Larry said, “Come back, Violet, come back.”
She wasn’t coming back. Mark felt her grip slacken, and he was about to withdraw his hand when she spoke.
“Don’t kill him,” she said.
He stared into her eyes, which looked absolutely lifeless. “I have to.”
“No, you don’t. Lauren doesn’t need that. And she doesn’t want that.”
“You have no idea what she wants,” Mark said.
“What the hell are you saying?” Larry asked.
“She doesn’t know. Nobody can,” Mark said to his uncle.
“Doesn’t know what?”
“You heard her. Telling me that Lauren wouldn’t want me to kill him.”
His uncle reached out and grabbed his shoulder and shook him. When he did it, Mark’s hand was pulled away from his mother’s, and there was a fragile static jolt and then stillness. Mark blinked and looked at her face-dead; she was unquestionably dead.
“She’s gone,” Larry said. “She’s been gone. What in the hell is the matter with you?”
Mark sat back on his heels. She was gone. He wiped at his eyes again, as if to clear something from them, and then turned to Garland Webb. He was motionless at the base of the steps.
Mark got slowly to his feet. He’d never felt less steady. Well, in Siesta Key, maybe. After the sheriff’s deputy gave him the news. Maybe then.
He said, “You need to get out of here, Larry.”
“I’m taking her.”
“No. She’ll slow you down.”
Larry’s voice was firm. “I’m not leaving her in this place. I’ll set her somewhere clean. Not here.”
Mark didn’t argue. Didn’t speak at all, in fact, while Larry gathered his mother’s body gently into his arms and stood. She looked so small.
“She’s my sister, son,” Larry said. “I’ve not left her behind yet.”
His uncle left without another word, carrying her body through the high fence and out to the world beyond. Then it was just Mark and Garland Webb.
71
Got him. The realization filled him with wonder rather than triumph. Pate had seemed untouchable since that first sighting in Jay’s house, his implacable calm evidence of something he’d understood from the start-he would survive. He would win.
The train whistle shrilled, low and mournful, and Jay looked east and saw the oncoming lights and then looked south to the silhouette of his truck, to the trees where Pate had anchored all the cables for the trap.
Jay wouldn’t have enough time to detach them from the towers. No chance. But he also didn’t need to. Not anymore, not with Pate and the gun gone. If Jay could cut the cables at their anchor point and haul them across the tracks and over to the north side, he could just watch the train roar by, the engineer oblivious to the near disaster.
There was enough time left for that. The train was coming fast, but Jay could climb down faster. The fear was gone now and the old faith was back. He knew the steel better than most men knew their front steps.
Sabrina was safe, Jay was alone, and Eli Pate was not going to win any part of this day.
72
Mark found an ancient kerosene lamp in the cabin that cast a faint, flickering circle of light where he sat waiting for Garland Webb to regain consciousness. Inside the circle, it felt as if the world had condensed-or collapsed-and this place was all there was to it. The massive western sky, blanketed with stars, hung so close it seemed to be within reach, but the mountains had vanished in the blackness and all that remained was the circle of lantern light that contained Markus Novak and Garland Webb.
There was nothing else.
And yet they were not alone.
Lauren was between them. Mark understood that. She was somewhere in that light between him and this other man, and his always-receding memories of her felt closer, fresher, sharper.
More painful.
His mother’s last words, the imagined words, the impossible words, would also not recede.
Lauren doesn’t need that. And she doesn’t want that.
He knew that it was true. Lauren had seen many horrors and studied countless more, yet her opposition to capital punishment had never wavered. Not for a second.
But still he could not leave.
He had to know how it had come to pass. How his wife and his mother, two people who had never met and who were separated by thousands of miles and many years, had come to die at the same man’s hand.
Mark wished he could believe in coincidence. He had never liked that notion before, but now he wanted to wrap it around himself to keep the other possibilities at bay.
He couldn’t, though. Not here in the mountains of his youth.
Garland Webb stirred a little and moaned. He was slumped over, held partially upright by the post Mark had tied him to, and Mark reached out and jabbed his belly with the muzzle of the rifle. Webb grunted and his eyes fluttered open. He looked directly at Mark, and then closed his eyes again. This happened several times before he registered Mark, and then he tried to rise. The knots caught him.
Mark said, “You know who I am?”
He was still foggy with the drugs, but he shook his head.
“Think about it,” Mark said.
Garland Webb blinked at him, wet his lips, then stared at the ground as comprehension returned. Mark could see a change in his face.
“Novak.” He slurred the name.
“Good. We were going to wait until you had it. I’m glad you’re finally there.”
Webb looked away from Mark, scanning in other directions.
“There’s nobody else,” Mark said. “You are alone.”
When Webb’s attention returned to Mark, there was hate in his eyes, and Mark was pleased by that.
“You told your cell mate that you murdered my wife. Bragged about it.” Mark had a tremor near his left eye, but his hand was steady on the rifle. “What we need to determine is whether you told that man the truth.”
Garland Webb smiled.
Mark’s hand moved toward the trigger of the AR-15 almost involuntarily. He considered things for a moment, then set the rifle aside entirely and took the revolver from his jacket pocket.
“This is a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. I think you’re familiar with them.”
Webb didn’t say anything. He kept smiling.
“Why don’t you tell me what you told the other man, Garland.”
Webb did not slur when he said, “Go ahead and use the gun.”
Mark shook his head. “I don’t intend to use the gun. I would like you to talk.”
“You think that will help you? Why? How would it help you?”
“I need to know if you killed her.”
“Yes.”
Holding off on the kill shot was incredibly hard. Mark gripped the.38 so tightly his hand ached.
“You’ve been told the truth all along,” Webb said. “You’re just missing one thing. Why she wanted to go to Cassadaga. You don’t understand that, do you?”
Mark cocked his head. The reason had been clear. Dixie Witte was the reason. The case had been bound for Mark’s desk when Lauren intercepted it and told Jeff London she’d take it because Mark wouldn’t believe the psychic was credible.
“Why was she in Cassadaga?”
“Looking for your family.”
Mark stared at him for a few seconds and then shook his head. “No. She wasn’t, and she wouldn’t have been. Try again.”
“She was,” Webb said simply. “You can deny it if you’d like, but I’ve never feared truth. I embrace it.”
“Not in the courtroom.”
“The courtroom is not my truth.”
“Lauren knew nothing about my family other than that I wanted no part of them,” Mark said. “And she sure as hell wouldn’t have consulted a psychic to find them.”
“Correct. She didn’t want a psychic. She wanted a town.”
Mark felt cold, remembering that house in Cassadaga, the fevered sickness of the place, its dark allure.
“Why would she want a town?”