Last Words

36

The gray skies opened up again as he drove, but this time it was rain, which helped melt the snow despite the low temperatures. The address for Julianne Grossman led him out of town and a short ways up into the hills, where the trees grew tall and dense. Mark turned into the driveway, a steep gravel track that led straight back down the hill and into the trees. Branches littered the ground, casualties from the recent storms. They crackled beneath his tires. At the base of the drive was a small, narrow house with weathered siding painted a deep red, like an old-time lake cottage. A carport with a sagging roof protected a red Honda Civic.

When Mark cut the engine and opened the door, a dog slipped out from under the wooden porch and peered at him, and at first he thought it was a fox, with its near-orange coat and upright, pointed ears. Its hackles rose and then it dipped back under the porch, and as Mark walked through the rain and up the steps, he heard a low growl from under the boards, like a troll under a bridge. Welcoming place.

When he knocked, the growling under the porch went up in pitch. A moment later he heard soft footsteps, and then the dead bolt ratcheted back and the door opened, still secured by a thin chain latch, and Mark saw her face.

Mark said, “Why, hello, Mrs. Martin. I was hoping we could discuss your daughter’s case again.”

To see her was startling as hell for him and should have been worse for her, but she simply said, “Hello, Mr. Novak,” as if he were an expected and welcome guest.

“Mind if I come in?” he said, moving his foot against the door. “Get out of this rain?”

She unfastened the chain and opened the door wide. She was wearing loose-fitting white pants that billowed around her legs and a pale blue sweater, both of which made her blond hair seem like the darkest part of her. Mark had an eerie flash of the hallucination he’d had of Sarah Martin in the cave. Then, worse, of Lauren underwater.

“Yes, please come in. The last thing you need is more time in the cold. It’s excellent that you found me. So much better than the alternatives.”

He stood in the rain, staring at her. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Not at all. It’s critical that we speak, but the fact that you found me under your own power is so much better.”

“You can drive yourself to the sheriff’s department and I’ll follow, or we can call them here to get you,” he said. “I’ll leave that one up to you.”

“And why would I go to the sheriff’s department?”

“You impersonated a dead woman, a murdered girl’s mother, and you think that’s viewed as harmless fun? I assure you that the sheriff will be eager to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she said, no trace of distress in her voice or face. “I never impersonated anyone.”

“You called Sarah ‘my baby,’ you lying bitch.”

“You’re upset, and that’s fine. In your defense, though, I’d like to say that—”

“In my defense?”

“—that you were speaking with Sarah’s mother at some points. There was a channel open, a conduit. Just as it was when you talked of your wife. It was extraordinary to see.”

He pushed through the door, grabbed her by her shirt, and shoved her into the house. She flinched more from surprise than fear, his face inches from hers, and then met his eyes with a questioning look, waiting for his next move.

“True things,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “That’s all we’re going to talk about.”

He heard the clicking of paws on the porch floorboards and the growl became a snarl as the dog rushed up the stairs and at him. He released Julianne Grossman and turned as the dog rose up on its hind legs as if to strike, then hesitated in midair, dropped back to the ground, and danced away, head dipped, chagrined. When Mark looked back at Julianne Grossman, he saw that she had one hand lifted, palm out, a silent command that the animal had obeyed completely.

Mark was nonplussed, ashamed by both the burst of physical aggression and her calm in the face of it and even by the self-control the dog had exhibited, superior to Mark’s own.

“Follow me,” she said, and then turned her back to him as if she had nothing to fear from anything.

As dark as it was outside, with the cold rain falling from an overcast sky, the cottage seemed to trap light. Everything had a bright, airy feel and was clean and ordered, as if not a single dust mote could be tolerated. The living room was small but neatly furnished with a couch facing two rocking chairs; the walls were lined with books. Crystal prisms hung in the window, reflecting light that shouldn’t be there, and there were maybe half a dozen unlit candles.

“Sit,” Julianne Grossman said, indicating the couch. She took one of the rocking chairs, crossed her legs elegantly, and looked at Mark, waiting. He didn’t sit.

“You want true things,” she said. “Everything I’ve told you is true. It’s a matter of perception. But I understand your reluctance to believe.”

“Stop,” Mark said. “Just shut the hell up. I’ve met better frauds, Julianne. I was raised by one. Spare me the psychic bullshit. It’s offensive to the dead and to those who cared for them.”

“For a skeptic,” Julianne Grossman said, “you entered trance most willingly. I didn’t even really have to work at it. Your unconscious mind seemed almost eager.”

Mark started to respond but whatever words he’d intended didn’t come. The word trance lingered in his mind, and he found himself coughing instead of speaking. His lungs scorched.

“We’re going to the police,” he said when he was done, “and we’re going to call a few reporters on our way. They don’t believe I talked to you.”

“Not true. They don’t believe you talked to Diane Martin. And you’re hardly prepared to prove them wrong by producing me.” She had an eerie calm, and he was reminded of the one tell he should have picked up on — she’d been too composed when she spoke of her supposed daughter. Far too composed.

“If the police were to search your house today, would they find any ketamine?” Mark asked. “Because I can arrange that search.”

“They certainly would not. I’m not a fan of narcotics. They make my work far more challenging. It’s harder to reach the unconscious if there are synthetic barriers in play. Would you like to hear a recording of our meeting, Mr. Novak?”

“I don’t need to hear it. I was there.”

“Let’s see about that,” she said, and then she stood and walked away, vanishing down a corridor. When she returned, she held a digital recorder in one hand.

“I don’t need to hear something you’ve had days to tamper with,” he said, but he felt a knot twisting in his gut.

“I actually think it would be prudent for you to get a sense of what really happened before you begin making calls to the media.” She played with the buttons and then Mark’s voice became audible.

What’s your concern in the case, Julianne? I don’t understand how it affects you personally.

There was faint static and background noise, but even so, there was no doubt that it was his voice and that he had called her Julianne. The knot twisting in his gut morphed into a sharp, ice-cold blade.

Julianne Grossman pressed pause. “Now, I’m not a detective, but it doesn’t sound like you had much confusion over my identity.”

“How did you alter that?”

“I didn’t alter a thing.”

“Slick trick, but I’m the wrong person to try it with. My company has contacts with the best audio forensic experts in the world. It’ll take them twenty minutes to blow that bullshit out of the water.”

“There’s that option,” she said, “or we could listen to a bit more, and maybe you’ll reach a different understanding.”

She returned her attention to the recorder, advanced it to the place that she wanted, and then played it. This time it was her voice, that strange cadence even more eerie over the static.

This has been a good conversation for you, hasn’t it? Yes. Yes, it was beneficial, wasn’t it?

Mark, sounding as if he’d overdosed on quaaludes, responded: Yes.

There are ways it might have been an even better conversation. So much better. For you, and for Sarah Martin. You know that there are ways, don’t you? There are always ways. So much beyond what we know. So much beyond what we say. But you feel those ways, don’t you?

Yes.

Of course. Of course you do. And the ways that allow you to feel close to her are the best, because it matters so much that you feel close to Sarah, doesn’t it?

Yes.

Some of those ways feel out of reach now, don’t they? They feel like something beyond you, beyond your potential. But they are not beyond your potential, Mark. You’re feeling that now, aren’t you? You’re understanding that your potential has changed. That all the old approaches can be improved upon. Tell me what you think about your old approaches?

They can be improved upon.

Mark felt like rushing at her again; hell, he felt like hitting her this time, knocking her onto the floor and taking that recorder and smashing it until it turned to fragments and then until the fragments turned to dust. He couldn’t move, though. He stood, frozen, listening to the voice he knew was his own speaking words he didn’t remember saying.

To feel closer to Sarah, would it have helped you if you had spoken to her family, do you think? Would that have helped?

Yes. It would have helped.

Think back on this conversation, then. Recall all that was said and all that was beneath the words. Because you know that there were things beneath the words, and you know that what was beneath the words mattered most, and always does, and always will. The words we say are not what matters most, are they?

No. The words do not tell the story.

The words Don’t embarrass me with this shit knifed through Mark’s brain, and he winced. Julianne watched him in silence.

So you know this. And you know that what was beneath the words you heard today could have come from someone close to Sarah, could they not? They could have come from her mother, perhaps. Do you think that is true?

Yes. That is true.

Would you like to remember the conversation that way? So that you can focus on what counts, and you can open your mind to new approaches?

Yes.

Then you will. You will remember that you spoke to Diane Martin, Sarah’s mother. You will remember her pain. You will remember her desperate thirst for truth. You will remember that what is beneath the words is what matters, and what was beneath the words came from Diane Martin. Do you remember this?

Yes.

Who did you speak with today?

Diane Martin.

And what mattered?

What was beneath the words.

Exactly. All of this you already know, and so all of this you will remember.

“Stop it,” Mark said. His voice broke. “Turn that damn thing off, turn it off now!”

She stopped the recording. Her face was serene.

“It’s jarring to hear, I’m sure. But if you—”

“How did you do that? Did you drug me? I’ll have a blood test done, and if—”

“No drugs. You might do some Internet searches later on something called the Erickson handshake induction. You’ll see some obvious frauds, and some things that once would have made you laugh. But now? Now you won’t laugh.”

Down in the hotel lobby, she grabbed your wrist. It looked like a handshake at first, but she took hold of your wrist. It was a strange contact.

But it couldn’t have been that simple. There was no way. You didn’t just take hold of someone’s wrist in an unusual manner and then ask him unusual questions and through those means convince him that his reality had changed. It couldn’t be done.

“It was ketamine,” he said. “You didn’t hypnotize me, and you know it. There was a drug involved, and that’s easy enough to prove.”

“Then feel free to prove it.”

“How long have you known Jeremy and Brett Leonard?” Mark asked. “What about Evan Borders?”

Her face appeared genuinely puzzled, but she was a fine actor. “I’ve heard Evan’s name, but the others are new to me.”

“Sure they are. I’ll find out where you got the drug and I’ll connect you to them, but it won’t be necessary for that stupid damned recording anyhow. People will hear that and they’ll know that I was set up. You just proved my story with that alone.”

“But what if they heard this?” she said, and she played another segment.

I had a snitch in Coleman prison down in Florida. He told me that he’d heard a rumor that someone in there had killed Lauren. And so I offered him ten thousand dollars and free legal assistance for his appeal if he... if he confirmed the rumor.

And how was he going to do that?

By any means necessary. And if it was confirmed, he had another hundred grand coming his way, though even he didn’t know that, because we didn’t get far enough along.

What was the other hundred grand for?

Killing him.

You would have arranged a man’s murder? You would have been comfortable with it?

If I could prove that he was the one who’d killed my wife? Absolutely. Without hesitation, I’d have had him killed. My only regret would be that I couldn’t do it myself.

Mark couldn’t speak. The plan that he’d had for the inmate in Coleman had existed only in his own mind. He’d had no fear that someone might find out about it, because he’d never voiced the plan to a soul.

Or so he had believed. They’d talked about it, but he hadn’t said... Even as he thought about it, though, it began to feel familiar. Feel vivid, in fact. He could see that table in the bar, could see her face, the face he’d believed was Diane Martin’s, and could recall her composed acceptance of the news when he’d delivered it. Yes, it had happened. How in the hell had he not remembered it?

“What are you thinking, Mr. Novak? You’ve grown very quiet. What’s on your mind?”

“You own me now,” he said.

“I don’t like that term.”

“But it’s the truth. You distribute that recording, and you can blow my life up. You know that and so do I. So what do you want? What in the hell do you want from me?”

“I want you to put Ridley Barnes in prison.”

He stared at her. “What? I thought you were working with him.”

“So does he,” Julianne Grossman said. “That’s why I had to go to the regrettable lengths that I did with you, in fact. Ridley does not trust easily. You have to prove yourself in the most severe ways to reach his inner circle. I’ve done that, I’ve broken my own ethical code to reach that point of trust with him, and I won’t waste that now.”

“Why do you care so much about Ridley Barnes?”

“Because I listened to him confess to the murder of Sarah Martin, Mr. Novak. Is that reason good enough for you?”

37

For a long time there was no sound but a ticking clock in some other room of the house. Julianne Grossman sat and waited and finally Mark said, “When did this happen?”

“During a trance session with Ridley last month. I make my living by using hypnosis to help people through their difficulties. Most of the time, that involves addictions or fears. I help people quit smoking, lose weight, gain the confidence to handle public speaking. Ridley came to me with a different problem; he said that he didn’t remember whether he’d killed a child, and he wanted to know.”

“You believed him.”

“At the time, yes.”

“And now?”

“Now I believe that Ridley Barnes is a wickedly smart sociopath. I believe that he killed that poor, sweet girl and got away with it and that too much time has passed and he’s grown bored. It’s important to me to keep him occupied. Do you understand why?”

“You think he’ll kill again if he’s not.”

“I fear it’s a very real possibility.”

“That’s a determination a good psychiatrist might be able to make,” Mark said. “Not a hypnotist. And if you’d had true concerns about Ridley and any conscience at all, you’d have spoken to police about this. They’re not aware of any confession, so I don’t think that you’ve told anyone about it.”

“No, I haven’t spoken with police.”

“So you’re full of shit,” Mark said. “If you’d heard it, and believed it, and cared as much as you claim, you’d have gone to them. Anything else is a lie.”

“You’re an experienced investigator. You should understand just how much value a confession given under hypnosis means. It’s all but useless in the courts now, which is a true shame. One of the most valuable tools for witnesses has been removed due to ignorance and a few dishonest practitioners.”

She wasn’t lying about this. At one time, police departments in Los Angeles and New York had maintained dedicated hypnosis units. There had been a brief flash point of excitement about the technique, but that had been all but obliterated in appellate courts. Arguments of implanted memory and coercion, along with scathing questions over the expertise of the hypnotists, had created an environment in which neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys saw much gain in introducing anything procured through hypnosis. It carried all the legal problems of the polygraph multiplied by the potential for human error and human fraud. The once-booming study of forensic hypnosis was not a popular approach anymore.

