Buried Alive (31 page)

“Why does Cherry think so highly of him?”

“After high school she was rarely around Horace, just her memories of him. Memories have softer edges. And it seems like most people have someone - friend, relative - where they have a blind spot, right?”

“I, uhm, guess. How did Horace make his money?”

“Whatever turned a buck. He’d own a coin laundry for a couple years, sell it, buy a sandwich shop, trade it for a trophy store. To hear him talk, he was Donald Trump.”

“All the more reason to affect the Colonel moniker,” I said, not going into the insecurities involved. “How did he die?”

McCoy pointed to the overlook. “Conventional
wisdom has Horace taking some kind of fainting spell at the edge of the cliff. He didn’t make bottom, but got hung up in a tree. I led the recovery team and had to rappel to the body.”

“Conventional wisdom?” I asked.

McCoy stared into my eyes as if weighing something. “When I was wrestling Horace into the basket I saw a scrap of paper pinned to his shirt. The words were so small they seemed whispered. He never whispered.”

“What did it say?”

“I’m sorry for everything.”

“What happened to—”

“I pulled it off and hid it. It would have produced nothing but hurt. And nothing would have changed.”

McCoy went to marshal his forces, rangers and park personnel driving every back road in the area, looking for anything that might lead to Cherry. He was going to alert the FBI and tell them that Cherry was missing. I advised that his people use alternate communications like phones unless an emergency, avoiding tipping their location over the police and emergency bands.

Finding anything was a tall order. Given the ability for concealment learned from Crayline, I figured Stone could stay invisible until his mission was accomplished.

But I had accumulated enough information to make a few conjectures.

They all led to my brother’s door.

I cut the engine and drifted up Jeremy’s drive. His car was in the side yard with a coiled hose beside it, the vehicle freshly washed. The residue was blue-gray, the color of the clay where Beale had died. I looked inside the Subaru as I passed and saw a stick shift.

My brother wasn’t on his porch or in the garden and I figured he was playing with his scared children and blustering drunkards. I turned the doorknob. Locked. I started to knock, but ended up kicking in the door. It swung around and banged the wall.

Coffee break: Jeremy sat in the living room, cup in hand, wearing a three-piece suit with a pink shirt and red striped tie. The Bloomberg channel was on television, stock quotes crawling across the screen.

Jeremy’s eyes went wide. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY—”

I strode to his chair. When he tried to jump up, I shoved him down. I said, “What’s the difference between a Hindu ascetic’s cave - a hole in a hill - and a hole dug in a barn floor when it comes to getting in touch with one’s inner self?”

“What are you babbling about?”

“Teeter Gasper, aka Jessie Stone. Crayline didn’t kidnap Stone, right, Brother? Crayline was hardening Stone for a warrior’s journey. Teaching him to turn off outer influences - like living in an open sewer.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Burying himself alive, that was Crayline’s magic. When his mama OD’d he sought refuge in a root cellar. Five years old and that’s where it started.”

“Where what started, Carson? You worry me when you get like this.”

“It’s where Crayline learned to shut off the outside. When he was eight years old he turned off time to get a larger share of candy. When he was being trained to fight, he stayed imprisoned in a lightless basement, tucking inside himself and getting stronger. When he escaped from the Institute, he lived in a pit under a house for weeks, waiting for the search to die down. So when Stone was readying to meet the past, Bobby Lee put him in a pit. Stone was to retreat inside himself and invent the symbolism necessary to destroy his tormentors, a rite of passage prescribed by Bobby Lee Crayline. Where did Crayline get that idea, do you suppose?”

My brother’s faced changed. The aggrieved professor-businessman-gardener mask fell away, as did the wisp of
accent. His eyes were totally his: clear and blue and as cold as the laughter in his voice.

“Bobby had things clanging inside him, Carson. I told you that.” He looked at my hand on his chest. “May I stand? Or are you determined to be a boor?”

I stepped away. Jeremy stood and paced the room. There was no trace of a Canadian psychologist.

“The clanging inside Crayline was the horrors of his past?” I asked.

“Far worse, Carson. The horror that he’d never escape his past. He killed his tormentors in a rage, Carson. No symbolic journey and, consequently, no salvation.”

“Thus his crying to you at the Institute?”

