“There were supposed to be two of you. A female, correct?”
There were always supposed to be two, and you always tried to avoid pairing a female inmate alone with a single male officer. Kimble said, “We’re good,” meeting the man’s gaze with a flat stare and eventually receiving the shrug he knew he would receive. The procedural burden was on his department. If anything went wrong, Sawyer County would pay the price.
It took about ten minutes for them to bring her out, and she showed no trace of surprise. That was expected; she always gave off the air of having fully anticipated all developments. It had worked against her during the trial. One juror admitted that they had found her calm reactions to testimony disturbing.
The CO nodded at the handcuffs on Kimble’s belt.
“You want to use those?”
“She’s fine,” Kimble said.
The CO shrugged again. Jacqueline was a minimum-security inmate and Kimble was police. They expected he could handle her. He hoped they were right.
“Let’s go,” he told her, voice cool, indifferent. This was for the benefit of the CO. Let them see nothing but professionalism. Jacqueline Mathis stepped forward—physically free, technically still in custody. Kimble’s custody. As of this moment, she was his and his alone. He led the way to the door, held it open as Jacqueline stepped through. She walked at his side out to the car—he was in the cruiser now, this being official sheriff’s department business, though the sheriff knew nothing about it—and he felt an absurd desire to go around and open the passenger door for her, chivalrous, as if they were on a date. Instead, he opened the rear driver’s side door and she slid into the backseat, separated from him by a metal grate. Fences had held her from him for a while now.
She said, “We’re going to Blade Ridge, aren’t we?”
They were through the gates now and driving toward the highway. Kimble said, “They tell you that?” even though he knew they couldn’t have, because they didn’t know.
“I made a guess.” Her voice was so soft, so gentle. “It’s the right one, though, isn’t it?”
Kimble flicked his eyes at the mirror, then back to the road. “Yeah. A lot of people have died out there, Jacqueline. A whole hell of a lot. And the people who didn’t die…”
“What?”
“They’ve had problems,” he said.
He drove them up the ramp and onto the highway, pulling in behind a semi that was headed westbound.
“Problems like mine?”
“Problems like yours.”
“What are you hoping for from me, Kevin? What am I supposed to provide?”
“I want to know what you see,” he said.
“And you think I will see something? Still?”
“Yes,” he said. “There’s a folder back there. Pictures inside.”
She picked it up, opened it, began to sift through.
“Do you recognize any of them?”
“I’m supposed to recognize someone from photographs this old?”
“I thought you might.”
She looked up, and when he looked in the mirror he could see her eyes narrow.
“You think one of them is him,” she said.
“I don’t know. Wyatt French had the pictures. You were among them. So were the others like you. And then there are many that I don’t understand. I hoped you might.”
She fell silent for a time as she went through them one by one.
“No,” she said. “None of them are him.”
“You’d actually remember?”
“Kevin,” she said, “it’s not a face that you forget.”
“I think I know who he was,” Kimble said. “Who he claimed to be, at least, what he called himself. Silas Vesey. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No. How did you find the name?”
He told her about it as he drove, told her about all the work Roy Darmus had done, the story of the trestle and the fever and the man who’d wandered out of the hills with breath that smelled like cold ashes and said that he might be able to bind people to the bridge as Whitman had wanted, but that it would be far easier to do so with the sick and desperate men.
“Do you believe that story?” he asked her.
“It’s the truth,” she said simply. He looked at her in the mirror again, saw her sitting in the backseat staring out the window like a child on a car trip.
“You can’t be so sure of that.”
She turned to face him. “I think I can. I’ve been one of them. The desperate. I’ve seen him. Kevin, that story is the truth.”
It was full night by the time they reached Sawyer County, and Kimble was driving with caution, the roads slick with a light dusting of snow. There was more on the way tonight, the forecasters said. He stared out into the moonlit countryside of this place he’d known so well for his entire life and suddenly felt as if he did not know it at all, the beauty of rocky peaks and wooded hollows shifting on him, developing a constant, whispering menace.