She finished her vodka in one swallow, and then she gathered up Purdue’s clothes and turned off the kitchen lights. She wanted the house completely dark if anyone showed up here. After she crossed the foyer, she checked the security of the lock and dead bolt on her front door. She went upstairs, where Purdue was still sleeping, and put his T-shirt, socks, and jeans back on the bed. She stuffed the money and car key back into his pockets, but she kept the spent cartridge herself. Then she went into her large walk-in closet and shut the door behind her.
Lisa changed clothes. She anticipated a long, cold day ahead. She found heavy wool socks in a dresser drawer and a pair of dark corduroys. She grabbed a jean shirt, buttoned it, and left it untucked. She had a white down vest on a hanger, and she took it down by the collar. Finally, she went to the bureau at the far back of the closet and found her gun safe shoved to the rear of the highest shelf. She pulled it into her hands and undid the combination lock and flipped open the top.
Her Ruger 9 mm semiautomatic pistol was inside, along with a loaded ten-round magazine. It was in perfect condition, only a year old. She’d bought it when she moved to this house, because help was far away when you lived out here and strange things had a way of happening so close to the border. Once a month, she fired at the range, and she was obsessive about keeping the gun clean and lubricated. She’d grown up with guns in her family. Pistols. Shotguns. Hunting rifles. Firearms were one of the prerequisites of country life. Even so, there had never been a time when she felt as if she needed to keep her pistol on her person when she was out and about.
Not until now.
Now her gut told her, Stay armed.
She shoved the magazine into the pocket of her corduroys, and then she zipped the Ruger into the right-hand pocket of the down vest. She took the vest with her as she left the closet. Purdue was still asleep, a little boy in a sea of white. When she went back downstairs, she hung the down vest on the hook by the front door, so she could grab it whenever they left the house.
She went into the kitchen again. She kept the lights off.
Her phone was on the table. She stared at it, debating what to do. Her gaze shifted to the clock, and she saw that it was nearly four in the morning. Sunrise was still more than three hours away. She’d heard the police saying they would be back when it was daylight.
Lisa took the phone and dialed Laurel March. It was the middle of the night, and she assumed her friend would be asleep, but Laurel answered the phone immediately, sounding as if she’d already been awake.
“Hello?” her friend said. “Lisa, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. Laurel, thank God you’re there. I’m sorry to call so late, but I need your help.”
5
The nightmares came for Denis Farrell, just as they had the previous several nights. Whenever he closed his eyes, his dreams tortured him. This one was the worst. He lay in a surgery room on the operating table, dressed in a three-piece suit and tie as if this were just another day at the office. A dozen doctors and nurses in scrubs surrounded him, but masks covered their entire faces, so he couldn’t see who they were. One of the doctors loomed over his body, knife in hand. The knife was on fire, a yellow flame dancing all along the metal of the blade.
“I’m awake,” Denis protested in the dream.
The surgeon acted as if he didn’t hear him. As Denis watched, the doctor slowly brought the flaming knife down to make an incision in his body.
“I’m awake!” he screamed.
But his warning had no effect. The blade seared through his skin, cutting him open from the hollow of his neck to the base of his stomach. Black flaming blood leached from his insides onto his clothes. His shirt and tie caught fire, billowing and steaming along with blood that spurted like a geyser. His organs bubbled and burned deep inside his body. When he breathed, he exhaled fire from his mouth like a dragon. The flames flew up the surgeon’s gown, until the doctor was nothing but a column of fire. With each breath, Denis’s mouth expelled more flames, lighting up the others in the room. Fire shot up every doctor, every nurse, like they were dry kindling. And then the walls caught fire. And the floor.
His whole world was flame and pain.
Denis cried out and jolted upward in bed, wide awake now. He was bathed in sweat. The sheets beneath him were soaked. His heart pounded so fast that he was afraid he was having a heart attack. He stretched out his arm to take his wife’s hand, but he realized that he was alone. Gillian was gone. The pillows and sheets on her side of the bed hardly looked slept in at all.
He found the strength to roll his legs out of bed. He stood up unsteadily and went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face, and he ran his wet hands through the thick, wild nest of gray hair on his head. A glass night-light, a gift from his grandson that was painted with the image of a hummingbird, made him look like a shadowy monster in the mirror. His old tanned skin was a web of wrinkles, and dark half moons sagged below his blue eyes. He hadn’t shaved in days, leaving him with scraggly stubble. He wore a graying V-neck undershirt that made him look like an old man. The fact is, he was an old man. He was seventy years old, and he could see every one of those years written in his face and feel them weighing down his bones.
It was the middle of the night, but Denis got dressed for the workday. He wasn’t going to sleep again. Throughout his life, he’d carefully laid out his clothes for the next day before getting into bed, so his suit was waiting for him. He put on a blue Arrow shirt and wool dress slacks, and he knotted a paisley tie carefully at his neck. He sat down on the bed and bent over with difficulty to tie the laces on his brown leather shoes, and then he slipped his arms into the sleeves of his suit coat. In the bathroom, he tried to tame his hair with a brush. These were the routines that shaped his life day after day, and right now, they were the only thing keeping him sane.
Denis used the railing on the steps to help him as he limped downstairs. The house was cold. The lights weren’t on in the living room, but there was enough of a moon to show him Gillian’s silhouette in an armchair by the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on the backyard. Like him, she was dressed. Her posture was rigid. He spotted a glint of crystal in her hand, which was the last thing he wanted to see. It meant she was drinking again. Ten years ago, she’d nearly drunk herself to death before finally emerging from her downward spiral, and since then, not a drop had crossed her lips. Now the bottle was open again, and there was no such thing as a little slip with Gillian. She’d made the decision, knowing what it meant.
“You couldn’t sleep?” he murmured in the darkness.
“I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.” Her voice was harsh.
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”
He heard the clink of ice cubes as she finished her drink. Languidly, she reached to a bottle of gin on the end table and refilled her glass. It was as if she was daring him to say something, to try to stop her. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t hate what was happening to her, even if he understood the reasons.
“Drinking isn’t the answer,” he said.
“Really? Because I think it’s the only answer.”
“I can take away the bottle, Gillian. Pour it out. I can make sure no one in this town sells you anything. You know that.”
“Go ahead.”
They both knew it was a hollow threat. Yes, he could try to choke off her supply, but she had her ways around that. The last time, every liquor store in Thief River Falls had been under strict orders to keep the booze away from Gillian Farrell, but regardless, he would find the recycling bin stocked every week with the broken glass of half a dozen empty bottles.