by J. A. Kerley
“This is fun, I never been on the tee-vee afore. Want me to sing you a song?” He leered into the camera and sang in a raspy falsetto.
“There once was a sweetie name of Cherry, who had a sweet pretty butt… and ever’ time I think of it, my peter starts standing straight up.”
I saw the hand come down and put the squeeze on Hawkes’s shoulder, heard a cautionary voice, deep: “Behave, Mr Hawkes.”
Hawkes shot a dark look at the guard. “He’d never a done that if I was Hank-fucking-Williams!”
“You know Hank Williams, Mr Hawkes?” Cherry asked.
“That shit played all day and all night when I was a kid. I’d sneak in the house while the record was on and Mamaw’d yell YOU MADE HANK SKIP! NO EAT FOR YOU!” Hawkes canted his head and leaned it closer to the camera. He winked. “I’d sure a-liked to eat Hank Williams. BETTER THAN PREACHER MAN MAGGOT SLOP!”
“Maggot slop?” Cherry asked, shooting me a glance. “Are you saying Brother Tanner fed you bad food, Jimmie?”
Hawkes poked his finger in his mouth, gagged. “GARBAGE CAN MEAT WHAT GOT THROWED AWAY AT THE STORE!”
I figured Tanner must have cooked with rotting ingredients scavenged from dumpsters behind groceries. It made sense: the killer had returned the favor by killing Tanner with poisoned food. I pasted a bright smile on my face and winked into the camera.
“I want to show you something, Jimmie. I want your impression.”
I reached to the side of the desk and retrieved a drawing done a few minutes before we’d fired up the theater of the weird.
“I want you to say exactly what comes into your mind, OK, Jimmie?”
I held up the paper, reproducing a symbol much in my mind of late:
=(8)=
Hawkes’s eyes widened. He screamed, “PUT ON YOUR CUPS AND GRAB YOUR PUPS! IT’S WHUP-ASS TIME!”
He started bouncing in his chair, agitated. “What is it, Jimmie?” I asked. “Tell me what you see.”
“COVER YOUR BALLS SPLATTER BRAINS ON THE WALLS!”
“Jimmie!”
“STRAP IT TIGHT AN’ WEAR IT RIGHT WE GONNA HAVE THE EAT TONIGHT!”
“What is it, Jimmie? What did I draw?”
He stood from his chair so all we could see was from his belly to mid-thigh. He cupped a hand over his genitals, jerked his hips at the camera.
“SOMEBODY’S NUMBER EIGHT TONIGHT! FIVE-FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE … PUNCH THAT MUFUKA!”
Hawkes went crazy, flinging kicks and punches. Guards rushed in and the scene turned to tumult. It was over and I snapped off the video feed. Cherry pulled down the edge of my drawing so she could take a long look.
“I see it now,” she said. “It’s an athletic cup, right?”
I nodded. “A simple and effective representation. The equals signs are the straps, the parentheses form the cup, the number is the fighter’s number.”
Her eyes widened. “Is it possible that—”
I shook my head. “There’s no way to ID a fighter by the numbers. They were drawn fresh each fight night. But Crayline is number five.”
“The number on the symbol when Bridges got killed. Crayline killed Bridges, right? He had it in for the guy.”
“I figure Bridges served two purposes. One was revenge, Crayline carrying through on his threat. Two was a demonstration of how a kill was done. A teachable moment, as they say.”
Cherry made a face. “Ugh. But it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is posting the information on the geocache site. The athletic-cup symbol of a fighter. The coordinates. Again, why post info that draws people to the murder scenes? It made it more likely to get caught.”
“Like calling in the FBI, it added the element of risk,” I said. “Get it?”
Cherry paused. I saw her re-playing the day Taithering died. Hearing my brother’s explanation for his public display of vengeance against a dead man.
“Danger, destruction, display,” she said, turning to me. “Charpentier’s criteria for symbolic victory over the past.”
I nodded. Cherry walked to the window and stared outside, finger at her pink lips. After a long minute, she turned to me, a strange light in her eyes.
“Who says only one kid from the backwoods fight club made it to the XFL?”
