Thief River Falls (25 page)

“This time Nick got two months in jail,” Tom went on. “Denis wanted Nick behind bars for a lot longer than that, but you know what the courts are like in these situations. Plus, I think the judge didn’t want to look like he was handing out a stiffer sentence because Denis was personally involved. Anyway, Nick went away to do his time, and Denis made sure Fiona got a restraining order and a divorce. When Nick got out in the middle of September, Denis had a sheriff’s car parked outside Fiona’s home day and night in case Nick decided to go after his ex-wife
again. Except nothing happened. Nick left town. He got in his car, and according to the credit card receipts, he drove all the way to Florida. Delray. The family was pretty relieved to have him gone, you know? We all figured that was that.”

Lisa closed her eyes. “That wasn’t that, was it?”

“No,” Tom replied. He flicked his first cigarette out the car window. “That was definitely not that.”

“What happened?”

“Ten days ago, Nick drove back to Thief River Falls. He parked a couple of blocks from Fiona’s place. Denis still had a cop outside—better safe than sorry—but Nick waited until the guy left the car to take a leak and swung a pipe into the cop’s skull. Knocked him out cold. Then he went after Fiona. She never even had time to call 911. He kicked in the back door, grabbed a butcher knife, and went after her. Neighbors heard screaming and called the cops, but by the time they got there, Nick was gone, and Fiona was dead in the bedroom. Seventy-plus stab wounds. I mean, he just went after her in a frenzy. Worst crime around here in decades. Maybe ever.”

Lisa could see the blood on the carpet. The screams reverberated in her head. She could picture Fiona on her back, could see Nick over her with his arm flying up and down, blood spraying everywhere. It was as if she’d been there to witness the whole thing. She felt sick again.

“They’re sure it was Nick who did it?” she said.

“Oh, yeah. Prints everywhere. On the knife. On the pipe where the cop was hit. Neighbors saw him running away, too.”

“What happened to him?” Lisa asked. “Where did he go?”

Tom shrugged. “That’s the million-dollar question. Your guess is as good as mine. The cops would love to find him, but he’s in the wind. They’ve been on the hunt for Nick ever since the murder.”

“He’s
missing
?”

“Yeah. He was on foot, too. The cops were all over his car, so he just ran. The sheriff put a squeeze around the whole town. I thought they
would have nabbed him by now, but it’s been ten days, and there’s no sign of him. It’s hard to believe he could still be hiding in Thief River Falls, so I figure he managed to get through the dragnet and steal a car. He’s probably down in Florida again.”

Lisa stared at the windshield, but it was almost completely covered in a light layer of snow. “I don’t think so,” she murmured.

“No? You think he’s still around?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You got any particular reason to believe that?” he asked.

Lisa didn’t answer, and Tom lit a fresh cigarette. Number two. The smoke stopped going out the window and settled over the Camaro’s interior like a cloud.

“Well, you could be right,” Tom went on, when he realized she wasn’t going to say anything more. “Maybe Nick is still holed up somewhere around here. He can’t hide forever, though. And I’ll tell you one thing. Nick better hope that the cops catch him before Denis Farrell does. This was his daughter. Believe me, Denis is out for blood.”

29

Daylight was waning as Lisa slipped back through her old neighborhood. She made it to her house unseen, and when she was inside, she called for Purdue. He didn’t answer, so she took the steps down to the cold, cluttered basement. She navigated through the maze of garage sale junk they kept down there to the tiny crawl space. Her heart felt a flood of relief when she spotted his face poking out from behind Madeleine’s old Christmas decorations.

Purdue snaked from his hiding place and dropped to the floor. He wrapped up Lisa in a hug.

“You were gone so long!” he said. “I was afraid you were never coming back.”

Lisa mussed his blond hair. “Don’t worry about that. Wherever you are, I’ll always come back for you. Why were you in the crawl space? Did someone come to the house?”

“I heard something outside, and I got scared. I didn’t know who it was, so I figured I would hide.”

“That was the right thing to do,” Lisa told him.

