The Ridge

by Michael Koryta

  Take him first, he prayed silently, take this cat first, because he will understand when I am gone, and I do not want him to know that he killed me, because that will hurt him. So take him first, and Lord, take him soon.

  “You’re a good cat,” he said from deep in his throat, his lips thick, impossible to move. “You’re a good boy.”

  Then he couldn’t even try to talk anymore, and they lay there together in the dirt, Wesley keeping his hand against the tiger’s fur and leaning his head against the same deadly paw that had struck him in the darkness. Out in the woods, the blue light continued to glow, but it came no closer. The wind blew cold and constant, but Wesley was warm there in his own blood and against the tiger’s fur. He was warm enough.

  Kino died first. Wesley Harrington’s final thoughts were of thanks.

  18

  KIMBLE HAD BEEN POLICING IN Sawyer County for twenty-one years now, and in that time he thought he’d seen about every manner of death. Homicides, suicides, car wrecks, electrocutions, fires—you name it, he’d seen it.

  Except for a man killed by a tiger.

  Somehow, he blamed Wyatt French. He’d been on the highway for ten minutes, headed for the women’s prison, when the call came. There was an uneasy moment when the ring of the phone inside the darkened car as the countryside slid soundlessly past created a sense of déjà vu so strong he was certain that he’d look down and find the call was coming from Wyatt again.

  Instead, it was his dispatcher, but as she detailed the scene and its location it felt as if it had all developed at Wyatt’s hand anyhow. Kimble found out that two deputies were already en route. Pete Wolverton, a veteran, always a good man in a messy situation, and Nathan Shipley, who’d been close to the preserve already, making his own morning drive to go back out and see if they’d had any luck trapping the black cat. Apparently they had not.

  Kimble said that he’d be there as soon as he could, and then he turned around and put on his lights and drove back toward the mountains.

  You can put another one on the board, Kimble thought. One more dead man at Blade Ridge, Wyatt. I’ll add him to your maps.

  The glass at the top of the lighthouse glittered in early-morning sun when he arrived. The wind was still and there were birds singing in the trees and one ambitious woodpecker at work somewhere up the hill. Cold, with that December chill, but beautiful. It seemed like a spot where you’d want to stop and spend some time, right up until you noticed the crime-scene tape.

  When Kimble arrived, he learned that he’d beaten Audrey Clark to the scene, and he was glad of that. The fewer civilians around, the better, for his first look, and right now he had only one: the kid who’d discovered the body. His name was Dustin Hall, and though he said he was twenty-four, he looked about fourteen. With thick dark hair that needed a cut and glasses with bent frames, he had the appearance of someone likely to need rescue from the inside of a gym locker. The kid was still worked up, crying and blubbering, and though Pete Wolverton was hardly known for his soothing qualities, Kimble asked him to calm the witness down so he could look over the death scene without distraction.

  “I’ll show it to you, chief,” Nathan Shipley said. They’d just gone far enough to fall out of earshot of Wolverton and Hall when Shipley looked at Kimble and added, under his breath, “Do you believe this? I was worried about the one who got out. Harrington was killed by one who stayed in, though.”

  “I wish I’d posted someone out here last night,” Kimble said. “I should have.”

  Shipley fell silent then, probably remembering the way he’d turned down Kimble’s request.

  “There’s something wrong with this place,” he said. “I really think that—”

  “Just show me the scene, Shipley.”

  The way Shipley told it, the kid, Dustin Hall, had arrived for the morning feedings, found himself alone on the property, and gone in search of Harrington, who was always up and at work by the time Hall arrived. He first checked the trailer, found it empty but with the door open, and then ventured into the preserve. He found Harrington inside one of the cages, torn damn near in half, with a dead tiger at his side.

  It was an ugly scene. The first thing Kimble thought of was a corpse from a pit-bull killing many years ago. That dog had to put in some time and effort to finish the job. The tiger, it appeared, had needed one swipe.

