Spilled Blood

by Brian Freeman

  ‘Go,’ Aquarius said.

  Julia shook her head. ‘I’m staying.’

  ‘This doesn’t involve you, Mrs. Steele.’

  ‘Go, Julia,’ Florian told her. ‘Get out of here. Please.’

  Her hesitation was eloquent. There needed to be words between them, but they were at a loss. She didn’t want to hear him say he loved her. They were beyond that. She didn’t need empty encouragement, and she wouldn’t believe it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, because he’d brought them here, to this place, to this moment. It was his fault.

  He looked for tears and didn’t see any. Not Julia.

  ‘I was wrong, Florian,’ she said. ‘God didn’t want any of this to happen.’

  She hugged herself in the cold, and she hurried past him. He heard the tap of her shoes, click click, moving away from him, until her footsteps were covered up by the rumble of rushing water. He didn’t look back; he didn’t take his eyes off Aquarius. Seconds later, he heard his car engine on the other side of the bridge. She’d left him here, which was the only thing she could do.

  She was safe.

  ‘Now we’re alone,’ Florian said. ‘Or do you have accomplices with you?’

  ‘We’re alone, Mr. Steele. It’s just the two of us.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to know.’ Florian drew out the Ruger from his pocket and pointed it at the chest of the man in front of him.

  He fired.

  49

  ‘Marco!’

  Chris hammered on the door of the motel owner’s house, which was a tiny cottage two hundred yards up the slope from the motel itself. The view down the river valley gave him a perfect vantage on the headquarters of Mondamin. It was easy to imagine Marco Piva here, staring each day at the company he despised, contemplating his revenge on Florian Steele for the death of his wife of thirty-two years.

  Lucia Causey.

  There was no answer. Chris was too late to stop him. He pushed heavily with his shoulder against the lock, and the door caved inward; it was open. The cottage smelled of garlic and browned beef. Opera music played softly on the stereo, but no one was in the living room to listen to it. He searched quickly from room to room. The formal dining room was set for two places, but dust had gathered on the plates and glasses. There was an unopened bottle of red wine on the table, and a candle in the floral centerpiece, with a box of matches beside it. He remembered Marco telling him that his wife had always set a place for a guest who never arrived. The house was a shrine to a woman who wasn’t coming back.

  In the kitchen, there she was. Everywhere. The oval dinette table overflowed with photographs. Chris recognized her from the Face-book photo. It was the beautiful Lucia Causey, channeling Sophia Loren with her wicked smile and low-cut dresses. Even in her fifties, her bronzed skin looked preserved by time, taut and attractive. This was a woman who peered into a microscope by day and danced in the bistros at night. This was a woman whose animal lust was obvious even in the still life of old photos. This was a woman who must have made her husband laugh, scream, bellow, cry, and groan with pleasure.

  This was a woman who had been eaten by a demon. Gambling. A woman who had sold her soul to the devil to escape.

  Florian.

  Marco was in the pictures, too. A young man. An old man. Years of pictures. Eating, drinking, dancing, singing, playing, traveling, sleeping, waking. He hung on his wife as if she were his treasure, which she clearly was. One of the pictures showed them kissing on a crowded sidewalk in Rome, and their passion for each other was so obvious that it made Chris want to run home to Hannah and sweep her into his arms and carry her to the bedroom. That was how much Marco Piva loved Lucia Causey. That was the void in his soul that she left behind.

  The man who took her away would suffer.

  He found Marco’s bedroom, which was small and dark. The heavy curtains were closed. The furnishings were in cherry wood. Religious icons in gold leaf graced the walls. He saw heavy metal crosses and paintings of Christ. Marco’s bed was a twin, and he’d made it neatly before he left, creasing corners into the blanket and smoothing the floral drape on the pillows. A Bible lay open on the bed, and a necklace of silver-and-black rosary beads was spread across the pages. On the floor, he could see the indentations on the carpet of a man who had spent hours in prayer.

  Chris leaned closer to look at the Bible. Marco had highlighted the verses of Genesis 6:5 to 6:7.

  And God saw that man’s wickedness was great on the earth and that his imagination and thoughts were nothing but evil.

