The Ridge

Shipley turned, and the gun swung toward Roy, who winced. “Sorry, sorry. Look, you want the gun gone, it’s gone.”

He set the weapon down on the coffee table between them. “I’m going to lose my job,” he said. “I know that. But I’d rather lose that than my damn mind.”

“You hit Dustin Hall?” Roy said. “And when you saw the blue flame, it was with Dustin Hall? The flame wasn’t with you, it was with him?”

“Yeah. And I’ll tell you something else—that kid knows what happened to him. He’s the reason I can’t convince myself that it was a hallucination or a dream or whatever. Maybe I could have, if not for him. But when I went back out there, the morning Harrington died? It was just me and Dustin Hall at first. Before Pete got there, it was just the two of us, and he knew what had happened, he knew that I’d run him down. I’m sure of it. But what was I supposed to tell Kimble? Or anyone else? Say, Hey, this kid, he rose from the dead the other day, and now I think he’s lying about it. I’m supposed to say that?”

“Yes,” Roy said. “You’re going to need to say that. To Kimble.”

“I could save us both the time and put the handcuffs on myself.”

Roy shook his head. “You don’t understand, Shipley. Kimble will believe what you just said, because it’s true. He knows somebody escaped death out there. He just thought it was you.”

“What?”

“Why do you think Kimble asked me to follow you, instead of a cop? He’s chasing stories that most people don’t believe are possible, just like you. He’s out there at the ridge now, I think. I’m not sure. I can’t get him on the phone.”

“What’s he doing out there?”

Roy was feeling the gravity of the mistake now, sensing all that it could mean, and there was no time to explain that to Shipley.

“We need to find Kimble,” he said. “And we need to talk to Audrey Clark. Isn’t Dustin Hall staying out there with her now?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not good,” Roy said. “That could be very, very bad. Will you let me call Kimble again? Please. This is serious.”

Shipley thought about it, looked once at the gun, as if that were an option worthy of further consideration, and then gave a broken man’s sigh and nodded.

“Call him, man. I need to understand what the hell is the matter with that place. What’s out there.”

He reached in his pocket and withdrew Roy’s cell phone and tossed it to him. Roy missed it—his hands were shaking. He picked it up off the couch and dialed and got Kimble’s voicemail again.

“Damn you, Kimble,” he said. “You told me my only job tonight was to call. Well, then yours should be to answer.”

Shipley said, “You want me to contact dispatch? See if they can raise him?”

Roy thought about what Kimble was doing tonight, thought about Jacqueline Mathis and how swiftly this could end the man’s career, and he shook his head.

“No. But we should call Audrey Clark. She needs to know that she should be careful with Hall.”

“They’re together in a trailer,” Shipley said. “You want to call her and tell her she should be afraid of the guy and think he’s not going to notice? He’s not going to pick up on that vibe?”

It was a damn good point. Roy swore, looked at the phone and then back up at Shipley.

“We’ve got to go out there, then. Will you do that?”

Shipley looked sick at the prospect, but he nodded.

43

AUDREY WAS STILL AWAKE when the headlights came back on at the top of the hill, and while she was relieved once again, she was also concerned. Kimble had been up there for so long. Too long.

The lights arced away, the car leaving the lighthouse and heading back downhill, and then she lost sight of them.

Out in the living room, Dustin called for her. “Audrey? The police are here.”

Kimble had pulled in to see them in the middle of the night? Why? Audrey stood up and slipped into her shoes. She’d slept—or tried to sleep—in her clothes, afraid or almost expecting something just like this, another call out into the darkness. By the time she got down the hall, Dustin was standing with the door open, and he said, “What the hell?” Before she could ask him anything, before she could even register the sound of alarm in his voice, Kevin Kimble had pushed inside. His gun was in his hand, pointing straight at her.

And there was blood all over him.

It was on the hand that held the gun, his uniform shirt, his shoes. He wasn’t wearing a jacket; his hair was tangled. His eyes looked fevered.

“What happened?” Audrey said, and only as she watched his face did a new option begin to form in her mind—that whatever had caused this bloodshed had happened not to him but because of him. He didn’t look right, didn’t have the reassuring demeanor he’d always exhibited before.

“I’ll be going to jail soon,” he said. His voice was dull. “But before that happens, I’ve got something I’d like to do, and I’m afraid you might not understand. I’m sorry about that.”

Audrey was looking at the blood, so much blood, all over his clothes, and she put a hand to her mouth and took a step away from him. Dustin actually went toward him, as if he might wrestle the big man to the floor, but Kimble lifted the gun and leveled it at his forehead.

“Son? You’re not standing in front of a man of reason. You’d do well to remember that. I will not hurt you if I can help it, but helping it isn’t easy for me right now.”

Dustin seemed to believe him. He backed away, sat on the couch.

Audrey said, “What are you doing? What happened?”

Kimble lowered the gun after giving Dustin a careful study. “I’m going to try to put an end to it, Mrs. Clark. This place. I doubt it will work, but I’m going to try it, and then I’m going to go to jail.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“You do, though,” he said. “You do. You’ve seen it out there. That man with the blue torch. I’m going to try to put an end to him.”

Audrey remembered the blue flame, drawing her into the night woods, drawing her toward a dead man in the dark.

“You sound like you’re talking about a ghost,” she said.

“Don’t I?” Kimble cleared his throat, gave his head a little shake, as if he’d wandered from the moment and had to bring himself back around, and then said, “There’s no landline here. But I’ll need your cell phones.”

“Why?”

He gave her a pained look. “Please, Mrs. Clark. Audrey. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be. But I’ve got to make sure I have enough time to do what I need to do.”

“What is that?”

“Burn that trestle down,” he said. “That trestle and all that lives with it. I’m taking it down.”

He was serious. There was a rust-colored streak of blood over his cheek and above it his eyes were red and swollen, but the dark irises betrayed no trace of anything but grim determination.

“Why?” she said. “Why would you burn that bridge?”

“To keep people from dying. Or killing. Or maybe it won’t do a damned thing, but it will do this much—nobody will be able to walk across it anymore. I don’t think that’s as small a difference as most people might.”

“That’s where my husband died,” she said.

“I know. It’s where quite a few people have died. It’s a dangerous place.”

He said it not in the way you’d talk about someplace where you need to be careful to avoid a slip and fall, but in the way you’d talk about a dark street with snipers on every rooftop, where all the care in the world might not help you if you made the mistake of entering it.

“You’re talking as if it’s evil,” Audrey said.