Читать книгу Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 7-9: Buried Alive, Her Last Scream, The Killing Game - J. Kerley A. - Страница 28

I was too unsteady to stand. The knot behind my ear was a beaut. Cherry lashed together a bag of ice from the church’s fridge and held it to my head. Jeremy stood to the side, arms crossed, concern on his face. Krenkler crouched in front of me, face filling my vision.

“Who was it?” she snapped. “What did you see?”

“I, uh—” trying to get words to fit in my mouth.

“Come on, Ryder, spit it out.”

“He had, uhm, slight build, brown hair and eyes, I think. Cheap gray sport coat over … gray flannel slacks. Brown shoes like Hush Puppies.” I felt a wave of nausea and rode it out.

“I was out back grabbing a smoke,” a man said to Cherry. “The guy went in the woods. Not even running, just walking fast.”

Krenkler turned to her adjutants. “Get on it!”

I tried to stand but Cherry’s hands kept my shoulders down. “How about you wait right here and we’ll go take a look.”

Krenkler stood to follow Cherry, stopped. She narrowed her eyes at my brother.

“What’s your name?”

“Dr Auguste Charpentier, at your service.”

“You don’t leave until we’ve had a chance to talk, you hear me?”

“Certainement.”

Cherry was back in minutes, Krenkler and the boys at her heels. I raised an eyebrow in question.

“It’s just a strip of trees behind the church, a fouracre wood lot for the family a block east. A block west is a failed restaurant. I figure our batter parked there, walked over, had his inning, zipped back to his vehicle. No one saw a thing. How’s your head?”

“He could have slammed a home run into my skull. But he didn’t. He bunted.”

“He tried to murder you,” Krenkler scoffed. “You got lucky.”

I looked through a cloudy recollection. “I’m sure he choked up on the bat and thunked me pretty lightly, all things considered.”

Krenkler shook her head like I was an idiot. I heard an ambulance in the distance. “Your ride’s on its way, Ryder,” Krenkler said. “Consider yourself lucky it’s not a hearse.”

I felt a wave of nausea and bent forward. Krenkler turned the eyes to my brother, scoping him from hair-part to Florsheims. She didn’t look happy with the results.

“Let’s you and me go over here and talk, Doc. I’m interested in hearing your story.”

I arrived at the nearby hospital in minutes. The small institution was backed up, and after a cursory inspection to make sure I wasn’t about to die on the floor, I was left sprawling in the waiting room, watching the clock and sucking coffee.

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?”