Michael Koryta - Last Words

He maneuvered her toward the door in an awkward waltz and she pushed it shut. The dog barked twice when the barrier was closed.

“Out of respect for your talents,” Ridley said, “I am going to need to tape your mouth shut.”

He removed a thin roll of duct tape from his jacket pocket, and though it required taking his hand from her mouth, she didn’t try to speak. He worked fast but he made certain to lift her hair high with his right hand so that it was not caught in the mess. He did not want her to be uncomfortable.

A phone began to ring in the house, but neither of them looked in the direction of the sound. He stepped back and removed his hooded jacket and held it out to her. She lifted her arms and allowed him to slip the jacket on her, as if it were a gallant gesture.

“Put the hood up so it covers your face, and we will walk to my truck. Please be mindful of your dog’s life when we step outside.”

He opened the door and nodded that she should go first. The dog was crouched with every muscle bunched, hackles lining her spine. She whined when she saw Julianne, a pleading sound, desperate for instruction. Or permission.

Julianne lowered herself to her knees and took the dog’s face in her hands and then stroked along the hackles, trying to soothe her. Some of the tension loosened, but only some. The dog’s eyes were on Ridley.

“Let’s go,” Ridley said.

Julianne pressed her tape-covered face to the dog’s, and the dog lapped at her eyelids. Julianne had begun to cry.

“Let’s go,” he repeated, but he was careful not to pull her up because he didn’t think the dog would allow that. He waited until Julianne rose and walked down the steps and then he followed. The dog walked close to her side all the way to the truck, and Ridley held the knife in a hand that was as tensed as the dog’s muscles. He opened the passenger door of the truck and Julianne climbed inside. Ridley had to walk back around the front of the truck to get in, and for a few steps the dog was alone with him, but she was still watching Julianne. Ridley got in the truck and closed the door and then closed the knife.

“Very noble choice,” he said. “The dog would have been willing to die for you, and you knew that and could have demanded it. But instead you chose to take your chances even if it means you die for the dog. That is a rare choice.”

She was no longer crying, and she didn’t look at him. He sighed, remembering all of the comfort he had taken in her once, and then he started the truck and turned on the lights and pulled away. The dog stood in the middle of the road behind them. When it became evident that they were leaving, the dog began to howl. Ridley winced at the mournful sound. He felt as if the dog knew that she had made a choice and that she now regretted the one she had made.

He hoped that the dog’s memory was not long.

Mark was told to wait in the sheriff’s office, and when Blankenship finally entered he was carrying two cups of coffee. He handed one to Mark without a word. The dynamic between them had shifted dramatically but Mark couldn’t say why. The discoveries in the trailer meant plenty to Mark, but he had expected an uphill battle to convince Blankenship of that.

“When we have anything from that scene, I’ll let you know,” Blankenship said. He drank his coffee for a few seconds. The door was closed and it was quiet in his office.

“Before you talk,” he said, “I probably should. I was pulled from Sarah’s case once, and if we went by the book, you shouldn’t be talking to me.”

“My time in Garrison hasn’t been very by-the-book so far.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Blankenship took his hat off and tossed it onto an empty chair beside the desk. His gray hair was thin. “Here’s what you should know, at least in my judgment, before you talk to me about anything related to Sarah Martin. That girl haunts my dreams, Novak. She and her mother both.”

He’d been staring at his hat, but now he moved his eyes back to Mark.

“I knew Diane and Sarah and Richard — that was Sarah’s father — through church. Richard died in a car wreck when I was still working road duty. One of the worst I’ve ever seen. I drew the job of notifying the family.” His voice thickened and he cleared his throat. “I stayed in touch a little. But with distance, you know. There’s a job involved, and there’s a respect involved. Both of them mattered to me. Both still do.”

He seemed to be waiting on a challenge over that. Mark didn’t offer one.

“You mentioned Julianne Grossman,” Blankenship said. “I’ve never laid eyes on her. I know that Diane went to see her for help with insomnia after Richard was killed. I didn’t really like that, to tell you the truth. Whole thing just seemed strange to me. Maybe I’m not much of a modern thinker, I don’t know. But back then I didn’t have as close of a relationship with Diane, and so I didn’t say anything. Later... later I told her not to go back. I told her to go to a real doctor and get herself some pills. Same kind that eventually killed her.”

He made himself look Mark in the eye when he said that. All Mark could do was nod. Blankenship returned the gesture. “So you understand that part. Okay. Time went on; I started to see Diane a little more. I was always real conscious of Sarah because I’d known her daddy and I knew what she’d gone through and I didn’t want...” He hesitated. “I didn’t want to infringe on that, you understand? I felt like her father, dead or alive, still had some jurisdiction.”

He ran his big hand over his eyes. A quick pass.

“That cave opened up for business sort of in the middle of all this. People thought it was a big deal, there was some excitement around here about it. I’ve never liked tight places. But Sarah? She was fifteen at the time, and she was real interested. When they opened up the tours, we all went down and took one together. I wish you’d seen her that day.” He shook his head at the memory. “The way a place can affect two people so differently, it’s really something. I couldn’t get out of that cave fast enough. You’d have thought she wanted to move in.

“The next summer, she wanted a job but didn’t want to work at a restaurant or behind a cash register. I’d just heard this when I went out to talk to Pershing MacAlister about some issues at that cave. He had complaints about the locals, people vandalizing the cave, sneaking into it; he wanted me to cooperate with the newspaper and say we were watching the place. Spread the word. What I did then, well, I good-old-boy’d it, plain and simple. Asked whether there might be a summer job available. Man needed my help, and I asked him for a favor. You might not believe it, but I didn’t often do those things.”

Mark believed it.

“So Sarah got the job, and it was all my doing, ain’t that something to consider? She never applied for it, never knew it existed. Never would have been down there again, probably. People would say it was such a small thing, getting a teenager a job, but I knew what I was doing. Using my position to get Sarah what she wanted, because Diane was what I wanted. I wasn’t doing police work. Maybe you pay for choices like that. I just never could have imagined the ways.”

His phone rang and he silenced it with one touch and without a glance. He drank some coffee and cleared his throat again. He had stopped looking at Mark.

“Things went fast between Diane and Pershing. That’s all that need be said about that. It isn’t my business, what happened between them. I told Diane that then, and I’m telling you now. The engagement happened, and I... I had to get used to another change in jurisdiction then. Diane and Sarah, they weren’t...” He had to work to get the next words out: “They weren’t in mine anymore. And that... that was a hard summer for me. Then came September, and the call came in, and that was the worst day of my life. Because I knew. Even while I was arranging the searches and telling Diane not to worry, I knew we weren’t going to be finding Sarah alive. Don’t ask me how. Sometimes you know.”