Buried Alive

by J. A. Kerley

  Jeremy arrived twenty minutes later, dropped off by a Woslee cop.

  “What happened with Krenkler?” I whispered. “What’d you tell her?”

  “I’m a retired psychologist who specialized in dysfunctional psychology. Thus it made sense for you and Miz Cherry to have invited me along.”

  I relaxed a half-degree. My fear had been Krenkler’s running some form of check on Jeremy while he sat before her.

  “No in-depth questions?”

  “I gave her all my fictional accomplishments, then begged to be put on the case as a consultant. Said I’d be by her side night and day, all for free.”

  “What!”

  He grinned. “It got the intended results: She couldn’t push me out the door fast enough. The Krenklers of the world don’t want consultants, Carson. It means sharing the spotlight.”

  My noggin finally got X-rayed and pronounced solid. Cherry had arranged for an off-duty ambulance driver to return us to the hollow, where we arrived at half-past eight in the evening. On the way back, Jeremy had ceaselessly grilled me on every aspect of Sonny Burton’s abuse and the perpetrator, prying from my aching head pictures I hadn’t recalled earlier: the bat-wielder’s curious gait toward the corpse, halting, like a man walking a plank. I recalled the tic in his cheek and the ferocity of his attack on Burton’s face, as if the batter’s very life depended on destroying the visage.

  Jeremy coaxed the memories from me with a quiet hypnotist’s voice, pausing as he absorbed the information, analysing. We stepped from the vehicle, thanked our driver, watched the taillights flee from the dark and quiet hollow. I turned to walk the last section to my cabin, to soak in the peace before falling into bed. I paused before my brother closed the door to his cabin, turned to him in the twilight.

  “The man with the bat, Jeremy,” I said. “He’s the killer we’re after, right?”

  “No, Carson,” my brother answered. “He’s simply an opportunist.”

  Sometime in the wee hours, my battered head woke me up. Or maybe it was the picture in my mind, a snippet: the elderly woman who passed by the attacker. She didn’t do a double-take, it was more like a take and a quarter, but I’d forgotten to mention it to anyone. I wrote it down so it wouldn’t slip my mind, and in the morning called Cherry about it.

  “Tell me again what the woman looked like,” Cherry said.

  I gave my description. “You know anyone like that?”

  “Miss Ida Minton,” Cherry said. “She’s an institution, the librarian at the high school for something like eight hundred years. She retired when I was a sophomore.”

  “What you gonna do?”

  “Got an hour to spare?”

  22

  Miss Ida Minton lived in a small retirement home near Campton. Her room was pin-neat and smelled of lilacs and baby powder. She wore a pink polyester pantsuit and a thick white sweater, blue slippers on her feet.

  “Miss Ida goes in and out,” Cherry had warned, referring to the elderly lady’s memory. “Sometimes she remembers the tiniest details, the next minute she forgets where she is.”

  I wavered on a loose-legged chair, fearful of its solidity, as Cherry asked the retired librarian about her seeming recognition of our mad batter.

  “Who?” Miss Minton said.

  I leaned closer. “I noted you looked twice at a gentleman at the church, Miss Ida,” I said, recounting the description as best I could.

  “I don’t recall. What day was that?”

  “Yesterday, Miss Ida,” Cherry said, taking the woman’s fragile hand. “At Sonny Burton’s visitation.”

  The woman paused, frowned. “I remember Sonny Burton. He didn’t like to read. A lost cause.” She looked at Cherry. “Wasn’t there some sort of commotion later? At the visitation?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And Mr Ryder is asking about that. And another gentleman you might have recognized.” She repeated my description.

  Nothing. Then a light seemed to dawn behind the woman’s glasses. “Didn’t I see a student named Willie Taithering from maybe twenty-two or -three years back?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Ida,” Cherry said. “Did you?”

  She paused, tapping her chin with a quivering digit. “Or was that later, at the grocery?”

  Cherry looked at me. I closed my eyes. “The church, Miss Ida,” Cherry said.

  But Miss Ida was drifting fast. “I wanted some fresh peaches from the store, but they were all hard as stones. I brought them home and put them in a paper bag. Would you like some peaches, children?”

