“By she, you mean Sarah Martin?”
“And Trapdoor. Either/or.”
“Either/or? One’s a dead child, Mr. Barnes. The other is a cave.”
Ridley frowned as if offended. “You’re going to need to start considering that from a different perspective if this is going to work.”
Mark held up a hand to silence him.
“I’m not going to get caught up in that before I understand the backstory. One question I have no answer to yet: Was there any reason police would have looked at you before you found her body? Did you have any prior knowledge of her?”
“Tangentially.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “Tangentially?”
Barnes shrugged. “She worked at Trapdoor. I was mapping Trapdoor that same summer. So I’d encountered her a few times. I mean, you know, I’d watched her. Sure, I’d watched her.”
Mark felt a spike of distaste. “What do you mean by watched her, exactly?”
Another shrug. “I paid attention to everyone who was going to be around the cave. She was just a girl, you know, but she caught your eye. Good-looking girl, big smile, big laugh. Lot of joy. She caught your eye.”
One of the interviewing techniques that Mark brought naturally to the table and that impressed Jeff London was a comfort with silence. You developed that sort of comfort when you grew up listening to drunks and blowhards in places where the weather could lock you down for days at a time, nowhere to go even if you wanted to. It had taken him a while to realize just how effective a tactic silence was. Most people viewed an interviewer’s lack of response as judgment at best and a threat at worst, so when faced with calm silence, they tended to start talking again, to volunteer more than they’d intended. Ridley Barnes was not of that breed. When Mark went silent, Ridley matched it with equal stillness.
“Anything else you recall of Sarah?” Mark said at last. “Or her family?”
“Not a bit. And I don’t mean to tell you your business, you’re the expert, but I’d say you ought to talk to people who did know her. Get their viewpoints on it.”
For a moment it was silent again, and then Ridley smiled. “You’re wondering, aren’t you? Wondering if I’m bat-shit crazy.”
Mark nodded.
The smile vanished and those bright eyes darkened. “Me too. You know what you ought to do? You ought to get into the cave. Before you make a decision, you ought to spend some time down there. In the dark. Think about her, think about me.”
“I don’t believe that will be necessary.”
Ridley Barnes showed anger for the first time. He wore it well. Like a natural color.
“Oh, I think it is. I think that anybody who even considers that girl’s story should sit down there in the dark for a time.”
“Let’s agree to put a pin in that particular idea, how about that?”
“Are you familiar with the term false necessity, Mr. Novak?”
“No.”
“I’m not surprised. You’re going to need to be. I had much higher hopes.”
“I’m often disappointing.”
Several seconds passed while the wind moaned around the old house, and then Ridley Barnes nodded as if Mark had said something that pleased him.
“Got yourself some spark, don’t you?”
“Pardon?” Mark said.
“More fuses than you’d like people to know you have. Oh, I understand. Don’t you worry, I’m not judging you. I understand it fine.”
“I’m not worried about you judging me,” Mark said. “But I’m not interested in wasting time either. If you insist on that, then—”
“Not insisting on anything. What would you like to discuss? I’m an open book. Just one with missing pages.”
His laugh was low and delighted. Mark felt a prickle ride along his spine.
“If you’re so curious about your possible involvement in the crime, then why not talk to the police? They say you shut down on interviews. Yet you’re talking to me.”
“The police don’t have distance, Mr. Novak. It’s too small of a town. They have pressure from all sides to get a conviction, sure. But not to get the truth. In your line of work, the difference between those things must be clear.”
“We pursue the truth, yes. But the truth could really hurt you, Ridley.”
He waved an uninterested hand. “So long as it’s told. Everything is connected. That’s why you’re here. The date does matter. It connects us, you see? You know that. This is what I mean when I say that everything is of consequence. The date connects you and me and Sarah and Lauren and—”
“Do not say her fucking name.” Mark was on his feet, and for the first time, Barnes looked nonplussed.
“You’re not understanding me,” he said. “What I mean is—”
“I don’t give a shit,” Mark said, stepping closer. “You were told, damn it, and you went back for it again, and I will not—”
He stopped talking when he saw Ridley move back. A subtle shift, but still visible. He was bracing, readying for a fight, or at least considering the possibility of a punch.
Now it was Mark’s turn to step back. He was holding tight to the file. Too tight. He looked down at it, at his knuckles pressed hard against his skin, and said, “I’ll review the file. I’ll review it and let you know what I think. Good-bye, Mr. Barnes.”
“Don’t go like that. You came all this way and you’re willing to go like that?”
“I’ll let you know what I think,” Mark repeated, and then he walked out of the house and back into the cold. It had started to snow again while he was inside, more of a sleet, really, and his windshield was already iced over. He cranked the heat up and turned on the defroster. While he waited for it to work, he opened the first of the folders.
Sarah Martin’s dead face looked up at him.
Morgue photos. About twenty of them. He went through them one at a time, handling them gingerly, as if he might disturb her. Lord, what someone had done to her. Dear Lord. Bruises showed around her eyes and throat, and scrapes and abrasions lined her entire body; it looked like someone had dragged her over concrete as if she were as inconsequential as a bag of garbage.
Good-looking girl, big smile, big laugh, Ridley had said. Lot of joy. She caught your eye.
Her eyes looked black in every picture. Dulled to something beyond death. Mark was holding his breath by the time he turned the last picture over, and then he found a sheet of yellow legal paper covered in scrawled notations with a heading: “Photographic Evidence — Ridley’s Notes.”
The first three notes, labeled with Roman numerals, were questions about the physical evidence, what had been considered and what might have been neglected. Other than some awkward grammar, they could have been an attorney’s notes, or a detective’s. Then the precision vanished, and the rest of the page was filled with scribbled questions.
Did I do it?
Did I do it?
Could I have done it?
Could I have done it? Could I?
The ink was darker with each new word, the scrawls becoming frantic by the end.
Mark looked up at the windshield. The ice had melted and was now dripping water down the glass, and beyond it, leaning on his porch railing, Ridley Barnes lifted one hand and waved at him.
3
Don’t scare him off. Ridley, do not scare the man off.