‘Yeah.’
‘How bad?’
‘Bad.’
‘What would you do for it?’
‘I don’t know. Like, anything.’
‘Would you lick my ass for it?’
The girl hesitated. ‘Yeah.’
‘Here, go fetch.’
Kirk wadded the bill into a ball and threw it toward the river bank. He laughed as Margie ran to retrieve it. He stretched out on his back on top of the bench, and his long hair draped behind him like a mop. His dirty bare feet dangled off the other end. He pointed his gun at the treetops and squeezed the trigger, and the revolver made an empty click. He hadn’t reloaded since their visit to St. Croix.
‘It’s like August in March,’ Kirk sighed. ‘Shit, Leno, does it get any better than this? We should be knee-deep in snow right now. Instead, we got seventy holy-shit degrees. I’d jump in the river if I thought I’d ever see my nuts again.’ He beat his chest with one hand like a gorilla. ‘FUKYEAHHHHH!!’
To Lenny Watson, his brother was a god.
He wanted to be just like Kirk, but his mother had played a mean trick on him, popping him out of the same womb like a pasty reflection of his brother. Lenny was sixteen, and Kirk was five years older. Kirk soared over Lenny by six inches and boasted an extra forty pounds of muscle. His older brother had guts, too. No one messed with Kirk. Not sluts like Margie. Not the pussy boys from St. Croix.
Not even Florian Steele.
For three years, it had been just the two of them, Kirk and Lenny, like Batman and Robin. When Lenny was six, their mother got drunk and drove her Grand Am the wrong way down an I-90 ramp into a semi. They could have buried what was left of her in a shoe box. After that, their father used Lenny as a nightly punching bag, until Kirk turned fourteen and bludgeoned the son of a bitch to death with a hammer. Kirk sawed their father’s body into pieces and dropped him bit by bit into the Spirit River, which worked fine until his head rolled ashore near Redwood Falls. The police came calling for him, but Kirk only did two years in juvie. When he was out, Kirk rescued Lenny from a foster family that didn’t give a shit, and since then, they’d been a team.
Lenny would have done anything for Kirk.
‘Hey, I got a new package coming,’ his brother told him, as he sucked down a beer on top of the bench. ‘Should be here in a couple of days.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, Vietnam this time. I bet we make ten K on this one.’
‘Cool.’
Margie returned from the river, shoving the hundred-dollar bill into the tight rear pocket of her shorts. Around them, the park was dark and mostly deserted. The bare treetops loomed over their heads, but the cloudy sky wiped out the stars. It was past midnight, and only a handful of Barron teenagers hid in the shadows, making out. Lenny could hear grunts and moans and the rustle of plastic tarpaulins spread over the muddy grass.
Kirk’s girl grabbed a beer as she sat down. ‘Ten thousand bucks? No shit? For what?’
‘For keeping your mouth shut and not asking questions,’ Kirk snapped.
‘Yeah, but can I get in on it?’
Kirk smirked. ‘Sure, why not. You like making movies?’
‘What kind of movies?’
‘Dirty ones.’
‘Like porno? That could be cool. How much could I make?’
Kirk stared at her. ‘What are you, seventeen?’
‘Almost eighteen.’
‘Too old. You got a little sister?’
‘That’s sick.’
His brother laughed hard. ‘The sickos are the ones who watch,’ Kirk said.
Kirk swung his legs on either side of Margie. He pulled the girl’s shoulders so that she was leaning against his bare chest, and he shoved his big hands inside her top and played with her breasts. Lenny’s palms grew sweaty as he thought about his own hands inside the girl’s shirt. He imagined them as soft and squishy as overripe peaches, except for the nubs on each end.
‘So what do you think, Leno?’ Kirk asked. ‘Did I hit her?’
‘Hit who, man?’
‘Hannah Hawk.’
Lenny shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. You got one of the windows.’
‘I heard her screaming,’ Kirk said, ‘but that doesn’t mean anything.’
‘I thought you were just trying to scare her,’ Margie said. ‘Not hit her.’
