Mark closed the file and dropped it back into the bag and turned off the bedside light, which did little to darken the hospital room, then closed his eyes and sought sleep. It was a fruitless search. He was exhausted physically, but mentally he was alert. Not just alert. Afraid. Mark was no stranger to horrors, but this one was unique. To say This is what happened and find neither trust nor support was a terrifying thing. How was it happening? Three men should be in prison for what they’d done to him, but the police weren’t even looking.
You’re going to need a witness, Jeff had said.
There had been three witnesses to his abduction. None of them were likely to corroborate Mark’s version of the events.
But who were they? Where had they come from?
He turned the light back on, found the phone, and called Jeff.
It was an hour before he got through to him, fresh off the plane in Texas.
“I want Ridley’s phone records,” Mark said. “Whoever came for me, they were sent by Ridley. There’s no other option. They came on fast too. He made a call, and there will be a record of it. The records can’t lie.”
The videotapes did, a voice in his head whispered. The voice had become familiar in the hours since Jeff had left, and its tone had shifted from warning to mocking. The people lie, and the videos lie, and you tell the truth, Mark? My, my. That’ll be a tough sell.
Almost on cue, Jeff said, “That’ll be a tough subpoena to get, considering there’s no legal case in progress and the only person who has grounds for charges here is Ridley, and against you.”
“I didn’t suggest a subpoena.”
Silence.
“Jeff, I’ve worked with you for years. I’m well aware of what can be gotten, and how. You can get them, and we both know it.”
“And we both know that it’s illegal.”
“We’re talking about saving my job here.”
“And risking mine.”
Mark lowered his voice. “This is all I have, Jeff. It’s not just a job, not just a paycheck. You know that.”
“That’s the same thing you told me the last time you jeopardized it. I listened then. I’m supposed to again?”
“Last time I made a mistake. This time I was forced into one. There isn’t a chance we’re going to take this case; it doesn’t even meet the rules of the damned bylaws, we couldn’t take it if we wanted to. Yet you sent me up here, and now everything I have left in my life is at risk, and you won’t run a fucking phone record for me?”
Jeff didn’t answer. Mark let the silence roll for a few seconds, and when he finally spoke, he had better control. “I know I’ve got no right to ask this of you. I know I keep pushing you for help, and your face told me what your words didn’t when you were up here — you’re starting to wonder about my story, aren’t you? To wonder about me. If I can be trusted.”
“I trust you,” Jeff said in the way a man might say I love you to his ex-wife on the day they signed the divorce papers.
“I need you to understand this from my point of view. After listening to you and hearing what work you’ve done to verify my story and what you’ve found, I’m beginning to have trouble trusting myself. Think about that for a minute.” Mark took a deep breath — which hurt; everything hurt, and he was still in bed — and said, “The only thing I can say is that Ridley is engineering all of this somehow. But he didn’t know I was headed to his house until I showed up. No one was following me. They came at me after I came at him. So if Ridley didn’t make any calls, Jeff? If his phone lines were silent between the time I left his house and the time I was stopped on the road? Then I need to go home. Without a job, because I won’t deserve one. I’ll deserve a room with padded walls.”
Still Jeff didn’t speak.
“You’re the one who told me I’m going to need to prove my story to keep my head above water,” Mark said. “It starts with those phone records. If you don’t want to do it yourself, I understand. Give me the right contact, and I’ll do it. You shouldn’t be involved anyhow.”
“Bullshit I shouldn’t. It’s my fault you’re up there. You shouldn’t have been there to begin with. You know that and you always did. I had an idea that it was what you needed. It was the wrong idea.”
“You wanted me up here because of the date,” Mark said. “You wanted to push my buttons, rattle me.”
“Yes. I thought — I hoped — that if you spent even a little time looking at an unsolved case that bore any similarity to Lauren’s, it might... give you a little perspective. Remind you that you’re not alone in the world. That others have suffered the same losses. It was a terrible idea.”
Two days ago, Mark had been enraged by the move. Now he couldn’t summon any emotion over it, let alone anger.
“If you feel any responsibility for this, then do this one thing,” he said. “Get those records. If Ridley didn’t make any calls, then it means...”
“I’ll do it,” Jeff said. “But Markus? You’re going to need to file this favor with all of the other things you can’t remember.”
“That’ll be easy enough.”
It took him less than an hour. Technology might have done a lot of good for the world, but it had done nothing good for personal privacy. If you floated around the investigative and intelligence professions for long enough, you began to understand just how laughable the illusion of privacy was; if a pro, or even a dedicated amateur, wanted someone’s information, he could find it, and fast.
Jeff’s phone-records contact was a retired FBI agent who’d specialized in computer intelligence and who now lived in Georgia and had an ax to grind with the government and a hard-core pill habit to support. His information came at a price, but it came fast, and it was reliable.
“Ridley was on the phone a total of four times to a total of three people in the two days you were in town,” Jeff said. “One was a dentist, one was a bakery, and two calls were with a guy named Evan Borders.”
“Evan Borders. Ridley called that guy?”
“You know the name?”
“He was the other suspect in Sarah Martin’s murder. He was her boyfriend, the one who took her into the cave.”
“Evan Borders called Ridley shortly before noon, at home,” Jeff said. “Ridley called him back shortly after one.”
Mark let out a breath that came more from his soul than his lungs. “That’s right after I left. They bookended me with phone calls, basically. Ridley picked up the phone just after I left.”
“Seems like a strange choice. Two lead suspects trading calls?”
“Sure does. But it’s real.” That word had taken on new meaning in the past day. “Ridley engineered all of this. He wanted me down in that cave. He asked me to go, and when I didn’t, he put me there. I don’t understand how he’s got the influence that he does, but I’ll figure it out. I’ll get him.”
“Step lightly with that boy.”
He asked Jeff for all the call times and numbers — Bishop was the dentist, and the bakery was Haringa’s — and he wrote them down, thanked Jeff, and then hung up. There was only one light on in the hospital room, and he lay there in the dimness and stared at those names.
Evan Borders. The kid who’d brought Sarah Martin down to Trapdoor was in communication with her suspected killer a decade later.
Evan was going to require a visit, Mark decided. No phone call there, no discussion with the sheriff beforehand. Mark wanted to see Evan’s face.