The Ridge (21 page)

Silence.

“We’re looking at a very different scene now,” Kimble said, “and it is important that we handle it right. This thing is not what it appears to be. Harrington did not shoot that cat. If anything, he probably went in there
because
the cat had been shot, and that makes it a crime scene, and a serious one.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Well, without alarming Mrs. Clark—I’ll deal with that when we have to—I want you and Pete to begin looking aggressively for signs of—”

“Pete found a spent casing.”

“What?”

“Not too far back from the fence line, toward the old railroad tracks.”

“Is it a .223?”

“My opinion? Yes. Probably fired from an AR-15 or, more likely, one of the clones, the cheap knockoffs.”

This was serious. This was
very
serious. Someone had gone down there and shot at the cats, which was a major crime on its own terms, but it had also led to the death of Wesley Harrington. You’d probably have to call it involuntary manslaughter…

Unless it was involuntary cat slaughter,
he thought.
Just because the cat was hit doesn’t mean the cat was the target. Shooting in the dark like that, it would be tough to hit a man. And in that place, any bullet that sailed by would have a good chance of finding a five-hundred-pound feline. In which case, Kimble, you could be looking at attempted murder.

“All right,” he said, when he realized the pause had gone on too long. “Listen—I want somebody on security out there tonight.”

“Here. At night?”

“Yes, Shipley, what the hell is the problem? You act like you’re scared of the dark out there. Been talking to Wyatt French?” Kimble’s frustration had been massing since he walked out of the prison, away from Jacqueline’s story, and now Shipley was catching it.

“I’m not scared to be out here,” he said in a clipped voice. “You just tell me the hours.”

“Break it up into shifts. You work until midnight, then let Pete take it. Sound fair enough? I know you’ve been going all day. You want it changed, or you want some relief, then—”

“I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, Shipley,” he said, trying to ease off. “They know you out there now, and I think that will help.”

“What am I supposed to tell them?”

“Tell them I’ve asked that someone remain on duty in case the cougar comes back. Put all the weight of it on that black cat, okay? Why not use the creepy bastard, since we’ve got him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep a sharp eye out there. It’s a damn strange place.”

“It certainly is,” Shipley said.

Kimble hung up and started the engine, ready to get back on the road, back home, ready to get moving through a life that
he’d been treading water in since a summer night five years earlier. It was time.

He drove fast on his way out, but there was a coal train coming through and he couldn’t beat it, caught the intersection just as the gate lowered, pinning him impatiently in place, engine idling, unable to rid the prison from his rearview mirror.

T
HE POLICE TOLD AUDREY
they would keep a man on the grounds overnight. It was the young deputy, Shipley, who informed them, and Dustin Hall shook his head as if he wasn’t happy with the news. Shipley caught the gesture and fell silent, staring Dustin down. There was something remarkably cold in the stare.

Audrey said, “It’s fine. It’s great. I appreciate the gesture. If you see the cat, please come for
me
first, though. Don’t just open fire.”

“If it’s possible to alert you, we will,” Shipley said. “Our safety will be first, the cat’s will be second. You have to understand that.”

“What did you find out there?” Dustin asked.

“Find?” Shipley raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah. You put something in a bag. Was it a bullet?”

Shipley looked at him for a long time, then back to Audrey, and smiled. “Didn’t know you’d hired one of the Hardy Boys. He’ll be good to have around.”

She didn’t think it was an appropriate time to joke, and said as
much. The smile bled off Nathan Shipley’s face and his blue eyes went cold again and he said, “Absolutely right. Someone was killed here last night. I don’t find that amusing. I’m of course in no position to reveal details of police work to Mr. Hall here. Chief Deputy Kimble can decide what he wants to share, and when. In the meantime, we’ll be here for your protection.”

She thanked him, and he went off to his vehicle, slid behind the wheel, and picked up the radio unit.

Dustin Hall, who was suddenly her most experienced staff member, told Audrey that he would replace Wesley on the property. To say that he was a brave kid was an understatement—this morning he’d discovered a good friend’s body, and tonight he was already trying to step in to fill the void. She couldn’t let him stay there, though.

“Go back home and get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll need you early, and need you strong. Okay?”

He frowned, watching Shipley. “I’d just as soon stay out here, Audrey. I feel like that’s where the need is.”

“Dustin? I know what I’m doing with the cats. I’ve got a police officer on the grounds all night, protecting me. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“All right.”

“We’ll stick it out,” she told Dustin. “We’ll be fine.”

Strong words. It was good to be bold, but it was dangerous, too. She was well aware of the truth: the only thing that had kept the preserve going was Wesley Harrington. Without him, she was in over her head and sinking fast.

“Sure,” Dustin said. “And
you
get some sleep, too. You need it.”

But around them the cats were all awake as the sun began to set, stalking the perimeters of their enclosures, eyes glittering, tails swishing, and Audrey had the feeling that sleep wasn’t permitted at Blade Ridge.

Kimble stopped by the department to pick up the reports that waited for him from the morning’s death scene and then went home, poured a glass of red wine, and sat on his couch. He drank wine only when he was at home. When he socialized, which was rare, he stuck to beer—a country cop drinking wine always seemed to draw attention, and Kimble preferred to float in the background—but he loved the taste of a full-bodied red, loved the hard-to-pronounce names on the labels, loved the sound of a cork leaving the bottle. These were all things that made him think romantic notions, and it had been a long time since Kimble had been with a woman. Sometimes—many times—he’d catch himself wondering if Jacqueline drank red wine. He was almost certain she did.

