The Ridge

Pete out here alone… he showed himself then, didn’t he?”

Kimble looked up at her, and she turned away. It had been Kimble’s decision to run a one-man rotation in these woods, and his deputies would not forget that. He wouldn’t either.

He cupped his hands to shield his eyes from the glare of the lights and focused on Pete’s body. There were tears in his uniform across the back, some blood showing through them, but not much. Obvious claw marks, but not the killing wound. He’d bled out from the throat.

“You ready to turn him over?” Kimble asked the lead evidence tech, who was with the state police, a topnotch guy. He’d rolled out fast. That was the way it went when a police officer was killed.

“Yeah. Waiting on you.”

“All right. Let’s turn him.”

Two of the technicians reached out with gloved hands and gently, with utmost care, rolled Pete Wolverton’s body over. The head didn’t roll in sync with the rest of him—there wasn’t much muscle left tethering skull to torso.

Someone whispered an oath, someone else a prayer. Kimble slid closer.

Pete’s throat had been laid wide open, and the cords of muscle showed white against the dark blood, which had spilled in enormous quantity, saturating Pete’s uniform shirt and all of the leaves around him. Kimble brought a hand up to his face and squeezed the flesh between his eyes with his thumb and index finger. He squeezed long and hard, concentrating on the pressure. Nobody spoke.

When he took his hand down again, he looked right at the wound. Not at Pete’s face, not at his eyes, not at the blood-soaked uniform that bound him in brotherhood to the men and women here. Just at the wound.

It was a very straight incision. An end-to-end slash that had cut remarkably deep, severing not just the arteries but the strong cartilage of the throat that people referred to as the windpipe.

Kimble said, “We think a claw did that?”

For a moment it was silent. Then the head evidence tech, from the state police, who was closest to the body, said, “Well, if it had used its teeth, everything would be torn. Chewed up. So that slash, yeah, that must have been a claw.”

“It’s very clean.”

Above him, Diane said, “There are claw marks all over his back, too.”

“I saw them. Not nearly so clean. Not very deep at all.”

Everyone was staring at him now. The evidence technician looked thoughtful. He turned back to the wound and said, “It is very clean.”

Diane said, “What are you thinking, chief?”

“I’m thinking that I’ve seen six people whose throats were cut with knives,” Kimble said. “One cut with a sword, one with an ax, one with a barbecue fork. I’ve never seen anyone’s throat opened up by a cat. I don’t know what it looks like.”

“Like that,” she said, her voice unsteady. The evidence technician, though, was meeting Kimble’s eyes, and there was a glimmer of understanding and agreement there.

“Autopsy will tell us, won’t it?” Kimble said, speaking to him.

“Yeah. We’ll be able to tell.”

“Tell what?” Diane said.

Kimble straightened, dusting leaves from his jeans. “Whether the cougar killed him,” he said, “or found him.”

28

THE IMAGE AUDREY COULD NOT get out of her mind was a Valium bottle. There was one at home, in the medicine cabinet, a prescription she’d filled in the weeks after David’s death. The pills had carried her through the funeral, through the softly spoken sympathies and the offers of help and the sight of him in the casket, but then she’d tucked them in a far corner of the medicine cabinet. Not because they didn’t help, but because she didn’t want to have to rely on that kind of help for too long.

Now she wanted that kind of help again. Wanted to take a handful of them, wanted the world to go cloudlike, soft and distant. Very distant.

She’d spoken to two different police officers, one woman who was harsh, almost accusatory, and one older man who hadn’t said much at all, just kept telling her to get comfortable, as if he were the awkward host of the world’s worst party. She’d gotten the tears and the trembling under control and was just beginning to feel some strength return when the sheriff himself stepped through the door. He wore his Stetson with the badge affixed to the crown, as if he’d just ridden in from Tombstone, and he looked at her with undisguised fury.

“Mrs. Clark,” he said, “I intend to let my department handle this investigation in the standard fashion. It’s not my job to interview you, and I won’t, though I’m damned tempted. I’m here for two reasons. The most important is out of respect for my deputy, who’s being zipped into a body bag right now. The other? I want you to know that this property is going to be closed.”

“What does that mean?” Audrey said. “Closed?”

“It means I will see this place shut down and your cats gone.”

She stared at him. In her hands was a cup of tea the other officer had insisted on making for her. He was looking at the floor now.

“I’ve tolerated this circus when I shouldn’t have,” the sheriff said. “I’ll carry that guilt for a long time, believe me. But in the last two days, two men have died because of your damned cats. If you think I won’t respond to that—”

“Someone shot Kino,” she said. “Your own officers found a bullet. They didn’t want to talk to me about it, but I know what it means. Someone came out here and shot one of my cats, and my best friend left in this world died trying to help. I know you just lost one of your own, and I’m sorry. But you need to remember that I’ve lost one of mine, too!”

Her voice was shaking, and the sheriff looked at her without a trace of emotion. When he spoke again, his voice was flat.

“It’s my understanding that the USDA handles your permitting.”

“That’s right,” she said. “And the permits are in order. They approved the new facility before—”

“They’ll be coming back out,” he said. “Along with some folks from the state wildlife agency. Along with whoever the hell else I need. I’ll find whoever it takes, and I’ll come with them.”

The door opened again, and another cop stepped through. She recognized this one. Kimble. The sheriff glanced at him, then turned back to Audrey.

“You can’t shut it down,” she said. “There are more than sixty cats who need—”

“I have no interest in the needs of your cats. I have interest in the public safety of Sawyer County. You have every right to object, and I’m sure you will. I’m just telling you the score. Don’t say you were blindsided. I intend to get these cats out of my county.”

She didn’t respond.

“As for the missing cat,” he continued, “I intend to find it. I’m having poisoned bait traps placed along the riverbed right now.”

“You can’t poison—”

He held up a hand. “You lost him, Mrs. Clark. You couldn’t handle him. When he was on your property, he was yours to care for. When he’s loose? He’s mine. I’m not worried about the cat’s health. I’m worried about the public’s.”

“Good luck getting him,” she said softly, and he flushed with rage, was halfway to a blustering response when she said, “No—I mean it. Good luck.”

He stared at her, then turned away. Said something low to Kimble and banged open the door and went outside.

“He’s hurting,” Kimble said, crossing the room to sit beside her. “We all are.”

“I understand that.”

“He’s also not wrong. Things are getting out of hand here. Do you have anyone you can contact, Mrs. Clark? Anyone who can come out here and lend some… some expertise? Experience?”