Michael Koryta - Last Words

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and spoke again.

“I sent Ridley Barnes in. You already asked me about it, and I walked out of here after you asked and drank whiskey for the first time in probably fifteen years. I sent Ridley in. Pershing tried to warn me that Ridley was not right, that he had mental issues, but I also had the caving people telling me they needed someone who knew the cave, and so I made the call. I believed it was the right thing, then. I’ve thought a lot about it, and I truly don’t think I was trying to overrule Pershing. I hope to God that I wasn’t. I couldn’t live with myself if I believed that. Hell, I don’t know, you can judge me how you want, and one day God will judge me in the way that counts, and I’ll know then, won’t I?”

He wiped at his right eye with his thumb, and Mark looked at the floor out of respect. He kept his eyes down until Blankenship spoke again.

“Now I’m going to tell you one last thing you should know,” he said. “When Sarah went missing, at first all anyone understood was that she was lost.”

“Right.”

“Back then, I didn’t know that Ridley believed that a hole in the ground was a supernatural place. That he told Pershing the cave made him stronger with each trip. Gave him power with each trip. Didn’t know he’d said he had to work alone because the cave wouldn’t talk to anyone else.”

He pulled himself up to the desk and faced Mark again.

“Now you’ve heard what I have to say, and you’re smart enough to understand how we go from here. You might want to talk to somebody else. Otherwise, whatever you disclose here, you’re disclosing it to an officer who was removed from that investigation for due cause. You want somebody else, I can point you to the state police.”

“I think I’d rather talk to you, Sheriff,” Mark said.

“All right, then. Let’s hear it.”

Blankenship didn’t say a word until Mark was through. Then he said, “Ridley confessed. On video, he confessed.”

“Yes. But it wouldn’t be worth a damn to the prosecutor. It would be blown up for coercion or false memory even if Julianne was accepted by the court as an expert, and that’s discounting Ridley’s options entirely. He might sit down with you and laugh in your face and tell you that he was putting on a show for her the whole time, and who could prove him wrong?”

“Do you think he was?”

“Not after this morning, I don’t,” Mark said. “I think she got him to tell the truth.”

Blankenship rose and went to the window and looked out at his little town. Someone was shoveling snow off the sidewalk and the rhythmic scraping was the only sound for a few seconds. Then he said, “She really thinks that Ridley will show her something if he gets the chance to be alone in that cave with her.”

“That’s what I’m told. She’s willing to do it, and she’s willing to wear a wire or a camera. She says he won’t allow anyone else along. It would be a damn difficult surveillance.”

“It would be impossible. Ridley would smell anything out of place down there, and you need light to move an inch. Or at least most people do.”

“Could put recorders in the cave, but you’d need a lot of them, since we have no idea where he’d take her. Not practical. Any device has to be on her.”

“Anything went wrong down there, I’d lose my badge. Hell, even if it went right, I probably would.”

Blankenship’s voice suggested he wasn’t too concerned with that.

“It’s a tough spot for police,” Mark said. “She knows that. Ridley does too.”

“ Damn that man,” Blankenship said suddenly, a near shout. “He killed her. He killed her but I can’t prove it, Novak. I have known this for ten years. I cannot prove it. I have no crime scene, I have no witnesses, and I have no forensics that he can’t explain away by claiming he found her body and dragged it through a cave. I have nothing.”

Mark had a flash memory of his last meeting with the lead investigator in Lauren’s case. I have nothing, Mr. Novak. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. We’ll get there, though. We’ll get there.

“I don’t want to go back in that cave,” Mark said. “I surely don’t want to go down there with Ridley Barnes.”

“Nobody’s asking you to. It’s a foolish idea, and nobody in his right mind would ask you to.”

“No, he wouldn’t. And let’s keep it that way. Because when I come back up from Trapdoor, Sheriff, we’ll both need you to have your legal distance preserved.”

“No. Absolutely not. I’ll handle Ridley.”

“All due respect,” Mark said, “but he’s not going to open the door to you, Sheriff. Not in any way that counts, at least. Don’t forget the essential difference in our approach here: You’ve been working on Ridley Barnes. As far as I’ve been concerned, Ridley Barnes has been working on me. Until today.”

“Until today. Now you care?”

Mark nodded. “I do. And you’re starting to trust me a little. The balance is shifting on Ridley. What scares me, though? What scares me is that he may already know that.”

It was time to see Ridley again face-to-face.

Mark had returned to Garrison determined not to make the same mistake he’d made on his first visit, when he’d had the blissful sense of going through the motions. He’d rushed into contact with Ridley then. He didn’t intend to repeat the mistake.

The time had come, though.

He was driving along the icy country roads when Jeff called.

“Please tell me you’re on a plane,” Jeff said without preamble.

“Not yet.”

“Mark...”

When Jeff London used the short version of Markus, it was the equivalent of anyone else using the full version and the middle name.

“I’ve got nothing for them yet,” Mark said. “But I will. You tell them that, and—”

“ I can’t just tell them things! This is it. This is the end of the road. You’ve got to sit at the table this time. No pick-and-roll left to be run. You’ve got to understand that.”

“If I leave here, Ridley Barnes is not going to answer for anything, and—”

“Ridley Barnes is not your case!”

Mark turned onto the winding road to Ridley’s, grateful for the security of the all-wheel drive beneath him. “I was nearly one of his victims. If it’s not my case, whose is it?”

“That’s not the point, and you know it. There are victims and there are vigilantes. I thought we’d reached an understanding as to which side of that fence you were staying on.”

Mark watched the lonesome fields pass by and didn’t speak. They’d reached an understanding on this, yes. An understanding that was based on a lie: I will leave Lauren’s case to the authorities and I will not seek the death penalty.

It had been an easy lie to tell then, when it saved him the only thing he had left that he cared about — his job. Somewhere along the line, somewhere during his time in this backwater Indiana town, he’d begun to tire of the lie. No matter what it gained him. No matter what it cost.

“I think I’m drifting a little too Old Testament for our line of work,” Mark said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Eye for an eye.”

“Don’t start again, Markus. Damn it, do not start that again. Leave her case to the people who have the right distance.”

“We’ll talk about it. We’ll also talk about this case. We never would have taken it. Sarah Martin’s death wouldn’t have qualified, because there was no capital-punishment element. No conviction, even.”