by J. A. Kerley
“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.”
Chapter 53
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 someone 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 saw a huge fist as if in slow motion.
Stars. Black.
Chapter 54
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.
Outside of the costume, Cherry was naked. She looked worn and frightened, but angry as well, watching Stone like he was a deadly snake, one she might kill if she found the chance.
I looked through slitted eyes as Cherry saw my crumpled form. Her eyes dropped in despair. I had no way to signal her without alerting Stone to my consciousness.
Stone rope-dragged Cherry to the far end of the structure, tying her to an iron hoop in the wall. My eyes searched the ground and saw a brown glint in the dirt a yard away, glass. I wormed through the mud, scraped at it with my fingernail, unearthing a semi-triangular shard from a beer bottle, shorter than my thumb. It was thick on one end where the wall of the bottle joined the butt end, pointed on the other. As a weapon, it was lacking – short and brittle – but it was something. I cupped it in my palm, shot a veiled glance at Stone.
He was staring at me.
“I saw you move,” he whispered.
He was reaching for a dark wooden bar when I closed my eyes, heard feet pounding my way. I made myself go limp, knowing what was coming.
The feet stopped beside the cage. The stick probed my back, jabbed my side.
Slashed down on my legs, the pain like a dozen simultaneous hornet stings.
Don’t move … don’t move …
The rod slashed down twice again. Finally satisfied I was unconscious, Stone padded back toward the dogs and prodded them with the stick. The emptiness in his eyes was spooky. Stone was foreign in time, inhabiting a world his body had left twenty years ago, but where his mind remained in a prison beyond anything of rock and iron. It was not the world of his miserable childhood, of the XFL, of the hole in the barn floor. Stone was in the twilight of all his worlds, and they intersected on these unholy grounds where, long ago, children had fought in the pit they called the grave.
When the dogs were foaming and furious, Stone went to Cherry and began untying the rope from the iron ring.
“Come on, Colonel,” he said, jerking her across the floor toward the pit.
“I’m not the Colonel,” Cherry gasped. “I’m—”
Stone calmly backhanded Cherry. She caromed off the wall, slipped in dogshit spread across the floor, fell to her knees. Stone grabbed the back of her hair, lifting. She groaned and fought to her feet, the hat sideways, glue tearing away. Stone replaced the hat atop her head, slapped it down. The blow must have been like a pile-driver, but Cherry stayed standing.
“Time to meet the boys, Colonel,” Stone said.
I wondered if I was seeing a fantasy created while he had retreated inside himself during his false abduction. He’d fantasized killing Powers by dressing her in whore garb, inverting logic by “baptizing” her in the pond. He’d crushed Burton beneath the kind of vehicle in which the man likely raped the young Teeter Gasper as he had William Taithering. Stone had fed poison to Tanner, a dark echo of the preacher feeding spoiled food to the boys in the camp.
I wondered what Stone imagined for the Colonel.
I heard a moan and saw Cherry stagger and seem to falter. It was a ruse. She snapped a kick into Stone’s belly that doubled him over. Cherry kicked again, catching Stone in his head. But Cherry’s kicks were nothing compared to punishment Stone had absorbed from professionals; his open hand swatted her like a troublesome fly. She spun away into the dirt.
“Get up, Colonel,” Stone whispered. “Up and up.”
Cherry tried to rise, hands squishing in the mud. Stone again lifted her to her feet with her hair, the hat tumbling away. He pushed Cherry into the pit and she sprawled across its mud-slick bottom. Stone retrieved Cherry’s clothes from the floor and used the dark stick to push them between the bars of the dog cage. The enraged animals shredded the cloth in seconds. Stone put his back to the cage and began skidding it over the floor to the pit, his heels digging into the floor.
“We’re going to be free,” he called over his shoulder to Cherry. “We’re free tonight, Colonel.”
Stone’s eyes glittered with an electric glow, haunted by his need to tear free of the bonds of his childhood. Stone grunted the cage toward the edge of the pit, the grave. The dogs tore at the metal, aching to sink their teeth into flesh.