  And God repented that he had created man on the earth and was grieved to his heart.

  And God said, I will destroy man from the face of the earth, man and beast, every creeping thing.

  ‘Marco,’ Chris pleaded aloud, as if the motel owner could hear him. ‘What are you doing, my friend? This isn’t the way.’

  He followed the hallway to the cottage’s second bedroom, which smelled of cigar smoke. Ash sprinkled the floor. Marco had fashioned it as an office, with a roll-top desk, an old leather chair, and oak filing cabinets so stuffed with papers that the drawers didn’t close. There were photographs hung on the wall from Marco’s decades with the police in San Jose. Marco in a perfectly fitted uniform, his expression serious, his badge gleaming. Marco in a row with other officers, all of them with their hands neatly folded behind their backs. Above the desk, Chris saw four framed graduation certificates, too. They were all identical, from different years over the past decade, all signed by the Director of the FBI and the Secretary of the Army. Marco had gone through explosives training at the Hazardous Devices School at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsfield, Alabama.

  Marco wasn’t just a cop. He had spent his career in the Bomb Squad.

  Chris felt his breathing quicken. He was suddenly conscious of every second that passed. He opened the drawers of the desk and piled papers in front of him, and everything he found made him sick.

  Engineering diagrams.

  Orders for electronics. Tools. Switches. Wires. Chemicals.

  Web print-outs on underground sources of explosive materials. Comparisons of yield. Bomb designs.

  Photographs.

  Marco had taken hundreds of photographs in a single location, and Chris recognized the innocent stretch of roadway, not even a hundred yards across. People who drove across it didn’t even know what was built below them. It was no more than three miles away, upriver. It was the cork in the bottle controlling the flow of millions of gallons of water into the valley.

  The Spirit Dam.

  Marco had analyzed the dam in exhaustive detail. He’d taken close-ups of every gate, valve, and pipe. He’d obtained the structural blueprints and marked notes on the elevation, cross-sections, and contour lines. He’d mapped the points of maximum stress. He’d studied the FEMA flood plains for southwestern Minnesota. He’d consulted with security experts and engineers by letter and e-mail, using his bomb-squad credentials to seek help from outsiders in assessing the risk of an IED to the integrity of the dam.

  Instead, unknowingly, they’d helped him design a bomb to blow it up. Destroy it. Bring a wall of water down on every creeping thing.

  Sometimes choices are easy. Sometimes they are hard.

  Chris bolted through the cottage. He had to get to the dam. He had to stop Marco, but even as he ran, he knew in the pit of his gut that the effort was futile. Marco was already there. He had chosen his path of revenge. He was unstoppable.

  As he passed through the dining room, with its odd settings of plates, crystal, wine, and flowers, he spotted a slim envelope tucked under one of the lace placemats. He stopped long enough to pull it into his hand, and he was startled to see his own name written across the envelope.

  Marco was way ahead of him.

  Chris opened the envelope and removed a single sheet of paper inside. He knew what he would find. It was a note of death, and yet it made him cry. It was the last note from Aquarius.

  TO THE ATTENTION OF

  MR. CHR
ISTOPHER HAWK

  IF YOU ARE READING THIS, MIO AMICO,

  YOU KNOW THE TRUTH

  I AM SORRY

  WHAT IS DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE

  SOON I WILL BE WITH LUCIA

  SOON JUSTICE WILL BE MINE

  I WILL PRAY THAT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY ARE SAFE

  NOW YOU HAVE YOUR CHANCE

  TO START OVER

  MY NAME IS

  AQUARIUS

  50

  Marco Piva staggered backward as the bullet tunneled through his body, splintering bone, searing and tearing muscle, and splattering blood, tissue, and skin across his back as it exited into the cold air and spent itself in the dead grass beyond the river. Inhaling, he felt knives cutting open his chest. He coughed, spraying red-tinged spit onto the white cotton of his T-shirt. Blood pulsed through the hole in his torso with the pumping of his heart. Even so, he managed to laugh. His lips folded into a smile. He’d expected deceit from Florian Steele.

