The Last True Sentence

The first lesson imparted in the FBI's Forensic Linguistics Unit is that "Language doesn't lie. People do. When they speak, their syntax, their rhythm, their unconscious tics seep truth out of their mouths; their faces perform sincerity, but the word itself, the words, is the truth. Dr. Iris Vance had worked her life around that principle until its very day was her undoing and cost a young woman her life. She now taught part-time in a windowless room in the basement of George Mason University, whose air reeked of damp wool and sorrows. Forty people could have fit in the room, but there were eleven students at the Language as Evidence course, and three of them looked like they were doing a distribution requirement course. Iris had no reason to think that they were to blame. She had been working in the morning with a client who had a threat letter stating that a disgruntled employee was going to sabotage the microwave in his company's break room. The worst item of evidence had been that pointless semicolon that had left Iris with a sense of satisfaction for having completed a puzzle and a sense of despair for living their life now. Just as she was drawing a ransom note taken during a k********g in 1932, her phone rang against the lectern at 2:17 p.m. She ignored it. Her classroom was not a place for phones, and she didn't hesitate to make it even more as if she were significantly older and more brutal than she was, 42 years. However, it was back again with the buzz. And again. Lastly, she looked down and remembered her sponsor's reminder to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that evening, which she did not wish to attend. She instead spotted a New York area code and a name that caused her to freeze as she was forming her chalk marks. Gideon Thorne. A literary agent, Thorne had the clout of two of the final three Nobel laureates, and his name was featured in Publishers Weekly as often as the weather report. Iris hadn't seen him before. She couldn't think of any reason why he should be calling her, except he'd run out of other Eastern Seaboard-based forensic linguists to call. That seemed unlikely. What would have been more probable was a clerical error, a misdial, a wrong number, a cosmic clerical error. When she was done with her idiolect markers lecture, the chalk dust on her tongue was as dry as the air. A boy wearing a Band t-shirt and a laptop computer with a tireless cough arrived at the end of the class, and she dialed the number back. The other assistant of Thorne responded with crispness that came at a six-figure price. It took just the first 40 seconds for Iris to talk to the man himself. His voice was smooth as baritone smoke and velvet; it was the voice that made people think that they were the only person he wanted to talk to and sold a million books. He said, “Dr. Vance, I have called you for two days, as it seems to be a breach of common decency that you haven't answered. I have a client (estate) who has a very sensitive issue; they need someone of your… special expertise. Iris leaned against the lectern, as the dust of chalk drifted through the projector light. “If this is a will dispute or a bogus dedication page, it's not my business. The prices I charge are ridiculous, and I don't make a very good customer. A low chuckle. I have heard, but it's different this time.” Do you know who the author of Eamon Roy is? Like a half-forgotten dream, the name came to her like a piece of music. Eamon Roy. The reclusive genius who had published three novels of staggering brilliance in the ’80s and early 90s, then "disappeared" altogether when he reached the peak of his fame. No photographs since 1996. No interviews. No sightings. The Glass Confessional, Apostrophes to the Dead, and The Syntax of Silence were his books that she had on her own shelves, grad school annotations in the margins. He was the source of her passion for sentence structure, for the secrets of story. To him, she was the language he had never known that could be a cathedral, a teaching he had imparted at the same time without his realising it. Sure, I know Roy”, she said, her voice catching her. Roy is "known" to everyone in my field of study: his use of free indirect discourse in Apostrophes is more of a dissertation topic. If so, you'll see why this telephone call is confidential," Thorne said, and his voice took on a different tone, the warmth replaced with steel. Eamon Roy died six weeks ago, alone, in a cabin on the San Juan Islands, no next of kin, but before he passed, he had a safe deposit box opened by his estate in which was a manuscript, an entire novel, more than six hundred pages long. It's called The Last True Sentence. Iris' pulse raced as it did in some of the years before the drinking began and the failure, before a new case file was placed on her desk and the world was reduced to the beautiful bloodless logic of words once again. An Eamon Roy novel that has been lost. The literate world would burn to the ground. The property would have a value of $100 million or more. Then they had summoned her! She said that she wanted to sign it. “No question about it,” Thorne said. “The publishing house has offered to wire up an eight-figure advance just as soon as they can establish its authenticity, but there are skeptics. Roy's style changed quite a bit from his first to his third novel, and some scholars say that a fourth novel wouldn't be recognisable to you—his… recent professional woes notwithstanding. Professional difficulties had been cut open, and carefully bloodless. Iris understood the meaning of his words. The Mallory Case. The false lead the FBI had been following and a repeat of the attack from a killer that attacked again! The news coverage. The investigation by the Internal Affairs department, which acquitted her on procedure but convicted her on judgment. The bottle, which is the replacement for her sense of self She said no, deflecting, that she didn't know how to decipher the handwriting. “If there is a physical manuscript - “ It's digital; it's been printed and then scanned, but we have all the original file data; the question isn't about physical provenance, it's about linguistic identity: Is this an original work of Eamon Roy, or an incredible forgery? The estate will settle for $50,000, plus expenses, for a definitive analysis—and a preliminary one within three weeks is needed. Fifty thousand dollars. She'd earned 10 times as much in 2 years as a teacher and as a pathetic consultant. Did not need to pay off the credit card debt, the detox clinic, cancer diagnosis medical bills, or the loan her sister cosigned many years ago. Iris also knew straight away it was some sort of test. Nobody was going to dish out such a substantial sum of money for nothing. She had been taught that from the language of contracts, the most dangerous of which were always the ones that sounded the most friendly. “Why me?” she asked, “Why me?” “There are others that are linguists; active, have clearances, and fewer… difficulties.” Thorne paused. For the first time she heard thine beneath thy polish, a tension, a placing of breath. “If anyone ever had any question about the blurb in his will being genuine, the estate was to seek your advice,” said he slowly, “you, and no one else. You.” Iris lost her grip on the Chalk, and it fell to the floor made of linoleum. She looked at the pieces of white, as though they were bones. Eamon Roy must have heard her name. The man to whose sentences she had been listening, whose linguistic traces she had been yearning for over the years, had come from the dead, and left his thumb on her maul. She did not answer but said in a timid voice, “I don't know.” “I have no idea.” If so, maybe it's your time to find out.” The velvet came back, and Thorne's tone was soothing. A car will pick you up tomorrow morning at 07:00; you are to pack for a minimum of 2 weeks two weeks, as the estate has provided a quiet place for you to work; all you need will be handed to you. The line went dead. It was a tall, thin, empty classroom surrounded by chalk dust and the echo of the name of a dead writer. It dawned upon Iris for the first time in a long, long time that there could be a reason for this, a reason with a deep, dark fear attached to it. With her newfound knowledge of the Bureau's best-written threat profiler, she was aware there would be nothing normal about this job. Eamon Roy wasn't a writer who formatted stories in a straightforward manner. He built labyrinths. And she had just taken her invitation to get in.