‘Did she ever talk about Ashlynn Steele?’
He was surprised to see Hannah hesitate, as if the question made her uncomfortable. She took a long time to answer. ‘Sometimes. Ashlynn was the enemy for kids around here.’
‘Which kids?’
‘Make a list. There are at least forty kids between the ages of thirteen and nineteen here in St. Croix. Any one of them would blame Ashlynn for who her father is. It was terribly unfair.’
He couldn’t help his first thought:
Hannah got up abruptly, cutting off their conversation. She took their coffee mugs and put them in the sink, and she ran water and wiped the mugs with a towel. Without looking back at Chris, she said, ‘I’m sorry, I know I’m not being much help. I appreciate your coming here for Olivia.’
‘I wouldn’t have done anything else.’
She turned around, and her eyes were warmer. She scanned him up and down. ‘You’re looking good, Chris. You’ve lost weight. Good for you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Are you involved with someone?’
‘No.’
Hannah looked genuinely sad. ‘Still addicted, hmm?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are a lot of drugs that control people. For some it’s cocaine or alcohol. For you it’s adrenaline. Money. Work. Deals. It doesn’t matter what you inject. It’s still addiction.’
He felt himself getting angry. He’d heard this before, but he tried not to fire back the way he had in the past.
‘We’ve been down that road, Hannah,’ he said softly.
She stopped herself, biting her lip, as if she realized it was too tempting to fall into old habits. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ she agreed. ‘We have.’
*
Chris returned to the town of Barron at ten o’clock. He found his motel room wrecked.
The door hung ajar, splintered where someone had kicked it in. Inside, his clothes had been knifed into shreds and strewn like confetti around the room. The papers he’d gathered about the case had been stuffed into a garbage pail and burned. The room stank of melted plastic, and the carpet had a singed hole, revealing charred floorboards. Multi-colored spray paint made streaks around the walls and across the bed linens.
Someone had used a black marker to write on the bathroom mirror.
He tried to put himself inside the heads of teenagers who could feel such primal rage, and he couldn’t. He didn’t get it. All he could see was the work of animals.
The motel owner, Marco Piva, stood beside Chris. ‘I am so sorry, Mr. Hawk,’ Marco told him. ‘My house is a couple hundred yards behind the motel. I didn’t hear anything until the fire alarm started going off. I ran down here, but the bastards were already gone.’
‘It’s not your fault, Marco,’ he said.
‘I’ve called the police.’
Chris thought about Hannah’s dismissive attitude toward the police and realized she was right. There was no protection. There was nothing to be done. ‘I’ll deal with them in the morning. Right now, I just need to sleep.’
‘Of course, yes. I have another room for you. Do you need anything? I can get you whatever you want.’
‘Maybe a toothbrush and toothpaste.’
‘No problem.’ The motel owner put his hands on his fleshy hips, and his golden face screwed up in disgust. ‘St. Croix attacks Barron, Barron attacks St. Croix. Where does it end? A pox on both of their houses, that’s what I say. I wore blue for three decades in San Jose. I saw this kind of hatred in the city, but I hoped I would never see it again.’
‘Whoever quits first is the loser,’ Chris said, ‘so no one quits.’
‘It is too bad you are in the middle of it, Mr. Hawk.’
‘Olivia’s in the middle, and I have to get her out,’ Chris replied. ‘You said you had another room for me?’
Marco dug in his pocket for a key. ‘It’s the last room on the corner. I was up half the night on Friday repairing the plumbing in there, so it’s all new. The toilet, now it goes
‘Thank you.’
Chris left the room without sifting through the remains of his luggage. He walked past the other motel rooms, where rain dripped from the roof into puddles beside him. The new room was sterile and empty, which was what he wanted. It smelled of lemon cleanser. He went to the bathroom sink and ran cold water and splashed it on his face and ran his wet hands back through his hair.
He stared at himself in the mirror. He thought about Hannah.
He heard a knock on the door. It was the ever-efficient Marco, handing him a plastic bag of toiletries. He thanked the motel owner again, then closed the door and locked it. He dumped the bag on the counter of the bathroom: toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, mouthwash, bags of M&Ms and pretzels, microwave popcorn, a Bible, and a clean, folded pair of XXL underwear. That was life in a small town. Someone gave you their underwear if you had none.
Back in the bedroom, he took off his clothes and lay on the bed. The room was black. The mattress was a stiff board. He stared at the ceiling, but he didn’t sleep. There was no way around it; he was a long way from home. He was an outsider, a foreigner, and the town of Barron was already sending him a message.
5
Kirk Watson shouldered out of the overgrown weeds near the Spirit River, bellowing ‘Fukkkkkkkkyeah’ so loudly that the curse carried across the water to downtown Barron. He tossed his shoulder-length black hair out of his face. He had a long day’s worth of dark stubble on his square chin. He was shirtless, and he carried a long-neck bottle of Grain Belt, which he tilted and swigged until it was dry. With his other hand, he tugged up the zipper of his jean shorts.
A teenage girl followed Kirk from the river bank. She was as skinny as a stick, with dirty blond hair. Her bone-white knees were smeared with mud. She wiped her mouth and shoved her grapefruit-sized breasts back inside the tight confines of her camisole. When she spotted Lenny Watson eyeing her pink nipples from the park bench, she snarled at him.
‘What are you looking at?’
Lenny’s face blushed beet-red. He stammered an excuse, but Kirk grabbed the girl’s hair and pulled until she screamed in pain.
‘Hey!’ Kirk warned, jabbing a finger in her face. ‘That’s my brother there. You got that, Margie? He wants a suck, you open your hole and give him a suck.’
Margie physically shrank as Kirk towered over her. ‘I’m sorry, Kirk,’ she whimpered.
Kirk shoved Margie toward Lenny, making her stumble in her block heels. ‘What about it, Leno? You want Margie here to swallow some squirt?’
Lenny squirmed on the metal bench, but he shook his head. ‘Nah, that’s okay.’
‘This girl’s got a tongue like a snake.’
‘No, thanks, man.’
Kirk shrugged and grabbed a beer from the twelve-pack box beside Lenny. It was his fifth. Lenny still nursed his first. Kirk dug in his pocket and pulled out a gun and set it on the bench. He extracted a dirty roll of cash and
