Last Words

by Michael Koryta

  Blankenship let that one pass and said, “You understand why he killed Danielle?”

  “She was done with whatever story they’d been protecting, would be my guess. She went down there to prep him for my arrival and found him trussed up. Cut him loose, and then…”

  “Paid for that mistake,” Blankenship finished. “Yes. That’s my read. Cecil has some risk in all this that I don’t quite understand yet, some risk that made murder acceptable so long as he could blame Ridley for it.”

  “But what is that? What’s he protecting?”

  “You see the shit Ridley brought in there? The paperwork?”

  “I saw it, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. I was just aware that it was there. Looked like he’d burned some of it.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, it’s a trust document. Interesting read. Deeds the property to Cecil and Ridley.”

  “Cecil and Ridley?”

  “Yes. The document Ridley took down there has an effective date that is only a few months away, or when Pershing dies, whichever comes first. Fun thing about that? Pershing has to die of natural causes. It’s the strangest damn protective order in history, essentially.”

  “Why is the cave willed to them?”

  “Because Pershing gave Ridley the motive to kill Sarah.”

  “What?”

  “Cecil puts the blame on Pershing. Pershing can’t speak to defend himself, and now his daughter can’t defend him either. But according to Cecil, Ridley reached a point where he wouldn’t take money for mapping the cave. He wanted a piece of ownership. Pershing didn’t want to grant that. So he drew Ridley up a nice little cartoon trust to keep him going with the exploration and keep him silent about just what he was finding. Only problem is that Ridley went down to the courthouse to inquire about it.”

  The disclosure should have felt like a triumph, but Mark’s stomach turned.

  “Ridley found out he had a handful of wooden nickels? And then Sarah went missing how much later?”

  “Six weeks later,” Blankenship said. He had trouble with the words.

  “Why in the hell didn’t Ridley tell anyone this?”

  “Because they drew up the new trust. It contented him, apparently. This is what he explained to Julianne Grossman.”

  “But that came after Sarah.”

  Blankenship nodded and when he spoke again, his voice had a honed edge. “So Pershing and Cecil knew the man was crazy, they played him for a fool, and then they got caught. All in the summer before…before Sarah. By the time I enter the frame, all of this has come to pass and she’s missing in the cave and I pull rank and demand that they send Ridley in after her. Pershing put up some resistance, I’ll admit that and already have, but the chickenshit never came close to saying what needed to be said. He didn’t want to admit it in front of Diane, is what Cecil and Danielle told me. He also didn’t think Ridley would hurt Sarah; he thought that she was just lost. But I’ll tell you this right now—I was the one who dealt with Pershing, and he was scared of Ridley Barnes. Never said a word of the true reasons, though. Never said enough to convince me Ridley was a threat and had reason to want to hurt Pershing, hurt the family. So I let him in, and then Ridley went in there and killed her!”

  Mark let him run out of steam and allowed a few seconds to pass before he spoke.

  “I think you’re almost there,” he said. “But you’re having trouble seeing past Pershing. I don’t blame you. It’s the reason they pulled you back then, but I don’t blame you a bit.”

  “What am I missing, Novak?”

  “The dark man that Ridley talks about like some sort of ghost or spirit of the cave? I think he was real. There was somebody else down there with him.”

  “Cecil, probably.”

  “I don’t think so. If Ridley told Julianne the truth last night, the dark man from that encounter is a dead man now. Ridley killed him.”

  “I should have seen a crime report on him, then. This dark man. Somebody should have noticed he was missing.”

  “I think you’ve got his teeth,” Mark said.

  Blankenship went silent for a few seconds. “You think Carson Borders was down there.”

  “Maybe, yeah.”

  “Teeth came from Detroit. Motive for killing him came from Detroit. Connections to Ridley don’t exist.”

  “His son is connected to it,” Mark said. “Of that, I’m certain. Where’s Evan?”

  “Missing. Same as his cousins.”

  “You’ll need to find him,” Mark said.

  “I’m not buying Ridley’s version of what happened in that cave, whether he was hypnotized for it or not,” Blankenship said, but the words came slowly and his eyes had a far-off look.

  “You’re wondering about it, though.”

  “No.”

  He was lying. Mark had seen similar lights in investigators’ eyes before. He’d felt that light.

  Blankenship’s chest filled with a tired breath. “I suppose if Ridley ever comes back to the surface, I can ask him.”

  “You can’t ask him,” Mark said. “That’s the hell of it, Sheriff. You’ve got to figure out his world to see where the pieces of your own got lost in it.”

  62

  Ridley was freezing and wet and it was impossible to dry off down here in the damp air. The chilled water beaded all along his goosefleshed skin, and when he shivered water sprayed from him like a dog shaking dry. Even by Ridley’s standards, it was far too cold, and that meant he was entering dangerous ground. He’d flirted with hypothermia before, but nothing like this.

