“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.
Jeremy was thirty-two, the oldest of them, and Brett was twenty-seven, and the cousins were all cut from the same cloth, with one notable exception: Evan’s violence involved only men. In the probable-cause affidavits, there were no females mentioned, let alone victimized. The Leonard brothers couldn’t claim the same. Jeremy had been charged with statutory rape, which was pleaded down to a misdemeanor, but three years after that, he’d been charged with sexual assault after he’d bound a girlfriend’s hands with duct tape in a “game” and then slapped her around and locked her out of the house, naked and in the rain.
Mark read that affidavit and felt his throat tighten and his breathing slow. The Leonards were the right kind of boys, that was for sure. If they’d been in a bar in Florida, he would have locked eyes with them, and he’d have known. He had teeth scars on his knuckles from men just like them.
Jeremy had gotten two years in prison for that one and was back out in a year with good-time credits. He and his brother had run into trouble together after that, had been arrested for robbing a pawnshop, which had led to Evan’s charge of trafficking in stolen goods. Jeremy had gotten another six months; Brett got probation.
The most recent charge against either of the Leonards was an open case with a trial date set for April. Brett was out of jail after his father had posted a $10,000 surety bond in a date-rape case. An underage girl who’d been drinking at a bar called the Lowland Lounge had gone to the hospital the morning after a night of drinks and dancing with Brett Leonard. She’d woken in her own home, naked and sore, with vaginal bleeding and one black eye. She didn’t remember how it had happened, but unlike so many other girls who woke in the same circumstances, she didn’t let shame or fear keep her from going to the hospital. A blood test had shown the presence of a narcotic called ketamine.
The gray-haired clerk interrupted Mark, saying, “You need some help?”
Mark blinked back into the present and shook his head. “No, thank you. I think I’ve got the gist.”
She frowned. “The gist is, those boys are bad news.”
“Seems that way.” Mark lowered his head again and flipped through the most recent case file until he came to an address of record for Brett Leonard, on Tower Ridge Road. Jeremy’s was the same, albeit from a year earlier. It seemed they didn’t drift far from each other. He wrote the address down, then went back and studied their booking photos. Jeremy was a bigger kid, six two and two hundred and fifteen pounds. Brett, the ketamine artist, was five inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter.
Mark’s fingers drifted to the bruise on his forehead that the muzzle of a shotgun had left a few days earlier. A bigger, stronger man had slammed the muzzle into him, but he remembered being more concerned with the bantam-size man in the black mask, the one whose hands had seemed nervous near the trigger. He also thought of the witnesses he’d accused of lying, of his version of events that seemed so real but had no support.
Ketamine.
27
Rarely did the police arrive on your doorstep bearing good news, but Ridley found such good fortune when he answered a thundering knock. He was hoping for the visitor he didn’t dare expect—Mark Novak—but when he saw that it was the sheriff, he was far from disappointed. Next to Novak, Blankenship was the best option.
“Lose somebody in Trapdoor again?” Ridley said, opening the door.
“Who’d you call after Novak left your property?”
Ridley cocked his head as if the question presented a difficulty.
“Who did I call? My goodness, how in the world am I supposed to remember that? It’s been days, Sheriff.”
“It’s easy enough for me to learn,” Blankenship said. His long face was pale.
“Then why don’t you go learn it instead of asking me?”
“He came up here at your request,” Blankenship said, “but he’s back for some other reason. What went wrong, Ridley?”
Ridley’s already slow breathing nearly stopped. Novak was back? This was spectacular news. Ridley had been pleased with what he’d seen of the man, but the surface world exerted a unique set of pressures, and most people crumbled under them. The surface world should have sent Novak running from this place, not brought him back to it.
“I didn’t call Novak after he left,” Ridley said. “As I remember it, you came for me. Needing help.”
“Who did you call, Ridley?”
Ridley sighed. “I’d love to help you. I really would. Best as I can remember, I called my dentist, and I called the bakery to order a pie. Maybe that’s why I need the
dentist, right? Have to cut out the sweets.”
