Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  He was still crying when he felt the dog’s tongue. Amigo was lapping at his salty tears with the expression of delight still on his face, the game of chase everything he’d hoped for and more. Up ahead, the Dodge rested in a ditch just in front of the stop sign, trailed by black streaks of parched rubber, and a bearded man screamed obscenities at Mark from inside the cab.

  Mark never walked Amigo on that route again. It was, as he told his mother and uncles—and, many times over, the dog—the worst road in the world.

  He hadn’t heard of the road to Cassadaga in those days.

  They’d been in Cooke City, Montana, when his mother was arrested, and the cop told them that they couldn’t take the dog. Mark, then fourteen, punched a grown man for the first time in his life that day. A police officer, no less. When his uncles heard the news and finally came to get Mark, they told him that Amigo was doing well, and the last time they’d seen the dog he’d been lounging in front of Miner’s Saloon. He’s the town dog now, Uncle Larry had said. It’s just as well. With your mother’s habits, well, that’s no way to raise a dog.

  If he’d understood the irony of that statement, he hadn’t shown it.

  For years, Mark dreamed of that hopeless run and the inevitable death that he was supposed to see, more a captured memory than a dream, always waking with a gasp when the dream dog’s tongue touched his tears.

  He missed the days when that dream had qualified as a nightmare.

  He reached the stop sign and turned and looked back to where his rental car sat with the blinkers on, and he remembered everything that had happened here but he could not prove it. It was bad, but there were worse things, and he was well aware of them. At least he knew what had happened on this road.

  From his vantage point in the middle of the intersection, he could see a weathered sign that he’d missed on his first trip, when all of his attention had been on the truck in his mirror. If he’d looked to the right at the stop sign, he would have seen it—a billboard advertising the Amazing Trapdoor Caverns!, only two miles away, on the left.

  The Leonard brothers’ home was “three point two miles ahead, destination on left,” his GPS informed him.

  Neighbors.

  There were places where this wouldn’t matter. He’d lived in enough one-stoplight towns to know that. But Garrison had a little more size to it, and Trapdoor wasn’t on a major artery.

  He walked back to the car and drove ahead slowly. The gated drive to Trapdoor appeared on his left and then fell behind in his mirror and the road curved sharply and then straightened out again and he saw that he was approaching the farm that could be seen from the banks of the creek near the cave, its rolling fields spread out over the bluffs.

  Mark pulled into the gravel drive. The farmhouse was dark and the only vehicle in sight was a truck that looked as if it hadn’t been moved in days.

  No one answered his knock at the door, but instead of returning to the car, he walked up the drive and toward the barns, searching for any sign of life. He went from one outbuilding to another, knocking on doors, opening them, calling out. The only answers were the echoes of his own weary voice. He was winded from the walk, and even the echoes knew it.

  He reached the stable last. It was set farthest back from the road and was clearly the newest of the buildings, styled to look like a high-end Kentucky ranch, home to Thoroughbreds. From the moment he entered it, memories slapped at him like storm-tossed waves. Nothing drove memories through you faster or harder than the senses. He’d learned that in a crippling way after Lauren was killed. He could be doing fine, getting through a day with a feeling of emotional control, and then something as simple as the smell of the right soap or the distant sound of the right song threatened to bring him to his knees.

  The stable was all of this, heightened. He’d worked in a dozen of them, all in the West, and when he’d arrived in Florida with no money and needing a job, he’d known damn well that he could find the best pay at a stable, but he had gone to gas stations instead. He didn’t want to remember the West. Not then, not now.

  But here it was.

  He put one hand on the steel rail of a stall gate and closed his eyes, drinking in the smell so pungent, it almost seemed to have a taste. The senses brought him another memory then, unbidden, as the thought of his family had been, relocating him in time and place once again. What he remembered was a smell that had been familiar but that he couldn’t identify: the scent of the hood they’d pulled over his head in the field, rough as burlap, stinking of something earthy.

