“You’ve been there,” she said.
“The lighthouse? Yeah.”
“What about the rest of the area? The ridge, the woods, the trestle. Have you walked around there at all?”
“Just yesterday. Looking for a cat.”
“A cat?”
“Not the kind in the Friskies commercials, Jacqueline. A black panther. But yes, I’ve seen the place.”
She nodded. “You can picture the base of the trestle. It would be on the… eastern shore, I think. Closest to the road.”
“I can picture it.”
“There’s a fire down there,” she told him calmly.
He raised his eyebrows. “There was a fire?”
“There is a fire. I haven’t seen it in a while—I’ve been otherwise engaged for a few years, you know—but I can’t imagine that it’s gone, either. It had been burning for a long time when I saw it, and I think it will burn for a long time to come.”
“I don’t follow this.”
“Of course you don’t. That’s why I tried not to tell you. You had to have it your way, though, and so now I’ll tell you and live with the response, I guess. There is a fire on the rocks below the trestle. When Wyatt made his visit, it was still burning. I can almost assure you that it still is now.”
Kimble had passed under the trestle with Wesley Harrington at his side the previous evening. There had been nothing there.
He said, “Okay. A fire.”
“Already you’re giving up on me,” she said. “I can see it in your face.”
“No, I’m not. But you should know that I was just down there, and I didn’t see a fire. Neither did the man I was with. So unless we both have really bad eyes…”
“You wouldn’t be able to see it,” she said. “Not yet. And I hope you never can.”
Her face was grim.
“The first time I saw it, Kevin, I was in the water and the rocks. I was dying. Make no mistake about it—I wasn’t just in pain, I was dying. And I knew then that I didn’t want to die. More than anything in the world, I didn’t want to die. The river was pulling me downstream, but I got hung up in the rocks and then I could see the fire. It burns blue, and there are people all around it. One man stepped away from it, took one of the sticks out of the fire, and held it like a torch.”
Please, stop, Kimble thought, trying to hold her eyes, trying not to betray the sickness. He needed her to be sane. He needed her not to belong in this place, but with every word she was validating the orange uniform.
“He waded out to me, just glided through the water, holding that blue torch. Told me that I was dying, and made me an offer.”
“An offer?”
“That’s right. He told me that I was dying, and I knew that I was. He told me that he could enable me to walk away, and I knew that he could.”
“This man healed you.”
“I didn’t say healed.”
“Then what did he do?”
“He bargained, Kevin. And I accepted.”
He looked at her, not really wanting to hear the answer, and said, “What did he want in exchange?”
“I think you know that.”
“No, I don’t, Jacqueline.”
“What I promised him,” she said, “I provided him.”
He was silent.
“You don’t just walk away from the devil,” she said. “Not for free.”
21
IRA MELTED INTO THE HILLS and did not surface. While Audrey and Dustin worked together to complete the day’s feedings and clean the cages, the two deputies who remained at the preserve took their weapons into the woods, armed with binoculars and, in one case, a rifle scope, and searched for some sign.
They didn’t come up with any.
Dustin, who hadn’t seemed to have recovered his strength after finding Wes that morning, who looked unsteady with every step, watched the police in the woods and told Audrey they were up to something.
“What? They’re looking for the cat.”
He shook his head. “No. They’re going along the fence line right now, Audrey. Watch them.”
She lowered the wheelbarrow full of raw meat—they kept it frozen, then thawed it each evening so it would be ready to go in the morning—and studied the police as Dustin was. They did seem to be walking along the edge of the fence, looking in instead of looking out.
“They don’t expect to find Ira hiding against the fence,” Dustin said. “So what are they doing?”
Looking for breaches, Audrey thought. They were looking for some indication of poor security, something that could potentially allow a cat to escape. Something that could potentially provide the sheriff with the ammunition that Kimble had hinted he would want. Well, that was ridiculous. The preserve was secure, and she knew it.
“Let them do their job,” she said. “We’ll do ours. Look at Lily. That girl is hungry.”
The blind white Siberian tiger was trotting back and forth in her cage, looking like a kitten with too much energy. She could hear them and smell the food; she knew it was close, she just couldn’t see it.
They fed Lily, then moved on to the next enclosure, which held two cougars. They were siblings. At one time the cougars on the preserve had fascinated visitors. Then Ira came along, and the standard variety was no longer of interest. People like the unique specimens, even when they know nothing about the basics.
But the two cougars Audrey and Dustin were feeding now were plenty unique. They were two of five cats that had been rescued from what Wes had deemed the worst conditions he’d ever encountered. The cats were at a facility licensed by the USDA for breeding purposes, which was an idea that David and Audrey abhorred—the cats were not supposed to be pets, and most of them wouldn’t be suffering if some jackass hadn’t decided he wanted a cougar or a lion for a pet.
The place was in Georgia, and all of the cats needed rescue. The owner simply told authorities that he’d “gotten in a little over his head.” Being in over his head meant forgetting to feed the animals, apparently. The cats were housed in filthy, small cages with no food or water in reach. Every bone in their bodies showed beneath matted fur. Often taking strange cats could be a challenge, even requiring sedation. In this case, the only thing that was needed to lure the animals out and into the transport cages was a bucket of clean water.
