Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  The house seemed to be occupied, with two vehicles parked outside, but the windows were dark, lights either lost to the power outage or turned off ahead of sleep. The outbuilding where his father had once taught him how to work wood with chisels and how to take a punch without tears had collapsed in on itself, the remains looking like something that had been subjected to a long, slow squeeze. A sapling was growing through a hole in the roof. Ridley skirted the building in a wide, looping arc, keeping his distance from whatever lingered there.

  Fifty yards beyond the outbuilding, right where the field grass began to give itself over to brush at the edge of the tree line, the strip pit announced itself in a series of rock slabs burped up by the earth and then forgotten. The ash tree whose roots had once provided a chin-up bar–style exit had died and fallen on its side. Someone had taken the time to limb it with a chain saw but had left most of the massive trunk and root ball untouched. They loomed above the pit now like bulwarks hastily erected against an invading army.

  You didn’t need a rope to descend into this pit, but Ridley wanted to work fast, and the ropes allowed for that. He freed them from his pack, scraped the snow clear beneath one of the uneven spots of the trunk, and then slid the rope around it and cinched it. A good anchor, and an easy one.

  He was wearing a headlamp but hadn’t turned it on yet, performing all of the tasks so far with ease, because the night didn’t seem the least bit dark to him. Not aboveground, where the white snow held starlight and traces of a rarely seen moon. He glanced at the house, sure that he’d heard a whisper, but there was no sign of movement, and when he heard the whisper again, he knew that it was his own name, and he knew who was calling for him. He kept his eyes away from the remains of the woodshop, slipped into the strip pit, and began to rappel down into the darkness, closing his eyes against memories of outstretched hands scrambling to catch him before he could make it deep enough.

  No hands chased him today. He went about ten feet down, until the neck of the pit narrowed, and then he clicked on the headlamp, keeping it to the dim red setting that was designed to protect night vision. He wasn’t worried about his night vision but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself if anyone in the house got up to take a piss. You could see the pit from the bathroom window. The bathroom window had been the place where Ridley usually reentered the house late at night. His sister, the one who now lived with her family in Rhode Island, had always unlocked it again after their father passed out. She’d been very young in those days, but still she had remembered Ridley, and stayed awake for him. The only one in the house who would.

  He hated making this return, thought now that this had been a terrible idea. It had made some sort of karmic sense, leaving as much evil in this place as possible, but he should have known he would have to come back for one piece of it or another at some point. The world above didn’t just let you put things away and move on. It sent you back for them in time, or—far worse—brought them back up for you.

  When the walls of the pit began to squeeze his thighs, he let the rope go slack. This was the place where his father had never been able to follow, not even with his most diligent efforts. He was a bigger man and he drank too much and exercised too little. Ridley remembered being on a date, back in the days when such things had been possible in his life, during which the woman noticed how little he ate and said, “What are you watching your figure for?” It had been a joke, and she’d laughed without knowing why when Ridley said, “Ease of escape.” That had not been a joke. They hadn’t had a second date.

  He wriggled his legs down and through and now he was essentially sitting on the bottom of the pit, his legs stretched out but his face and torso pressing against stone. He paused to shed the bulkier outer layer he was wearing, balled it up, and pushed it into the rocks, and then he began to dig with his heels, slowly drawing his body down into the gap beneath the stone. By the time you were done with this maneuver, you were lying flat on your back, your face staring straight up to the top of the pit, your arms pinned against your sides, useless for protection. Ridley’s father used to throw rocks or, if they were available, beer bottles at him until he disappeared from sight. It had been a very good thing that the old man did most of his drinking from cans; the glass littered the rocks and laced your flesh with cuts when it was safe to emerge.

  He’d experimented with a headfirst approach a few times, not wanting to have that experience of staring straight up into daylight and what waited there, but the feetfirst approach was faster, and when Ridley took to the pit, speed was usually of the essence.

  He slid into position now and took a deep breath, bracing himself for the tight slide that waited. Above him, the snow whirled down through the blackness, and a few stars glittered. It was beautiful, and he wanted to lie there and drink it in. He lingered too long, though, and his father caught him, bounding up to the lip of the pit and leaning down, leering at him with a wolf’s smile.

  Ridley closed his eyes and used his heels to drag himself under the stone and out of sight.

  That squeeze beneath the stone pulled you into a tomb of rock. If you were brave enough—or scared enough—you could keep pulling yourself forward with your heels, though, and eventually you’d come out into a small chamber. Ridley had a sense now of just how small it was, but in his boyhood, the place had seemed impossibly massive, big enough for treasure chests and pirate hideouts. High enough to allow you to sit upright if not quite stand, about eight feet in diameter, and, best of all, accessible only through an opening the size of a small oven door, easily sealed with a rock if you needed protection. He had spent more hours in that small chamber than he could count. He hauled himself toward it again, pausing once to lift his head and kiss the stone roof for luck, the way he always had. It felt like kissing an old tombstone, but the taste was damp and earthy and comforting.