  It had smelled of horse feed.

  He opened his eyes and looked around the stalls and now he was entirely in the present.

  There are a million feed sacks around here, he told himself. It was farm country. It could have come from anywhere.

  But the Leonards didn’t come from anywhere. They came from this place, and they ran with Evan Borders, and Evan Borders had once been a suspect in the murder of his teenage girlfriend Sarah Martin, and Evan Borders had exchanged calls with Ridley Barnes in the minutes preceding Mark’s abduction.

  He heard the sound of an engine then and walked out of the stable in time to see a pickup truck rattling in. A white Silverado. Like feed sacks, there would be plenty of them around here.

  He waited outside the barn as the truck was parked and the driver got out—a large, bald man with a gray beard.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I was looking for Brett and Jeremy Leonard,” Mark said, approaching the truck.

  The man’s face went from cordial to wary. “Those are my boys. What do you need with them?”

  This obviously wasn’t the first time someone had arrived in search of the Leonard boys.

  “Wanted to ask them about clearing some snow,” Mark said. “I was told they do that?”

  “Oh, sure.” The elder Leonard was relieved now. “I can just take your name and address, get you put on the list. ’Nother storm due this evening is what I’m hearing. Be good to get on the plow schedule. I’m Lou, by the way.”

  Mark shook his hand but didn’t give his own name, just said, “Good to meet you, Lou,” and then he followed the older man inside the house. They walked into a kitchen that smelled of bacon, and Lou Leonard grabbed a notepad and a pen.

  “It’s my plow truck, but I don’t get out there much anymore. That’s a young man’s game, you know? Takes a toll that you wouldn’t think, all that time behind the wheel. And, hell, my eyes aren’t what they used to be. When I was out in the last storm, I was struggling, to be honest. Was damn happy when the boys took over.”

  “Your boys, they work with Evan Borders?”

  “Time to time. Evan’s sketchy. Some days he’s on time, some days he don’t show up at all.”

  “Why do you keep him on?”

  Lou Leonard sighed. “Family ties. That’s my nephew. His mother left when he was a child, and I didn’t blame her, though I’m not proud to say it. She’d found the wrong man. Carson was in a bar when he wasn’t in a jail, and then he got sent up to Pendleton for a good stretch and Evan was in the wind, and I took him in so the state wouldn’t. He lived with me while his daddy was in prison. You try to look out for someone that doesn’t have anybody else. Some people call it foolish; I call it Christian.”

  “You said you were out in the last storm?” Mark asked.

  “For a bit. I’m only good for a couple hours anymore.”

  Mark tried to keep his voice casual when he said, “What time was that?”

  The old man gave him a curious look, and Mark said, “I was just thinking, it was blowing hard there for a while around noon. More than I could’ve handled.”

  “It was blowing hard,” Lou agreed, and then he bent to his notepad again. “What was your name?”

  “Mark Novak.”

  No reaction. For once, someone in Garrison didn’t seem to be aware of who he was. He watched as his name was lettered in, and then Lou said, “Address?”

  “I’m at Trapdoor Ca
verns right now.”

  This caught his attention. He looked up with a frown. “Doesn’t Cecil clear the snow?”

  “He’s having some issues with the plow. It’s a long driveway to work with just a snowblower.”

  “It sure is.” But Lou was curious now, maybe suspicious.

  “Your boys ever spend any time down in the cave when it was open?” Mark said. “I hear it was a popular place back in its day.”

  “For tourists maybe. I never cared for caves. Claustrophobic. Anyhow, we’ll get you on the list, and when it snows, Cecil won’t have to worry.”

  “Appreciate that.” Mark turned to the window and waved a hand out at the fields. “Some beautiful horses there. You take care of them?”

  “Yup. I never cared for horses much myself, but it’s part of the job.”

  “What’s the job?”