  ‘Bastardo,’ he whispered.

  Florian kept the gun pointed at him. ‘Who are you?’

  Marco focused beyond the agony of every breath. His T-shirt had a small breast pocket, and he slid out a photograph. It was partly soaked in blood now. He stared at his beloved Lucia, in one of the happiest times of their lives. A decade earlier, they had spent a month in his hometown outside Milan. For four weeks, they had gotten drunk and made love like teenagers.

  He stared at her face. Her eyes making love to the camera. Her lips blowing him a kiss. That was the image of her he wanted to take to the grave. That beautiful memory, inked into his brain.

  He handed the photograph to Florian, whose eyes flicked to the picture in confusion. It took him a moment to recognize her. She looked different in the lab, her hair pinned, her glasses on that perfect sharp nose. The scientist was all business. The wife and lover let her hair down.

  ‘Lucia Causey,’ Florian said finally, remembering her face. He studied Marco, dying in front of him. ‘You’re her husband.’

  Marco thumped his chest. ‘Thirty-two years.’

  Florian shook his head. ‘You crazy son of a bitch. This was never even about Mondamin? Hell, you should thank me instead of trying to kill me. I saved you, both of you. Your wife was gambling your lives into oblivion. You were going to lose everything until I came along.’

  Marco stabbed a finger at him. ‘You killed her.’

  ‘She killed herself.’

  ‘It was you,’ he insisted.

  ‘What, do you think I sent someone there to murder her? You’re wrong. You may hate it, you may not want to accept it, but your wife went into that garage all by herself and chose to end her life.’

  Marco gripped the bridge railing for support. His knees buckled, and he sank toward the ground, feeling dizzy. ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’ Florian demanded angrily. ‘If you know, then why the hell are we here? I had nothing to do with your wife’s suicide!’

  Marco bowed his head. He’d been expecting those words. The arrogance of the man was amazing. It was why he and his company were beyond salvation. Out here, unashamed, unaware of his fate, Florian Steele still managed to believe that he was innocent.

  ‘Ashlynn knew,’ Marco whispered.

  ‘What about my daughter?’

  ‘She understood. She knew who you are.’

  Florian pointed the gun at Marco’s skull. ‘What did you do to my daughter?’

  Words came harder now. He was floating with the loss of blood. ‘She knew . . . you destroy . . . everything you touch.’

  ‘Ashlynn loved me.’

  ‘You can love . . . and you can still hate.’ He wrapped his left arm around the railing, holding himself up.

  He’d loved Lucia. He’d hated her, too. He’d hated what the gambling did to her, how it had sent her spiraling into despair. He’d hated watching his beautiful wife devolve into someone he didn’t know. The begging, the pleading, the threats, the screaming, made no difference. She was in thrall to the disease. She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t help pouring the fruits of their life down a pit of adrenaline and thrill.

  Only one fragile lifeline kept her sane. Through it all, only one aspect of her life didn’t succumb to the poison. Her work. Her research. Her integrity. Then Florian Steele took that away and left her with nothing.

  Florian had found her in Las Vegas; he followed her there. He enabled her like a common drug dealer. He gave her all the money she wanted to get her life back, and all she had to give away was everything. Everything she stood for. Everything to which she had devoted her life. Every value that made her who she was. She had to turn a blind eye to the poison she’d found at Mondamin, the horrific remnants of what Vernon Clay had done to the people of St. Croix. She had to pretend it didn’t exist.

  She had to lie. She had to betray families and children. All to save Florian Steele and his legacy of death.

  Marco had begged her not to do it. Better to lose everything. Better to lose the house and start over. He knew where it would lead if she crossed that line. He knew that Lucia would never be able to live with what she had done. From that moment forward, every dollar in her grasp, every cell on every slide under her microscope, would be a voice accusing her. Convicting her. Sentencing her.

  I had nothing to do with it!

  Florian Steele could still stand there and proclaim that he didn’t kill her. He could still protest that his ghost wasn’t in the garage with Lucia as she connected the hose to the tailpipe and drifted out of her pain into a final, blissful unconsciousness. He could pretend that his entire world was not irreparably evil.

