Michael Koryta - Last Words

“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.”