The Ridge

by Michael Koryta

  “If they prove to be, I won’t be surprised. Murder seemed to fascinate Wyatt. I’m trying to understand why. You can help me by telling me about them.”

  “Why do you care, Kimble? It was a suicide.”

  Kimble drained the rest of his beer.

  “Wasn’t it?” Roy said, the first time any other possibility had crossed through his mind. He’d seen the corpse, had seen the gun in the dead man’s lap. But guns could be placed in a way to suggest suicide. Kimble would be well aware of the forensic response to the scene by now, and maybe there was something in it that Roy hadn’t anticipated.

  “He did a lot of talking about how I would investigate this,” Kimble said slowly. “When he called me that morning, he kept talking about the differences between suicide and homicide. Made the outright suggestion that someone could be compelled to kill himself by another, and then it shouldn’t be considered a suicide at all.”

  Roy was astonished. He said, “You think somebody else is involved in this?”

  “I have no idea. But it’s my job to find out. And listen—you had an inordinate amount of time alone at that scene before I reached you. Would have been shorter, but Shipley flipped his cruiser.”

  Roy held up his hands, palms out. “I didn’t tamper.”

  Kimble gave him a measured stare, then said, “You’d understand why I might be skeptical of that, considering the stunt you pulled with the notepad.”

  “I was walking around that crazy place and saw the names of my own parents written on one of those maps. Forgive me for a bit of curiosity.”

  “I understand curiosity. I also understand that I gave you a direct order, asked you to turn over the notes you’d taken, and you gave me a handful of blank pages, then chose that time to mention Jacqueline and take my mind away. Not a bad play on your part, and it’s my fault for falling for it, but if you came across other things of interest in that place, I need to know.”

  “All I left with was the names.”

  “You didn’t find any cameras?”

  “Cameras?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “A question of timing that I need answered: when you busted the bulb, that tripped the breakers and knocked out the power, right?”

  “Yeah. I flipped the breakers back so I could see my way around to stop the bleeding.” He held up his bandaged hand.

  “All right. How long was the power out?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Ten minutes? I’m not certain.”

  “You heard the sirens, then heard the wreck. That’s what you told me yesterday. Correct?”

  “Correct. I was going to go down to check it out, but your dispatcher was emphatic that I remain where I was.”

  Kimble mulled on that, staring at the wood paneling above Roy’s head, and then refocused his gaze and said, “So when the wreck took place, when you heard the sounds of it, was any light on?”

  It was a puzzling question. Roy thought about it, wanting to be sure he had it right, and then shook his head.

  “Power was out. I went back in after I heard the accident. Found the electrical panel, flipped the breakers.”

  Kimble was silent. Roy tilted his head and said, “Why does that matter?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t. My deputy, though… he isn’t the sort who’d just shoot off a road and into the trees.”

  “I thought the same of my father. It happens.”

  “Quite often, out there.”

  Roy waved a hand at the waitress, signaling for another beer. Kimble shook her off, his empty bottle already pushed to the side.

  “Shipley—that’s the deputy who was in the wreck, the one who was there with me today—swears he saw a man in the road. Then some kind of blue light. You never left the lighthouse after you called in the body?”

  “No.”

  “What about the light? He had a spotlight in there, too. You use that, thinking it was a flashlight, maybe?”

  “No. I didn’t see any spotlight. All I did was flip the breakers back on so I could see my way around the downstairs. I made sure not to touch the switch that fed the main light, either.”

  Kimble nodded, then tapped the folder between them. “Let me know what you get. You’ll have better luck than me. All that local history, it’s your bailiwick.”

  “Hell, it seems somebody read my column.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  Roy grinned. “So I get to help an investigation, eh?”

  “You get to look up some history, that’s all. You can probably find that sort of information a lot faster than I can.”

  “Reassuring news to the locals who rely on your protection, I’m sure. I’ll do what I can. Though I don’t know what the gain could be.”