The two of them went back upstairs to the main part of the house. Purdue went from window to window to peer outside as if he were a spy, and Lisa went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. The kitchen was a match for Fiona’s house, without the marble countertops and stainless steel appliances. There were knives on the counter, just
like there had been at Fiona’s, but none of the knives was missing. Lisa took Madeleine’s butcher knife out of the block and thought about all the times she’d seen her mother cutting up chicken pieces with it and singing, “Alouette, je te plumerai” while she did.

When the water was boiling, Lisa brought her tea into the living room. She took a seat on the sofa and patted the cushion for Purdue to join her. The boy galloped over and sat with his legs underneath him. It felt right to have a boy running around the house. Her eyes drifted to the mantel of their fireplace, which was where they kept their family photographs, just as Fiona had. Except Lisa had turned all the photographs facedown when she came back into the house. Seeing them was still too painful.

“I explored the house while you were gone,” Purdue told her. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Sure. It’s fine.”

He pointed at a copy of
Thief River Falls
on the coffee table. “I found that book in the bedroom upstairs. Is that yours? Is that the one about the boy who’s lost, like me?”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

“Can I read it?”

Lisa shook her head. “Not yet. It’s a little old for you.”

Purdue fidgeted on the sofa. He looked at the book and then down at his lap. “Well, I started reading it anyway. I read the first part, about the boy in the ground who’s talking to his mom.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Lisa said.

“Does the boy die?”

“No. I told you he gets rescued.”

“What about his mom? She’s dead, right? Like mine. You didn’t say that in the book, but I figured that was it.”

“Purdue, this is not a book for kids. It’s a book for adults.”

“What happens? Who rescues the boy?”

Lisa shook her head and didn’t answer. She wanted to get away from the book; she didn’t want to dive inside the plot of
Thief River Falls
. Not now. Then she heard an echo of Willow Taylor’s voice in her head, and she realized she didn’t have a choice. The more she tried to get away from the book, the more she kept finding herself in the middle of it.

Do you ever worry about someone bringing your books to life?

“Listen to me, Purdue, that first scene takes place in a cemetery,” Lisa said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“Like what?”

She tried to decide how much to tell him. To get answers without scaring him any more than he was. “I talked to a girl who was in one of the town cemeteries two nights ago. That was the night you came to my house. She says she saw someone in the cemetery, and she thought they were burying a body. I was just wondering if that stirs any memories for you. You know, like the boy in my book who was put underground.”

His brow furrowed. “No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I don’t think so.”

Lisa didn’t sense any deception from him this time. Purdue didn’t remember what had happened to him, and if he’d been injured—if someone had struck him—then the trauma had blacked out his memories. So maybe he’d been at the cemetery and maybe not. There was no way for her to be sure.

“I’m going to say a few names to you,” Lisa said, “and I want you to tell me if you’ve ever heard any of these names before.”

“Okay.”

“Fiona Farrell.”

Purdue shook his head. “No.”

“What about Nick Loudon?”

“No.”

She hesitated. “Denis Farrell. What about him?”

“I don’t know any of them. Who are they? What do they have to do with me?”

“Well, I don’t think they had anything to do with you. Not until two nights ago. After that, I’m not so sure.” Lisa reached into her pocket for the photographs she’d taken from Fiona’s house. She took the wedding picture of Fiona and Nick, and she extended it to Purdue with her thumb covering Nick Loudon’s face.

“How about this woman?” she asked. “Do you know her? Have you ever seen her before?”

“No.”

Lisa moved her thumb away from the photograph. “What about him?”

Purdue’s face changed instantly. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he couldn’t bear to stare at the man, as if his picture brought back memories of blood and death. Lisa knew. She’d suspected all along, ever since she’d heard about the murder of Fiona Farrell, ever since she’d found out that Nick Loudon was missing.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” she asked softly. “The man by the river? The one who looked like a football player?”

Purdue nodded.

“He’s the one they tortured and killed?” Lisa asked.

The boy nodded again. He still hadn’t said anything.

