Читать книгу Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 7-9: Buried Alive, Her Last Scream, The Killing Game - J. Kerley A. - Страница 29

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.