  Once inside the little chamber, he sat up and took a few deep breaths. This was the place where all bad things became good, where all negative energy became fuel. His sister had called it the Batcave, but she was wrong, it was more like Superman’s phone booth, a place where you transformed. There was an old metal ammunition box tucked in one corner, a relic from the Army Navy store in Bloomington, a gift from Ridley’s parents on some long-ago Christmas. It had held his sacred things when he was a child, and still did. He opened it, paused to examine a rusted Swiss Army knife and a few arrowheads and the dusty remains of a letter and a poem he’d written to a girl from school but never delivered to her locker. At the bottom of the box was the most recent addition, a DVD in a plastic case, labeled with a date written in black Sharpie: December 13, 2013.

  Ridley extracted the DVD and slipped it into the cargo pocket of his pants then restored the other items to their proper places and closed the ammo box and put a flat rock over the top of it and leaned another against that. Of all the hiding places he had, this was the poorest construction, but he believed it also had the smallest risk of a human encounter. This was the place where he’d intended to leave as much evil as possible, here in the chamber room, where the evil might in time be transformed into something else, something good.

  Foolish, childish notions.

  The DVD rode along in his pocket as he slipped back out of the chamber, found his rope, and began to ascend. There was no sign of his father. He climbed on toward a howling wind and a sky that was just beginning to flush around the edges.

  34

  Mark slept for nearly twelve hours but woke feeling groggy instead of refreshed. And stiff. When he climbed out of the bed, every muscle seemed to protest the movement in rapid-fire shrieks, like a disorganized and off-key choir. He limped to the bathroom and ran the shower as hot as it would go, then stood beneath the water until it went cold, which didn’t take long. He toweled off and dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the day before and then stretched, or performed at least an approximation of stretching. It felt as if sleep had battered him rather than soothed him. He was cold but clammy with sweat too
. Rest and warm sunshine, Dr. Desare had advised. Sure. When he pulled the curtains back, the landscape was covered with a fresh layer of snow, and the sky was an unbroken gray.

  He was hungry, though, and when he considered it, he realized that he hadn’t eaten in nearly a day. Breakfast in the hospital, coffee in Garrison, that was it. The recipe for recovery. He grabbed his bag and put on his jacket and stepped out into the winter morning. This hotel wasn’t one that had a breakfast option, so he’d have to head into town. Or maybe he could walk across the street and see if they’d let him at least buy breakfast. Maybe if he sat there long enough, he’d have the chance to visit with Diane Martin again. Wouldn’t that be nice. He had questions for her again, but they were…

  He stopped in his tracks halfway to his car. He was standing in the parking lot of the low-rent motel, facing the higher-rent one that had sent him away. They shared an access road, if not clientele. You drove in the same way from the highway, and the road dead-ended just beyond the hotels and the restaurants. If you were visiting one or the other, you had to come in the same way. The parking lots were divided by the access road.

  He turned back and paced the exterior of the shotgun-style motel until he found what he’d expected—security cameras were mounted under the eaves on both entrance doors. He stood beneath them and squared himself with their angles. Both were positioned to show anyone entering the motel, but they might pick up the parking lot too. And if they did, they surely picked up the access road beyond. The entrances to the parking lot of the nicer hotel, the national chain that had refused him the room last night because they didn’t want more of his brand of trouble, were in plain view.

  He left and got into his car and drove down the access road to the first gas station he found. Inside, he ran the Innocence Incorporated credit card on a cash advance. The machine limited him to four hundred dollars. He went to the next gas station and did the same thing. This time he got five hundred. In his own wallet, he’d had just over a hundred, bringing him to a grand, total. He could make another withdrawal somewhere else, but he was afraid of pushing it to the point that the fraud protection kicked in and killed his card. Besides, if it was the bored blonde again this morning, he thought that a grand might be enough.

  She was in the office, and the television was still running. One of those shows where paternity tests were the bread and butter, everyone shouting at one another and the audience hooting at it all. Mark looked at her and considered whether or not to show his ID. Sometimes, the PI license helped. But in this town, his name was pretty familiar, and not in a helpful way. He’d lead with the cash.

  “Your security cameras work?” he said.

  She turned for the first time, regarded him with annoyance and contempt. “Yes. But there’s a sign in the parking lot for a reason. Anything happened to your car, it’s not our liability.”

  It was a response that begged the question of just how often cars in this particular Four Seasons were vandalized, but that wasn’t Mark’s interest. It was, however, an entry point that he hadn’t considered, and one that he liked.

  “Exactly. But you’ve got working cameras, to protect yourselves. Your buddies across the street? I stayed there last week, my car got busted into, and they said their cameras don’t show the parking lot. I think they’re lying about that.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. You know it’s one of those Pakistani chains. Or Indians, I don’t know. Saudis?” She shrugged. “They own ’em all, mostly. You wouldn’t believe how many hotels they own. Ain’t many locals like us left.”

