‘I’ll try.’
‘I meant what I said. I’m sorry about Olivia, and I will do everything I can to catch the boys who did this.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I also meant the part about staying out of it. Revenge doesn’t give you a free pass for violence.’
‘Message received,’ Chris said.
Altman returned to the elevator, leaving Chris alone in the hospital hallway. He watched the doors close. With Altman gone, he left the evidence box on the floor and wandered toward the first patient room beyond the nurse’s station. From the doorway, he watched Olivia in bed, asleep, at peace. Her face was angelic. She bore no scars on the outside. It was her head and heart that worried him.
He needed fresh air. He returned to the hallway and hoisted the evidence box on his shoulder. Inside the elevator, he sagged against the rear wall and closed his eyes, and for a second or two, he slept. The opening of the doors on the first floor jarred him. He shook himself and exited into the hospital lobby. Outside, the night was cool, and the rain had stopped, but the air was damp. His Lexus was parked at the back of the lot, facing a grassy field. He carried the box to his car, popped the trunk, and deposited it inside. Tomorrow, he would review what the police had found, looking for more evidence. More doubt. Drip by drip.
Chris slammed the trunk. He saw no cars on the streets, and there were no lights in the nearby houses. The town of Barron was quiet. Even so, he felt as if a voyeur were watching him. It was a strange, uncomfortable sensation. He studied the parked cars in the hospital lot, but he was alone. He looked across the street to the dark field, which was buried in shadows. If anyone was there, they were invisible.
He was about to return to the hospital when he noticed something under the windshield wiper of his car. It hadn’t been there when he parked. He assumed it was the kind of annoying advertisement that sandwich shops placed on cars on the Minneapolis streets, but when he plucked it from the windshield he saw that it was an envelope. Nothing was written on the outside. It wasn’t sealed.
Chris slid a single sheet of paper from the interior, and when he unfolded it, he looked up sharply, staring into the empty darkness around him. He hadn’t been wrong. He wasn’t alone.
He read the black printed letters on the page.
TO THE ATTENTION OF
MR. CHRISTOPHER HAWK
YOU HAVE SUFFERED TONIGHT
YOU ARE IN A WORLD
WHOSE EVIL IS BEYOND SALVATION
YOU ARE IN A WORLD
THAT WILL SOON BE DESTROYED
LET THIS BE YOUR WARNING
THERE WILL BE NO ESCAPE
IF YOU STAY YOU WILL DIE
MY NAME IS
AQUARIUS
PART TWO
THE DEAD LAND
16
Chris found the minister’s son, Johan, awake and alone in his hospital room. The teenager sat up in bed, staring out the window at the pre-dawn darkness and using an incentive spirometer for deep breathing. It was obviously painful, and he winced as he inhaled. Seeing Chris, Johan put the device aside. His face still bore the welts and bruises of the beating he’d taken, but the wary demeanor that Chris had observed when he first met Johan at the motel had softened.
‘Mr. Hawk, I’m really sorry,’ Johan told him.
Chris pulled a chair next to the bed. ‘Why are you sorry?’
‘It’s my fault. I couldn’t stop them.’
‘There was one of you against half a dozen or more of them,’ he told the boy. ‘Don’t blame yourself.’
Johan rolled his head back. His fingers curled together into fists. ‘Those bastards.’
Chris saw in the boy what he’d felt in himself the previous night. It was so easy, so tempting, to be consumed by hatred in this town. Marco Piva at the motel had said the same thing. Everyone wants revenge.
‘I’d like to ask you some questions, Johan, if you’re up to it.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s about you and Ashlynn,’ he said.
The teenager didn’t look surprised. ‘I figured people were going to find out sooner or later.’
‘You were involved with Ashlynn, weren’t you?’ Chris asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Was it serious?’
‘Yeah. Very.’
‘Who knew about it?’
‘Almost nobody. It wasn’t safe, you know? My dad knew. Ashlynn told her mom. That was it. We didn’t tell anybody else.’
‘What about Olivia?’
Johan hesitated. ‘Yeah, she found out,’ he admitted. ‘She saw us together. She was really upset.’
‘Why? Because of Kimberly?’
‘Not just that.’ The boy hooded his eyes. ‘She was – well, she was really jealous.’
Chris was confused, and then he realized he’d missed the answer that was staring him in the face.
‘Did you and Olivia have a relationship, too?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Last summer.’
‘Did you break up with her because of Ashlynn?’
‘Look, Mr. Hawk, I never meant—’
Chris held up his hands to stop him. ‘I’m not playing the outraged father here. I just want the truth.’
He saw genuine conflict in Johan’s face. ‘Olivia thought so, but that’s not how it happened. I really care for Olivia a lot, but we’re so different. She thinks religion is a waste of time, and me, well, it’s a big part of my life. There were lots of things like that, where we just didn’t see life the same way. The more we dated, the more I began to realize we didn’t have that much in common. The one thing we did have was Kimberly, but you can’t build a relationship around losing someone, right?’
‘That’s true.’
‘I tried to tell her that, but she said she loved me. She was really hurt.’
‘What about you and Ashlynn? How did that happen? You two were on opposite sides of a pretty big divide.’
Johan looked uncomfortable, as if he were reluctant to share the secret even though Ashlynn was dead. ‘We met at church.’
