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