Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  “So if this woman yesterday had identified herself at any point as Sarah’s mother, that would have stood out to you?”

  “Are you kidding? Sarah’s mother is dead! Yes, that would have stood out to me.”

  “She called Sarah her baby,” Mark said. “On the phone. She said, ‘What are you doing asking about my baby?’”

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Bullshit! You must have been standing right there! You handed her the phone! Why in the hell are you lying about this?”

  “Novak—” Blankenship barked, but this time Mark cut him off.

  “No, that deserves an answer! You tell me that Ridley is some sort of town pariah, but I’ve been here for twenty-four hours and it seems that plenty of people are willing to tell elaborate lies on his behalf. Aren’t you interested in why? Or do you already know?”

  “Novak, get out. Now.” Blankenship’s grip tightened and he guided Mark to the front door and then pushed him through it, out into the blowing snow. “Wait here. If you so much as open this door, you’ll spend the night in jail.”

  He went back inside and Mark stood in the parking lot and watched through the glass as the sheriff continued talking to the girl, who cast frequent, nervous glances at Mark. He stared at them, bristling with anger and fear and trying to fathom why she was lying. Had she been paid, threatened, what? Regardless, she’d been prepped. She had been as ready for this performance as the woman who’d impersonated Diane had been for hers. How in the hell had they put it together so fast? He’d chosen the hotel at random. Nobody had known where he was.

  There were answers, but the sheriff wasn’t going to get them. Not from a girl who’d been either bribed or threatened. The answers would come from the people who’d started the game.

  Mark left the hotel entrance and walked to his car. He was behind the wheel of the Ford and driving through the parking lot when the sheriff burst out of the hotel doors, shouting for him to stop. Mark ignored him and drove on, heading for Ridley Barnes and truth through any means necessary.

  10

  Ridley’s father had been a carpenter when he wasn’t being a drunk, and in those rare hours, he was both gifted and willing to teach. He had no interest in power tools; a true craftsman never used them and that, he claimed, was what separated a master from a journeyman when it came to woodworking. As far as Ridley and his mother and sister could tell, though, all it separated was men who didn’t have jobs from men who did.

  But he’d been skilled, there was no denying that, and he’d enjoyed passing the lessons along. Between his first beer and his sixth, he was a marvelous teacher. When he edged toward the seventh, though, the steady hands vanished, and then the patience, and then the temper control. Some kids learned to count on their fingers; Ridley learned to count by his father’s empty beer bottles. Ten down, go underground, he’d rhymed to his sister, but he’d taken that mantra literally. There was an old strip pit on the family land in Stinesville—you couldn’t really call it a cave, because it went nowhere; it was just a hole in the ground, but it went deep and it went dark and it was tight. If you were committed, you could squirm far enough down that you’d never be found by a searching light or, worse, a reaching hand.

  His father had been in a pine box for years—actually, there couldn’t be much of the box left by now—and what memories Ridley had of him were far from fond, with one exception: when he worked on wood with hand tools. They were the old tools, too, the ones Ridley had been taught with. And, more than occasionally, the ones he’d been hit with.

  One thing his father could do better than any other carpenter Ridley ever saw was join boards so that they appeared to be one piece. He could work them in such a fashion that he seemed to convince the boards themselves that they belonged together. Even a trained eye had trouble finding the seams in Joel Barnes’s work.

  But Ridley didn’t think his father had ever hidden a seam better than Ridley himself had with the knee wall in his attic. Under the dim light of the lone forty-watt bulb that lit the room, the wall looked flawless—one straight stretch, surely nothing but insulation and ductwork behind it. The old man would have been impressed. Between beers one and six, he might even have been proud.

  As the morning wind rose to a steady moan, Ridley pressed on one corner of the attic knee wall and watched as it moved inward and another panel opened outward like a revolving door, all of it done without a sound. There wasn’t a screw or a nail in the whole thing. It was all built with wood, the door turning on a dowel. The area behind it wasn’t large—eight feet long by four feet deep and only four feet high. While that low ceiling would have driven many people mad, Ridley was used to tight spaces. Once he was inside and the wall was sealed behind him again, he had to use a headlamp or lantern.

