The Ridge(67)

Move slowly, she told herself. You have to move slowly. She swung the flashlight to her left, the beam gliding over the trees like headlights coming around a curve, and found the black cat no more than ten feet away.

She saw the sparkle of his eyes first. Emerald, like pieces of an old bottle made of green glass. Then the rest of him took shape—hunched shoulders, coiled muscles, stiff tail. She was trying to say his name when she saw something pale beneath his front paws, and then the breath went out of her.

He was standing on a body.

One limp white palm extended out into the leaves. That was what had caught her attention. The rest was nearly camouflage, the brown uniform of the sheriff’s department. He was facedown in the brush, and the blood that pooled around his throat looked so black that it seemed a part of the cougar, an extension of his fur.

Audrey screamed. Everything in her brain told her not to, told her that the cat would spring at the slightest provocation, but everything in your brain could fail you at the sight of something like this, and so she screamed despite herself.

The cat snarled, snapped forward, and lashed out with a paw. He didn’t leave, though. He was protecting the kill.

Audrey turned and ran into the night, ran gracelessly and pointlessly, knowing that he would bring her down from behind and end her out here in the cold woods.

He didn’t, though. He never moved, but even after Audrey fell onto her knees in the trailer, with the door closed behind her, she still had her hands up by her neck as if to protect her throat when he sprang.





27


WHEN THE PHONE RANG at three A.M., Kimble knew it would be bad in the way that you always knew a call at that hour would be bad, but he hadn’t imagined it could be like this. He hadn’t imagined that whatever had happened had happened out there.

His first, groggy thought upon hearing that one of his own was down at Blade Ridge was a perverse, horrible hopefulness.

Maybe it’s Shipley. Maybe whatever madness exists out there is feeding on its own.

It wasn’t Shipley, though. It was Pete Wolverton.

He hung up the phone, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and cursed himself. All he’d heard about that place tonight, and still he hadn’t called them off. He’d considered it, but then the thought of Audrey Clark had changed his mind. She wasn’t going to abandon her cats, and he hadn’t wanted to leave her alone out there.

“I’m sorry, Pete,” he whispered. “Damn it, I’m so sorry.”

Then he got up, dressed, put on his gun, and went to make amends.


The scene was bright when he arrived, four cars already there, three from his department and one from the state police, all with flashers going. Spotlights were shining in the woods where Pete Wolverton had died, brightening the night so that the evidence techs could take their photographs.

Kimble got out of his car, feeling wearier than he ever had in his life, and went to talk to Diane Mooney, who was in charge of the scene.

“Where’s Audrey Clark?” he said. Around them the cats milled, bothered by all the lights and activity.

“Inside. She’s shaken up pretty bad.”

“She saw it happen?”

“Essentially. She found Pete with that fucking cat still on top of him.”

The venom in Diane’s voice was something Kimble had never heard from her. She wasn’t facing him, was instead looking out at the preserve, where dozens of massive cats stared back at her.

“Be a pro,” Kimble said, gentle but firm.

“I’m trying, chief. But that was Pete out there. That was Pete.”

“I know it. You talked to Shipley?”

“No. Why?”

“He was here until midnight, when Pete relieved him. I want him…” He hesitated, about to say that he wanted Shipley out to tell them what he’d seen, but now thinking that he didn’t want Shipley out here at all. “We need to know if he saw or heard anything during his shift,” he said. “But I’ll run him down tomorrow. We don’t need him at the scene. We got enough people out here as it is, and since they were working together on this, it might hit him harder than any of us.”

“I don’t think there’s a sliding scale on the way this one hits.”

Kimble nodded. “Was it you who interviewed Audrey Clark?”

“Yes. We’ll need to take another run at her, though. She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.”

“How so?”

“Well, she’s hysterical, for one thing. But when she does talk, she claims that all those damned cats were dancing around on their hind legs, that someone with a blue torch guided her to the body, that—”

“Hang on. Hang on. A blue torch?”