“I tend to agree with the courts,” Mark said. “You realize the recording you played for me does absolutely nothing but prove that point? If you could convince me you were Sarah’s mother, what’s to stop you from convincing Ridley to confess?”

“You’re part of the game now,” she said, “and I played a role in bringing you in. For that, I don’t apologize. I need the help. I apologize for the methods, because I realize they were hurtful. But I need the help.”

In the silence, all Mark could hear was the ticking of that unseen clock.

“Can you turn that thing down?”

“The clock?”

“Yeah.”

“It bothers you?” She smiled, and he felt a surge of annoyance, because she seemed to understand why it bothered him — a childish, irrational fear that she was somehow going to be able to claim his mind against his will, use the ticking of the clock to lull him into a trance.

“It bothers me because it’s all I can hear,” he said. “And you’re supposed to be talking.”

“I’ve done my talking, Mr. Novak. You can run screaming to the police or to the media all you’d like, but I promise you this: the moment you do, Ridley’s belief that he has me as an ally — and right now he believes that firmly — is gone. And the best chance at seeing him answer for his crimes goes with it.”

“So you’re going to extort me into helping you?” He gestured at the recorder that was still in her hand. “I’m supposed to trust someone who’d rather blackmail me than approach honestly?”

“I’ve already told you that this was about gaining Ridley’s trust, not yours. I understand why it would be counterproductive for our relationship.”

He almost laughed. “Yes, it could be viewed as counterproductive. I’m hanging on to my career by a thread, and you’re the reason!”

“The purpose our meeting served is already paying dividends. I filmed my early sessions with Ridley until he decided he didn’t like that. This morning, he returned one of those videos to me. Because of you. Because of what he feels your presence means to the cave.”

“Means to the cave?”

“You’ll understand that soon enough. Now I’ll make you an offer. You feel blackmailed, you feel taken advantage of, all of these negative things. You fear the recording in my hand, don’t you?”

Mark didn’t say anything. She already knew he did.

“I’ll turn it over to you,” she said. “You can destroy it or do whatever you’d like with it, provided you give me twenty minutes of your time. If after those twenty minutes your concern is still with the recording, you may take it and go. I hope that won’t be the case.”

“What are we going to achieve in twenty minutes?”

“You’re going to watch a video.”

She had no television in the living room, so he followed her down a narrow hallway and into a small bedroom that had been converted into an office of sorts. Bookshelves filled three walls — most of the titles had to do with hypnosis, mindfulness, or spiritualist topics — and the other wall was occupied by an ancient oak desk with a high-end Mac computer. The computer felt out of place in the room, the lone intruder. Julianne sat at the desk and fed a DVD into the disk drive. Then she turned to Mark.

“You’re the first person other than me to see this. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

For a few seconds the screen was a bright, empty blue, and then it filled with an image of Ridley Barnes sitting alone in a straight-backed chair with a small pillow tucked behind his head. His eyes were closed. Mark recognized the room as Julianne’s living room. She advanced the frames until she reached a place that satisfied her and then she stood up, stepped back, folded her arms, and let the video play.

The first voice that came, off-camera and soft, was Julianne’s. Mark recognized the familiar, lulling cadence.

“Tell me more about Trapdoor. You’ve been there for a while, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Ridley said. “Longer than I planned. Longer than I was ready for.”

“Tell me what you see,” Julianne said.

“Nothing.”

“Why can’t you see anything?”

“Darkness.” Ridley’s voice suggested that speaking took effort and he wanted to do as little of it as possible.

“Is the darkness all around?”

“All around.” He nodded slightly. His back was rigid, but his neck muscles seemed so loose that they were barely capable of holding his head upright, requiring the support of the pillow.

“Why is it dark?”

“Lost my lights. Too long down here. Too long.”

“Why do you think it has been too long?”

“Tired. I’m tired. And...” His head rocked again, as if he were struggling to free his own thoughts, and then he said, “And it’s dark. It should never be dark.”

“Right. It shouldn’t be dark. So why is it?”

“Because my lights are gone.”

“Where did the lights go?”

“Burned out. I’ve been down too long.”

“Why did you stay so long?”

“Because I can hear her.”

Mark felt his breath catch. He’d been watching the video with skepticism, or trying to, but there was something in the surreal sound of Ridley’s answers that felt authentic.

“What do you hear?”

“Crying.” Ridley’s voice wavered and nearly broke. “She’s crying. And I know she’s right there, but I can’t find her.”

“You hear other things. There are other sounds. Tell me what they are.”

Ridley’s hands began to tremble and then the rest of his body joined in a single shudder.

“She’s asking me to stop.”

Mark felt a prickle along his spine.

“To stop what?” Julianne Grossman’s voice said.

Silence. Ridley’s eyelids fluttered but he didn’t speak.

“What is the thing that she wants you to stop?” Julianne asked.

“I don’t know.”

“She wants to be found, doesn’t she?”

These were the kinds of moments she’d mentioned to Mark, the moments that would render the video inadmissible in court. She was guiding him, coaxing him. An attorney couldn’t get away with those tactics on cross-examination even with a coherent witness, and when the witness was hypnotized, it stood absolutely no chance. The opposition would call it memory implanting, and that would be the end of it. That didn’t mean hypnosis wasn’t a valid technique, though, and it didn’t necessarily mean that she hadn’t gotten the truth from him.

“I think so,” Ridley said, his voice so soft that Mark leaned closer to the computer.

“Then why would she want you to stop looking?”

“She wouldn’t.”

“No, she wouldn’t. She would want you to continue, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain of this?”

“I’m certain.”

“Good. Very good. You know this to be true, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And since you know it to be true, then what does she want you to stop?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look around you. Tell me what you see.”

“Nothing! Nothing, nothing. It’s all dark, I can’t see.” His voice had gone high, had an edge of hysteria that raised the hair on Mark’s arms.

“Tell me about the place. Use all of your senses. Tell me what you can feel.”

“Stone and... and dampness.”

“You’re in the water?”

“No.”

“What’s the dampness, then? Are the stones wet?”

Ridley’s body shuddered again, but he didn’t speak.

“What do you smell?” Julianne Grossman asked.

“Blood.” This answer came without pause, none of the previous hesitancy or sense of effort, just a simple, matter-of-fact statement. Mark’s mouth had gone dry and though he wanted to see Julianne Grossman’s expression he couldn’t bring himself to look away from the image of Ridley on the screen.

“You smell blood. Yes. Good. Your memories are strong, aren’t they? Because the senses hold memories, and you are using your senses. They hold more memories, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Smell the blood, then. Use your senses to find the source. Are you bleeding?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So where is the blood coming from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is the dampness that you feel water, or is it blood?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was still high, and now it had an angry quality, as if the questions were frustrating him.

“Can you still hear her voice?”

“No.”

“But she was speaking. Now she is not. Why did she stop speaking?”

Ridley’s voice dipped again, soft and low. “She’s too cold,” he said.

“She told you that she’s too cold?”

“No. I can feel it.”

“How can you feel her sense of the cold? How is that possible?”

“Because I’m touching her. And she’s too cold. She can’t speak anymore. She won’t speak anymore.”

“Where is she?”

“In my arms.”

“When did this happen? When did you reach her?”

“I don’t know. Time is... confusing.”

“Did you hurt her?”

On the screen, Ridley Barnes began to shiver. A single tear leaked down his cheek and into his beard.

“Did you hurt her?” Julianne Grossman repeated.

“Maybe.” His voice was childlike.

“You need to tell yourself the truth. You need to be honest with yourself. Did you hurt her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is the blood hers, Ridley?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Why are you touching her?”

“I’m moving her.” Each word sounded weighted with guilt.

“Why?”

“Because she shouldn’t be there anymore. Because they’re all waiting for her.”

“How long have you been with her?”

“Too long. Too long in the dark. She’s too cold, and we’ve been too long in the dark.”

“Is she alive, Ridley?”

“No. No, I don’t think she is.” More tears now, and the shivering was relentless. The neck pillow slipped loose and fell to the floor.

“Was she alive when you found her?”

“I think so.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Because she talked.”

“What did she say?”

“‘Please, stop.’”

“What did she want you to stop?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you stop?”

“I don’t know.” He was shaking, and his hands were opening and closing. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“Why did you go into the cave, Ridley?”

“To rescue her.”

“Did you do that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Bad things happened. Things I didn’t mean to do.”

“What didn’t you mean to do?”

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t.”

“Of course you didn’t want to. But did you hurt someone?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

“Did you kill?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill Sarah Martin, Ridley?”

“I think so.”

This proclamation, loud and shrill, put the first dent in Julianne Grossman’s steady, unflappable voice. There was a silence, and when she spoke again it was clear that she was searching for the right words and tone, that the questioning was no longer as natural.

“Tell me how that happened.”

“She was his responsibility. They’ll all blame me but she belonged to him first.”

“What do you mean, belonged?”

“If it’s my fault, then it was his first.”

“Who are you referring to? Whose fault was it?”

“The dark man’s,” Ridley said simply.

“Who is the dark man?”

“I don’t know. How would I know?” He was getting edgy again, and his fingers were in motion, tapping on his legs like a nervous piano student fumbling through a bad recital.

“Did the dark man come into the cave with you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then when did he join you?”

“He was always in the cave.”

“That can’t be true, can it?”

“Yes. Trapdoor sends him. He is the cave. He is the cave.”

“Think about this. How can it be true?”

“It’s true. It is true.”

Julianne was pushing too hard now, and Ridley was resisting. For the first time, a clear break had appeared, and even in his trance state, Ridley was beginning to view her as an interrogator and not a guide. She seemed to realize it because she changed tacks, but it was too late.

“Focus on the things around you,” she said. “Don’t worry about how it all came to be. Return to your senses now. Only the senses. Just tell me what you see, what you feel, what you hear, what you smell.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Ridley said. “I can’t be here anymore.”

“That’s all right. You’re fine, you’re safe.”

“No. Not here. In this place, no one is ever safe. Not ever.” The words had gone frantic.

“You’re safe,” Julianne said. “Can you say that? Say the words and know that they are true. Say the words.”

“I’m safe.” He sounded like a blubbering child being talked out of a crying fit, promised that his injury didn’t hurt as bad as he thought it did. His breathing had gotten so rapid that he was hyperventilating. It was as if Ridley’s mind had blown a fuse, and whatever protection the hypnotized state had once offered him was now gone.

“I want to leave. Please. I want out of the dark. Please.” Each word left him with a gasp.

“Then we’ll leave it behind. We’re going to count our way back now, all right? We’re going to start at one, and when we reach ten, you’ll be back where you are safe. You will feel better, because you’ve asked yourself the right questions, and you know that you need to ask those questions. When we reach ten, you will feel safe, and you will feel peaceful. You will feel these things because you deserve them, don’t you? Yes. You deserve to feel safe and peaceful. You deserve that. One... You know that you deserve peace. Two... And when you return you will feel good, you will feel alert and strong and clean, you will feel so much better than before. Three... You know that you deserve safety. Four... five... six.” As she counted up, her voice rose in volume just a touch, a slow but steady increase, and even from just the recording Mark could feel a shift in his own energy. “You have done all of the right things, and you have asked the right questions, and you will feel better now than before, you will be a new and better version of yourself, because you have sought these things. You will feel the peace that comes with doing the right things... seven... eight... Let yourself feel warmth again. Feel warmth and see light. Everything will be brighter now. Everything will be safe. Nine... feeling the warmth... feeling so good and so peaceful... and ten.”

Ridley’s eyes opened on ten with an unseeing stare that focused quickly. His chest rose and fell in long, deep breaths. His hands were motionless against his legs; his body was still. For a moment, the screen held on his eyes, which were looking directly into the camera, and then the picture went black.

38

Mark let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. Julianne was still standing just as she had been, a few steps behind him, her eyes locked on the now blank computer screen, her arms folded.

“That was in December,” she said. “I’ve continued working with him, but we’ve never gotten back to that place. Never so far. He’s very guarded now. As I said, I have had to prove myself as an ally. I couldn’t go to the police. You might disagree, but I know what would have happened. They would have dismissed me, then they would have been too aggressive with him, and the bond of trust I was forming with Ridley would have shattered.”

“But there’s been no gain to it,” Mark said. He was still shaken by what he’d seen. He’d never watched anyone speaking under hypnosis before, let alone confessing to a murder. “Your trust hasn’t led to anything good.”

She turned from the screen to face him. “It’s led to you.”

He didn’t answer right away. The clock ticked somewhere down the hall, and the wind drove rain against the windows, and Julianne Grossman stared at him as if she were waiting for an answer to a question that hadn’t been voiced.

“What am I supposed to do?” Mark said finally. “What do you think I can do that the police can’t?”

“Engage him in the way he wants to be engaged,” she said. “That’s the secret. He chooses who gets to play the game, don’t you see that? He gave the police nothing. Ever. He gave me something, and once he realized that he had, he came back around. I had no idea how to handle it, nor did I have the skills. It’s why I convinced him that we needed help to get his truth. When we found you... well, it was easier then. Because of your wife, you fit the role quite nicely.”

Mark ran a hand over his face and it came back damp with sweat. He was dizzy and wanted to sit.

“Was Ridley playing with you, or was that legit?”

“Do you mean was he really in trance? Yes. I’m certain of that. I’ve been a practicing hypnotist for twenty-two years. I know when someone is faking, and I know when it is real. Ridley was in trance.”

“And you’ve put him back in trance.”

“Yes. But he no longer shows interest in recall or trapped memories. He speaks of the dark man, he speaks of the cave as if it is a person. He speaks of what the cave wants him to do.”