  He sat on a lip of stone, pondering problems that light alone could not fix. Ahead of him was a steep drop of at least thirty feet, and while he remembered it and knew that he was on the right path, he’d had climbing gear the first time through. He’d removed his backpack to work with Julianne, a critical mistake. He needed it now, but going back didn’t seem like an option. He wasn’t sure that the cave would allow him to pass back through the water again. He had to stay in pursuit until he found the dark man, but that meant finding a way down this wall. There were bolts in the stone and that surprised him because he didn’t remember running any bolts when he’d come this way searching for Sarah Martin. He was almost certain he hadn’t, but it was foolish to think that the dark man would have needed them. He could pass through as he wanted; the cave yielded for him, and surely he did not require mechanical assistance.

  Ridley leaned forward, out over the lip, and studied the bolts. They were not the kind he used for the etriers. They were open U-bolts and there were only two of them, set eighteen inches apart and just below the cliff edge. Ridley was no stranger to visions, so he reached out and touched one of the bolts, feeling the steel under his fingertips. Very real. The steel was scraped, the base of the U-shaped portion nicked. Ropes would not do that. Metal would. He looked at the open bolts again and now he thought he understood. A quick scan of the room confirmed it—a caving ladder rested in the rocks just beside him, coiled up and tossed aside, waiting for someone’s return.

  Ridley had been using single-rope techniques for so long that the possibility of the ladder had not come to him as swiftly as it should have. The ladder was made of aluminum steps with strands of cable for the side supports so that it could be rolled up.

  Ridley unfurled the ladder slowly and the feeling that descended upon him then was one he’d always feared he’d encounter in a cave, although he’d expected it would come from a roof collapse, a rock slide, something that left him trapped and hopeless. He hadn’t expected it to come in the form of a ladder.

  Police searchers could not have left this behind ten years ago. They hadn’t made it this far. No one had. This was the province of the dark man, the heart of Trapdoor, and nobody but Ridley—and Sarah Martin—had ever passed this way.

  None of this made any sense. The cave had created the dark man, and the dark man did not require ladders.

  Ridley hung the ladder through the bolts, giving him a method of descending the wall, b
ut he was so tired after that small bit of effort that he sat on the cliff with his feet dangling off the edge as he fought to catch his breath. He stared at the ladder as he breathed, so focused that his peripheral vision began to blur, almost as it did during visualization just before trance.

  Look at it from above, and then from below. What do you notice about it now that you did not notice before?

  There was blood on the rocks. These were old stains, streaks of dusty red that might have belonged to an ancient people. Ridley had shed no blood here.

  The only thing that seemed less likely than the dark man requiring ladders was the dark man bleeding.

  What do you understand now that you did not understand before?

  The light was bothering him now and he wanted to reach up and turn the headlamp off and be soothed by the dark. He squeezed his hands into fists to still them. He needed to keep the light on, whether it was pleasant or not. He had to remember the things Julianne had taught him.

  “What did you do, Ridley?”

  He breathed the words into the emptiness, a question so familiar it seemed like part of his name now. It was the wrong question. He thought that he knew what he had done and that he always had. That meant he needed to ask a different question.

  Why had he done it?

  63

  Mark’s rental car was in the police impound lot in an alley across from the sheriff’s department. Blankenship opened it for him and then said he was going back to talk to Cecil Buckner.

  “You hang around town for me, okay? We’ll need to talk again.”

  “I’ve got no place to go,” Mark said. They had just returned his phone to him. The battery was dead, so he couldn’t see how many calls from Jeff London had stacked up. By now the board of directors had already met. He wondered if they had any idea what was going on in Indiana at the moment. He had trouble bringing himself to care. What had once seemed paramount—appeasing the people in that room—now seemed inconsequential, with Julianne in the hospital and Ridley Barnes still belowground and the dark man with him in mind if not in body.

  Mark pulled out of the impound lot and went through the alley and came out on a street that ran toward the downtown square and the courthouse where once Ridley Barnes had walked in with a few questions and a fake deed. What exactly had that day done to this town? What had that decision by Pershing MacAlister done?

  “Never count out your sins,” Mark’s uncle had told him the night they had Mark drive them through the snow to find the poker cheat. There had been blood on Larry’s jeans by then, and they weren’t even through with the search.

  He started toward Trapdoor even though he’d been told to stay away. The town fell behind him and the fields opened ahead and he’d gone no more than half a mile before he saw the white truck approaching in his rearview mirror. He reached for the brake but just as he hit it, the truck turned off the road and the exhaust growled as it headed south, away from Mark and out of sight. He watched the mirror for a few seconds anyway, but the road behind him was empty now, and then he let up on the brake and continued out of town.

  The next time, he heard the exhaust before he saw the truck. It came from his right, where a four-way stop loomed, woods on the right-hand side and fields and two pole barns on the left. The barns were closed and no one was in sight. By the time Mark reached the stop sign, he could see the truck tear-assing up the road in an effort to beat him to the intersection.

  He brought the car to a stop and put it in park. Watched as the white Silverado fishtailed into the middle of the intersection, black smoke bubbling from the worn-out muffler. Mark opened the door and got out of his car and walked toward the truck with his hands in his pockets and his head high as Evan Borders fumbled out of the driver’s seat with a gun in hand.

  “No mask today,” Mark said. “And no friends?”

