The Ridge (25 page)

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.

W
HEN 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 technician 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.”

T
HE 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.

“Mrs. Clark,” he said, “I intend to let my department handle this investigation in the standard fashion. It’s not my job to interview you, and I won’t, though I’m damned tempted. I’m here for two reasons. The most important is out of respect for my deputy, who’s being zipped into a body bag right now. The other? I want you to know that this property is going to be closed.”

“What does that mean?” Audrey said.
“Closed?”

“It means I will see this place shut down and your cats gone.”

She stared at him. In her hands was a cup of tea the other officer had insisted on making for her. He was looking at the floor now.

“I’ve tolerated this circus when I shouldn’t have,” the sheriff said. “I’ll carry that guilt for a long time, believe me. But in the last two days, two men have died because of your damned cats. If you think I won’t respond to that—”

“Someone shot Kino,” she said. “Your own officers found a bullet. They didn’t want to talk to me about it, but I know what it means. Someone came out here and shot one of my cats, and my best friend left in this world died trying to help. I know you just lost one of your own, and I’m sorry. But you need to remember that I’ve lost one of mine, too!”

Her voice was shaking, and the sheriff looked at her without a trace of emotion. When he spoke again, his voice was flat.

“It’s my understanding that the USDA handles your permitting.”

“That’s right,” she said. “And the permits are in order. They approved the new facility before—”

“They’ll be coming back out,” he said. “Along with some folks from the state wildlife agency. Along with whoever the hell else I need. I’ll find whoever it takes, and I’ll come with them.”

The door opened again, and another cop stepped through.
She recognized this one. Kimble. The sheriff glanced at him, then turned back to Audrey.

“You can’t shut it down,” she said. “There are more than sixty cats who need—”

“I have no interest in the needs of your cats. I have interest in the public safety of Sawyer County. You have every right to object, and I’m sure you will. I’m just telling you the score. Don’t say you were blindsided. I intend to get these cats out of my county.”

She didn’t respond.

“As for the missing cat,” he continued, “I intend to find it. I’m having poisoned bait traps placed along the riverbed right now.”

“You can’t
poison—
”

He held up a hand. “You lost him, Mrs. Clark. You couldn’t handle him. When he was on your property, he was yours to care for. When he’s loose? He’s
mine
. I’m not worried about the cat’s health. I’m worried about the public’s.”

“Good luck getting him,” she said softly, and he flushed with rage, was halfway to a blustering response when she said, “No—I mean it. Good luck.”

He stared at her, then turned away. Said something low to Kimble and banged open the door and went outside.

“He’s hurting,” Kimble said, crossing the room to sit beside her. “We all are.”

“I understand that.”

“He’s also not wrong. Things are getting out of hand here. Do you have anyone you can contact, Mrs. Clark? Anyone who can come out here and lend some… some expertise? Experience?”