The Ridge

by Michael Koryta

  “Yes.”

  “That idea you had, something in the college newspaper, or—”

  “The Whitman Company paper. The college has the archives.”

  “Well, if you think there’s something there, please try to find it.”

  “All right,” Roy said, watching his reflection in the window, snow flurries swirling beneath the orbs of the street lamps outside, and then, “Kimble, what are you expecting me to find?”

  “I’m not sure,” Kimble said. “But it might involve a fire. A torch. A lantern. I don’t know, some kind of light.”

  Roy couldn’t get any words out in response to that.

  “Can you look?” Kimble said. He sounded plaintive. No, it went beyond that. He sounded desperate.

  “Yes,” Roy said. “I can look.”

  The cats were stirring, growls and sharp roars splintering what had been a quiet night. It had taken Audrey hours to fall asleep, and she fought against consciousness now, clinging to soft, sweet darkness, but the sounds didn’t relent, and eventually her eyelids dragged up despite her desires. It was dim in the trailer, with only the light from one corner floor lamp. Audrey squeezed her eyes shut again, still not fully awake, but then a new sound registered: rattling metal.

  They were going at the fences.

  This time her eyelids snapped open, and now sleep was far from her. She sat up abruptly, a blanket sliding from her shoulders onto the floor. There was no mistaking the sound—fences all over the preserve were rattling, rippling, and the cats continued to roar.

  They’re trying to get out, she thought. Please, no, don’t let them get out…

  She stood and jammed her feet into the boots that lay beside the couch, then pulled on a jacket and ran down the hall and jerked open the door.

  “Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop!”

  Her first answer was a resounding roar from one of the male lions, a sound so powerful she took a step back, actually considering shutting the door. Then she saw them, though, and the initial fear faded to fascination.

  They weren’t lunging at the fences, trying to tear through them, as she’d feared. They were simply standing against them, up on their hind legs, bracing their front paws against the fences.

  Every single one.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, as if expecting an answer. The sounds she had heard were more than sixty pairs of paws landing against chain link, every cat rising. For what?

  She found herself wishing for David. She wanted him to see this. To tell her what it meant. David or Wes, someone who understood these animals better than she did, that was what she needed.

  The voice she was hearing, though, didn’t belong to David or Wes but to her sister. That morning phone call after the nightmare, Ellen telling her to abandon the preserve, near hysteria in her voice.

  Audrey watched the cats and felt the flush of adrenaline that had caught her when she heard them banging against the fences fade out to a cold, damp fear.

  One thing you should always remember when you’re out here at night, David had told her years ago, is that they can see in the dark six times better than a human. Think about that—six times better. So if they seem focused on something you don’t see, pay attention.

  She’d laughed and told him that half the cats passed time by staring intently at nothing even in the daylight.

  You’re the one who thinks they’re staring at nothing, he’d said, none of his usual humor evident. Maybe you’re wrong.

  She stepped outside hesitantly, taking a flashlight with her, and called for the police officer.

  “Hello? Deputy Shipley?”

  Silence except for the cats. She looked at her watch and saw that it was past two. Shipley would be gone. Who was the other one? Wolverton.

  “Deputy Wolverton? Can you come here, please?”

  She was out in the preserve now, and in the cage at her side Larkin gave a low growl. The lynx was literally at her side, too, not at her feet where she belonged but stretched out to full length, bringing her head level with Audrey’s waist. Audrey stared at the cat, called for Wolverton again, and received no answer.

  Some security, she thought, trying to mask fear as bitterness. They were supposed to be here to help me, not scare the shit out of me.

  She took a step farther out and was just ready to shout for him again when she saw the blue light.

  It was well into the woods, back where the ground gave way to steep stone walls, and it looked like some sort of flame. She watched it spark and flicker, then looked back and realized that every single cat was watching the light.

  Call for help, she thought, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes away from it. That cold, dancing glow was enchanting.

  Numbing.

  Jafar erupted with a harsh snarl then, and the sound jarred her back into the moment. She swung the flashlight around and fastened the beam on the spotted leopard.

  “Easy,” she said. “Chill out, buddy.”

  He looked at her but did not drop down to all fours. None of them did.

  She swung the flashlight back out into the woods, toward the blue flame.

  “Hello?”

  There was no answer.

  Has to be the police, she thought. He’s got some sort of special flashlight.

  That wasn’t a flashlight, though. It was a flame.

  There was no smoke in the air. No smoke, no crackle of fire, just that unmistakable flame.

  She moved toward it despite herself, swinging the flashlight around, the beam tracing the trees and fences, catching eerie reflections when it hit on the eyes of the various cats that were watching her.

  Go back inside, she told herself. Go back inside.

  But she couldn’t. If something was wrong, she needed to know. The police were gone, and the cats were anxious, and there was one person left to deal with it: her.

  The wind blew along in a sudden gust that had brittle edges of December cold. Above her, branches knocked hollowly off one another, and one tree emitted a long, whining creak that seemed directed at her, seemed plaintive.

  The blue light was moving toward her.