  “Let me worry about the gain. And keep it quiet, okay? Otherwise I might be inspired to remember your behavior at the crime scene in a different light.”

  “The threats begin. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that you catch more flies with honey?”

  “My mother liked cop shows,” Kimble said, and then he slid out of the booth and walked away. When he pushed open the door Roy could see the dark night beyond, and the twinkling Christmas lights strung from the courthouse and out to the light poles across the street, a cheerful white glow against the blackness. Then the door swung shut, and he was gone.

  Roy looked down at the folder Kimble had left, opened it, and stared at the century-old pictures, marred by the single scrawled word.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  It seemed as if Wyatt French had been looking for someone.

  17

  THE DECEMBER NIGHT WAS cloudless and cold, the rain replaced by a steady, biting wind, but Kimble ignored his car and walked from the tavern back to the sheriff’s department, breathing deeply of the frigid air, hoping it would clear his head.

  It didn’t.

  There were too many questions. There was also the cause of death, as reported by the coroner: suicide. Case closed.

  So let it go, he told himself. Get back to work on things that can help the living.

  But he wanted to know about Jacqueline. How French had known her, and why she mattered to him. It would be hard for him to move forward with that question unanswered, and Wyatt was long past his question-answering days. Jacqueline Mathis, however, was not.

  He took up the phone, dialed the Kentucky state women’s prison, identified himself, and asked for a check on Jacqueline’s visitation logs. Had she ever been visited by a Wyatt French?

  It took a few keystrokes before the voice on the other end of the line had an answer.

  “Yes, sir. He came by in late October.”

  “This October?”

  “Affirmative. October thirtieth.”

  Six weeks before he put the gun barrel in his mouth.

  “Any other visits?” Kimble asked.

  “Negative. He was a one-shot guest. Don’t see too many of those except for lawyers or journalists.”

  “He was neither,” Kimble said, and then he thanked the man and hung up the phone feeling far worse than he had before. What had taken an elderly, suicidal alcoholic to visit Jacqueline Mathis? And what had they discussed?

  Wyatt French couldn’t tell him anymore. Jacqueline still could.

  It was just past two in the morning when the cougar screamed.

  Wesley slept with his bedroom window cracked, even on the harshest nights of winter, so he could hear what was happening with the cats. He knew any species by sound, but guessing the individual cat was next to impossible. Then it came again, a keening pitch he’d heard before but only in the mountains of the West, where such cats roamed wild and always had, and he knew the precise animal.

  Ira.

  Wesley swung out of the bed and onto his feet, reaching for the flashlight and rifle that he had placed at hand before going to sleep tonight. With Ira loose, it seemed prudent. He’d never use the gun unless he had no other alternative, but
the black cat was the kind that could put you in that situation swiftly.

  By the time he reached the door the other cats were into the fray, roars echoing through the woods. Ira had sounded the first alarm, but now the rest had joined the chorus.

  He came back after all, Wesley thought, amazed. Maybe he actually went into that trap.

  He came out of the trailer barefoot, wearing nothing but the old gym shorts he’d slept in. The gravel bit into his feet but he ran ahead anyhow, ran in the direction of the trap he’d constructed for the cougar, out near the overgrown tracks that ran through the woods south of the preserve. The cat was still screaming, and Wesley didn’t like that. There should be no way it could have gotten injured in the trap, but it was screaming all the same, and—

  The gunshot brought him to a stunned halt.

  A rifle had just been fired. There was no mistaking it.

  Shooting at the cats, he thought, and there was wild, black rage in him. If someone is shooting at my cats, I will kill him, and I won’t need a gun to do it.

  Another shot, closer, and for the first time Wesley recognized the possibility that he was the target. The bullet had passed close, just over his left shoulder. He turned the flashlight off, and as the world returned to darkness there was the crack of yet another gunshot and the anguished bellow of one of the tigers just behind him.