The sheriff didn’t match Ridley’s smile. The sheriff rarely did. Ridley could remember the way Blankenship had looked as chief deputy, his shoulders not yet stooped, his hair not yet gray. His eyes not yet haunted. He remembered in particular the way he looked when Diane Martin passed by. Blankenship always stood straighter then, sucked in what little gut he had, pulled his shoulders back. He’d been a comical presence, large and awkward and obvious.
“I’m doing some research into your boy,” Blankenship said. “I can’t quite figure how you found him or what he wants with you, but I will. That letter was a mistake. I’m not sure that you wrote it, of course—he probably handled the words for you—but you wanted him to wave it under my nose. That was a mistake.”
“You ever read about the rapture before that note?” Ridley asked.
“I’ve read the Good Book plenty of times.”
“Wrong book,” Ridley said. “Wrong rapture. I’m talking about what happens to the mind when it’s left alone in the dark. I’m guessing you probably never considered that. Or tested it.”
“Did Novak enter that cave of his own free will, Ridley?”
“I can’t speak to the will of another man. I wouldn’t trust anyone who claimed to be able to either.”
“Who did you call, Ridley?”
“Why my phone activities are of interest to you, I have no idea. On that day, not only was I the victim of a crime, but I came to your aid. If not for me, Sheriff, you might have lost another one in Trapdoor. That would have hurt you, I think. Am I wrong?”
Blankenship was staring at the ropes in front of the dark and cold woodstove. He looked like he was about to say something, but Ridley beat him to the punch.
“Tell me,” he said, “did you ever discuss that situation with Pershing? I know there were some hostilities between you, or jealousies, however you prefer to phrase it, but I hope such petty things wouldn’t have kept you from an honest exchange.”
Blankenship’s pallor drained to match the old ashes in the stove. “You know why I’m still the sheriff?” he said.
“A poorly educated electorate, I’ve always assumed.”
“You,” Blankenship said. “You’re it, Ridley. You’ll step the wrong way someday, I believe in that because I believe in God, and when you do? I’ll be here.”
“Have a fine afternoon, Sheriff. Next time you need my help, and you always seem to, you’ll know where to find me.”
Ridley closed the door and stood on the other side of it, his palm pressed to the wood—his hand was trembling faintly, and he hated that—until Blankenship had returned to his car and driven away. When he was out of sight, Ridley went for his own keys and hurried to his truck. He wasn’t supposed to visit her unannounced, but he needed her now, and she understood emergencies.
Novak had returned, and Ridley needed to get his mind right before he saw him. He’d long ago given up the hope that he could achieve that alone, unguided in the dark.
28
Mark hesitated before deciding on the next person to call because all his hopes for a possible explanation of things rested on the conversation. Eventually he chose a medical examiner in Gainesville who had testified for Innocence Incorporated on a few cases, Arthur Stewart, and told him he had a simple question—he wanted to know about ketamine.
“Ever-evolving applications for the drug. Developed as a human anesthetic years ago,” Dr. Stewart said. “Then it became a popular animal tranquilizer. Now some psychiatrists are using it to treat depression. Real-world guys are using it for date rape.”
“Right. What are the effects?”
“There are plenty of them. Ketamine is a highly dissociative medication. Memory goes, and suggestibility of the victim is high, but physical performance isn’t compromised as dramatically as with other tranquilizers. There are reasons it’s a popular date-rape drug.”
Memory goes. Mark let out a long breath. He might have something more than a desperate plea for Jeff London.
“When you say suggestibility of the victim is high, do you mean that someone who has been given it could be convinced to believe a version of events that wasn’t true?”
“Possibly, although you’d have to see on a case-by-case basis; it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. The imagination runs wild too. Hallucinations are common, which makes victim accounts extremely unreliable and makes the investigator’s job harder.”
“Hallucinations,” Mark echoed, thinking of how clearly he’d seen Sarah Martin watching him from the rocks.
“Absolutely. It’s called conscious sedation. Even if you know what is happening, you’re unable to do anything about it. You’re along for the ride.”
“Suppose rape wasn’t the goal,” Mark said. “Suppose misinformation was the goal; would it be as effective?”
“I’m not sure that I follow. You mean, would it aid someone in lying to a victim?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely.”
“And it’s a pill or a liquid?”
“Both. You can inject it or snort it or, as is most common for criminal use, add it to a drink.”