‘Hell, what’s the point of that?’ Kirk put his gun against the side of Margie’s head. The cold metal went in her ear. ‘You don’t shoot a gun unless you want to hit something.’
‘Stop that!’ she told him.
‘I thought you wanted to be a porno star.’
‘Don’t,’ Margie begged.
Kirk hooked his arm around her throat and shoved the gun until it was almost breaking skin. As he tightened his grip, Margie twitched in panic. Her legs kicked spastically.
‘Bang,’ he whispered as he pulled the trigger.
Click.
‘It’s empty, stupid,’ he chuckled.
Maggie squirmed in his arms and hyperventilated. ‘You bastard!’
‘Don’t be a cry-baby.’
‘You scared the shit out of me!’
‘Oh, quit bitching. You got off easy. My gun wasn’t loaded. Ashlynn got her brains blown out by that St. Croix pussy.’
‘Why do you care about her?’
‘Ashlynn was a Barron girl. In Barron, we stick together.’
‘I heard she dumped you,’ Margie snickered.
‘Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything.’
‘She was just dating you to piss off her father. Every rich girl likes to fuck her daddy’s nightmare. Although the word at school is she never even let you between her legs.’
Under her shirt, Kirk crushed Margie’s nipples between his thick fingers, and the girl wailed. ‘Shit! Shit, stop it!’ She wrenched away from him, crying. ‘You crazy asshole!’
‘Don’t talk about Ashlynn. You hear me? Don’t even say her name to me.’
Margie’s knees knocked like a baby deer’s. Tears of anger and pain rained down her face along with makeup, and strands of her blond hair lay plastered on her cheeks. Her lower lip bulged in defiance. ‘Oh, yeah? Ashlynn, Ashlynn, Ashlynn. As in Ashlynn Steele would never dream of getting banged by Kirk Watson.’
Kirk shot off the bench with his forearm cocked, and Margie ran. She fell down in her clumsy heels and got up, drenched in mud, but she ran through the park until she reached the footbridge that arched across the Spirit River into downtown Barron. They heard a frantic clop-clop as she sprinted across the bridge, arms pumping. In the middle of the bridge, under the twinkling lights, she finally looked back and realized that Kirk wasn’t chasing her. She stopped, panting, and held out her hand with her middle finger raised. She shouted a curse at the top of her lungs.
Then she turned and ran until she disappeared into the town.
Kirk landed his fist on the bench so hard that the vibrations nearly pushed Lenny off the seat. It happened like that with Kirk sometimes. He boiled over like a pot of water, and you didn’t want to be nearby. Lenny had been hit. Burned. Choked. Kirk took an unopened beer bottle and marched toward the nearest oak tree and smashed it into popcorn against the trunk. Beer foamed white, splashing over him. Glass cut and scratched his hand, drawing blood. Lenny heard murmurings of fright elsewhere in the park.
Kirk spun back, sucking the blood from his fingers. ‘We’re not done. You got that? Ashlynn’s dead. People gotta pay.’
‘I hear you, Kirk,’ Lenny said softly. ‘What’s next?’
‘We need to teach Tanya Swenson a lesson. The little bitch ran away and left Ashlynn there. Get her out of school tomorrow, Leno. Bring her to the football field for me. We’ll make sure she gets a message to take home to her daddy.’
‘I don’t know, man.’
‘Do it!’ Kirk snapped. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
‘Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.’
‘Then we deal with Olivia Hawk.’
Lenny paled. ‘She’s in prison,’ he protested.
‘The judge will let her out.’
‘Yeah, but why bother with her? Everybody says she’s going to be locked up for life.’
‘Then we’ll give her something to think about while she rots,’ Kirk said.
Lenny’s palms were sweating again. He felt himself growing aroused at the thought of Olivia. She was the only one he wanted, with her pouty lips and the brown hair that always fell over one eye. When she talked in class, she was so intense. So sure of herself. She was amazing. He wondered what it would be like to sleep with someone like that, but she barely knew who he was.