“What do you make of the dark man?”

“He’s a part of Ridley. A part he wants to deny.”

“But that portion in which he talks about Sarah being someone else’s responsibility suggests that she wasn’t alone, doesn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. I suppose he could be blaming Evan Borders for losing her, but I think he’s blaming himself throughout. You just watched a chess match, and Ridley Barnes lost. To his own subconscious. I don’t think it happens often, though. I think he usually wins.”

“Even if I agree with everything you said, I don’t see how I can help. This” — he pointed at the computer monitor — “is not what I do. A forensic psychiatrist might have a shot with him. I wouldn’t.”

“I disagree. He has a vision for your role. If you play it, I think we can have some success.”

“What’s his vision for me?”

“You’re supposed to get him access to the cave. He’s certain of this. The fact that you already went into the cave—”

“I was forced into the cave!”

“Fine. Either way, it has validated his vision of you. That the cave wants you. He’s convinced that you can get him access to the cave. That the reach and clout of your firm can do that.”

“My firm wants nothing to do with me.”

“Access is controlled by Danielle MacAlister. She’s more likely to listen to someone of your background than someone of mine. If you could gain her cooperation, Ridley would view it as progress.”

“I’m not going back in that cave.”

“Why not?”

“If you’d spent the quality time down there that I did, you wouldn’t need to ask. But there’s also simply no gain to it. Let’s imagine it’s possible for me to get access, which I doubt, but let’s imagine it. What good comes of having Ridley in the cave?”

“For hypnotherapy, none whatsoever. We would ordinarily never expose someone to fear-inducing imagery. In somnambulism — that’s deep trance — the imagery becomes very, very real. Ridley carries powerful beliefs about Trapdoor on both the conscious and subconscious levels. At the level reached in deep trance, he believes that Trapdoor is a source of special power. It’s not that strange when you consider the experience he had there, his closeness with death and violence and questions of his own survival. Over time, however, those experiences have become more deeply associated with Trapdoor in his mind. It has become a mythological sort of place to him, capable of bestowing gifts on people and... and requiring gifts from them.”

“Gifts,” Mark echoed. “Can you elaborate on that?”

She looked at him for a long time before she said, “Lives. Deep in his mind, Ridley believes that the cave can grant them. Or demand them.”

“Fantastic. If no good can come from it, why would you indulge him in the attempt?”

“Because he already knows what happened in that cave. And what other trance sessions have told me — when I’m able to achieve deep trance with Ridley, that is, he can be a challenge — is that he wants to show someone where it happened.” She swallowed, and for the first time she looked afraid. Outside, the wind picked up and grew louder, and the dog began to howl along with it, as if concerned over the changes that were on the way. “In particular, he wants to show me.”

“You truly believe that he would take you to where she was killed? That he would tell you the truth?”

“I can’t say that for certain. But I know that I can’t walk away from what I’ve heard.” She moved to a closet set between the bookshelves and opened the door. On the back of it, carefully taped, were articles with enlarged photographs of Sarah Martin. Old newspaper items covering her disappearance and the discovery of her body.

“I knew her mother,” Julianne said.

“Hey, that’s funny, so did I! I wouldn’t mention that around town, though. Just a bit of friendly advice.”

When she turned back to him, her eyes were dark. “You think you were the only person who was hurt that night, and that’s far from the truth. I’ve told you why I did what I did.”

“Sure. To appease a sociopath.”

“In part,” she said. “But there are many more layers. You need to know all of them to make a judgment. That’s your problem. You’re too comfortable determining the shape of the world from the surface.”

“Of the many problems facing me today, that’s not a high priority.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She looked at the articles again, all those bold headlines announcing no leads, no arrests, and finally a “Ten Years Later, Still No Answers” anniversary piece. Mark thought about Lauren’s case. Sixteen months in, no arrests. What would they write in ten years?

“Diane Martin came to me at the recommendation of a friend,” Julianne said. “It was the year her husband was killed in a car accident. She was struggling with insomnia. She visited four times, and on the last visit reported that she was finally sleeping well. She said that she was dreaming vividly and that most of her dreams involved her daughter, and that in them, her daughter was always happy.”

Julianne closed the door slowly. “I reached out to her when I heard about Sarah. I didn’t hear back, but that wasn’t surprising, because everyone was reaching out to her then. I offered to help her in any way that I could. I never heard from her again. When she died, though, it was from an overdose of sleeping pills.”

“Maybe she didn’t think your techniques would work again.”

“Maybe she didn’t know if she’d find any peace in her dreams.” Julianne Grossman stepped away from the closet and looked Mark in the eye. “When Ridley came to me, I considered refusing. I suppose I should have. But my theoretical conflict of interest was dead, and, frankly, I was curious. I wanted to know what he would say. That’s the truth of everyone in this town — we all want to know what he would say if he’d talk. Well, I got to be the lucky one.” She turned away and took a deep breath. “Then I learned what is being done on her case: nothing. Nothing. Investigation has ceased. If he was honest in that confession, and I believe that he was... ” She turned back to Mark. “I can’t be the only one who knows. If he wants to bring me to the place where he killed her and tell me how he did it, I’m willing to take that walk. But I need help. I need someone who believes in what you just saw, someone who won’t roll his eyes and say that confession was coerced, someone who understands that you can tell the truth without ever being aware of doing it. I need you.”

“My only concern is my job,” Mark said. “You’ve threatened my career. My life. The rest of this, the story you just told? It doesn’t matter to me, Julianne. As much as I hate to say it, Sarah Martin doesn’t matter to me, either. Let me be absolutely clear: I don’t care. I just want out of this town with my life intact. That’s all.”

She crossed the room and stopped close to him, nearly touching him. The force of her stare seemed to hold his feet to the floor, making movement impossible. He struggled to keep the eye contact.

“Somewhere in the world,” she said, “someone knows the truth about your wife. I wonder if they care.”

He didn’t answer. She pressed the digital recorder into his palm.

“There’s your career,” she said. “There’s the truth you came back to Garrison to find. Do what you’d like with it.”

39

Mark turned the wrong way out of Julianne Grossman’s house and drove through the rain down an unfamiliar road until he reached a dead end and realized his mistake. Instead of turning around, he put the car in park and wiped sweat from his brow with trembling hands and then shook his head, as if he could clear his thoughts from inside it. Turned the AC on and cranked the fan up in hopes the cold air would sharpen his thinking. The digital recorder that Julianne Grossman had used to threaten his career was now in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and stared at it for a few seconds, considering this supposed goodwill gesture. She could have made copies of the recording. She could be e-mailing them to his board of directors right now, and the sheriff, and anyone else who was interested; she could be burning CDs to distribute far and wide.

He pressed play and turned the volume up so he could hear the conversation clearly, and for the next twenty minutes he didn’t move, just sat there with the air-conditioning blasting on him even though it was thirty-some degrees outside and listened to his own voice telling Julianne all of the things she had wanted to hear. He listened to the way she’d asked him, in a casual but still direct fashion, for his own permission before various points of questioning. The permission was always granted.

There’s the truth you came back to Garrison to find.

He punched the power button and shut the recorder off.

If he shared the recording, people would know the reason he’d lied, supposing that they believed in hypnosis, but if he shared it, people would also know that he’d planned to murder a man. He could pull select clips, but sooner or later someone was going to want to hear the whole thing.

Some gift she’d bestowed upon him. Some peace offering.

He took out his cell phone and called Jeff London.

“Any progress up there, Markus?”

“Some.” Mark had the recorder in his free hand and was looking at it as if it were a snake. “But not all good.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You’re not going to like where I go with this.” Mark took a breath and said, “Jeff, do you believe in hypnotism?”

“What do you mean, do I believe in it? As in, does it exist? Of course.”

“I mean...” He wanted to ask whether Jeff believed that someone could be hypnotized and never remember that it had occurred, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. “If I told you I put any confidence in a confession a man gave under hypnosis, you’d tell me I was crazy, wouldn’t you?”

“Not at all. I’d tell you that we likely couldn’t get it into court, but I wouldn’t tell you to discount it.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. I’ve got friends who worked with the old units at NYPD and LAPD. Some of those guys swear by them. There was that famous kidnapping case in California, the one where the bus driver accurately recalled most of a license-plate number under hypnosis. Another one, this was crazy, they were interviewing a victim who said she couldn’t recall any information about the car she’d been abducted in, right? All she said, over and over, was that she didn’t know anything about cars, so she couldn’t help. Well, she was an artist. They hypnotized her and asked her to sketch the car. She drew it so accurately they got a make and model, located the car, and then found forensic evidence connecting the car not only to her but to other victims. That story really piqued my interest. You ought to see the sketches compared to what she said in the initial interviews. Her mind recorded so much detail, but somehow, because she didn’t know cars, she had convinced herself that she wasn’t capable of remembering it. Who gave you a hypnotized confession?”

“Ridley Barnes. But I never figured you’d put any credibility in things like that.”

“Hell, I’ve consulted hypnotists,” Jeff said. “Now, I lead with skepticism. Always. But you have to try any tactic in a dead-end case, and I’ll listen to anybody once. If the facts stand up, I’ll keep listening. Most times, with those types, they don’t. But every now and then, something I’m hard-pressed to believe in will bear some fruit. I mean, I didn’t send Lauren to Cassadaga on what I thought was a fool’s errand.”

Mark forgot the question he had been prepared to ask about Julianne Grossman’s techniques. Forgot about Ridley Barnes and the cave and the Indiana rain that was turning to ice. He was on a sidewalk now, standing on concrete baked by a harsh sun, saying, Don’t embarrass me with this shit.

“You sent her?”

“Of course. You knew that. We spoke to the police together.”

“I knew that you understood where she was going. I just thought that it was her idea.”

“What the hell does that matter? It was an assignment. She was on the job.”

“But I thought it was her idea,” Mark repeated, and he wanted Jeff to say that it had been, he wanted that even more desperately than he’d wanted Jeff to believe him about what had happened in Garrison.

“It wasn’t her idea, it was her instruction,” Jeff said. “But I don’t see the difference. She was working for me. You want to blame me, then—”

“No,” Mark said. “You don’t understand. I didn’t want her to go, because I thought you wouldn’t have approved of her consulting a psychic. I thought it would have been... embarrassing. That last day, I was trying to talk her out of it to shield her from that. From your response.”

“She went at my instruction. The only thing I would have had a negative response to was her not doing her job. That day, that was her job. I wish it hadn’t been.”

“She had a chance to tell me that. We argued about that. I was upset that she was giving the story any credibility, I said you wouldn’t support it and she’d hurt her standing with you if she filed the report. Why wouldn’t she have said it was your instruction?”

Jeff’s voice softened. “Sounds like you were a little caught up in trying to protect each other.”

“How so?”

“The original assignment was intended for your desk. She convinced me that was a bad fit for you, and she asked for it.”

“What?”

“She told me that you weren’t equipped to interview the woman. The one who said she was a psychic. The woman had identified a few things, and I thought it was worth the wild-goose chase. As I said, I’ll listen to anybody once. So I was going to send you, but then Lauren heard and said that you wouldn’t do the interview well. I’ve never told you that because... well, because it seemed like an unnecessary addition of pain. I thought telling you that she’d stepped in for you would only hurt worse. But now you’re asking. She told me you wouldn’t do the interview well because you wouldn’t think the woman had any credibility. That you’d scorn her, and if there was anything legitimate, you’d overlook it. She said that was a personal hang-up of yours and that she didn’t want me to put you in that position. It would be hard for you, she said. Unfair, that was the word. She said it would be unfair to you.”

Rain drummed off the hood of the car and ran down the windshield, putting a crystalline buffer between him and the clarity of the world beyond.

“She said it would be unfair for me.” His words tottered out as if they were just learning to walk.

“It doesn’t matter in any ways but good ones,” Jeff said. He sounded as if he regretted having told the story. “She wanted to take care of you. Always. You know that.”

“But I was the one who should have been on that road.”

“Don’t think about it like that. Think about it the way she’d want you to: she was looking after you, Markus.”

“‘Don’t embarrass me with this shit,’” Mark said. “I said that to a woman I was more proud of than anyone I’ve ever known. ‘Don’t embarrass me.’”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing, Jeff. Let’s get back to the point of the call.”

What had the point been? Mark didn’t remember, didn’t care. He was glad when Jeff picked up the baton.

“Is anything about this confession, the hypnosis deal, going to help you?” Jeff said. “Because that’s why you’re there, right?”

I can’t be the only one who knows. If he wants to bring me to the place where he killed her and tell me how he did it, I’m willing to take that walk. But I need help.

“Right,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Well? Can this shit help you, or is it a dead end? You don’t have time for dead ends. The board meets day after tomorrow, and this time you’ll need to be here for it with whatever you have to offer.”

Mark turned the recorder over in his hand. “I’m getting close,” he said, and the drumming became a rattle as the rain turned to ice.

40

In all the time that he’d been working with her, Ridley Barnes had gone to see Julianne Grossman for every session. When her car pulled into his yard, tires skidding in the mix of rain and snow, he felt a black chill spread through his chest. He had carried his secrets to her. If they returned to his doorstep in a rush, he knew it was trouble.

“What’s happened?” he said, opening the door as she jogged through the dampness and up the porch steps.

“He watched it.”

Ridley stood stock-still, oblivious to the cold rain. “Novak? You played him the video?”

“Yes.”

“He came to you?” Ridley said. “Today?”

“Yes.”

“Was he alone, or was he with Blankenship?”

“He was alone.”

Ridley let her in and closed the door and found himself feeling vulnerable and exposed as she looked around his house. That was laughable, considering he had let her probe the blackest places of his unconscious mind, but he felt it all the same.