50
Her words were a Zen punch that left me reeling with a drunken clarity, like the world was spinning, but in perfect focus. My fingers were shaking so much it took me two tries to dial the number fished from my notebook.
“Mickey Prince, please,” I told the receptionist. “It’s Detective Ryder.” A pause as the call was announced. I could almost feel Prince’s hand hovering over the phone. He picked it up and launched his false bonhomie.
“Hey, Detective Ryder. Great to hear from you. We still cool?”
“We’re as cool as we’ll ever be, Mick.”
“Uh, sure. Good, I guess. S’up?”
“You put new names on most of your fighters, right?” I asked.
“Like I said, you can’t seem tough if your name is Lester Doodle.”
“I’m gonna read you a list of names, all right?”
“Go for it, Detective.”
I turned my notepad to the boys in the Solid Word program and commenced my recitation, omitting Hawkes’s name because we knew his history.
“Jessie Collier … Elijah Elks … Bemis Smith … Creed Baines … Teeter Gasper … Donald Nunn.” I finished, said, “Well, Mickey, know any of them?” I held my breath and looked at Cherry.
“Sure,” Prince said. “Teeter Gasper. Ain’t that a silly fucking thing to name a kid? I guess if he was twins the other’d be Totter.”
“Who did Teeter become, Mick? What did you name him?”
“Teeter was the guy that whipped Bobby Lee,” Prince said. “Then got stuck in the ground for his efforts. Teeter turned into the Mad Dog … Jessie Stone.”
I set the phone down, stunned.
“What?” Cherry said.
“Jessie Stone never went to Ireland,” I said. “He came home to the mountains to destroy his past.”
“Stone and Crayline had to know one another as kids, right?” Cherry said after taking several head-shaking moments to process the information. “They were fighters from different camps?”
I saw in my head the Appalachian mountain range stretching from the Talladega mountains in north Alabama up to, and past, Kentucky. Saw nondescript vehicles ferrying young fighters under cover of backwoods darkness. Vans pulling beside barns filling with raucous drunks, pockets thick with rolled bills, yelling odds as they sucked down bottles of beer, shots of whiskey. The kids stripping off their clothes and pulling on their cups as their trainer-coaches bellowed incentives.
I nodded. “Forced to beat the shit out of one another. Only two kinds of bonds come from that: Fierce hatred or total allegiance.”
“I’ll put out an All Points Bulletin on Stone,” Cherry said. “Then I’m gonna go fill everyone in, even Krenkler.”
“I think she’ll be happy with this news. You’re saved from a life sentence at Wal-Mart.”
“You coming?” she asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Bask in some of the glory?”
“You can have my share. I’ve still got thinking to do. Be careful out there. Stone’s lost his buddy and it may cause an explosion. He killed Beale, who had no part in the fights except for his genetic connection. It’s an insane jump, but…”
“But Stone’s insane,” Cherry completed. She zipped away to brief the county guys. I paced the room, writing down all the information on the murder scenes instead of the victims. I made coffee and studied timelines. Compared them to sunrise data. Scribbled, erased, scribbled again.
Nearly an hour passed. I was making ties and conclusions when my cellphone rang.
“Detective Ryder? This is Judd Caudill. Detective Cherry left there yet? She was heading over here to give us some new infor—”
I looked at my watch. It was a ten-minute drive. Cherry should have been there
forty minutes ago.
“She hasn’t shown?” I asked, feeling sweat prickle beneath my arms.
“Huh-uh. Any idea where she could be?”
I told Caudill to get some cruisers on the road, check for an accident. I also advised to avoid usual communications modes, switching to alternate channels or phones when possible. I didn’t want the info broadcast on the air.
I called McCoy. He was out on a trail but showed up twenty minutes later, fear darkening his eyes.
“Let’s not start worrying yet, Lee,” I said. “A lot of little things could have happened. A flat tire. A stop at the store. A visit to her home to pick something up.”
“Those are rationalizations,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
When another hour passed with no sign of Cherry, McCoy and I went to check her home. The door was locked. “She keep a key anywhere?” I asked.
“I’ve never been here. She kept trying to have me over for supper, but schedules never worked. We always ended up at a restaurant.”
