The Last True Sentence

Chapter Four: The Unwritten Reader

There was no path through the forest, only a hint of one between the trees. Iris walked for more than an hour, her bag loaded with paper, her thoughts racing with the code, which she had broken. The coordinates had led to a place in the San Juan Islands, just the islands where Roy had met his end. Doesn't that seem like a coincidence? The Sanctuary was a physical place, and it might have been Roy's last hideout, where he had left the last piece of the puzzle—a piece that would explain everything. However, it needed a ferry and a car, which Iris didn't have. She had to find civilization, call for a ride, and stay out of the way of whoever was trying to make her stay quiet.

She eventually came upon a logging road and drove on it until she reached a gas station selling old coffee and one prepaid cell phone. She thought of the only one who could come to her help if asked don't ask: former FBI colleague, retired early, Leo Braden, who was running a small private investigation business in Seattle. She owed him a debt of gratitude from “old times”, a debt which she had never paid back. When he replied, his voice was harsh and apprehensive.

“Iris? You must have fallen out of your cloud, Jesus, I thought! What’s going on?”

She told me to call her to pick her up after I gave her the address of the gas station. “But I have to have you bring a gun.”

Leo didn’t hesitate. “You will see me in 4 hours – stay put.”

As she waited, Iris purchased a map of the Pacific Northwest and put it out on a picnic table off the station with rocks at the corners. She followed the path to the San Juans and started to color in the pages of the manuscript anew. Once the dual-voice pattern was detected, it further intensified and became more disquieting. Now she felt that her self-styled “Eamon Prime” was the lyrical narrator, and it had been her task to record in a way that included hints for the future reader to solve, recording with guilt and horror. The cold narrator, whom she referred to as “The Syntax,” reported with the flat present tense of a man who didn't feel remorse, and described violence in that way. It wasn't like the two voices were two different people; it was a dissociative split that Roy had documented in his own psychiatric file.

There was a third voice, however, which can be heard, but in the margins, in footnotes and crossed-out passages, a female voice. These she at first thought were editorial inventions, but now, examined with scrupulous care, she was able to understand their nature. The tone of the female voice was backstopping and even pleading. It questioned the facts; it challenged The Syntax's version of facts. The alder you left her by, not the oak. So, why do you get the trees wrong all of the time?” This voice was one that knew the truth. But it wasn't set off in the direction of the predator.

Who was she? A survivor of the victimization? A collaborator? A part of Roy's conscience in the shape of a language? It was too early to tell, but the presence of the voice marred the story. The manuscript was both a triptych, the artist's, the monster's, and the witness's. The witness was trying to help Iris to the truth.

When Leo's truck came in, the sun was beginning to set, but the truck was a battered Ford with mud on the fenders. His eyes had seen much, and his grey beard was a great part of who Leo was. He held Iris tightly and, after a moment, let her go, looking at her.

“You look awful, Iris.”

“I’ve been reading.”

He didn’t laugh. He heard of her from the Mallory Case; he could see her break down. “Why is this happening? Why is this 'this' about?

She gave it to him in the binder. Read Chapter 27, then tell me this is a story.”

The engine idling, Iris looked at the shadows grow in length, and Leo read in the cab of the truck. When he was done, his face was white. This is Ellie; this is your sister.” How can this be?

“She was a person that he knew. He knew them all.” He thinks he left the last proof at a place called Sanctuary.” She revealed the word she had deciphered from the acrostic. “But I have to get there before the estate realizes that I'm not just establishing what the manuscript is; I'm making a murder indictment.”

Leo started the motor of the truck. “Well, then we're going on the ferry tonight, and you'll tell me all this, starting from the beginning.”

As they traveled on still longer road over the sea, Iris told him all about what she had discovered: forensic linguistics, the two voices, the coded coordinates, the psychiatric file, and the mysterious footnote-voice of the female. There was no one else around to interrupt, and Leo was in no hurry to park the car as he was listening.

I think this is crazy,” he said after a while. “Granted it is the largest story in publishing history, the largest serial murder case in the Pacific Northwest, but we need evidence. Manuscript analysis isn't enough to warrant a warrant.”

After all, we need Sanctuary,” Iris went on. “He left a physical thing behind. I can feel it in the way the sentences are formed, leading me to closure. Roy was a perfectionist; there was redubbing, there had to be corroborating proof.”

The crossing place was very cold and black, and out of water the islands were like sleeping animals. They travelled the night from their ship to Orcas Island, following the “code” to drive along the curvy roads and find this location. It proved to be a small old shack at the end of a muddy road overlooking the sound – The Sanctuary. The door was dark, unlatched, and had an old paper smell to it.

They discovered inside one room that had a writing desk, a cot and a row of filing cabinets. In the cabinets were Roy's own personal effects – his own archives of drafts, letters, photographs. However, the find was made when a small fireproof safe was discovered, which was fastened onto the floor. The numbers were combined in the acrostic, which is a number made up of the numbers of pages and lines. Iris' hands trembled with fear as she dialed. The safe opened and gave a click when it was unlocked.

There in there were three things: a stack of Polaroids of young women in various places, eyes wide with terror, a handwritten journal with the name written in it, ‘Eamon Roy: The Syntax Record, ' and a letter in an envelope that was yellowed at the edges by the passage of time and sealed with Iris Vance's name.

Iris took out the letter. The writing style was clean, elegant, and very similar to that of the entries in the journal, but the tone of the voice was distinctly Eamon Prime—the lyrical, guilt-ridden narrator.

Dear Dr. Vance,

If you were reading this, then you have survived my sentences. I wish I could have avoided the danger, but that wasn't possible. I have an enemy in my body who speaks, who has been with me for a very long time, from time immemorial really, from the trauma, a monster, a second self with its own tongue. While I was sitting in the back seat of my consciousness, this self I call The Syntax was doing some terrible things. I didn't stop him, but I could get hold of him. I could create a cage of words and confine him in this book. It is only YOU who have the skills to decipher it in this world. You've been my intended reader from the start. You weren't the first sister that he robbed, but you were the one that tore me down. I read her face in the papers, and saw the fruits of my dark twin. That recognition is a shattering in me. I started to write this book, The Last True Sentence, as a confession and a trap—hopefully so you will come one day.

The pictures speak for themselves. The journal is a record of the Syntax and in his voice. Use to make peace to the families. Also, remember when you tell this story, I was the monster. I was also the one that made the manju cage.

Eamon Roy, "the man who never knew the joys of language less than his own.

Tears blurred Iris' sight as she lowered the letter. Behind her, standing, was Leo, who was reading over her shoulder. Polaroids were spread out on the desk – the faces of the lost. But some way up there, Ellie had to have been.

We must tell them about this,” he said softly. “This is over,” the FBI and the police at the crime scene told them.

But Iris knew that it was not a matter of time. The manuscript's voice was still present: it was still speaking its words in the terrible present tense. But somewhere out there, the estate men and women Margot Lyle, Gideon Thorne, maybe more- were attempting to shape the story. She didn't know on whose side they stood or whether their intent was to sweep the truth under the carpet or just to reap the rewards. The story wasn't finished yet.

She took up the Syntax's journal and started to read. The first was dated 1987, and the first sentence, written in that style, in that voice (contraction-free), caused her blood to run cold.

“So I am going to tell you what I did, not to get forgiveness, but to be remembered.”

Still, the Syntax was rattling the cage; the manuscript had been a cage.