Kimble’s breathing and heart rate had slowed in the way they always did in high-pressure interviews, times when he had to will himself not to press. He was listening to O’Patrick but hearing Jacqueline Mathis.
“You asked for his help?” he said finally, after he realized O’Patrick was staring at him, waiting for a response.
“I did. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to die out there, either.”
“And what did he do for you?”
O’Patrick gave him a long stare, then said, “The EMT who put me in the ambulance took a look at my car and called me the luckiest son of a bitch he’d ever seen.”
Kimble was thinking of Shipley’s car, the way he’d walked into the department the next day and announced that he was a little sore, that was all.
“In that moment, though,” Kimble said, “what did he do?”
O’Patrick breathed in until his chest swelled, then steadied himself and said, “He said he could heal me, but only if I was willing. He said that he couldn’t reach me if I wasn’t, and that I needed to understand that he was bound by balance. That was the phrase, I’ll never forget it. Bound by balance. And I knew what he meant by it, I won’t lie about that. But I still said yes. Then he dipped that torch down to me. That’s the last of it I remember until the EMT was there.”
For a long time it was silent in the garage. Out at the high school the bleachers rattled, rattled, rattled.
“This happened in ’82,” Kimble said. “This happened before Wyatt put up his lighthouse.”
“Yeah.”
Something that had been absent fell into place in Kimble’s brain, and he said, “Wyatt had an accident out there, too, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
“When?”
“I’m not certain. Not long before he set to building the lighthouse. And before you ask, yes, he saw the man with the torch, and he made his bargain. Only difference is, when I shook it off like it was a bad dream, Wyatt believed in it. I guess because he was out there all the time. You go back to that place once you’ve made your bargain, you can see them. That’s what he told me.”
“So he lived with that every night?”
O’Patrick shuddered. “I can’t imagine, man. I can’t imagine.”
“Why didn’t he leave?”
“I suppose because he knew you can’t run from something that’s in you. So he set to work fighting against what was in him, but once you’ve made that bargain, it ain’t something you can fight. By the time he found me, Wyatt was understanding that much.”
“What was the lighthouse supposed to do?”
“The question, deputy, is what does it do? Everyone laughed at that thing. When I heard about it, you better believe I wasn’t laughing, just because of where it stood. Anything that went on at that place… well, I’d just as soon have nothing to do with it. But I damn sure knew better than to find it funny. Now, you ask me what it was supposed to do? I’ll tell you what it did—kept people from going my way.”
“You mean murder?” Kimble said. “That’s what you’re telling me? That some ghost light in the woods out there made you commit murder?”
“You don’t like the sound of it, huh? Well, maybe you understand why I’d rather not tell the tale. Maybe you understand that. And if you’re so damned brave, buddy, so sure that I’m wrong, then you go on and enjoy yourself at Blade Ridge. Pitch a tent and spend the night.”
“Easy,” Kimble said. “I’m not trying to offend, I’m just telling you that—”
“That it sounds foolish as a campfire story.”
Kimble didn’t answer.
“You wanted to know what the point of the lighthouse was,” O’Patrick said, the heat in his voice fading to dull embers. “Well, I’ll let you answer that yourself. You consider how many problems there’s been at the ridge since that light went up. You chew on that.”
There had been some problems at the ridge since it went up. David Clark died. Jacqueline Mathis survived. But of course the light had been out for Jacqueline. Wyatt had come to apologize to her for that reason. And then there was Shipley… whose accident came after Darmus broke the light and shut off the power.
“You thought it was a dream,” Kimble said. “A hallucination.”
“Hell, yes. Most vivid dream I’ve ever had, but once they got me away from there… well, it was easier to push it to the corner of my mind then. I remembered what had happened, but away from the ridge, out in the real world and daylight, it seemed impossible. So I told myself that it was. Then along comes that night with Joe, and I wake out of a damned trance with a wrench in my hand and his blood all over me, and you’d better believe I remembered it then.”