“The search was a little harder than that.”
“Yeah? How’d you get here?”
“I was hypnotized. By a woman named Julianne Grossman.”
Blankenship was one of those rare older men who could still intimidate with sheer size, and he knew how to draw it up. His body seemed to inflate.
“There are some lines you don’t cross,” he said, each word deep and dark.
“I’m not trying to cross any, damn it. I came back here to find out who had fucked with me, and why. She’s the woman who impersonated Diane Martin. Only it’s a little more complex than that. If you know anything about her, maybe you understand what I mean.”
He had Blankenship’s full interest now.
“You know Julianne personally, or you just know of her?” Mark asked.
Blankenship didn’t answer right away.
“What I was told,” Mark said, “was that she worked with Diane Martin after her husband died. That’s all I know. If she lied to me, then set me straight, please. Because I’ve got my own issues with Julianne.”
The sheriff turned the flashlight over in his hands and hesitated as if he was trying to make up his mind on something. Finally he said, “What do you know about this place, Novak?”
“I know that I can see the cave from here, and that’s where I ended up. I know that the Leonard brothers live at that farm way out across.”
“The Leonards have gone to ground, by the way. Haven’t been seen in a few days. You know anything about that?”
“I stopped by to talk with Lou.”
“That would have done it. They’ll be MIA for another week or two and then I’ll see them again.” Blankenship pointed at the trailer. “But this place? What do you know about it?”
“I’ve got a feeling it will help prove my story.”
“You’re telling me the truth?”
“Damn it, Sheriff, I don’t know another way to say it.”
Blankenship shook his head. “You weren’t kidding when you said you didn’t care, were you? You came back here for your own skin. You got no interest in Sarah.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I said it, but I’m starting to care.” You see, I saw her down there, Mark thought. And she’s waiting, Sheriff. She’s waiting, and she doesn’t understand why it’s taking so long. But what he said was “What’s so important about the trailer?”
“It’s where Evan Borders lived as a child. This collapsing shit pile was home when his daddy wasn’t in prison. Family land, going back more than a century. Carson — that’s his father — ended up selling it off to pay for his lawyers and his habits. Didn’t get much for his money. Tried to bargain his way out of prison in a different fashion and got a hit put on his head for that effort. All that remains of Carson’s legacy in Garrison County is his son. And, I suppose, his teeth. The boys in Detroit were kind enough to mail those back.”
“Would Evan have owned the cave?” Mark said. “If his father hadn’t gotten into the legal troubles, would the cave have been theirs?”
“Yes. If it had opened up a little earlier, a little later, however you care to look at it. Family land, like I said. But instead, it was going to be Sarah’s family land. I always wondered about that. Seems irrelevant to some, I suppose, but I wondered.”
“You were right to,” Mark said. He remembered a rancher outside Billings who sold a few hundred acres of generations-old family cattle land that turned out to have vast oil deposits. He’d put the barrel of a twelve-gauge in his mouth six months after news of the discovery broke. He hadn’t ever disputed that the transaction was fair and honest. The point was only that it had been made.
“I can tell you some things about Ridley,” Mark said. “They’ve got nothing to do with what happened to me here, but I think you should hear them.”
“We’ll talk in my office,” the sheriff said, and then he walked away from Mark and back up to the road. He had his radio to his lips by the time he reached his car.
48
The sapphire sky was cleansed of color by storm clouds just before dusk and then the sun went down somewhere behind them and full dark settled and Ridley knew that it was time.
He had two caving packs prepared, perfect twins, every tool in his own pack mirrored by one in the other. Julianne was not capable of using all the equipment, but still he’d outfitted her with the proper gear. Ropes, carabiners, and ascenders. Gloves, knee pads, elbow pads. A first-aid kit. Protein bars and glucose tablets and water bottles and an emergency blanket. Headlamps with fresh batteries.
He looked over all the gear, satisfied except for the missing tool, the one he never went into a cave — or anywhere, even aboveground — without: a Benchmade knife with black grips and a folding steel blade that was just a fraction under four inches in length. It was as close as he’d ever been able to come to the discontinued model that he’d carried for years and lost somewhere in Trapdoor in a transaction that was forever hazy — a knife in hand one moment, Sarah Martin’s sapphire necklace in hand the next. When he thought of being back there in the dark with Julianne Grossman at his side, he wondered if maybe he should leave the knife behind.
He thumbed it open, the blade extending with a soft snick, the grip perfectly balanced in his hand. His mouth was dry. When it came to this tool, Julianne would not need a matching version.
He put the knife in his pocket, clipped helmets to the packs, slung one pack over each shoulder, and turned and looked around the house. The rooms were hard to make out in the shadows but he knew them well and he thought that his time here had been mostly good. Of the homes he had known on the surface of the earth, this was probably the best of them. He stepped outside and walked to the truck and put the packs in the bed and was in the driver’s seat with the key in his hand when he stopped. He did not believe he would be returning to this place, and while he wasn’t one for sentimental gestures, he felt that he hadn’t left it quite right for the visitors who would soon descend on it. He left the truck and walked into the house and went upstairs. He pushed on the knee wall and watched it pivot open soundlessly. The seams were still flawless and there was not so much as a creak to the dowels. It was fine work and he wondered if anyone would appreciate that. He turned it until it was half open, and then he left the room and went back down the stairs and exited again. This time he remembered to leave the front door unlocked. If it was not unlocked, they’d kick it down, and Ridley had built the door and the frame himself and hated the idea of that beautiful wood splintering needlessly.
The roads had been plowed and salted and there was no fresh snow coming down but somehow his thin tires felt less secure on the road than they had only a day before. Only this morning, even. You could wear the rubber down for just so long before the wires started to show and then the withheld pressure you counted on to carry you along went from helpful to dangerous. He’d understood this since he was a boy and he was vaguely disappointed in himself for having allowed the tires to reach such a point, and in the winter, no less, when traction was critical and steady pressure was harder to hold. He’d gotten distracted somewhere along the line.
When he took the sapphire necklace out of his pocket, the stone was cold, and though he held it in his hand for most of the drive, it never warmed. Just before he reached Julianne’s house he reached up and looped the chain around the rearview mirror so that it dangled in the center of the cab. For a short stretch, it caught the reflected light off the snow and glistened beautifully, but then he had to turn the lights off and the color went with them.