The Ridge(81)

The next letter was a great deal shorter, and far more optimistic.

“I have counted more men working on the bridge each morning than the day before. There is an odd quality to watching them work—never have I seen a more silent group of men—but the construction is sound.”

Then came his final letter, written on Christmas Eve 1888, and Roy read it with astonishment.

“My concerns about Mr. Vesey have been growing immensely, and last evening I endeavored to put them at ease by observing the men in the night. Their silence during the day, which is when I typically visit, has unnerved me, and well it should. Our bridge, brother, is a creation of an evil I have never believed possible. The nails are being driven by dead men. At night, Vesey visits the sick with a torch in hand. Sometimes he moves on, and the next morning those men have passed. But on two occasions last evening, I watched with my own eyes as he lowered the torch to a dying man. The flames turned to coldest blue, and then the man rose. I watched this happen, Roger. There is no mistaking what I saw.”

It was the last letter Frederick Whitman Jr. wrote, or at least the last that the family had preserved. Roy flipped through several pages of business-related correspondence with frustration, hoping for more, and finally hit upon an exchange from May 1890, between Roger, by then located in Sawyer County, and his wife, who was still in Boston. It was the first mention of his older brother.

“We are moving him again, and I maintain hope that the plagues of his mind will soon abate. I’ve heard numerous accounts of the miraculous restorative powers of the mineral springs of French Lick and West Baden, Indiana, and have been assured that time spent at rest amidst those healing waters may well be what my brother requires.”

The next appearance of Frederick Whitman Jr. in the college archives was his obituary, published in 1892. It said that Frederick, an ill man, had perished in Indiana. The formal language of the time did not succeed in entirely obscuring the fact that he had died by his own hand.





33


THE HONORABLE DOUG GRAYLING, Sawyer County Circuit Court judge, was presiding over his morning docket when Kimble arrived, so Kimble waited in his office, pretending to flip through an Outdoor Life magazine so he didn’t have to make conversation with the judge’s clerk and explain the purpose of his visit. The issue he picked up included a feature detailing mountain lion attacks in Montana and California. Just what he wanted to read about today.

When Grayling finally wrapped up his docket, it was nearly eleven in the morning, and Kimble had an ache down low along his spine from sitting so long.

“Kimble, hey there.”

He stood and shook the judge’s hand. “Hello, Doug. You have a minute?”

“Of course.”

They walked into his private office, and the judge sat behind his desk, let out a soft groan, and said, “It would be nice if assholes took the holidays off, wouldn’t it, Kimble? If people said, Hey, let’s take the month of December and not be pricks to one another, not get arrested, not get charged, not be arraigned. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“It would. You’ll have a tough time convincing them of the merits of the plan, though.”

“Agreed,” Grayling said. “What can I do for you?”

Kimble took a deep breath, looked at the judge who’d sentenced Jacqueline Mathis to ten years, and asked for an order on jailer to be issued. It was a simple bit of legalese granting the sheriff’s department temporary custody of an inmate. Usually this was done for court proceedings of some kind, when the inmate was required to travel for a hearing. Today Kimble requested it for purposes of investigation, and Grayling went silent.

“She’s in a minimum-security facility,” Kimble said, “and she’s recently been approved for work release. There’s no reason we can’t borrow her for a few hours.”

“No reason we can’t, okay. But I need to hear the reason we should.”

Kimble gave him the pitch: active investigation and a delicate one. Based on evidence found in Wyatt French’s lighthouse, he said, it was possible that a series of accidents that had occurred over the years at Blade Ridge might have been initiated.

“Initiated?” Grayling said. “What in the hell does that mean? Caused by French?”

Kimble had expected this jump, and while he felt a pang of guilt at allowing the misconception to flourish, he figured Wyatt would have approved. He’d wanted Kimble to pursue the truth, not polish his reputation.

“Possibly. There have been many deaths out there, Doug, and survivor accounts are uncomfortably similar. People report the accident being initiated by a man in the road.”