The Ridge(2)
“Suicide,” Kimble interrupted. “There, you happy? I picked, and I was honest. But I don’t want either, Wyatt. I hate them both, and if there’s some reason for this call beyond alcohol, then—”
That provoked a long, unsettling laugh, the tone far too high and keening for Wyatt’s natural voice.
“There’s a reason beyond booze, yes, sir.”
“What is it?”
“You said you would prefer a suicide. I’m of a mind to agree, but I’d like to hear your reasoning. Why is a suicide better?”
Kimble was drifting along in the right lane, alone in the smoky fog and mist. He said, “Because I don’t have to worry about anyone else being hurt by that particular person. It’s always tragic, but at least I don’t have to worry about them pointing a gun at someone else and pulling the trigger.”
“Exactly. The very conclusion I reached myself.”
“If you have any thoughts of suicide, then I’ve got a number I want you to call. I’m serious about this. I want you—”
“Now what if,” Wyatt French said, “the suicide victim wasn’t entirely willing.”
Kimble felt an uneasy chill. “Then it’s not a suicide.”
“You say that confidently.”
“I am confident. If the death was not the subject’s goal, then it was not a suicide. By definition.”
“So even if a man killed himself, but there was evidence that he’d been compelled to in some way—”
“Wyatt, stop. Stop talking like this. Are you going to hurt yourself?”
Silence.
“Wyatt?”
“I wanted to know if there was any difference in the way you’d investigate,” the man said, his words clearer now, less of the bourbon speaking for him. “Do you pursue the root causes of a suicide in the same manner that you would a homicide?”
Kimble drove along in the hiss of tires on rain-soaked pavement for a time, then said, “I pursue the truth.”
“Always?”
“Always. Don’t give me anything to pursue today, Wyatt. I’m not joking. If someone has been hurt, you tell me that right now. Tell me that.”
“No one has been hurt yet.”
Yet. Kimble didn’t like that. “If you’re thinking about suicide, or anything else, then I want—”
“My thoughts aren’t your concern, deputy. You have many concerns around you in Sawyer County, some of them quite serious, but my thoughts aren’t the problem.”
“I’m going to give you a number,” Kimble said again, “and ask you to call it for me, please. You called me early, and on a private line, and I’ve given you my time and respect. I hope you’ll do the same for me.”
“Certainly, sir. If there are two things I’d hope you might continue to grant me in the future, it is your time and respect.”
French’s voice was absent of mockery or malice. Kimble gave him the number, a suicide assistance line, and he could hear scratching as Wyatt dutifully wrote it down.
“Take care of yourself,” Kimble told him. “Get dried out, get some rest. I’m worried about the way you’re talking.”
“What you should be worried about is that I’ll choose to live forever. Then you’d really have your work cut out.”
It was the first time any of Wyatt’s traditional humor had showed, and Kimble let out a long breath, feeling as if the worst of this strange call was past.
“I’ve dealt with you for this long,” he said. “Wouldn’t be right not to keep at it.”
“I appreciate the sentiment. And deputy? You be careful with her.”
Kimble was silent, lips parted but jaw slack, and didn’t realize he’d let his foot off the accelerator again until a minivan rose up into his mirror with an accompanying horn, then an extended middle finger from the driver who swerved around him. Kimble brought his speed back up and said, “Who do you mean, Wyatt?”
“The one you’re going to see,” Wyatt French told him. “Be very careful with her.”
His voice had the low gravity of someone speaking at a wake. When Kimble finally got around to responding, offering up an awkward attempt at denial, he realized that the line was dead.
There was no time to call back from the highway, because the exit for the women’s prison was just ahead, and Kimble had no desire to hear the old drunk’s strange voice again anyhow. Let him sip his whiskey inside his damned lighthouse in the woods. Let his disturbed mind not infect Kimble’s own.
He set the phone down and continued up to the prison gates.
2
A LONG, SINISTER BRICK STRUCTURE, the women’s prison had been built back in 1891, a hundred and twenty years before it would house an inmate of interest to Kimble. Approved adults could begin arriving at 6 A.M., but the parking spaces were empty when he pulled in. Kimble was always the first one in the door. He liked to be alone in the visiting area, and he liked making the drive in the dark.