Buried Alive (2 page)

“The third one?”

“A hard-looking guy, big, had to surrender a Glock 17 at the outside gate. Wasn’t happy about it, either.”

“What’s your take, Theo?” I asked, knowing he kept a close ear to the ground.

“You know Bobby Lee Crayline was with us for a couple
months two years back, Carson? Just after he killed the guy in the ring?”

I nodded. “Vangie was studying him.”

“Crayline’s got one of those personalities that sucks everything to him. He started getting into people’s heads and causing all sorts of trouble. He was never meant to be a permanent resident. Dr Prowse sent him back to prison. Then the appellate judge set him free.”

“I figured he’d be back in the system,” I said. “Took a couple years and a kidnapping – and maybe a few bodies pulled from the dirt in Alabama – but here he is.”

“Doc Prowse thought a lot about hypnotizing Bobby Lee when he was here, Carson, but decided against it. She ever tell you why?”

I nodded. “Vangie was afraid he’d decompensate. That direct contact with his past might create conditions in which he’d become even more dangerous.”

“He’s barely wrapped as it is.”

“He siphons off the worst impulses by beating the hell out of others, Theo. It’s an escape valve.”

Theotis shook his head and retreated down the hall. I led Mix-up to a small meeting room, tossed a biscuit on the floor. When he was rolling on the biscuit, his curious pre-chow ritual, I closed the door and turned down the hall toward the conference room.

I knocked and stuck my head inside. The room was spare, the lighting indirect, the cool air tinted with false lemon. Two men were at the table, one resembling country singer Porter Wagoner, hound-dog features beneath a white
pompadour. He had a booth-built tan and looked in his late fifties. Theo was right about the threads: Where Wagoner would have worn ten pounds of sequins, this guy was tucked inside three thousand bucks’ worth of sedate gray silk.

Beside Pomp’n’tan was a tall and broad-shouldered guy in his mid-thirties. His eyes were deep-set and dark and when added to his thick eyebrows suggested a Neanderthal on steroids. His black suit was cut large, allowing easy access to the Glock he’d had to surrender.

A penguin-bodied man sat to the side with a briefcase in his lap. Bald with side fringes, pencil mustache, soft blue eyes behind thick trifocals. He was sixty or so, dressed in a formless suit. The hypnotist shrink.

“Where’s Dr Wainwright?” I asked.

“The restroom,” the Neanderthal said, eyeing me like a bum who’d stumbled into a wedding. “Wait outside and you won’t miss her.”

“I’ll wait in here,” I said, stepping into the room.

“This is a private meeting.” He stood, hand blocking entry further than two steps. It was a bouncer’s move and I’d never liked bouncers.

“I’m on the VIP list,” I said.

“I said this is a private meeting.”

When I started toward a seat the Neanderthal stopped me with a stiff finger at my sternum. Another bouncer move. I jammed my leg in front of his, grabbed his wrist and rotated like an ice skater starting a sit-spin. The Neanderthal went sprawling across the floor, sending two
chairs tumbling. He was up in a half-heartbeat, fists clenched, flashing I’m-gonna-kill-you eyes. I whipped out my badge wallet and ID.

“Not recommended,” I said.

“What’s going on here?” Doc Wainwright appeared at the threshold, looking between the upended chairs and my ID display.

“A get-acquainted session, Doc,” I said.

“Sit, Bridges,” said a voice behind me. Scarcely louder than the hum of the air conditioning, it was a command. Pomp’n’tan was studying me with interested eyes. He held a business card between index and second finger, as if slipping a tip to a bellhop.

“Read it to me,” I said.

“Arthur Slezak, of Dunham, Krull and Slezak. Counsel of record for Robert Crayline. The gentlemen with me are Charles Bridges, who you just, uh, met. And this is Dr Walter Neddles, psychiatrist and certified hypnotist. May I see your identification, please?”

Slezak donned reading glasses and studied my particulars as I studied his hands: pink with perfectly manicured nails, on his left wrist a Rolex that cost as much as I made from January through June. I saw him frown, as if trying to grasp a memory.

“Mobile?” he said. “Aren’t you a bit far from your jurisdiction, Detective?”

“I’ve asked this man to be here,” Wainwright said, taking her chair at the head of the table.

“Why’s that, Doctor?”

“Detective Ryder knows the danger Mr Crayline represents. He’s against the hypnosis as well.”