  There in the hidden room, surrounded by some items it was legal to have and others that would get him arrested, Ridley swung around so he was facing the wall that he’d sealed shut behind him. It was lined with maps—some topographic versions produced by the U.S. Geological Survey and others hand-drawn, produced by Ridley. The topos showed the surface world. Ridley’s showed what went on down below.

  Today, he was interested in the topographic maps, all of which were covered with pushpins and notations in red, blue, or black ink. Each red circle had an X in the center, meaning Ridley had explored the cave, or potential cave, and found that it didn’t suit his memory or his needs. Each black circle had a check, which meant that he’d been in the cave and thought it held possibilities. Each blue circle had a question mark, meaning that he wasn’t certain there was a cave there but the topography suggested it was likely.

  Southern Indiana was a karst landscape, which meant that part of the state existed above a world honeycombed with caves, caverns, and crevices. The land was home to springs where water bubbled up from below, sinkholes where the surface was pulled underground, a river that vanished for miles at a time—countless collisions between worlds above and worlds below.

  Because of this, southern Indiana, like Kentucky, was heaven for cavers. Unless you were looking for one particular place in a cave and you weren’t certain that it even existed. Then it felt a lot less like heaven and a lot more like hell.

  Trapdoor itself had been viewed as nothing but a sinkhole, a pocket of stone that caught excess runoff when Maiden Creek spilled its banks. Then came a week of relentless rain, and the ground opened up and revealed the entrance to an extensive cave system, but exploration efforts had stopped once the cave was closed, leaving Ridley to peck away from the outside and forcing him to remind himself, time and again, that the locked gate put in place by the MacAlister family concealed only an entrance, not the entrance.

  There were others.

  There had to be.

  The issue was patience. That thing his father had never been able to hold, Ridley must keep firmly in hand. He put his finger on one of the maps and traced from one pushpin to the next, crossing over two blue circles with question marks. It was a swale maybe a quarter of a mile long, a small depression, and it seemed to offer little hope. But he’d searched so many better options for so long. He had to keep at it.

  But not today. Today he would cut boards in his tiny sawmill operation, the only thing that still brought him any money. People had stopped hiring Ridley for carpentry ten years ago. There were rules in Garrison, and one of them was that you didn’t let Ridley Barnes in your house. Particularly if you had daughters.

  Still, the men who were hired remembered the way that Ridley could work wood. Cabinets built by his hands were in plenty of homes around the area, though the owners didn’t know it. The contractors waited warily outside while he loaded their trucks, and they passed him cash quickly, and they left in a hurry.

  Probably some of them had daughters.

  Before he left the hidden room, he turned and took Sarah Martin’s necklace down from the peg on which it hung. A simple silver chain with a blue stone—it was a sapphire, her mother’s birthstone—in a setti
ng rimmed with diamond chips. The clasp was still solid, but the chain was broken. It had been snapped, torn off her neck. The way things tore when reaching hands grabbed at them in tight, dark places. Trapped places.

  He handled it delicately, running his thumb over the sapphire, remembering the time the police had come in with a list of things missing from Sarah’s body, things remembered by her mother and her friends and her boyfriend, and searched his house. Both her mother and Evan Borders recalled the necklace. Her mother said she never took it off and Evan confirmed she was wearing it the last time he’d seen her.

  The police had been thorough with their search, but they didn’t quite understand Ridley. If they had, they would have looked at the place with different eyes. Maybe they would search again. Because they were coming back, make no mistake. Novak would see to that.

  Everything old was about to be new again.

  As if in confirmation, a knock thundered at his door. It wasn’t the knock of a casual visitor; it was a pounding of anger and authority. Ridley let out a breath of relief at the sound, understanding that things were, finally, back in motion.

  11

  Mark had given up knocking—either Ridley wasn’t home or he was pretending not to be—and was considering the pros and cons of kicking the door open when he finally heard footsteps inside.

