The Ridge (3 page)

The truth was, he had to be alone for it. Not just alone—he had to be the last man standing. Captain of the sinking ship.

That seemed to satisfy everyone except Donita. Her eyes stayed on him for a long moment, and then Roy suggested they have another round, and the response was a collective hemming and hawing. The night had gone on too long for most now—they were an older crowd, J.D. excepted, and it had been a draining day. People began to reach for wallets, but Mike Webb, the editor, insisted he was putting it on the company tab, saying that if the owners didn’t like it, they could shut the place down.

That joke landed as smoothly as a buffalo coming off a balance beam, but hell, at least the drinks were free.

Everyone walked down the steps and out into the night. December, the town aglow with Christmas lights, air biting with cold wind driven out of the Appalachian foothills, the season, quite appropriately, of death. The course had been charted nine years earlier, when a newspaper that had been family-owned since its creation sold out to a national chain. The cuts began almost immediately—first pages, then staff. There had been talk of a Web-only product for a time, but this rural Kentucky community wasn’t viewed as a potential profit center, despite more than a century of profit, and eventually the terminal diagnosis was issued.

Outside of Roman’s, the last of the crew shared hugs and handshakes and went off to their cars and the rest of their lives, promising to keep in touch in the way kids did at graduations, firmly and incorrectly believing it would actually happen.

That was supposed to be the last of it, the final rites administered, but Roy was back the next afternoon. He preferred to shut it down in private. It was home in a way your office never really should be, and that afternoon, when he went in alone, the building was so silent it made him feel unsteady. Newsrooms were never quiet, were always filled with a humming, delightful energy, sometimes chaotic, sometimes somber, but always present.

Today, it had all the energy of a crypt.

He had five drawers to empty—three in the desk, two in the file cabinet. It was very much like sorting through a loved one’s belongings after a funeral.

The first thing to go into the recycling bin was his tips folder. He flipped it open and saw notes jotted on scraps of paper and backs of menus and napkins:
Brandon Tyler taught his blind brother to throw a tomahawk; astronomy club planning event for lunar eclipse; Evelyn Scott won national cookie recipe competition…

And so on. Stories of local people and local interest. He looked at them now, feeling sorrow because their forum was gone. Determined not to wallow in that sorrow, Roy went through the crank file next, knowing it would demand a smile. It was in the bottom right-hand desk drawer, a good five inches thick, jammed with letters. He opened it up and began to read through them, and, as he’d hoped, couldn’t help but smile. There was the savage critique of his story judgment from a woman who wanted to let the public know that she and her husband had caught the
exact
same smallmouth bass on the
exact
same day, and just what was the matter with him that he didn’t think people would be interested in that? There was the collection of letters from a group of neighbors who had recorded sightings of a sasquatch—well, it was probably a sasquatch but potentially a wolf capable of walking on its hind legs, which was
twice
as alarming, didn’t he think? There was a note from a woman who was certain her neighbor was breaking into her house to use her Jacuzzi and
asserted that she had the pubic hair to prove it, and the allegation that the mayor had been sighted in Maloney Park in carnal embrace with a sheep.

He remembered them all, remembered sharing them with Donita or Laura or Stewart and sharing laughs. There would be no more crank letters here, there would be no more laughs. The smile gone from his face, he set the folder on top of his desk with a sigh and walked all the way into the break room in search of coffee, pulling up short when he saw the pot was gone. Right. He turned on his heel, and had just settled back down at his desk when the phone rang.

It was startlingly loud in the empty newsroom, which was going dark as the stormy day faded to night. Roy picked it up and said hello.

“Mr. Darmus. This is Wyatt French.”

“Oh. Hot-tip time?”

Old Wyatt was a well-known figure to those in the newsroom and those in the liquor business. He didn’t appear to intersect with much else, just booze and bizarre news. Roy had written about the old man’s lighthouse once, and apparently Wyatt had appreciated the tenor of the piece, because he’d taken to calling every so often with what he referred to as “hot tips.” They generally involved police misconduct or local bars that served watered-down bourbon. Lately the calls had been focused on the pending relocation of an exotic-cat rescue center to his isolated stretch of the woods. Wyatt did not approve of the facility, at least not across from his home. Today he’d either missed the fact that the newspaper was no longer in business or he was too drunk to remember.

“Mr. Darmus, I wanted to tell you… wanted to ask that you…”

“Buddy, we’re out of the tip business, I’m afraid,” Roy said, smiling, but then the smile faded when he heard French’s ragged breathing.

“It will be very important to keep the light on when I’m gone,” Wyatt French said. “Very important.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’d like to say otherwise, Mr. Darmus. I would so dearly like to say otherwise.”

Roy frowned. “Wyatt, what’s wrong?”

“You were right about this place, you know. You just didn’t look far enough. Didn’t look hard enough. I don’t blame you. There’s more to it than I can explain, and more than a sane man would pause to hear. I’m not one who would be heard, anyhow. The mountain could tell it, if it could talk.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You haven’t got the faintest notion what I’m talking about. I did more than most, though. I fought it.”

“Let’s slow down,” Roy said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“If I felt I could make a soul believe me, I might stay around to try. The longer I stay, though, the greater the risk. I’m getting scared of the dark coming. I’m getting scared of what I could do in the dark.”

The rant faded back to ragged inhalations. The breathing of a panicked man. Roy’s frown deepened.

“Wyatt, do you need help out there?”

“Oh, yes. Help is needed out here. For me? Sure. For you? Absolutely. I tried to provide it. I did what I could. You tell them that. You tell them that Wyatt French did what he could—for
them
. For everyone.”