He spoke the words crisply but the images they conveyed were foggy and soft around the edges. Diane Martin’s face, open and honest and imploring even as she told lies. Her eyes, so compelling, so haunting. Mark had looked into her eyes and he had known her pain. The greater violation was that he had believed she’d also known his. He tried to recall whether he’d left the table at some point, gone to the restroom or taken a call, given her any opportunity to be alone with his drink. He didn’t think so. Then again, what he thought had happened no longer carried much weight. Memory and reality had taken different paths away from that meeting, and Mark had traveled along the wrong one.
“All right, Dr. Stewart,” he said. “Thanks for the help. One last question, though, and this is important: How long would traces linger? How quickly do you need to test for its presence?”
“It can linger for up to two weeks, depending on the dose, but I’d want the test done within a few days, if at all possible.”
Mark was four days removed from his meeting with Diane Martin now, and three days removed from the cave. He thanked Dr. Stewart again, hung up, and followed the GPS directions in search of Brett and Jeremy Leonard.
He’d been on the road for more than a mile before it felt familiar. He was in a tunnel of leafless trees, hemmed in, and up ahead, snow-covered fields stretched out, and a four-way stop loomed.
He pulled off the road and onto the shoulder and left the car running with the hazard lights flashing. Opened the door and stepped out into the snow and nodded when the wind rose to meet him. That was right. That was how it had been. No snow blowing in with it today, but the same arctic chill.
He walked down the middle of the road, looking at the pavement even though there would be nothing to see. The crime that had occurred here had been a clean one. No shots had been fired, no glass had broken, no evidence left behind to mark the road. He walked the pavement anyhow, just in case there was something. The intersection where the truck had turned sideways to block the road loomed ahead, and he thought then of an intersection in Cody, Wyoming, that he’d once thought of as the worst road in the world.
When Mark was thirteen, his uncles had retrieved a stray dog of indeterminate breed and presented it to him as a gift, against his mother’s wishes. His uncles had named the dog Amigo, for reasons that probably had more to do with tequila than logic. Amigo was a goof, but he had fine energy and was well muscled, and when he laid out to run, he was fast, a true burner, and thus a wandering boy’s best friend.
The only problem with Amigo—at least, the only one Mark saw—was that he pulled at his leash. The concept of being tethered was foreign to him, and what resulted was a war of wills.
It was on one of the more beautiful afternoons of spring that Amigo began to kick at the collar with his hind leg as they made the walk home. Mark responded by giving the leash
a few gentle tugs, thinking that he needed to distract the dog from his itch, and then the third tug met no resistance and there was the tinkle of metal on asphalt. The collar had come free. For one long second, Amigo held his place, looking at Mark as if to see what the problem was. The choice Mark made then was the worst one possible: he lunged at the dog in the hope of recapturing him.
When Amigo hit full speed, he looked like a greyhound, his hind paws nearly catching his front as he exploded ahead. Mark compounded the mistake of the lunge by doing the only thing that he knew to do when a dog bolted—he ran after him. Amigo, absolutely delighted, raced ahead, the game of chase now fully approved.
There was a stop sign up ahead, and the road on the other side had a speed limit of thirty-five but nobody paid that number any mind and the average had to be fifty miles an hour. Mark ran after the dog as hard as he could, heart thundering and legs throbbing, but Amigo outpaced him effortlessly, gaining distance with each second and then pouring on speed as he approached the stop sign that meant absolutely nothing in his world. A Dodge pickup with oversize off-road tires and a lift kit roared downhill. Just before Amigo reached the intersection, he turned and looked at Mark with his tongue lolling and ears pinned back and an expression of utter, oblivious delight. Then he faced forward again, dipped lower, and ran on, through the stop sign and out in front of the truck.
Mark could see the rest as if it were written before him. The lift kit on the Dodge afforded extra height that exposed its undercarriage plain as day, including the axles that would corkscrew Amigo and thrash his body and throw it, mangled, out onto the other side.
Mark fell to his hands and knees and heard the horn blare and knew he owed it to his dog to watch—it seemed required—but he couldn’t. He dropped his head and looked at his bleeding hands on the gravel and although he’d promised himself when he turned twelve that he would never cry again, he sobbed into the dust of the road.
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