  He went into the cage and crouched down and looked at both bodies. The tiger had been shot just behind the shoulder. There was a high-caliber rifle in the dead man’s hand, his stiff fingers still on the trigger guard.

  “That thing on the pole, it’s a syringe,” Shipley was saying. “Looks like he was trying to drug the cat when he came in, but he had the rifle with him just in case, you know?”

  Kimble didn’t say anything, his eyes following the blood trail back from the dead man. It seemed he’d dragged himself about ten feet after suffering the wound. Toward the cat instead of toward the gate. That was damned curious. Why would he have tried to close the gap?

  “Tell you something, these damned cats are killing machines,” Shipley said. “When we were out here last night, I thought, Someone is going to get hurt. That’s just what I thought. And then this poor bastard gets killed. I don’t understand why anyone is allowed to have animals like this outside a zoo. It’s a dangerous place, and that’s not even counting the—”

  “Shipley?” Kimble said. “Shut up for a minute, all right? Just shut up.”

  He was looking at the dead man’s eyes as if they might tell him something. It was odd, the way the victim had fallen. Curled up against the cat, almost, but there was no way the killing wound could have been inflicted from that angle. So had the cat tried to come over and finish the job and then fallen dead almost exactly as he reached the man? It didn’t make sense. Unless the poor son of a bitch had been coming toward the cat in the end.

  “I’m guessing Mr. Harrington didn’t have any luck with the missing cougar before he found his way here,” Kimble said.

  “No. It appears he set up a trap out by the old railroad tracks, but it hasn’t been touched. That’s not good, because this guy was the only person who was able to get him in a cage to begin with.”

  “No,” Kimble said, looking back down at the body. “Not good.”

  Audrey was usually at the preserve no later than eight, but today she’d been delayed by a call from her sister, who’d awoken at three in the morning from a terrible nightmare, one that was hard to recall in detail but somehow left the overwhelming sense that it was time for Audrey to give up the preserve.

  This wasn’t a new sentiment, but it was a new delivery, and one that incensed Audrey. Her older sister had been campaigning for her to abandon the rescue center from nearly the moment the minister had finished David’s eulogy. While Audrey understood and appreciated her concern, she didn’t need any hysterical talk of prophetic nightmares. Not now, not the way things had been going the past few days. It was too much, and she told Ellen that in no uncertain terms. She was committed to the preserve, and if Ellen would shut the hell up about it and support her instead of arguing with her, it would be great.

  Afterward, standing in the shower trying to purge the argument with hot water and deep breaths, she felt bad in the way you could only when you understood the place someone was coming from. Ellen had always had a bossy streak, yes, but being in charge wasn’t the issue here. Loving her sister was. Audrey leaned her head against the cool tile of the shower as the room filled with steam and thought of her family, all of them living their practical, ordered lives in Louisville while their once most practical and ordered member, Audrey, drove to the middle of nowhere each morning to feed chunks of bloody meat to cats with paws the size of her head.

  Maybe they were entitled to their concern.

  She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her body, which was so thin, too thin. For a time after David’s death she’d been able to con herself into the idea that losing a few pounds was never a bad t
hing. No creature alive was more predisposed to fall for that con than a woman, after all. It was when five pounds turned to fifteen and then to twenty that she knew it needed to be dealt with. She’d used fatigue as an excuse for a lack of appetite, but fatigue didn’t keep you from avoiding the dinner table. Memories of sharing that table with your late husband did.

  She’d been doing better lately, though. Five pounds back in the last month. All you needed to know about appetite you could learn from a lion.

  She was thinking that, and smiling, when the phone rang again. She almost ignored it, certain that it would be Ellen again, perhaps calling to apologize, perhaps not. Then she gave in just enough to check the caller ID and saw that it wasn’t Ellen but Dustin Hall.

  She picked up, and thirty seconds later, that snapping dismissal of her sister’s nightmare seemed a dangerous thing.

  Wesley Harrington was dead.

  Wes had been killed by one of the cats.

