He sighed, and his voice softened. “I just can’t. I think about a woman in a cell instead. I’d like to fix that about myself, but it is beyond me.”
“You really don’t think Jacqueline belongs in prison?” Roy asked.
“The night she shot me, she was not herself. Okay? That’s the clearest I can say it. You should have seen her that night. Because she was evil. Then the life went out of her husband, just as she put the gun to my forehead, and… and she was back. So now I’d say, you should have seen her that night. Because she was worthy of love, worthy of dying for, worthy of anything I could give.” He spread his hands. “They’re both true. Now you try living with that. Try treating that like you’re a cop.”
“You can’t decide which she is?”
“I couldn’t reconcile how she was both. I went to see the woman every month, and I always left thinking how damned egregious it is that she’s in that prison. But then I remembered the way she was that night, I remembered the fact that she smiled while she put a gun to my forehead, and I… I just didn’t know.”
Roy had covered the trial of Jacqueline Mathis. He had listened to Kimble’s testimony, he had read every document. There had never been a mention of a gun put to his forehead. Only a bullet in the back, supposedly fired in error, supposedly aimed at her abusive husband. He knew that Kimble had not made a mistake in what he’d just said, though. You didn’t forget something like that. So that meant he’d chosen to forget it on the witness stand.
“She wasn’t herself,” Kimble said. “When I say that, I don’t mean that her mood changed. I don’t mean that she was in shock. I mean that for a while there, the woman who is Jacqueline Mathis became something else. Then that woman came back. Put down the gun and apologized as I lay there on the floor in the blood—mine and her husband’s—and it was like watching a… a soul slip back where it belonged.”
He coughed, shook his head. “I know how that sounds. I know what you probably think of it.”
Roy said, “Don’t worry about how it sounds. I just needed to hear it.”
“I could never come to peace with that night, and she couldn’t help me. Claimed she couldn’t remember a thing. But now I hear the stories from O’Patrick, and I see all the work you’ve done, and I can believe her. For the first time, I can explain it. When I walked through that door, she was just… blackness. Evil. But her husband was still breathing at that time. And when he was gone? She came back. I can believe all these stories now, because I saw it.”
They sat together in silence, and eventually Roy nodded.
“Thank you,” he said. “I wanted to know. And hearing it helps me believe a little more, myself. I’d still say you’re taking one hell of a risk taking her out there by yourself.”
“I know it.” Kimble met Roy’s eyes and said, “Do you ever wonder why you’re along on this ride?”
“Because it’s a hard story to sell, and I was already involved.”
“Exactly. Wyatt called you out there, and you were willing to consider it longer than most, to follow it into stranger places and darker corners than most, and that’s because it’s personal to you. Well, it’s surely personal to me, too. He didn’t pick us by mistake.”
“No. I don’t think the man’s approach was anything close to haphazard.”
“All right. We’re agreed on that. You asked me to tell you the truth, and I’ve done it. I’ve told you what I intend to do, and what really happened with her that night. You’ve heard my soul emptied out, and you’ve got the chance to walk away. I won’t blame you.”
Roy waited. Kimble watched him for a while, then gave a short nod, satisfied.
“I’ve got something else to ask of you,” he said. “And please, Darmus, be careful. This one is riskier than reading old papers.”
“What is it?”
“I’m worried about Shipley.”
“I know that.”
“Well, I can’t very well put a surveillance detail on him. I start asking for that on one of my own deputies, say that he’s suspected in the murder of another, and I’m going to have to defend my reasoning in ways that I simply can’t right now. I can’t do it. But I also can’t have him showing up at the ridge when I’m there with Jacqueline. I want you to watch his house and call me if he leaves. That’s it. Don’t move, don’t engage him, don’t do a damn thing but call me. If he leaves his house tonight, I will need to know.”