The Ridge

“Son of a bitch, Darmus,” he said.

Good trick. A lot better than whatever Wyatt was playing on Kimble from beyond the grave.

He looked up again, at the maps and the photographs. All those old pictures, looking as if they’d been copied out of history books, and then Jacqueline, staring at him with those endless blue eyes.

Why did Wyatt have her picture up?

Kimble reached up, pulled the thumbtacks from the wood, removed Jacqueline’s picture, and put it in his pocket with the blank pages from Darmus.

8

IT TOOK A FEW HOURS for the medical folks to finish their work in the lighthouse. Kimble stood around in the rain and waited for them, spoke to the deputy coroner, and then watched as they finally removed the body, which wasn’t an easy or pleasant task, coming down those steep, narrow stairs.

Kimble had another deputy on scene now, Diane Mooney, and he discharged her, said he was shutting it down for the day. It wasn’t a bad move; every element pointed to a straightforward suicide.

Except for those maps. And that phone call. What if the victim wasn’t entirely willing…

As he’d waited for the coroner’s people to do their work, Kimble had perused the maps, reading the names. When he saw Joseph and Lillian Darmus, he felt a pang over the way he’d snapped at the old reporter for mentioning Jacqueline. It had surprised him, that was all. And he’d lashed out because… because it was his own damned business. Personal, private.

After Diane Mooney left, Kimble stepped back inside the lighthouse, armed with a Maglite now, and went to the electrical panel. He didn’t want to leave the busted light with live current going to it. Last thing he needed was a fire. He snapped the main breaker off, plunging the room into darkness.

He turned his flashlight on, checking for last precautions before locking this place up, and around him the old pictures picked up the glow, dozens of dead eyes watching him. He paced with the flashlight held at shoulder level, taking them all in. With only a few exceptions, they were turn-of-the-century photographs. A few, such as Jacqueline’s, had names, but most were tagged simply with the word NO. What did that mean?

Kimble slipped on a pair of plastic gloves, then moved around the room, carefully removing every photograph and every map.

It was a suicide, nothing else to it. No call for investigation. Still…

If there are two things I’d hope you might continue to grant me in the future, it is your time and respect.

“Why did you do it, Wyatt?” Kimble whispered. “And what is all this shit about?”

There was no suicide note, no explanation or farewell. Beyond the maps and photographs, there was nothing except a handwritten sheet of paper taped to the electrical panel above Wyatt’s bunk. Behind that panel existed everything that the man seemed to care about—the circuits that controlled his lights, the power that fed them—and Kimble leaned over the bed to read it more carefully. Lyrics to some poem or song titled “Lantern.”

It’s a hungry world out there

Even the wind will take a bite

I can feel the world circling

Sniffing round me in the night

And the lost sheep grow teeth

Forsake the lambs and lie with the lions

The story of the song, which seemed to be a defiance of human darkness, of an evil world, and the significance it might have had to Wyatt French, became vividly clear by the end:

So if you got a light, hold it high for me

I need it bad tonight, hold it high for me

’Cause I’m face-to-face, hold it high for me

In that lonesome place, hold it high for me

With all the hurt that I’ve done, hold it high for me

That can’t be undone, hold it high for me

Light and guide me through, hold it high for me

And I’ll do the same for you, hold it high for me

I’ll hold it high for you, ’cause I know you’ve got

I’ll hold it high for you, your own valley to walk

I’ll hold it high for you, though it’s dark as death…

Kimble stopped reading, saddened, and turned away. Wyatt had certainly held a light high, but for what? Kimble thought of him living up here in total isolation, listening to the wind work over the ridge and watching from behind the glass as his lighthouse illuminated the night woods. What had it meant to him? These words, that light? He felt the weight of sorrow on him as he always did soon enough with suicides, a hard tug of personal connection that he’d never dare put into words. I want out, too. A person was more than twice as likely to kill himself as to be killed by another, and yet people feared murderers far more than what lurked within themselves.

“Poor bastard,” Kimble said, and then he turned away. As some odd temple of loneliness the lighthouse made sense to Kimble, almost perfect sense—You’re right, Wyatt, it’s too dark too often here— but the maps seemed to suggest something more than that. He had been a lonely man, certainly, but there was more than loneliness here, and perhaps Kimble should be grateful that he’d not harmed anyone else. Another year or two of living in this place and brooding over whatever the hell he brooded over and he might have picked up the same gun and ventured out. It happened sometimes. Chief Deputy Kevin Kimble had been around long enough to know that terrible things happened sometimes, strange things, things that you couldn’t even say out loud…

With every passing minute the place felt smaller and colder, and Kimble found himself thinking of the infrared illuminators, that ring of lights below the main bulb. What in the hell was he using those for? He moved away, leaving Wyatt’s treasured song lyrics where they belonged, on the front of the electrical panel, and returned to the stack of photographs and maps he’d placed on the desk. After a moment’s pause, he reached into his pocket, withdrew the photograph of Jacqueline Mathis, unfolded it, and added it to the collection. For a long time he stood above the desk, staring down at her face.

One in the hole, he found himself thinking numbly. Rookie fucking mistake. Inexcusable error. It was your own fault.

He’d taken the gun from her without incident. Ejected the magazine, slipped it into his pocket, and then, as her husband wheezed on the floor, he’d set the gun on the coffee table and turned to the dying man. Never pulled the slide, never checked the chamber. It was his own fault.

She crossed the room for it, Kimble. That wasn’t your fault. She moved like a shadow, moved fast and silent, and she came ten feet across that room to grab the weapon and then she pointed at you and fired. That was your fault?

She’d been scared. She’d been terrified, and he had to remember that.

No. She was terrifying. There’s a difference.

He could still remember the way she’d moved, remembered it so damn vividly that it made his whole body tense. It had been a feeling more than anything else, an instinct—he didn’t remember hearing her or seeing her. There’d just been some flutter of recognition in his brain, some primal warning, and then he’d glanced back and seen her in the darkness with the gun in her hand and a smile on her face.