Buried Alive (17 page)

No rustling in the underbrush. No happy bay as he raced to my side. Nothing.

I drove the nearby roads, stopping to speak to everyone I saw outside. Giving them my cell number in case they saw him.

“What’s your dog look like, mister?”

“Like nothing you’ve ever seen. And a lot of it.”

I saw a barrel-bodied guy wearing overalls and a ZZ Top beard sitting on his porch and cleaning a shotgun. I stopped, told him my story and passed him my number. “You know there are b’ars in the woods, don’t you?” he said, spitting tobacco juice over the porch rail.

I nodded. “But bears are few and far between, right?”

He thought for a moment. “E’yup. It almost ain’t never b’ars that get lost dogs …”

Thank God,
my mind said.

“They usually get tore apart by coyotes,” the guy finished.

I added the aspect of heart-pounding frenzy to my search and continued another hour, passing out my number like a religious zealot jamming tracts into people’s hands. My breath stopped at a mound of fur at the side of the road,
started again when I saw it was a deer carcass. Several times I wondered if passers-by thought me a crazy man, parked beside the road, yelling into the woods while beating a bowl with a wooden spoon. I didn’t care.

After two hours of nothing, I returned to the cabin, passing Jeremy’s home. Though I figured I’d said my goodbyes, I had to check.

“You’re still here?” he said when he answered the door, seeming to stifle a yawn.

“My dog’s gone. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

He wrinkled up his nose. “Not in two days. The smelly cur was on my porch. I was going to set out poison, but figured that would set you off.”

I stared at him.

“You’re still leaving, right?” he asked, looking like I was keeping him from a task.

“My dog’s here, Jeremy. He’s lost.”

“A dog’s going to keep you from leaving?”

“I have to find him.”

My brother looked perplexed, as if I was talking Gaelic. “But didn’t you say the thing cost you something like ten dollars?”

Mix-up had been a deal. The shelter folks were so happy to have him saved from Death Row they dropped the adoption fee. My sole cost was an annual license.

“Five,” I corrected.

He looked thoughtful. “Five bucks for a hundred-plus pounds of dog? Maybe I should start shopping at the pound. How do the things taste, Carson?”

I jammed my hands in my pocket to keep from punching out my brother’s teeth and walked away.

Mix-up hadn’t returned to the cabin. All I heard when listening into the woods were bands of rabid coyotes. Like most Americans under the age of forty, the prospect of traveling without connectivity was too daunting to consider, and I’d packed my laptop. In common with most pet owners, I had more shots of my dog than I could count - his first bath, his first swim in the Gulf, his first steak dinner. It took fifteen minutes to lash together a DOG MISSING poster complete with photos, basic description, and my phone number. I also added a reward, a hundred bucks at first, but the coyotes started howling in my head again and I upgraded to five hundred.

I climbed into the truck and rushed to the local library to print canine wanted posters, dropping them off at any venue with human traffic, gas stations, restaurants. I taped them to phone poles, bulletin boards at trailheads, the message boards used by rock climbers.

My travels took me past the Woslee County Police Department. I gritted my teeth and turned back, telling the person at the desk I wanted to speak with whoever was in charge, hoping for Caudill, but knew by the way my luck had been running it would be Beale.

“The Sherf’s on the phone,” the young woman at the desk said, pausing in the filing of her nails. “He says for you to hold your water ’til he gits done.”

I turned to the photo wall ubiquitous at cop shops,
the parade of past leaders. There were five: a mustachioed fellow who had been sheriff until 1947, a hollow-eyed and cadaverous-looking fellow who had the position until 1967, and square-jawed man who’d started in 1967 and held the position until six years ago. The names beneath the last two photos were Earl Gaines Beale and Roy Stimple Beale, granddaddy and daddy, respectively, to the current holder of the title.

McCoy had described the earlier Beales as stubborn and humorless men from a time when rules were pliable, with enemies punished, friends rewarded, and the position paying so poorly it was almost expected that illegalities - moonshining and so forth - would be overlooked if an envelope of the correct thickness moved beneath a table.

Indeed, I saw nothing akin to humor in either pair of Bealean eyes, nor anything resembling stern-jawed integrity. They looked more like members of Ike Clanton’s gang than Eliot Ness’s crew.