  Mark agreed that her establishment was one of a kind, then leaned on the counter and said conspiratorially, “I want to sue their asses. I don’t even need a copy of your security videos to do that, I just need a look.”

  She frowned, torn. On the one hand, she clearly liked the notion of causing trouble for whatever Middle Eastern empire opposed her, but on the other, the task smelled like work. “I really shouldn’t do that for you. You know, the legalities and whatnot.”

  “Sure.” Mark reached into his jacket pocket and removed the wad of cash, glad for the first time in history that ATMs didn’t dispense anything larger than a twenty, because it made the stack of bills look more substantial. “Or you could put this in your pocket, let me look at those videos, and I’ll get the hell out of here and you won’t see me again.” He nodded across the street. “But they will. And so will their attorneys.”

  She looked out the front window. Other than her car and Mark’s, the motel’s parking lot was empty. She looked at the cash on the counter. There were at least fifty bills in the stack.

  “It won’t take me long,” Mark said.

  She used one of the laughably long acrylic nails to fan through the bills, then did the math—or gave up on doing it, one of the two—and said, “Come around the desk.”

  The cameras were standard cheap technology, adequate for the motel’s liability insurance and little more. They fed back into a computer hard drive much like a television DVR, and a simple software program allowed you to enter the date and time of your choice. The blonde didn’t know how to operate it, but Mark figured out the intricacies in about two minutes. He’d seen plenty of similar systems before. She sat and watched with the bills clutched in her hand.

  The cameras captured what he’d hoped for, and more—the view of the parking-lot entrances across the street was clear, and you could see the cars well. He had to scroll through only twenty minutes before he saw his own Ford Escape pull in, and he watched himself stride through the parking lot. The view gave him an unexpected chill. When he’d walked into that place only a few days ago, he was generally regarded as an honest man. By the time he’d checked out the next morning, he was about to hit the news as an unusually disturbing fraud.

  He accidentally fast-forwarded right over Diane Martin’s arrival and had to go back to find her. When she appeared in the parking lot, his chill turned to rage. There she was, striding purposefully over the pavement on her way to destroy his career and threaten his life. Calm as could be.

  He backed the video up farther and found the car she’d arrived in—an older Honda Civic, red—and discovered that she’d given him the most generous of gifts. She’d turned into the first entrance of the parking lot instead of the second. This meant that the back end of her car had faced the cheap motel squarely for a few precious seconds.

  He zoomed in, his breath trapped in his chest. They weren’t high-end cameras, and you could save a lot of money on cameras if you didn’t care about the zoom. As he clicked, the image pixelated, but it held just clear enough. He could make out the license plate.

  “Got a piece of paper?” he asked, and while the blonde was rummaging for a notepad and pen, he took his cell out of his pocket and snapped a few quick photos of the screen. When she gave him the notepad, he wrote the license plate down along with the arrival time of the vehicle and then tore the page free.

  “That’ll do,” he said. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, and when he was back on the other side of the counter and had his hand on the door, she added, “Good luck chasing dead women.”

  He turned and stared at her, and she gave him a wide smile. “I’m not quite the yokel you want me to be, mister. But I do appreciate the cash.”

  Mark opened his mouth to speak, but she waved him off with those bright red nails. “Don’t you worry about me, honey. It’s an interesting little story, but I know how to run my business. Two things I’m real familiar with: cash and keeping my mouth shut. You go on your way now, and try to stay aboveground.”

  35

  Jeff had called three times the previous night, but Mark had slept through them all. When Mark called him back, Jeff was on his way into the courthouse in Austin, and the concern in his voice was evident.

  “The last time you started missing calls, they had to chopper you to a hospital, Markus.”

  “Sorry. I was asleep. Doctor’s orders.”

 
“Where are you?”

  “Garrison.”

  “Shit, you went without me?”

  “You’re still in Texas. I can’t really afford to wait. You’re the one who made that clear. It became even more clear to me when I learned that Greg Roche is calling around. Not having someone do it for him—making calls himself.”

  He could hear Jeff take a deep breath. “Greg’s concerned, yes.”

  Mark closed his eyes. If Greg was concerned now, that meant Mark’s firing was imminent. But Greg couldn’t know what had really happened in Coleman, the full scope of Mark’s visits there and the offers he’d made, or Mark would already have been fired. Even Jeff didn’t know all of that. The organization was dedicated to the opposition of capital punishment, and if its executives ever learned that Mark had been trying to arrange a prison hit—even if the target was guilty of murder—he’d be fired, and he’d face charges. Greg would see to that; he’d have to. The integrity of his organization would require it, and neither Jeff London nor anyone else would be able to prevent that train from running Mark down. The only saving grace was that nobody on earth knew what he’d really been after in Coleman. He was counting on that to save his job at least long enough for him to make one more pass through the prison. The one that counted.