The Ridge by Michael Koryta

Darmus had a reporter’s pad out and a pencil in his hand.
    “What are you doing? Don’t write any of that shit down. This isn’t a public scene. And there’s not even a newspaper anymore.”
    “Did you look at these maps?” Darmus said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “It’s like he was charting accidents, but there’s no way there have been this many accidents out here.”
    “Give me that,” Kimble said.
    Darmus stopped scribbling and looked up.
    “The list,” Kimble said. “You can’t walk out of here with it. This is an investigation, not a sporting event, Darmus. Give me whatever you’ve written.”
    There was something deeply wrong with reporters. A corpse was sitting upstairs, and Darmus had willingly come back inside and was now taking notes?
    “Come on,” Kimble said, and stretched out his hand. Darmus sighed, tore a handful of pages free, folded them, and passed them over.
    “You see whose picture he has on the wall?” he said, tapping on one with his pen. “Maybe there
is
a reason he called both of us. My parents, and her.”
    Her
. Kimble followed the tip of Darmus’s pen and saw that it was pointing at a color photograph of Jacqueline Mathis. Her name was written beneath it.
    For a moment Kimble just stared, but he saw Darmus watching him and was unsettled by it, felt as if he were suddenly exposed. “What did I just tell you? I’ve got a death scene to deal with. Get out of here.”
    “Wyatt told me about you making those visits up to see her,” Darmus said.
    “Why in the hell were you talking about that?” Kimble snapped.
    “I don’t even know. He just told me that you went to see her every month. I was having trouble following the—”
    “Well, it’s none of anybody’s damned business. I tell you, there’s some good things about that paper being shut down, too. Tough that you lost your job, but you know what? There are some things people do in private that should
stay
private. Now listen to what I told you and get the hell out of here.”
    Darmus looked at him curiously, then nodded and turned and walked out into the dark and the blowing rain. Kimble watched until the car’s taillights had vanished down the hill, wishing he’d been alone up here, wishing he’d been the first to find the body. He looked down at the folded pages in his hand, torn from the reporter’s notebook, and unfolded them.
    Blank. Every one.
    “Son of a bitch, Darmus,” he said.
    Good trick. A lot better than whatever Wyatt was playing on Kimble from beyond the grave.
    He looked up again, at the maps and the photographs. All those old pictures, looking as if they’d been copied out of history books, and then Jacqueline, staring at him with those endless blue eyes.
    Why did Wyatt have her picture up?
    Kimble reached up, pulled the thumbtacks from the wood, removed Jacqueline’s picture, and put it in his pocket with the blank pages from Darmus.

8
     
    I T TOOK A FEW HOURS for the medical folks to finish their work in the lighthouse. Kimble stood around in the rain and waited for them, spoke to the deputy coroner, and then watched as they finally removed the body, which wasn’t an easy or pleasant task, coming down those steep, narrow stairs.
    Kimble had another deputy on scene now, Diane Mooney, and he discharged her, said he was shutting it down for the day. It wasn’t a bad move; every element pointed to a straightforward suicide.
    Except for those maps. And that phone call.
What if the victim wasn’t entirely willing…
    As he’d waited for the coroner’s people to do their work, Kimble had perused the maps, reading the names. When he saw Joseph and Lillian Darmus, he felt a pang over the way he’d snapped at the old reporter for mentioning Jacqueline. It had surprised him, that was all. And he’d lashed out because… because it was his own damned business. Personal, private.
    After Diane Mooney left, Kimble stepped back inside the lighthouse, armed with a Maglite now, and went to the