  “Just what it looks like—tending the farm. All leased land now. People who own them horses are from Indianapolis. Had an idea about turning this place into some sort of a riding camp, training kids, crap like that. Poured money into the barn, but I ain’t seen any dollars come back in from it yet. They don’t need any, though. Funny how that goes—the people who own the land don’t need the money from it; the people who live on it do. Ain’t that the way all around?”

  “I couldn’t say. Your boys, do they tend to the horses as well?”

  “Why in the hell are you so damn interested in my boys?”

  “More interested in the horses, honestly. Look like nice animals. Well cared for.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Stable looks pretty well equipped too.”

  Lou tilted his head, eyeing Mark uneasily, and said, “What’s it matter?”

  “You ever hear of ketamine, Lou?”

  “Nope.”

  Mark nodded. “Maybe your boys have,” he said. “It’s a horse tranquilizer.”

  Lou Leonard stared at Mark grimly. “What are you really after? What’re they into?”

  “I’ll be real clear here,” Mark said. “Your boys are going to want to speak with me. You’re a smart guy, you get it. There are different roads I could take. The road they want to take? The road you want them to take? It starts with them coming to see me, Lou. Trust me on that.”

  “I don’t know you. Sure as hell don’t trust you.”

  “Sometimes you’ve got to gamble, Lou. I’ll let you think on it.” Mark gave him a little salute, turned, and left the house.

  29

  The black holes in Mark’s memory hadn’t swallowed his first visit to Trapdoor, and he noticed some changes there immediately: The gate at the top of the drive had been expanded with long strands of barbed wire, and the chains and locks were brand-new.

  Mark pulled his rental car into the same place where they’d found the one that had been stolen, killed the engine, and sat in the silence for a few minutes, studying the property and trying to ignore the question dancing in his mind.

  Is this the second time you’ve driven here or the third?

  It was the second. He had to prove it, but he knew this.

  Do you?

  For the first time, he felt confident that he did. The ketamine explained what he could not. The proximity of the Leonards’ farm seemed to go a long way toward explaining the rest of it, but he wanted to see how one would get down the bluffs to the cave entrance and whether they’d left any trace. He opened the door and stepped out into the snow. The waterproof boots held up well, and the jacket kept the wind from cutting him. All the same, each step was agony. He’d done nothing but drive and walk today, but his body felt pushed to its limits, and the physical aches were beginning to move toward mental, leaving him feeling feverish and a little dizzy.

  He didn’t make it nearly so far as he had on his first visit before he was interrupted.

  “Unless you’ve got a badge, you better get the hell off this property or I’ll call someone who does have a badge,” Cecil Buckner began, boiling out of the garage as if he’d been lying in wait. He held a shotgun this time. Security at Trapdoor had been stepped up in the face of crisis, evidently. When he was close enough to see Mark’s face, he pulled up short and squinted. “You got to be shitting me. You’re back?”

  “I’ve got some more questions,” Mark said. “They’re different this time around. I’d like to know how I got inside your cave.”

  “You ain’t alone there, pal. I got my ass ripped good for it, like it was my fault.”

  Cecil propped the barrel of the shotgun in the snow and leaned on it as if it were a cane. Maybe it wasn’t even loaded. Maybe he was just an idiot.

  “I might know how to get us started answering them,” Mark said. “What do you know about the family who lives in the farm up there?”

  “The Leonards? Trash and trouble. Old Lou, he’s not so bad, but those boys he raised are a different story.” Cecil pointed in the opposite direction of the bluffs, off to the southwest, where the fields ran up alongside the road and a dilapidated trailer was barely visible. “Lou’s sister lived right there, and she raised the only child in this county who could compete with his boys.”

  “Evan?”

  “You know all the names, don’t you? Yeah, that was his boyhood home. Nice place, ain’t it? Now, you tell me, why in the hell would anybody want to rent to a family like that? It doesn’t make sense. But Pershing—”

  “Cecil?” A voice sharp as a gunshot snapped at them from the deck of the big house. “Who is it?”