“I’m not following, and you sound—”

“They should have listened to me about those damned cats. You know how many people will come out here now? Do you have any idea what that might mean?”

“No,” Roy said. “I do not. Explain it to me.”

“Take a closer look,” Wyatt said. “That’s all I ask. If you and Kimble both do that much, then maybe—”

“Kevin Kimble? With the sheriff’s department?”

“He’s gone to see her, you know.”

“Gone to see who?”

“Jacqueline Mathis. The woman who shot him, and he drives up there every month to pay a visit. He doesn’t ask the right questions.”

“What should he be asking?”

Wyatt went silent for a moment, and when he spoke again he’d gotten the harried pace under control.

“I want you to try to tell this story,” he said. “You’re the right one for it. You and Kimble. And somebody needs to tell it. I hope you will.”

“I would if I could, Wyatt. But they’ve closed the paper.”

“It’s not a newspaper story, Mr. Darmus. But so many of the ones that really need to be told aren’t, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I tried to tell the ones that mattered.”

“You really did, Mr. Darmus. You really did. And this one needs to be told, for you particularly. I think you need to know the character your parents showed.”

Roy felt his breathing slow. His parents had died in a car accident on Blade Ridge Road, very near Wyatt’s lighthouse.

“What do you know about my parents?”

“The decisions that they both made. Very brave. Very strong. And knowing what they were saying goodbye to, with a child at home, it must have been so difficult. You can be very proud of them.”

“Damn it, Wyatt, I don’t appreciate you talking about—”

“When you write the story,” Wyatt said, “please make something clear. I didn’t have to die. I could go on as long as I want.”

He hung up. Roy stared at the receiver in astonishment.
Disconnected, then dialed the number that had appeared on the caller ID. It went right to voicemail. Roy hung up.

I didn’t have to die.

“Oh, shit,” he said, and then he took his car keys, left his boxes on the desk, and left the building.

B
LADE RIDGE ROAD LAY
in the western reaches of the county, a twenty-minute drive from Whitman, though Roy did it in fifteen as dusk fell over the wooded countryside. It wasn’t so much of a road—just a rutted gravel lane that broke away from County Road 200 in the foothills that had once been home to coal-mining country, making a straight line toward the Marshall River, which marked Sawyer County’s western border. County Road 200 bent sharply to the left at this point, but if you missed that curve and continued straight, you’d end up on Blade Ridge, which would deliver you to the realization that you’d made a mistake and then to a sudden wall of trees.

For some people—Roy’s parents among them—it was a very bad mistake. The narrow, twisting lane was treacherous, particularly in the winter, particularly in the dark. When Roy’s parents died, the county was inspired to replace the original dead-end sign with two larger ones and add a warning that traffic was for residents only. Not that there were many of them. Just a lighthouse, where once a trailer had stood. And, now, a cat zoo.

Thinking about his parents made him tighten his hands on
the steering wheel. What had the old boozehound been trying to imply—that they’d driven off into the woods intentionally, a joint suicide?

And knowing what they were saying goodbye to, with a child at home, it must have been so difficult.

“Bullshit,” Roy said aloud, his voice hot with anger. His parents had been dead for forty-six years, but even that wasn’t enough time to provide a buffer against the emotions that swelled at the suggestion that they might have left him on purpose.

They were coming home from my basketball game in Jasper County, and they were looking for a shortcut and took the wrong turn. I’ve known that for decades, Wyatt, you prick. Don’t you dare poison my memories of them, don’t you dare.

Ahead of the spot where the gravel road reached its end, directly across from the fresh fencing and cages that had now been built into the woods to house a rescue center for tigers, cougars, lions, and leopards, there was a track that cut off to the right. This was the driveway to Wyatt French’s lighthouse. It came in from the north side at a harsh angle and began to climb immediately. Roy made the turn, loose gravel sliding under the tires, and heard the pitch of the Pilot’s engine turn harsh as it strained up the incline. It was like driving through a tunnel because the trees hung so dense and so close to the road. Then it broke to a crest and there were a few gaps that allowed you to see between the mountains and out to the Marshall River and an ancient railroad trestle.

A long fence protected the lighthouse property. The gate was padlocked; Wyatt French didn’t care for visitors. Built at the base of the lighthouse was a structure that looked no bigger than a shed. It was there that the old man lived.

“Crazy bastard,” Roy muttered, staring at the lighthouse as he parked the Honda in the weeds beside the fence. He hit the horn, three taps.

Nothing. He gave it a minute and laid on the horn again, longer this time, figuring the blaring noise would raise Wyatt’s ire and call him forth.

It didn’t, though. Roy shut the car off and climbed out into the rain. The fence was there, but fences could be climbed. Wyatt French hadn’t added razor wire and guard towers to the property, though they were probably on his list.

There was not a sound except for the rain, but the light was flashing steadily against the gathering dusk.

I’m getting scared of what I could do in the dark.

“Just go knock on the damn door,” he muttered to himself, and then he went forward. The fence was simple, six-foot chain link, and Roy was still in decent shape, cleared it easily. There was only one door. A piece of paper fluttered on it, secured with two large thumbtacks. Roy used the side of his hand to flatten the paper against the wind so he could read the message, hoping it was instructions for FedEx or a note for a neighbor.

It wasn’t.

For purposes of investigation,
the handwritten note read,
please contact Kevin W. Kimble of the Sawyer County Sheriff’s Department.

Roy took his hand away from the note, and the breeze slid under the paper again, rustling it against the wood. He was afraid now, plain and simple.

For purposes of investigation…