  “Thank you, Miss Ida,” Cherry said. “But we have to go.”

  We walked to the door. Miss Ida’s eyes were bright as diamonds. She waved.

  “Come and see me anytime, Laura. You were always a very good reader.”

  * * *

  Cherry returned me to the cabin. Mix-up and I hiked in the woods for an hour and a half. I discovered a house-sized boulder in the creekbed and practiced several climbing moves until missing a hold and falling a dozen feet, into sand, luckily, only then recalling Gary’s admonition that Those who climb alone, die alone. I brushed off my clothes and returned to the cabin.

  Cherry was parked in the drive, reading through case materials.

  “Is this where you’re hiding from Krenkler?” I asked.

  “I stopped by the FBI’s digs earlier. They were all swarming like bees and Krenkler made me feel like some kid trying to play with the grown-ups.”

  “Condescending?”

  “She did everything but pat my head and tell me to run along. So I did.”

  “Did you mention Miss Ida?”

  Cherry laughed without mirth. “Tell Krenkler my lead is a name from twenty years back from a ninety-year-old woman who only occasionally remembers who I am?”

  “I see your point.”

  “Didn’t keep me from searching on my own. I went to the school, cross-checked between twenty-year-old records and the state phone directory. There’s a William J. Taithering living in Augusta, up on the Ohio River, about an hour away. You up for a ride? Charpentier’s going along. I stopped and asked. He said he feels healthy and would love some fresh air.”

  “He wants to go?”

  “He seems fascinated by the case.”

  I drove on the way up, Cherry on the phone, checking with various local bureaus. Jeremy sat in back, seemingly deep in professorial thought. Cherry discovered that Taithering had lived at the same address for fifteen years, was unmarried, a self-employed accountant and notary public, and had no police record.

  “I got the background from Bob Murray,” she said. “Bob used to be a Statie, retired last year as a part-time deputy with the Augusta force. He says once a year - June twenty-third - the Augusta cops get called to a local bar after Taithering drinks himself into a stupor. It’s like a ritual. They drive him home and make sure he gets inside safely.”

  William Taithering didn’t sound like a corpse-basher, but did seem a man with a problem or two.

  We found Taithering’s house, a small bungalow in a 1950s subdivision. A four-year-old Prius sat in the drive. A sign on the door said W.P. Taithering, CPA/Notary. It was a tiny sign, as if a larger version might constitute braggadacio.

  “I’ll call for local back-up,” Cherry said on our second drive-by recon. “Get a couple cars and an ambulance here. I’ll have the ambulance stay down the block.”

  “Why all the drama, Miss Cherie?” Jeremy asked.

  “If Taithering’s the guy who tore into Burton’s dead body with a ball bat, he might come out with guns blazing.”

  Jeremy frowned. “Why would a man who already killed and tortured a victim - slowly and ritualistically, with time to perform every gruesome need - risk his reputation to publicly inflict destruction on the dead man?”

  “Maybe the killer needed more.”

  “I suspect Mr Burton’s killer got all he needed in the woods.”

  Cherry looked unconvinced. She drove on, passing Taithering’s house. I saw her head
whip to the side as she stood on the brakes.

  “I see a guy out back, burning trash or something. It could be evidence.”

  She jammed the wheel hard, spun in the street, thundered into Taithering’s drive. “Cover me, Ryder,” she yelled, sprinting around the side of the house. I scrambled out, smelling smoke in the air.

  “Police!” I heard Cherry yell. “Drop the pages and keep your hands away from your body.”

  I rounded the corner to the back yard as a man turned, confusion in his face. He was standing beside a rusty burn-barrel, feeding sheets of paper into a fire. I ran to the barrel and kicked it over, sending a few singed pages rolling over the grass.

  “William Taithering?” Cherry said.

  “That’s me,” Taithering said, voice flat, hands held out like bird wings.

  “Is this the guy from the church, Ryder?”

  When I nodded, Cherry pulled her cuffs from beneath her jacket. “William Taithering, you’re under arrest for—”

  From nowhere, Jeremy was between Cherry and Taithering. He held up his hand to cut Cherry off.

