The Ridge(13)

It seemed Kimble’s presence had been requested at the scene.

“By Shipley?”

By the victim, he was told. There was a letter on the front door, asking that for purposes of investigation the case be handed to Kevin W. Kimble. Dispatch thought he’d like to know that.

First the predawn call to his private number, now a letter on the door? What did Wyatt French want from Kimble?

He pulled on a baseball cap and went back out into the rain, tired and confused and wondering what else he could have said, should have said.

What he should have done.


Roy stood outside the lighthouse as darkness gathered and the rain pounded down on him and blood dripped off his palm and into the grass. He felt a tingle in his elbow. That wasn’t good. He’d probably cut right through the nerves in his hand.

Explaining this to the police was going to be a treat. Tell them that a man was dead and Roy’s own blood just happened to be splattered all over the scene? Somehow he had a feeling that wouldn’t go over too smoothly.

Where in the hell were the cops, though? He’d heard a siren that sounded as if it were just below him, but then it had stopped.

The pain in his hand had ebbed away to a dull ache, but he was continuing to drip blood all over his pants. He considered taking off his shirt and wrapping it around the wound, but then he looked through the open door into Wyatt French’s strange living quarters and saw the dishtowels hanging from the stove. It wasn’t as if Wyatt would miss them.

He stepped back inside, feeling an uneasy sensation the moment he reentered, knowing damn well now what waited at the top of those steps. His first stop was the sink, where he ran warm water over his hand until the pain ratcheted up a few levels, and then he switched it to cold, hoping to numb things down. The water mixed with the blood and swirled down the sink. He felt lightheaded watching it, so he looked away and took one of the dishtowels from the stove, soaked it in cold water, and then wrapped it tightly around his palm.

The dizziness was still with him. He blinked and took a few deep breaths and stared around. When he’d first entered, his focus had been on finding Wyatt, but now he had a chance to register the room itself. Wyatt had never finished the walls—two-by-fours climbed like latticework, pink insulation showing between them, no drywall pinning them in. His focus, it seemed, had been on speed as he built. He wanted to get to the top and get that light going. The same one he’d asked Roy to keep on before he’d eaten his gun. The same one Roy had promptly shattered.

Like it matters, he told himself. Like the crazy thing really matters.

He stepped farther into the room, looking at the maps Wyatt had pinned to the exposed wall studs. There were a lot of them, names written across in red ink. Beside the maps, and all around the room, photographs were held in place with thumbtacks. Ancient pictures, sepia-tinted relics of another time, men with old-fashioned mustaches and women standing beside cars with wide running boards. Roy stepped closer, saw that each photograph was labeled. A few with names, but most—almost all of them, it seemed—with one scrawled word: NO.

It was eerie, standing here in the darkened room, a dead man upstairs and all of these faces from times gone by watching him. He shot a glance at the door, wondering again about the police.

One picture caught his eye—more recent, a color shot, and the woman in it was breathtaking. He crossed the room and stared into her crystal eyes and realized he was looking at the booking photograph of Jacqueline Mathis.

What in the hell went on in that man’s head? Roy thought. What was he looking for?

He wanted to see it all better now, but it was dark inside and the light switch by the door did no good. He thought of the popping sound he’d heard when he broke the bulb, that harsh snap. He’d taken the power out. Question was whether it was a blown fuse or a circuit breaker.

The positive side of Wyatt’s sparse home was that it was hard for anything to hide. Roy found the electrical panel easily enough—its metal door stood just over the head of the narrow cot Wyatt had used for a bed, almost as if he’d wanted it as close by as possible while he slept. Roy opened the door and saw that several of the breakers had snapped down. He reset them, and when he tried the light switch at the door again, it worked.

He wandered, studying the old photographs and the maps with the names in red ink, wondering what they meant, wondering what had happened to the police car down below and whether he should head out and take a look, wondering if he’d seriously damaged his hand, wondering why the dead man upstairs had pulled the trigger and why, above all else, he’d had to call Roy before he did it.

To keep the light on. And you broke it. Somewhere, his ghost is shaking his head at you now, Darmus.