Читать книгу Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 7-9: Buried Alive, Her Last Scream, The Killing Game - J. Kerley A. - Страница 44

I stood on Jeremy’s porch and willed myself calm. If he saw my anger he’d shut me out or disappear into the forest. I had to appear serene. The door was unlocked and I entered.

“Jeremy,” I called, stepping over the threshold. “Where are you?”

“Upstairs, in my office,” he yelled, joy in his voice. “Come watch me make money, Brother. The blustering drunkard is starting the day on a binge.”

I took the steps two at a time, strode the hall to his open office door. He was at his desk, wearing a dark pinstriped suit, pink shirt, tightly knotted tie. It seemed odd until I realized he was in his business mindset. He had his gentleman gardener garb, his button-down business dress, his retired academic outfit, his rugged outdoorsman wear … he affected the uniform necessary to fully complete each personality.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

He spun in his chair. The screens on his desk danced with charts and graphs and crawls of stock symbols. “The Chinese Ministry of Economics issued a report calling for increased spending on infrastructure. The drunkard is puking gold … I’ve got a heavy position in an Asian copper-mining company that jumped eight points in an hour on the Hang Seng Index. I’m about to—”

“NO! What the hell is going on here?” I said, flailing my arms, meaning here, the locale, the region.

He regarded me warily before turning back to the monitor. “Whatever kind of question is that, Carson? It’s vague. What are you talking about?”

I crossed the room in a half-heartbeat, grabbed the back of his chair and spun him to face me. My voice was a constricted hiss. “I’m talking about Bobby Lee Crayline. He just tried to kill me. He’s dead, thankfully.”

The surprise in my brother’s eyes turned to evasion, which in Jeremy was less a tactic than an emotion. He switched into acting mode, moving up-angled eyes back and forth, as if searching a catalogue of names in his head.

“I’m sorry, Carson. I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly who Bobby Lee Crayline is,” I said, sick of his games. “You got into the heads of everyone who came near you at the Institute. You needed to know what made them tick and how they could be of use to you.”

“That’s so cynical. I never had any real contact with the man.”

“STOP LYING!” I roared. From nowhere my hands were around my brother’s throat, lifting him from the chair, spinning him into the wall. “Did you know the staff at the Institute keep round-the-clock track of who the inmates talk to, relate to, spend their time with? It’s an interaction study to see who pairs up, weak with weak or weak with strong … and who appears to be using who.”

“It’s whom,” my brother snarled. “And it’s disgusting.”

“From the moment Crayline walked in the door, you started circling him. Nodding the first day, speaking in passing the second, eating together on day three. Five days later you two were bonded like Siamese twins. Crayline started his mornings in the community room, waiting for your dramatic daily entrance. The staff read the body language, Jeremy. You were the Alpha in the relationship. Big nasty dangerous Bobby Lee Crayline treated you like some kind of wizard king.”

“A pack of lies from a den of spies.”

“You know what else was recorded, Jeremy?”

“My bowel movements, from the sounds of it.”

I wrenched him tighter to the wall. “You and Bobby Lee Crayline sitting alone in a corner of the ward, Crayline sobbing on the couch as you patted his back and whispered in his ear. People like Crayline don’t cry like babies, Jeremy. What was all that about?”

Jeremy pushed my chest, hard. It broke my grip, sending me backwards. “All right,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I remember Bobby. He had things clanging together inside him, issues.”

“Everyone there has issues!” I snapped. “They define issues. What did you and Crayline talk about?”

“I told Bobby things about my past. My experiences touched something inside him. He seemed fascinated at how I’d overcome my history. My abuse.”

“You told him how it ended?” I said. Jeremy had disemboweled our father and strung bits of him in the trees.

My brother smiled and stabbed his hand in the air, as though plunging a knife deep into tissue. “Not an end, Carson. A beginning.” He canted his head, regarding me with curiosity. “Helluva day, wasn’t it, Carson? The day the cops came to tell us we were free?”

… police at the door telling my mother her husband had been found in a nearby woods, lashed to a tree, disemboweled while still alive, his innards spread across the ground and into the surrounding trees as if a terrible ritual had been performed.

I said, “I’ll remember it forever.”

“Do you remember the knife I used, Carson? You do, don’t you? Father’s old hunting knife, the one he’d gotten from his father? Hidden in the back of his top desk drawer?”

I felt the knife in my hand as if I’d held it yesterday. Razor sharp. Hickory handle, an eight-inch stainless-steel blade with a curve like a gentle smile.

“Of course,” I said. “I know the knife. Why is this important to—”

“Did I ever tell you why I selected it?”

“I don’t know. I guess it was close and wouldn’t be missed.”