The desk phone buzzed. I heard a burp and Beale Junior’s voice.

“Ryder still there, Louella?”

“Yup, Sherf.”

A pause.
“Send him on back, I guess.”

I nodded thanks to Louella, pushed through the door to the rear, found Beale leaning back in his chair with his feet on a desk holding no visible sign of activity save for the lone
Hustler
half-tucked under a local newspaper. In one hand was a cigarette, in the other a bottle of Ale-8-One, a regional soft drink consumed like water by
seemingly everyone in Eastern Kentucky. His eyes were bloodshot and I wondered if he’d spiked the drink.

“You’re not up in Augusta, Sheriff?” I said by way of greeting.

“Ain’t my party, Ryder. What am I gonna do that the FBI can’t?”

“You never knew William Taithering? You’re both about the same age, from the same county.”

“I used to see him around when I was in school. He was one a them geeky types, always looked like if you slapped your hands hard, he’d jump outta his shoes. You never know who’s gonna turn into a serial killer, right?”

“That’s what Agent Krenkler thinks? That Taithering’s the killer?”

“You don’t?”

I shrugged, not wanting to debate psychology with someone who would spell it with an S in front. Beale yawned, showing teeth that saw more repair than maintenance. “Guess it don’t really matter. Looks like the FBI nailed it where Cherry couldn’t. Be nice to have some peace an’ quiet around here again.”

It suddenly occurred to Beale that I wasn’t usually standing in front of him.

“Why you here, Ryder?”

I held up a sheaf of posters. “My dog’s lost. I hoped you could distribute posters to the guys on patrol, have them keep an eye out.”

Beale sucked in smoke and waved the poster away. “We got more to do than look for a lost dog, Ryder.”

“There’s a five-hundred-dollar reward, Sheriff.”

Beale’s eyes widened. He rocked forward in his chair, hand waving the
gimme
motion.

I went from Beale’s office to Cherry’s. Her desk was antithetical to Beale’s, a visual cacophony of files, folders, and photos.

“I made these up,” I said, handing over a dozen posters. “If you’re out, could you please—”

“I’ll put ’em all over the place. Give me all you have and I’ll take care of it.”

I gratefully handed her the stack. When I looked down at her desk, I saw it was covered with her handwritten notes and photos of Burton and Powers and the man in the shack.

“You’re pondering the cases?” I said.

She frowned, tossed her pen atop the mound of papers. “I’ve been thinking …”

“And?”

“What if Taithering really is the killer? Or was. What if Charpentier was wrong with all that academic symbol and metaphor hoo-hah, and Taithering was another Manson or Gein or …”

“You mean someone more like the Zodiac Killer,” I said, lapsing into my detective persona. “The Zodiac left cryptic messages.” I went to the whiteboard and picked up a red marker, scrawled the odd geocache sign on the clean white surface.

=(8)=

“How does that relate to Taithering?” I asked.

“I don’t know … yet.”

Cherry crossed the room to the board and wiped the symbol away. I figured she hated the damn thing. She hopped atop the small conference table and pulled her feet beneath her long legs, sitting cross-legged. She fixed me with the right eye.

“Do you ever think we were wrong, Charpentier was wrong … Taithering was the killer?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

She nodded toward the paperwork jungle on her desk. “I’m revisiting Tandee Powers and Burton. Soldering-iron Man’s still a cipher, but he’s wired into this somehow, no pun intended. I want to see if Powers ever crossed paths with Burton.”

“You sharing anything with Krenkler?”

The eyes darkened. “As much as she shares with me. At least until I find something solid.”

“She still using you as a messenger service?”

“No. Sometimes she has me make copies.”

I thanked her for distributing the posters, and turned to carry on the search for my lost dog. I felt Cherry’s eyes inspecting my back as I left.

“Good luck finding your doggy,” she said quietly as the door closed between us.

The night brought little sleep, every sound causing me to sit up with the hope my companion had found his way home. Either that or I heard ravenous and red-eyed hell-hounds pursing my gentle giant of a dog.

Morning arrived with a siren’s call, literally, a long keening howl at seven a.m. I stumbled out to the porch, saw Cherry stepping from her vehicle. I saw her mouth move but heard nothing until she reached inside to kill the screamer.