Neddles cleared his throat. “I assure you, Dr Wainwright, that I’ve hypnotized dangerous people. Terrence Crump, Ernesto Vasquez, Rhonda Sue Bolz—”

“I’ve met them all,” I interrupted. “I tracked and arrested Crump, who attacked elderly women. Bolz was a hospital poisoner. Vasquez killed winos or railroad bums. Have you studied Bobby Lee Crayline, Doctor? His capacity for violence is on another level.”

Slezak had a butter-smooth smile on his face. “If Mr Crayline is resistant to hypnosis, we’re gone. All I’m requesting is the opportunity.”

“What do you want to know?”

“That’s private, except to say that Mr Crayline might know things he may not know he knows.”

“That’s suitably vague,” I said, “You going to ask Bobby Lee about the three bodies found in his old hometown?”

“Purely circumstantial,” Slezak pooh-poohed. “Never tied to Mr Crayline.”

“So far,” I said.

“I’ve decided this is too dangerous,” Wainwright announced, finding her courage. “I’m sorry for your trouble, Mr Slezak, but I refuse to allow the hypnosis.”

Slezak plucked out a sheaf of paper from the briefcase at his feet. He slid reading glasses over the lengthy nose and tapped the pages. “Did you know, Dr Wainwright, that the land beneath the Institute is leased from the state
for a dollar a year? And there’s a clause stating if the Institute poses a threat to the well-being of the local citizenry, the deal can be revoked?”

“We’ve never posed a threat to anyone,” Wainwright said.

Slezak feigned confusion. “Did not a patient escape from this very institution just two years ago? A man who murdered his father and five women? Wasn’t he a prime suspect in the death of Evangeline Prowse, the former director of this institution?”

“Jeremy Ridgecliff,” Wainwright said, leaning forward, her voice tight. “The man was never loose in this area. And no one really knows what happened after his escape. Surely you heard the rumors regarding Ridgecliff’s supposed role in the hotel explosion during the—”

Slezak cut her off mid-sentence. He snapped his fingers and turned to me.

“I know why the name Ryder sounds familiar. You were the cop sent to New York to stop Ridgecliff. Don’t tell me you think the man is anything but a vicious killer.” Slezak raised a white eyebrow, as if Ridgecliff’s guilt was written in the sands of Time and anyone thinking otherwise was moronic.

“I do question Ridgecliff’s guilt. Revisiting the women’s murders could have different findings this time around.”

“But isn’t Ridgecliff still in hiding?” Slezak countered. “No effort to proclaim innocence? Never contacted anyone?”

My face grew hot and I looked away. I’d spoken to
Jeremy Ridgecliff a week ago, the seventeenth conversation I’d had with him since his escape. I actually spoke to him on a fairly regular basis, though I never knew where he was calling from.

It’s said everyone has one big secret. Here’s mine: Jeremy Ridgecliff is my biological brother, our kinship concealed by my long-ago name change and other obfuscations. Those who knew could be counted on one hand with digits to spare. I’d spent years hiding my ties to Jeremy and our childhood, only to be slammed into him in New York and made part of his escape mechanism. I had no idea where he was, only that he was brilliant enough to develop exacting mechanisms to avoid capture.

“Detective Ryder?” Slezak prodded. “You’re not answering my question. Is Ridgecliff on the run from the law?”

“Yes,” I said. It was all I could say.

Slezak gave me a lizard smile and turned to Wainwright. “A mad killer set loose, Doctor? Imagine if that fact was presented to the citizens who allow prime taxpayer land to be leased for a paltry sum. A funding backlash might ensue.”

“We do important work here,” Wainwright said. “You can’t jeopardize that in order to—”

Faces turned my way as I stood and crooked a come-hither digit at Nancy Wainwright.

“Doc? How about a brief meeting in the hall?”

She followed me outside and I closed the door. “It’s a
goddamn bluff,” she said. “The slimy bastard won’t do it.”

“He might, just to show he can,” I cautioned, having met too many Slezaks.

“Having to defend the Institute would wear me out,” Wainwright sighed, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. “Upset the staff. Jeopardize serious research. The scum bucket has me by my weakest point.”

“Slezak’s crafted his whole life around exploiting weaknesses, Doc.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s obvious they’re gonna do the hypnosis somewhere. Here, at least you’re in charge, right?”

She reached out to one of the EMERGENCY buttons recessed into the white walls, ran her finger lightly over its blood-red surface.