“I had just confirmed Bobby Lee’s worst fears: his direct and simple vengeance lacked the power to destroy his past. He would never be free.”

I walked to Jeremy’s bookshelves, saw Jung’s
Man and His Symbols
and
Modern Man in Search of a Soul.
They nestled against Joseph Campbell’s
The Power of Myth, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion.
A dozen similar books ran the shelf, held in place by Frazer’s
The Golden Bough.

I ran my finger slowly down the covers, making a ticking sound. I turned to my brother.

“You got paid a helluva lot, Jeremy. Am I right?”

“Paid for what, Carson?” he crooned, almost a taunt, enjoying himself and proud of whatever he had done.

“To judge whether the murders met the proper criteria
for danger, destruction and display. You said Taithering’s journey lacked only one element, the validation of a higher authority. Someone had to study the signs, produce the white smoke of success. You were Jessie Stone’s higher authority, right? A man who spouted all the right terms about magic and symbols and was regarded as no less than a past-killing wizard by Bobby Lee Crayline.”

My brother flicked a piece of lint from his cuff. “I did nothing wrong, Carson. I took innocent morning walks.”

“Innocent? You were a killing inspector,” I said, using Judd Caudill’s perceptive term. “Did you stand before the carnage and give a thumbs-up, Jeremy? You posted your acceptance on the geocache website, right? It was you who invented the visual pun of the athletic cup.”

His eyes twinkled. “Took me all of two minutes of playing on the keyboard. Did you like it?”

“What did you promise Crayline he’d get from assisting with Stone’s journey … the mentor’s cut of redemption?”

“Bobby Lee helped Stone because of his love for a fellow warrior. A brother in arms. Bobby Lee might benefit, but never enough to be free.”

“You told me you hadn’t spoken to Bobby Lee since the Institute. Years.”

“Not aloud. You never mentioned correspondence. There are quiet corners of the Web, Carson. Places to meet. Bobby Lee notified me that he had a friend wanting to free himself by erasing the past. He needed a shaman to read the entrails.”

I looked at my watch, fear boiling in my belly. It was time to change the angle of my questions.

I stepped close to my brother, hands in my pockets, voice gentle.

“Stone has Cherry, Jeremy. He needs to kill her.”

He grinned. “That’ll certainly make things quieter around here.”

My punch caught him between the eyes, snapping his head back. He stumbled into the wall. My brother studied my face as his eyes refocused.

“Oh my,” he sneered, rubbing his forehead. “You finally slipped your tongue into the pie, Carson. Was it tasty?”

“Where’s Stone?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll say it one more time. Where’s—”

“You don’t understand, Carson. I didn’t know who Bobby was working with. Coordinates of, uh, various events arrived on my computer. I’d slip out and inspect. If the event had sufficient poetry, I signaled acceptance. All I know is the victims were people who tormented children and deserved what they got. People like our male parent.”

“Beale never tormented children. Neither did Cherry. They’re stand-ins for the dead.”

My brother did wide-eyed innocence. “You can’t expect me to have predicted that.”

I wanted to slam my brother into the wall. Instead I looked out the window and breathed slowly, controlling my emotions. I looked over his beloved garden, seeing a bright cardinal flash in the open sun. Beyond, the bees sizzled in their white hives. I saw the white chair where he sat in the shade and read his books. I’d never known my brother to feel a kinship with a locale before, one place as good or bad as the next. But something was different here: He’d set down roots, literally and metaphorically. It was a first step, but something in him was changing, perhaps even moving toward the elusive peace he seemed to seek in more rational moments, but never find.

“Do you like it here in the forest?” I asked.

“It’s my home. I’ve never been able to say the word before. I love it here.”

I checked my watch. “I’ll give you a three-hour head start beginning right now. Then I’m blowing the whistle.”

His mouth dropped open. “What?”

“You like anonymous calls? Here’s mine: one to the FBI that suggests a fast and close inspection of one August Charpentier.”

“YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”

I nodded toward the garden. “Kiss it goodbye and remember it fondly.”

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO YOUR OWN BLOOD!”

“Tempus fugit,
Brother. Best get packing.”

He glared at me, fists clenching and releasing. “I KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON, CARSON. YOU WANT ME TO FIND YOUR LITTLE SCREECH OWL. CHECK THE GODDAMN RV PARKS.”

