The Ridge(43)
Kimble was silent. Roy tilted his head and said, “Why does that matter?”
“Maybe it doesn’t. My deputy, though… he isn’t the sort who’d just shoot off a road and into the trees.”
“I thought the same of my father. It happens.”
“Quite often, out there.”
Roy waved a hand at the waitress, signaling for another beer. Kimble shook her off, his empty bottle already pushed to the side.
“Shipley—that’s the deputy who was in the wreck, the one who was there with me today—swears he saw a man in the road. Then some kind of blue light. You never left the lighthouse after you called in the body?”
“No.”
“What about the light? He had a spotlight in there, too. You use that, thinking it was a flashlight, maybe?”
“No. I didn’t see any spotlight. All I did was flip the breakers back on so I could see my way around the downstairs. I made sure not to touch the switch that fed the main light, either.”
Kimble nodded, then tapped the folder between them. “Let me know what you get. You’ll have better luck than me. All that local history, it’s your bailiwick.”
“Hell, it seems somebody read my column.”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
Roy grinned. “So I get to help an investigation, eh?”
“You get to look up some history, that’s all. You can probably find that sort of information a lot faster than I can.”
“Reassuring news to the locals who rely on your protection, I’m sure. I’ll do what I can. Though I don’t know what the gain could be.”
“Let me worry about the gain. And keep it quiet, okay? Otherwise I might be inspired to remember your behavior at the crime scene in a different light.”
“The threats begin. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that you catch more flies with honey?”
“My mother liked cop shows,” Kimble said, and then he slid out of the booth and walked away. When he pushed open the door Roy could see the dark night beyond, and the twinkling Christmas lights strung from the courthouse and out to the light poles across the street, a cheerful white glow against the blackness. Then the door swung shut, and he was gone.
Roy looked down at the folder Kimble had left, opened it, and stared at the century-old pictures, marred by the single scrawled word.
No.
No.
No.
It seemed as if Wyatt French had been looking for someone.
17
THE DECEMBER NIGHT WAS cloudless and cold, the rain replaced by a steady, biting wind, but Kimble ignored his car and walked from the tavern back to the sheriff’s department, breathing deeply of the frigid air, hoping it would clear his head.
It didn’t.
There were too many questions. There was also the cause of death, as reported by the coroner: suicide. Case closed.
So let it go, he told himself. Get back to work on things that can help the living.
But he wanted to know about Jacqueline. How French had known her, and why she mattered to him. It would be hard for him to move forward with that question unanswered, and Wyatt was long past his question-answering days. Jacqueline Mathis, however, was not.
He took up the phone, dialed the Kentucky state women’s prison, identified himself, and asked for a check on Jacqueline’s visitation logs. Had she ever been visited by a Wyatt French?
It took a few keystrokes before the voice on the other end of the line had an answer.
“Yes, sir. He came by in late October.”
“This October?”
“Affirmative. October thirtieth.”
Six weeks before he put the gun barrel in his mouth.
“Any other visits?” Kimble asked.
“Negative. He was a one-shot guest. Don’t see too many of those except for lawyers or journalists.”
“He was neither,” Kimble said, and then he thanked the man and hung up the phone feeling far worse than he had before. What had taken an elderly, suicidal alcoholic to visit Jacqueline Mathis? And what had they discussed?
Wyatt French couldn’t tell him anymore. Jacqueline still could.
It was just past two in the morning when the cougar screamed.
Wesley slept with his bedroom window cracked, even on the harshest nights of winter, so he could hear what was happening with the cats. He knew any species by sound, but guessing the individual cat was next to impossible. Then it came again, a keening pitch he’d heard before but only in the mountains of the West, where such cats roamed wild and always had, and he knew the precise animal.
Ira.
Wesley swung out of the bed and onto his feet, reaching for the flashlight and rifle that he had placed at hand before going to sleep tonight. With Ira loose, it seemed prudent. He’d never use the gun unless he had no other alternative, but the black cat was the kind that could put you in that situation swiftly.