  Borders looked at him and then glanced at his gun as if confused by it, because it now appeared to be an unnecessary tool. “You were a long time with the police,” he said.

  “Lots to talk about. People keep dying in this town. They’d like that to stop.”

  “You’re pretty relaxed for a guy without a gun.”

  “I’m getting used to the role.”

  Evan Borders nodded, looking over Mark’s shoulder and back toward town. No traffic was coming from that way, but it was bound to eventually.

  “You stay relaxed, then,” he said. “We’re going to take a little trip. You can drive.”

  “I’m not real interested in a trip right now.”

  “Bullshit you aren’t. You want to know if Ridley makes it through. So do I. Why don’t we take your ride? Police have eyes for mine. I’ll leave it here where it’s convenient for them.”

  The gun was pointed down. A car had appeared far off down the road, heading toward town, and Evan pressed the handgun into the pocket of the oversize farm jacket he wore and said, “Just get back behind the wheel and keep it in park.”

  He climbed into his own truck and pulled out of the intersection and onto the side of the road as the car came by. Mark gave the driver a nod and a wave as he passed, casual. By the time the car was gone, Evan was out of the truck and jogging toward him, the gun still hidden in his coat.

  “All right,” Mark said. “I’ll drive.”

  “There ya go!”

  Evan walked around the front of the car with a cheerful, buoyant stride, went to the passenger door, opened it, and fell into the seat.

  “Cold today!” he said. “My goodness, the sun comes out and it gets colder? Crazy.”

  The muzzle of the gun was showing again, pointed at Mark, and Evan had a strange false smile, like a department-store greeter.

  “Where are we going?” Mark said.

  “Just drive toward Trapdoor for now.”

  “Bad location if you’re hoping to avoid police.”

  “Why don’t you let me give the tour?”

  The route took them across the intersection and back into the winding hills. Evan watched it all as if he were seeing the place for the first time.

  “What do you think of our town?” he said.

  “One of those unfortunate situations where my experiences are tainting my sense of the place,” Mark said. “Don’t take that personally. It’s not Garrison, it’s me.”

  “Sure. You know, it’s actually a hell of a nice little town. I’ve always enjoyed it. Haven’t enjoyed all the people, and that’s more than mutual, but I like the place. Growing up, kids were always talking about getting out of here. For what? I’d say. I don’t like cities. Just can’t take them. People talk about the beach too, someplace warm, but, you know, I like seasons. I like knowing the back roads and the trails that nobody else knows. Sound enough like a country song to you? It’s the truth, though. I was always happy here.”

  Mark didn’t say anything. He just drove. The gun was pointed at him but Evan seemed uninterested in it, or even in Mark.

  “I never cared about money,” Evan said. “That’s the truth. I just needed enough to get by. Tell you something that makes me happy—cutting grass and plowing snow. You can see your work. See the mess that was there before you, and how nice and clean it is when you’re done. How orderly. I always liked that feeling. People say a lot of negative shit about me, but I defy you to find somebody who says I did a poor job of cutting grass or clearing snow.”

  Mark drove on in silence.

  “Wonder where I’ll land,” Evan said. “Man, I hope not in a city. I don’t like crowds.” He shook his head and sighed as if to redirect himself, then said, “So, the longer I’ve been waiting on you, more curious I’ve been getting. Who said what? You solved it all yet, Detective?”

  “No,” Mark said. “I didn’t do much detecting either. I just put on enough pressure that things started to leak.”

  “Things blew up, is what happened. Didn’t leak long. Now we’re going to talk straight, just the way you wanted when you came around the first time.”

  “I came around
then because I was curious if you’d tried to kill me. And you had.”

  “Oh, hell, I’ve never been a killing man. Not even a hunter. Kids would make fun of me for that. I just had to pretend I’m a lousy shot. You weren’t going to die down there.”

  “The doctor had another perspective on that.”

  “Well, you wandered off. Shit, if you’d stayed in one place, you’d have been fine.”

  “My apologies. It was inconsiderate of me. What was supposed to happen?”

  “I didn’t really have a plan for that. I just thought it was time to send them back in.”

  “Send who back in?”

  “Police, searchers, the whole damn show, one more time. Encore performance. See if anybody made it through and wait for Cecil to make a decision on pulling your ass out if nobody else did. Far as I know, only Ridley Barnes has made it through, but he doesn’t remember how he did it. Word is he’s taking another run at it right now; is that true?”

  “He’s in the cave,” Mark said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Then he’s making a run at it. He’s not as young as he was the first time, and he damn near died in there then, so this will be a stretch.”

  The snow-covered farmland was falling away at the road’s sides and the interior of the car had warmed and Evan seemed like an almost congenial presence as long as Mark disregarded the gun in his hand.

  “Tell me something,” Evan said. “Did you really remember the trailer? If so, I was given some bad advice. You weren’t supposed to remember shit.”

  “It came to me,” Mark said.

  Evan frowned. He’d pulled the hood down from his jacket, and with his dark hair cropped short, he looked younger than he was; he could have passed for a college student.

  “Well, not all of it came to you. So I guess I got my money’s worth. Go on and pull in there now when we get to it.”