My brother shook his head like I was wasting his time. “Don’t be a simpleton, Carson. It was Daddy’s beloved knife. I needed to do something very important with it. But first, I needed to perform a magic trick: I had to move the knife from his alliance to mine.”

My brother’s voice had dropped into a soft monotone and I again felt him leading me into the chaos of his mental landscape. “You’re talking about befriending wood and metal?” I scoffed.

“I’m talking about a power akin to magic, Carson. Gaining power over the past. I started by opening the drawer to get the knife used to seeing me. Later, I took it on visits to my room where it learned to trust me. After I’d made the knife mine, I put it above the ceiling tiles. Beside the light above my bed.”

“Jeremy, this is completely insa—”

“SHUT UP! Whenever Father entered my room, he walked beneath the knife. I visualized fingers of blood-red light reaching from the knife to Daddy dear. It felt delicious. By the time I used the knife, Carson, I had granted it power unheard of by Excalibur: the power to cut me free of my past.”

I shook my head. Excalibur, befriending knives, transforming time through delusions … Talking to my brother was like being locked in a revolving door and thrown into a maelstrom. I walked to the window, finding the reality my brother was attempting to dissolve. Reality was the amber sunlight filtering through the trees and dappling the garden. Reality was the red wheelbarrow, the weathered shed, the hoe against the fencepost. Reality was the finches pecking at the feeder, the bees crisscrossing above the hives.

My brother’s voice broke into my thoughts. “You don’t believe me? You came into possession of father’s magical knife, Carson. You discovered it behind a brick in the storm cellar, right? Where it had been waiting for you.”

“It was just a knife, Jeremy,” I sighed, keeping my eyes outside, looking at the real. “It was always just wood and metal.”

hidden behind a loose brick, rolled in a strip of velvet, the blade mottled with dark stains

“Really? What did you do with the knife, Carson?” he asked. “What happened?”

“You know that, Jeremy. I threw it away.”

“Oh? Just tossed it in the trashcan? Or perhaps flung it out into a field?”

“I threw it in the Gulf, Jeremy.”

“So the knife went into the sea,” he purred. “Interesting. Where in the sea, Carson? Where exactly?”

at the mouth of Mobile Bay, or perhaps throat

“It’s not important.”

“Come on, O brother mine,” he said. “Tell big brother about the knife.”

“I was on the Dauphin Island ferry. I threw the knife overboard. No big deal.”

waiting far out on the waters and knowing the sea floor was littered with the carcasses of broken ships and doomed men

“Ah. In the channel where the Battle of Fort Morgan occurred. Seems a heroic place to drop a sad old knife, Brother. Down to the depths where the bones of the valiant dead rattle and cry.”

the knife concealed in my belt, shirt overhanging, my thumb sliding over the edge of the blade as I looked side to side, no one watching

“Yes,” I admitted.

“How did you feel when it sunk beneath the waves?”

the knife moving in a see-saw motion in the current, as if cutting away bonds, a final glint of light slicing from the blade and then covered forever by green and flowing water …

“Free,” I said, closing my eyes, amazed at how swiftly I’d been manipulated.

Jeremy walked over and stood beside me at the window, surprising me by laying a reassuring arm around my shoulders, pulling me tight. “The people Bobby Lee wants to kill are already dead, Carson. That was the terrible clanging in Bobby Lee’s head: He needed to kill people he thought had wronged him, but they were already in the ground. I have no idea who they were, Brother, God’s truth. But you can’t kill someone twice, right?”

“You’ve not seen Crayline since the Institute?” I asked.

A half-beat pause. “Not a blink’s worth. He was at the Institute two months, Carson. It’s like you said, I got to know him because I wanted to get in his head. Everyone needs a hobby.”

“So you haven’t …”

Jeremy squeezed my shoulder. “Haven’t spoken a word to Bobby in years. I’m happy he’s dead, Carson. I expect he’s happy he’s dead, too.”

The room seemed to close in and I could take no more of the darkness inside my brother’s home. I turned and exited the cabin, shaking loose from Jeremy’s spell, letting the sun burn his words away. It felt like escaping a darkly enchanted castle, where fierce dreams whirled and fought in the charged air. I breathed deeply, wondering how I’d again let his words pull me into his obsessions.

Walking back to my cabin I heard tires crunching gravel at my back, turned to see Krenkler in a dark sedan piloted by one of her drones. I turned as the car pulled beside me, Krenkler looking out through the window and folding a stick of gum into her mouth.

“If you think you got your beauty sleep, Ryder, think again. You look terrible.”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Agent Krenkler. Might I ask the reason for the delight of your company?”

“There’s a 2008 Fleetwood Discovery in the Haunted Hollow Campground, empty and locked. The campground manager ID’d a pic of Crayline as the owner. Now that we know who to show photos of, we’re finding out Mr Bobby Lee C stayed at every campground in the area, two days here, three there. He kept moving. You nailed his hideout.”