Stone had only to release the latch and the dogs would cover Cherry. He stood back and took a final look at the scenario, an eerie smile on his face, beatific calm. My mind raced to fathom the shapes in Stone’s head. What had eleven-year-old Teeter Gasper seen in this place eighteen years ago? Who had he known?
Jimmie Hawkes.
With Stone’s eyes turned to his tableau, I stripped to white briefs and rolled the sides into straps, a white pouch over my genitals. Stone moved toward the cage and put his hand on the latch. The dogs fought at the door, establishing which came first to Cherry’s throat.
I dipped my finger in the mud at my feet and scrawled a dark shape on the white cloth, like a number, feverishly trying to recall what Jimmie Hawkes screamed in LaGrange.
“YEEEEEE-HAH!” I screamed maniacally, leaping from one side of the cage to the other. “PUT ON YOUR CUPS AND COVER YOUR PUPS!” The sound echoed through the barn. The dogs stopped fighting and looked my way, sensing more quarry.
“PIN A NUMBER ON YOUR DICK!” I howled. “BUST THEIR ASSES AND GET SOME EAT IN THE BELLY! EAT AND MORE EAT.”
Stone halted, his face turning to me. “Jimmie?” he said, confusion clouding his eyes.
“DOPE AND WHISKEY AND GETTIN’ ALL FRISKY! WIN AND FILL THE MOUTH-HOLE!”
“Jimmie? Is that you?”
I drummed down my body, jerking my hips, Stone was frozen in the black hole of his mind, mouth open and aghast at whatever images I was creating in his brain. His hand fell from the latch. I pointed my hand at him like I was delivering an ultimatum.
“READ THE DOG, BUDDY! THE DOG KNOWS THE FUTURE.” I bounced from side to side of the cage like a trapped animal. I stopped, stumbled as if seized by a terrible thought. I craned back my head and screamed.
“HERE COMES THE SNACK TRUCK!”
No, Stone mouthed, his face seized by fearful awe.
“HELP ME TEETER,” I crie
d. “I WANT OUT FROM THE GRAVE!”
Stone seemed as numb as a zombie as he plodded to my cage, yanked open the door. He came to me with arms wide.
“Jimm—”
My hand flicked out and slashed his left eye with the shard. When reflex pulled his hand to the eye, I jammed the shard so deep into the right eye I felt it hit bottom, whatever that was.
He screamed like a scalded banshee but instead of grabbing at his eye he closed his massive hands around my neck, as if everything in him had burned away but the instinct to fight. I jabbed at his face with the glass but he tucked it between his arms and all I could do was scrape at his crown. His hands seemed ready to meet in the center of my windpipe and I heard the roar of unconsciousness closing in, felt the final rush down the vortex. The roar turned to a series of noises I figured would be the last sounds I ever heard. It sounded like twigs breaking in a moonlit forest.
Was Crayline after me in the next life, too?
Chapter 55
“You’re a hot dog, Ryder,” said the voice in the sky.
“And you just about got what hot dogs deserve. Cooked.”
Krenkler’s voice. It zoomed down to stop just past my splayed feet. I opened my eyes. The agent named Rourke was crouched beside me, palpating my neck.
“Nothing broke,” he said to Krenkler.
“You can’t win ’em all.”
“Cherry!” I said, my head snapping upward.
“Outside getting medical attention,” Krenkler said. “She’s all right, outside of cuts and bruises.”
My eyes came to focus on a human form, horizontal and still, the body of Jessie Stone face-down in the mud of the barn floor. I smelled cordite in the air and realized the cracking twigs were gunshots.
“The cavalry arrived just in time,” I said, feeling my head clearing. “Thank you.”
“It was close,” Krenkler said. “Luckily we had a window into your ridiculous attempt to fly solo.”
She nodded toward the door of the barn. Entering, surrounded by a half-dozen FBI agents, was my brother, hands behind his back. Krenkler had probably started digging into Jeremy’s background from the moment he’d stepped into Burton’s visitation. He’d told me how he’d put one over on Krenkler, asking to be part of the investigation. It appeared he’d misread the lady. His life in the forest – his life in the real world – was over.
