“Who killed her?” Blevins asked.
“I don’t know.”
“According to this, it was that Barrington bitch.” Blevins spun the laptop on his kitchen table so that the screen was facing me. It displayed an article from the website of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “It says you helped.”
“It’s what the county attorney told the paper. It’s not what happened.”
“You tell me, then, you sonuvabitch. You tell me what happened.”
Blevins was angry, to say the least. That was okay. Anger was good. I could work with anger. There were times when I was forced to tell parents the unthinkable when I was with the cops. I watched them melt before my eyes, their brains becoming emotional mush that I couldn’t access. It’s a sight that stays with you, too. A sight that haunts your dreams. I thought Blevins would do the same. Back in the pole barn he kept chanting the same question—“What are you telling me?”—until I spelled it out.
“The girl in the pic is dead. She was murdered last week in St. Paul.”
He collapsed to his knees and started hammering the concrete floor with his fists. His wail was painful to hear. Instead of attempting to comfort him, his people dragged Tom out of the tiny cell and disappeared. That left it to me.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t know. I would have found a better way to tell you if I had known.”
Blevins wasn’t listening. He rocked on his knees and pressed his head to the floor and hammered the concrete and wailed.
“It’s my fault, it’s my fault,” he told me.
I said nothing. Hell, maybe it was his fault.
Yet the grieving didn’t last long. Less than fifteen minutes by my watch. Blevins gathered himself together. He stood slowly, took a deep breath, and brushed the tears off his face.
“Come with me,” he said. “I have questions for you, and you had better answer them.”
We exited the pole barn, and Blevins led me across the compound to the trailer mounted on the cinder blocks. A half dozen of the Red Stone Patriots watched us pass, including Eric, yet no one spoke a word.
Blevins fired up his personal computer and started searching news archives from his tiny kitchen table as if he needed independent confirmation of what had I told him. Maybe he was hoping I was a liar.
“I don’t know who killed Emily,” I said.
“Her name was Julie. Julie Elizabeth Blevins.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“What do you know? Why are you even here?”
“We traced Emily’s … we traced Julie’s movements. She was seeing Joel Barrington—”
“That’s what the media said.”
“What they didn’t say is that she visited him at his office. He was meeting with representatives from U.S. Sand.”
“The Barringtons are dealing with those bastards?”
“Let me finish. Joel Barrington was meeting with representatives from U.S. Sand—”
“Kaufman and Palo.”
“Yes. This seemed to upset her. No one knows why. The next day she was killed.”
Blevins grimaced at my words.
“Later, I asked Kaufman and Palo about it. They claimed they had no idea who Julie was, claimed they didn’t even remember seeing her in the office. Their administrative assistant said the same thing.”
“Esther.”
“Yes.”
“Esther who works for them.”
“Yes.”
“My niece. Julie’s cousin.”
“She told me she didn’t know who the girl, who Julie was. The next day I was at Julie’s duplex. That’s when Eric and his pal tried to shoot me. I didn’t know who he was at the time. Or Esther, either, for that matter. I found out yesterday. When I went to the town hall meeting, Eric and his pal attacked me again. The bruises on Eric’s face, that was from me. Yet he still insisted he didn’t know who Julie was. That’s why I’m here.”
Blevins went to the thin trailer door and flung it open.
“Eric, get your ass in here,” he said.
He stood back, leaving the door ajar. A moment later, Eric entered. He moved cautiously. Blevins grabbed his arm, pulled him all the way into the trailer, and pushed him down to the floor.
“Tell me about this,” he said.
Eric pointed at me. “It was him,” he said.
“Tell me about him.”
There were a lot of hems and haws and ums in his answer, a lot of backtracking and repetitions, but eventually the story came out. Esther simply had not recognized her cousin in the brief moments she saw Julie in the conference room. Julie had kept her blond hair long and wore glasses; Emily had short black hair and didn’t. She realized it was Julie only after I gave her a look at Emily’s pic on my smartphone. I asked why Esther didn’t identify Julie then.
“She was afraid,” Eric said.
“Afraid of what?” I asked.
Instead of answering, Eric said that Esther called him the first chance she got after I left the offices of U.S. Sand. Eric came to St. Paul to see if he could find out what was going on and encountered me. He insisted that he had only wanted to ask a few questions. When I started running, his partner lost his head.
“Why did you ambush me at the high school last night?” I asked.
“We wanted to scare you into leaving town.”
“Why?”