“I stumbled on to it.”

“That’s a big shiny box he was driving. Expensive. He made good money, I figure, as the one-time head honcho of SFL.”

“XFL – Extreme Fight League.”

“Whatever. We’re more interested in his current history. Like why did he spend his money living in an RV and killing people? And did he do it other places?”

“Damn good question.” Fifty-four per cent of all murders went unsolved. A small percentage were serial killings, madmen – and occasionally women – skulking in the dark and taking lives. It was very possible Woslee County wasn’t the first place Crayline visited. Or perhaps it was his shake-down cruise. I wondered if that was why he’d alerted the Bureau, his maniacal ego figuring if he could kill with the Feds around, he could kill anyone, anywhere.

Krenkler continued: “Did you know Crayline is under suspicion of gunning down three people in his home county in Alabama? Someone shot them four years ago, a rage shooting, the bodies riddled like Swiss cheese.”

I nodded. Krenkler said, “I take it you also know why Crayline went to prison the last time?”

“He abducted the only guy who ever beat him in a fight.”

“Mad Dog Stone. How’s that for a name? Crayline tossed the poor schnook in a pit and fed him garbage. Guess ol’ Bobby Lee Crayline hated to lose. But he lost to you, Ryder.”

“Is there a point here, Agent Krenkler?”

“I also wanted to tell you Soldering-iron Man was Charles Bridges, the guy who pissed off Crayline at the Alabama crazy hospital. Like you said, Mr Bridges did occasional work for Dunham, Krull and Slezak.”

“You spoke to Slezak?”

Krenkler’s nose wrinkled. “I spoke to him personally. It reminded me of what it must be like to talk to a grease pit.”

“Good description,” I said, meaning it.

“Thank you. One more thing you might like to know. Something we dug up from a long time ago back in ol’ Alabammy. Ever hear of the Marshmallow test?”

I saw a mind picture: a bespectacled experimenter holding a bag of marshmallows while talking to a child sitting at a small desk.

“The Bing Nursery School studies at Stanford,” I affirmed, wondering what the hell it had to do with Bobby Lee Crayline. “Young kids were offered treats, like candy or marshmallows. An experimenter gave them a choice: eat one marshmallow right then, or wait for the experimenter to leave the room and return fifteen minutes later. If they waited the full time, they got two marshmallows.”

“An experiment in patience?” Krenkler asked. “Or maybe self-control? Most kids popped the treat straight away, right?”

“What’s truly being observed is the child’s ability to reason,” I corrected. “To create a situation where they can out-think their own need for immediate gratification to gain the larger reward. Some did it by covering their eyes, or looking away, or singing, or playing games with their fingers. What does this have to do with Crayline?”

Krenkler consulted some notes on her lap. “Back in the early eighties a psych class at Alabama U. replicated the test with children in the rural Talladega Mountains. One of the test cases was Crayline. I guess Crayline’s screwed-up parents heard the test paid a stipend, used the kid to make a few bucks.”

I pictured a skinny, poorly nourished Bobby Lee diving on the treat like a hawk on a sparrow, jamming it down his gullet with unwashed hands. “I take it Bobby Lee devoured the marshmallow and maybe the experimenter’s hand?”

“Listen to this, Ryder: when the experimenter told Crayline one marshmallow now or two in fifteen minutes, the kid looked up and asked, ‘How many do I get if I sit here until tomorrow?’”

“What?”

“The researchers put Bobby Lee to the test with a dozen marshmallows. Not all night, of course. But three hours.”

“Crayline waited three hours to pounce on the candy?” It was unheard of.

“The kids are observed through a one-way mirror, naturally. When the experimenter left the room, Crayline closed his eyes and didn’t move a muscle for three hours.”

“Jesus.”

“The prof said he’d never seen anything like it. They might have let the test continue, but little Bobby was starting to spook them.”

I pictured Bobby Lee Crayline sitting motionless at the table, the delicious reward an arm’s length away. It seemed to defy everything I knew of the man.

Krenkler continued. “So either Crayline has enormous willpower and self-control …” she let the words hang, waiting for my conclusion.

“Or he could invent an interior world so lavish that time meant nothing. When he stepped inside himself, time stopped.”

“How’s that for weird?” Krenkler asked. “Anyway, thought you’d like to know.”

I couldn’t tell whether Krenkler actually thought I should know that tidbit about Crayline, or she just wanted to display the FBI’s power to dig. Like maybe I’d made contributions to the case, but she wanted me to know that the Bureau was on top, nonetheless.

Did it matter?

The sedan kicked gravel and spun away. I stiff-legged my way back to the cabin, made fruitless calls to the local animal shelters, and finally went to bed.