their scientists. She was pretty sure that we’d find plenty of dirt once we started looking.’
‘What kind of dirt?’
‘Environmental violations. Questionable science. Bad actors. There was one scientist in particular they had suspicions about, a whack job named Vernon Clay who lived near St. Croix. He disappeared, and we tried to find him. No luck.’
‘The whole thing sounds like an uphill climb from a litigation standpoint.’
‘Well, I was hoping we could prompt a settlement offer to make us go away,’ Rollie admitted. ‘Florian was in negotiations to sell the company, and I figured he didn’t want bad publicity to screw the deal. But he’s a hard-ass. I got out-lawyered and out-resourced. The Bible may say different, but most of the time, when David goes up against Goliath, David gets his ass kicked.’
‘Causation is almost impossible to prove in these cases. That’s not your fault.’
Rollie shrugged. ‘In my line of work, I don’t have too many opportunities to be on the side of the good guys. I really wanted to come through for those people, but I let them down.’
The younger attorney finished his burger and dumped the empty foam container into a wastebasket under his desk. He sucked up his Coke through a straw, until there was nothing left but an empty slurp, and then he threw the cup away, too. He sat silently in his office chair and studied Chris with a thoughtful expression.
‘So,’ Rollie said finally. ‘Now that we know each other, should we talk about why you’re really here, Chris?’
‘Okay, sure. I’d like some information about the night Ashlynn Steele was killed.’
Rollie rolled around the mouse on his desk, and the twenty-four-inch flat-screen monitor for his computer awakened. He typed in a password to reaccess his files. Chris counted at least fourteen keystrokes.
‘That’s a pretty long password,’ Chris commented.
‘Yeah, I learned about security during the Mondamin litigation.’
‘How so?’
‘My office was broken into twice. I could never prove it, but I think Florian hired somebody to see what data we’d uncovered.’
Rollie accessed his recent documents and sent two files to a printer in the open closet behind him. He grabbed the sheets and handed them to Chris. ‘Those are copies of our statements to the police. Mine and Tanya’s.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sure you’ll get them from the sheriff soon enough, but this way, you don’t have to wait.’
‘I have some more questions for Tanya, too, if you don’t mind.’
Rollie eyed him across the desk. ‘Here’s my problem, Chris. This is the point where our legal interests don’t coincide. I’m sure you understand. I’m fond of Olivia, but my only concern in this case is the welfare of my daughter. As a lawyer, I know what you have to do. I don’t blame you for it, but I won’t let you make Tanya into a suspect.’
‘Tanya may know things that will help me prove that Olivia wasn’t involved in Ashlynn’s death.’
The other attorney didn’t hide his surprise. ‘You’re planning to argue that Olivia is innocent? You’re not using emotional distress?’
‘I’m not arguing anything yet.’
‘Maybe so, but that makes me even more nervous about letting you talk to Tanya.’
‘Tanya can help me corroborate Olivia’s story. She already told me that she talked to Olivia after she got home. Olivia told her that she left Ashlynn in the ghost town. Alive. That’s important.’
Rollie frowned. ‘You
Chris knew he’d made a mistake. He tried to backtrack, but it was already too late. ‘I asked her a couple questions. I told her she didn’t have to tell me anything.’
‘Don’t play dumb with me, Chris. Did you ask Tanya whether she went
‘Yes, I did,’ he admitted.
‘In other words, you tried to get her to incriminate herself.’
Chris said nothing, and Rollie stood up. His demeanor made it clear that the meeting was over. ‘You have our statements,’ he announced. ‘For now, that’s all you get. Let me be clear about something else, too, Chris.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If you want to talk to Tanya again,’ Rollie told him, ‘you talk to me first.’
10
The guards at Mondamin Research didn’t want to let Chris inside the gate. It took ten minutes of phone calls back and forth to the administration building before they confirmed that he had an appointment with Florian Steele. One of the guards, whose tattoo suggested that he was a retired Marine, climbed into the passenger seat of Chris’s Lexus without being asked.
‘I’ll show you where to park,’ he told Chris, pointing at a road leading around the rear of the facility.
The main building was approximately two football fields in length. It was clean and pristine, as if the white paint were touched up daily. There were no windows along the walls of the building, but he could see extensive environmental duct work on the roof. As he drove, he saw that the larger section of the campus was connected to a smaller administrative building by a glass-enclosed walkway. He could see two employees in white coats walking behind the glass.
When he reached the opposite side of the smaller building, which overlooked the river, he saw a small parking area. The guard gestured.
‘Park there.’
Chris spotted several empty visitor parking places near the front door. At the far end of the first row of cars, he also saw a bright orange Mustang convertible. He didn’t think there were two vehicles like that in Barron, Minnesota. This was Ashlynn’s car.
He ignored the guard’s instructions and drove past the building entrance. He stopped in an empty parking spot forty yards down, immediately next to the Mustang. The man next to him protested.
‘Not here!’ he instructed Chris. ‘Back up!’
Chris turned off the Lexus and hopped out. ‘You going to shoot me?’ he asked.
While the guard climbed out of his car, Chris made a careful examination of the exterior of the Mustang. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. The flat tire that had stranded Ashlynn in the ghost town hadn’t been replaced; he assumed the vehicle had been towed here. He bent and studied the tire and didn’t see any obvious damage. It was most likely a puncture wound deep in the tread. The rest of the chassis was in perfect condition, without dents or scratches. If there had been dirt or dust on the frame, the rain had washed it away.
‘Let’s go, Mr. Hawk,’ the guard warned him in a growling voice.
Chris paid no attention. He tried to drown out the low machinery hum from the buildings, the murmur of the river fifty yards away, and the guard’s voice. Instead, he put himself inside Ashlynn’s mind that night. She was sitting in the Mustang, near midnight, stranded in a town full of dead buildings. She’d driven this car. This was the last place she’d been before she died. He cupped his hands and peered through the windows at the white leather seats inside. The interior was immaculate, not a scrap of paper, no coffee mug in the cup holder, no pen shoved into the visor. He assumed that anything inside had been bagged and tagged by the police. Or maybe Ashlynn simply kept a clean car. It was impeccable, except for the remnants of powder where the police had dusted for fingerprints and messy splotches of dried mud on the driver’s seat and on the floor mat from the recent rains.
There was nothing to see. Even so, something about the Mustang bothered him.
‘I didn’t invite you here so you could conduct a search of my daughter’s car, Chris,’ Florian Steele snapped.
Chris looked up from the Mustang’s windows. Florian stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, ten feet away. His arms were folded across his chest. The guard began to apologize, but Florian waved him to silence.
‘Shall we go inside?’ Florian asked. ‘Or do you want to poke around the trunk and the glove compartment, too?’
