“Because your mother had written her a letter about it.” Webb was enjoying himself now. Enjoying Mark’s face, whatever reactions he was seeing there. “Your mother is the reason any of us went to Cassadaga.” His laugh ended in a cough. “Maybe that’s not right. Maybe your father is the reason. He convinced her it was a special place. She convinced Eli. It suited him. He liked the energy there. For a while, that was going to be Wardenclyffe. Until your wife came, with the letter from your mother.”
“She came for a case. I know that. I was part of it.”
But he could see the possibility of truth here. A wider truth than what he’d known before. Fuller, like a sunrise revealing a world that was different than the one you’d imagined in the night.
Garland Webb spoke with mocking patience, as if talking to a dullard. “That case was the excuse. She really had questions about your family. Didn’t you wonder why she stayed in town after she was done with Dixie Witte?”
Everyone had wondered. The car being on Kicklighter Road never made sense. Unless she had a second goal in town. A secret goal.
“Are you ready to laugh?” Garland Webb said. “Here’s the best joke you’ll ever hear, Novak. Your mother told your wife that when the dark rose, you two should go to Cassadaga for protection. I took that letter. It was the only thing I took. Feel better now? All the answers-do they help?”
His laughter was rich and delighted. Mark slapped the side of his face with the gun barrel. As soon as he’d done it, he felt rage thundering in his blood and he wanted to swing again and again, until Webb’s face was nothing but a memory, the remains nothing but blood and bone fragments. He stilled himself with an effort. Webb grinned, forcing blood from his lacerated lips.
“It’s about trust. You and your wife kept so many secrets from each other.” He made a tsking sound. The blood bubbled on his lips when he did it. “No trust.”
Lauren had knocked on the wrong door, and she had given her name. Mark’s name. The one that she’d taken as her own, along with all that came with it. She had been killed for this. Because she had joined her name with his, and his past had infected her like a cancer.
Mark shook his head. “No. That is not why she died. That is not enough.”
“But it’s true.”
“Why kill her?” Mark said.
Webb’s indifference vanished and his face turned graveyard serious, almost innocent.
“Eli told me to.”
Garland had done what he’d been told. How would that play in court? What deals would he be offered for testimony about Pate?
“If you’re going to kill me,” Garland Webb said, “let’s move it along. I don’t fear it. I welcome it. Death for a cause isn’t death at all.”
“You’ll be a martyr, that’s what you think?”
“I’ll have died for a purpose. Not like your wife.”
Mark grazed the trigger. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertip where it touched the metal. A pulse like thunder, telling him to just end it. Lauren’s memory urged him otherwise.
Evidence. Find the evidence that shows the truth. A bad detective builds a case, his wife would say, a good one finds the truth.
“How did you get her out of the car?” he said.
Webb seemed to consider not answering or perhaps telling a lie, but in the end he smiled again and said, “I called for help. I waved at her and shouted for help. She stopped right away. Got out of the car. Didn’t even close the door. And I pointed into the woods and I said, ‘She’s drowning.’ That’s all I said, just those two words. I just needed to get her away from the road, but she ran away from it.”
Lauren had stopped her car because of either trust or threat, the police had surmised, detectives torn between opposite theories. For the first time, Mark had heard an explanation that fit Lauren’s character: she had been trying to help.
His mouth was dry and his head ached. He could picture the pearl-white Infiniti on the side of the road, door standing open. Could picture the way Lauren would have run. Without hesitation, without questioning.
She’s drowning.
Yes, she would have run fast. She would have run right down that dark path.
His hands were shaking. Webb saw it and his smiled widened.
“Look at you,” he said. “Just look at you.”
Shoot him, Mark thought. Kneecaps first, then testicles. Then find a knife and cut the flesh from him in strips. Skin him alive and leave him for the wolves.
He worked saliva back into his mouth and said, “I will have to prove this, you understand? I don’t think this confession will hold up in court. Not under your current circumstances. I suspect a judge would consider this unfair duress.”
“You can’t prove it,” Webb said. “So you’ll have to use that gun.”
Mark shook his head. “Not an option.”
“You are a very weak man.”
“Maybe.”
“Weaker than your wife.”
“Absolutely. I always knew that.”
Webb laughed again. His face looked bright in the lantern light. The sound of his laugh traveled through Mark’s nerves like an electric charge. You’re making the wrong choice, he thought. It’s like you told Jeff-who’s to say what she thought in the last seconds of her life? Who’s to know that her heart didn’t change then?
“You don’t get to keep taking things from her,” Mark said. “Lauren was so much more than I deserved. And she wanted to keep me clean. She died trying to do that.” His voice had the sound of a wood rasp. “You don’t get to take that from her. This would be an execution, and she did not believe in execution. She believed in hope. Lived for it. You live for fear. You don’t get to beat her. You don’t get to win.”
“I’ve already won.”
“I don’t think so. You’re going to prison. And who knows, maybe Innocence Incorporated will take your case. But I’ll be working on the other side of it. You’re going to stay in prison this time, Garland. God help me, I will see to that.”
“She would have been ashamed of you. You’re nothing like her. She had the kind of fight I enjoy. I wish I’d had more time with her. It just wasn’t the right day for that. But when she saw the gun, her eyes, oh, they were wonderful.”
Mark’s finger slipped back onto the trigger. The gun shook in his hand.
“Most times, I see fear,” Garland Webb said. “But with your wife? She was angry. When she understood what was about to happen? She wasn’t afraid of me, she was angry with me, and she looked beautiful. You know the look I’m talking about. The two of you would have had fights, arguments. Then you made up, I’m sure. I bet that was fun. How could it not have been with her?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You wanted talk! So I’m talking. And, yes, you know the look I’m describing. How the anger can actually be sexy. She radiated sex in that last moment.”
“Shut the-”
“No, it’s important for you to know the way she looked at the end! I want to complete the picture for you. All those hours you must have imagined it! What you’re probably missing is the anger, and the sex. You imagined fear, imagined terror, but you were wrong. Trust me, after she saw the gun, she was something beyond gorgeous. I had to shoot her in a hurry, because time was an issue. I think she felt my hands on her, though. Yes, I would say the last thing she ever felt was my hands on-”
The bullet split the center of his forehead. His eyes went wide and his jaw slackened and his tongue fell forward a half a second before his head did. Bright blood streamed from his skull.
Mark looked at his own hand and back at Webb, and for a moment he was truly and deeply confused. Then he heard footsteps and turned to see his uncle.