‘Was that an accident?’ Chris asked.
‘No, it was arson. Whoever did it was never caught. Most people suspected local kids.’ Magnus frowned.
‘You sound like you don’t believe it.’
‘Well, that was when the rumors started. We were in the midst of the cancer diagnoses among the children when Vernon vanished. Some people thought Florian arranged for the house to be burned to erase evidence.’
‘Evidence of what?’
‘Evidence that Vernon had been poisoning us for years. There were those who suspected he had a delusional vendetta against us going back to my wife’s death. Others said that Vernon had taken to writing his formulae on the walls of his house, and so Florian had to destroy the house to secure any trade secrets. Believe what you want.’
‘What about the dead land?’
‘Same rumors. People suspected that Vernon had been testing experimental pesticides on the fields around his house. They said Florian wanted to erase all evidence of what had been used. Maybe it was to protect company secrets. Maybe it was toxic. When we filed the lawsuit, we were desperate to believe almost anything.’
‘You tried to find him.’
‘Yes, without success. Vernon never re-entered the scientific community. He became our mystery man.’ He added, ‘I’m not sure where you’re going with all of this, Chris.’
‘It’s the timing that bothers me. All of this coming up just before Ashlynn was killed. Hannah and I wondered if she could have discovered something about Vernon that everyone else missed. Something that became a motive for her murder.’
‘What do you think, that she found out where he was hiding? That he came back here and killed her? I realize you’re trying to help Olivia, but I don’t think anyone is going to believe that.’
Chris nodded. Magnus was right. He knew he was chasing ghosts, and he didn’t know whether to believe in them. ‘I admit, it may be nothing at all. So far, I can’t connect the dots.’
‘I suppose that leaves you back where you started,’ the minister said. ‘In other words, you’re back to Johan. If Olivia is innocent, my son must be guilty.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t have to, Chris, but you’re wrong.’
He realized that he and Glenn Magnus were divided by irreconcilable faiths in their children. He also knew what the minister was really thinking. ‘You’re convinced that Olivia killed her, aren’t you? That’s what you’ve believed all along.’
‘I hope that’s not true. Truly, I do. I only know that Johan didn’t kill her.’
‘He went to the ghost town,’ Chris reminded him. ‘Her blood is on his clothes. You can’t run away from that, Glenn.’
‘Olivia was there, too, and she had the gun in her hand. She was pointing it at Ashlynn’s head. I’m sorry, Chris. Can you really not accept the possibility that she made a youthful, impulsive mistake? That she pulled the trigger and can’t bear to admit it?’
The minister’s voice was calm, and his composure was infuriating because everything he said was logical. Chris was alone in defending Olivia. Everyone else assumed she was guilty. Even Hannah had doubts. He was the outlier who couldn’t face the truth.
He also heard another undercurrent in what Magnus was saying. The minister knew Olivia better than he did. Olivia had grown up without him. He’d been missing in action, far away from the turmoil of her life. Did he really know whether his daughter was capable of murder?
‘That’s not what happened,’ Chris insisted.
‘Fair enough. We both have faith. I hope we’re both right.’
Chris said nothing more. He glanced up as he saw a nurse hovering in the doorway of the lounge. She was obviously reluctant to interrupt them, but her eyes flicked around the empty room with concern. She backed out without saying anything, but Chris got up to stop her.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.
The nurse looked at Glenn Magnus nervously. ‘I was hoping your son was in here with you.’
Magnus stood up, too. He was immediately concerned. ‘Johan’s not in his room?’
‘No. I’ve searched the floor. I can’t find him.’ She added, ‘I’m sure he’s here somewhere, though.’
The minister marched toward the hallway, brushing past the nurse. Chris followed. It was still early, and the hospital floor was deserted. Johan’s room was at the end of the hall, the last room before the EXIT sign over the stairway. The door was open. Magnus pushed past the curtain, calling his son’s name softly as he entered. Chris heard the minister inhale sharply. The bed was unmade, but it was empty.
‘He may be with Olivia,’ Chris suggested. ‘Let’s not panic.’
‘I’ll check,’ the nurse replied.
She hurried up the corridor toward Olivia’s room, but Magnus threw open the door of the small closet, where empty hangers dangled on the wooden rod. ‘No, his clothes are gone.’
‘You think he left?’ Chris asked.
‘He must have gone down the back stairs.’
The minister retreated to the window near the stairwell and examined the dark parking lot below them. There were only a handful of cars there in the early morning hours. He pointed at a section of the lot bathed under the glow of a street light. ‘My car is gone. I parked next to that light. He took it.’
‘Did he say anything to you?’ Chris asked.
Magnus shook his head. ‘The last thing I did was tell him about Ashlynn and the baby. He was stricken. I never should have told him.’ He murmured to himself, as if praying, ‘Johan, what do you think you’re doing, son? Don’t be a fool.’
31
Kirk Watson deposited Lenny at the Indian monument half an hour before the scheduled drop.
The eastern horizon was pink. A cardinal sang from the bare trees and flew past Lenny in a flash of red. He hiked up the cracked gravel road from the highway with binoculars slung around his neck. The road led to a park on the shallow hillside, dominated by an obelisk of rough gray stone. Huge trees dotted the open lawn surrounding the monument. Once, when he was really bored, he’d read the historical marker. The monument honored a pioneer victory in a long-ago frontier war, when Dakota Indians surrendered to a Minnesota colonel and released hundreds of farmers they’d held captive. If Lenny had been an Indian, he would have warned them: They’ll kill you anyway, guys.
He sat down on a park bench to watch the highway traffic going in and out of Barron. Two sets of headlights stared from the predawn gloom in the east. The bass growl of the engine told him the first vehicle was a semi. He raised his binoculars and focused, watching the truck draw closer. As it roared past the entrance road to the monument, he could make out its distinguishing characteristics. The trailer was white, mostly unmarked, with numbers painted on the side like a code. Kirk had told him once that a lot of the unmarked trucks were military, carrying secret payloads. The truck headed west, doing at least seventy, and he wondered what was inside.
Behind the truck, the other set of headlights didn’t move. A vehicle was parked on the shoulder a mile away. Lenny couldn’t identify the car, and he couldn’t remember whether it had been waiting there as he hiked from the highway. He wondered whether someone could have followed them. The headlights watched him like unblinking eyes, and as two or three minutes passed, his fears grew. He was getting ready to warn his brother when the headlights winked out, and he saw the red flicker of tail lights as the car reversed direction. It disappeared, turning south on one of the long farm driveways. He breathed easier.
His phone rang. It was Kirk.
‘You’ve got a semi heading west,’ Lenny said. ‘Nothing funky.’
‘Soon as you see our guy, you call me, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Then you tell me when you spot him heading east again. I want to make sure he’s not playing games with us.’
