He remembered them all, remembered sharing them with Donita or Laura or Stewart and sharing laughs. There would be no more crank letters here, there would be no more laughs. The smile gone from his face, he set the folder on top of his desk with a sigh and walked all the way into the break room in search of coffee, pulling up short when he saw the pot was gone. Right. He turned on his heel, and had just settled back down at his desk when the phone rang.
It was startlingly loud in the empty newsroom, which was going dark as the stormy day faded to night. Roy picked it up and said hello.
“Mr. Darmus. This is Wyatt French.”
“Oh. Hot-tip time?”
Old Wyatt was a well-known figure to those in the newsroom and those in the liquor business. He didn’t appear to intersect with much else, just booze and bizarre news. Roy had written about the old man’s lighthouse once, and apparently Wyatt had appreciated the tenor of the piece, because he’d taken to calling every so often with what he referred to as “hot tips.” They generally involved police misconduct or local bars that served watered-down bourbon. Lately the calls had been focused on the pending relocation of an exotic-cat rescue center to his isolated stretch of the woods. Wyatt did not approve of the facility, at least not across from his home. Today he’d either missed the fact that the newspaper was no longer in business or he was too drunk to remember.
“Mr. Darmus, I wanted to tell you… wanted to ask that you…”
“Buddy, we’re out of the tip business, I’m afraid,” Roy said, smiling, but then the smile faded when he heard French’s ragged breathing.
“It will be very important to keep the light on when I’m gone,” Wyatt French said. “Very important.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’d like to say otherwise, Mr. Darmus. I would so dearly like to say otherwise.”
Roy frowned. “Wyatt, what’s wrong?”
“You were right about this place, you know. You just didn’t look far enough. Didn’t look hard enough. I don’t blame you. There’s more to it than I can explain, and more than a sane man would pause to hear. I’m not one who would be heard, anyhow. The mountain could tell it, if it could talk.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You haven’t got the faintest notion what I’m talking about. I did more than most, though. I fought it.”
“Let’s slow down,” Roy said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“If I felt I could make a soul believe me, I might stay around to try. The longer I stay, though, the greater the risk. I’m getting scared of the dark coming. I’m getting scared of what I could do in the dark.”
The rant faded back to ragged inhalations. The breathing of a panicked man. Roy’s frown deepened.
“Wyatt, do you need help out there?”
“Oh, yes. Help is needed out here. For me? Sure. For you? Absolutely. I tried to provide it. I did what I could. You tell them that. You tell them that Wyatt French did what he could—for them. For everyone.”
“I’m not following, and you sound—”
“They should have listened to me about those damned cats. You know how many people will come out here now? Do you have any idea what that might mean?”
“No,” Roy said. “I do not. Explain it to me.”
“Take a closer look,” Wyatt said. “That’s all I ask. If you and Kimble both do that much, then maybe—”
“Kevin Kimble? With the sheriff’s department?”
“He’s gone to see her, you know.”
“Gone to see who?”
“Jacqueline Mathis. The woman who shot him, and he drives up there every month to pay a visit. He doesn’t ask the right questions.”
“What should he be asking?”
Wyatt went silent for a moment, and when he spoke again he’d gotten the harried pace under control.
“I want you to try to tell this story,” he said. “You’re the right one for it. You and Kimble. And somebody needs to tell it. I hope you will.”
“I would if I could, Wyatt. But they’ve closed the paper.”
“It’s not a newspaper story, Mr. Darmus. But so many of the ones that really need to be told aren’t, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I tried to tell the ones that mattered.”
“You really did, Mr. Darmus. You really did. And this one needs to be told, for you particularly. I think you need to know the character your parents showed.”
Roy felt his breathing slow. His parents had died in a car accident on Blade Ridge Road, very near Wyatt’s lighthouse.