“All right.”
“I don’t want to ask that of you,” Kimble said. “Bringing a civilian into a murder investigation… well, you can add that to the pile of reasons I might lose my badge. But there’s no one else I can ask.”
“I’ll do it, Kimble. Not a problem.”
“There’s an old gas station just up the road from his house. Empty for years, old Esso station. He’ll have to come by it to head into town, or toward the ridge. The only way he wouldn’t pass by is if he’s headed north, and I’m not worried about him heading north. If you see him pass by, he’ll be doing forty miles an hour, and he won’t notice you. If that happens, just pick up the phone and dial. Nothing else.”
“Okay. But Kimble? If you believe what you told me about Jacqueline and O’Patrick and all the others… he’s not going to kill again. If he did kill, he’s satisfied his debt. None of the others in the Blade Ridge history have killed again. Bound by balance, that’s what you told me. Shipley is balanced now.”
“Right,” Kimble said. “The difference? If he did kill Pete, right now he’s getting away with it. The others were all arrested at the scene when they came back around from their trances. Shipley came back around alone in the dark woods. That means he might not understand why he killed, but he understands that he did.”
Kimble put his arms on the table and leaned close. “If all that is true, Darmus, then he might want to keep improving his chances of getting away with it. Why wouldn’t he? And the only evidence and witnesses are at Blade Ridge. Audrey Clark is at Blade Ridge. If Shipley did this, and he’s thinking about ways to clean it up… well, I just worry that he might head that way.”
“But you’re getting ready to drive in the opposite direction.”
“Yeah,” Kimble said. “Because I can’t see in the dark. But I think I know someone who can. At least out there.”
35
THE DAY WORE ON, snow fell in scattered flurries, and police came and went steadily.
No one found any trace of Ira.
At noon, while Audrey and Dustin took their first break of the day, with not even a third of the cats fed yet and many of them growing annoyed with the delay, a pickup truck rolled up with four dogs in cages.
“I’d better see about this,” Audrey said.
The dogs belonged to a man named Dick Mitchell, a wiry old-timer with a Mark Twain mustache, a scoped rifle, and a large pistol on his belt.
“I’ve come to catch the cat,” he said. “I reckon you’re not too happy about it, but when the police call, I’ve found it wise to pick up the phone. Got me out of a speeding ticket or two along the way.”
She watched the dogs ranging about in the kennels, pressing their noses to the gates and staring out at her cats. Jafar emerged from his long, dark quarters, where he’d spent most of the day tucked back in the straw, bothered by the constant stream of traffic, and began to pace restlessly. Immediately one of the dogs let out a baying howl, and that triggered a response of roars.
“I thought the sheriff was trying traps,” Audrey said.
“He’s doing that, too. Somewhere along the way, he heard the best bet was Big Dick Mitchell. He heard right.”
Big Dick Mitchell hefted his rifle and took an experimental sighting, aiming it down the road. Audrey thought of Ira’s beautiful, sleek body, and somehow, even after the terror she’d felt only hours earlier, she was sad for him.
Just get the hell out of here, Ira, she thought. Hit those hills running and don’t stop. This isn’t the place for you. For anyone.
“Get your dogs out of sight of my cats quick,” she said. “I’ve got enough headaches today without this.”
“Plott hounds,” Dick Mitchell announced proudly, opening the first of the kennel doors. “They’ve yet to run a mountain lion, but they’ll catch on quick. They’ll catch on.”
“If you want to take them back home tonight,” Audrey said, “you’d better hope they don’t catch on.”
He gave her an odd look. “That nasty of a boy, is he?”
“He was fine until he came here,” she said, realizing that she sounded more like Wes with each passing day, and then she left and returned to her cats.
Kimble had once been a churchgoing man, and though he was no longer, he found himself in the parking lot of the one he’d once attended, detouring in there instead of heading for the highway and all that waited down the road. He sat alone in the parking lot with the engine running and thought about what Roy Darmus had said.