Читать книгу Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 7-9: Buried Alive, Her Last Scream, The Killing Game - J. Kerley A. - Страница 25

Cherry and Caudill had stormed the trailer when they’d seen Tanner on the floor, moaning, grabbing at his belly. In what seemed like seconds – and with no resistance – the pair had the reverend subdued.

The bush-hog operator was rushed toward a hospital in Jackson. The paramedics from the second bus were trying to get Tanner stabilized. We’d figured the guy was having a psychotic episode, but it seemed he had serious physical problems as well. He struggled to pull in breath, then rolled to his side and began shaking.

Krenkler walked up, looked at the reverend. “Jesus,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “What’s wrong with him?”

“What’s wrong with you?” I said, anger rippling through my guts.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I said, “The only people I saw crossing the field to the church were Cherry and Caudill.”

“And?”

“Three armed and experienced FBI agents and you sat on your thumbs.”

Krenkler looked on the verge of a yawn. “It’s a local matter. Not our problem.”

“What?”

“We’re here to stop a psychotic torturer, not a local head case. There were no new inclusions on the geocache site and Officer Caudill told us the victim was emotionally erratic. Ergo, it fell under local jurisdiction.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Fellow law-enforcement agents and an injured man were at risk and you squatted behind a wall and watched it like a croquet match.” I looked at the two other agents. They were turned away, like this scene wasn’t happening.

Krenkler’s mouth twisted into an ugly shape. “Get out of here, Ryder. That’s an order.”

“It’s not your jurisdiction, Agent Krenkler. You just said so.”

The mouth twisted tighter but any response was interrupted by the preacher convulsing so powerfully he knocked one of the attendants from the ambulance. The sick man projectile-vomited a sticky curd the color of dead blood. It kept coming, a deluge, like a drainage pipe had broken in his guts.

“My God,” Cherry whispered.

“His vitals are failing,” one medic yelled to the other, eyes tight to the monitors attached to Tanner. “Oh shit, he’s shutting down, cardiac arrest.”

The medics applied the shock paddles. Nothing.

Applied them again.

After four tries, they shook their heads. The bus pulled away. Somewhere in there the FBI had departed to do things in its jurisdiction.

McCoy appeared, called by Cherry. Caudill and I followed Cherry into the torn and listing church-trailer, McCoy standing aside and watching us work. There were no pews, only folding chairs in disarray. At one end of the floor was a plywood pulpit, painted white, a hand-painted cross on the front.

“Look for drugs,” Cherry said. “The rev was acting like a guy on PCP or meth.”

Caudill was scrabbling through a metal cabinet. “Bullets and bibles. Wonder why he stopped shooting?”

“He got too sick,” Cherry said. “Dry-heaving like his body was trying to push something from his gut.”

“Demons,” I suggested. “Unfortunately, they were in his head.”

“Let’s check his house,” Cherry said. “Nothing’s here.”

We walked the fifty steps to the trailer where Tanner had lived. A two-box life. We went our separate ways and I checked a closet.

“I’ve got six boxes of ammo at fifty rounds per,” I noted. “Another box of nines for the Browning. Was Tanner expecting a revolution?”

“Paranoia.” Cherry lifted a 3 × 5 index card, a hole punched in one corner, a loop of string tied through the hole.

“Got something?” I asked.

“A note that says Bless you Brother for your constant inspiration. From one of the flock, I expect.” She tossed the note aside and studied a pan on the stove.

“Tanner’s last meal. Chunks of chicken, potato, carrot, mushrooms, gravy. Hope he said grace.”

We stepped into the dining area where I reported finding nothing of merit, Caudill the same. We heard a clanging of silverware and turned to see McCoy in front of the stove. He’d fished something from the stew with a fork, holding the specimen at eye level, studying it in the light through the window.

“I don’t like this mushroom,” he said.

We bagged the stew and went outside. Cherry’s cruiser was a jumble of useless metal and Caudill took us to his department, loaned Cherry a county car. She drove me to her office.

“Tanner was really half-crazed?” I asked.

“Like I said, Uncle Zeke was touched by the spirit, though some might say walloped so hard he lost all worldly perspective. You and I see gray, mostly. Zeke only saw white and black, Good and Evil. And Evil was always winning.” She paused to watch a hawk spiral in the sky, turned back to me. “When I see things like Soldering-iron Man, I think maybe Zeke was on to something.”

“Tanner was always that way?”

“Zeke started out gentle, a young pastor in tune with his flock. But maybe twenty years ago everything became repent this, repent that. He got strident on the salvation message, screaming at everyone to get saved before the devil got them. I always had this feeling …” She frowned, trying to find the words.

“What?” I asked.

“He wasn’t preaching to a flock so much as to himself.”

Cherry dropped me off. I stepped up to my porch, pulled my keys. A fortune-cookie-sized strip of paper had been taped across the lock with small and precise words penned over it. Though the words were in French, the language didn’t matter: My brother wanted something, and that always meant Now. If I blew it off, he’d end up at my cabin at three a.m., shrieking in the window.

My shoulders slumped. I turned and trudged to Charpentier’s cabin. I knocked on the thick door of Jeremy’s home, heard entrez-vous. My brother was sprawled on the couch wearing a purple robe, his long feet tucked into a pair of battered hiking shoes with laces removed. He had a cup of coffee at his side and a computer on his lap. He looked up, closed the computer.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Company.”

“I’m a little tired right now.”

My brother’s nose started quivering like a hound’s nose. “You stink of sweat and gunpowder, Carson. I smell a woman, too. Have we gone burrowing for love in the cherry grove?”

I saw his emergency-band scanner on the table. “You know what happened, right? You were listening.”

He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. “A bit. I heard cops and medical people. A man died, correct?”

“Yes. Badly.”

“Tell me all about it, brother.”

“I was visiting Cherry and she got a call about a man with a rifle shooting at—”

“Not all three acts, Carson, just the final one. What was the death like?”

“The man was sick. Convulsing. His heart stopped in the ambulance. Drugs maybe. Or it just chose that moment to go.”

Jeremy’s brow furrowed with curiosity. “Was the death interesting?” he asked, eyes alert.

“Interesting?”

“You know … a sense of drama. Of theater. Or, as deaths go, was it just …?” he fluttered his tongue dismissively.

“I don’t need this right now,” I said, not wanting to revisit a man’s demise for the odd pleasures of my brother. I walked out the door and kept moving.