That didn’t stop him from fantasizing about her.
Following her.
‘Do you really think Olivia killed Ashlynn?’ he murmured to his brother.
Kirk’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about, Leno?’
‘It just doesn’t seem like something she would do. Not her.’
‘How the hell would you know?’
‘I don’t, man.’
‘She did it,’ Kirk insisted. ‘That bitch shot Ashlynn. End of story.’
6
‘Do I get to tell the judge that I’m not guilty?’ Olivia asked.
Chris shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘So what do I say?’
‘For now, nothing. Leave it to me.’
‘But people should know that I didn’t do it,’ his daughter protested. ‘Why can’t I tell them?’
‘You will. Later. This is just a detention hearing. If it lasts five minutes, that’s a long time. If the judge releases you, which I expect he will, we’ll work through some paperwork, and then I’ll take you home.’
‘Great. Jail still sucks.’
‘I know.’
He didn’t add that an overnight stay in jail was nothing compared with the prospect of twenty-five years.
‘Florian Steele probably has the judge in his back pocket,’ Olivia said. ‘He won’t let me out.’
‘Yes, he will. It’ll be okay, but keep your cool in there. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, and don’t swear. Got it? If you act out, you give the judge an excuse to keep you locked up.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
Chris added, ‘The county attorney thinks we should consider having you stay in jail for your own protection.’
‘No way. Not a chance.’
‘I didn’t say that’s what we’re going to do, but he’s right about keeping you safe. I’ll hire someone to watch the house in St. Croix, and once we get there, you stay put.’
‘So what, I’m a prisoner at home, too?’ Olivia asked. ‘I can take care of myself, Dad.’
‘No, you can’t.’
His daughter made a face at him, but she didn’t argue.
‘Did you tell Mom I didn’t do it?’ she asked.
‘I did.’
‘What did she say? Did she believe me?’
‘Of course, she did.’ Chris had no intention of sharing Hannah’s secret doubts. Olivia didn’t need to hear them.
He checked his watch. They needed to be in court in less than fifteen minutes. ‘Listen, I don’t think you shot Ashlynn, but I also think you’re not telling me everything you know. You can’t keep things from me, Olivia. You’re being charged with murder.’
‘I don’t know what happened, Dad. Really.’
‘Let’s start at the beginning. Who knew you were meeting Tanya out at the ghost town that night?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Did you see other cars? Did you see or hear anything to suggest that someone else was in the town?’
‘No, we didn’t hear anyone. Nobody was around until Ashlynn showed up.’
‘Where did she come from?’
‘She said she was heading back to Barron and got a flat tire.’
‘Did she say where she’d been?’
‘No.’ After a pause, she added, ‘Ashlynn told us she’d been driving for hours.’
‘Hours?’ Chris asked.
‘That’s what she said. I figured she was lying, but—’ Olivia stopped, biting her lip.
‘Why did you think she was lying?’
‘I thought maybe she’d been in St. Croix.’
‘Why would she be there?’
‘That’s the way it’s been for the past year. Raids and sneak attacks between the towns.’
‘Was Ashlynn part of that?’
‘I don’t know. She was from Barron. They’ll do anything to hurt us.’
Chris still wasn’t convinced that his daughter was giving him the whole story. ‘What did you do after you dropped the gun and left Ashlynn in the park?’
‘I went home and went to bed.’
‘Did you talk to your mother?’
‘She was already sleeping. She sleeps pretty heavy because of the chemo.’
‘So she didn’t hear you leave or come back?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Did you tell anyone about Ashlynn? Did you send someone to help her?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? You said she was stranded out there.’
Olivia shrugged. Whenever she talked about Ashlynn, her face went cold. ‘I wasn’t going to help her,’ she said.
‘What time did you leave Ashlynn in the ghost town, and what time did you get home?’
‘It was around twelve-thirty when I left, and I got home ten or fifteen minutes later. It’s not far.’
