The Ridge(88)

He never went back. Sometimes he ran into some people from church and felt a need to explain but couldn’t. Communication was a strength for him, until it came to communicating something about himself. Then he was utterly inept. He could not tell them how uneasy it had made him to be the personal target of pleas to God. He understood that it had been meant with the best intentions.

All the same, he’d never been back.

He hadn’t been much of anywhere in the past few years. Not in a way that mattered. He’d been the work, and the work had been him, and all the rest was detached and hidden and married to something he couldn’t explain and deeply feared. Something that, it seemed, began at Blade Ridge.

He was tired of letting it own him, and tired of letting it take its slow, steady blood toll from his town.

He would stand for it no longer.

He said a silent prayer then, first for himself and then, spontaneously, another one for his mother, many years departed. Then he started the car and drove off to get Jacqueline Mathis.


Roy had the address for Nathan Shipley’s house and clear instructions from Kimble: do not engage, do not so much as turn your headlights on if he passes. Just call.

He’d driven past the house, a sprawling but dilapidated place nestled in a high valley with a stunning view of the mountains beyond, and then he’d circled back and found the ancient gas station that Kimble had told him about.

Shipley’s truck was still in the driveway of his home, and there were lights on inside. So far he was following the chief deputy’s instructions and not wandering.

Roy settled into his car, looked at the fading sun, and hoped that Kimble knew what in the hell he was doing.


At sundown the sheriff’s deputies came by to tell Audrey they’d had no luck with the cougar hunt.

“He hasn’t touched the bait,” said the cold female officer named Diane, who seemed to hold Audrey personally responsible for her colleague’s death. She was the most intimidating of all of them, harsher even than the sheriff. Audrey couldn’t help but be impressed by her. She certainly had the look of a woman who did not take any shit from her male colleagues. Or, for that matter, from anyone.

“I didn’t think he would,” Audrey said. Technically, Ira should have been interested. He should be hungry by now, having grown accustomed to a steady diet that required no hunting, and the presence of massive pieces of bloody, butchered meat scattered along the river should have appealed to him. She just knew somehow that he would not fall for the trick.

The watcher, David had said, and then named him Ira.

He would be watching now, she was certain. Maybe from the rocks, maybe from the upper branches of a tree, maybe from some unremembered crevice of the old mines themselves, over on the other side of the river. Wherever he was, he would be watching, and he would not easily be fooled.

“I’m guessing the man with the dogs didn’t have any better luck,” she said.

“He hasn’t yet. The dogs can’t seem to pick up his scent.”

Again Audrey felt no surprise.

“You’ll try again tomorrow, I assume,” she said.

“Oh, yes. We’ll keep at it until we get him. Tomorrow the folks from the USDA will be down, too. They’re going to inspect—”

“They just did inspect. Right before we began to move. They said it was one of the highest-quality facilities in the country.”

“They want to inspect and see exactly how the cat escaped,” Diane Mooney said, as if Audrey hadn’t spoken. “So we will deal with all of that tomorrow. But I don’t want any of my people out here at night. Not after what’s been happening.” For the first time, the woman’s coldness seemed to abate, and she said, “I don’t think you should be here either.”

Audrey took a deep breath and shook her head. “I don’t particularly want to be, to tell you the truth. But I have to be. You see all of them?”

She waved her hand back at the cats.

“They can’t be left alone,” Diane Mooney said.

“No, they can’t. So Dustin and I, we’ll be here.”

“Call for help if you need it,” Diane said. “If you see him, or hear him, or just if anything seems wrong, call us, Mrs. Clark. Don’t try to handle things on your own. You got very lucky last night. I don’t want to see you press that again.”

Audrey nodded. “I don’t intend to.”





36


IT WAS NOT YET DARK when Kimble got stiffly out of his car—his back had been killing him all day—and walked into the prison with his order-on-jailer paperwork. They’d already gotten a call from the judge, so they were aware of the order and prepared to see him, but all the same he could feel the curiosity as he spoke with the supervising CO, a guy named John who’d seen Kimble come and go on many visits.