Buried Alive (12 page)

“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.

The next morning found me sitting in the lodge restaurant at Natural Bridge Park, McCoy and Cherry across from me, revisiting the Tanner episode. Her cellphone buzzed. She pulled it from her jacket, walked to the porch for better reception. After three minutes she rang off, returning with a hard smile on her face as she shot McCoy a thumbs-up.

“I messengered the mushroom to a buddy in forensics. Tanner’s chicken stew contained a fungus called a fool’s mushroom.”

McCoy winced.
“Amanita verna.
Deadly poisonous. A few bites would start messing up the head and tearing down the machinery. Think Brother Tanner’s recipe came from the Borgia family cookbook?”

I thought back to fungi noted on my hikes. In under a week I’d seen perhaps fifty different varieties. “Does this happen often?” I asked McCoy. “Mushroom poisoning?”

“It’s a problem.”

“There’s another possible explanation,” Cherry said, shaking her third packet of sugar into her cup of coffee. “Brother Tanner was purposely eating poison mushrooms to prove he was touched by Grace, safe under the watchful eye of God. It’s the creed of the snake handlers. Taking up serpents to test one’s faith. Cousin Zeke had been getting stranger over the years, more insistent on proofs of faith.”

McCoy said, “Two choices, then: Zeke got careless or tempted fate.”

I said, “There’s a third. Tanner’s part of the other killings. The geocache murders.”

Cherry shook her head. “It hurts to agree with Krenkler, but nothing ties Tanner’s case to the others. He wasn’t tortured. Nothing appeared on the geocache website.”

“He looked a lot like a man in torture,” I argued. “Especially those last few minutes. Something feels related to the others.”

“Can you expand on that logically,” Cherry asked, “or are you using your psychic powers?”

I thought a moment, shrugged, let it go. “What’s your plan for the day?” I asked, changing the topic.

“Sonny Burton’s visitation is today. The Feds want me there in case our killer pays his respects.”

“The Feds are attending?”

“I actually convinced Krenkler they’d be too conspicuous in person. There’s a junk shop a block and a half away. They’ll park behind it and we’ll use radio.”

“Radio? So they’d never know if we added another pair of eyes to the mix, right?”

Cherry and I walked from the lodge together. The sun was high and warm, the air rich with the scent of pine and last year’s leaves turning into humus, intoxicating and almost dizzying in its gentle fecundity.

“Do you want me along?” I asked. “Burton’s visitation?”

“Very much, Ryder.”

“If I recall, it wasn’t all that long ago you were telling me to take a hike.”

“That’s when I thought you were a hot dog with an attitude.”

“You don’t think that any more?”

She smiled, coy and warm at the same time, a wonderful combination. Both eyes seemed to focus on mine. I felt my knees tremble.

“A little,” she said. “But you’re improving daily.”

We stopped at her cruiser and I looked into her eyes. It was a moment with the chance of turning either beautiful or awkward, so I chopped it off, spinning toward my truck while my legs still functioned.

“I’ve got to change into a dress,” she called to my back. “How about I come get you in an hour.”

I winked as I climbed into my truck. “Done.”

I started the engine, drove past Cherry. She held up her hand,
wait.
I stopped.

“One more thing just came to mind. We talked about Charpentier? I’m thinking if he’s as perceptive as McCoy
says, he might be another useful set of eyes. Think you could stop by his place and feel him out?”

My heart froze in my chest. “You want Charpentier at the visitation?”

“The man’s a head doc, right? Given that we can use all the professional input we can, and the Feds won’t be overly near …”

“Charpentier’s an odd duck,” I said, trying to keep from stammering. “But I’ll ask.”

I returned to the cabin, slipped into dark slacks and blazer and drove to Jeremy’s. Though it was ten a.m., Jeremy was in pajamas, sky-blue with white piping, like we’d worn as children. His feet were in brown leather slippers and he was opening mail with a pearl-handled dagger.

I said, “You know, of course, that a man named Sonny Burton was the first killing.”

“It was all over my police scanner. Fascinating methodology, no?”

“Burton’s visitation starts in an hour. Cherry wants you along.”

The knife fell to the floor. “WHAT?”

“Don’t worry, you can make up a story about you having the flu or something. I want you to meet her. It’s the perfect chance to brand the image of a benign professor
into Cherry’s head. Do it now and here, where you control the setting.”

“Why does your little screech owl want me at the visitation?”

“McCoy told her you’re a brilliant psychologist. It’s your fault for talking psychobabble like you’re the Freud and Jung Traveling Circus.”

“I refuse to hide my light under a barrel,” he sniffed.