  It didn’t matter. The choice was made.

  ‘Marco.’

  He heard his name as if through a fog. His chin had fallen against his neck, but he labored to look up. The voice came from down river. He winced, as each breath became thicker, and followed the ribbon of the water, but saw nothing. The voice might as well have come from the clouds.

  ‘Marco,’ he heard again.

  He wasn’t imagining. Florian heard it, too, and hunted in the trees, as if another threat were waiting for him there. Marco saw. Christopher Hawk stood on the plateau of the river bank, two hundred yards away, calling for him. He was shouting, but across the space, his voice was a whisper.

  ‘Don’t do this.’

  Marco waved him away with a feeble brush of his hand, but he didn’t know if his friend could see him. In his head, he thought about the distance. Chris was safe from the blast, but not from what came next. He wished he had the strength to shout: Get out of here. Go to your family.

  Get to high ground.

  Marco watched anxiety bloom in Florian’s face. The man really thought he had won, bringing his gun, firing before Marco could react. He thought it was all over. It had never dawned on him that this meeting was about something else altogether. Seeing Christopher Hawk, listening to the panic in his voice, Florian’s face grew puzzled, trying to understand the urgency in the man’s pleas. Suspicion washed over his features. Then fear.

  He stared at Marco, who knelt in his own blood. He stared at the whitewater eddying below him, placidly flowing toward Mondamin and the town of Barron. He gazed across the highway at the giant lake, its water pushed well beyond its banks, swelled by the rapid snow melt and the raging rainfall of the past two weeks. The lake lay there as it did in every season, freezing, thawing, pushing, glistening.

  Waiting.

  Finally, Florian’s eyes dissolved in terrible understanding. He saw the cargo van parked on the dam. He saw Marco, staring back at him with no fear, and for the first and last time in his miserable life, he knew that punishment was at hand.

  Marco uncurled his right fist to show him the trigger. It was such an inconsequential thing, a bit of plastic and wire, barely bigger than a postage stamp, with a white button to complete the circuit. Florian frantically raised the gun to fire again, and Marco squeezed his fingers closed. It was a race now, between the shot into Marco’s brain and the pressu
re of his hand on that plastic trigger, sending the signal, igniting the bomb. It took only a millisecond for the bullet to roar from the barrel of the gun and end Marco’s life, but a millisecond was excruciatingly slow compared with the speed of light.

  Before he could even fall, before he could feel any pain or hear any sound, he and Florian Steele were both atomized.

  The detonation lifted Chris off his feet and catapulted him onto the wet ground, as if he’d been slapped down by the hand of God. Lying on his back, he was deaf, dumb, and blind. He heard silence; he saw blackness; and his brain was cleared of everything except a single thought. I’m dead.

  He wasn’t.

  Debris rained out of the sky, awakening him. The air was burnt, and a wave of heat passed over his skin. He found himself pelted by a spray of concrete shards, sharp as knives, peppering his body with bruises and cuts. A choking mist, sucked into his lungs, made him gag and retch. He squinted as dust assaulted his eyes. The trees above him swirled like a kaleidoscope, broken into colorful fragments. He squeezed his head to make it stop.

  Chris pushed himself up on his elbows. He felt alone and adrift, bobbing in an endless sea. The world was oddly silent, except for a rumbling thunder that sounded miles away, like a storm blowing in from the horizon. He shouted a warning. He screamed two names over and over.

  ‘Hannah! Olivia!’

  He didn’t hear his voice. He didn’t know if he was calling for them out loud or in his head. It didn’t matter. They were miles away and couldn’t hear him.

  His eyes spun in and out of focus, as if he were drunk. When they finally came to rest, letting him see clearly, the land looked invisible beyond the reach of his arms. There was no river, no dam, no road, no earth, no trees. The universe in front of him was a gray wall of dust and smoke, billowing, expanding, rising into the heavens, towering like a genie released from its bottle. He stood as the cloud enveloped him and coughed as he tried to breathe. His legs bent like rubber, and as he stumbled, he clung to the flaky trunk of a birch tree, cherishing the feel of something real and solid under his hands.