Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  Diane Martin didn’t move or blink or even seem to breathe.

  “You would have arranged a man’s murder?” she said at length. “You would have been comfortable with it?”

  “If I could prove that he was the one who’d killed my wife? Absolutely. Without hesitation. My only regret would be that I couldn’t do it myself.”

  “Are you at risk for criminal charges?” She held up a hand and said, “If you don’t want to talk about that, you don’t have to. Only tell me if you want to.”

  “Nobody knows what I just told you. I don’t know why I chose to.” But he did. He’d told her because she was the only person he’d met who would understand. Not logically, not in the way a shrink or a counselor would claim to understand, but down in her bones, down in the place that had been hollowed out of her and could never be filled again. “Even with the other issues, though, things could have gone badly for me. My boss made sure that they didn’t. The snitch I talked to has a credibility problem. My boss built on that. He sent me up here so I wouldn’t have to answer questions myself. I think he knew that if I did, I’d tell the truth.”

  It was an odd answer, and he wasn’t sure why he’d offered it. He was fine telling her that he’d plotted to kill a man, but he also wanted her to know that he hadn’t lied? Maybe it was because he thought she’d respect the former but not the latter.

  “I would imagine it is also a problem for your boss because the approach does not fit well with an organization that abhors capital punishment.”

  “No,” Mark said. “It does not. And that’s what brings me here, Mrs. Martin. I am just supposed to be out of the way, and I was happy to agree to it, because I need that job for reasons I can’t explain. It is all that I am now. I’m here so my boss can go about protecting me, and your daughter’s death, truth be told, is simply not a case we will take. I’m sorry for any trouble or grief it causes you.”

  “What causes grief is Sarah’s absence, and the absence of any resolution.”

  “I understand.”

  “So perhaps you can convince your organization that this is worth their time.”

  Mark frowned. “I thought you didn’t want me doing anything with it. I thought you wanted me gone.”

  “Now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to think you’re supposed to be here.”

  He was supposed to be in Florida. He wanted to tell her that, but he couldn’t, not while he was looking into her eyes. So he glanced away again, a coward’s move but a necessary one, and he was ready to explain that this was not the right situation when she said, “What do you think Lauren would say? If she had the chance.”

  His first instinct was anger. The question was unfair, and he didn’t like the sound of his wife’s name said in such a familiar fashion from a stranger. But when he turned back, Diane Martin’s eyes were gentle, that unique stare of hers, penetrating curiosity but soft-edged, and he found himself saying, “She’d be a poor judge.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she wanted to take them all,” he said. “Because she could not hear a story like yours and tell you no. Ever.”

  “Can you?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about I tell you what I think,” she said. “How about I give you what you came for, and then…then you do what you want. But at least you’ll understand the full story. Or as much of it as I can tell.”

  Mark took a breath, nodded, and then turned to the bartender and held up two fingers. “We’ll do another round,” he said. His fingers were trembling.

  5

  Two hours later, they were still talking.

  “Do I think Ridley Barnes did it?” Diane said. “Probably. But I can’t say for sure. It’s that element that haunts me, haunts this town, haunts everyone. From friends to strangers, no one can look me in the eye when Sarah is mentioned because no one really knows. If the man who killed her is just walking around free, enjoying his days, and knowing all the while that he…” Her voice broke. It was a musical voice most of the time, one that didn’t betray her own pain so much as offer to take yours away. Mark wondered who or what had given her the deep wells of composure.

  “I understand the basics of the prosecutor’s decision not to pursue charges,” Mark said, “but what did they tell you? Anything different?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything substantially different. It would have been what you heard—lack of usable physical evidence, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s my understanding.” She paused, swallowed, and said, “But then Ridley brought Sarah up and said he couldn’t remember where he’d found her. Then he stopped giving interviews to the police entirely. Offered no cooperation. The prosecutor was worried about getting the physical evidence into court, because Ridley had an explanation for it, since he’d carried her out. They also couldn’t ascribe a motive. Unless he’s just a sociopath, which is my vote.”

  “When we talk about motive, we have to talk about your family,” Mark said. “I’m sure you understand that. Are there people you and your husband might have had problems with who—”

  “No. No one who came to mind. And my husband died when Sarah was fourteen. I don’t think he left enemies behind. I think he just left a lot of emptiness and sorrow.”

  “You said you think Ridley did it,” Mark said. “But who else do you wonder about? Who keeps you awake?”

  Diane swirled her beer—it was still her first, the second one was warming beside it, untouched—and considered the question. “Who keeps me awake,” she said. “I like that. Yes. Excellent. That’s just the right question.”

  Mark waited.

  “Evan Borders,” Diane said. “He was the flavor of the week before Barnes.”

  “What was your take on Borders? Obvious suspect, being the one who took her down to the cave, but is there more to it?”