  A hit. The son of a bitch had hit one of the cats.

  Wesley got back to his feet, screaming, and ran toward the tree line. He got past the occupied cages and opened fire blindly into the woods. He knew that there were no cats in his line, and that was his only concern. There were only three cartridges in the huge Remington Model 798 that he held, and he put all three of them into the trees. When the last shot had been fired, he could hear the sound of someone running through the woods, crashing through the timber. Wesley could not pursue, though—a cat had been shot.

  He found the flashlight where he’d dropped it in the gravel and turned it back on and searched the darkness for the wounded animal.

  It was Kino. The tiger was trying to fight through the fence, trying to escape this place of rescue that had suddenly turned dangerous on him. In the pale white glow of the flashlight beam Wesley could see a wound bubbling with blood. The tiger’s left shoulder was broken, so he could not stand without keeping his right foreleg on the ground, which left him attempting to chew through the fence instead of using his paws.

  “Kino, buddy, relax,” Wesley said. His voice was shaking. “You got to relax, buddy, I can fix this, I can fix this.”

  But could he? The bullet had penetrated deeply. That the tiger was still up at all was astonishing.

  “We’ll fix this,” Wesley said again, and then he set the empty rifle down beside the fence and ran back to the trailer, his bare feet leaving streaks of blood on the gravel.

  Inside the trailer, he fumbled a ketamine-filled syringe onto one of the six-foot poles they used to tranquilize the cats. Tranquilizing a wounded animal could be deadly, but he’d have to do it to have any hope of stopping the bleeding and addressing the wound. If he could get the bleeding stopped, he could call for a veterinarian—there was one in Whitman who helped them regularly—and maybe Kino could be saved.

  He considered making the call now, getting the vet on his way, but decided that the loss of time was too dangerous. The first priority had to be getting the cat down and the bleeding stopped.

  They had a dart rifle but he trusted the pole syringes more, particularly in the dark, and the cat was close to the fence. He’d be able to reach him.

  Back outside he ran, the pole in one hand and the flashlight in the other. All around cats were roaring or growling or hissing. Somewhere out there in the darkness, Ira was loose.

  Who would have done this? Wesley thought. What sick, evil son of a whore would have done this?

  When he reached Kino’s cage, he saw with dismay that the cat had returned to the center of his enclosure. He was still trying to stand. Each time he tried the left leg collapsed and he dropped drunkenly into the dirt.

  Wesley looked at the pole in his hand and back at the cat inside, now far from the fence. He’d have to go in. It was that or return for the dart rifle, but that would waste more time and—

  Kino tried to rise again, and this time he let out an agonized cry, and that made Wesley’s decision. There was no time. He opened the combination lock on the gate—every lock in the facility had the same combination, set to Audrey and David’s wedding anniversary date—and removed the chain. Kino, thankfully, was so antisocial that he had his own enclosure, leaving no other cats to deal with.

  “Easy, buddy,” he called, and then he removed the cap from the syringe, opened the gate, and stepped inside, his breath fogging in the cold night air.

  The tiger roared. Tried to roar. The powerful sound died into a rasp and blood ran out of his mouth and onto his muzzle. Wesley Harrington, more than four decades devoted to these beautiful cats, felt the black rage again.

  I will find whoever did this and tear his heart from his chest, kill him with my hands…

  “Easy, Kino,” he murmured. “Easy.”

  He was close now, about five feet away. Within range of the pole, but it would be a stretch, and he didn’t want to be off-balance. Another step, then. Two more. He needed to get this in where it would count, and he knew this cat and the cat knew him and there would be no problem with this, no problem at—

  He’d just pressed the syringe to Kino’s rib cage when the tiger lunged. It was difficult for the cat—obscenely difficult, considering that Wesley had carefully approached from his left side, his wounded side, knowing that if the tiger did make aggressive movements, it would be harder for him to go left than right.

