Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  He told her. Everything that she asked and that he could answer, he told her.

  “I’ve got to defend myself against the lies that have been told,” he concluded when she seemed to have run out of questions. “But more than that? There are people who should pay for what happened here, but I’m not one of them. I won’t play that role.”

  She listened to that in silence.

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s what I can give you. Every answer I have, you’ve heard. Your turn. Tell me about the Ridley Barnes you know.”

  She hesitated, then turned from him. “Follow me. I can show you Ridley. I can show you where the whole ugly mess began.”

  30

  The basement was unfinished with walls of rough concrete block, cool and dimly lit. Metal stools without backs sat before an old workbench with a set of steel vises. An ancient La-Z-Boy recliner was in the corner of the room beside a minifridge from the same era, unplugged. Twin file cabinets stood against one wall beneath a bare lightbulb with a pull chain that produced dim light. The walls were lined with maps.

  “The basement was my father’s sacred ground,” Danielle said. “Where all the grand plans were made. Where he looked at those maps and dreamed of success.”

  “What was success, in his mind?”

  “Something bigger,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Isn’t that always the way? The small want to be big, the big want to be monstrous, and the monstrous…” She ran out of orders of magnitude, leaving monstrous to be the end of the growth cycle.

  Mark walked to the wall and studied the hand-drawn maps.

  “Chronological order, from left to right,” Danielle MacAlister said. “The first ones were done by a group. You’ll see the names on there. Then you’ll see what it turned into.”

  Mark moved from left to right, passing across the years of Trapdoor. Many of the maps—most, even—were redundant, the only difference being changes to dimensions of chambers or passages, with few new discoveries. Most of the discovering in the early days had been done by Pershing MacAlister, Tyler Spatta, Dave Everton, and Joseph Anderson. Their names were noted on all the maps, and each was signed by the party who’d created the physical drawing—MacAlister had less skill but paid more attention to detail; Anderson had crafted far better images, but MacAlister had gone back through and corrected his measurements. The artist and the engineer working in tandem.

  “Who were these three?” Mark asked. “Beyond your father, who are these guys?”

  “Local cavers. When the place was first discovered, he recruited a team to help him explore it. Then he came across Ridley Barnes, who was supposed to be the best caver in the area and the most experienced with exploration teams. The others were willing to work with him, but Ridley had his own set of rules. He wasn’t going to volunteer for the job, like everyone else had, and he was going to work alone. I don’t know how much you understand about caves?”

  “Next to nothing.”

  “Okay. Well, cave exploration, or digs, the trips to try and find new passages, they’re incredibly dangerous if not done properly. People always work in teams. For a man to insist on working alone is beyond foolish. But that was Ridley.”

  “Why did your father agree to it, then?”

  She sat on one of the stools in front of the workbench. “He got protective.”

  “Of what?”

  “The potential, I suppose. He had a theory that there was something truly massive waiting to be found in there. Something that would make the existing tour cave portion look like child’s play. Ridley promised him secrecy—I’ve reviewed the confidentiality agreements and contracts they signed—but in exchange, he was paid for his work, and he was allowed to do it alone. For nine months, Trapdoor was Ridley’s full-time job. He said it was the happiest he’d ever been in his life. That ended two weeks before Sarah was killed.”

  The final sets of maps were signed by Ridley and drawn with remarkable skill and attention to detail and scale; here, engineer and artist were combined in one man. Here, also, the rate of discovery accelerated. The original chambers and passages remained, but every so often an entirely new section would appear. Seeing the cave grow on the maps this way was a bizarre, fascinating thing, like watching a chronological series of fetal ultrasounds, except that the cave had always been there and needed only to be discovered.

  Some of the chambers had names—the Funnel Room, the Chapel Room—and others did not. The stream flowing through the middle was labeled Greenglass River. Danielle, following his index finger as he traced along, said, “Ridley came up with that name. Most of the names are my father’s ideas. The Chapel Room and Greenglass River belong to Ridley.”

  Outside the mouth of the cave, Greenglass River changed to Maiden Creek.

  “Maiden Creek? That’s really what it’s called?”

  “Yes,” Danielle said. “Supposedly named after a beautiful young pioneer girl who drowned in it while running from the Indians.”

  Mark felt a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature. His face must have showed it, because Danielle said, “Why is that a problem for you?”

  Because when my mother decided to be an Indian, she named herself Snow Creek Maiden, he thought, so if I’m standing beside Maiden Creek in the snow, maybe Ridley is right. When dangerous things stop feeling like coincidences, what’s the term for that?

  But all he said was “That’s a sad story, if it’s true. Probably isn’t, though. Most of the legends aren’t. Here’s a novice question, but I don’t understand how it could take so long for these new portions to be found.”

  “Then you don’t understand caves. My father didn’t either. Ridley Barnes did. It also wasn’t that long, really. My father bought the acreage for the timber rights but hadn’t cut a single tree before the cave opened up.”

  “What do you mean, opened up? He had to go looking for it, right?”