  “Now, Markus,” Mark whispered to himself, “you’ve got to think about that temper. Got to anticipate it.” He was speaking in an affected Southern drawl, handling each word as if he were testing the flavor. “A question of willpower, that’s what you’ve got to figure out. That’s what defines you, Markus. Willpower.”

  Not bad at all. He could do a pretty decent impression of Jeff London when he wanted to.

  “Greetings,” Ridley Barnes called as he opened the door, and Mark kept the London impression in his voice when he responded.

  “How y’all doing, Mr. Barnes?”

  Sweet as syrup. Ridley cocked his head, aware that it was an act and not aware of the reason for it. On a porch chair beside the door was a coiled rope, dusted with frost; it looked like it had been left out to dry in the cold air and had frozen. Mark slipped it off the chair and ran it through his hands. Stiff, but not frozen. A fine rope, expensive. It was a static line, designed not to stretch. Ridley probably used it for rappelling. You wouldn’t want much stretch in a cave. Mark kept it in his hands as he walked away from the door and out into the yard. Ridley followed.

  “What is this, seven-sixteenths?” Mark said.

  “Good guess. You’ve done some climbing, I take it?”

  “Not much. Spent some time with ropes, though. Trick stuff.” He slid the rope out of the coil with hands that were long out of practice but still far from forgetting, then looped and twisted a quick noose. “Poor man’s lariat,” he said. “With trick ropes, you use a metal piece called a honda. Brass, usually. But if all you have is the rope, you make do.”

  Mark held the rope in his left hand, and with his right hand he flipped over the noose he’d created and gave it a clockwise spin, keeping it parallel to the ground. The rope wasn’t right for the task, and the absence of the honda was noticeable, but he could spin it well enough for the noose to stay open. He dropped his left hand from the rope and kept his right hand spinning it, mostly wrist action, almost like twirling a bicycle wheel. The noose spun in a circle about one foot above the ground. Mark walked with it, testing the feel.

  “Impressive,” Ridley said.

  “Not really. See that wobble? No good. It’s supposed to be flat.” Mark still hadn’t looked up at him. His eyes remained on the spinning rope.

  “Not the sort of trick I’d expect a Florida boy to know,” Ridley said.

  “Now, see, there’s your problem. You know that I came up from Florida, that I’ve got a suntan and don’t have a good winter coat, so you assume I’m a Florida boy. But that’s not the truth.”

  “So where are you from?”

  “Bozeman, Cooke City, Emigrant, Laurel, and Livingston, Montana. Cody, Casper, Bridger, and Sheridan, Wyoming. Ashton, Idaho.”

  “Rodeo family or something?”

  “Or something.” Mark lifted his gaze from the rope up to Ridley. “My uncle Larry, he was the trick-roper. Damn good at it. Let’s see if I still have any of his touch.”

  He kept the rope spinning, the noose flatter now, but his eyes were on Ridley, assessing the distance. He twirled the rope in front of him, bringing it right to left across his body, and then brought it overhead, spinning it faster and a little wider.

  Ridley smiled. “Nice. You look like a real cowboy. Question is, can you do that and ride a horse at the same time?”

  “Oh, sure,” Mark said, and then he stepped straight toward Ridley and threw the rope, making sure to hold his follow-through, because it had been a long time since he’d done this. Ridley was only ten feet away, though, and he was standing still. Mark had been able to rope a post at that distance when he was eight years old. The toss wasn’t as pretty as it should have been, but it was effective—the noose settled over Ridley’s head and around his shoulders, and Mark gave a quick, snapping tug and cinched it. His timing was a touch off—he’d wanted to catch Ridley around the chest but got him at the waist instead—but it still served the purpose, binding Ridley’s arms against his body. Ridley stumbled forward, caught himself, and then gave another smile, this one less certain.

  “Not bad at all. Uncle Larry would be proud.”