“Cherry will be here in fifteen minutes,” I instructed my brother. “Get into costume.”

I was waiting on the porch when Cherry rolled up. She was in the first dress I’d seen her wear, a dark amethyst that highlighted her slender waist and compact hips. The demure décolletage nonetheless displayed a half-circle of warm cream ringed with small dark stones. Her knee-bottom hem hinted at curvaceous calves flowing into slender, defined ankles.

“You look ready for a Parisian runway,” I said.

She shook her head like I was twitting her. “The dress cost twelve bucks at a second-hand store in Jackson. I spent a day with a needle and thread getting it to fit halfway right.”

“I don’t think I could take all the way right.”

I saw her neck color slightly. “So is the Doc in or out?” she asked, changing the subject as she stepped to the porch.

“He has a malaise and won’t be able to attend,” I said, expecting Jeremy was eavesdropping behind the door.

Her face fell. “At least you tried. What’s bothering the guy?”

The door opened at my back. My brother appeared in loose jeans and a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the Edmonton Oilers hockey team.

“Mon Dieu,”
my brother crooned, brushing past my introductions as if I were invisible, striding directly to Cherry. “You are the loveliest woman I’ve seen since arriving here!” Jeremy took Cherry’s hand and bowed to kiss her fingertips. “You shame the angels, my dear.”

Cherry’s face turned red. Her mouth moved, but no words came out.

“I just explained that you’re under the weather, Dr Charpentier,” I said.

He shook his head, angry at himself. “I have a condition called IBS. It comes and goes. Today it seems particularly vexatious.”

Cherry regained her voice. “My aunt has IBS,” she said. “I understand why you need to remain here, Dr Charpentier.”

“You’re too kind. Before you go, Detective Cherry, please grace my home for a few moments. I get so few visitors, and none so beautiful.”

Cherry stepped into the living room, eyes wide at the sophisticated decor. Jeremy followed, pretending to masturbate over her derriere while grinning lasciviously at me.

Eight minutes later - minutes my brother had jam-packed with dissertations on plant genetics, the nutritive components of honey, the geology of the area, and a speculative
foray into the sexual psyche of Jack the Ripper - Cherry pulled out of the hollow to the main road and aimed toward the Mountain Parkway.

“Damn, Ryder, is Charpentier bright or what? I wish he felt better.”

“You said your aunt had IBS? What’s it mean?”

“Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It manifests a lot of ways, like cramps, diarrhea, constipation, flatulence. Some days you can’t get too far from a toilet.” Cherry shook her head in sympathy.

“Ugh,” I said, inwardly complimenting my brother on a masterful choice of affliction.

“I’ll drop you off at the church,” Cherry said, as we pulled off the Parkway. “Then I’ll see the Feds in their hideaway and get my mic in place. We can saunter into Burton’s visitation like …” I saw Cherry’s eyes rivet on the rear-view mirror. “Damn!”

“What?”

A roaring engine followed by a horn blast. Cherry veered toward the berm. A vehicle blew by, a blue panel van marked
A-1 Air Conditioning Service.
Seconds later it was out of sight.

“Must be one helluva AC problem,” Cherry said.

After three minutes, I saw the church in the distance. Cherry pulled between a pair of church buses.

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get mic’d up. The we’ll go hunting bad guys.”

I stepped out just as a blue work van swooped to our
bumper. The
A-1 Air Conditioning
van. The side door slid open. Agent Gloria Krenkler was sitting in a jump seat in what I recognized as a surveillance vehicle.

“Why, Detective Ryder,” Krenkler said, as though we were old friends. “I didn’t know you were a fan of visitations. Why don’t you jump in here and we can talk.”

Feeling like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, I climbed inside the surveillance van, Cherry behind me.

“My compliments to whoever pimped your ride,” I said.

Krenkler folded a piece of Juicy Fruit and fed it between her teeth. “I didn’t think it would arrive in time. But now we can see everything. Just like we saw you two on the road. Care to explain, Detective Cherry?”

“Explain what?”

“Why you invited Ryder to our show?”

Cherry canted her head, as if the question seemed bizarre. “I thought you’d want him along, Agent Krenkler.”

“Why on earth would I want such a thing?”

Cherry ticked off reasons on her fingers. “One, I have doubled our surveillance range; two, added high-level experience and, three, put another layer of protection and safety in place should we encounter an armed killer. May I ask your specific objections to my considerations, Agent Krenkler?”

Krenkler’s attendant agents snuck looks at her. I saw a slow smolder behind the eyes before Krenkler’s face went blank. She nodded to the older agent in the front
passenger seat, a mini-mic ready to pin inside Cherry’s collar.