Kimble said, “Really?”
“Yeah, really. Sorry you wasted the trip, bud. Might have just picked up a phone instead, saved yourself the—”
“You’ve told two versions of it now,” Kimble said, “and neither one is the truth.”
“You know what I find interesting?” O’Patrick said.
“What’s that?”
“You know who I am. I can see it all over your face. You know that I did twenty years for killing a man.”
Kimble nodded.
“And you know what else? The questions you’re asking? They’re about a lot more than a car wreck. Tell me if I’m lying.”
Kimble was silent. Ryan O’Patrick gave a dark smile and then bent to a mini-fridge tucked under a nearby shelf. He pulled out another tall-boy and extended it to Kimble with a question in his eyes. Kimble accepted it.
“You want to hear it?” O’Patrick said. “I’ll tell it this once. Never again.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
O’Patrick nodded, moved to a stool, and popped the top on his beer. He took a long pull and said, “I was always a bit of a hell-raiser. I’ve got a temper like a damned light switch. People used to call me that, in fact.”
Kimble raised an eyebrow, and O’Patrick said, “Well, if they didn’t, they should have. Because I could snap pretty fast. Had my share of fights. So when I killed Joe, everyone said, Ah, Ryan’s temper got away from him. But that’s bullshit. Or maybe it isn’t. The point is that I don’t remember killing Joe. I stuck to that story all the way through trial and rode it on into prison. It wasn’t a lie. That moment? It’s nothing but blackness.”
Every time Kimble had seen her, Jacqueline had offered the same line: I’m sorry, I don’t remember. She never wavered.
Kimble said, “Tell me about the ridge, please. About your accident. Describe it as best as you can remember it.”
“Brother, I can describe it fine. I just don’t like to. Now, the accident itself? Simple. I was watching the blue light. Watching so close I couldn’t have hit the brakes if I wanted to.”
“The blue light?”
“You heard me. Thing was floating through the trees, glowing. A blue flame. I couldn’t mix you a paint to match, not even a pearl coat. You ever heard of Saint Elmo’s fire? Shit that shows up on a ship’s mast out in the middle of the ocean?”
Kimble nodded, thinking of Jacqueline’s recollections of her suicide attempt and feeling sick.
“I expect that’s the closest thing to it,” O’Patrick said.
“The sight of it was enough to make you wreck?”
“You say that like it’s hard to believe! Let’s get you out driving in the dark, pal. Let’s give you the wheel, take it up to fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour, and then let that light float your way. I’d like to see how good your reflexes are then.”
Kimble held up his hands. “All right,” he said. “I’m not arguing. I’m asking. What happened after you crashed?”
O’Patrick paused, and Kimble let him.
“What I remember,” he said eventually, his voice the most unsteady it had been, “was the man who came for me.”
It was clear he wasn’t talking about paramedics.
“He came down off the ridge and out of the woods. A blue torch in his hand. Cold flame. I was hurt bad, and at first I was glad to see him, because I knew I needed help. But then he came on down the road and I didn’t even call out for help, because, well… he wasn’t the sort of man you called out to. I could sense that much. So he kind of circled, studying me. And I remember being afraid that he would…” His voice broke and he covered it up with a long pull on the beer. “That he would take me,” he finished.
Kimble was quiet. Ryan O’Patrick fumbled a cigar out of his shirt pocket, then put it back without lighting it.
“I could see my face in the mirror,” he said. “Could see how busted up I was. My nose was laid over to one side, and the skin was torn right off my jaw. I could see my teeth and my jawbone, and blood was just pouring out.”
He reached up and touched unmarked skin with his fingertips.
“I saw that and I knew that I was dying,” he said, and his voice was one Kimble had heard before, when he had talked to witnesses of terrible crimes. Or, more often, survivors of them. There was always weight behind the words of someone who’d passed near the mortal precipice.
“The man with the torch, he knelt down, taking his time, relaxed as could be. I can’t remember much of his face, just that firelight. He was shadows and cold flame to me, nothing else. He asked if I wanted help. And I had the sense that… even if he could help, it wasn’t the sort of help you wanted to accept. You know? That it came with a price.”