  “He was a troubled kid. Or at least from a troubled family. The family was just a wreck. Dad got arrested as often as most of us go to the movies. Mom went through jobs faster than that until she left, when Evan was maybe eight, nine years old. Then Dad, he’d take off, only he’d wander back, time to time. You ever read Huckleberry Finn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Picture that father, and you’ve got a sense of Carson Borders. Evan was pretty well on his own as a kid. Had an uncle who as good as raised him, a man named Lou Leonard. When Sarah started dating Evan, I thought that by showing him trust, I was helping him overcome that upbringing. But then…then it happened, and I wondered…”

  “Right,” Mark said. There was no need to make her finish.

  “It was probably for the best that Carson was out of Evan’s life, honestly,” Diane said. “Evan worked, he showed some initiative, and I think he carried a lot of shame, which I always felt bad about. It’s hard for a child to have to deal with that sort of family reputation, particularly in a small town.”

  Mark nodded. It certainly was hard. He’d never known his own father, but he knew small towns and family reputations. He’d been raised by uncles who were on a first-name basis with every jailer in western Montana and northern Wyoming and a mother who changed her name almost annually to try to keep her scams from catching up with her. The worst part of the family burden was the lack of surprise people showed. The way they just nodded over the news, as if they’d been expecting it, and then they looked at Mark with eyes that said, Wonder when your time will come.

  “Was Carson Borders ever considered a suspect himself?”

  “Briefly.” Her eyes flickered away. “Then he was…cleared, I guess you’d say.”

  “What cleared him?”

  “His teeth.”

  Mark cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. Diane Martin took a drink of her beer and said, “Someone mailed a bag to Evan with Carson’s teeth in it.”

  “Good Lord.”

  She nodded. “The package was sent from Detroit. Evidently Carson had tried to negotiate his way out of prison by giving up some information o
n cell mates from Detroit.”

  “Evan must have understood something about them too. You get that package in the mail, you know why. It was a message to him.”

  “If it was, he never explained it.”

  “Which means the message was received.” Mark thought about that for a minute and then said, “Did Ridley have a similar reputation? Any history of violence, of crime?”

  “He had a reputation, but not for being a criminal. He was viewed as an eccentric, that was all. But he was never right. He was always saying strange things, giving you strange looks. Ever met someone who doesn’t seem to fit into the world the rest of us share? People who seem to belong to another one, up in their own heads? He had that sort of reputation. He used to go caving with some of the groups around here, but he made them uncomfortable. He’d talk to the cave, he’d say odd things, and most people who went out with him once never went back to him again, even though he was apparently very skilled at what he did. He was as comfortable underground as any snake.”

  You ought to spend some time down there. In the dark. Think about her, think about me.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Brett and Jeremy Leonard. They’re Evan’s cousins. Bad kids. He felt some loyalty to them, I think, but they were always trouble and he wasn’t, at least not back then. One of my rules for Sarah was that she was not to be around those two.”

  “But you’d put money on Ridley?”

  “Yes. If he had just stayed with the group and not broken off on his own, well, then his story would either hold up or it wouldn’t, right? Then we would know the truth. But instead, he went off alone and conveniently forgot the path he’d taken, so whatever happened down there became harder to prove.”

  “He says he doesn’t remember anything. What do you think of that?”

  She fixed that penetrating stare on him again but this time added are-you-kidding-me raised eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” Mark said. “I know.”

  “Total memory loss? Please. Something happened down there. He has to remember something.”

  “I agree. Now, what happened once he was inside, we don’t know. But what about before he was called out?”

  “He was already underground.”

  Mark frowned. “He was inside the cave when this happened?”

  “Another cave. Or so he says. The surveillance videos say he didn’t go into Trapdoor. But Ridley was the one person on earth who might have known another way in.”

  “My understanding,” Mark said, “is that the police were never able to locate the spot where…where Sarah was found.” He was careful to say Sarah, not the body or the corpse or the remains.

  “That’s right. And that’s another reason that Ridley Barnes becomes so hard to believe, because he’s an expert, right? He supposedly knows the place better than anyone alive, but he claims he can’t even begin to remember where he was when he found her?”

  “Okay,” he said. “So it’s Ridley, Evan, and these cousins of his. Nobody else stands out to you?”

  Diane went quiet. When she spoke again, her voice was lower.

  “I lied to you,” she said.

  “When?”

  She turned to face him, and her eyes were bright with unspilled tears. “You asked who keeps me awake at night. I gave you three names. But I didn’t give you the one that matters most. I keep myself awake at night. I’m the one. Because isn’t it my job to see that someone finds out the truth, finds out who did it? Isn’t that my job?”

  Mark shook his head and said, “No, it’s not yours,” but he’d never convinced himself to believe that either.

  “Then whose is it?” Diane Martin asked.

  “The police.”

  “And when they can’t do anything? When they don’t do anything?”

  “Then you need help,” Mark said. “Then you need…”

  “Someone like you,” she said when he didn’t finish.

  He drained his beer and put some cash on the bar. “I appreciate your time, Mrs. Martin. I truly do. You had every right to be angry with me, and yet you heard me out.”

  “So you’ll help?”

  “I’ll do what I promised. I’ll evaluate things, and the rest is up to my boss.”

  “You should go there.”