“Sorry I’m becoming your alarm clock,” she said. “But a new entry on the geocache site arrived minutes ago.”

“It wasn’t Taithering,” I said, feeling like someone had kicked me in the gut.

Cherry sighed. “Doesn’t look that way. The coordinates are close to Rock Bridge.”

I’d hiked that trail my second day here. Rock Bridge trail inscribed a mile-long circle down into the Gorge to the trail’s namesake, a natural stone arch over Swift Camp Creek. It was basically a dilettante’s trail, the Park Service having poured a slender asphalt band most of the distance, winding through rhododendron tunnels and past towering hemlocks ringed with ferns. Though paved, the trail was no cakewalk, owing to the steep angle in and out of the valley.

Cherry looked past me toward the cabin, saw no happy mound of mutt. “Your dog back?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Look on the bright side. He’s probably found a girlfriend and they’re doing something that doesn’t involve you, at least for a day or two. So come with me, Ryder. We’ve come this far together.”

“What about the Feds?”

“Krenkler’s in Washington. Some kind of meeting not related to here. Her people are still in Augusta. Krenkler was so convinced Taithering was the killer she set up a command post there. The Feds are tearing Taithering’s house apart for evidence. They sent his computer to the forensic lab in Washington, that type of thing. I alerted her to the new geocache entry. She didn’t sound happy, and she’s heading this way on the red-eye.”

I startled internally, fearing the Feds finding my brother’s fingerprints in Taithering’s home. Then I recalled that, save to pat Taithering in camaraderie or consolation, my
brother’s hands had never left his pockets. Always a step ahead.

“So we won’t have to deal with Feds at the site?” I asked.

“Not for a while, at least.”

I looked down: wrinkled shirt, Levis, bare feet. “I don’t suppose I have time for a shower? Before we head to Rock Bridge?”

She hid the smile poorly. “You got time for shoes. That’s it.”

In a minute I was inside the SUV and pulling on a fresh shirt and my hiking boots. Cherry turned and headed out of the hollow, passing my brother’s home.

“No stopping for Charpentier?” I asked.

She shifted to low and angled up the hill. “I’ll be frank, Ryder. The guy’s got more smarts in his pinky than I do in my entire brain. He knows things about the insides of people I’ll never see …” She clammed up and concentrated on driving.

“There’s a
but
in there,” I prompted.

“But the more I think about it, the more the guy weirds me out. It’s like he knows too much about how people work … does that make sense? It makes me nervous when he looks at me. It’s like he’s studying thoughts I haven’t had yet. If we find anything that needs shrink action, then we’ll come calling on the Doc.”

Nice alarm system, Cherry,
I thought, pulling on my seat belt for another whirlwind adventure in driving.

When we arrived, Beale had closed off the road, Caudill and another county cop manning the block. Caudill waved
me through, then turned to stop one of the ubiquitous RVs from pulling on to Rock Bridge Road. I wondered what Caudill would tell the tourists.

We’ve got a madman killing folks right and left. Have you considered Yosemite?

We drove to the trailhead and found McCoy pulling a backpack from the gate of his vehicle. Beale was pacing and tapping his holster, trying to appear in command. When he saw me, his dark eyes went a shade darker, but he didn’t complain aloud.

“Christ in a hammock, where you been, Cherry?” Beale bellowed. “I ain’t got all day.”

“Let me go first, Sheriff,” McCoy said, shouldering into his pack. “There are things I need to see.”

“Like what?”

“Spiders.”

Beale, confused, jumped in behind McCoy. Cherry and I fell in after that. We descended a long series of wood and rock steps into the valley, jogging toward the coordinates on the geocache site. Every hundred feet or so McCoy stopped to peer into trailside vegetation.

“Almost there,” McCoy yelled, studying his GPS as we ran alongside Swift Camp Creek and passed Creation Falls. “The coordinates are at Rock Bridge.”

We picked up speed, Beale now stumbling and puffing two hundred feet back, years of biscuits and gravy taking their toll.

“Oh, lord,” I heard McCoy say.

Rock Bridge was at the far end of a miniature plain,
a flat and open acre scoured by seasonal floodwaters. The top of the rock arch was fifteen feet above the slow, green water, the bottom about ten feet from the surface.