  “Hell, no, he wouldn’t. He’d have spit tobacco juice at my feet, shaken his head, and told me to do it again. He was a stickler for form.” Mark was pulling the rope forward hand over hand, and Ridley walked toward him rather than resist it, still smiling. “Nobody tips a trick-roper if it doesn’t look good.” Mark stopped drawing the rope in when Ridley was two feet from him, studying the smaller man and his false smile.

  “You’re not fond of being caught in a noose, are you?”

  “I thought that was a universal trait.”

  Mark nodded. “Well, good old Uncle Larry, he was a character, I’ll tell you. And my uncle Ronny? He had some tricks too.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is. His were a little different, though. Let me show you one of Uncle Ronny’s tricks.”

  Before Ridley could say a word, Mark jerked hard on the rope and brought him stumbling forward, then dipped down and snapped his forehead off the bridge of Ridley’s nose.

  “Wh-what the fuck…” Ridley stammered, trying to reel away, the blood already spilling, but then he got caught in the rope and went down. Mark moved in above him, pulled up on the rope enough to get Ridley off the ground, then grabbed him by his belt, spun him, and drove him back until he slammed into the hood of the Ford. Ridley’s ribs connected with the metal, and his breath went out with a grunt. His hands were fumbling for something, had been the whole time, but Mark didn’t care much about his hands because his arms were pinned to his sides, useless. When he saw that Ridley had managed to get a knife out of his pocket and open the blade, he was almost impressed. Now that mistake with the rope, getting him at the waist instead of the torso, was actually working in Mark’s favor. Ridley couldn’t get the knife high enough to do anything with it from a distance, but if Mark hadn’t been paying attention, Ridley might have been able to stick him.

  “Now, Ridley,” he said. “A knife at a rope fight? Do you think that is fair?” He shook his head like a displeased teacher and then banged Ridley’s wrist on the fender until the knife fell to the ground. Ridley stopped resisting and rested on the hood, gasping. The blood bubbled in his nose as he tried to get his breath back.

  Mark leaned close.

  “You understand that I’m going to require her name,” he said. “Not the one she gave me either, no more bullshit and lies. I’m going to need to find the real woman, Mr. Barnes. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Ridley began with “I don’t know—” but whatever he was trying to say ended in a sharp gasp of pain as Mark hit him
twice under the sternum with a flashing left hand.

  “You can’t afford to go that way, Ridley. You really can’t.”

  Ridley didn’t speak this time. Just leaned back on the car, submissive, breathing hard and bleeding hard. Mark gave him a minute. After those gut punches, it would take Ridley a while to get any words out. Mark loosened the noose and let the rope drop to Ridley’s feet, freeing him.

  “How’d you get the hotel clerk to lie?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s a hell of a good trick,” Mark said. “I’ll give you credit there. First the bit with the woman pretending to be Sarah’s mother? That was inspired, sure. But how you got the girl at the hotel in the mix, I don’t know.”

  Ridley just stared at him. He had his sleeve pressed against his nose to soak up the blood. His gray hair fanned out in all directions. Mark cupped his hands and blew into them to warm them and said, “I’m going to need her name, Ridley.”

  “I don’t kn—”

  “Shut up. Do not speak to me unless you’re going to speak the truth. Understand?”

  Ridley nodded, which shook some drops of blood loose.

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Mark said. “She had to come from you. Because here’s the scenario: I got into town, and I spoke to two people. You and the sheriff. That’s it. The sheriff wasn’t going to roll out somebody pretending to be the victim’s mother, I just don’t see that being an option. Sheriff also never saw my car yesterday. He didn’t know what I was driving, wouldn’t have been able to find me that fast even if he’d wanted to. Nobody knew I was coming to this town, Ridley. So she came from one of two sources, you or the sheriff, and I don’t think it was the sheriff. You going to try and convince me that it was?”

  Ridley Barnes didn’t say a word, but he reached down to pick his knife up out of the snow. Mark let him do it, watching and feeling the old pulse, the sight of the knife exciting him rather than scaring him, a near-pleasant sensation of Oh, so that’s the way this is going to go.