“Stone knows we know about them.” I glanced at my watch again. “You’re down to two hours and—”

“ENOUGH!” Jeremy howled, dropping his face into his hands. “LET ME THINK!”

I went to the porch and waited. It took ten minutes until Jeremy called me back. He was lying on the floor and looking up. It was his preferred manner of thinking: projecting thoughts and ideas on to the ceiling like watching a movie.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“If I tell you, I stay here. If I’m going to lose my home, I’ll lose it today. But you’ll lose …”

“Deal,” I said. “Tell me.”

He stared at the ceiling like he was watching a scene come into focus. “If Stone has entered a world where some-one related to a tormentor is a perfectly acceptable metaphor
for the actual tormentor, he’s in a world of pure symbol. He’ll need to be at a magic node for the finale.”

“A what?”

“A place where the present intersects the past, and all is possible.”

“That’s useless to me,” I snapped. “Be more specific.”

“I can’t tell you
where
Stone is, Carson. I can only tell you
how
he is. What he needs right now is past and future together, Alpha and Omega.”

“The camp,” I whispered, seeing the completion of a circle.

I pulled out my phone to call Krenkler and the crew, but I couldn’t get my finger to press her number. Thinking she was racing to the solve, Krenkler had gone stormtrooper on the poor tormented Taithering, causing needless destruction. Stone was a man without limits; he needed to kill Cherry to regain his soul. There would be no bargaining, nor would he tolerate any form of stand-off. While Krenkler raised her bullhorn, Stone would butcher Donna Cherry, destroying the hated Colonel.

If I called Krenkler, the situation could turn bad in an eyeblink. On my own, I had control.

It took under twenty minutes to get to the rusted gate outside the camp. There was no other vehicle nearby and my heart sank until I realized Stone would use a back entrance; surely there was a hidden entrance. I parked at the gate, the dirt still puddled from the earlier storms. The air was blue with twilight, night falling fast. I checked
my weapon, patted pockets filled with bullets, knife, and flashlight, climbed over the barbed wire, and began running to the camp.

Recognizing the final bend, I slowed. High ridges blocked the waning sun, making it seem an hour later here in the valley than in the highlands, almost full dark now. When I saw lights in the barn, I ducked low and sprinted to the tumbledown house for cover, crouching in the soupy dirt.

I heard dogs growling nearby, deep-throated rumbles. The sound chilled my spine. A whiff of dog excrement hit my nose, fresh. I peered around the corner and saw a bright RV, boats and bikes strapped aboard.

I sprinted to the corner of the barn and heard a dog start baying. I hoped it wasn’t announcing an intruder. The huge cage Cherry and I saw outside the back door was missing. I put my ear to the warped barn slats and listened. The growling of dogs. I crept another six paces, listened again. Heard a sound at my back and turned.

I saw a huge fist as if in slow motion.

Stars. Black.

Dogs barking. Followed by the reek of excrement. Followed by the smell of mud. I opened my eyes and saw I was caged in a six-foot cube of quarter-inch bars set four inches apart: the cage from the bushes behind the barn, now positioned beside what had been the bar area during fight days.

My gun was gone.

Stone stood two dozen feet away beside a similar cage containing a trio of black, snarling dogs, two Dobermans and a pit bull. He wore nothing but a white athletic cup, his overbuilt body gleaming with sweat. The metal-shaded lamps in the rafters produced a hard white light that lent the feel of a theatrical performance.

I studied the scene through a half-opened eye, twitching each limb slightly, testing for pain and response. Everything seemed to work. Stone had missed a chance to incapacitate me, totally focused on Cherry, perhaps.

Stone turned, pushed open the door and went outside, the dogs snarling and high-hackled. Dog excrement had been mounded around the floor, part of the symbolic tableau, I figured.

Seconds later, Stone re-entered the barn, tugging on a yellow rope with one hand, holding a wad of clothes in the other, throwing to the floor a blouse, jeans, panties, bra. Cherry followed, the rope tight around her neck. She was dressed in a man’s suit jacket, cream-colored and outsized, sleeves past her fingertips, the bottom inches above her knees. A tan hat was on her head, a dollar-store purchase resembling the hat Horace Cherry affected. I saw trails of brown crust in her hair and realized the hat had been glued to her head.