“You think that qualifies as an answer?”
“I was closing up shop at the office today when I got a call from him,” Darmus said. “From Wyatt French. I’d written about the lighthouse when he first built it. I took it at face value, quoted him accurately, didn’t make a joke of it. He said he was building it because the place was dangerous, and I just put that in and let it sit there. I got a lot of eye rolls for that story, but I guess Wyatt appreciated the way I treated it. Him. He started calling me with tips, time to time. Once in a while there was actually some decent information. Most of the time there wasn’t. But today… today he was just frightening. Talking in riddles, breathing hard, saying that he was scared of himself, of what he could do. I wasn’t sure if he was suicidal or homicidal or just drunk. I drove out to see.”
“You wanted to see if he was homicidal?”
“I wanted to see if anyone needed to be worried about him. The answer, clearly, is no. Not anymore.”
“What time was this?”
“Maybe an hour ago.”
So Wyatt had still been alive, and working the phones, long after he’d called Kimble. He’d seen it through almost another day. Hadn’t been willing to let the sun go down, though, hadn’t seen it through another night.
“He talked about my parents,” Darmus said. “I didn’t exactly appreciate that. Then I walk in there and I see he’s got their names on a map. He’s got a lot of names on maps, a lot of old photographs.”
Kimble frowned. “Your parents?”
Darmus nodded, and the usually friendly eyes had a hard sheen to them now. “Yes. The old tosspot suggested that they killed themselves out here. Wanted me to know how brave they were, making a decision like that and leaving a child behind.”
“Out here?”
Darmus waved a hand down at the flashing lights in the trees below them. “Right about where your deputy wrecked, I’d assume. They missed the curve on the county road back in ’65, ended up on Blade Ridge, and ended up in the trees. I was fourteen years old.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” Darmus said, trying without success to be dismissive. Then he took a deep breath, nodded, and said, “Thanks, Kimble. I’m not going to let the guy get in my head. He was not a well man. And he’s in mighty worse shape now.”
Kimble said, “I’ll go have myself a look.”
“There’s blood up there,” Darmus said, “and it’s mine.” He held up his hand, which was wrapped in a towel but still showing blood.
“How’d that happen?”
“Wyatt doesn’t look good. Looks pretty ghastly, in fact. When I saw him, it scared me. I fell and put my hand through the bulb.”
“The wound serious?”
“Not too bad. But I’m glad that you ended up here, because—”
“Because you broke the law by trespassing and then proceeded to bleed all over the death scene?”
“The door was open.”
“And the gate?”
Darmus was silent. Kimble said, “All right, let me go on up and have a look. There’s an ambulance on the way. They can look at your hand. If he’s as you say, isn’t going to be much need to hurry him out of here, is there?”
“No,” Darmus said. “There surely isn’t. But you didn’t let me finish. I called for you because, well… Wyatt French did, too. There’s a note on the door.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Less than you, I expect,” Kimble said. “But he sent for you, too. Sent for both of us. And you know what that tells me?”
“What?”
“That even crazy men can read the papers.”
Kimble left Darmus standing in the rain and walked to the lighthouse. He stopped at the door and studied the note. A simple, oddly polite request to contact him for purposes of investigation. He read it, remembering the hiss of the tires on the pavement and the look of the fog in his headlights as he’d answered Wyatt’s questions that morning.
Do you pursue the root causes of a suicide in the same manner that you would a homicide?
Kimble had told him that he pursued the truth. Always.
Now, in the freezing rain outside the dead man’s door, Kimble turned back to Darmus.
“I suppose I should wait for someone else now,” he said. “I’m probably a suspect, what with my name stamped on the damn door. And he called me this morning, too. Probably said about the same things he did with you. Maybe he called half the town, I don’t know. But since my deputy just flipped a cruiser on his way here, and I’m the only officer on scene, I guess I’ll count on Wyatt having taken himself out of this life nice and simply and leaving me no trouble. Did he do that much for me?”