  She stood where she was, and the cats fell silent but did not change position, every one of them watching the woods.

  I want your eyes, she thought. Just for a minute. Let me see in the dark like you, just for long enough to know what’s out there.

  But all she could see was the silhouetted trees and the glimmering blue flame.

  “Who’s there?” she called, and then she began to walk toward it, her own flashlight now a moving glow. The blue light seemed to have stopped between the crest of the ridge and the edge of the preserve. She wouldn’t go far. Just out past the cages, far enough to see, far enough to be heard. It was Wolverton, had to be. He just couldn’t hear her. With those gusts of northern wind pushing the trees and the cats roaring, it would be hard to hear her.

  And hard to see a flashlight, Audrey? He can’t see a flashlight?

  Maybe he was being silent for a reason. Maybe he was pursuing the source of that blue light himself, and the last thing he wanted was for her to come bumbling along, shouting and shining a flashlight and—

  When the cat growled on her left, she wasn’t immediately concerned. She was used to walking past growling animals, had just come out in the darkness to be greeted by a lion’s roar. It registered slowly—far too slowly—that she was past the enclosures, and no cats were on her left.

  No cats should be on her left.

  She stopped walking, a sense of inevitable disaster descending over her, a soldier hearing the click of a land mine at his feet.

  Ira.

  There was another growl, a deep, warning note, and it was very near. The blue light ahead of her was forgotten now, irrelevant. All that mattered was this sound at her side and how to respond.

  Move slowly, she told herself. You have to move slowly. She swung the flashlight to her left, the beam gliding over the trees like headlights coming aroun
d a curve, and found the black cat no more than ten feet away.

  She saw the sparkle of his eyes first. Emerald, like pieces of an old bottle made of green glass. Then the rest of him took shape—hunched shoulders, coiled muscles, stiff tail. She was trying to say his name when she saw something pale beneath his front paws, and then the breath went out of her.

  He was standing on a body.

  One limp white palm extended out into the leaves. That was what had caught her attention. The rest was nearly camouflage, the brown uniform of the sheriff’s department. He was facedown in the brush, and the blood that pooled around his throat looked so black that it seemed a part of the cougar, an extension of his fur.

  Audrey screamed. Everything in her brain told her not to, told her that the cat would spring at the slightest provocation, but everything in your brain could fail you at the sight of something like this, and so she screamed despite herself.

  The cat snarled, snapped forward, and lashed out with a paw. He didn’t leave, though. He was protecting the kill.

  Audrey turned and ran into the night, ran gracelessly and pointlessly, knowing that he would bring her down from behind and end her out here in the cold woods.

  He didn’t, though. He never moved, but even after Audrey fell onto her knees in the trailer, with the door closed behind her, she still had her hands up by her neck as if to protect her throat when he sprang.

  27

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG at three A.M., Kimble knew it would be bad in the way that you always knew a call at that hour would be bad, but he hadn’t imagined it could be like this. He hadn’t imagined that whatever had happened had happened out there.

  His first, groggy thought upon hearing that one of his own was down at Blade Ridge was a perverse, horrible hopefulness.

  Maybe it’s Shipley. Maybe whatever madness exists out there is feeding on its own.

  It wasn’t Shipley, though. It was Pete Wolverton.

  He hung up the phone, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and cursed himself. All he’d heard about that place tonight, and still he hadn’t called them off. He’d considered it, but then the thought of Audrey Clark had changed his mind. She wasn’t going to abandon her cats, and he hadn’t wanted to leave her alone out there.

  “I’m sorry, Pete,” he whispered. “Damn it, I’m so sorry.”

  Then he got up, dressed, put on his gun, and went to make amends.

  The scene was bright when he arrived, four cars already there, three from his department and one from the state police, all with flashers going. Spotlights were shining in the woods where Pete Wolverton had died, brightening the night so that the evidence techs could take their photographs.

  Kimble got out of his car, feeling wearier than he ever had in his life, and went to talk to Diane Mooney, who was in charge of the scene.

  “Where’s Audrey Clark?” he said. Around them the cats milled, bothered by all the lights and activity.

  “Inside. She’s shaken up pretty bad.”

  “She saw it happen?”

  “Essentially. She found Pete with that fucking cat still on top of him.”

  The venom in Diane’s voice was something Kimble had never heard from her. She wasn’t facing him, was instead looking out at the preserve, where dozens of massive cats stared back at her.

  “Be a pro,” Kimble said, gentle but firm.

  “I’m trying, chief. But that was Pete out there. That was Pete.”

  “I know it. You talked to Shipley?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He was here until midnight, when Pete relieved him. I want him…” He hesitated, about to say that he wanted Shipley out to tell them what he’d seen, but now thinking that he didn’t want Shipley out here at all. “We need to know if he saw or heard anything during his shift,” he said. “But I’ll run him down tomorrow. We don’t need him at the scene. We got enough people out here as it is, and since they were working together on this, it might hit him harder than any of us.”

  “I don’t think there’s a sliding scale on the way this one hits.”

  Kimble nodded. “Was it you who interviewed Audrey Clark?”