“For whatever that’s worth,” she said.

We adjourned to the observation room adjacent to where Crayline would be hypnotized, a one-way mirror allowing viewing. The room was small and dark. Speakers piped in conversations from the meeting room, the on/off switch beside the mirror. The set-up made me think of a recording studio without the electronics.

Slezak, Wainwright and I took chairs. We peered through the glass into the adjoining room and saw Dr Neddles and Bridges. The room was painted in soft and neutral tones, calming, perhaps to distract from several steel rings recessed into the concrete floor. Two chairs sat within, as well as a small round table. A sofa was to the rear.

“I want a guard in there,” Wainwright said.

“Mr Bridges is an ex-Marine,” Slezak said. “Very capable should extra restraint be needed. He’ll stay.”

Bridges puffed out his chest and jutted his jaw, looking
tough. Wainwright looked to me for a verdict. I knew Bridges was a contract employee for a firm like Dunham Krull, inhabiting a hard-edged world of bail bondsmen and bodyguards, repo men and bounty hunters. He’d be mean and hard and proud of the fact, since it was his sole selling point.

“We can live with that,” I said.

Wainwright plucked a phone from the table beside her chair. “I’ll have Bobby Lee brought in.”

Crayline shuffled through the door a minute later, grinning as if he’d called the meeting. He was six-two or -three, two hundred ten pounds, wide shouldered but wasp-waisted. His head was shaved, the bright flesh webbed with scars. Some of the healed wounds looked decades old and I wondered how they’d been inflicted. He was wearing an institutional sweatshirt and pants, muscle-crowded arms and chest filling his shirt; his thighs pulsing against the fabric like beating hearts. Crayline radiated so much force that a blind person would have sat up straighter when he entered a room.

Crayline surveyed his surroundings with electric green eyes, as if determining whether accommodations and participants met his standards. He’d obviously been told of the lawyer’s visit – his right – and the wrangling on the subject of hypnosis. He had just as obviously agreed to the procedure, probably to break the monotony of his day.

“Have a seat, Crayline,” Bridges said.

Crayline turned to Bridges as if suddenly noticing him. “You’re a big fella, aincha?”

“Big enough,” Bridges said, putting challenge in his eyes and tapping the chair. “Sit.”

Crayline turned his head away and whispered softly.

“What was that?” Bridges asked, leaning closer. “What did you say?”

Crayline whipped his head back around and snapped his teeth like a pit bull biting a chunk off a roast. Bridges startled backwards into the table, sending it skidding across the carpet. Crayline grinned. Bridges, red-faced with embarrassment, shoved the table back in place.

“Sit,” Bridges repeated, voice taut with anger.

Crayline sauntered to the table and stood beside the chair, flexing his knees. Bridges slid the chair beneath Crayline’s buttocks and he sat. Bridges had, without thinking, moved the chair to accommodate Crayline.

Control.

The guard affixed Crayline’s leg chain to a D-ring beneath the table and retreated to the rear. Dr Neddles placed his open briefcase on the table and took the chair opposing Crayline. The prisoner had a sinus affliction, trails of syrupy yellow mucus draining from his nostrils to his upper lip. Neddles popped a few tissues from his briefcase.

“Would you like for me to wipe your face, Mr Crayline?”

Bobby Crayline drew his lower lip up and over the effluvium, scooping it into his mouth. He swished it between his cheeks as if sampling wine.

“Tastes like fresh oysters,” he grinned, winking and swallowing. “I’m my own seafood restaurant.”

Beside me, Slezak grimaced and whispered
Jesus.

Crayline looked at the mirror as though seeing it for the first time. It seemed he was staring directly at me. Then he did something – I don’t know what it was – like he’d directed energy into his eyes.

For a split second Crayline’s eyes were those of a rabid wolf.

I blinked, looked again. His eyes were normal. My heart was beating faster. Bridges backed to the corner as Neddles produced a small musical triangle and its striker. “The sound starts a musical voyage, Mr Crayline. Each ring of the bell helps you float away.”

“What if I ain’t a floatin’ sort, Doc?”

“You promised to let us try, Bobby,” Neddles crooned. “Close your eyes and clear your mind until there’s nothing in it but one clear and pure note …”

Crayline closed his eyes. The psychologist struck the triangle twice.

ting, ting

“Relax, Bobby Lee. Breathe like a series of waves. Warm and gentle waves …”
ting
“… Foaming and flowing around your legs …”