Michael Koryta - Last Words

“Speaking of Ridley, I understand that he’s the one who found me in the cave.”

“He was the first one to you. The rescue team had located your general area, but Ridley was the one who determined how to actually reach you.”

“Because he knew where I was. Have you considered that?”

“I have.”

“And yet you show no interest in pursuing how I ended up in that cave. You tell me that I need evidence, but you don’t have evidence to prove me wrong. Don’t you want that?”

“After your opening act in town, no, I don’t. You told a savage and sick lie, Novak.”

“I would hope,” Mark said, “based on your personal relationship with Diane Martin, you would have some interest in finding out who’s pretending to be her.”

Blankenship moved his large, heavy-knuckled hands around his desk as if looking for something to fill them with before they found their real target: Mark’s throat.

“Let the dead have their peace,” he said softly. “What is wrong with you?”

“You and I might understand each other a little better if you looked into my background, Sheriff.”

“I’ve done so. I know what happened to your wife. I’m sorry. If that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back of your sanity, I am truly sorry. But the verdict is in: You lied. Why, I don’t know. But I do know that you lied. And as for the next story? The three men who you say came for you? Well, Ridley doesn’t have three friends in this world.”

“I had the same notion, and I was proven wrong. Painfully. So I’d be careful in underestimating the reach of Ridley Barnes. I’d also like to know whose call it was to bring him into the cave looking for me.”

“It was mine. He knows the place better than anyone alive. The only person who could solve my problem was him, whether I liked asking for his help or not.”

“He’s Captain Quint himself, eh?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Really? That might be the saddest thing I’ve heard yet. Hoosiers, sure, but you don’t even get the Jaws reference? My goodness, Sheriff. Disappointing. Mind if I ask you another question about Ridley’s, um, assistance in my situation?”

“Fire away.”

“You called for him when you wanted Sarah Martin found, and that didn’t go well. But when I went missing, you said again that you needed him, because he’s the best.”

Blankenship looked at him for a long time, the stare dim, as if he didn’t want to allow himself to see Mark in focus. Or maybe as if he were trying to see someone else.

“He knew the cave best,” he said finally, and his voice was hoarse. “Everyone said that, even Pershing admitted it; Pershing had hired him to explore the place! Pershing said he didn’t trust Ridley, that they’d had disputes over the cave, but I didn’t care about the cave, I cared about her. ” He thumped a hand on the desk. “Every caver I talked to, and I didn’t give a damn what Pershing had to say, every expert I talked to told me that Ridley Barnes had to be involved because he was the only one who really knew the place, and I needed someone who could reach Sarah.”

He choked on the last words and took a moment to collect himself.

“So why did I let him go after you?” Blankenship said. “Honestly, I wanted to see him in there. I wanted to watch him, watch where he went. I wanted him to go to the right place.”

“You mean the place where she was found.”

“Yes. No such luck. But it saved your dumb ass, so you can thank me and then go on your way.”

Mark nodded. “Here’s what I’d do if I were you,” he said.

“This ought to be good.”

“You might want to nudge around my story about those three men with shotguns, Sheriff. If they came for me the way I said, then Ridley called them. And if I were you, sitting there with a cold case still waiting to be closed? Well, I’d want to at least have a look at who Ridley might have called. I think you might find that real interesting. I think you might want to have a different kind of talk with me then. More cooperative.”

“You talk like you already know what I’ll find.”

“Give it a look, Sheriff,” Mark said, getting to his feet and trying to hide the wince of pain that the motion caused. “Then give me a call. Maybe we’ll talk some more. Maybe you’ll give me a little more credibility than you think.”

“I don’t need to study your credibility. You made up a strange, sad little story, and two witnesses and a video disproved it. You’ve done absolutely nothing to help on the Sarah Martin case. From my perspective, you’re not much different than Ridley Barnes.”

“All due respect?” Mark said. “I need you to understand that I don’t care about Sarah Martin’s case, Sheriff. Never did and still don’t. I wanted to come and go and stay gone. Now all I want is to know who fucked with me and why. When I know that, I’m gone. But people aren’t helping me do that. You’ve got an aptly named little town, don’t you? Everyone closes ranks fast when a stranger arrives with questions. Then they put guards at the walls.”

“If you don’t want to be here, go on home.”

Mark ran a hand over his face, feeling the stubble from several days without shaving. He’d stayed clean-shaven in Florida, but not before that, when he was living in places where the cold could nip at your skin. His beard was growing in fast now.

“The hell of the thing, Sheriff? I just spent a lot of dollars on winter clothes. I’m in no rush.”

The courthouse had gone up in 1903 according to the plaque on the front door, and based on the smell of the interior, it had been cleaned maybe once since then. Every footstep echoed on the wide, scarred floorboards, which had a little give, as if the joists were considering calling it a day. The courtrooms were on the ground floor, and the second floor held the county offices, with old frosted-glass doors labeled in gilded trim Auditor, Clerk, Assessor. Mark went to the clerk’s office and asked to see the criminal records of Evan Borders and Jeremy Leonard.

“There’s another Leonard,” he said. “I think his name is—”

“Brett.” The gray-haired woman with bifocals who stood behind the counter said it without hesitation. “Sure. I hope you got some time on your hands, because there’s plenty of paperwork.”

Apparently Evan Borders and his snowplowing cousins were no strangers to the county court system. The gray-haired woman retrieved three stacks of folders, asked Mark to have a seat at a long wooden table beneath an arched window through which downtown Garrison looked almost charming instead of imposing, and told him to let her know if he had questions.

“They make for good reading, I’m sure,” she said, handing him the files.

It wasn’t quite as good reading as Mark had hoped. Evan’s first encounter with law enforcement — barring any juvenile issues, which wouldn’t be accessible in the public record — had come when he was twenty and arrested for marijuana possession and disorderly conduct. From then on, he’d visited more or less annually, but the charges never ranged into felony territory. He’d been arrested for assault once after a bar fight, but those charges had been dropped, and the other offenses were run-of-the-mill alcohol and disorderly conduct issues. Trafficking in stolen goods once, but that had also been dropped. He was like countless other small-town ne’er-do-wells, in and out of the local jail often but never staying long. If there was one thing that stood out, it wasn’t his penchant for fighting but the consistent refusal of his victims to press charges. It seemed that those who ran afoul of Evan’s temper were interested in seeking distance rather than justice.