Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  “Not her?” Cecil said.

  “Of course not,” Mark said.

  Cecil shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. There’s some folks see ghosts, some folks see—”

  “Stop that bullshit. The woman was real, she was a fraud, and she set me up. I wish I’d taken her picture so I could ask you who she was.”

  “Too bad,” Cecil said, but he didn’t sound particularly dismayed. “If Sarah’s daddy comes at you next, ignore that one too. He was killed in a car accident. So, how long were you in town before she appeared?”

  “Arrived,” Mark snapped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Mark didn’t like Cecil’s word choice. The woman didn’t appear, the way a ghost or a phantom might. She’d arrived at his hotel and called his room, the way a real person did. “It was maybe seven hours after I got here.”

  “How many people in Garrison knew you were coming to town?”

  “Zero,” he said, not liking it any more than Cecil did, the way this had been waiting on him like a snare.

  “So someone at your hotel must have—”

  “No.” Mark shook his head. It was the right idea, but the wrong sequence. Someone had sent her to him, yes, but not someone from the hotel. “How many places are there to stay in this town, do you think?”

  “Maybe a half dozen.”

  “Exactly. I wouldn’t have been hard to find. Not if you knew what I was driving.”

  “Who knew that?”

  “Ridley Barnes, Sheriff Blankenship, and that’s it. By the time she came to my hotel, it was just the two of them who knew I was here. I spoke to only three people yesterday. Barnes, the sheriff, and that woman. She came on fast, and she came on ready.”

  That part bothered him the most. She’d been prepped. You didn’t just rush out of the house and pull off a pitch-perfect performance as a victim’s mother. Mark had met with too many of the real deal. He’d have spotted the falseness.

  “Can’t believe I bought it,” he said. “I mean, damn, some detective, right?”

  “She was that good?” Cecil seemed intrigued by the tale now, like he wanted to sit down and put up his feet and listen to it all. It was probably the best theater to arrive at his closed-for-business cave in a long time.

  “She was that good.” Mark paused and then added, “And I let go of my own rule.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Question everything; trust nothing. I let it go, because she didn’t seem worth questioning, you know? She had to be who she said she was. But if I’d questioned it…” He gave a bitter smile. “There were some tells. Yes, there were. She was too composed. The act was good, and all of the words were right, but the eyes? Those didn’t fit. The way she looked when she told it…no, that didn’t fit. I kept thinking that her calm was impressive.”

  He was cut off by the ring of his cell phone. Jeff London calling. Bringing him home, hopefully. That would be a gift. He couldn’t wait to get out of this town.

  “Sorry, I’ve got to take this.” He answered the phone and said, “Hey, Jeff, I’m right in the middle of—”

  “A disaster,” London said.

  “What?”

  “I just got a call from a newspaper reporter in Indiana.”

  “Shit. Don’t talk to him. This thing is—”

  “Oh, I’m going to have to talk to him, because his article is already up online. He won’t be the last reporter to call. It’s a hell of an interesting piece after all. Not every day that an investigator blows into town and claims to have interviewed a dead woman.”

  “I’ll get him to kill it. I’ll get that pulled down.”

  “Sure, Mark, you can stop the Internet. Before you do that, would you mind reversing the Earth’s orbit?”

  “Jeff, you have to understand that—”

  “I’m going to read this to you,” London said, talking right over him, his voice tight with anger. “I want you to hear what’s circulating about an organization that relies entirely on its reputation and credibility. ‘Mark Novak’s Florida-based Innocence Incorporated purports to have unique abilities on death-row defense cases. Based on his early work on the unsolved murder of Sarah Martin, the company’s abilities certainly are unique. This morning Novak claimed he opened his assessment of the case with an interview of Diane Martin, the victim’s mother. It’s an unsurprising place to start, but there’s one problem—Diane Martin died in 2008, after an apparent prescription-pill overdose. “I’ve met with Diane Martin, and she’s aware of the possibility of the investigation and supportive of it if we choose to move forward,” Novak said. “Right now that’s unlikely.” Unlikely seems to be the ideal word for all of Novak’s investigations in Garrison.’”

  Mark had his eyes closed by the time Jeff finished.

  “What happened?” Jeff said. “What in the hell happened?”

  “Somebody set me up. It had to be Ridley Barnes. But this woman came to my hotel and told me she was the mother. I just found out the truth. I’ll call Clay and straighten him out.”

  “Good luck with that. The Associated Press has already grabbed it. Every time I refresh the news page, I see more hits. I’ve got calls from numbers in five different states so far. I can’t wait to play all the messages. And I have to answer them, because I have to answer for your conduct.” His voice was bristling. “Yesterday I spent five hours convincing my board of directors that you didn’t deserve to be fired, that you had your head together. I used those words, Markus. I told them, ‘Oh, yes, he has his head together.’ Then I find out you’re talking to dead people? Boy, do I look like one fine judge of mental health!”