  “Yes. We’ll need to take another run at her, though. She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, she’s hysterical, for one thing. But when she does talk, she claims that all those damned cats were dancing around on their hind legs, that someone with a blue torch guided her to the body, that—”

  “Hang on. Hang on. A blue torch?”

  “Like I said, she’s hysterical. Talking nonsense.”

  Kimble looked up at the lighthouse and wet his lips. “Right. You’ve seen the body? You’ve seen Pete?”

  She nodded.

  “Any chance he wasn’t killed by the cougar?”

  “Sure,” Diane said. “If there’s a wolf on the loose.”

  He followed Diane through the woods and out to the place where Pete Wolverton lay in the wet leaves. A ring of spotlights had been set up around him as if a film crew were readying for a shoot, and yellow tape was strung between the trees. Everyone was hushed. Death scenes were always grim places, but this was different. This was one of their own.

  Kimble ducked under the tape, approached the body of his friend of fifteen years, and dropped into a crouch. He felt something thick in the back of his throat and tight behind the eyes, drew in air through clenched teeth and then let it out slowly.

  “No sign of the cat?” he said.

  “None,” Diane answered. “With all these people around, he won’t show himself again. But when it was just Pete out here alone… he showed himself then, didn’t he?”

  Kimble looked up at her, and she turned away. It had been Kimble’s decision to run a one-man rotation in these woods, and his deputies would not forget that. He wouldn’t either.

  He cupped his hands to shield his eyes from the glare of the lights and focused on Pete’s body. There were tears in his uniform across the back, some blood showing through them, but not much. Obvious claw marks, but not the killing wound. He’d bled out from the throat.

  “You ready to turn him over?” Kimble asked the lead evidence tech, who was with the state police, a topnotch guy. He’d rolled out fast. That was the way it went when a police officer was killed.

  “Yeah. Waiting on you.”

  “All right. Let’s turn him.”

  Two of the technicians reached out with gloved hands and gently, with utmost care, rolled Pete Wolverton’s body over. The head didn’t roll in sync with the rest of him—there wasn’t much muscle left tethering skull to torso.

  Someone whispered an oath, someone else a prayer. Kimble slid closer.

  Pete’s throat had been laid wide open, and the cords of muscle showed white against the dark blood, which had spilled in enormous quantity, saturating Pete’s uniform shirt and all of the leaves around him. Kimble brought a hand up to his face and squeezed the flesh between his eyes with his thumb and index finger. He squeezed long and hard, concentrating on the pressure. Nobody spoke.

  When he took his hand down again, he looked right at the wound. Not at Pete’s face, not at his eyes, not at the blood-soaked uniform that bound him in brotherhood to the men and women here. Just at the wound.

  It was a very straight incision. An end-to-end slash that had cut remarkably deep, severing not just the arteries but the strong cartilage of the throat that people referred to as the windpipe.

  Kimble said, “We think a claw did that?”

  For a moment it was silent. Then the head evidence tech, from the state police, who was closest to the body, said, “Well, if it had used its teeth, everything would be torn. Chewed up. So that slash, yeah, that must have been a claw.”

  “It’s very clean.”

  Above him, Diane said, “There are claw marks all over his back, too.”

  “I saw them. Not nearly so clean. Not very deep at all.”

  Everyone was staring at him now. The evidence techni
cian looked thoughtful. He turned back to the wound and said, “It is very clean.”

  Diane said, “What are you thinking, chief?”

  “I’m thinking that I’ve seen six people whose throats were cut with knives,” Kimble said. “One cut with a sword, one with an ax, one with a barbecue fork. I’ve never seen anyone’s throat opened up by a cat. I don’t know what it looks like.”

  “Like that,” she said, her voice unsteady. The evidence technician, though, was meeting Kimble’s eyes, and there was a glimmer of understanding and agreement there.

  “Autopsy will tell us, won’t it?” Kimble said, speaking to him.

  “Yeah. We’ll be able to tell.”

  “Tell what?” Diane said.

  Kimble straightened, dusting leaves from his jeans. “Whether the cougar killed him,” he said, “or found him.”

  28

  THE IMAGE AUDREY COULD NOT get out of her mind was a Valium bottle. There was one at home, in the medicine cabinet, a prescription she’d filled in the weeks after David’s death. The pills had carried her through the funeral, through the softly spoken sympathies and the offers of help and the sight of him in the casket, but then she’d tucked them in a far corner of the medicine cabinet. Not because they didn’t help, but because she didn’t want to have to rely on that kind of help for too long.

  Now she wanted that kind of help again. Wanted to take a handful of them, wanted the world to go cloudlike, soft and distant. Very distant.

  She’d spoken to two different police officers, one woman who was harsh, almost accusatory, and one older man who hadn’t said much at all, just kept telling her to get comfortable, as if he were the awkward host of the world’s worst party. She’d gotten the tears and the trembling under control and was just beginning to feel some strength return when the sheriff himself stepped through the door. He wore his Stetson with the badge affixed to the crown, as if he’d just ridden in from Tombstone, and he looked at her with undisguised fury.