“Do you think he will be a help?”

“I do. It’s early to tell, of course. That’s why I came here — I wanted to let you know immediately, and in person. I didn’t want there to be any surprises.”

“And how did our friend Novak, the chosen one, react to my confession?”

“He seemed to believe it.”

“Well, he should. That’s not what I’m asking. Does he understand the importance of the cave?”

“He wants the same thing you do, though he’s not fully aware of it yet. He wants to return to Trapdoor. I’m almost certain.”

Ridley went to the woodstove and busied himself with stoking the fire just because he needed something to do, a place to direct the energy that was pulsing within him.

“He’s not what I’d hoped,” he said with his back to her. “He’s too rigid. I don’t think he understands the first thing about that place.”

“Earlier you thought that the cave might have shown more of herself to Novak than to others.”

Ridley watched the flames grow and then he added fresh wood and cupped his hands and soaked in the warmth as the fire crackled.

“Why are you here?” he said finally, still without turning.

“I was afraid he might be headed this way. I wanted to prepare you.”

“I can handle him just fine. He’s no different than any other detective.”

“He most certainly is. You sent for him, Ridley. You asked him in.”

“And you supported it. Suggested it, even.”

“I did, and I do now, but with much more caution. Much more. Because I see real risk. For the both of you.”

“What would you like me to do about that?”

“Challenge yourself,” she said.

He looked over his shoulder. “I’m not hurting for challenges.”

She nodded. “So you can bear another one, can’t you?”

He didn’t answer.

“You’re going to need to trust him first,” she said. “You’re going to need to be vulnerable with him, Ridley, in ways that you don’t like to be.”

He returned his attention to the fire. A blackened piece of ash went up in an orange glow and licked toward the front of the stove as if it had eyes on escape. He grabbed a rag to keep from burning his hand and pushed the stove door closed, sealing in the flames, then adjusted the damper so that the fire could exhale.

“I can keep my control around him,” he said. “That won’t be a problem.”

But he was thinking of Novak inside of Julianne’s house, invading that safe haven, and his hands opened and closed on the rag. She had suggested getting involved with Novak, and it made sense to recruit someone from the outside. Now he had his doubts. Even while she was exhorting him to show control, she was removing some of it from him.

“I’m simply telling you that he’ll need to be shown trust,” Julianne said. “If you can’t do that, then it may be better to send him away. If you still can.”

If you still can. There was an accusatory flavor to the statement, an indictment, and he wanted to whirl around and shout that it had been her idea in the first place. The tension that had been growing in him in recent days was reaching a high-water mark.

“I won’t need him if I can just get access to that cave,” he said.

“I know you’d like that. I also know that you have some fear related to that place.”

“That’s the wrong word.”

“It’s the word you use when you’re in a state of trance.”

Once again, he found himself disliking her. Trance had been an intriguing gambit once upon a time, and certainly they had reached interesting places and had fascinating conversations. Lately, though, he wondered if she believed she had more power over him than she truly did.

“Nothing will go wrong,” he said.

“Your subconscious disagrees. Your subconscious has disclosed, on multiple occasions, that you fear a return to Trapdoor will provoke a return to violence. That you may harm people.”

She said all of this flatly, as if reading information off his driver’s license. That was part of her approach with him, always had been — she listened to the discussion of violent deeds and the potential for worse and responded to them with detachment — but still, it unnerved him.

“I fear harming people?” he said, and he smiled in the firelight. “Well, that is troubling news, isn’t it?”

“It isn’t news to you. I came here because I wanted to tell you what had happened with Novak and tell you what I think.”

“Which is that I should trust him.”

“Yes.”

Ridley nodded, and the motion cast rippling shadows along the wall. “I’ve trusted you. With Novak, I am only willing to wait. He’s seen what he needs to see. There will be no further contact between you. Not until I’m convinced that he can, in fact, be trusted.”

“We’ve already agreed that—”

“What was agreed to has been done. What he does from here, we’ll just have to wait and see. He must come to me now. Not you. Only me.”

“That may be out of my control, Ridley. He could return. He could return with the police.”

“And you will send him away.” He turned from the stove to face her. “Is this understood?”

Her expression didn’t change. “I’ll send him away. Until you’re ready. And you will need to be ready.”

“I lack many things, Julianne. Readiness is not one of them.”

41

Mark drove to Trapdoor with air vents angled onto his face, blowing cold air into his eyes to help him stay alert. The road seemed to swim at times. Twice he looked at the GPS for guidance and realized that he’d never put in an address. He made the turns with confidence, though, as if the route were familiar.

The gate at the top of the drive was closed and locked. Mark left the car and walked down the slushy drive. The rain was beginning to mix with snow.

Cecil Buckner didn’t spot him this time, or if he did, he didn’t care to stop him. Mark made it all the way to the front door. When Danielle MacAlister opened it in response to his knock, her eyes went wide. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. I just need some help.”

“Well, get inside.”

Once he was inside, dripping water onto her hardwood floors, he realized that her concern wasn’t over his presence so much as his condition.

“I’m a little under the weather still,” he said.

“You look awful. Sit down.”

He sat on her leather sofa without removing his jacket. If there was a more comfortable couch in the world, he couldn’t imagine it. Lord, he was tired.

“Did Cecil let you in?” she said.

“I walked down.”

She didn’t seem pleased to hear that.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Coming in like this. But I need some help.”

She was looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and caution. “What can I do?”

“I need a copy of a map. One of the maps that Ridley drew.”

“Why?” She folded her arms over her breasts in a protective fashion, and Mark observed that she wasn’t wearing a bra and that she was in sweatpants and a T-shirt, and he wondered what time it was and why he didn’t know that.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Do you need me to call someone, Mr. Novak? You don’t look well.”

“Just tired,” he said. “I’m on my way back to a hotel, but I needed to stop here first. I’d like to have a copy of one of those maps. I need to get a sense of where I was. At the time, in the dark, it was hard to get my bearings.”

“The maps won’t show where you were found.”

“But Ridley would know. Ridley could show me, because he’s the one who found me, and he’s the one who made the map.”

“I suppose.”

“I’ll just make a copy,” he said. “You can come with me, never let it out of your sight.”

“You can have the original for as long as you need it.”

He thought that she would have offered him just about anything as long as it ensured that he left her house in a hurry.

“I’ll find the maps,” she said. “Wait here, please?”

She went to a door that led to a staircase, but she passed through the kitchen first and picked up a knife with a long, shining blade. She was afraid of him. He wanted to tell her that wasn’t necessary. He meant no harm. He just needed to get a sense of Trapdoor. Down there alone in the dark, it hadn’t been possible. He’d get a sense of it, and he’d ask Ridley to show him, and he would watch Ridley. He wanted to watch Ridley with those maps, and maybe — maybe — he’d ask what Ridley would think of giving him a tour, of showing Mark exactly how he’d gotten lost.

Danielle closed the door behind her and he heard her footsteps on the stairs and then he leaned back against the plush leather couch to wait. When his head settled against the cushion, he closed his eyes despite himself. With a couch like this, a man would never need a bed. Speaking of which, he was going to need a bed. His lungs hurt and his throat was sore and his body ached. He listened for her footsteps on the stairs and hoped that they wouldn’t come too fast, that she wouldn’t hurry. He just needed a few minutes with his eyes closed. It had been a long day.

When he woke, the room was dark except for a soft lamp in the corner, and he had no idea where he was. He closed his eyes again, wanting to retreat, but then the reality of his situation intruded and he straightened up fast, hoping that he’d been asleep for a minute or two, no more.

From the corner opposite the lamp, Danielle MacAlister said, “I’ve been debating whether to call the police or a doctor. I’m really not sure. In the end, I just let you sleep.”

“You don’t need to call anyone.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes and felt radiant warmth from clammy skin. “I’m sorry. I’ll get out of here.”

“It’s past midnight, Mr. Novak.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. She was still wearing the sweats and had her auburn hair pulled back and tied loosely so that it fell over one shoulder, and the formidable, authoritative quality that she’d had before was gone and she looked very young. There was a tenderness in the way that she watched him that should have been sweet but instead was unsettling, because it had been a long time since anyone had looked at him that way.

“You’ve slept for a long time. It was obvious that you had a fever. You slept like a dead man until about an hour ago, and then your fever broke and you were covered in sweat. You started talking in your sleep a little. I think your dreams were awful until then. Then, when your fever broke, they changed.”

He swung his legs around and put his feet on the floor. The room seemed to keep swinging when his own motion was done.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a long day. I pushed it when I shouldn’t have. You didn’t need to let me sleep, though.”

“You talked about your wife.”

Mark retied a boot lace that was already tied just to give him an excuse to look away from her. “Did I?”

“Yes. It was actually very... sweet. You talked to her as if she were here. I know that she’s not. I mean, obviously she’s not here — I’m saying that I know what happened to her.”

Mark looked up, and now she seemed flustered.

“I researched you, of course,” she said. “It seemed prudent, after you’d trespassed on our property. I had to see who I was dealing with, that’s all.”

“Sure,” Mark said. He wanted to know what he had said to Lauren in his sleep, what had been so sweet, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. He rose unsteadily, each bruise taking the opportunity to announce its presence. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I fell asleep here. This was embarrassing.”

“Where are you going now?”

“I’ll find a hotel.”

“It’s past midnight, it’s snowing again, and you’re ill. All things considered, I think you should stay here tonight. There’s a blanket and another pillow next to the couch. Just so you’re aware, I will be in the room at the far end of the hall. I keep the door locked, and I have a handgun, and I’m accurate with it.”

She spoke with a firmness that suggested she believed in her capabilities to protect herself, and no doubt she did. The young often believed in their own capabilities and their own safety. Too often.

“You won’t need any locks or guns,” Mark said.

“I’ll make that judgment, thank you.”

She left him then, and a few seconds later he heard the door close and the lock engage. He turned and looked out of the window behind him and saw nothing but blackness and a skein of ice on the glass. The wind came in shrieks and howls. He knew he should leave but the thought of that long walk through the snow and up the hill to his car seemed exhausting, and the motel where he’d paid for surveillance videos that morning held no more appeal. He took his boots off, stretched out on the couch, and didn’t even bother to look for the blanket or pillow she’d mentioned. He was asleep again almost immediately, and though she’d said he’d dreamed sweet things of his wife, all he was aware of dreaming of now was Ridley Barnes, Ridley sitting in a straight-backed chair with his eyelids fluttering, then Ridley with a smile like a deranged clown and endlessly dark eyes. I told you, he said, all you needed to do was spend some time down there. In the dark. Let’s go back. Let’s go back to where we both belong.

And Mark followed, because in the dream he had no other choice. He knew that it was the wrong path, the dangerous one, and yet he followed Ridley out of the light and into the darkness. He was cold immediately, and then his clothes were gone and he was crawling in the dark again, crawling once more in an endless room, and though he was alone, he knew that Ridley was still with him, invisible but watching, always watching.

42

Mark woke before Danielle MacAlister. He rose from the couch and went into the kitchen, poured a glass of water, drank it gratefully, then chased it with another. In the pale light of dawn he could see that maybe two or three new inches of snow had fallen overnight. He’d slept deeply and he felt physically better and more mentally in control than he had when he’d arrived. That thought disturbed him more than it comforted him, though, as if his coming to Trapdoor hadn’t been his own idea.

If you can get Danielle MacAlister’s cooperation, Julianne had said, her unseen clock ticking loudly, and then Mark had driven to Danielle’s house.

There was a laptop computer on the dining room table, and Mark went to it and opened it and got on the Internet and began to search for information on Julianne Grossman. He found no criminal or civil charges, but Garrison County and Orange County did not strike him as places where local records would be picked up by the major search databases. Small towns required local searches, even in the computer age. In general searches, all he found was that she had a website advertising her services and that her professed specialties were just as she’d claimed: help with addiction, anxiety, confidence building. She identified a number of hypnotherapy certifications that meant nothing to Mark but neglected to add any formal educational history. She appeared to be a local girl who’d gotten very interested in hypnosis very early. As an agent for positive change, I will help you rewire your brain to transform! she promised on the site.

He ran searches for the Erickson handshake induction she had referenced. He watched half a dozen videos of people supposedly put into immediate hypnosis with a few slight hand movements, and he said “Bullshit” under his breath. You’ll see some obvious frauds, and some things that once would have made you laugh, she had told him. But now? Now you won’t laugh.

She was right about that much. He wasn’t laughing.

“Make yourself at home,” a voice from behind him said, and he turned to see Danielle standing in the kitchen.

“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s fine.” She waved him off and turned her attention to the coffeemaker. She was dressed in jeans and a formfitting long-sleeved shirt, and she stood barefoot on the hardwood floors. Her auburn hair was loose around her shoulders, and the sight of her, so natural and comfortable in her own home, drove thoughts of Lauren at him like a spear. There had been other women since Lauren, but not many, and he’d never lingered long enough to see one of them at home in the morning. Watching Danielle MacAlister go about making coffee was, in its own way, a more intimate moment than any he’d shared with a woman since Lauren died.

“Last night you wanted maps,” she said. “Do you still?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we can go downstairs and pick one out.”

He closed her laptop and came into the kitchen. “Why are you cooperating?”

She set the coffee to brew without answering, then watched it for a few seconds. When the pot began to fill, she turned back to him.

“You’ve been told that I wouldn’t, I take it?”

“That seems to be the family reputation.”

“It better be. The property is my family’s and there’s no small amount of liability risk with a cave. Your situation is the perfect example. If you’d died in there, someone might have sued us, even though you’d trespassed.”

“That explains your defensiveness. But I asked about your cooperation.”

She took a breath, pushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes, and said, “Ridley Barnes talked to you.”

“Correct.”

“Ridley Barnes hasn’t talked to anyone in ten years.”