Cody, one of the cougars, was in such bad shape that he required two weeks of antibiotics just to stabilize enough so the vet could remove several infected teeth. He now had a hilariously crooked smile, which he showed often, and his ribs were no longer pushing against his flesh. His brother, Otto, had suffered frostbite so severe that his ears were mangled shreds.
Audrey looked at the two cats, healthy and happy and eager for food, and said, “Let the sheriff’s department try its worst. I run one of the best facilities in the country, and I’m not closing it. The escape was not due to our facility. It was due to a cat that is something strange. Our fence height exceeds the minimum. If he jumped over it without help… well, good for Ira. But we couldn’t stop it.”
“They say those black cats are supposed to be witches,” Dustin said. “I remember reading about it with David.”
She looked at him and sighed. “Helpful, Dustin. I’ll just call the old witch defense into play. When they’re burning me at the stake, remember that it was your suggestion.”
They were cleaning one portion of the cougar enclosure while the cats were isolated with their meat in another sector. Audrey always worked this way in the preserve. David and Wes would sometimes go in the enclosures, but Audrey never did. Dustin was watching the police, and Audrey looked up, too. One of them—Wolverton—appeared to have found something. He called to Shipley, who walked on slowly, carefully—every move Shipley made out here seemed cautious—and knelt beside his comrade. They turned something over in their hands, whispering.
“What did you find there?” Audrey called, walking toward them. A plastic bag appeared, the item went into it, and then the bag disappeared into Wolverton’s po
cket.
“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Clark. Nothing here.”
She frowned and turned back to Dustin. His pale face was grim. “They found something, all right.”
“What?”
“I think it was a shell.”
She stared at him. “From Wesley’s gun?”
“Maybe.” He didn’t look at her when he said it, though.
“Dustin,” she said, “do you think someone else shot my tiger?”
He still didn’t meet her eyes, just took his rake and returned to work.
“We’ll see what the police think,” he said.
Kimble had left Jacqueline abruptly, thanking her for her time like some door-to-door salesman who’d struck out badly but had to keep the false smile until he was out of sight. She hadn’t even responded, just watched sadly as he stood up to go.
“You wanted to know the truth,” she said as the CO opened the door for him.
Yes, he had. And the truth was that several years of his life had vanished into a fantasy image of a woman who belonged in the state hospital, not the prison.
He picked up his phone as soon as he got into the car, began to make calls about work, real work, determined not only to make up for lost time but to force his mind away from her and back into the world of real problems that needed real solutions. Back into his world.
His first call was to the department’s evidence tech, to see whether the medical examiners had come through on Kimble’s request and retrieved the bullet from the tiger.
They had.
“Looks like a .223,” the tech told him. “We can of course do more specific ballistics if you need them, but I can tell you the caliber right now. That mean anything to you?”
It meant plenty.
The gun in Wesley Harrington’s hand on the night of his death did not fire .223 cartridges.
Kimble thanked them, hung up, and called Shipley.
“You still out there?”
“Yes, sir. No sign of the cat. Everything’s been peaceful.”
“Listen, I just got a match back on the bullet that killed the cat. It wasn’t fired from Harrington’s gun.”
Silence.
“We’re looking at a very different scene now,” Kimble said, “and it is important that we handle it right. This thing is not what it appears to be. Harrington did not shoot that cat. If anything, he probably went in there because the cat had been shot, and that makes it a crime scene, and a serious one.”
“I understand.”
“Good. Well, without alarming Mrs. Clark—I’ll deal with that when we have to—I want you and Pete to begin looking aggressively for signs of—”
“Pete found a spent casing.”
“What?”
“Not too far back from the fence line, toward the old railroad tracks.”
“Is it a .223?”
“My opinion? Yes. Probably fired from an AR-15 or, more likely, one of the clones, the cheap knockoffs.”
This was serious. This was very serious. Someone had gone down there and shot at the cats, which was a major crime on its own terms, but it had also led to the death of Wesley Harrington. You’d probably have to call it involuntary manslaughter…
Unless it was involuntary cat slaughter, he thought. Just because the cat was hit doesn’t mean the cat was the target. Shooting in the dark like that, it would be tough to hit a man. And in that place, any bullet that sailed by would have a good chance of finding a five-hundred-pound feline. In which case, Kimble, you could be looking at attempted murder.
“All right,” he said, when he realized the pause had gone on too long. “Listen—I want somebody on security out there tonight.”
“Here. At night?”
“Yes, Shipley, what the hell is the problem? You act like you’re scared of the dark out there. Been talking to Wyatt French?” Kimble’s frustration had been massing since he walked out of the prison, away from Jacqueline’s story, and now Shipley was catching it.
“I’m not scared to be out here,” he said in a clipped voice. “You just tell me the hours.”
