Michael Koryta - Last Words

“I don’t remember!” He was watching Jeff’s eyes, seeing the skepticism in them, and panic began to rise at the idea that even his friend didn’t believe him. Jeff reached out and put a reassuring hand on his arm.

“All right, Markus. We’ll get it straightened out.”

“Straightened out? Someone tried to kill me! What do people think happened?”

Jeff pulled a plastic chair up close to the bed. “They think you went in there and got lost. The last report of you before that was from Ridley Barnes. He told the police that you came by and kicked the shit out of him. After tying him up with his own rope. That didn’t happen either?”

“That actually did.”

Jeff rubbed his eyes. “Beautiful.”

“But then I left, and there was a truck behind me. It turned and blocked the road, and then the van came. Three people total, two in the van and one in the truck.” Mark sat up with excitement, ignoring the aches that throbbed through his body. “My rental car. They took it. Didn’t it occur to anybody that it would be hard for me to get to the cave without a car?”

Jeff studied him for a few seconds before he said, “Your car was at the cave. Parked up on top, pulled off the side of the road. The caretaker saw it, and that’s when he went looking for you and found the damage to the gate and your clothes in a pile inside. Then he called the police.”

“What?” Mark eased back in the bed in disbelief, grateful that he could lie down. “I was left inside, Jeff. I don’t know how or by who, but I was left inside.”

“What do you remember about it?”

“Waking up in the dark and the cold. I couldn’t just stay there, so I started to crawl. I was looking for a way out. There was no light. I can’t explain just how dark it was.” He remembered seeing the dead girl, Sarah Martin, and he knew that he’d better not tell Jeff about that.

“I was delirious at some points,” he said. “Obviously, that can happen with hypothermia. But when it comes to how I was stopped on the road, I’m not confused. Not even a little.”

“Okay. Well, we’re going to need to figure out how to prove it, Markus. Because right now, we’ve got big problems. And I don’t mean just the obvious ones. I mean back home.”

“I don’t follow.”

“While the docs worked on you, I worked for you. I met with the sheriff, met with the state police, got your things out of the rental car, and generally did all the pushing I could to find that woman who told you she was the dead girl’s mother.”

Diane Martin. The first time that Mark’s reality and the one everyone else participated in had separated.

“People are lying about her,” Mark said. “I don’t know why. I don’t see how one man, who appears to be a town pariah, can exert so much influence. But he’s doing it. The story the hotel clerk told? Total bullshit, Jeff. That woman was pretending to be Diane Martin! I can’t say that clearly enough. If you’ve ever believed any words that came out of my mouth, it better be those.”

The look on Jeff’s face then was chilling — not because he was disturbed by what he’d heard, but because he apparently didn’t believe it.

“How is he getting them to lie, Jeff? How in the hell is Ridley Barnes getting so many people to lie?”

Jeff wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“What?” Mark said. “Damn it, you do believe me, don’t you?”

Silence for a beat, and then Jeff took a deep breath and faced him again. “I talked to the bartender who served the two of you. His version of events closely matches the hotel employee’s. He said he overheard you talking about Diane Martin, so unless you and this woman lapsed into the third person, it’s hard to use his story to validate yours. I’ve also seen the security tapes from the hotel lobby. There’s no audio, but your interaction with the woman... it certainly matches the clerk’s story better than yours. There’s no anger. You shake hands, talk a little, all pretty relaxed, and then you walk out the door together, happy as could be.”

“That’s not what happened,” Mark said, although how he intended to argue with the video, he wasn’t sure. He just needed to argue because doing anything else was to accept... what? That he was losing his mind?

“Fine. But it’s what appears to have happened, and credible witnesses are backing that version. You’ve got to come up with the best explanation you can. And finding that woman will go a long way toward it. I don’t want to keep you in Indiana, but... you’re going to need to provide some better answers than you have.”

Mark swallowed — a painful task — and said, “Let me guess. Board of directors isn’t pleased.”

“They weren’t pleased before all of this. Now, with that frigging attorney calling everyone on the board individually and threatening to sue—”

“Hang on. What attorney?”

“One Danielle MacAlister, Esquire, of Louisville, Kentucky. Her father owns the cave. Based on my conversation with Miss MacAlister, she owns the universe. Of all the caves to wander into, you picked the wrong one. She came at us aggressively. A lot of talk about criminal trespassing.”

“Trespassing!” Mark barked out a laugh at the absurdity of the claim. “I was—”

“I know. You were left there. But you can’t prove it. Just like you can’t prove that woman was really lying to you. And the board was already uneasy with your recent conduct. I’d just gotten that out of the way when this blew up.”

“Am I going to be fired?”

Jeff hesitated. “Nobody wants to say that you’re fired. Not right now, when press calls are flooding in. The board has decided to revisit the issue next week. Until then, you’re suspended without pay, pending internal investigation.”

Mark took the news in numbly. “What’s your read?” he said. “Do I even have a chance?”

“Before this? Yes. With the current story, though? Without a better explanation for it, at least? I won’t lie — the votes will be against you. There are some people who think you’re going off the rails.”

“I was kidnapped,” Mark said. “Doesn’t that mean anything? Doesn’t that give some credibility to my story, as you call it?”

“You’re going to need a witness.”

“ I’m going to need a witness? I was attacked by three men and put in a van and beaten and drugged and left to die!”

Jeff rubbed his eyes again as if weary of Mark’s repetition. “I understand all of this. And I believe it, because I know you. But here’s the scenario that the rest of the world knows right now: You wandered into town and claimed that you’d talked to a dead woman, then you claimed that someone had impersonated her, and both claims have been blown out of the water. Then you left the sheriff behind and went after Ridley Barnes. You’re damn lucky he’s not pressing charges, frankly.”

Mark didn’t say anything, and Jeff nodded at the silent confirmation.

“Then you fell off the grid,” Jeff continued, and he lifted a hand before Mark could voice objection. “You were forced into the situation, but right now we can’t prove that.” His face was grim. “We’re going to need to. If you want to hold on to your job, Markus, you are going to need to give me something real.”

“It’s all real,” Mark said. “We’ll prove that.”

“Sure we will,” Jeff said.

Mark recalled a hospital in Wyoming where his uncle Ronny lay dying of lung cancer, evidence that forty years of chain-smoking and no visits to doctors wasn’t a recipe for a long life. Mark had told him they’d do some fly-fishing on the Lamar as soon as Ronny got out. Sure we will, his uncle had said with a wan smile, and they’d both known it would never happen. He was dead three weeks later.