“You want to know what he says to me.”

“And why. Yes. If you bring Ridley a map and he sits down and looks at it and talks to you about the cave? About anything? My God, would I love to know what he has to say and why he’s decided to say it. It’s fascinating. He hasn’t spoken to anyone about Sarah, at least not as far as I know.”

“He speaks to Evan Borders.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“They exchanged calls the day I ended up in your cave. I found that interesting, to say the least.”

“Ridley talks to Evan.” She said it as if she were trying to believe it.

“At least that day. Did you know Evan?”

“Oh, yes. He’s very different now than he was back then.”

“How was he back then?”

“Funny. He was an entertainer. He liked to get you laughing, and he was good at it. That’s hard to remember now.”

“He wasn’t telling many knee-slappers when I met him, that’s for sure.”

“Evan is another casualty, in my opinion. He wasn’t killed, but whatever happened that night took what he was, what he could have been, and snatched that away. Then he became what the town probably expected him to be all along — like his father. One of those people who just seem destined for bad luck and trouble, you know? But when he was a kid...” She shook her head. “There’s a reason a girl like Sarah Martin ended up in that cave with him. You see him today, you wonder how it would be possible, because he seems...”

“Threatening,” Mark offered, and she nodded with what seemed to be real sorrow.

“He’s angry white trash now, right? That’s what people who don’t know him would say. Isn’t that what you’d say?”

Mark thought of the bins overflowing with Busch cans, of the rental house that was waiting on a teardown. “He’s trying to play the role, at least.”

“That’s my point. He was given a role, and it was given to him that night in the cave.”

Mark understood something about being given a role and about the way you could play a different one if you cared to try, but he didn’t want to argue with her. He was about to ask another question when he was interrupted by an electronic chime. Danielle leaned over and punched a button on an old-fashioned intercom screen that was mounted on the wall above the kitchen counter.

“Good morning, Cecil.”

“Miss MacAlister, I think that asshole from Florida came back.”

Danielle smiled at Mark, then pushed the talk button again. “I’m aware of this. He’s actually standing here with me now.”

There was a pause, but Cecil’s voice didn’t betray any less hostility when he spoke again. “I didn’t know he was on the property. From the snow, looks like he has been all night.”

“It’s under control, Cecil. Thanks.”

The intercom light blinked off. Mark nodded at it and said, “That’s connected to the garage?”

“Yes. And he has a radio.” She shook her head and poured coffee into two mugs and passed one to Mark. “He’s quite the watchdog, our Cecil. Always vigilant. Only took him twelve hours to notice your car.”

“Yet your father has paid to keep him here for ten years. Even Cecil seems confused by that.”

She drank some of the coffee without looking at him and said, “Let’s go downstairs and get your map.”

They were back in the unfinished basement room with the map-covered walls when Mark said, “Why do you still have this place? Why let it sit for a decade?”

“That wasn’t my choice. It will be soon enough, I’m afraid. My father isn’t well.”

“Will you sell it?”

“Absolutely.”

“So why hasn’t he?”

“He promised Diane Martin he would keep the cave closed,” she said. “That was when they were still speaking. Whatever they had, it fell apart fast after Sarah died. Selling Trapdoor would have made him feel like he was profiteering when he should be suffering, I think. So he put that gate up, put the locks on, and left it to sit like some sort of monument to the dead. Any thought of selling it ended completely when Diane overdosed. He never came back to Garrison when he heard that. Not once. I’m the only person in the family to have stepped onto this property in the past four years, and I wasn’t any more eager to do that than he was. For my family, Trapdoor became a very bad place, very fast. There’s nothing but a lot of regret here.”

She sat down on the old recliner, and dust rose from the cushions. She pulled the wooden handle on the side of the chair and the footrest rolled out with a protesting creak.

“You know this was the first place I ever made out with a boy? Not kissed, I’d been kissed before, but I mean really... you follow.”

“I follow the mechanics, sure. I don’t follow why you’re talking about them.”

“It felt terrible. Not the make-out session, that’s not what I mean. At that age, you don’t know what feels good yet.”

“Then why’d it feel terrible?”

“You’re a detective,” she said.

“That’s right. But apparently not a very good one, because I don’t know why we’re talking about this.”

“Do some detecting, then,” she said. “Why does a girl feel terrible for kissing a boy?”

Beside them the furnace kicked on and the exposed ductwork above began to hum. Mark looked at her and said, “Evan Borders?”

“You are a detective.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

“When he was dating Sarah?”

“Yes.”

“You were competing for him?”

“Oh, no. I had no interest in Evan. He was a sweet kid, cute and funny, but he was Sarah’s.”

“So you kissed him...”

“To hurt her,” Danielle said. “I wanted to really hurt her, you know? In the worst possible way.”

“Why?”

“Because I was seventeen years old and my father couldn’t keep it in his pants and he was getting married again and Sarah was delighted about it. She was just thrilled. She’d talk about it all the time, she’d write me notes, send these cute little messages all with the same theme: we were going to be sisters. But I didn’t want to be her sister. I wanted to be her friend, and I wanted my father back with my mother. She was so clueless about that, so obtuse, and it drove me crazy. I wanted to punish her. And what’s the best way for one teenage girl to punish another?”

“Through her boyfriend.”

“There you go. I knew it was an awful thing to do, of course. That was the point. I was trying to be awful. Because she needed to be punished, you know, for daring to act as if it were a good thing that my father was marrying her mother. For daring to want to be my sister.”

She wiped at her eyes again. “That was the last weekend I was here. I went back to Louisville two days later, feeling very self-righteous about what I’d done, about teaching that little bitch a lesson. But that’s all it was, understand? A lesson. A temporary thing. I’d see her again in a few weeks, and we’d get over it. Of course we’d get over it, because we were seventeen years old and we’d be family for the rest of our lives, right? The rest of our lives. It would be a footnote by the time we were twenty, something we laughed about by the time we were forty.”

She put the footrest down and got out of the chair, returned to the file cabinet, opened it again, removed a photograph, and handed it to him. There were nine teenagers pictured, four boys in T-shirts and five girls in tank tops that said Trapdoor Caverns. They were standing in front of the entrance to the cave, everybody smiling, the sun on their faces. In the back row, Evan Borders looked relaxed and charming, a kid ready to cruise through the world. Just in front of him, kneeling with their hands on their slim, tan thighs, were Sarah Martin and Danielle MacAlister. Their heads were close together, their smiles wide. Sarah was just a few weeks away from another photo shoot, this one in the county morgue.

“Look at those eyes,” Danielle whispered. “She had eyes that shone. Eyes that belonged to some pop love song. And when Evan came by? Her eyes took on a luminescence when he passed through. She was always smiling too. Immune to the petty and melodramatic things that you’d get between kids. Because she was trying to show her maturity that summer. Trying to act older to impress Evan. To impress me. I can’t lie about that. She looked up to me, and I knew that. How awful then that I was the one who was petty and melodramatic. I was the child to her. My God, her father had died a few years earlier, and I was so dramatic about a divorce that I wanted to punish Sarah? How awful is that?”

She stepped away from Mark and sat back down on the ancient, creaking recliner. The day was young but she looked as if she wanted it to come to an end already. The question Mark asked then wasn’t a detective’s question at all.

“What was the last thing you said to her?”

She looked at him with surprise. “Why does that matter?”

“Don’t you remember? I think most people do when they lose someone. Or if they don’t, they come up with something. They need to remember, whether it’s accurate or not.”

Her chest swelled with a deep breath, and then she said, “I told her that she’d never be my sister, and I hoped she was classy enough not to take my family’s last name for her own.” She managed to say it without looking away from Mark, but it was evident that the statement was a bloodletting.

“You were right,” she said. “People remember. I wish that I didn’t, though. What was the last thing you said to your wife?”

“Told her that I loved her.”

“Do you know what I would give to be able to say that same thing?” Danielle asked, and Mark looked away.

They were quiet for a few moments. Danielle sat in the recliner and gazed around the room as if she didn’t recognize it.

“You asked why we let this place sit,” she said. “Understand now? Trapdoor seemed so pure once, seemed so magical. Right up until my father proposed to Diane Martin. And do you know what? Diane was lovely. She was a lovely woman, and her daughter was the same, and I knew that. Even when I went out of my way to hurt her, I knew that. I just wanted to be allowed to be angry about it. He was my father, and he’d left my mother, and I was entitled to my anger, and Sarah didn’t get it. But my anger wasn’t supposed to last. I understood that even then. The fight would pass, and we’d be fine. We were seventeen. You get another chance then, always.”

She tucked her feet beneath her so she was sitting curled up on the oversize chair, and she cried without making much of a sound. He didn’t say a word, because he understood. She needed to weep for Sarah, for her father, for Evan Borders, for an unspoiled summer that had been swallowed by darkness. To weep not for the way things had once been but for the way things had been supposed to go and did not. People believed that they were haunted by bad memories, but that wasn’t the truth. The most sinister hauntings were from unrealized futures.

Mark watched her and wondered why he hadn’t told her the truth. Because it was none of her damned business, that’s why.

Then why’d you ask her?

What he’d told her wasn’t a lie. He had said the words into the phone, whether they’d been heard or not. Maybe they had been. How could he know?

You know.

Of course he did. Don’t embarrass me with this shit. For so long, he’d known what he’d meant — his wife was willingly pursuing a fraud’s foolishness. He had known that without question, because it was the truth and the truth didn’t require questioning. Then Jeff London provided his addendum, and the old truth remained but another emerged beside it: Lauren had gone to Cassadaga to protect him. To cover for his weaknesses.

She told me you wouldn’t do the interview well because you wouldn’t think the woman had any credibility, Jeff had said. That you’d scorn her, and if there was anything legitimate, you’d overlook it.

Mark went to the wall and removed the tape from the last map Ridley Barnes had drawn, the one from the summer of Sarah Martin’s death.

“Are you going to see Ridley?” Danielle asked.

“Maybe. First I’ve got another stop to make. We’ll see how it goes.”

43

The dog that looked like a fox was back in the yard when he pulled in. It kept its distance but watched him with total focus and a regal stance, like some sort of mythical guardian. He was wary of it as he walked to the porch, but the dog let him pass without a sound. It felt like the animal had made a conscious decision, one that could easily have gone another way.

Julianne Grossman answered the door and said, “You look better. You’ve slept.”

“I’m going to need you to prove yourself to me,” Mark said.

“I gave you the recorder. You’ve got everything you need.”

“Not enough to prove that Ridley’s confession was anything close to legitimate.”

“I thought that was irrelevant to you. That you — to be absolutely clear — didn’t care.”

Mark said, “I can’t get at the truth of Ridley in an hour. I should be able to with you.”

It could have been a confusing statement, but she followed. “You want to be hypnotized?”

Mark nodded.

“This will tell you, what, whether I’m a fraud?”

“Whether I should believe that video confession of Ridley’s was anything close to legitimate.”

“It won’t tell you that,” she said. “You’ll learn about yourself, not about me. But I get your point nonetheless.”

“You’re from here,” Mark said. “Not Garrison, but close by. How did you come to do what you do? It’s a strange profession for an honest person to pursue.”

“You’re very wrong about that. There are many honest hypnotists. Some frauds, sure. But I suspect there are fewer frauds in hypnosis than there are in banking or real estate. And I’m quite confident there are more in politics.”

“How did you come to do what you do?” he repeated.

“My older sister struggled with alcoholism. Badly. She turned to a hypnotist, and everyone else thought she had lost her mind and was throwing away money. It worked. I was fascinated by that. I’d seen the wreckage of her life, and the idea that this thing had worked, and so effectively... it fascinated me. I read; I studied. I took classes.” She paused, and her eyes drifted, which was unusual for her. “There was another reason too.”

“What was that?”

She refocused on him. “There are always skeptics. Every day, I meet someone who doesn’t believe in me. In what I do. People like you. The personal challenge of that, the emotional challenge? I’ve learned to embrace it. Now, I could provide references, you could interview people about me to your heart’s content, you could go out and do your fact-checking work, but that’s not going to mean anything to you, is it? You need to feel things to believe in them. Every skeptic must. You put faith only in your own judgments, your own experiences.”

He thought of his mother with the dyed braids and brown contacts and self-tanning lotion, dream catchers scattered about.

“Yes, I put more stock in my judgment than in anyone else’s.”

She nodded. “That’s an issue you’re going to need to work on for the long haul, isn’t it? But no matter. We can conduct trance. I think if we—”

“We’ll conduct it just like Ridley’s confession.” Mark held out his phone. “We’re going to record it with this, not your equipment. And we’re going after memories, just like you did with him.”

“What memories, Mark?”

“How I got in that cave.”

She gave another of those measured, steady nods, but he could see intrigue in her eyes. “All right. We can do that. Come on in.”

He stepped over the threshold.

“Take the couch, please,” she said, and then she pulled a straight-backed chair close to him. He sat on the couch and tried to look relaxed, indifferent, crossing one leg over the other and folding his arms over his chest. She reached out and tapped his ankle.

“Let’s try a different posture. Something not so defensive. You’re guarding yourself.”

He put both feet flat on the floor and moved his hands to his sides and was amazed at how instantly vulnerable he felt.

“You’re going to have to be receptive,” she said. “Your pursuit right now seems to be due to sheer skepticism. You want me to prove that I can hypnotize you. I’d encourage you to think deeper. A stage hypnotist could hypnotize you, but it wouldn’t mean that person would be able to ascertain anything of value in working with Ridley Barnes. You want to get at your memories of that day, correct? The day you were hurt.”

“The day I was attacked.”

“And did that not hurt you?”

Mark wet his lips and gave a grudging nod.

“Can we vocalize that, please?”