“Break it up into shifts. You work until midnight, then let Pete take it. Sound fair enough? I know you’ve been going all day. You want it changed, or you want some relief, then—”
“I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, Shipley,” he said, trying to ease off. “They know you out there now, and I think that will help.”
“What am I supposed to tell them?”
“Tell them I’ve asked that someone remain on duty in case the cougar comes back. Put all the weight of it on that black cat, okay? Why not use the creepy bastard, since we’ve got him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep a sharp eye out there. It’s a damn strange place.”
“It certainly is,” Shipley said.
Kimble hung up and started the engine, ready to get back on the road, back home, ready to get moving through a life that he’d been treading water in since a summer night five years earlier. It was time.
He drove fast on his way out, but there was a coal train coming through and he couldn’t beat it, caught the intersection just as the gate lowered, pinning him impatiently in place, engine idling, unable to rid the prison from his rearview mirror.
22
THE POLICE TOLD AUDREY they would keep a man on the grounds overnight. It was the young deputy, Shipley, who informed them, and Dustin Hall shook his head as if he wasn’t happy with the news. Shipley caught the gesture and fell silent, staring Dustin down. There was something remarkably cold in the stare.
Audrey said, “It’s fine. It’s great. I appreciate the gesture. If you see the cat, please come for me first, though. Don’t just open fire.”
“If it’s possible to alert you, we will,” Shipley said. “Our safety will be first, the cat’s will be second. You have to understand that.”
“What did you find out there?” Dustin asked.
“Find?” Shipley raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah. You put something in a bag. Was it a bullet?”
Shipley looked at him for a long time, then back to Audrey, and smiled. “Didn’t know you’d hired one of the Hardy Boys. He’ll be good to have around.”
She didn’t think it was an appropriate time to joke, and said as much. The smile bled off Nathan Shipley’s face and his blue eyes went cold again and he said, “Absolutely right. Someone was killed here last night. I don’t find that amusing. I’m of course in no position to reveal details of police work to Mr. Hall here. Chief Deputy Kimble can decide what he wants to share, and when. In the meantime, we’ll be here for your protection.”
She thanked him, and he went off to his vehicle, slid behind the wheel, and picked up the radio unit.
Dustin Hall, who was suddenly her most experienced staff member, told Audrey that he would replace Wesley on the property. To say that he was a brave kid was an understatement—this morning he’d discovered a good friend’s body, and tonight he was already trying to step in to fill the void. She couldn’t let him stay there, though.
“Go back home and get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll need you early, and need you strong. Okay?”
He frowned, watching Shipley. “I’d just as soon stay out here, Audrey. I feel like that’s where the need is.”
“Dustin? I know what I’m doing with the cats. I’ve got a police officer on the grounds all night, protecting me. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“All right.”
“We’ll stick it out,” she told Dustin. “We’ll be fine.”
Strong words. It was good to be bold, but it was dangerous, too. She was well aware of the truth: the only thing that had kept the preserve going was Wesley Harrington. Without him, she was in over her head and sinking fast.
“Sure,” Dustin said. “And you get some sleep, too. You need it.”
But around them the cats were all awake as the sun began to set, stalking the perimeters of their enclosures, eyes glittering, tails swishing, and Audrey had t
he feeling that sleep wasn’t permitted at Blade Ridge.
Kimble stopped by the department to pick up the reports that waited for him from the morning’s death scene and then went home, poured a glass of red wine, and sat on his couch. He drank wine only when he was at home. When he socialized, which was rare, he stuck to beer—a country cop drinking wine always seemed to draw attention, and Kimble preferred to float in the background—but he loved the taste of a full-bodied red, loved the hard-to-pronounce names on the labels, loved the sound of a cork leaving the bottle. These were all things that made him think romantic notions, and it had been a long time since Kimble had been with a woman. Sometimes—many times—he’d catch himself wondering if Jacqueline drank red wine. He was almost certain she did.
He sipped a glass of blended Chilean red, purchased at an organic food store near the college that stocked wines from all over the world and was a place in which Kimble was unlikely to bump into a colleague or acquaintance. He opened the report from Wesley Harrington’s death scene and tried to steer his mind away from a brown-haired woman in an orange jumpsuit.
She probably likes champagne, too. That seems right. The sparkle.
He blinked, fought to focus. He would write the formal incident report himself, but it would be heavily dependent on supplemental reports from Shipley and Wolverton, who’d both arrived on scene ahead of Kimble. Tonight he had only Wolverton’s account available, because Shipley was still on duty. Still out at the ridge. Pete had taken the time to provide a clipped account of the scene, and Kimble read it with no expectation of new information. But he grew curious as he reviewed Pete’s brief account of his interview with Dustin Hall, the Whitman student who’d discovered the body. Mr. Hall first noted that there was blood in the cage, Wolverton had written. He then moved closer, observed that the cat was not moving and that a rifle was visible. At that point Mr. Hall entered the cage, discovered the victim’s body behind that of the cat, determined Harrington to be deceased, and called for help.
It went on for a few paragraphs after that, but all Kimble needed was contained in that initial account of the witness statement.
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