PART THREE
SINS OF THE FATHER
30
Chris didn’t sleep.
He stayed with Hannah in the ghost town until two in the morning. When they finally parted, he sensed her reluctance to go home alone. Or maybe it was pent-up desire. He thought that she wanted to ask him to come with her but couldn’t find the words to say so. Something had changed between them, but neither was ready to acknowledge it. Even so, he returned to the motel and lay in bed without closing his eyes, and all he could think about was Hannah.
At six in the morning, he gave up on sleep and went back to the hospital. He wasn’t alone there. Glenn Magnus lay in the visitor’s lounge, his long legs stretched out on the sofa, his arms behind his head. His tired eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. His unruly blond hair hadn’t been washed, and he was dressed casually, in a sweatshirt and jeans. The lights in the lounge made the room unnaturally bright.
‘You couldn’t sleep either?’ Chris asked.
The minister nodded. The fluorescent bulbs made his pale face look almost dead. ‘I got here an hour ago.’
‘How’s Johan?’
‘Angry. I’m worried about him.’
‘Did you tell him about Ashlynn and the baby?’
‘I did. There was no way to cushion the blow. I’m afraid I lit a fire with him, and I don’t know what he’ll do.’
The minister pushed himself up on the sofa. Chris sat down next to him.
‘Can I ask you something about Ashlynn?’ Chris said.
‘Of course.’
‘When did you last talk to her?’
Magnus rubbed his face with both hands to awaken himself. ‘Sometime in February. It was shortly before she broke up with Johan. I didn’t talk to her again after that.’
‘How did she seem?’
‘Depressed. Of course, I had no idea at the time what she was wrestling with. I wish I’d known.’
‘Did she contact you at all before her death?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m sure she felt she couldn’t turn to me after she broke Johan’s heart.’
‘You told me that when Ashlynn first came to you, she suspected her father’s company of causing the cancer cluster. Did she say why?’
‘I think she simply found it hard to believe that God would be so arbitrary,’ Magnus said. ‘She refused to accept what everyone told us, that the deaths were simply a mathematical anomaly. An accident of fate.’
‘Do you believe that’s true?’ Chris asked.
The minister stared blankly at the paintings on the hospital wall. ‘I lost my little girl, Chris. I had to watch Kimberly suffer. I couldn’t blame God, so I blamed Florian and Mondamin. They were responsible. They were guilty.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I’ve run out of blame. I shouldn’t have questioned God’s will.’
‘Are you saying you no longer believe there was a connection between Mondamin and the deaths in St. Croix?’
‘I’m no expert in science, but I know what the experts told us. The people at the county and state said they had no basis to run tests, given the size of the cluster. We didn’t listen. A Stanford scientist studied everything during the litigation, and she told the judge there was no connection. Still we didn’t listen. Who am I to say they were wrong and we were right? It’s over, it’s done. I’ve let it go.’
‘Ashlynn didn’t.’
‘She was a young, idealistic girl. She wanted an explanation. God isn’t in that business.’
‘What about Vernon Clay?’ Chris asked. ‘Did you and Ashlynn talk about him?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, we did. Remember, Vernon was our principal suspect. Ashlynn fixated on Vernon when I talked about him.’
‘Did she know anything about his work that would have connected him to the deaths in St. Croix?’
‘Not that she ever told me. Why?’
‘She was still talking about him only days before her death. She seemed to blame him for what happened to her baby.’
Magnus ran a big hand through his hair, leaving it a mess of cowlicks. ‘I never should have put the idea in her head.’
‘Did you know Vernon Clay?’ Chris asked.
‘Of course. He worked at Mondamin in the early days, and he lived near St. Croix. He came to our church, but he didn’t really interact with the other parishioners. He was a loner. My wife was the only one who ever got close to him. She had a weakness for vulnerable adults.’
‘Vulnerable adults? What does that mean?’
‘Vernon was extraordinarily intelligent, but he was largely unable to function among other people. Clinically, I’d say he was borderline schizophrenic. He spouted conspiracy theories all the time, truly crazy ideas. He was deeply paranoid, always convinced that people were scheming to steal his research. And yet his mind was wired for science. He had a gift. There are more people like that than you’d believe – people who work and make a living but who are barely competent on other levels.’
‘But your wife got through to him?’
Magnus smiled. ‘Leah was persistent. She’d bring him meals, talk to him, sit by him in church. Really, she became his social lifeline. I think she was the one thread connecting him to the real world. She was probably the only person who took an interest in him for something other than his work.’
‘You said you lost your wife almost ten years ago,’ Chris said. ‘How did that happen?’
‘It was a brain aneurysm. The doctors said she’d probably carried it all her life. One morning, she simply never woke up.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was painless, and she was gone in an instant. If God was going to take her, at least he did so quickly. It was merciful, compared with what happened to Kimberly.’
‘How did Vernon Clay react to losing his social lifeline?’ Chris asked.
Magnus shook his head. ‘Oh, it was very sad. He withdrew even further inside himself. His delusions became much worse. He blamed everyone in town for Leah’s death. He showed up in church one day and ranted about our being murderers and the Devil coming for us and even about the Mafia and the CIA, as I recall. That was the last time he set foot in St. Croix.’
‘I can’t believe Florian kept him on at Mondamin.’
‘Well, I told you, he was perfectly functional when he put on his lab coat. From what I heard, Vernon was as much a genius as ever in his own world. If anything, he was even more obsessive about it. He worked seven days a week. I think he mostly went home to sleep, and then he went back to his lab. That was the only place he felt comfortable.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I have no idea. About four years ago, he disappeared. Honestly, he could have been gone longer, and I’m not sure anyone outside Mondamin would have realized it. We only found out he was gone when his house burned down.’