  “It’s rather warm out here,” my brother said pleasantly, like we were a foursome on a golf course, ready to go club-housing for cocktails. “How about stepping inside where things are cooler, folks?”

  And then my brother had his arm around Taithering and was guiding him toward the patio door. Cherry stared, open-mouthed, cuffs dangling in her hand.

  23

  We reconvened in Taithering’s living room. Cherry and I did a quick search of the furniture and closet to assure ourselves no Uzis were planted. Taithering sat on a chair dragged in from the dining room.

  The man was thirty-four and looked a decade older. Part of it was his carriage, holding himself close and hunched over, like a frail elder walking on ice. His eyes were tight and lined, the kind of eyes I got when a case kept me awake for days. His mouse-brown hair was speckled with gray. Taithering was staring at the floor and seemed numb. His hands shook and he held them in his lap to staunch the motion.

  Cherry pulled a chair in front of Taithering as I stood to the side and Jeremy relaxed on the couch. “Let’s start with Sonny Burton,” she said. “Is that all right, Mr Taithering?”

  He nodded, not meeting her eyes.

  “Tell me about what happened,” Cherry said. “From the beginning. Why did you put Sonny Burton under the truck?”

  Taithering’s eyes went wide. “What? NO! I didn’t do that.”

  “You didn’t lower a truck on to Burton’s chest?”

  “No!”

  “You didn’t kill Sonny Burton?”

  “NO!”

  “What about Tandee Powers?”

  Taithering stared at Cherry. I swear his short hair was standing on end. “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”

  “Mr Taithering, you need to calm down and answer my—”

  My brother was suddenly standing beside Cherry, his hand in the pockets of his jacket.

  “I believe this might be a propitious time for us to trade places for a minute or two, Miss Cherry.”

  Cherry looked up, surprised. “Uh, I—”

  My brother was smiling gently, his words so perfectly weighted they offered no option of refusal. It was a strange and potent effect that seemed to border on hypnosis, a master manipulator’s skill honed over decades. Jeremy looked to Cherry and me.

  “Could you folks please give us a few minutes together? Alone? I think it would be most helpful here.”

  Cherry shot me a glance. I nodded toward the kitchen and we retreated out of sight.

  “What’s Charpentier doing, you think?” Cherry asked, perplexed.

  “I expect he’s gaining Taithering’s confidence and getting a read on the man’s mental state,” I approximated. It’s said that Alcoholics Anonymous works because the only person capable of reaching an alcoholic is someone with the same affliction. I suspected my brother was meeting William Taithering in some strange land of dysfunction, trading images and symbols incomprehensible to the normal mind.

  Called back ten minutes later, we found Jeremy standing behind the sitting Taithering, hands resting on the man’s shoulders. Taithering looked alternately ready to flee or burst into tears.

  “William would like to speak with you, Miss Cherie,” my brother said. His eyes and voice said go easy.

  Cherry got the message, positioning her chair not in the confrontational front and center, but canted to the side, conversational. “Tell us about Sonny Burton, William,” she said. “Explain yesterday. Take all the time you need.”

  Taithering’s face screwed up in misery. “Every … day … he …” The man’s mouth made several missteps, chokes and swallows. He tried again.

  “E- Every day for twenty years he … Burton … was in me. I’d wake up and he was there. I’d take a breath and feel him stealing part of it. I could feel him squirming inside me.”

  “You were in Burton’s truck, right, William?” Jeremy said, his voice as soft as cotton. “Things happened there. Started there.”

  “He p-pushed INSIDE ME. He got stuck there and I couldn’t g-get him out. I moved away. But he stayed in me. I went to college. But he stayed in me. I been in Augusta for years but he was always on top of me with his fingers in my hair and his tongue in my … I tried BUT I COULDN’T GET HIM OUT OF ME.”

  “Easy, William,” Jeremy said. “You’ve thought about yesterday a long time, haven’t you?”

  Taithering thrust out a forceful jaw. “I got FREE of him. For the first time ever. I took his face out of mine. I took HIM out of ME.”