Chris put the facts together in his head. Olivia left Ashlynn Steele stranded at half past midnight. Alive, with a gun at her feet in a deserted park, miles from either Barron or St. Croix. Five hours later, before dawn, Tanya Swenson finally confessed to her father what had happened overnight, and Rollie Swenson called 911. The sheriff’s department found Ashlynn in the park, dead of a single gunshot to the forehead. The revolver was missing. The girl’s Mustang was parked in the main street of the ghost town, with a flat tire, exactly as she’d left it.
The initial estimate placed the time of death several hours before the body was discovered. In other words, she’d been killed shortly after Olivia left Ashlynn there.
Or before, he thought to himself.
Olivia could see it in his eyes. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You think I killed her.’
‘No, I don’t think that, but a trial is about good facts and bad facts. Right now, we have a lot of bad facts. You were there. You had a gun. You threatened Ashlynn. Ashlynn is dead. What we need are facts to support your version of what happened. That you didn’t pull the trigger. That someone else did.’
‘I don’t know what to tell you, Dad. It could have been anyone.’
‘Tell me about Tanya,’ Chris said.
‘What about her? It’s not like she went back to the park and blew Ashlynn away.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Tanya? No way.’
‘If you weren’t there, you don’t know that. Our job is to establish reasonable doubt that you killed Ashlynn. Tanya knew about the gun. She knew Ashlynn was stranded. She didn’t tell her father or call the police for five hours.’
‘Yeah, but Tanya would never—’
‘She’s a suspect, Olivia.’
His daughter frowned. ‘Whatever.’
Chris opened his mouth to chastise her, but he held his tongue. He reminded himself that she was young. Sixteen-year-olds could do adult things; they could smoke, drink, have sex, and even kill. It didn’t matter. She was still a kid, who didn’t realize that the rules of the game had changed, who didn’t grasp that her whole life was hanging in the balance.
‘It’s time for the hearing,’ he told her. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’
*
After a hearing lasting no more than three minutes, the judge ruled that Olivia would not be kept in secure detention, and he released her without conditions, pending the next stages in the criminal proceedings. Chris wasn’t surprised, because the presumption in any juvenile case, even murder, was to relea
se the child. It was an easy victory, but going forward, the battle got much harder.
Outside the courtroom, while Olivia was in the bathroom, Michael Altman corralled Chris. The county attorney’s face was concerned. ‘I heard about the incidents at your motel and at your ex-wife’s house. The sheriff wants to talk to you about what happened.’
‘We didn’t see who did it.’
‘Maybe not, but I don’t want teenagers in either town thinking they can get away with these assaults without consequences.’
‘I understand.’ Chris added, ‘I assume you’re planning to file a motion for a certification hearing.’
The certification hearing would determine whether Olivia’s case would continue in juvenile court, or whether she would be tried as an adult, with adult punishments. Unfortunately, in a murder case, the presumption of the law worked against them. The only way to keep the proceedings in juvenile court was to mount an uphill argument that mitigating factors weighed in Olivia’s favor. Judges rarely agreed.
‘The hearing may be a moot point,’ Altman told him.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I plan to seek a grand jury indictment for first-degree murder. At that point, the certification is automatic.’
Chris felt as if he’d been punched in the chest. ‘First-degree murder? You can’t be serious.’
‘I am.’
‘Even if you believe Olivia pulled the trigger, you can’t possibly believe she intended to kill Ashlynn.’
Altman’s face was grave. ‘Talk to your daughter.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means this wasn’t just a depraved game played by a teenager without regard to the consequences. It was a deliberate revenge killing.’
‘Revenge for what? Kimberly’s death?’
Altman hesitated with his hand on the oak door of the courtroom. ‘I’m afraid it goes deeper than that, Mr. Hawk,’ he said.
Without waiting for Chris to reply, the county attorney turned and disappeared inside the courtroom.
Chris stood alone in the hallway, inhaling the musty smell of the old building. He remembered what the motel owner, Marco Piva, had told him when he first arrived in town. You will not be trusted. People will not tell you things you need to know. That was already true. He felt as if there were a back story playing out around him, and everyone else knew what it was.
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