“Yes, it hurt me,” he said, and the admission was entirely unpleasant. Try, he told himself, you’ve got to try. Think about Lauren, damn it. What she said you couldn’t do. Do not show this woman scorn or contempt, and do not rule out the chance of something legitimate here.

He was in his most receptive mood when Julianne said, “Can you give those emotions a shape?”

“Excuse me?”

“Tell me what shape they have. Those feelings, those hurts. What shape?”

He knew then that it wouldn’t work. Not on him. “I do not have a shape for my emotions,” he said.

“Then we’ll start with a box,” she answered, unfazed. “I think that’s a fine shape for your emotions, Mark. I want you to imagine a box in the center of the room.”

Lauren, baby, I’m trying, I really am, but this...

“Right there where the light goes through the shadow, do you see that?” Julianne said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Imagine the box. When you’re ready, I want you to describe it for me.”

He stared at the place where the light met the shadow, and he tried like hell to imagine a box, to imagine there was anything there but weathered floorboards. He couldn’t, but he didn’t want to admit that, so he said, “It’s wooden,” simply because the floorboards were wood and that was the easiest visual to conjure up.

“What kind of wood?”

“Older,” he said. He still wasn’t visualizing anything. He just wanted to have an answer.

“A large box? Like a chest?”

“No.” He wasn’t sure why he sounded so damn confident about that, considering he was making it all up on the fly.

“So what size is it?”

“Um... maybe about a cigar-box size,” he said, and there was a flicker of an image then, neither real nor imagined, just some spark in the synapses that gave him a vague sense of the thing that he was attempting to describe to appease her. He understood what a cigar box was, of course, he could picture that, and so the image flickered through and was gone and the empty floor remained.

“Keep looking at it,” Julianne said. Her voice had gone lower and softer and he squinted at the floor intently and then thought of how he must look and felt torn between a desire to call the whole thing off and a desire to laugh wildly. Julianne’s voice came again, though, saying, “The box needs to hold all of your focus. Really try. I know it’s not easy, but I can see how hard you are trying. That is very good. That is excellent. Your focus is impressive. Keep your attention out there in the room. There’s a box on the floor, and it is old, and it is made of wood, and it is a cigar box, maybe, or at least it is of that size. Focus on it. Focus.”

Mark stared at the patch of light on the floor trying to imagine a cigar box and thought, This is going to take a while.

It did. There were times when he felt vaguely detached and removed, times when answering questions about an imaginary box seemed important, but then self-awareness would return and jar him, or his mind would simply wander, and thoughts of Florida and Jeff London would intrude, or images of Ridley Barnes on the video, speaking of the dark man. He’d say this for Julianne Grossman — she was patient. She was incredibly patient. Over and over she asked meaningless, silly questions and listened to his meaningless, silly answers, and not once did her energy diminish. She managed to sound fascinated by his descriptions of the stupid damn box, and her voice came on and on in waves that rose and fell and broke over him and then washed back across him, and he was impressed by both her steadiness and her bearing, because it couldn’t be easy. He knew that it was not easy. He’d conducted a lot of interviews. Controlling your focus and emotions was hard enough, but to keep that cadence, that rise and fall, rise and fall, the vocal equivalent of rocking a child, was impressive. He was curious how she did it and how much practice it took and wondered if she was aware of her breathing or if that became natural. She never took a breath at the wrong time, and he thought that was probably critical. Any disruption would break the spell. Although of course there was no spell, no trance. No hypnosis. He’d always been skeptical that it would work on him. He believed that it worked in some situations, the science and evidence seemed undeniable, but it wasn’t for him.

Still, the cadence was effective. He had to admit that. The cadence was relaxing, soothing, and the way she held his focus by asking these ridiculous questions kept the mind from wandering. The visualization technique was smart, too, because it demanded stillness and focus that was truly draining. His vision had begun to ripple along the periphery. Yes, all in all, he could see how her techniques might be effective in time, on the right person. He just wasn’t that person.

When he said, “I think it’s a cave,” he felt a sense of slipping, like he’d hit mental black ice. What question had she asked? He couldn’t remember, but he’d given the answer, and she seemed pleased by it. And the cave was where they were supposed to be going, wasn’t it?

“And what do you see?”

“Blackness,” he said, an automatic answer that seemed logical, but it was also confusing, because what had happened to the cigar box? That was what he was supposed to be imagining. Maybe he should try a little harder. He focused but couldn’t find the floor. He thought he heard distant drums. That didn’t make any sense. He needed to clear his head. Needed to—

“If you would like, you may close your eyes,” Julianne said, and he thought, Thank God, because he was so tired now, and the floor where that box was supposed to be had started to swim from the sheer effort of staring at it for so long. Shutting his fatigued eyes for just a moment sounded grand.

It’s working on me, he thought, and there was some true and deep fear to that realization.

But not enough to keep his eyes open.

44

Ridley should have gone underground after Julianne’s visit — he needed the solace — but he hadn’t. Instead, he had stayed in the house listening to the wind blow snow against the walls, and he debated whether he could still view Julianne as an ally.

Always, she had listened to his needs, and always, she had attended to them. Or so he’d thought. As the snow accumulated and the dark hours passed and were replaced by the light, he considered the evidence against Julianne’s integrity, and he was concerned.

There had been no shortage of people in Ridley’s life who believed they could manipulate him, but he’d not sought any of them out. Julianne was his own find; he’d gone to her for help and she had provided not only help but a sense of possibility. What Ridley had once believed was beyond his grasp, Julianne had convinced him was in fact a reasonable goal.

She had also convinced him that Mark Novak would be of assistance in achieving that goal. The problem, Ridley realized as he tied knots with hands that had gone slick with sweat, was that she had located Novak. Ridley had done the writing, Ridley had reached out, but Novak had not been his discovery. He belonged to Julianne.

That was beginning to feel like a problem.

The decision to trust him with a video of Ridley’s most vulnerable moment, an even greater problem.

The goal, as Julianne had always understood — or claimed to understand — was to grasp the full power of Trapdoor. She had been the only person who had listened to Ridley’s explanations of the cave and not recoiled. She was the only person who had enough wisdom to refer to Trapdoor with proper respect. For all of these reasons, he had felt certain that she was the only person the cave would permit to join Ridley in a quest that had been building for ten years.

The rope slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor and he opened his eyes and stared at it in horror, trying to remember the last time he had dropped a rope while tying a knot.

The snarl of rope lay there like a symbol of the mistake that he had made, and he understood that he should never have written to Novak, but it was too late to fix that. Whether it was too late to give up on Julianne, he wasn’t sure. He’d waited so long for someone like her and had nearly lost hope.

He wiped his hands dry on his jeans and went upstairs to his bookshelves, which were lined with studies on the power of the mind, from a 120-year-old volume on levitation to the latest neuroscience research. There was also a collection on jewelry and gemstones, and the highlighted portions all concerned the sapphire. If there was any topic Ridley would consider discussing with Blankenship — and he’d come close once, only to pull back at the last minute — it was the sapphire necklace. Ridley understood from the police reports that Blankenship had given the necklace to Diane Martin because it was her birthstone. A simple enough reason for a simple man, and Blankenship was nothing if not simple, but Ridley wondered if the stone might have been powerful enough to affect him nevertheless. The sapphire, Ridley had learned in his studies, provided spiritual enlightenment, inner peace, and — most critically — protection from harm. Whether Blankenship might have sensed a harm approaching the Martin household was something Ridley had long wondered.

Eastern cultures believed the stone warded off evil, but if you studied enough, you learned that the gemstone’s power was so mighty as to be selective and that it would protect its first wearer even if it was sold or given away to another. Ridley thought this might explain why it had failed Diane’s daughter, but Diane was dead now as well and there was no one left to ask about this except for Blankenship, who seemed too dull to receive the question properly.

And there was Julianne.

Ridley left the bookshelf untouched and went instead to the knee wall, pressed on the panel, and revealed the room hidden beyond. He retrieved the necklace with the broken chain and handled it carefully. The stone was small and unremarkable in color, but it was genuine. According to Persian legend, the entire earth rested on a core of sapphire, and the sky was blue because it reflected the color of that hidden core. According to Greek myth, Prometheus had been chained to a rock for stealing fire from the gods, and the rock was made of sapphire. Ridley believed both stories could be true. While he could not speak for the accuracy of all the sapphire’s reputed powers, he understood that they must be great because Trapdoor had presented it to him and allowed him to remove it from underground. The necklace, he’d come to realize, was the most sacred of all his possessions — so sacred that he had taken the risk of keeping it with him rather than placing it in the ground near his childhood home, so sacred that he had never shared it with anyone.

Now was the time.

The sun was high in a cloudless sky as he drove to Julianne’s, and, never a fan of bright light, he cursed the harsh white landscape, lowered the visors in the truck, and put on sunglasses. They dulled the glare some, but not enough. He was beginning to feel a real rage over the light when it occurred to him that the sky was sapphire blue and that this was perhaps a good sign. He would show Julianne the necklace and in this gesture of trust he believed her allegiance would be assured once more.

He felt renewed confidence as he turned onto the gravel road that led to Julianne’s, and he thought the small sapphire clutched in his palm had warmed ever so faintly, just enough to let him know that he was on the right course.

That was when he started to make the turn into her drive and saw that another car was already there.

He came to a stop and then moved to put the truck in park. When he reached for the gearshift, the necklace slipped from his hand and the sapphire fell to the filthy floor mat, its brilliant shine lost in Ridley’s own shadow.

The car was a new-model Ford SUV and while Ridley wanted to believe that it was not a rental and did not belong to Mark Novak, he couldn’t convince himself of that. He reached into the glove compartment and withdrew a small pair of binoculars that he carried with him in the field to study terrain. He focused them on the front window of the house and what he saw chilled his blood.

Julianne was seated in a chair beside the couch, and on the couch, his posture slumped, his head drooping, was Mark Novak.

He was in trance. She had promised Ridley she would have no more contact with the man until Ridley commanded otherwise, and not only had she broken that promise, but she’d shattered it in the most irrevocable way — she was working with him, guiding him in the way she had guided Ridley.

He sat in the idling truck for a long time, and then he reached down and fumbled around the dirty floor mat until he found the necklace with the broken chain. The gemstone’s power was not a lie. Whether it would grant him protection or not, Ridley couldn’t say, but it had guided him and allowed him to see things clearly again, and this was critical.

He put the necklace into his shirt pocket, close to his heart, and drove away knowing that the time had come to set right his mistakes. He had trusted in something outside of himself and should have known better.

45

Mark felt incredibly relaxed as he listened to Julianne count upward to ten, though he became aware of the progression only at around five or six. Then, when he opened his eyes at ten, he felt exposed. The room came into focus in a disorienting way, and his first clear thought was that the light on the floor had shifted to another area. Some time had passed, certainly. His mouth was dry and he wanted to talk just to reassure himself that he had control over his own voice, but no words came to mind. There was a sensation of pressure on his right hand, and he looked down and saw that his index finger and thumb were curled together in a perfect circle, like a basketball player signaling for three points.

You did that to join the past and the present, he thought, and though the purpose seemed crystal clear he couldn’t recall the specifics of the action or how long he’d held his hand in that fashion. He relaxed his fingers and flexed them, then looked up at Julianne Grossman. She was watching him with an expression of deep compassion, and he felt nothing but warmth for her in that moment.

“So,” Mark said, his voice a croak. He worked his tongue around his mouth, trying to rid it of that dry sensation. “So, how about that? How good was I?”

Julianne smiled. “How do you feel?”

“Odd,” he said. “And tired.”

“Would you like some water? Sometimes trance can cause a strong feeling of thirst.”

“I would love some water,” he said, the word trance lingering in his mind, bouncing around. He’d actually entered one. She’d hypnotized him. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Julianne brought him a glass of water and didn’t speak while he drank. Outside, the trees moaned in a strong wind, and he wondered how he hadn’t heard them before.

“Okay,” he said. “Did we get anywhere? Or did I just talk about the cigar box the whole time?”

Julianne said, “That’s all you remember?”

He thought about it, and although he couldn’t recall the specifics beyond that, it wasn’t a troubling sensation.

“That’s all,” he said.

“You reached a state of somnambulistic trance,” she said. “That’s excellent, you know. For all of your initial resistance, in the end you made quite an effort.”

“So what did I remember?” Mark said.

“It’s all recorded on your phone, as you requested. But your descriptions of what happened on the road were... vivid. You talked about the way the men spoke, looked, and breathed. The way the wind felt. You said that you’d tried to make a trail of blood so that the police would have better clues than they’d had with your wife’s case. You didn’t want to make it hard on the police if you were killed.”

Mark turned away from her and looked out the window. The trees were weaving and at the top of the driveway the dog was patrolling, nose up, sniffing the wind.

“That’s right,” he said, and his voice was thick. He hadn’t remembered the attempt to leave a blood trail behind until now, and that seemed impossible. It had been so calculated; how could he have forgotten?

“After they put you in the van, they took you to another place,” Julianne continued. “A field. Your head was covered by some sort of a hood that you said smelled like horse feed.”

He nodded.

“At that point, you thought there was only one of them left. He was the one who cut you, the one who put a needle in your arm.” She paused and then said, “Maybe that blood test you keep talking about wouldn’t be a bad idea after all.”

“Did I remember going into the cave?”

“No. You said that this one man, the only one left, took you somewhere to ask more questions. You said that it was probably a house, you weren’t sure about that, but you knew that it was someplace where you couldn’t feel the wind, though it was still cold even without the wind. Your memory of getting inside involved walking a plank.”

“Walking a plank? They took me to a pirate ship? That ought to be easy to find.”

Julianne continued without pause at his sarcasm. “You didn’t remember much about the house except for a wall of boards that you said didn’t look right. At times you thought they were melting.”

This meant less to him. A vague sense of recollection, but not as clear as the blood trail.