Lisa had one more photograph in her hand. It weighed hardly anything, and yet it felt heavy. “There’s one more picture I want to show you, Purdue. I think this one may be hard for you to see, but I need you to look at it, and I need you to tell me if you know this man. If he was there by the water that night.”

Still the boy said nothing.

She took the picture, and she covered up Gillian’s face so that only her husband was visible.

Denis Farrell.

The county attorney of Pennington County.

She held the picture in front of Purdue’s face and watched terror crease his features, washing away his innocence, bringing back that night as if he were in the midst of it again. As if they were holding him as he struggled to escape.

He knew the face. He knew Denis Farrell.

“Purdue?” Lisa murmured as the silence stretched out. “You have to say it out loud.”

He pointed at the photograph with a trembling finger.

“Kill the boy.”

30

“It was this man?” Lisa said.

She got off the sofa and shoved the photograph back in her pocket. She found herself moving restlessly around the room, touching all the little objects that made up her past. “He was the old man in charge? He was the one who told the others what to do?”

Purdue nodded. “Yes. He found me by the water. He pretended to be nice, but he wasn’t. He asked me all sorts of things about who I was and where I came from, but I didn’t trust him. He said the police were going to take me somewhere safe, but then I heard him say it to the others.
Kill the boy.
He didn’t think I heard, but I did. He said it like an order, and then he walked away. He had a limp. I remember him limping when he left the others behind with me. That’s the last thing I remember.”

“Thank you, Purdue. I know that was hard for you.”

“Who is he?”

Lisa asked herself how she could describe Denis Farrell to someone who didn’t know him. Her judgment was colored by the fact that she’d never liked him. She resented the power he’d had over Danny and the way he’d tried to control both of their lives. Obviously, he’d done the same thing to Fiona. Denis expected the world to bow to him, and when it didn’t, he needed to lash out at whoever stood in his way. For
most of the past twenty years, that someone had been Lisa. The weight of his grief had fallen on her.

Even so, she felt sorry for him. Deep down, he was a sad old man caught up in his grief, and she of all people knew that grief could change someone. Turn them into someone new, twist around their minds until they didn’t even recognize themselves. It didn’t excuse what he’d done, but she wouldn’t have wanted to walk in his shoes.

“He was Danny’s father,” she told the boy.

“Your Danny?”

“Yes.”

“But . . . why would he hurt that man? Why would he hurt me?”

“Because that man hurt his family, and he was angry,” Lisa said. “I understand that. I know how he feels. But Denis crossed a line, and now I have to find a way to stop him.”

“How?”

“I need to go out again,” Lisa told him.

Purdue got off the sofa and ran to her. “No! No, Lisa, don’t do that.”

“I have to.”

“If you go out, we’ll never see each other again. I know it. Something will happen. Don’t leave me alone!”

“I won’t let anyone hurt you, Purdue.”

“But I want to stay together. I want to stay
with
you. Let’s go away! Let’s go to Canada! Both of us. Take me there, take me away from here, and we’ll be safe. We can cross the street and hop on the train. Just like I did.”

Lisa shook her head. “Denis won’t let us leave. If we go, he’ll keep looking for us. Sooner or later, he’ll find us—he’ll find
you
—and I won’t let that happen. I need to stop him. I need to put an end to this. That’s the only way to protect you.”

The boy buried his face in her chest and hung on to her. She could tell that he was crying silently. She held him, stroking his hair, trying to
comfort him. Then she felt his little body stiffen with resolve, and when he separated himself from her, he looked older than his ten years. He had that serious, quizzical face again, the face that seemed to understand the world better than she did.

“I told you that I would never be able to leave this place,” he said.

“Don’t talk like that. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. I won’t let it.”

“Something bad already did happen. I’m only here to run away from it.”

“I can’t change what happened to you before,” Lisa said, “but I can
fix
this. I just need to gather more evidence against Denis. He’s a powerful man, so I need something that will make people listen to me. Things I can take to Will at the FBI. I need to be able to prove what really happened.”

“So where are you going?”

“I’m going to find the place where you were hiding two nights ago. I want to see if they left anything behind. Anything that proves what they did to that man.”