The kid agreed, but none of the trepidation left his voice.
Kimble pitched his question then, asked him to recall what he’d seen and when he’d seen it.
“Go slow and think clearly,” he said. “I need to know the order of things.”
Dustin went slowly and clearly, and he recounted everything exactly as he had with Wolverton.
“All right,” Kimble said, and then, gently, “I’m wondering about that rifle, son. I was there, inside the cage. We’ve got photographs. You can’t see the gun from the angle you describe. It was hidden by the cat.”
“Not when I got there.” He was firm.
“You’re telling me that there was a gun—”
“You might want to ask your deputy about this,” Dustin Hall said.
Kimble fell silent for a moment, then said, “Was there a problem with Deputy Wolverton?”
“Not him. The other guy.”
“Deputy Shipley. What was the problem with him?”
“I’m not saying there was a problem,” the kid said. He was very uneasy. “It’s just… look, he was there after me, right? Maybe things got moved around.”
“Got moved around?”
The kid went silent, and the silence went on too long, and when he spoke again, he sounded like a chess player regretting his last move, knowing damn well where it had placed him.
“Probably not. Maybe I just remember it all wrong. I was nervous.”
Kimble was certain that the kid wanted only to end the conversation, certain that his recollections had not been skewed by nerves.
“Mr. Hall,” Kimble said. “Dustin, buddy? Tell me what you’re not wanting to say. Tell me now, when it’s not a problem. I need to hear it.”
There was a pause, and then a rush of words.
“You need to talk to your deputy, not me. He made me go out of sight of the cage first thing. Like his priority was being alone there. And that guy, he was… look, I don’t know how else to say it, he was scaring me. There’s something wrong with him. He wanted to talk about his car accident. Was asking me all these questions that were so fucking—pardon my language—so weird. Asking me why I had lied about being in the road, but I wasn’t in the road. Sir, all I know is that I was scared of him. He didn’t seem right, and he was looking at me in a, well, in a hostile way, I guess. That’s the best word. Hostile.”
“I see,” Kimble said. “Son, let me ask you one more question, and I want to assure you that the answer will stay between the two of us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think Deputy Shipley moved that rifle?”
“Sir? I know he did.”
23
IT WAS PROBABLY BAD PRACTICE to drop in on police uninvited, but Kevin Kimble hadn’t returned the messages Roy had left at his office, and he needed to talk to him about what he’d found during his day in the newspaper morgue.
He needed to talk with someone.
The chief deputy lived in a modest brick ranch home five miles outside of town. Kimble didn’t go to the trouble of hanging Christmas lights as his neighbors did, but there was a wreath on the door, a concession to the season without the time investment. Roy pulled in, looked at the list he’d compiled, and shook his head.
Yes, he needed to talk with someone.
Wyatt French had collected a slice of Sawyer County history that bordered on the impossible. He’d found six murderers scattered over eighty years who all shared one thing: an accident at Blade Ridge.
Well, five of them did. Jacqueline Mathis was the rogue, but maybe Kimble would know something about that. Regardless, it was an unbelievable pattern. And a disturbing one.
Kimble answered the door almost immediately, as if he’d heard the car come in, and he wasn’t happy to see Roy.
“There are telephones, you know, Mr. Darmus.”
“You don’t answer yours. And I didn’t have your home number.”
“But you had the address?”
“I found it, yes. Listen, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve got something you need to look at. Please.”
Kimble sighed but let him in. The house was sparsely furnished but incredibly clean for a bachelor’s home. Roy had been divorced for twenty years now, and he knew well the condition of the average bachelor’s home: he lived in one.
“I’m in the middle of work,” Kimble said. “Real work. One of the cats killed its keeper. All those things we talked about last night, I can’t worry about them until I’ve got that situation—”
“Take a look at this,” Roy said, and handed him a piece of paper. It was a neat, morbid time line:
Jacqueline Mathis, killed husband, 2006