“The questions this man asked you were mostly related to Ridley Barnes and the cave. He was very interested in the cave.”

Listening to a recap of his own words when he didn’t remember the words or the source of them was surreal.

“You don’t seem to have any memory at all of how you arrived in the cave. There’s a gap, which suggests that you were truly unconscious when you went from this place with the wall of boards to the darkness in the cave.” She paused, gazing at him with interest. “The recollections of the cave troubled you. That was the only time you displayed any real resistance to trance. You said you encountered people in the cave who did not belong there. You would not identify them to me because you said they were not real.”

“Sarah Martin,” he said. “I was imagining things. Hallucinating.”

“Interesting. Here you are willing to tell me that, but in trance you were not.”

“Which means what?”

“That your subconscious has a greater difficulty dismissing the things that you saw.”

“My subconscious can believe in ghosts, but I can’t? That’s what you mean?”

“Possibly? I’m trying to facilitate access. I’m not trying to interpret for you. You can consider the meaning of all this on your own. Before we ended the trance, I asked whether there was anything you could or should do to further help yourself understand what had happened in the cave. You said you should have looked at the maps by now.”

“That’s what I was going to do next. I want to look at a cave map with Ridley.”

“That’s not the way you put it during trance. You said repeatedly that you were looking at the wrong maps, and that was a problem. You were very insistent that you needed to look at different maps. At this point, you laughed a little and told me that your mother wouldn’t have made the same mistake.”

Mark felt a ripple of distaste, the first sense of regret over letting her probe around in his unconscious mind. It was easier to accept the notion that his subconscious believed in ghosts than it was to think he would give his mother any credit for logic.

“The creek name,” he said, waving a hand. “That’s all that was.”

“The creek name?”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “My mother had a bullshit persona that connected to the creek name, which would be on maps. I get it. Don’t worry about it. You just said yourself that you’re not trying to interpret for me.”

She gave a slow nod, but he felt like a specimen under a microscope.

“What was the deal with my hand?” He made the circle with his thumb and index finger again.

“That was done while we asked your subconscious mind to close the link between past and present.”

Exactly what he’d understood, even though he hadn’t remembered the moment.

“Well, I’m impressed, I’ll admit that,” he said finally. “Sadly, it didn’t turn up much of value.”

“I don’t know if that’s true. Many times the value of memory — of the unconscious in general — isn’t readily apparent.”

“Melting boards aren’t going to get me far with the sheriff or going forward with Ridley. That seems readily apparent.”

“I asked about going forward.”

“Oh? Did I crack the case?” Mark was smiling until she answered.

“You seemed to take a macro view of the question. You told me that you would have to go to a place called Cassadaga, and then to the mountains.”

She watched his smile fade into something hard and cold and said, “Cassadaga has meaning to you, I take it?”

“A little. But I won’t be going there.”

“What about the mountains?”

“I don’t care for the mountains. If I can avoid them, I will.”

“Why is that?”

“I’ve seen enough of them.” He got to his feet and picked up his phone from where it rested, still recording, on the coffee table beside him. He stopped the recording, put the phone in his pocket, and looked outside. The sky was cloudless today and the sun was gorgeous on the snow.

“You’re willing to go into that cave with Ridley if it can be arranged?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“And you honestly believe that he will say something of value?”

“He wants to show me the place. He’s made that clear.”

“It’s a hell of a risk for you,” Mark said.

“I understand that. Do you think you can get us access?”

He thought of Danielle MacAlister, crying in her basement chair surrounded by Ridley’s hand-drawn maps.

“I think it’s possible.”

46

The sweat didn’t start until he was back in the rental car, and he was out of the driveway before he allowed himself to use his shirtsleeve to mop his face. He had wanted the hypnosis to work, had wanted to see Julianne Grossman provide something that allowed him to believe in her, but a part of him — larger maybe than he’d expected at first — was terrified at the idea that she’d been able to take him to a place in which he’d communicated without awareness or memory of it. Mark had no conscious ranking of his personal values, but one had floated to the surface during his time in Garrison: control. He didn’t just want it, he craved it. Self-control, he would have called it once, but that was a lie. The word was control, pure and simple, and though he’d sacrificed it willingly with Julianne this time, it still hadn’t settled comfortably.

He was still sweating and so he put down the window and let the chill in. When his phone rang and it was Jeff London, he stared at the display with surprise. Only yesterday he would have picked it up eagerly. Now it seemed to confuse his purpose.

“Hey, Jeff.”

“Hey, Jeff? I left two messages. Markus, I’ve got to sit down with the board tomorrow. Do you have anything, and I mean anything, for me to show in your defense? I thought you said that you were making progress!”

“I am.”

“Good.” Jeff’s exhalation was audible. “Tell me something I can use.”

“I’m not quite there yet.”

“I don’t mean full resolution, I mean anything! What happened to the hypnotist? What about the ketamine? What can I tell them?”

The road rolled by for a few seconds before Mark said, “You know I’ve never broken a case?”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Not one case. I never broke one open.”

“Bullshit you didn’t. Your work was critical on so many different—”

“Critical, sure. I made some finds. I passed them off to you. I never got to see one through. That’s the point, isn’t it, Jeff? To come in without the truth and stay until you’ve learned it?”

“The point is generating quality work product for the team.”

“Did you ever solve one? I mean really solve one? Ever go from looking at crime scene photographs of a murder victim to seeing the truth come to the surface thanks to your own work?”

Jeff’s voice softened. “A few times.”

“How’d that feel?”

“Why are you asking this?”

“I need to know,” Mark said. The wind had picked up again and it should have chilled him but the cold felt good, familiar in the ways he’d wanted to deny when he arrived. “I need to know what it feels like. Maybe you were right that it shouldn’t be Lauren’s case.”

“I know I’m right about that. You’ll drown in those waters, Markus. You’ve already come close. Don’t go back in.”

“Sarah Martin isn’t Lauren. But she deserves it just as much.”

“They all do,” Jeff said. “It’s the reason I sent you up there to begin with. I’ve already acknowledged that was a mistake. Don’t double-down on it. Please.”

Mark was now just two miles from Trapdoor, and the open fields came into view and with them the snow-covered, collapsing trailer and beyond those and far on the horizon the high bluffs where the horses had been visible on Mark’s first visit. He hadn’t heard back from the Leonard family. Maybe it was time to go see the old man again. Maybe it was—

“Markus? Mark?”

The urgency in Jeff’s voice made Mark blink back into reality. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m here.” But he’d pulled off the road and was staring at the trailer. “Listen, Jeff, I’ve got to go. I’ll be back in touch fast. With something you can use. I promise.”

He disconnected before Jeff could utter a response.

What had once been the drive to the trailer was so overgrown that small shrubs were visible even beneath the blanket of snow. The trailer still stood, but that was a generous term. The whole structure canted to the left, like a sinking ship listing to port. On the road-facing side, the roof was bowed in almost to its limits. The windows were broken and even the plywood sheets that had been fastened to them from the inside were pocked with holes and splinters. A corrugated metal ramp that had once served as a front porch was disengaged from the main building completely; at least three feet of air separated the top of the ramp from the front door.

Mark killed the engine and stepped out of the car. To the east he could see the bluffs, no horses in sight today, and to the south he could see the tree line where the bluffs began their descent to Maiden Creek and the caverns its water had opened. He turned again, putting his back to the trailer, and looked to the west, his face into the wind.

The wind worked on you with a honed blade, coming over those fields with nothing to disrupt it. Mark closed his eyes and felt the wind and thought of Julianne Grossman’s recap of his hypnosis session.

You said that it was probably a house, you weren’t sure about that, but you knew that it was someplace where you couldn’t feel the wind, though it was still cold even without the wind. Your memory of getting inside involved walking a plank.

He opened his eyes, turned back to the trailer, and studied that ramp, the way the connecting bolts were sheared, leaving it loose at the top. He walked down the drive and up the ramp slowly, and this walk he made with his eyes closed, paying attention to every other sense. The thin metal boomed with each step and flexed beneath his weight because it was no longer anchored to anything, the top end floating in the air. With his eyes closed, it felt very much like walking a plank.

There were hinges for a storm door, but there wasn’t a storm door. The knob on the main door didn’t turn. Locked.

He removed a credit card from his wallet and slipped it between the door frame and the door. It slid down past the dead bolt without making contact, which was good. Dead bolts were more time-consuming, though hardly impossible. Shimming a lock was a skill you picked up fast when you were regularly evicted from apartments. Mark’s mother had been a hell of a lock pick.

He felt pressure on the card and then twisted the knob hard to the left and flicked the card down. The door swung open, releasing a wave of dank air. On the other side was a strip of peeling linoleum and stained carpet beyond that. A skim of ice had formed on one portion of the carpet.

Cold even without the wind.

As Mark stepped inside, he heard a plinking noise and saw that water was dripping through the molded tiles of the drop ceiling, probably right below the place where the roof bowed severely. He stood on the linoleum square and looked around, wishing for a flashlight. Not that there was much to see. The trailer was vacant and had been for years, save for the occasional rodent. There were mouse droppings on the kitchen floor to the right, beside a chair that been smashed and left in shards.

He slipped his cell phone out and used its flashlight function and swung back to the left, where the trailer’s only source of sound was provided by the steady plinking of the dripping water on the skim of ice over the carpet, and then he stopped scanning the place and stared at the far wall of the living room. It was covered in the faux-wood paneling that had once been popular and now made most people shudder, the kind that was supposed to give a room a log-cabin feel. There was clearly another leak behind the wall, because the paneling was peeling away from the studs, warped and bubbling.

He stepped over the ice and walked up to the wall. Ran his fingertips along the warped panels. Moisture had caused some to peel free and others to sag, although a few remained in place. The final effect was something you wouldn’t want in your home but that Salvador Dalí might have appreciated — it looked like the wall was melting.

“Well done, Julianne,” Mark whispered.

He’d been here before, and she’d gotten him to tell her about it. During hypnosis he’d ranted to her about a melting wall. It made no sense unless you’d seen these warped panels through a semiconscious haze, which was exactly what he’d done. He dropped to one knee and looked at the filthy carpet, tracked back through it until he found what he was looking for: four faint impressions, the kind left behind by the legs of a chair. Yes, this was where he’d been. The chair would have faced the wall. It was probably the one in splinters in the kitchen. Evan Borders had taken some frustration out on it. There were red stains on the carpet. Mark’s blood, probably. He lifted the cell phone higher and passed the faint glow over the filthy carpet. He turned halfway to the kitchen, froze, and then — slowly, as if rapid motion would scare off what he’d seen — brought the beam back.

There was a piece of plastic in the shadows on the floor. He slid forward and then lowered himself until he was resting on his hands and knees and could see the plastic squarely centered in the light.

It was about the size of a poker chip and bore the logo of the Saba National Marine Park. A diving permit.

Mark reached for it and managed to stop himself when his fingers were about an inch away. He closed his eyes again and breathed a few times and then he rose without allowing himself a look back and went outside in the hard white glare of the day and called the sheriff’s office and asked for Dan Blankenship.

47

It took the sheriff just over fifteen minutes to arrive and when he did, he was alone. He was in uniform with the badge gleaming high on his chest and even had the brown trooper hat. Very Wild West.

“Let me guess,” he said. “The door was standing open when you found it.”

“You’re good at this,” Mark said.

Blankenship spit into the snow, trying to hold his trademark sour expression with Mark, but he was struggling. Something about the place excited him, and that was interesting, because the only importance Mark could attach to it was that this was where he’d been beaten, drugged, and interrogated — all crimes that Blankenship claimed he didn’t believe had occurred.

“You’ve got unique law enforcement in this county,” Mark said.

“How’s that?” Blankenship answered.

“Fieldwork tends to be handled by deputies. But I get the elected official himself, and I get him solo.”

“You didn’t call 911, Novak, you called me direct. I always answer direct phone calls. Part of my duty to the taxpayers.”

“That must be it,” Mark said. “In Florida, we don’t pay state income tax. I’ve always suspected policing was a lot more hands-on in places where you did.”

Blankenship almost smiled at that. He walked through the snow and up to the ramp and put one gloved hand on the railing.

“You said you had evidence, not just a story. Is that inside?”

“Yes, sir. You’ll find a plastic dive permit on the ground in there that was previously in my pocket.”

“The kind of thing you could have just dropped on the ground before you called me, in other words.”

“Exactly that kind of thing. Only I didn’t. And the dive permit doesn’t belong to me. It belonged to my wife.”

Blankenship turned away from the trailer and his expression softened.

“You carried it with you?”

“Every day, Sheriff. Every single day.”

They looked at each other in silence and then Blankenship said, “Anything else?”

“Bloodstains on the carpet. They’ll belong to me. Maybe not all of them, it looks like the sort of place that has seen some blood before, but I can point you to some of them.”

“Stand where you are for a bit, all right?”

“Sure.”

Blankenship went up the ramp, walking carefully, and then withdrew a small tactical flashlight and used it to illuminate the interior of the trailer. He didn’t cross the threshold, but he didn’t need to in order to see the living room.

“I didn’t touch the dive permit,” Mark said. “Sure wanted to, but I left it.”

“You think it’s worth bagging and tagging?”

“I doubt it, but that’s why I didn’t touch it. Two of them wore gloves, but maybe they took them off at some point. Test it, but I’d like it back when you’re done. Please.”

The sheriff turned the light off and walked back down the ramp to join him.

“So this is where they brought you, eh? Three masked men. An abandoned trailer. And you just happened to come across it?”

“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.

He drove the last half mile in the dark and parked on the shoulder of the road where he was screened from her house by the trees. In all of his visits he had never seen her dog indoors, and that was a problem because she appeared to be a vigilant animal. Ridley had always appreciated the vigilance and the fact that she was clearly a den dog, always burrowing, digging deeper, a creature who wanted to crawl beneath. Those were fine things and he would hate to see any harm come to the dog, but all the same he slipped his knife free from his pocket as he approached.

