Brian Freeman - Spilled Blood

The truth was Hannah. He’d never stopped loving her. Her voice on the phone was enough to awaken the old feelings. She was what was holding him back.

Ready or not, Chris drove across the dam and turned south toward Barron. The river followed the highway, winking in and out behind trees that grew on the shore. Houses appeared. A school bus pulled in front of him. The city sign advertised the population: 5,383. Out here, that was a metropolis, a hub for the whole county. As he neared the town, he felt as if he had crossed back into the 1950s, as if decades of progress had hopscotched over this section of land. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe this place would not be as intimidating as it seemed.

Life in the city was fast and complex; life in the country was slower and simpler.

A mile later, he realized that he was wrong.

On the outskirts of Barron, he passed an agribusiness facility built on the western bank of the river. It was one-story, white, clean, and almost windowless. The plant looked more like a prison than an industrial site, because it was protected by a nine-foot fence wound with coils of barbed wire to keep intruders from reaching the interior grounds. The single narrow gate in the fence, just wide enough for trucks to pass, was guarded by two uniformed security officers who were both armed with handguns. As he drove by the plant slowly, he noticed their eyes following him with suspicion.

He noticed something else, too. Outside the fence, he saw a dramatic marble sign ten feet in height, featuring the company name in brass letters. Mondamin Research. Its logo was a golden ear of corn inside a multi-colored helix strand of DNA. Two workers in yellow slickers labored in the rain to sandblast graffiti that had been spray-painted in streaky letters across the white stone. Despite their efforts, he could still see what had been written.

The graffiti said: You’re killing us .

Chris found the Riverside Motel a quarter-mile beyond the Mondamin headquarters. From the parking lot, he had a perfect vantage on the plant’s barbed-wire fence glistening in the rain. Ahead of him, he saw the main street of Barron. Between the two landmarks was the chocolate-brown ribbon of the river.

The motel was a U-shaped, single-story building with two dozen rooms. The white paint had begun to peel away in chips, and the gutters sagged from the shingled black roof. The doors were cherry-red. After parking and retrieving his bag, he ducked through the rain and opened the screen door of the motel office. The interior was humid, and a fan swiveled on the desk, which was unusual for March. On the left wall he saw an ice machine and two vending machines selling snacks and pop. He approached the check-in counter.

‘I’m Chris Hawk,’ he told the man seated behind the counter. ‘I called this morning about a room.’

The motel owner nodded pleasantly. ‘Welcome to Barron, Mr. Hawk.’

Chris guessed that the man was in his early fifties. He had an olive Italian cast to his skin. His hair was black-and-gray, buzzed into a wiry crew cut. He had a jet-black mustache, a mole on his upper cheek, and a silver chain nestled in the matted fringe of his chest hair. He slid out a reservation form, which he handed to Chris with a pen.

‘I’m looking for the county courthouse,’ Chris mentioned as he filled in his personal details.

‘Yes, of course. Well, you can’t miss it. It’s downtown, beautiful old building, red stone.’

Chris stopped writing and looked up. ‘Why “of course”?’

‘Oh, everyone knows who you are, Mr. Hawk, and why you’re here.’

‘Already?’

The motel owner shrugged. He was short and squat, with bulging forearms. His T-shirt, which fit snugly, advertised Dreamland Barbeque. ‘This is a small town. If you fart in your bedroom, your neighbors start gossiping about what you had for dinner.’

Chris laughed. ‘That’s good to know.’

The man extended his hand. His handshake was a vise. ‘My name is Marco Piva.’

‘Since you know why I’m here, Marco, can you tell me what people are saying about what happened on Friday night?’

The motel owner snuffled loudly. He wiped his bulbous nose above his mustache. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to hear that.’

‘They think my daughter murdered Ashlynn Steele.’

‘Oh, yes, everyone says she did. No one thinks it was an accident or a game. I’m very sorry. I have to tell you, I knew something like this would happen. Violence begets violence, and someone dies. It’s a shame two young girls were involved.’

Chris handed the registration form back to Marco and turned as the screen door banged behind him. A teenage boy, the kind of fresh-faced Scandinavian Lutheran that Chris expected to find in this part of the state, stood in the doorway. He had wavy blond hair that was plastered on his head from the rain and the sturdy physique of a football player. His eyes were sky-blue. He wore a form-fitting white T-shirt that emphasized his muscles, crisp jeans, and cowboy boots. Chris figured he was seventeen or eighteen years old.

‘Johan,’ Marco called. ‘This is Mr. Hawk.’

The boy didn’t look surprised. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Johan lives in St. Croix,’ Marco added.

‘Oh, really?’ Chris said. ‘So you know my daughter.’

‘She lives across the street.’

Chris found it odd that his teenage daughter lived so close to a boy who looked like a Norwegian god, and she had never mentioned him. Not once. He thought about Hannah’s warning: You see the girl she wants you to see.

‘Marco says a lot of people think Olivia is guilty, Johan. What do you think?’

The boy looked pained. ‘I guess nobody really knows what happened,’ he replied, but his face said something else. We all know what happened.

‘I’m here to help her,’ Chris told him. ‘Maybe you can help me.’

‘How?’

‘By telling me about the bad blood between the kids in Barron and St. Croix.’

Johan frowned. ‘I try to stay out of it. It’s like a poison.’

‘That’s smart.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I told Olivia, but she didn’t listen.’

‘No?’

‘No, she’s stubborn. She couldn’t let go.’

Marco interrupted them, as if he didn’t want the feud carried inside his walls. ‘Is Mr. Hawk’s room ready, Johan?’

The boy nodded.

‘Put his suitcase inside, all right?’

Johan grabbed the suitcase, swinging it as if it were practically weightless. He nodded at Chris as he left the office, and his sculpted face was pure Minnesotan: polite, handsome, but yielding no secrets.

‘Johan is a good boy,’ Marco said when he was gone. ‘He cares for your daughter.’

‘He looked at me like I was from another planet,’ Chris said.

‘Ah, but you are, Mr. Hawk. You’re an outsider.’

‘Is that a crime around here?’

‘Oh, no,’ Marco chuckled. ‘It’s worse. Most people here would happily choose a local criminal over an honest outsider.’

Chris smiled at the man’s jowly Italian face. ‘You look like an outsider yourself.’

‘Yes, you’re right about that. I bought this place in December. What a shock, all that snow and cold! I hate winter, but I needed to get out of San Jose. My wife passed away last year, and all I had was my city pension and a house full of memories. I asked a realtor to scout motels for me, and this place looked like a nice business in a beautiful area. I figured, that’s for me.’

‘Have the locals accepted you?’ Chris asked.

‘No, I could be here twenty years, and I’d still be a newcomer. The people are perfectly nice, but that’s as far as it goes. I don’t mind. I didn’t come here to make friends, just to get a little peace. It will be worse for you, Mr. Hawk.’