The Ridge (22 page)

Well, five of them did. Jacqueline Mathis was the rogue, but maybe Kimble would know something about that. Regardless, it was an unbelievable pattern. And a disturbing one.

Kimble answered the door almost immediately, as if he’d heard the car come in, and he wasn’t happy to see Roy.

“There are telephones, you know, Mr. Darmus.”

“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?

A
UDREY 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 fast-twitch power? No—if he sprang on her from the darkness, she wouldn’t have a chance.

“What are you doing out here?” she said again, stepping back from Shipley.

“Kimble told you. I’m the night watch.”

“I thought you were supposed to be here in case anything happened, not creeping around the woods.”

“Sorry.”

He had turned from her and was facing one of the enclosures. Home to five lions, it was one of the largest spaces in the preserve. It was rare that you could get so many to socialize well; often there was an attitude problem that led to fights. These lions, though, got along just fine. They were all on their perches now—six, eight, twelve feet in the air, their strange eyes fractured reflections in the beam of her flashlight.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Shipley said.

“What?”

“Live out here with them. At night.”

“They’re harmless,” she said, though the truth was she
hadn’t
lived out here with them at night. She’d spent many evenings at the old preserve, but she always went home to sleep. This was new, and yes, a little frightening. She’d been lost in thoughts of Wes when she bumped into the deputy, thinking of how it had been for him in those last moments, wondering what had gone through his mind when he realized that his favorite cat had brought an end to his life. She hoped it had been so swift that no thoughts had come at all, but that was hard to believe. He’d bled out in the cage. That took time.

“They don’t seem to like me,” Shipley said. “Growl when I walk by.”

“Lions are the least people-friendly of the big cats. There are exceptions, of course, but as a rule they aren’t like the tigers. Many of the tigers actually
want
attention. The lions are more wary, and you’re a stranger.”

“You ever go in the cages with them?”

It was an innocent enough question, but she folded her arms across her chest and looked away, as if he’d said something lewd.

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t, personally. But they’re fine with people. Wes used to go in with them. And my husband.”

“You just don’t trust them the same way?”

She turned back to him, thinking that he’d isolated the exact reason she was doomed to lose these cats. To care for them properly, you had to trust them. She’d always had people to do that for her. David and Wesley. Their faith had been so big that she didn’t need to test her own. Now they were gone. The fences between her and the cats remained, but there was no one left to cross over them for her.

“I trust them,” she said softly. She could isolate them in different portions of the enclosures for cleanings and feedings, but now that Wes was gone, there would come a time when they would need her. Something would go wrong, and they would need someone to enter the cages with them.

“You really think this is the right spot for them?”

“There aren’t any zoos that will take them, if that’s what you mean. And yes, in every single circumstance, we are providing a better life for these animals than they had before.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about
this
spot. Don’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?” She was taken aback.

He spread his hands, the black-gloved fingers casting shadows. “There’s something different out here, Mrs. Clark. You’re telling me you can’t feel it?”

What she was
feeling
was an intense desire to be back inside the trailer, with the door locked. She moved the pole syringe so that it was pointed at him, then was embarrassed when he looked down at it, well aware of the motion.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s just what you don’t need to hear, I’m sure. All I’m saying is… there’s something strange in this place. And I think the cats feel it. I’m pretty sure about that.”

He left her then, walked back into the night woods, his hand tapping along the stock of his gun.

K
IMBLE SAT WITH HIS FOOT
on the brake, staring at the mailbox—
O’Patrick, R.—
and the trailer and five-bay garage beyond. A man was standing in one of the open garage bays, smoking a cigar, and Kimble pulled into the drive, parked, and stepped out of the cruiser. Ryan O’Patrick had been paroled after serving twenty years for murder, and he’d returned to Sawyer County, moving to Modesto, which was home to the county’s consolidated rural high school. O’Patrick lived in a trailer directly across the street from Hefron High, and according to Roy Darmus ran a cash-only mechanic’s shop and was apparently capable of fixing anything that ailed a car, boat, tractor, or other engine-reliant item. He’d always been handy with a wrench, it seemed. Just got a little too handy one day, upside his boss’s skull.

Kimble got out of the car and walked up to the garage. A radio was on, tuned to a sports talk station, and beside it a small space heater blew warm air over the concrete floor.

“You Ryan O’Patrick?”

“I got a feeling,” O’Patrick said, studying the police car, “that I’m not going to enjoy this visit.”

He had the look of someone who’d been jailed for a long time. A posture that made him seem bigger than he was, eyes that were somehow both challenging and resigned. He was heavier than in his old booking photographs, with an extra layer of chin partially obscured by a short graying beard. Kimble saw an open tall-boy of Old Style sitting on top of a toolbox at his side.

“Well,” O’Patrick said, blowing smoke at Kimble’s face, “what do you need, deputy? If anything in these cars is stolen, I don’t know about it, and I don’t care to know. I just fix them.”

“Not here about a car. Here to ask you about Blade Ridge.”

Ryan O’Patrick drew smoke in and never released it. After a long silence, he said, “Say that again?”

“Blade Ridge. You had an accident out there back in—”

“I know damn well when I had my accident and where it was. What I’d like to know is why you’re interested.”