  She made the drive to the preserve in a horrible déjà vu daze. Back to Blade Ridge Road, back to a place where a good man lay dead in his own blood.

  The police were there when she arrived. Two cars, an ambulance, and somebody’s pickup truck. She asked to see Wesley, demanded it, but they said nobody but police and his family could see him.

  “I am his family!”

  It wasn’t true, though. The cats were his family.

  There were three deputies standing around watching her, and two of them were the pair who’d been on hand yesterday. Kimble and Shipley. Shipley, who’d been so nervous around the cats, who’d worried about being out in the woods when the sun went down, seemed calmer today, his blue eyes meeting her gaze without difficulty. The new one was a balding guy with sharp eyes who looked as if he wanted to arrest everyone now and sort it out later. Or not. He introduced himself as Pete Wolverton.

  “What happened?” she said. “What happened?”

  “One of the cats got him.”

  “Ira,” she said.

  “Is Ira the name of a tiger?” Wolverton asked.

  She blinked, refocused. “No. Wait, what? He was killed by a tiger?”

  “It was Kino,” Dustin called, face pale, eyes ringed by dark, puffy bags. “It was Kino, Audrey.”

  “He went in the cage with Kino in the middle of the night?” she said.

  Kimble stepped forward then, took her gently by the arm, and guided her from the others. They walked along until they came to Jafar’s cage. The leopard rose at the sight of her and jogged over, just as he always did. Waited with his face close to the fence, wanting her to reach in and scratch his ears, just as she always did. This time she hesitated.

  “Seems like something happened in the middle of the night,” Kimble was saying in a gentle voice. “He went into the cage with a syringe.”

  Jafar growled, and Kimble pivoted away from the cage and moved his hand toward his gun.

  “He just wants attention,” Audrey said, and then she reached in and scratched Jafar’s head, the big cat preening, delighted. Kimble watched apprehensively, and she had a feeling he was thinking about what he’d just seen in Kino’s cage. She was imagining it herself.

  “He went in the cage barefoot,” Kimble said. “Seems to imply there was some sort of chaos or problem.”

  Audrey slipped her hand back through the fencing, remembering the way Wes had talked about the place being different at night, remembering the way she’d chastised him for his dire warnings. She leaned against the fence, feeling sick, and Jafar reached up and braced his front legs on the fence so that he was standing with his head close to hers. He licked her ear.

  “He was barefoot?” Audrey said. Wes always had his boots on. She would have sworn he slept in boots.

  “Yes. And he entered the cage with a rifle and some sort of a pole with a needle on it. A syringe.”

  Something had gone wrong. The cat had been sick, or injured. That would have explained the rush into the night. If something had been wrong with Kino, that would explain everything.

  “Was the tiger hurt?”

  “Beyond the gunshot wound?”

  She closed her eyes, and he said, “Sorry. I know they’re very important to you. Beyond the gunshot wound, I see no sign of injury. Now, I’m not a vet. Obviously, the syringe suggests something was wrong with the cat. What it was, I can’t say. There’s no obvious injury, though. Could he have wanted to sedate the animal just from a behavioral standpoint?”

  “Behavioral?” Audrey felt Jafar’s rough tongue on her neck, then opened her eyes and moved away from the fence.

  “Yeah. If it was, you know, acting up. Really going wild, for whatever reason. Might he have tried to sedate it then?”

  “Wes hated to sedate cats except under extraordinary circumstances.”

  “Well,” Kimble said, “it seems there must have been something extraordinary going on last night. I’ve got to warn you, Mrs. Clark—I think you’re likely to have some trouble over this.”

  “Trouble?”

  His face was grave, but he nodded. “It’s an accidental death. We’ll be clear on that. I’m in charge of the report, and I promise you that we will be clear on that. But you have to take the long view—you’ve got a man dead on this property, killed by one of your cats, and you’ve got another cat missing. People are going to react to that situation. You’re going to need to be ready.”

  She stared at him, hearing the words and processing them but unable to attach any real meaning. All she could think of was Wes, running barefoot into the night with a rifle and a pole syringe. What had gone wrong?

