The Ridge(21)

Do something, he told himself.

But what? Chase down the source? That didn’t seem like such a good idea. Because that light… there was something strange about it.

He was still standing there debating when the light vanished over the crest of the ridge, and the cats began to fall silent and settle back down. Some—Kino in particular—continued to pace and voice displeasure, but the unified response was done.

“What was that, Kino?” Wesley said, walking out into the preserve, where his favorite tiger was placed in a central location. “What was that, buddy?”

The tiger continued his restless patrolling. Wesley watched him, then looked back at Tina, the always-docile serval, who’d risen in such aggressiveness, and found himself recalling all of the legends that said cats could sense spirits.

And a man just died up there, he thought. The lighthouse keeper himself. Maybe he intends to remain on duty after all.

“Stop it,” he said, and while he directed the harsh command at Kino, it was intended for himself. He didn’t need to indulge such foolish thoughts. The cats, who had never united in aggression like this before, were simply responding to the new grounds, to unhappiness with the change, to…

“To that light,” he whispered.

And whoever carried it.





10


IT APPEARED THAT WYATT FRENCH had died intestate, no family or guardian in line to step up and handle the proceedings. That made it the county’s problem. If no will or heir was found, the dead man’s property would go up for auction. That one, Kimble wanted to see. Who in the hell would bid on a lighthouse in the woods?

In the course of working the phones that morning, he was beginning to develop a picture of Wyatt French. French had been an extraordinarily gifted carpenter, one of the finest in the area, and in his youth seemed destined for good things. When a big parcel of land at Blade Ridge—holdings of the Whitman Company for generations, back to the mining days—was released for sale, Wyatt mortgaged himself up to the ears to acquire it, intending, apparently, to develop it into a neighborhood of log homes that would embrace the region’s beauty.

Not a single log had ever been laid.

Times got tougher, Wyatt’s drinking habit worsened, and the grand plan faded from his conversation. Eventually he put a trailer on the choicest grounds of his property, telling friends—or, by that point, bartenders—that he’d soon replace it with the first of his custom log homes.

Instead he’d replaced it with a lighthouse.

By then his alcoholism was a crippling thing, and no contractor in the area would hire him, no matter his skills. Too much risk. He made a living through odd jobs and people with great patience—if you could wait for him long enough, he did fine work—and lived a solitary, bourbon-soaked existence out in his lighthouse. When the bank finally went after him, he’d lost the rest of his land and declared bankruptcy. All they let him keep was the ground on which he’d built his bizarre home. The rest sat untouched for a few years—it was so far from everything that no developer was interested—and then David and Audrey Clark came along and purchased it from the bank that had held it for so long.

Now they were moving in, and Wyatt was dead by his own hand.

Kimble had been working the phones for a full hour, trying to track down next of kin, when three plastic bags were delivered to him: the items that had been removed from Wyatt French’s pockets by the medical examiner.

There was a wallet, a cell phone, and a pocket knife. Kimble set the knife aside and started with the wallet. There wasn’t much to study: eleven dollars in cash, an ancient set of business cards that identified Wyatt as a “skilled tradesman,” and a driver’s license that had been revoked years earlier. When Wyatt came to town, he walked or hitchhiked. He did not come to town often.

Kimble put the wallet back in the plastic evidence bag, then turned his attention to the cell phone. It would be the only phone—no landline had ever been extended to Blade Ridge. Wyatt could have requested one when he moved out there, though it probably would have required a substantial payment, but he never did. The cell was a cheap thing, the sort you could pick up at a gas station or drugstore with cash and no contract. It held a log of calls, though. Kimble scrolled through, wincing a bit as he saw his own number, and then put the others into a computer search, looking for matches.

The most recent call was, of course, the last—the Sawyer County Sentinel, where he’d reached Roy Darmus. Before that, Wyatt had called Kimble. The previous eight calls had all gone to the same number, and when Kimble ran the reverse search, it returned to the office of a Dr. Kaleb Mitchell in Whitman.