  “Pardon?”

  Her face was intense; she was leaning close to him now, one hand on his arm. “To Trapdoor. To the place where she died. I think you should see it for yourself.”

  “People keep telling me that,” he said, and he was afraid she’d ask who else had said it, but she didn’t.

  “People are right. You should go down there and think about your wife, and then make up your mind.”

  “My wife has absolutely nothing to do with this. That has to be understood.”

  The silent smile she offered in response was impossibly kind.

  6

  He didn’t feel that he’d had that much to drink, but by the time they left the bar and walked into the wind-whipped cold, Mark had a shakiness and disorientation that suggested he’d had a few more than he remembered. Diane Martin was rock steady, though, walking briskly through the parking lot and toward the hotel. She stopped in front of a row of cars and turned back to him and offered her hand. The parking lot was poorly lit and he couldn’t make out her eyes in the shadows and was grateful for that.

  “Consideration,” she said. “That’s all I’m asking for. If you believe you can help, and you wish to, then you should allow yourself to. It’s all up to you.”

  Her hand lingered on his in a strange grasp, as if she was trying to communicate a sense of need that she wasn’t willing to voice.

  “It’s not my call,” Mark said. “I’ve got bosses to answer to.”

  “Consideration,” she repeated, and then she released his hand and said, “Get out of the cold, and get some sleep.”

  He followed the instruction, because it was damn cold, and suddenly he felt damn tired. When the sliding doors parted, they revealed an empty and silent lobby, the hotel so quiet it felt like a funeral home. The girl at the front desk glanced up at him, and her eyes were hard, almost hostile.

  Do I look drunk? he wondered. He hadn’t had that many. Two, right? Maybe three. No more than three. He’d paid the bill; why hadn’t he noticed how many beers were on it?

  “Mr. Novak, I want to let you know that your room will be unavailable tomorrow.”

  He’d been almost to the elevator when she spoke, and he turned back in confusion.

  “I booked just the one night.”

  “I know. I’m only informing you that if you decide to stay in this town any longer, it won’t be here.”

  Mark stared at her. She was standing tall, shoulders back and arms folded over her chest, a just-try-and-argue-with-me look.

  “There are maybe nine cars in your parking lot,” he said. “Not real crowded.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Tomorrow you’re filled up? What battalion is coming to town?”

  “We won’t have any rooms available for you,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “For me? Or for anyone?”

  “There are other hotels in town,” she said, and then she turned on her heel, walked into the office, and shut the door behind her, leaving him alone in the silent lobby.

  There was a mirror a few steps away, and he moved to it and looked at himself. Clear-eyed, if a little tired. Well dressed, if not for this weather. There was nothing about his appearance that made him an undesirable in a hotel that was probably desperate for cash this time of year.

  So it’s Ridley. She overheard that conversation with Diane, thinks that I’m working for Ridley, and now I’m an unwelcome guest.

  He was tired and wanted to sleep and shouldn’t give a shit about a girl who was throwing him out of her hotel for whatever small-town reasons she had. All the same, it chafed. It had been a long time since he’d been told he wasn’t welcome somewhere, and those days were supposed to be behind him. No matter the reason, th
e eviction stirred unpleasant memories and dark urges. He looked at the closed office door and considered it for a moment and then shook his head.

  “Get some sleep, Markus,” he said. “And then get the hell out of here.”

  He heard the phones ring the next morning while he was in the shower—first his cell, then the room phone. When the room phone stopped and then started up again, he shut off the water, wrapped a towel around his waist, and hurried out of the bathroom. He was expecting it to be Jeff or possibly Diane Martin. But the caller introduced himself as Gary Clay, a reporter with a newspaper in Evansville, just an hour south of Garrison.

  “I understand that you’re opening an investigation into the Sarah Martin case, and I was hoping to learn a little bit about that,” Clay said.

  “I really can’t comment. I don’t know who told you about this, but it’s a nonstory.”

  “All due respect, but I’ve got plenty of readers who would disagree. The Martin case still has a hold around here, as I’m sure you know.”

  “If we move forward with it, I’ll talk with you at some point.”

  “My editor isn’t going to let me make that bargain. I’ve been told to write something, and all I know right now is that you’ve been hired by the only suspect—”

  “No, that is not correct. In no way, shape, or form is that correct. Who told you that?”

  “I can’t reveal that.”

  “Of course not. But I’m supposed to reveal things to you, right?”

  “I called to make sure I had accurate information,” Clay said. “See, it’s already helping.”

  “Whatever you write, you’d better make it damn clear that we are not working for Ridley Barnes. Not working for anyone. And if you’re going to refuse to hold this story until you learn whether it even is a story, you’d better get your facts straight.”

  “My apologies. I just knew that he was the only person you’d spoken with, which led me to believe—”

  “Then you don’t know anything,” Mark snapped. “If you write that I’m working for Barnes, you’re going to need to have an attorney onboard real fast. Because that’s a flagrant lie. As is the statement that he’s the only person I’ve spoken with. As is, for that matter, the statement that he’s the only suspect.”