  Mark looked up and saw a woman framed in the doorway of the house. At the sight of her, Cecil went from cooperative gossip to guard dog in a flash, lifting the shotgun back into firing position and straightening up, like a sentry who’d been caught sleeping.

  “It’s that asshole who broke into the cave! I was throwing him out. You want me to call the police?”

  There was a pause as the woman considered this information. From a distance, Mark couldn’t tell much about her other than that she was young and slim and looked very cold on the deck. Outlined against the white landscape of the farm fields beyond, she also looked very alone.

  “Bring him up,” she said.

  Cecil looked at Mark with a touch of pity. “That’s Danielle MacAlister, Pershing’s daughter. You’re going to wish I’d just called the police.”

  The woman met them at the front door. It hadn’t been a long walk, but Mark was winded by the time they arrived.

  “Trespassing and breaking and entering could already be established, but now you’re back,” she said. “Perhaps stalking begins to apply.”

  She was young, maybe not yet thirty, wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up to expose thin forearms that were adorned with bracelets. An attractive woman, certainly, but if she had any charm to match her looks, it was well hidden. She had the bearing of someone used to being the boss but without the age that usually went with it.

  “The breaking-and-entering charge might be useful,” Mark said, “but it won’t be levied against me. I was brought into the cave against my will. If you’re scrambling for legal grounds, you might want to spend a little time brushing up on your own liability. I nearly died in a cave that you own and claim is secure.”

  “It’s been secure for ten years, and I hardly think I’m liable when someone pries bars apart so he can—”

  “I’m not really interested in the charges,” Mark interrupted. “Go ahead and file them. I’ll deal with them as they come. That’s the least of my problems. I’m going to find the people who put me down there, and I’m going to find out why Ridley Barnes has such clout in a place where he’s supposedly loathed and what inspired him to try to hire detectives to put him in the electric chair.”

  She’d wanted to continue the hostility, had been bracing for further argument, but something knocked her off stride.

  “What do you mean, he tried to hire detectives to put him in the electric chair?”

  “Ridley Barnes requested an investigation in Sarah Martin’s murder
so that he might know whether or not he killed her. We’ve seen a lot of odd requests, but that was a first.”

  Danielle MacAlister paused, then said, “Give us a few minutes, Cecil,” dismissing the caretaker without even glancing his way. He gave a sullen nod and shuffled off, casting one look back at Mark as if to say, I told you the police would be better. She told Mark to come inside, and only when the door was closed behind him did she speak again.

  “Ridley Barnes wants the case reopened?”

  “That’s right. I came up to discuss things. I knew nothing about what had happened here. It was preliminary talk, nothing more, at least until people began to involve me in elaborate lies and then tried to kill me. I owe your caretaker some gratitude, by the way. If he weren’t alert on the job, I would have frozen to death down there.”

  She didn’t seem to register those words. “Ridley Barnes wants the case reopened,” she echoed, and then gave a bitter laugh. “That twisted bastard.”

  “Tell me about him,” Mark said. “Please. Or put me in touch with your father so I can talk to him.”

  “You won’t have any luck,” she said. “My father is not very lucid these days. He had a bad stroke two years ago and has been in assisted living ever since. He might tell you stories about Trapdoor, but they’re likely to be a product of his own imagination.”

  “He won’t be alone in that regard.”

  She considered him in silence for a few seconds and then said, “I shouldn’t be talking to you, but I’ll go this far, despite my better judgment. You tell me about Ridley, everything you know about him, and I’ll offer the same.”

  “Fair enough,” Mark said, “but why so interested, Danielle?”

  “My father was engaged to Diane Martin,” Danielle MacAlister said. “Sarah and I would have been stepsisters, Mr. Novak. Instead, by the next summer, Sarah was in a casket, and Diane had left my father. Meanwhile, Ridley Barnes is free and clear. Do you still have any questions as to why I’m so interested?”

  “No,” Mark said. “No, I don’t think so. Let’s talk about Ridley.”