The Ridge (30 page)

The next letter was a great deal shorter, and far more optimistic.

“I have counted more men working on the bridge each morning than the day before. There is an odd quality to watching them work—never have I seen a more silent group of men—but the construction is sound.”

Then came his final letter, written on Christmas Eve 1888, and Roy read it with astonishment.

“My concerns about Mr. Vesey have been growing immensely, and last evening I endeavored to put them at ease by observing the men in the night. Their silence during the day, which is when I typically visit, has unnerved me, and well it should. Our bridge, brother, is a creation of an evil I have never believed possible. The nails are being driven by dead men. At night, Vesey visits the sick with a torch in hand. Sometimes he moves on, and the next morning those men have passed. But on two occasions last evening, I watched with my own eyes as he lowered the torch to a dying man. The flames turned to coldest blue, and then the man rose. I watched this happen, Roger. There is no mistaking what I saw.”

It was the last letter Frederick Whitman Jr. wrote, or at least the last that the family had preserved. Roy flipped through several pages of business-related correspondence with frustration, hoping for more, and finally hit upon an exchange from May 1890, between Roger, by then located in Sawyer County, and his wife, who was still in Boston. It was the first mention of his older brother.

“We are moving him again, and I maintain hope that the plagues of his mind will soon abate. I’ve heard numerous accounts of the miraculous restorative powers of the mineral springs of French Lick and West Baden, Indiana, and have been assured that time spent at rest amidst those healing waters may well be what my brother requires.”

The next appearance of Frederick Whitman Jr. in the college archives was his obituary, published in 1892. It said that Frederick, an ill man, had perished in Indiana. The formal language of the time did not succeed in entirely obscuring the fact that he had died by his own hand.

T
HE HONORABLE DOUG GRAYLING
, Sawyer County Circuit Court judge, was presiding over his morning docket when Kimble arrived, so Kimble waited in his office, pretending to flip through an
Outdoor Life
magazine so he didn’t have to make conversation with the judge’s clerk and explain the purpose of his visit. The issue he picked up included a feature detailing mountain lion attacks in Montana and California. Just what he wanted to read about today.

When Grayling finally wrapped up his docket, it was nearly eleven in the morning, and Kimble had an ache down low along his spine from sitting so long.

“Kimble, hey there.”

He stood and shook the judge’s hand. “Hello, Doug. You have a minute?”

“Of course.”

They walked into his private office, and the judge sat behind his desk, let out a soft groan, and said, “It would be nice if assholes took the holidays off, wouldn’t it, Kimble? If people said,
Hey, let’s take the month of December and not be pricks to one
another, not get arrested, not get charged, not be arraigned.
Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“It would. You’ll have a tough time convincing them of the merits of the plan, though.”

“Agreed,” Grayling said. “What can I do for you?”

Kimble took a deep breath, looked at the judge who’d sentenced Jacqueline Mathis to ten years, and asked for an order on jailer to be issued. It was a simple bit of legalese granting the sheriff’s department temporary custody of an inmate. Usually this was done for court proceedings of some kind, when the inmate was required to travel for a hearing. Today Kimble requested it for purposes of investigation, and Grayling went silent.

“She’s in a minimum-security facility,” Kimble said, “and she’s recently been approved for work release. There’s no reason we can’t borrow her for a few hours.”

“No reason we
can’t,
okay. But I need to hear the reason we
should
.”

Kimble gave him the pitch: active investigation and a delicate one. Based on evidence found in Wyatt French’s lighthouse, he said, it was possible that a series of accidents that had occurred over the years at Blade Ridge might have been initiated.

“Initiated?” Grayling said. “What in the hell does that mean? Caused by French?”

Kimble had expected this jump, and while he felt a pang of guilt at allowing the misconception to flourish, he figured Wyatt would have approved. He’d wanted Kimble to pursue the truth, not polish his reputation.

“Possibly. There have been many deaths out there, Doug, and survivor accounts are uncomfortably similar. People report the accident being initiated by a man in the road.”

“You think he was
causing
car accidents by running out in the road?”

“I don’t think it’s anywhere near that simple. But he kept track
of the dead, and of the survivors. I’ll tell you this in total honesty: I’ve never been more disturbed by discovery of evidence than I am by what I found in that lighthouse.”

“Homicide investigation,” Grayling echoed. “That’s what you’re saying?”

“Absolutely.”

“The man is dead. We can’t prosecute.”

“That does not remove the need for answers,” Kimble said, “and there’s the distinct possibility—probability, actually—that he was not working alone. One of our deputies died last night, Pete Wolverton, and that demands—”

“I’ve heard. I understood that he was killed by a cougar.”

“Autopsy results are pending, Doug, but I just got off the phone with the medical examiner. He says those results will confirm what I suspected when I saw the body last night—the cougar might have found Pete, but it did not kill him.”

“You’re saying that Pete Wolverton was murdered last night.”

“Yes. I think that’s what happened. I may be wrong, and I hope to be. But I don’t think that I am, and neither does the ME.”

“Tell me again why we need Jacqueline Mathis
released
for this?”

“She’s one of the survivors who reported activity on the road.”

“Well, interview her then. Get a statement.”

“I have. That’s why I’m here. I want her to walk me through it. I can’t overstate the importance of seeing the way she recreates the scene, Doug. I simply cannot overstate that.”

“You have a distinctly personal relationship with that woman, Kimble.”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“She
shot
you. That constitutes a—”

“I am well aware of who she is and what she did,” Kimble said. “I’m asking for a little latitude here.”