“They thought they were protecting me,” Blevins said.
“Protecting you from what?”
“They thought I killed her.” Blevins bent to Eric and cocked his hand as if he wanted to slap him, yet stopped himself. “Didn’t you? You thought I killed her.”
Eric didn’t answer. He didn’t move an inch.
Blevins turned on me. His nostrils flared and his fists clenched and his breath started coming in short gasps. I was convinced that he was about to attack. Instead, he turned on his nephew. Eric used his feet to propel himself backward across the floor.
“Get out,” Blevins said. “Get out, get out, get out.”
Eric scrambled to his feet and literally jumped out the door, leaving his uncle to slam it shut behind him. Blevins glared at me for a moment, went to a chair in what amounted to the trailer’s living room, and sat down. He rubbed his face with both hands and spoke into the palms.
“I didn’t kill my daughter,” he said.
“I didn’t think for a moment that you did.”
“Julie never lived in Arona. Not for a day.”
“I know.”
“How did you trace her here, then?”
I couldn’t answer his question, so I asked one of my own.
“Why was your daughter living under the name Emily Denys? Mr. Blevins? Why was she hiding?”
He hesitated before answering.
“She was hiding from me,” he said.
“Why?”
“I did something.”
“What did you do?”
“What do you know about me?”
“Almost nothing.”
“Before I came here, before I moved to Arona, I lived in a small town in Michigan called Menominee, me and Julie. Ever hear of it?”
“No.”
“People confuse it with Menominee, Wisconsin.”
Blevins explained it to me. I admit the story of how he lost his home seemed much more compelling the way he told it as compared to Special Agent Rachel Colgin’s version. He ended it by saying, “The morning we left, someone blew up the city’s so-called Welcome Center.”
“Did Emily—excuse me,” I said. “Did Julie know that you bombed the building?”
“Who said I did?”
“Call it a lucky guess.”
“Julie had nothing to do with it.”
“Okay.”
“It’s all on me.”
“Okay.”
“She’s the one who bought the hydrazine, the ammonium nitrate, the aluminum powder, that’s true. She didn’t know at the time what I planned to do with it, though. Do you believe me?”
“Why not?”
“Later she thought it made her an accomplice, and it shook her. I explained about the corrupt government and people’s rights and how we must fight tyranny wherever we find it. She wouldn’t listen. We had people in Arona. A sister, brother-in-law, nieces and nephews. I told her it would be a new start for us, that we would put the past behind us. Jules knew about the Patriots, though. She knew that my family was involved and that I intended to join them and continue the fight against injustice. She wanted no part of it. My daughter—she wanted no part of me, either. She said she was afraid of me. She said … When we reached a gas station in Eau Claire, Julie took her bag out of the trunk of the SUV and left. Just walked away without a word. Didn’t even say good-bye. She was over twenty-one; I had no hold on her. If that’s what she wanted to do…”
“Did you look for her?”
“No.”
“I guess she thought you might. That’s why she changed her name.”
“Funny. I actually thought she would turn me in to the FBI. For the longest time I waited for a knock on the door.”
“She didn’t turn you in.”
“No. Taylor, you didn’t answer my question. Why did you come here?”
I answered without thinking.
“I believe whoever killed the mayor might have also killed your daughter.”
“Todd Franson? That makes no sense. Julie never lived here. She never met the man. There’s no connection between him and her.”
“Tell me about Esther.”
“What about her?”
“She worked for Mayor Franson right up until he was killed. Now she works for U.S. Sand.”
“So?”
“You said there’s no connection between the mayor and Julie. Esther connects them.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
Blevins went to his feet and crossed the trailer to a window. He gazed out as if he wanted to make sure there was no one near enough to eavesdrop.
“I’m going to tell you something in absolute secret. Only me and Eric know.”
“Know what?”
“Esther is a spy.”
Oh, for God’s sake, I thought yet didn’t say.
“She was keeping tabs on the mayor for me, and now she’s doing the same with U.S. Sand.”
“Then you knew that Franson was attempting to seize private property through eminent domain and give it to the sand miners long before it was announced in the Kamin County Record.”
“I knew, but…”
Blevins stopped speaking, his eyes grew wide, and he became very still. I understood why, too. He had all but confessed that he blew up the Welcome Center in Menominee, and now he’d just admitted he had a motive for killing the mayor. Certainly he had the means. That left opportunity, and I bet he had that, too.
“Where were you the night Franson was killed?” I asked.