  She shook her head. “He bought the property in August and intended to begin timbering the following summer. That winter, it just sat. The next spring was a wet one, with high flood levels. The creek spilled over its banks and flooded a small pond that was on the other side. The level in the pond kept rising too. Then the pond vanished into the ground.”

  “Completely?” He was trying to envision it, trying to imagine what it must have been like to walk out into daylight and see that while you’d slept, the earth had changed.

  “Completely. Where it had been, there was nothing but a gaping sinkhole with a small gap in the stone at the base. The ground just opened up and swallowed the pond. Hence the name—it swung open just like a trapdoor. A couple of the locals grabbed flashlights and ropes and went in and eventually called my father. Back then, the entrance was so small you had to squeeze to get through it. When my father realized there was a large cave beyond, he blasted the stone out to get the entrance you see today, and it looks like it has always been there.”

  Mark kept moving around the walls of maps as he listened, and as he studied the dimensions and details, he tried to find a room that approximated the one where’d he found himself. None of them did. There were some drops and cliffs, but nothing that looked as sheer as what he’d encountered. Maybe it wasn’t that deep at all. How do you know when you didn’t see it? You also heard snakes. Without a doubt. But those weren’t real. And what about Sarah Martin, sitting on that ledge with light emanating from her pores? Was that real?

  He finally reached the last one, an elaborate and painstaking sketch, dated May 2004.

  “Ridley didn’t find anything new that summer?” Mark asked.

  “Oh, he did. He claimed to have made extraordinary finds that summer. He was getting close, he kept telling my dad, he was always getting close. But he never turned over the maps.”

  “According to the case reports, Blankenship was removed from the investigation because he had a relationship with Sarah’s mother. But she was engaged to your father.”

  Danielle winced. “Both are true, ugly as that sounds.
Sarah’s father was killed in a bad trucking accident when she was twelve. Blankenship was the deputy who’d informed the family. He stayed in touch with Diane throughout, and eventually, he fell in love with her. Fell hard, I believe. Sarah told me that. But then Sarah began to work out here. Diane had a terrible fear of cars after the accident. She wouldn’t let Sarah get a driver’s license, so she would drop her off and pick her up every day. It was humiliating to Sarah—you know, the worries of the sixteen-year-old—but it also meant Diane was around every day.” She sighed. “I’d love to tell you my father is this wonderful, noble man. I think he’s a good man, and I love him. But he has his weaknesses. Diane would have been his third wife, and I think there was another one who was almost in the mix. My mother was his second. My father liked to play the savior role. People accused those women of being gold diggers, but they were wrong. He liked to find women he could dazzle. Women he could introduce to a different type of world, a different lifestyle. Diane was one of those.”

  “So Blankenship was the jilted one in all this?”

  “He felt he was, at least. He was also the one who called for Ridley over my father’s objections. I don’t think he’s ever really recovered from that. How could someone?”

  “Why did your father object?”

  “Ridley was a disturbed man. We all knew that, because we’d been around him. Blankenship hadn’t. He just thought he was getting an expert. That much was true, but he hadn’t heard the way Ridley talked about the cave, talked about its power, talked about it like it was a person. And I think my father had an even darker concern that he didn’t give voice to.”

  “What was that?”

  “Ridley made some odd remarks about the girls who worked here. About me, and about Sarah. He said once that Sarah looked like his sister, but it was not a casual comment. It was creepy. It just felt off.”

  Mark remembered the chill he’d felt when Ridley said that Sarah had caught his eye.

  “I understand that Blankenship was told Ridley could move fast in the cave, but I’ve always wondered how much of that decision to overrule my father came from testosterone rather than logic.”

  Probably a lot of it, Mark thought. Put a woman between two men, and anything that was even a cousin of logic would usually drown in the tidal waves of testosterone.

  “At any rate, Blankenship was removed from the scene, and Ridley came. The rest…well, you know the rest.”

  “I know the result. That’s all.”

  “Then you know as much as everyone else. Nobody knows the rest except for Ridley Barnes.”

  “What do you think he did?” he asked.

  “I think he killed her. He was supposed to lead the team, not leave the team. And the way he talked about the cave as if it were alive? It always gave me chills. He referred to the cave as ‘her’ or ‘she’ all the time. ‘The old girl,’ that was one of his favorites. Then he began to talk about his discoveries of new passages as if the cave had guided him. ‘The old girl was whispering to me today, Danielle. She’s starting to tell me her secrets.’ I will never forget those words. So disturbing, particularly with the look in his eyes. This…hunger. He’d gotten possessive about access to the cave too, wanted limits on everyone. Ironic, because that’s just the way my father was. Trapdoor has that effect, I suppose. Another reason I’ll never open the door.” She looked at Mark with distaste. “Not that the locks stopped you.”

  “I didn’t go in that cave of my own free will. And if you feel so passionately about Ridley’s history, then you really should believe me.”

  “Maybe. If that were the only part of the story, I probably would, in fact. But that’s not the only part of the story, is it? You also claimed to have seen Diane. I can believe some things about Ridley Barnes, and most of them are uniquely evil, but I don’t believe he summoned poor old Diane Martin from the grave.”

