“I’m not running. I’d like to sit down and talk. I always intended to.”
“You always intended to. Well, that’s sweet of you to say.”
“I’m not going to cause you any trouble. I’m not going to be in this town for one damn minute longer than I can help it. I’m doing what I was told to by my boss, but the truth is, I’m biding my time up here because my boss is worried about me. You want to know why?”
“Not particularly.”
“Because he thinks I’m doing a poor job of coping with my wife’s unsolved murder.”
Several seconds of silence passed. The wind was howling in, and it was hard not to turn away from it, but Mark stayed in place, facing the wind and Mrs. Martin. Her hunter’s eyes had softened. Almost too much. They were harder to face now than the wind. He was so much better with anger than grief.
“Would you be willing to at least hear from Sarah Martin’s mother? While you’re busy talking to other people, perhaps you should pause to hear from Diane Martin. Are you willing to do that?”
“I never wanted to ignore—”
“It’s your choice. I just need to know if you are willing.”
Silence again. He tried to avoid her stare but couldn’t.
“Buy me a beer?” she said. It was a strange question, like she was asking for a date, but he nodded.
“Buy you plenty of them.”
They were nearly alone at the restaurant bar, drinking a local beer called Upland that was actually damn good, when Mark finished explaining Innocence Incorporated and why he’d come to Garrison. Diane Martin didn’t speak at all, just sipped her beer and watched him. He found himself avoiding her gaze, the reverse of his typical habit. He favored direct eye contact at all times because he’d learned that it often told you more about someone than words did, but her eyes unsettled him. She was so balanced, so composed, as if she understood him well from his one disclosure.
Maybe his biggest concern was that she did.
“I can’t tell you with certainty that we won’t take this case,” he said, “but I can tell you that it would be a first if we did. The whole point of the organization is death-row defense.”
“So why are you here? You said your boss—”
“I’m in exile,” Mark said, and gave a weary smile. “And maybe I’m fired. It hasn’t been decided yet. My boss wanted me out of the way of the board of directors. He’s fighting for me, and he shouldn’t be.”
“What’s your great transgression?”
He wasn’t going to tell her that. He hadn’t told anyone that, had admitted the truth to only London, who was now busy trying to convince everyone that it was a bullshit story concocted by a desperate inmate seeking attention.
“I can’t disclose that,” he said, but her damn eyes were fixed on his and he couldn’t look away from them. They were magnetic, but not in an attractive sense. Just a powerful one.
“Yes, you can. If you would like to tell me, you should tell me. Would you like to?”
Her voice was almost intimate. He tried to separate himself from her gaze by turning back to his beer, but she said it again: “Would you like to, Mark?”
She hadn’t used his first name before. He looked back up, back into that stare, and said, “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,” Mark said, and his voice was steady. “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.” He had never told anyone this, not even Jeff. All that was understood of his negotiations in Coleman were that they’d been conducted in pursuit of information.
Diane Martin didn’t move or blink or even seem to breathe.
“You would have arranged a man’s murder?” she said at length. “You would have been comfortable with it?”
“If I could prove that he was the one who’d killed my wife? Absolutely. Without hesitation. My only regret would be that I couldn’t do it myself.”
“Are you at risk for criminal charges?” She held up a hand and said, “If you don’t want to talk about that, you don’t have to. Only tell me if you want to.”
“Nobody knows what I just told you. I don’t know why I chose to.” But he did. He’d told her because she was the only person he’d met who would understand. Not logically, not in the way a shrink or a counselor would claim to understand, but down in her bones, down in the place that had been hollowed out of her and could never be filled again. “Even with the other issues, though, things could have gone badly for me. My boss made sure that they didn’t. The snitch I talked to has a credibility problem. My boss built on that. He sent me up here so I wouldn’t have to answer questions myself. I think he knew that if I did, I’d tell the truth.”
It was an odd answer, and he wasn’t sure why he’d offered it. He was fine telling her that he’d plotted to kill a man, but he also wanted her to know that he hadn’t lied? Maybe it was because he thought she’d respect the former but not the latter.
“I would imagine it is also a problem for your boss because the approach does not fit well with an organization that abhors capital punishment.”
“No,” Mark said. “It does not. And that’s what brings me here, Mrs. Martin. I am just supposed to be out of the way, and I was happy to agree to it, because I need that job for reasons I can’t explain. It is all that I am now. I’m here so my boss can go about protecting me, and your daughter’s death, truth be told, is simply not a case we will take. I’m sorry for any trouble or grief it causes you.”
“What causes grief is Sarah’s absence, and the absence of any resolution.”
“I understand.”
“So perhaps you can convince your organization that this is worth their time.”
Mark frowned. “I thought you didn’t want me doing anything with it. I thought you wanted me gone.”
“Now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to think you’re supposed to be here.”
He was supposed to be in Florida. He wanted to tell her that, but he couldn’t, not while he was looking into her eyes. So he glanced away again, a coward’s move but a necessary one, and he was ready to explain that this was not the right situation when she said, “What do you think Lauren would say? If she had the chance.”
His first instinct was anger. The question was unfair, and he didn’t like the sound of his wife’s name said in such a familiar fashion from a stranger. But when he turned back, Diane Martin’s eyes were gentle, that unique stare of hers, penetrating curiosity but soft-edged, and he found himself saying, “She’d be a poor judge.”
“Why?”
“Because she wanted to take them all,” he said. “Because she could not hear a story like yours and tell you no. Ever.”
“Can you?”
“Sure.”
“How about I tell you what I think,” she said. “How about I give you what you came for, and then... then you do what you want. But at least you’ll understand the full story. Or as much of it as I can tell.”
Mark took a breath, nodded, and then turned to the bartender and held up two fingers. “We’ll do another round,” he said. His fingers were trembling.
5
Two hours later, they were still talking.
“Do I think Ridley Barnes did it?” Diane said. “Probably. But I can’t say for sure. It’s that element that haunts me, haunts this town, haunts everyone. From friends to strangers, no one can look me in the eye when Sarah is mentioned because no one really knows. If the man who killed her is just walking around free, enjoying his days, and knowing all the while that he...” Her voice broke. It was a musical voice most of the time, one that didn’t betray her own pain so much as offer to take yours away. Mark wondered who or what had given her the deep wells of composure.