“It’s not my job to give you latitude, it’s my job to uphold the law.”

“That’s both of our jobs,” Kimble said. “How long have we worked together, Doug? How many cases? You know me, and you know my word. I’m asking you to let that count for something.”

“Always has, always will. But I’ve got to understand
how
she can help!”

“Her recollection of the scene is special.”

“Special.”

“Yes.” Kimble leaned forward and said, “Doug? I have never worked another case that feels as threatening to the people of Sawyer County as this one. Never.”

Grayling looked at him with alarm. “Car accidents that were really homicides. We’re actually talking about this. Based on evidence you found in a
lighthouse
.”

“We’re actually talking about it, yes. And I need her at the scene. It’s critical.”

“Someone else should handle her testimony.”

“It’s my investigation. And that was my deputy who died last night. I’m not turning it over to anyone else, Doug. You have a problem with that, you can call the sheriff himself. Troy will approve it.”

The Honorable Doug Grayling swore under his breath and ran both hands through hair that glistened with dye that left it an impossibly radiant shade of black.

“She shot you,” he said.

“I recall that, yes.”

“And you want me to issue an order on jailer to turn her over to you.”

“Twenty-four-hour release. This thing is big, Doug. It’s worth it. No, check that—
demands
it. I have to know what she can recreate at that scene.”

Grayling pushed back from his desk and stared at him for a long time. Kimble, who understood the value of silence, let him stare and didn’t press.

“I can’t give her to you alone,” Grayling said finally. “Not with your personal history. And I need a female officer there. Is that clear?”

“Diane Mooney will be with me,” Kimble said, and it was the second time he’d ever lied to a judge. The first time had also been with Grayling, only Kimble had been on the witness stand then. Not so much a lie back then as an omission. The prosecutor hadn’t asked
specifically
if, after the supposedly accidental shot that had dropped Kimble to the farmhouse floor, Jacqueline Mathis had leaned down, smiling, and pressed the muzzle of his own gun to his forehead.

“Do me a favor on this,” Kimble said. “Do the people of your county a favor on this. Keep it quiet, all right? You give me twenty-four hours and I hope to have the answers for you. You might not like them, or even believe them, but I intend to have them.”

“I’ll issue it. But I don’t like the way it feels.”

“Neither do I,” Kimble told him, and it felt good to speak the truth again.

R
OY SAT IN A BOOTH
at the Bakehouse, wondering why Kimble would possibly want to meet to discuss something so dark, so wildly implausible yet thoroughly documented, in a brightly lit coffee shop. It felt like a discussion for a dim and private room, where even whispers wouldn’t be overheard, where two men could talk about madness and not fear the consequences.

Kimble had been firm, though. He wanted to meet at the Bakehouse.

When he came through the door, Roy was taken aback by just how exhausted he looked. The chief deputy had always walked with a touch of a limp after the shooting, and stood with a posture that suggested more years than he had, but today you could have said he was fifty and no one would have blinked.

“I’ve got a story,” Roy said. “But it’s not one you’re going to want to hear, and the source is hardly reliable. It’s not just more than a century old, it was also left to us by an insane man. I don’t even know that it is going to be worth hearing.”

Kimble said, “It’ll be worth hearing. And maybe we shouldn’t judge the man’s sanity just yet.”

It was an odd thing for him to say, this man who was so painfully practical that extracting colorful quotes from him for a newspaper story had been almost impossible. Roy shrugged, said, “Okay,” and then he told him the story.

When he was through, Kimble didn’t respond right away. He sipped his coffee and looked over the notes Roy had taken in the archives, studied the pictures Wyatt had already found there, and did not speak.

“Like I told you,” Roy said, “this is probably wasting time that you can’t afford to waste. It’s a good chiller, I’ll grant that, but the idea that it has anything to do with what’s—”

“I think he was looking for Vesey,” Kimble said. “All those pictures labeled
NO?
I think you’re right. He must have been looking for Vesey.”

Roy sighed, lowered his voice, and said, “I hit on the same idea. Then I hit on one that’s even more absurd. I was wondering why he was content to write the names of the dead on the walls, but he used photographs for the murderers. It almost suggested that… that he had seen them, somehow. That what he was looking for was visual confirmation.”

“I believe that’s correct.”

Roy stared at him. “The story I just told you was about dead men building a bridge, Kimble. Are you being this calm about it because you’re waiting for someone to come take me away to a padded cell, or is there something I don’t understand?”

Kimble was staring out to the patio, where in warm weather the sidewalk tables were popular. Now they’d been put away for the season, and a trace of snow was beginning to gather where they’d once stood.

“There are lots of things we don’t understand,” he said. “And I’m tired of it, Darmus. I can’t bear it anymore. I’ve got an idea
that might help me understand it, and it might also cost me my job by the time things are done. I think it probably will. If things go
well,
then my badge may be all that I lose.”

“What in the world are you talking about, Kimble?”

“There’s a ghost out there,” Kimble said, turning back to him. “Or the devil? Some combination of the two? I don’t know how to explain him, but this Vesey sounds just right. Now you’ve told me the stories you found. Let me tell you the ones I’ve found.”

He told them, while Roy’s coffee went cold and people milled around them, laughing and talking and complaining about last-minute holiday shopping and long car trips to see family in far-off places. Roy listened as the most dogmatic cop in the county spoke of specters with blue torches and bargaining that led to murder and invisible beams of light that had protected Blade Ridge for many years. He told all of this, and Roy listened, and he believed.

The time when he could not believe had passed.