The Ridge

“You don’t answer yours. And I didn’t have your home number.”

“But you had the address?”

“I found it, yes. Listen, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve got something you need to look at. Please.”

Kimble sighed but let him in. The house was sparsely furnished but incredibly clean for a bachelor’s home. Roy had been divorced for twenty years now, and he knew well the condition of the average bachelor’s home: he lived in one.

“I’m in the middle of work,” Kimble said. “Real work. One of the cats killed its keeper. All those things we talked about last night, I can’t worry about them until I’ve got that situation—”

“Take a look at this,” Roy said, and handed him a piece of paper. It was a neat, morbid time line:

Jacqueline Mathis, killed husband, 2006

Ryan O’Patrick, killed boss, 1982

Adam Estes, killed financial adviser, 1976

Becky Stapp, killed husband, 1948

Timothy Osgood, killed sister, 1931

Ralph Hill, killed business partner, 1927

“Okay,” Kimble said. “That’s about what we figured. Wyatt had an unhealthy hobby. Liked to read about —”

“Now look at this one,” Roy said, feeling like a magician preparing a dubious audience for his trick, and handed Kimble a new sheet of paper.

Ryan O’Patrick, April 12, 1982

Adam Estes, July 17, 1975

Becky Stapp, January 12, 1948

Timothy Osgood, October 31, 1931

Ralph Hill, May 15, 1927

“Are these the dates of the killings? No, Estes doesn’t line up,” Kimble said.

“These are the dates of accidents they had at Blade Ridge. Every one of them.”

Kimble looked up at him. “Accidents?”

“I’m positive. I spent all day tracking them down, and I didn’t believe it myself. These people are separated by decades, but they’re held together by two things: killing and Blade Ridge. Every single one of them survived an accident out there before they did their killing. Becky Stapp was thrown from a horse. Then she put a kitchen knife in her husband’s spine. Adam Estes almost drowned. Then he shot his investment guy. Ryan O’Patrick put a Camaro into the trees, then came back and beat his boss to death with a wrench. The exception is Jacqueline Mathis. Not a recorded incident. Do you know of any connection between her and Blade Ridge?”

“No.”

Roy had been interviewing people for more than forty years and had heard plenty of lies. He looked at Kimble now and knew without question that he’d just heard another.

Why? he thought. Why would he lie about that?

“Okay,” he said. “Well, then she’s the one exception. All of the others survived accidents at Blade Ridge, then went on to kill.”

Kimble was looking at him, but his eyes seemed to be receding.

“It’s bizarre,” he offered finally.

Roy gave a short, humorless laugh. “You’re awfully adept with the understatement, Kimble. It is bizarre.”

“Well, what do you have to say about it? You have some sort of explanation?”

“No, I don’t. And I’m still missing four of them. There are four other men named in those pictures. John Hamlin, Fred Mortimer, Henry Bates, and Bernard Snell. I can’t find anything in the newspapers about them. I think they go back too far. Those pictures are ancient.”

“Well, French found them somewhere.”

“I don’t know where. They’re definitely…”

He stopped talking, and Kimble said, “What?”

“They’re microfilm printouts,” Roy said slowly. “But not from the Sentinel. I’ve been trying to think of what else he could have gone through that was on microfilm and local. The college has archives of the Whitman Company. They kept a newspaper of their own. The Sentinel actually spun out of it, I think. A free paper instead of a company mouthpiece, that sort of thing. But maybe those names are from the company newspaper.”

“Great,” Kimble said, not sounding interested in the slightest, still looking at that list of dates.

“If they are,” Roy said, “then whatever happened with them happened a hell of a long time ago.”

Kimble was moving back toward the front door. “Listen, I’ve got work to do, Mr. Darmus. I appreciate the time you’ve put into this, but—”

“Kimble, are you just pushing that aside and saying—”

“I don’t know what I’m going to say!”

Kimble’s voice had risen to a shout. It was just like the day at the lighthouse. The chief deputy was mild- mannered until you found the right nerve. Before, that nerve had been Jacqueline Mathis. Roy figured it was again, but he didn’t understand why.

“I’m just… just trying to process a whole hell of a lot right now, okay?” Kimble said. “I’m trying to get my head around all of it.”

Roy nodded. “Sure. I’m not there yet myself. I don’t know what it means, but you do have to admit that those connections are… rather extraordinary.”

“Yes,” Kimble said. “They are.”

“One of them is alive,” Roy said.

Kimble stopped. “What?”

“Everyone on that list is dead except for Ryan O’Patrick. And Jacqueline Mathis, of course, but she didn’t have an accident at the ridge that I can find. O’Patrick did. He lives in Modesto.” He extended another piece of paper, this one with an address on it. “Just in case you want to talk to him.”

Kimble took the paper.

Roy went back to his car, and for the first time in his life felt relieved that his parents had died in their accident at Blade Ridge.

What if they’d survived?

It was an idea he’d considered so often, with such hopefulness, wondering how things might have been different if he’d had a family beyond the age of fourteen. Now it entered his mind again and he suppressed a shiver.

What if they’d survived?

24

AUDREY WAS MAKING THE ROUNDS, flashlight in one hand, pole syringe in the other, when the deputy stepped out of the woods and made her scream.

“What are you doing?” she said. She’d spun the syringe around, ready to lunge. “I almost put you into a coma. And you almost put me into a coffin.”

He was wearing a jacket with the hood up, shielding his face in shadow, his breath leaving wisps of vapor. He looked from her to the syringe and smiled.

“That’s for the cougar?”

“In case,” she said, feeling suddenly defensive. She realized how awkward her motion with the long pole had been, how ineffective she would have been if she’d needed to use it. Against an animal like Ira, all sleek speed and