The Ridge

“I don’t,” Kimble said.

Troy looked at him with surprise.

“They’ve had this preserve going for a long time,” Kimble said. “Never an incident. Not until they came here.”

“Been a lot of incidents since.”

“There have been. I intend to find a way to handle it, Troy. I do. But let’s not allow ourselves to blame the wrong party. I was with her most of the morning. That’s a brave woman.”

“I don’t blame her, Kimble. It might have sounded as such, but I don’t blame her. I blame that damned cat. And while I don’t like any of them here, the one that’s free is the one we’re going to need to deal with first. Going to need to find that cat and kill it. That’s the only thing. I’m thinking poison bait traps. Spread ’em out all along the river down there.”

“And what if somebody’s dog gets into them, or, hell, a kid?”

“A kid’s going to eat a bloody piece of raw meat? Any kid that does that is one I’d put on the scorecard as points in our favor. Won’t have to arrest him for some fucked-up shit ten years from now.”

Kimble couldn’t help but smile at that.

“We’ll figure out a way to get him,” he said. “But even if the cat did kill Pete, you’ve got to remember that it was recently a wild animal and still has a hunter’s blood. Not much Audrey Clark, or anyone else, can do about that.”

Troy tilted his head and stared at Kimble. “Did I hear you say if?”

Kimble glanced to his left, where the crime-scene lights glared in the woods, and said, “Troy, I’ve seen the body. I’d wager my last dime that when the medical examiner is done, he’ll say Pete’s throat was cut.”

Neither of them spoke for a long time. When Troy finally broke the silence, he said, “She saw the cat with him, Kimble. She saw it.”

“After Pete was dead. She did not see it bring him down.”

“You’re telling me you think someone came out here and cut his throat tonight. You’re serious.”

“I am. We’ll see what the autopsy says. The tiger that was shot out here yesterday? That was not a case of the property manager trying to put down a wild cat. Someone else took that shot.”

“I know that, Kimble. I read your report, and Mrs. Clark was in there carrying on about it just a minute ago. I understand it’s a crime. But there’s a damned big difference between someone taking a pot shot at a tiger and someone cutting a policeman’s throat.”

Kimble took a breath, looked Troy in the eye, and said, “I’m going to ask you for some leeway on this.”

“What do you mean, Kimble?”

“Give me twenty-four hours on my own with it. No reports, nobody riding with me, no meetings. Just give me a day of space to work.”

“If you’ve got notions on who did this,” Troy said, “I need to hear them.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Kimble repeated. “You give me that, sir, and I’ll give you every notion I’ve got. If you don’t like them, and you probably won’t… well, we’ll deal with that then. But let me run with it, sir.”

Troy looked at him for a long time, and then he said, “We’ve been working together for too damn long, Kimble, for you to call me sir.”

“I know it. But this just feels a little different, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Troy said. “It sure as shit does.”

They walked together back to Troy’s car, and Kimble put out his hand and squeezed the sheriff’s shoulder and wished him luck. There was nothing false in the gesture. They had their differences, in demeanor and approach, but Kimble did not envy the man the trip he was about to make to see Julie Wolverton, and he was proud of him for making it.

When the sheriff was gone, Kimble waited until they removed Pete’s body. He stood with head bowed as they carried it past, and then, when the others were either gone down the road or back in the woods, he got into his own car and drove across the gravel and up the winding lane until he reached the top of the hill and the lighthouse rose like a menacing specter in the night, white paint and glass picking up the pale moon glow and holding the tower stark against the night sky. Kimble parked outside the fence and left the car running, the headlights aimed at the front of the building, then found the keys to the property. He stepped out of the car and unlocked the gate and went up the path to the lighthouse, opened the door, and stepped inside the cold room. The walls were bare wood now, unadorned by the maps and photographs. All that remained was the thumbtacks, which protruded in all directions, tilting like gravestones in a forgotten cemetery.

“Okay,” Kimble said. “I’ve heard enough and seen enough to give it a shot, Wyatt. I’ll give it a shot.”

He crossed to the bed, leaned over it, and opened the electrical panel. There was a series of metallic snaps as he flipped the breakers. No lights came on, but he heard a hum.

He closed the panel door, looked at the words that covered it, those song lyrics:

And the sky’s so cold and clear

The stars might stick you where you stand

And you’re only glad it’s dark

’Cause you might see the Master’s hand…

He turned away, then used the flashlight to find his way up the stairs. There he dropped to one knee, reached out, and laid a palm over the lens of the infrared lamps. Warm. They were back on, casting their invisible beams into the woods.

He straightened, turned off the flashlight, and looked at the fractured glass panel left from the killing bullet. He thought of a line he’d read long ago: It was no accident that most people who committed suicide with a gun chose to shoot themselves in the head and not the heart. It was there that they were plagued, haunted, tormented.

He stared out at the dark hills through the wide glass panes, thinking of all the stories he’d heard today. Even in the night, you could see the outline of the railroad trestle, spindly silhouettes over a river that shimmered beneath the moon.

Twenty-four hours, he’d told the sheriff, and then he’d share his thoughts. They were thoughts that might well cost him his badge. What he was coming to believe was likely impossible to prove.

But he’d be damned if he wouldn’t try.

30

THE WHITMAN COLLEGE LIBRARY was open until Christmas Eve, but with classes already out of session for the semester there was hardly a student or faculty member to prowl the shelves. Roy met the librarian at the door as she unlocked the building, and his presence gave her a start. It was well past dawn but barely light, the sun hidden by layers of leaden clouds. They were predicting snow, the season’s first chance of accumulation.

Roy was vaguely acquainted with the librarian who greeted him—her name was Robin and she’d helped him out with a few bits of research over the years—and that was both reassuring and a little troubling. She’d be good to him, he knew, but she might also have questions that he wasn’t prepared to answer.

She led with a question, in fact. As Roy showed her the photographs and explained that he was hoping to find the source, she asked immediately what he was working on, now that the newspaper was closed.

“Looking for that next step,” he said. “You know, maybe a book or something.”

“I think that would be just great,” Robin said in the tone of voice you used when a toddler announced his intention to learn to fly a plane. Or, in Roy’s experience, when damn near anyone announced their intention to write a book. “We’d hate to lose you from town, you know.”

“I don’t think it’s in me to leave, even if I wanted to. Still stories to tell, too. I suppose I’ll turn into an old man sitting on a liar’s bench, passing my news along that way.”

“You could start a blog,” she said cheerfully and seriously, and the word stirred bile in Roy’s stomach.

“I could,” he said. “Now, it looks to me like these are microfilm printouts. But they aren’t from my paper.” Even now, he couldn’t get that out of his system. My paper. “I was thinking that there