  It was hard. His left foreleg twisted uselessly, shattered bone rolling in the shoulder socket, fresh blood pouring free, as he pushed off the ground entirely with his hind legs. For one second they were facing each other, the tiger’s lips peeled back to expose massive, bloodstained teeth and enraged eyes that glittered in the flashlight glow. Wesley saw the right paw rising, saw it coming, and even in the second before it hit him he was more dazzled than terrified. What an incredible show of power. This cat was dying, but he had risen up one last time, risen bold and brave and—

  The impact caught him in the chest and threw him back toward the fence. The pole syringe and flashlight fell from his hands and he felt searing warmth and then he was down on his back and the dark trees wove overhead in the endless breeze, tendrils of fog drifting through the fences and out into the woods.

  It had not been a full-strength blow. Far from it. A tiger did not need to use full strength, or even half strength, to kill a man.

  Wesley got his chin onto his chest and looked down and saw the source of the terrible warmth that engulfed him. Kino had torn him open. In one swift strike, the cat had laid Wesley open from midchest to abdomen. The blood pulsed and pooled around him and he was glad that it was dark and he couldn’t see the wound any better.

  Should’ve used the gun, he thought stupidly. Not even the dart gun—the real one. Should’ve just ended his misery. Because that cat is dying, and he is scared, and he knows that it was a human that did it.

  Kino was up again, moving again. Coming toward Wesley. He let out a bellow, and Wesley, who knew more about cats than he did about people, understood. The cat was not coming to finish the job. The cat was sorry.

  “I know,” Wesley said, or tried to say, but his tongue was leaden in his mouth and his jaw seemed locked. “Not you, Kino. Not your fault. You were scared. We were both scared.”

  The cat’s noise had changed, shifting from the roars of agony and fear to the softer chuffing, the sound of friendship, of love, and Wesley could see that Kino was trying to reach him. Not to strike again, not to do harm. The tiger didn’t want to kill him, never had. It was scared, that was all, and an animal of such tremendous size and strength could kill quite accidentally when it was scared.

  Kino fe
ll again. The white on his muzzle was stained dark with blood. He tried to stand and couldn’t. Wesley said, “Not your fault, Kino. Not your fault.”

  Still the cat tried to rise. Wesley dug his fingers into the grass and the dirt and dragged himself. Parts of him seemed to be trailing behind, but he did not look back. The tiger had gotten so close; all Wesley had to do was close the gap.

  He reached him and got his hand up, laid it on the side of the cat’s massive head. The tiger chuffed again, softer, and nuzzled against the hand. Wesley tried to scratch his ears, but it was hard to make his fingers work.

  The tiger turned from him then, faced the woods, and growled. Wesley looked in the same direction, and that was when he saw the blue light. It flickered through the darkness, a thin blue flame that seemed to move on its own, a dancing orb in the black night.

  “Who’s there?” Wesley tried to call, but he didn’t have much voice anymore.

  The blue light came on toward him, and Kino growled again, and now he had support, every cat in the preserve joining the chorus, standing at attention. Across from Kino’s cage, illuminated in the moonlight, Wesley could see that two of the white tigers were on their hind legs, forepaws resting against the fence, snarling into the night. The blue light retreated, flickering in and out of the trees.

  That’s him, Wesley thought. That’s the bastard who did this. If I had the rifle right now I could get him. I could hit him from here, so long as he kept holding that light.

  But the rifle was outside the cage, and Wesley wasn’t going anywhere. The man with the light wasn’t coming on, though, and after a time Wesley realized that he was scared of the cats.

  Kino seemed to know it, too, and though he growled again, he lowered his head, dropped his chin onto Wesley’s thigh. His large eyes regarded Wesley sorrowfully.

  “Not your fault, Kino,” Wesley said. “He did it to me, not you. It was his fault. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  The cat’s head lolled down onto the ground but his eyes were still open, his breath coming in anguished gasps.

  “I’ll be fine,” Wesley told him. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be fine.”