  “But Sonny Burton was dead, Mr Taithering,” Cherry said.

  “HE WAS STILL ALIVE INSIDE ME.”

  Taithering began weeping uncontrollably. I felt claustrophobic and went to the back yard. I retrieved a sheaf of photos only touched on the edges by fire. I stared a long time and returned to the house.

  Cherry was in the kitchen. I heard a toilet flush and my brother came down the hall from the bathroom and joined us. Taithering was still weeping, and I took it they were giving space to his grief. I set the rescued photos on the cheap table.

  “What was Taithering burning?” Cherry asked.

  “Pictures from his youth.” I tapped the top photograph. It was similar to a photo I’d seen earlier at the visitation: Sonny Burton with his hands around a gangly boy with a shy smile and braces on his teeth: William Taithering in his early teens. The other photos were nearly the same: Burton hanging on Taithering, smiling at him, touching him. Some had other kids in the background, others didn’t. In one photo, both Taithering and Burton were in swim trunks, standing at the edge of a pool, the grinning, thirtyish Burton seemingly a picture of happy camp-counselor innocence behind Taithering, Burton’s outlined penis nestling in the small of Taithering’s back.

  Cherry looked ill. She turned to my brother. “It still doesn’t make sense: Burton was nothing but dead meat. How do you get revenge on dead meat?”

  “Whether Burton was alive or dead is meaningless. He was a strand of symbols inside a coffin. Mr Taithering, fueled by years of agony and imagined retributions, came to vanquish the symbols.”

  “Surely the photographs were symbols, Dr Charpentier? Taithering didn’t burn the pictures until now. Why?”

  “He couldn’t destroy them, Detective Cherie. As long as Burton was inside Taithering, Burton had control over these pictures. They didn’t belong to Taithering because Taithering didn’t belong to himself.”

  “That makes no sense,” Cherry said.

  “It makes perfect sense if your life is the singular arc of events and memories that comprise William Taithering. Yesterday, after years of belonging to Sonny Burton, William Taithering employed a power ritual created in his subconscious and gave himself back to William Taithering.”

  Cherry shot a glance at the weeping man.

  “It seems a shame to arrest him, but…”

  Jeremy frowned. “One day of freedom after twenty years in the bleakest of
prisons, Taithering goes to jail? Does that seem just, Detective?”

  “I truly don’t want to hurt him any more, Doctor. But he’s broken laws.”

  “Such as?”

  “Creating a public disturbance. Abuse of a corpse. He did it to himself, Doctor. He chose to go to the visitation.”

  “He had to go, Detective Cherie,” my brother argued. “It was his only chance to confront his tormentor and escape his past.”

  “Only chance?” Cherry said. “Here’s a grisly what-if, Doctor: why not wait until Sonny Burton was buried? Taithering could have dug him up and beaten him like a gong all night long.”

  “A very intelligent question,” my brother said. “But to unearth Burton in the dark would have been the coward’s path. Taithering’s salvation demanded three primal elements: personal risk to Taithering, Burton’s metaphoric humiliation by the loss of his face, and a public viewing of that humiliation. Even if William Taithering didn’t realize that, his subconscious did.”

  “Danger, destruction, display?” Cherry shuddered and looked to me. “You studied psychology, Ryder. You agree with this?”

  In truth they were not connections I would have made so quickly. But when it came to sailing through the dark waters of the human mind, my brother was an Odysseus. I nodded the affirmative.

  “Let me talk to Taithering by myself,” Cherry said.

  “This is truly insane,” Cherry said as we drove back to Woslee County, Taithering still home in Augusta. “If Krenkler finds out, she’ll tear me apart. My superiors will have no choice but to pull me from my position and … jeez, I don’t even want to know.”

  “William Taithering was telling you the truth,” Jeremy said.

  Cherry nodded. “Burton was a mentor, a big-brother type, supposedly providing a role model. What Burton provided was increasing amounts of liquor and pornography. His bonding culminated on the floor of the snack truck during a weekend camping trip. The date, as you might expect, was June 23rd. The confused kid let Burton have his way for a couple of months, until Burton found another fish, I imagine.”