Buried Alive (Carson Ryder, Book 7) Page 10

  “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.”

  Chapter 20

  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 a
gents 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.

  “Hook her up, Agent Rourke.”

  “Ryder, too?”

  “I don’t think I need to hear him.”

  Cherry and I stepped into the church lot two minutes later. Banks of flowers flanked the coffin. Cherry nodded to people, shaking hands or gathering someone in an embrace. She introduced me without reason, a good friend or perhaps a beau. I nodded that I was going outside to take a look around, mouthed back in five.

  I leaned against a sycamore and studied rugged backcountry types smoking and looking uncomfortable in collared shirts and clip-on ties. Bar buddies of Burton, I figured, none appearing particularly malevolent. I watched an ancient woman in a blue dress make unsteady progress toward the men, marking her passage with quivering thumps of cane and talking to herself as she went. She broke into the men’s conversation, speaking to each in turn. They nodded and spoke back respectfully, holding their cigarettes behind their backs, like kids caught smoking on a schoolground.

  I avoided looking the two hundred feet to the blue van at the far edge of the lot, figuring Krenkler had field glasses to her tight little eyes.

  “Lose your love-muffin already, Carson?”

  My head snapped to the smiling face of my brother. His dark suit was as fitted to his frame as a Vogue model, his smile radiating joyful warmth. Blue had been the perfect choice of shirt, highlighting his robin’s-egg eyes. His cologne recalled smoked sherry served with fresh-picked limes.

  “Jeremy? What are you—”

  “You were right. If I pretend to be on the side of the angels for an hour or so, I can return home with Miss Cherry convinced of my stellar citizenship. You didn’t tell me she was such a sugary little cupcake, Carson. What’s keeping you from opening her legs and closing the deal?”

  “The FBI’s here, Jeremy,” I hissed through closed lips. “They’re watching.”

  He froze. “What? Where?”

  “At the far end of the lot. Don’t look, just shake my hand like we barely know one another.”

  We shook hands as Jeremy backpedaled to a semi-stranger’s distance. “Perhaps I should leave,” he said through a frozen smile.

  “They’ll ask who you are and why you left without visiting dear ol’ Sonny.”

  We walked to the church. I didn’t see Cherry, but figured she’d slipped out one of the side doors or the back, checking the gatherings there. I took my turn at viewing. A haphazard photo display of the deceased sat on a table beside the coffin, thirty or forty shots. Sonny Burton had a square, ruddy face and wide forehead, his hair waxed thick and combed back in curly waves. Burton was aware of the camera in most shots, meeting the lens with a grin, perfect teeth flashing as his broad, square hands pulled people to his side. Sonny Burton was a happy man, to judge by the beaming face, like life was an Italian bakery and he got born with a sweet tooth in every socket.

  Jeremy appeared at my side. We were alone at the front of the church. “My, my,” he said, glancing at the photographs. “There’s an unhappy fellow.”

  “Unhappy?” I side-mouthed. “Are we looking at the same guy?”

  “Learn to isolate, Carson. Cover the white teeth. Cut away the happy eye crinkles and brow furrows. Strip off the upturned lips.”

  My brother positioned his hands over an eight by ten shot, blotting out as much face as possible. Only the eyes were left, Burton staring between my brother’s fingers like a man peering from a bunker.

  “Jesus,” I gasped. “I see hate.”

  My brother removed his hands, leaving the full-face shot of a happy man. I stared like seeing a palimpsest, a Bosch nightmare hidden beneath a Thomas Cole landscape. “The eyes are five per cent of the total, Carson. Burton had the other ninety-five trained to mimic happiness. Practiced from early on in life, it can be completely convincing.”

  My brother tapped a photo taken at a birthday party. Burton’s arm circling the shoulders of a gangly, small-framed teen boy with liquid, feminine eyes. A cone-shaped party hat perched atop his head. He was grinning through braces.

  Burton’s palms were touching the boy’s body, fingers pressing wrinkles into the fabric of his white shirt. I mentally walled off sections of face, isolating Burton in the slitted bunker. It was like another sense had been turned on. I smelled lust rising from the photograph.

  “Burton looks aroused,” I whispered.

  “What a fast learner you are,” my brother said.

  We moved up to view the deceased himself. There was nothing to learn there but the skill of the cosmetologist. Burton looked as airbrushed as a centerfold, his heavy hands crossed over the chest where last week a truck had rested. I figured a pillow or air bladder beneath the black suit had been the mortician’s restoration of Burton’s ribcage to pre-truck standards.

  We hustled toward the front door just as Cherry was entering, nearly bumping heads.

  “Dr Charpentier?” she said, surprised at seeing my brother.

  “I began feeling better,” Jeremy said. “I thought I’d accept your invitation.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Cherry said.

  Jeremy nodded and glided outside, hands in his pockets and walking slowly, a man innocent of everything in the world, even care. Cherry went out to check cars for nonlocal license tags. I sat in a middle pew and watched a fast-thinning crowd drift in and out for several minutes. The visitation was nearly over.

  A slight man in his early forties caught my eye. He stood a dozen feet from Burton’s casket, holding a box of flowers, roses perhaps, the box long and slender. His choice of flowers seemed out of place at a funeral, but he didn’t look overly sophisticated. His thin and sallow face looked nervous, and I put him among the people unsettled by ceremonies of the dead. In that, we shared the same feeling.

  My scan was broken as the elderly woman from outside passed by, still mumbling to herself, unsteady with the cane. When she glanced at the man something seemed to click behind her bifocals and she turned for further study. He seemed to feel the woman’s stare and looked away, clutching his flower box tighter. The woman pursed her lips in thought, then turned and muttered from the church, leaving only stragglers in the room.

  I heard the man’s footsteps cross the room to the casket. I looked up to see him studying Burton. I could only see a portion of the man’s face and noted a nervous tic twitching his cheek. Had it just started?

  The man stood still as stone. When he moved it was to untie the bow on the box of flowers. The bow fell to the floor. Followed by the lid.

  Not flowers in the box, but a baseball bat. The man lifted the bat like a sledgehammer and brought it down on the corpse’s face. A hideous chunking sound. Face powder exploded into the air like pink smoke. The bat came down again, this time the head blew apart, pink clots of gelatinous goo flying through the air. I heard screaming and running at my back.

  The bat was lifting for a third shot when I got there, diving at the guy. He jumped aside, swinging the bat after me, catching me behind the ear. I went sprawling to the floor. My dizzy attempts to push to my feet resulted in a slow-motion breaststroke. The man was six feet away, still hammering. More cold goo splattered my face. A table leg below the casket broke under the onslaught and the coffin tumbled, spilling Burton to the floor beside me. His face was a puddle, a single eye floating in the middle. An inflated bladder had been provided to give volume to the deceased’s chest, but it was damaged in the attack.

  I watched in horror as Sonny Burton, now a Cyclops, stared at me, his chest deflating with a rubbery, blubbering hiss.

  Chapter 21

  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.