  “She wasn’t summoned from the grave. She was impersonated, and then people lied about it to make me look like a fool and keep the police from searching for the person who did it.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “People lie for different reasons. For money, sometimes. For power.”

  “Ridley is in no position to grant anyone money or power.”

  “There are other reasons. Fear, for one. You don’t think Ridley can wield fear? Sounds like that’s what he’s good at.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached out to one of the vises mounted on the workbench and ran a fingertip along the inside. It came back dry and clean, but she rubbed her fingers together and laughed.

  “It still smells the same.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This room. Nobody has done any real work down here in years, but it still smells like sawdust, don’t you think?”

  It did. There wasn’t a trace of sawdust in the room, but the smell was certainly there. She returned her focus to him. There was an intensity to it that, combined with her youth, made her painfully familiar. She looked like Lauren had when they were discussing a case for Innocence Incorporated. Danielle’s face was more angular, with higher cheekbones, and her hair was auburn instead of blond, but the body type was close, and the combination of intelligence and intensity was identical. She was an attorney too. A young attorney, full of confidence, ready to conquer.

  He looked away from her and reached automatically into his pocket for the Saba dive permit, forgetting that it was no longer there. He removed his hand and gazed around the room at that mess of maps, slowly developing, like an old Polaroid, revealing more and more.

  “Do these maps show where I was found?” he said.

  “No. You were off the maps.”

  “But not off Ridley’s.”

  She shook her head. It was silent for a while, and then she broke the quiet by saying, “So people lie for different reasons. I’ll grant you that. But if this woman impersonated Diane Martin…that’s more than a lie. It would mean she’s a little more invested, don’t you think? It would mean that she has a stake in Ridley.”

  “Agreed.”

  “That’s why I have trouble believing you,” she said. “I can’t imagine who in the world would have a stake in Ridley Barnes.”

  “Four people,” Mark said. “Three guys on the road, and then the woman who pretended to be Diane.”

  Danielle frowned and shook her head. “Somehow the woman is harder for me to believe. The idea that he’d be able to recruit some locals with guns? I believe that. But a woman, any woman? Unless he paid her by the hour, I can’t see it.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve given you more than you deserve, Mr. Novak. More than I should have, probably. But I’ll admit that you’ve made me curious. If you have other questions, I’ll consider answering them. Emphasis on consider. Because until you find a way to explain that story about Diane Martin, or prove anything else that you say, you feel just a little too much like Ridley himself for comfort.”

  31

  She held a towel filled with ice against the side of his face and ran her fingertips lightly over the swollen skin. “Ridley,” she said, “it was a mistake. It was too much.”

  He took a few breaths through his mouth—it was still painful to breathe through his nose, thanks to Novak—and said, “He’s still here, at least.”

  “And how’s that going for you?”

  “We knew he wouldn’t take it well. We always knew that.”

  “There’s a difference.”

  “Easy thing to say. But if you imagine how he felt…”

  “Trust me, I did. Before I saw him, and after. And during. Especially during.”

  “He was going to leave.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “He would have. I’m sure of it. And you know I can’t allow that. He’s too special.”

  She moved the ice away. “A mistake,” she repeated.

  “That’s what he called it too.”

  “Unanimous, then.” She replaced the ice, a little lower now. He closed his eyes aga
inst it and spoke with them squeezed shut.

  “Now the sheriff is back around. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I have trouble with him all the same. I have struggles.” He opened his eyes. “He asked questions about how Novak ended up in the cave, and I almost had to tell him.”

  “What would you have told him?”

  “The truth.”

  “And what is the truth?”

  “The cave sent forces to the surface for him. It was bound to happen. He’s special. The cave knows that. The cave wasn’t going to let him leave here without a visit.” Ridley shook his head with frustration and confessed the thing he did not want to tell her: “I drew a knife on Novak.”

  The ice lowered again. Her eyes on him now were horrified. Julianne’s eyes usually held only sympathy or suggestion. This reaction to him was jarring.

  “You did what?” she said.

  “Nothing happened. But it just…” He struggled for words. Looking her in the eyes, he often did. “It just found its way there.”

  “A knife just found its way into your hand?”

  He fell silent, sucking air in through his mouth, and closed his eyes.

  “Talk me down,” he said. “Please.”

  “It won’t be easy right now. With the adrenaline? It won’t be easy.”

  “I can focus,” Ridley said.

  “Maybe we should stay up here for a while. Here on the surface of the mind.”

  “I don’t need that.”

  “Some people might disagree. Some people might hear the story you told, hear about the knife in your hand, and think that you cannot carry control back to the surface with you.”

  “I have control!” The statement sounded ludicrous when shouted. He took a breath, steadied himself, and repeated it again, lower and softer. “I have control.”

  “It’s about trust, Ridley. You’ve always understood this.”

  “I trust you.”

  “I’m not the concern. Mr. Novak is your concern, isn’t he? This will have been a waste unless you put real trust in him, Ridley. You’ll need to turn over more than a case file.”