  “I’m not talking to dead people, Jeff. I talked to a fraud. What she was after, I don’t know. But if you hadn’t sent me to this place to begin with to look at a case that we wouldn’t even consider taking, then—”

  “No,” Jeff said. “Do not question that. Do not even mention it. I cleared you off the decks so I could protect you and make you think a little, maybe get some perspective back. Don’t you dare question that when I’m down here taking bullets for you. How in God’s name did a professional investigator, a detective with a license and training, not do enough research to learn that the girl’s mother was dead! It’s one Google search!”

  “You know damn well why I didn’t do any research, Jeff. Because we weren’t going to take the case! You sent me up here with a one-page abstract and Ridley’s letter, that was it.”

  “You want to debate the blame, knock yourself out, but now I’ve got to do damage control, round two,” Jeff said. “Because when the board sees this, I promise you, you’re done. Unless we can explain it. And we are going to need to explain it with something better than what I’ve heard so far.”

  You’re done. Jeff might have thought he was talking about Mark’s job, but he was wrong. Without the job, Mark himself was done. The job was all that Mark had, all that got him through his days. But more important—most important, the only thing that mattered, now—the job gave him a way to complete the sole task that remained for him in this life. Lauren’s killer was still out there. Mark had leads that he’d gotten through his work, abuse of his position be damned, and he couldn’t afford to lose them this early. After he settled the score for Lauren, fine, let them take what they wanted, let them take everything, because everything wasn’t much anymore. But until then, the access Innocence Incorporated gave him was crucial. It had gotten him close already, and if he just weathered this storm, it would get him home. It had to.

  “I’ll find this woman,” Mark said. “I’ll find her, and I’ll make her own up to this, and the board won’t have to decide anything because it will be obvious what happened up here.”

  Jeff was silent.

  “You got a better idea?” Mark said. “If so, I’ll take it. But I think we’re going to have to produce her.”

  “All right, go ahead, but first make damn sure that you’re looped in with the local police. We need to have allies up there, not enemie
s.”

  Mark had a feeling that Blankenship was not going to relish the role of ally, but he told Jeff that he’d do his best.

  “I’ll get this cleaned up by tonight,” he said, and Cecil Buckner looked at Mark as if he’d just placed a high-dollar bet on a horse with three legs.

  “You’d better,” Jeff said. “Or it’s back to the board I go, and the fresh questions aren’t going to be fun ones, for you or for me.”

  He hung up then, and Mark pocketed the phone and looked at Cecil Buckner, who was watching with interest.

  “That didn’t sound real positive, at least from this end of the call,” he said.

  Mark ignored that and said, “Listen, I’m going to go talk to the police and get this shit handled. I may need to call you at some point.”

  “Sure. And you do realize that I’m going to have to call the MacAlisters? Pershing, he’s in bad shape these days. Had himself a stroke on the golf course. Never been right since. But his daughter is looking after their affairs, and that’s kind of lucky, because she’s a lawyer.”

  Lucky, indeed. The last thing Mark needed right now was a lawyer showing up.

  “Can you give me a few hours before you make that call?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to do my job,” Cecil said. He didn’t look sorry at all.

  9

  Mark wasn’t surprised that Blankenship had been expecting to hear from him, but he was surprised at the man’s energy and anger. In their first meeting, the sheriff had been low-voiced and skeptical, more of a watcher than an aggressor. Today, that approach was gone.

  “I’ve dealt with some stupid sons of bitches before, but you’re setting a new standard,” Blankenship said, boiling up to the front desk as soon as Mark’s presence was announced. “What in the hell about this entertains you, son? People hurt over this shit, you understand that? They hurt!”

  He glanced at the listeners around him, straightened up to his full, impressive height, and said, “We’ll walk and talk. I don’t need you wasting anyone else’s time.”

  He banged the door open and Mark followed him out onto the sidewalk. Blankenship’s large hands were clenching and unclenching as if he were willing down a desire to take a swing.

  “I understand you don’t like it,” Mark said. “But can you pause to consider how I feel about being set up by some idiot like that?”

  “I don’t give a damn how you feel. I told you this thing could cause pain. Would cause pain. You ignored me. But this? This with Diane? I’ve never heard anything like it. Never.”

  Blankenship was walking toward the town square, his long legs moving so fast that Mark had to struggle to keep pace. Snowflakes were falling, and a plow went by and splashed slush onto Blankenship’s shoes and pants but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “You know how that poor woman died?” Blankenship said. “She went into Sarah’s bedroom, lay down on the bed where her baby had slept, and read a children’s Bible she’d given Sarah when she was a little girl. While she read it, she took sleeping pills. One after another. Just trying to find some peace. People said suicide, but they were wrong. She was just looking for some rest. For just a few moments of peace.”

  His voice broke on the last sentence. He cleared his throat and shook his head.

  “Now you’ve even got that damned family coming back into town. Icing on the cake, right there. I never needed to see them again. Any of them.”

  “Who in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Got a call from Danielle MacAlister not ten minutes ago. I thought that whole clan was done with Garrison. But you pass through town and they decide it’s worth a return trip. Next they’ll probably decide it’s time to open the cave again. Of course, I’m the only man in Garrison who actually thinks that it shouldn’t be open—to everyone else, it’s lost money in a town that doesn’t have money to lose. Only thing Pershing and I ever agreed on was closing that cave. Him shutting that damned place down and then getting the hell out of this county, those were the only moves he ever made that had my blessing.” He shook his head, and by now his hands were no longer clenching and unclenching; they were held in tight fists. “I’ll see you charged for this, Novak.”