“I didn’t kill the bastard. The Patriots didn’t do it, either.”
“Okay.”
“Something else—I never actually said that I bombed a building in Menominee, did I?”
“No, you didn’t.” Although, I thought, you said enough.
“Even if I did do those things, I would never have hurt my daughter. Never.”
“That’s the only thing I care about, Mr. Blevins—finding out who killed your daughter.”
“So you can get the Barrington bitch off.”
“So I can get the Barrington bitch off. What about you? What do you care about?”
Blevins sat in the chair again and buried his face in his hands. I heard him say, “What am I going to do?” in a muffled voice.
“How should I know?”
I could have been more empathetic, I know. Then again, why would I? In any case, I figured it was as good a time as any to make an exit, so I moved to the door and opened it. I glanced back over my shoulder at the man. His face was stained with tears, and for a moment, I did feel empathy. I had lost a daughter, too.
“Mr. Blevins,” I said. “For what it’s worth, the medical examiner said Julie died instantly. She never knew what hit her. If that’s true, she died happy. She was living a good life. She had many friends. They all loved her.”
I stepped out of the trailer and closed the door. I could hear him weeping behind it.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, I found Special Agent Rachel Colgin of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives waiting for me in the front seat of a white van. The van was parked at the mouth of the road that led to the compound of the Red Stone Patriots, about fifty yards from where my own car was parked. The side door slid open, and Colgin hopped out, followed by a man who looked even younger than she did. I removed my jacket and shirt and winced as the tech peeled off the tape that held the wire to my chest.
“I’m sorry about your wife and daughter,” Colgin said.
“I talk too much. Did you get what you needed?”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. The number of Patriots, how they were armed—I appreciate that, too. Now all I need to do is travel to the office of the U.S. attorney of the Northern Division of the Western District of Michigan, which is all the way up in Marquette on the south shore of Lake Superior, prove that we have enough evidence to prosecute, get a warrant complaint because I don’t think Blevins is going to respond well to a simple court summons, assemble a team, come back down here, and arrest the man without triggering a siege of a militia compound like they had in Waco or the Bundy ranch in Nevada. Easy peasy puddin’ and pie.”
“While you’re at it, tell me what’s the penalty for slapping the hell out of a federal agent, because right now I think it might be worth it.”
“Hey, I’m the one who has to deal with the bureaucracy.”
“You knew Emily Denys was Blevins’s daughter before you sent me in there.”
“Yeah.”
“You heartless bitch. You made me tell the man his daughter was dead. That someone shot her in the fucking head.”
“There’s no need for obscenities.”
Colgin’s colleague smirked as he crawled back into the van and shut the door. Colgin hooked her arm around mine as if we were on a second date and walked me along the county blacktop toward my Camry.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I figured the fact you clearly didn’t know who Emily was would only add confusion to the old man’s grief, thereby increasing the likelihood that Blevins would do exactly what I needed him to do—confess his crimes. It was a cruddy thing. My only consolation is that it worked.”
“Did you know Julie Blevins?”
“Of course I did. We were onto her two days after she ditched the old man. I tried to turn her, only she would have none of it. Blevins was a jerk, but there was no way she was going to testify against him, not even when I offered her a new life in WITSEC. I liked her for that, believe it or not, standing by her father.”
“Rachel, how could Julie get a birth certificate and an authentic Social Security card with you watching? How did she become the ghost of Emily Denys?”
“I suppose it’s possible that someone felt sorry for her and helped her out off the books. She needed help, too. It took a devious mind to do what she planned to do, and she didn’t have a devious mind.”
“On the other hand, a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Taylor.”
I gave her hand a squeeze.
“You have a kind heart,” I said.
“Yeah, well, keep it to yourself. Something like that gets out it can only hurt my career.”
“Especially if Emily … Julie was playing you like she had so many others.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Blevins taking the blame for the bomb, insisting Julie had nothing to do with it—what if Julie had planted it and he was just trying to protect her name, the image people have of her?”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he loves his daughter, why do you think?”
“You honestly believe he’d risk going to prison…”
“He didn’t know he was providing evidence to the ATF, did he? He didn’t know anything he said could be used against him in a court of law.”
We reached my car.
“What are you going to do?” Colgin asked.
“Keep at it until I learn who killed Julie.”
“What if you discover it really was Eleanor Barrington?”
“Then I’ll stop.”
“Take care, Taylor.”
“Don’t forget. We have a deal.”
“I won’t forget.”