He sipped a glass of blended Chilean red, purchased at an organic food store near the college that stocked wines from all over the world and was a place in which Kimble was unlikely to bump into a colleague or acquaintance. He opened the report from Wesley Harrington’s death scene and tried to steer his mind away from a brown-haired woman in an orange jumpsuit.

She probably likes champagne, too. That seems right. The sparkle.

He blinked, fought to focus. He would write the formal incident report himself, but it would be heavily dependent on supplemental reports from Shipley and Wolverton, who’d both arrived on scene ahead of Kimble. Tonight he had only Wolverton’s account available, because Shipley was still on duty. Still out at the ridge. Pete had taken the time to provide a clipped account of the scene, and Kimble read it with no expectation of new information. But he grew curious as he reviewed Pete’s brief account of his interview with Dustin Hall, the Whitman student who’d discovered the body.
Mr. Hall first noted that there was blood in the cage,
Wolverton had written.
He then moved
closer, observed that the cat was not moving and that a rifle was visible. At that point Mr. Hall entered the cage, discovered the victim’s body behind that of the cat, determined Harrington to be deceased, and called for help.

It went on for a few paragraphs after that, but all Kimble needed was contained in that initial account of the witness statement.

In order, Hall recounted seeing blood, a rifle, Harrington.

Kimble had been in the cage. Had approached just as Hall must have that morning, and he had seen blood first, yes, but he had not been able to see the rifle until he saw Harrington. Hall’s recollection of the man’s corpse was correct—it had been blocked from sight by the cat’s body. But the rifle had been in the dead man’s hand.

At least when Kimble saw it.

Perhaps there’d been two rifles on the scene, which meant maybe this wasn’t going to be such a pain in the ass after all; maybe the dead man had brought two guns out with him, and the killing shot had been fired with the first, not the second. Simple.

But why would he have used two rifles? Why not just reload? How had he even managed to approach the cage carrying two rifles, a syringe on a pole, and a flashlight? It was a ludicrous scenario, would have required “Send in the Clowns” playing in the background and Harrington riding a unicycle to make it believable.

So maybe the kid had been confused. Rattled. Said the wrong thing, that was all, meant to say he spotted the rifle in Harrington’s hand but misspoke due to the pressure of the moment. He’d certainly been shaken up.

Wolverton’s supplemental report contained contact information for Dustin Hall, including phone numbers for both a dorm room and a cell. Kimble called the dorm first, got nothing, and
then the cell. The kid answered, and sounded nervous from the moment Kimble identified himself.

“We don’t have a problem,” Kimble said, although that was perhaps untrue. “I’m just trying to finalize the report and need to clear up a discrepancy. You have a minute, I’d appreciate your help on that.”

The kid agreed, but none of the trepidation left his voice.

Kimble pitched his question then, asked him to recall what he’d seen and when he’d seen it.

“Go slow and think clearly,” he said. “I need to know the order of things.”

Dustin went slowly and clearly, and he recounted everything exactly as he had with Wolverton.

“All right,” Kimble said, and then, gently, “I’m wondering about that rifle, son. I was there, inside the cage. We’ve got photographs. You can’t see the gun from the angle you describe. It was hidden by the cat.”

“Not when I got there.” He was firm.

“You’re telling me that there was a gun—”

“You might want to ask your deputy about this,” Dustin Hall said.

Kimble fell silent for a moment, then said, “Was there a problem with Deputy Wolverton?”

“Not him. The other guy.”

“Deputy Shipley. What was the problem with him?”

“I’m not saying there was a problem,” the kid said. He was very uneasy. “It’s just… look, he was there after me, right? Maybe things got moved around.”

“Got moved around?”

The kid went silent, and the silence went on too long, and when he spoke again, he sounded like a chess player regretting his last move, knowing damn well where it had placed him.

“Probably not. Maybe I just remember it all wrong. I was nervous.”

Kimble was certain that the kid wanted only to end the conversation, certain that his recollections had not been skewed by nerves.

“Mr. Hall,” Kimble said. “Dustin, buddy? Tell me what you’re not wanting to say. Tell me now, when it’s not a problem. I need to hear it.”

There was a pause, and then a rush of words.

“You need to talk to your deputy, not me. He made me go out of sight of the cage first thing. Like his priority was being alone there. And that guy, he was… look, I don’t know how else to say it, he was scaring me. There’s something wrong with him. He wanted to talk about his car accident. Was asking me all these questions that were so fucking—pardon my language—so
weird
. Asking me why I had lied about being in the road, but I
wasn’t
in the road. Sir, all I know is that I was scared of him. He didn’t seem right, and he was looking at me in a, well, in a hostile way, I guess. That’s the best word. Hostile.”

“I see,” Kimble said. “Son, let me ask you one more question, and I want to assure you that the answer will stay between the two of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think Deputy Shipley moved that rifle?”

“Sir? I know he did.”

I
T WAS PROBABLY BAD PRACTICE
to drop in on police uninvited, but Kevin Kimble hadn’t returned the messages Roy had left at his office, and he needed to talk to him about what he’d found during his day in the newspaper morgue.

He needed to talk with
someone
.

The chief deputy lived in a modest brick ranch home five miles outside of town. Kimble didn’t go to the trouble of hanging Christmas lights as his neighbors did, but there was a wreath on the door, a concession to the season without the time investment. Roy pulled in, looked at the list he’d compiled, and shook his head.

Yes, he needed to talk with someone.

Wyatt French had collected a slice of Sawyer County history that bordered on the impossible. He’d found six murderers scattered over eighty years who all shared one thing: an accident at Blade Ridge.