  “When I say be ready,” Kimble continued, “I mean not just for the public reaction, but for a lot of tough questions. One of the toughest: will you be able to deal with the missing cougar?”

  “That will be a tough question,” she agreed, her voice numb and distant. Kimble looked at her and shook his head, unhappy.

  “Is there someone you can go to for help? Do you know anyone who specializes in this sort of animal?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Wesley Harrington.”

  Kimble didn’t say anything. She looked away from him and up at the mountains and felt her mouth go dry and chalky. She tried to remember the trick she’d devised for herself to get through the hardest days: imagining her emotions being carefully folded and placed into a tight box and tucked away in some never-opened closet, the way she’d handled all of David’s clothes after the funeral.

  Strength, she told herself, you’ve got to show strength. Go out and find that damn cat, bring him back, and then you can grieve for Wes. Grieve for Kino. Grieve for David again, hell, grieve for yourself. You’re entitled to that. But first you have to find that cat.

  “Mrs. Clark?” Kimble said. “Is there anyone who can help? Anyone who knows about these cats?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “That would be me.”

  Kimble regarded her with no quality of judgment. “Can you find him?”

  No, she thought. She was picturing the sleek black cat, so silent, so strange. No, they could not find Ira. That was even more implausible, somehow, than the idea that Wesley had been killed by Kino.

  “We’ll have to,” she said.

  19

  ROY WAS LOST IN THOUGHT when he approached the employee entrance of the Sentinel that morning. A harsh electronic buzz finally shattered those distractions and brought him into the moment. He had just waved his keycard in front of the receiver. No green light, no soft chime of acceptance. Instead, the loud buzz and a flashing red light.

  He passed the card over the receiver a second time, even though he knew.

  Rex Schaub had deactivated his keycard. Shut him down. The Sentinel office doors would not open for him again.

  He stepped back and stared up at the silent limestone building, his home for so many years, and then, as if he simply could not understand, he reached out and tried again, and again.

  Red light.

  Red light.

  He could hear
banging near the other side of the building, and after circling around, he saw that the loading dock doors were up. The crew was hauling out office furniture and piling it inside a pair of large panel vans that had been backed up to the docks. Rex Schaub was supervising, but Roy didn’t recognize anyone else. Those who were gutting his home were nameless, faceless sorts. Roy hated them on principle, but he appreciated this much: they’d left the loading dock open. He waited until they deposited a load in the truck and returned to the building, and then he followed, slipping into the pressroom, the massive machinery taking shape from shadows. He had no idea what a press like this was worth. It had been a big deal when they’d added it because the thing could print color pages on the inside, a first in the Sentinel’s history. Was there even a market for such equipment, or did it go to scrap now?

  Your entire life, headed for scrap, Roy thought. Not even the dusty pages remain for you—you’ll never make it that far. The day of the dusty pages is done.

  He stopped at the door to the morgue, realizing that this might be it for him. The last time in the building, the last perusal of all those pages of newsprint. Thanks to Kimble—and Wyatt—he had one last assignment, one last Sawyer County story to tell. But when he left the newspaper today… well, that might be it. The clean-out crew would work its way down to the morgue eventually. The building would soon enough be a hollowed-out corpse, and then the property would be sold, the structure torn down or converted into something else, and all that would remain of the Sawyer County Sentinel was the impact of the stories it had told.

  He sat down with his notebook, where he’d written the names from Wyatt’s photographs in a column. He’d start with those, the known quantities being far easier to trace, and then deal with the mysterious old photographs, trying to put names where Wyatt had put only NO. That would not be an easy task.

  Kimble had told him the names were likely to belong to murderers, which meant they were likely to be in the old index—murder in Sawyer County generally qualified as big news. Tracing some of the older cases back might be tricky, but the more recent ones should move quickly enough. He didn’t need to know any more about Jacqueline Mathis, and Kimble had already found out the significance of Ryan O’Patrick and Adam Estes.