  “You got nothing to charge me with, Blankenship. And I’d think you’d want to find out who set me up like that, and why. No interest?”

  The sheriff studied him with disgust but didn’t say anything.

  “The reporter alone is worth your time,” Mark said. “He wouldn’t tell me who called him with the tip. He might tell you.”

  “Doesn’t need to. I know who tipped him.” Blankenship raised his hand. “And I’m not the least bit sorry about that either. I wanted to know what you’d say to the media that you wouldn’t say to me. You sure came through, didn’t you?”

  “That’s a bullshit small-town move, Blankenship.”

  Blankenship shrugged.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mark said. “I don’t need the damn reporter. I’ve got witnesses. In the hotel, and in the restaurant just across the parking lot. Hotels have security cameras. I suspect the restaurant does as well. We can get video of this woman. So before you start spouting off about charges again, why don’t you do a little police work? Give me fifteen minutes of police work.”

  Blankenship didn’t like that, but he didn’t answer right away either. Mark said, “You want her worse than I do, Sheriff. Let’s go find her.”

  Blankenship followed him to the hotel. Mark had expected they’d ride together, but the sheriff said, “I don’t want you in my damn car until I can put you in the backseat in handcuffs,” and he’d slammed the driver’s door, leaving Mark standing alone in the snow on the sidewalk, marveling at the amount of rage Blankenship showed. It wasn’t his reputation that had taken the hit; it was Mark’s.

  When they entered the hotel, the same young brunette who had checked Mark in the previous day was working, a sight he took in with relief. She’d been all ears for the discussion, enjoying the theater playing out in her lobby. She would remember enough to help.

  “I thought I told you that we were—” Then she caught a glimpse of Blankenship’s uniform and stiffened.

  “Don’t worry,” Mark said. “I don’t intend to ask for another room. Just tell the sheriff here what happened in the lobby not long after I checked in.”

  “When the woman came by to get you?”

  “Exactly,” he said, feeling better already.

  “You were here for this?” Blankenship asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. He’d checked in, and then she came in and asked me to call his room. She did the talking, though. I just handed over the phone. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Blankenship assured her. “I just need to understand what was said.”

  “Well, she didn’t say a lot to me. But, you know, I overheard enough to get the gist. I could hear only her. Whatever he said on the phone, that was too quiet. But she said that she was a friend of Ridley Barnes and—”

  “Wait,” Mark said. “No, no, no. She might have mentioned his name, but she didn’t say she was a friend, she said—”

  “Let her talk,” Blankenship said, his voice weighted with warning. Mark lifted his hands in frustration and nodded.

  “So she said she was a friend of Ridley Barnes, and, well, that kind of stood out to me,” the clerk continued. Her name tag identified her only as Lily, no last name.

  “Why?” Blankenship said.

  “Um…you know how Ridley was…well, what people thought about him when Sarah Martin was killed.”

  “Yes,” Blankenship said coolly. “I know what people thought.”

  “Okay. So I knew Sarah. We went to school together. Ran track and cross-country together. We weren’t, like, super-close, but we were teammates, so I knew her, and I followed the story, everybody did.”

  Mark was already concerned about his eyewitness. Not only had she misunderstood the context, but he was certain
that Ridley hadn’t been mentioned at all on the phone.

  “Tell him who the woman said she was when I got down here,” Mark said. “You were taking that whole conversation in and didn’t pretend not to be. Tell him what she said then.”

  “The same thing.” Lily didn’t hesitate, didn’t so much as blink. “You came out of the elevator and she thanked you for making time for her—”

  “Thanked me? What are you talking about? She was furious with me!”

  “Novak, you say another word and I will put you in the back of my car,” Blankenship said. “Let her finish.”

  The clerk was rattled now, looking at Mark uneasily, and he knew he needed to dial down the anger—witness accounts were always varied and rarely accurate, but she was so far off base that it was hard. Her hostility from the previous night had bled over into lies, plain and simple. He exhaled and stepped back, trying to cool off.

  “What did you hear her say?” Blankenship asked her.

  “She told him that she appreciated him making time for her, and then she said that it was important for him to hear a different perspective on Ridley Barnes from what everyone else around here would tell him. I remember that, because I thought, Well, she must be willing to say something nice about him. Nobody else does.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mark said. “If you didn’t actually hear what was said, then don’t make shit up! What she told me was—”

  Blankenship put a hand on his arm, and the grip was not gentle. The sheriff’s eyes were locked on the clerk, and they were intense.

  “Ignore him. Just talk to me. Did you happen to hear any reference to Diane?”

  “Diane?”

  “Sorry. To Sarah’s mother.”

  “No.”

  “You say you were teammates with Sarah in high school,” Blankenship said. “Did you know her mother?”

  “Of course. Sarah’s mom was always around. Mrs. Martin drove our coach nuts because she loved to bake for us and he didn’t want us eating stuff like that.”