He was twenty feet from the house when the dog began to bark, and Ridley gritted his teeth and snapped the blade open and then closed it again when the animal retreated. In his past visits, she would cautiously advance toward him and the fact that she would not tonight made him curious as to what she smelled on him. How did she know? It was fascinating to consider. If dogs could talk, people would say, but they were always referring to the idea that the dogs would reveal something stupid or humorous; they failed to grasp just how much their worlds would change if dogs could talk. You were exposed in front of a dog in ways you never considered. The moment you hit the door, your dog knew whether you felt anger or fear, whether you’d wept recently, fought recently, had sex recently — and whether that sex had been with your spouse. If dogs could talk. Yes, wouldn’t that be something? Ridley wondered how many people would have pet dogs in that world.

He went up the steps as the dog circled the porch and he knocked on the door with his left hand and opened the knife again with his right and held it so that the edge of the blade was facing forward. When Julianne opened the door he showed her the knife and said, “Please do not make me kill the dog.”

She had the security chain fastened but they both understood that would not hold as long as she would need it to.

“Don’t do this,” she said. Her voice so soft, so familiar. “Please do not do this.”

“Open the door.”

She opened the door. She was an intelligent woman and he was grateful for that.

As she stepped away from the door, words poured from her.

“Please sit so that we may talk about the things that you are feeling. There is a chance of more snow again tonight, did you hear? I have not seen so much snow in a winter in a long time, and if you would like to sit on the couch, obviously there is negative emotion with you tonight, the emotion that you have, feeling very negative, and those feelings are very valid, so if you would like to sit, you may. If you would like to sit and leave the cold outside and we could—”

Ridley grabbed her hair with his right hand, the knife tangling in the strands, and put his left hand over her mouth. Her words had been streaming at him in those unusual rhythms and with unusual thoughts, thoughts that did not match the situation. Ridley had studied enough to understand that this was one area where Julianne Grossman excelled. While she had weaknesses as a hypnotist, her ability with what was called neurolinguistic programming was remarkable. She jarred your expectations with thoughts and cadences and word choices, and eventually her suggestions ceased to feel suggestive and became more directive and then your mind belonged to her.

Ridley no longer wanted it to.

“You will have an opportunity to talk,” he said. She was not struggling. She was aware of the knife just behind her brain stem. “But I can’t allow you to have that now, because you are so good with words. You are so good at what you do. I respect that. You know that I have always respected that, don’t you?”

Her eyes were locked on his and there was fear in them but there was something else also and he said, “Do not let the dog inside.”

He had not turned to see the dog and he had not heard the dog but he knew that it was there and when she lifted her hand, he allowed the motion because the hand was for the dog and not for Ridley. There was an anxious whine from behind him and Ridley realized how close things had come to going very bad.

“Thank you,” he said. “Use the same hand to close the door.”

He maneuvered her toward the door in an awkward waltz and she pushed it shut. The dog barked twice when the barrier was closed.

“Out of respect for your talents,” Ridley said, “I am going to need to tape your mouth shut.”

He removed a thin roll of duct tape from his jacket pocket, and though it required taking his hand from her mouth, she didn’t try to speak. He worked fast but he made certain to lift her hair high with his right hand so that it was not caught in the mess. He did not want her to be uncomfortable.

A phone began to ring in the house, but neither of them looked in the direction of the sound. He stepped back and removed his hooded jacket and held it out to her. She lifted her arms and allowed him to slip the jacket on her, as if it were a gallant gesture.

“Put the hood up so it covers your face, and we will walk to my truck. Please be mindful of your dog’s life when we step outside.”

He opened the door and nodded that she should go first. The dog was crouched with every muscle bunched, hackles lining her spine. She whined when she saw Julianne, a pleading sound, desperate for instruction. Or permission.

Julianne lowered herself to her knees and took the dog’s face in her hands and then stroked along the hackles, trying to soothe her. Some of the tension loosened, but only some. The dog’s eyes were on Ridley.

“Let’s go,” Ridley said.

Julianne pressed her tape-covered face to the dog’s, and the dog lapped at her eyelids. Julianne had begun to cry.

“Let’s go,” he repeated, but he was careful not to pull her up because he didn’t think the dog would allow that. He waited until Julianne rose and walked down the steps and then he followed. The dog walked close to her side all the way to the truck, and Ridley held the knife in a hand that was as tensed as the dog’s muscles. He opened the passenger door of the truck and Julianne climbed inside. Ridley had to walk back around the front of the truck to get in, and for a few steps the dog was alone with him, but she was still watching Julianne. Ridley got in the truck and closed the door and then closed the knife.

“Very noble choice,” he said. “The dog would have been willing to die for you, and you knew that and could have demanded it. But instead you chose to take your chances even if it means you die for the dog. That is a rare choice.”

She was no longer crying, and she didn’t look at him. He sighed, remembering all of the comfort he had taken in her once, and then he started the truck and turned on the lights and pulled away. The dog stood in the middle of the road behind them. When it became evident that they were leaving, the dog began to howl. Ridley winced at the mournful sound. He felt as if the dog knew that she had made a choice and that she now regretted the one she had made.

He hoped that the dog’s memory was not long.

49

Mark was told to wait in the sheriff’s office, and when Blankenship finally entered he was carrying two cups of coffee. He handed one to Mark without a word. The dynamic between them had shifted dramatically but Mark couldn’t say why. The discoveries in the trailer meant plenty to Mark, but he had expected an uphill battle to convince Blankenship of that.

“When we have anything from that scene, I’ll let you know,” Blankenship said. He drank his coffee for a few seconds. The door was closed and it was quiet in his office.

“Before you talk,” he said, “I probably should. I was pulled from Sarah’s case once, and if we went by the book, you shouldn’t be talking to me.”

“My time in Garrison hasn’t been very by-the-book so far.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Blankenship took his hat off and tossed it onto an empty chair beside the desk. His gray hair was thin. “Here’s what you should know, at least in my judgment, before you talk to me about anything related to Sarah Martin. That girl haunts my dreams, Novak. She and her mother both.”

He’d been staring at his hat, but now he moved his eyes back to Mark.

“I knew Diane and Sarah and Richard — that was Sarah’s father — through church. Richard died in a car wreck when I was still working road duty. One of the worst I’ve ever seen. I drew the job of notifying the family.” His voice thickened and he cleared his throat. “I stayed in touch a little. But with distance, you know. There’s a job involved, and there’s a respect involved. Both of them mattered to me. Both still do.”

He seemed to be waiting on a challenge over that. Mark didn’t offer one.

“You mentioned Julianne Grossman,” Blankenship said. “I’ve never laid eyes on her. I know that Diane went to see her for help with insomnia after Richard was killed. I didn’t really like that, to tell you the truth. Whole thing just seemed strange to me. Maybe I’m not much of a modern thinker, I don’t know. But back then I didn’t have as close of a relationship with Diane, and so I didn’t say anything. Later... later I told her not to go back. I told her to go to a real doctor and get herself some pills. Same kind that eventually killed her.”

He made himself look Mark in the eye when he said that. All Mark could do was nod. Blankenship returned the gesture. “So you understand that part. Okay. Time went on; I started to see Diane a little more. I was always real conscious of Sarah because I’d known her daddy and I knew what she’d gone through and I didn’t want...” He hesitated. “I didn’t want to infringe on that, you understand? I felt like her father, dead or alive, still had some jurisdiction.”

He ran his big hand over his eyes. A quick pass.

“That cave opened up for business sort of in the middle of all this. People thought it was a big deal, there was some excitement around here about it. I’ve never liked tight places. But Sarah? She was fifteen at the time, and she was real interested. When they opened up the tours, we all went down and took one together. I wish you’d seen her that day.” He shook his head at the memory. “The way a place can affect two people so differently, it’s really something. I couldn’t get out of that cave fast enough. You’d have thought she wanted to move in.

“The next summer, she wanted a job but didn’t want to work at a restaurant or behind a cash register. I’d just heard this when I went out to talk to Pershing MacAlister about some issues at that cave. He had complaints about the locals, people vandalizing the cave, sneaking into it; he wanted me to cooperate with the newspaper and say we were watching the place. Spread the word. What I did then, well, I good-old-boy’d it, plain and simple. Asked whether there might be a summer job available. Man needed my help, and I asked him for a favor. You might not believe it, but I didn’t often do those things.”

Mark believed it.

“So Sarah got the job, and it was all my doing, ain’t that something to consider? She never applied for it, never knew it existed. Never would have been down there again, probably. People would say it was such a small thing, getting a teenager a job, but I knew what I was doing. Using my position to get Sarah what she wanted, because Diane was what I wanted. I wasn’t doing police work. Maybe you pay for choices like that. I just never could have imagined the ways.”

His phone rang and he silenced it with one touch and without a glance. He drank some coffee and cleared his throat again. He had stopped looking at Mark.

“Things went fast between Diane and Pershing. That’s all that need be said about that. It isn’t my business, what happened between them. I told Diane that then, and I’m telling you now. The engagement happened, and I... I had to get used to another change in jurisdiction then. Diane and Sarah, they weren’t...” He had to work to get the next words out: “They weren’t in mine anymore. And that... that was a hard summer for me. Then came September, and the call came in, and that was the worst day of my life. Because I knew. Even while I was arranging the searches and telling Diane not to worry, I knew we weren’t going to be finding Sarah alive. Don’t ask me how. Sometimes you know.”

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and spoke again.

“I sent Ridley Barnes in. You already asked me about it, and I walked out of here after you asked and drank whiskey for the first time in probably fifteen years. I sent Ridley in. Pershing tried to warn me that Ridley was not right, that he had mental issues, but I also had the caving people telling me they needed someone who knew the cave, and so I made the call. I believed it was the right thing, then. I’ve thought a lot about it, and I truly don’t think I was trying to overrule Pershing. I hope to God that I wasn’t. I couldn’t live with myself if I believed that. Hell, I don’t know, you can judge me how you want, and one day God will judge me in the way that counts, and I’ll know then, won’t I?”

He wiped at his right eye with his thumb, and Mark looked at the floor out of respect. He kept his eyes down until Blankenship spoke again.

“Now I’m going to tell you one last thing you should know,” he said. “When Sarah went missing, at first all anyone understood was that she was lost.”

“Right.”

“Back then, I didn’t know that Ridley believed that a hole in the ground was a supernatural place. That he told Pershing the cave made him stronger with each trip. Gave him power with each trip. Didn’t know he’d said he had to work alone because the cave wouldn’t talk to anyone else.”

He pulled himself up to the desk and faced Mark again.

“Now you’ve heard what I have to say, and you’re smart enough to understand how we go from here. You might want to talk to somebody else. Otherwise, whatever you disclose here, you’re disclosing it to an officer who was removed from that investigation for due cause. You want somebody else, I can point you to the state police.”

“I think I’d rather talk to you, Sheriff,” Mark said.

“All right, then. Let’s hear it.”

Blankenship didn’t say a word until Mark was through. Then he said, “Ridley confessed. On video, he confessed.”

“Yes. But it wouldn’t be worth a damn to the prosecutor. It would be blown up for coercion or false memory even if Julianne was accepted by the court as an expert, and that’s discounting Ridley’s options entirely. He might sit down with you and laugh in your face and tell you that he was putting on a show for her the whole time, and who could prove him wrong?”

“Do you think he was?”

“Not after this morning, I don’t,” Mark said. “I think she got him to tell the truth.”

Blankenship rose and went to the window and looked out at his little town. Someone was shoveling snow off the sidewalk and the rhythmic scraping was the only sound for a few seconds. Then he said, “She really thinks that Ridley will show her something if he gets the chance to be alone in that cave with her.”

“That’s what I’m told. She’s willing to do it, and she’s willing to wear a wire or a camera. She says he won’t allow anyone else along. It would be a damn difficult surveillance.”

“It would be impossible. Ridley would smell anything out of place down there, and you need light to move an inch. Or at least most people do.”

“Could put recorders in the cave, but you’d need a lot of them, since we have no idea where he’d take her. Not practical. Any device has to be on her.”

“Anything went wrong down there, I’d lose my badge. Hell, even if it went right, I probably would.”

Blankenship’s voice suggested he wasn’t too concerned with that.

“It’s a tough spot for police,” Mark said. “She knows that. Ridley does too.”

“Damn that man,” Blankenship said suddenly, a near shout. “He killed her. He killed her but I can’t prove it, Novak. I have known this for ten years. I cannot prove it. I have no crime scene, I have no witnesses, and I have no forensics that he can’t explain away by claiming he found her body and dragged it through a cave. I have nothing.”

Mark had a flash memory of his last meeting with the lead investigator in Lauren’s case. I have nothing, Mr. Novak. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. We’ll get there, though. We’ll get there.

“I don’t want to go back in that cave,” Mark said. “I surely don’t want to go down there with Ridley Barnes.”

“Nobody’s asking you to. It’s a foolish idea, and nobody in his right mind would ask you to.”

“No, he wouldn’t. And let’s keep it that way. Because when I come back up from Trapdoor, Sheriff, we’ll both need you to have your legal distance preserved.”

“No. Absolutely not. I’ll handle Ridley.”

“All due respect,” Mark said, “but he’s not going to open the door to you, Sheriff. Not in any way that counts, at least. Don’t forget the essential difference in our approach here: You’ve been working on Ridley Barnes. As far as I’ve been concerned, Ridley Barnes has been working on me. Until today.”

“Until today. Now you care?”

Mark nodded. “I do. And you’re starting to trust me a little. The balance is shifting on Ridley. What scares me, though? What scares me is that he may already know that.”