The oak door built by Cherry’s Uncle Horace was castle-quality. I broke a side window and unlatched it, crawling through and opening the door. It was cool and dark inside, scented with a woman’s potions. A plate and coffee cup sat in the sink. The bed was made. I looked at the wall and saw Cherry’s favorite photo, her with Uncle Horace. She beamed her bright child’s smile into the empty room.
“Everything looks like it would have when she left this morning,” I said.
“There’s a couple of messages on the phone machine,” McCoy said. He pressed the Play button. The first was a bank trying to upgrade Cherry to the new Super Titanium credit card. A pause and the machine beeped to a woman’s voice with a central Kentucky accent, warm vowels, consonants softened at the edges. The time signature placed the message as arriving fifteen minutes back.
“Hello, Detective. This is Daisy Lutes at the state property evaluator’s office. I’ve been trying your mobile phone and can’t get you. Give me a call when you get a chance, please.”
Lutes finished by leaving her number. I sat on the couch and called, explaining that Cherry and I were working together.
Lutes said, “Detective Cherry wanted me to check on a parcel of land. I guess it’s about forty-six acres.”
The fight camp.
“See, what happened was a foreclosure,” Miz Lutes continued. “The owner stopped paying.”
“Who was the owner?”
“Allen Eckles.”
“Who?”
“This was … lemme see, twenny years back. I’m looking at the paperwork. Right here, Allen Eckles. Lived in West Liberty back then. Looks like Eckles died and the government foreclosed.”
“The state owns the property?”
“That’s what I couldn’t find out because things back then aren’t on the computer. We had to root through boxes. What I found was the land got bought at auction seven weeks later. Price was eighty-seven thousand dollars.”
“Who bought it?” I asked.
“Now I just had that sheet here … daw-gone, bet I left it in the copier. Hang on a second.”
I held the phone to my cheek and looked over at McCoy. He stood riveted before the wall of photos and objects. “I wish I’d gotten over here for supper,” he said, shaking his head.
“Why?”
He nodded to an arrangement of wood and metal implements on the wall, the odd tools that had given me an uncomfortable feeling.
“Donna didn’t have any idea what this stuff is, did she?” he said.
“She found it in Horace’s shed. Some kind of farm gear, she supposed. You know what it is, Lee?”
He blew out a breath. “That piece of wood on the right is called a break stick, used to separate dogs when they’re fighting. That lead and leather gizmo is a weight collar to build a fighting dog’s neck strength. Beside it is a—”
Miz Lutes popped back on the phone. “Mr Ryder? I got the name of the guy that bought the place from the government.”
“Horace Cherry, right?” I said, feeling lightheaded.
“Horace Thurgood Cherry,” Miz Lutes said, adding, “Ain’t that some fine kind of name?”
51
“Horace Cherry was the Colonel?” McCoy asked.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded. “The impresario of the circus from hell.”
“What does this have to do with Donna?”
“She’s Horace Cherry’s only surviving relative. She once called herself the last Cherry left on the tree.”
It took McCoy eight seconds to get it. His voice fell to a hush.
“Stone killed Beale as a stand-in for Daddy.”
“Now Cherry’s a stand-in for Uncle Horace,” I said. “She’s the only available symbol of the Colonel.”
“Why Colonel?” McCoy asked. “Horace was never in the military. Or anything else I can recall.”
I went to an arrangement at the far end of the wall, the framed-certificate subdivision. Cherry’s papers, mainly, a couple of diplomas, training certifications and so forth. I pointed to a framed document that looked straight from a physician’s wall.
“Right here, Lee. A certificate naming Horace T. Cherry a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels.”
McCoy scoffed. “I’m a Kentucky Colonel. Every third Kentuckian is a Colonel. It’s what Kurt Vonnegut called a granfalloon, a proud and meaningless association of human beings.”
“Burton was Coach. Tanner was the Preacher. Powers was the Lady. It makes sense for Horace Cherry to be the Colonel.”
“Come to think of it, that sounds right. Horace was a human granfalloon. A blusterer, full of himself. Loud. Drank too much. Gambled too much. Thought himself above everyone, the law included. He used to boast about screwing the government out of taxes.”
“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.
52
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 cl
ay 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.
