Ryan
Tabitha seemed surprised at the question. “Yes. We met him when Father came to buy this place.”
“Did he happen to have a kid? A son?”
“I think he mentioned one, yes. There was some difficulty in the family. He wasn’t able to see the boy often.”
He shrugged to Ethan. “I’m sorry, kid, but Kyla was right, earlier in your room.
Me and your man were cellmates back in Huntsville.
He was a friend. Just a friend, before you give me that look.
When he and I bumped into each other tonight for that smoke, Hunter asked that I not mention anything about his time in prison.
He didn’t want you to think less of him. ”
Kyla said, “You know what he was in prison for, don’t you?”
Ryan saw a look of blank horror cross Ethan’s face.
The boy clearly didn’t want to know, and Ryan didn’t see how it would help them.
“Let’s talk about that later. I only mention it because of the guy who slept in the cell next door to me and Hunter.
He was an old Native dude who mostly kept to himself.
He said he was the last man standing of his tribe.
Everyone around the prison used to call him The Chief. ”
“What are the fucking odds?” Kyla said, though she almost didn’t sound surprised. Tabitha blinked at her language.
“It gets weirder. A few months ago, Sarah Powers—yes, this Sarah Powers—turned up at Huntsville and paid The Chief—our Chief, the man who slept next to me and Hunter—a visit.”
“Sarah visited Huntsville?” Ethan said. “Does that mean Hunter knew her too?”
“Not much better than me, I don’t think.
I never saw Sarah in the flesh until today.
The guards at the prison pulled pictures of her from the surveillance footage, of course, showed them around.
No one could believe it. The Chief was just some old man spending thirty years on a big counterfeit charge, minding his own business, and suddenly this beauty with long hair and longer legs comes striding up to the visitor center asking to see him.
We thought she was one of those weird girls who get obsessed with guys behind bars, but The Chief swore it was nothing like that.
He said he’d been wrong—apparently, he did have some tribe left in this world.
That girl, Sarah Powers, was a distant relation.
But that’s all he ever really told us. Me and Hunter both were curious why she kept coming to see him, but The Chief just said that he and Sarah were catching up on old family business.
And before we could learn more, The Chief died.
I’d thought that was the last we’d ever hear of Sarah.
” Ryan felt a tingle on his arms: he was skirting, very carefully, around something he really—really—did not want to talk about.
“When was this exactly?” Kyla said. “When The Chief died?”
“Maybe six or seven weeks ago. Why?”
“That’s around the time Sarah turned up at the steakhouse and started having those dinners with Stanley and Frank. Again, totally out of the blue,” Kyla said. “Whatever work Sarah was doing with those guys, it started after your friend The Chief died.”
“Is that another coincidence?” Fernanda said. “Or could the two events be connected?”
Ryan said nothing. That tingle crept up his arms. It wasn’t guilt he felt, or fear of being found out. He really hadn’t done much tonight to hide, at least nothing very serious. He hadn’t killed anyone. He hadn’t helped cover up the murder.
He just didn’t want to think about the reason he’d gone to see Sarah Powers, earlier in the evening. It scared the shit out of him, thinking about the things The Chief had said the night the old man died.
The mountain—
Tell Sarah, the mountain—
“I know you killed her,” Kyla said to Ryan: flat, thoroughly unbothered. “I’d just like to know why.”
That jerked him out of the past. “You what?”
“You have no real alibi. You went to Sarah’s room at some point before eight o’clock this evening.
You even stole a roll of film from her. Considering the scraps of burned-up photo negatives we found in Sarah’s room yesterday, I’m going to go out on a limb and say she took a picture of you that she shouldn’t have.
You aren’t supposed to be here. You wanted to make sure there was no trace you’d ever come by. ”
Ryan’s head was spinning, mostly because he was impressed. Not because he’d killed Sarah, of course, but because very few people could stitch together so many clues so wrongly.
“If you’d just admit it, we can move on to bigger problems,” Kyla said. “Like how the hell we get out of this place alive.”
Ryan took a sip of water. This was going to take some work.
“I did go to Sarah’s room before eight o’clock, yes, but not to kill her. And I went back an hour ago and found the burned film you’re talking about. I assume it came from this.”
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, Ryan removed the rolled-up length of camera film he’d retrieved from a strange black cylinder in Sarah’s bathroom.
He rested the roll of negatives on the bar.
“I don’t think those burned pictures were as exciting as you want them to be.
Look at how neat and clean the cut at the end of the film is.
A killer jacked up on adrenaline wouldn’t have made such a clean slice. ”
Ethan said, “So if the killer didn’t burn the pictures, who did?”
“Sarah, obviously. The film is flawed—there’s weird gray smudges all over it. Sarah probably decided the last few shots just weren’t worth keeping.”
“But why would she burn them?” Ethan said. “Why not just throw them in the trash?”
Ryan shrugged. Fernanda plucked up the roll of film and held it to the light.
Kyla just stared at Ryan until he kept talking.
“I didn’t kill Sarah,” he said. “Yes, I did go to her room. That was around seven fifty. I went because I wanted to talk to her about something. I slipped through the front door while everyone was at dinner, but it didn’t do me any good. Sarah was already dead.”
“How convenient,” Kyla said.
“You can believe me or not.” Ryan stared Kyla in the eye. He was telling her the truth. “I didn’t hurt her. And I didn’t steal any film from her either.”
Kyla didn’t look impressed. “So Sarah was dead by seven fifty?”
“Yes. Very. She looked exactly the way she did when Tabitha found the body a few minutes later. I’d slipped back out of the room by then.
Stanley must have caught a glimpse of me around that time, but I got into the supply closet without much attention.
That’s where I was, trying to figure out what the hell was going on here, and then all the screaming started. ”
“There’s more, though, isn’t there? Because you said in my room that you thought Sarah was already dead by seven thirty.”
Fernanda looked away from the film in her hands. “That’s impossible. I told you earlier that I heard Sarah speaking to a man in her room at—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but could this wait?” Tabitha said. “Time isn’t slowing down, and we still have a lot to cover.”