“May I ask how?”

He stuck out his tongue, unfurling an appendage rivaling Gene Simmons’s taste organ. Had I been in water I would have run for the shore screaming alligator! The old guy let it dangle a few seconds, then slurped it back between his lips. He wiped his mouth on his shoulder and grinned up at me.

“This was when Tandee was in her thirties. I was twenny years older, but my pecker and tongue could party all night. Wanna see it again?”

“That’s OK. How often did you and Miz Powers see one another?”

He shivered his hand, meaning not much. “I was married back then, had to sneak around. My wife’d go off to visit her kin in Missouri and Tandee an’ me’d run up to the gamblin’ boats on the Ohio River, get a room. When me and Tandee got together, buddy, it was something to see and hear.”

“When was the last time you and Miz Powers were, uh, together?”

“Been over fifteen years.” He paused. “Tandee started gettin’ too nasty for me.”

One wrinkled claw was rubbing beside his zipper. I nodded my thanks and moved quickly away. Cherry had her hand on Miz Coggins’s shoulder as she passed over one of her cards. Ms Coggins nodded and retreated to the kitchen. Cherry and I let ourselves out. The fresh air was a welcome relief.

“You get anything else?” I asked her.

“Just what you heard: Tandee Powers was probably a lesbian.”

We got in the cruiser. Cherry fired up the motor. “Actually,” I said, “she was probably a nymphomaniac. Surreptitiously screwing a small group of the like-minded of either gender. Between appearances at church socials, of course.”

Her head spun to me. “Where’d that come from?”

I looked toward the house. The old man had whirred to the door in his scooter. He was parked at the threshold, winking at me, his hand tickling in his lap as he slurped that monster tongue in and out.

“I see you made a new friend,” Cherry said as she backed down the drive. “He seems happy you visited.”

14

“What’s the next step, Detective?” I asked when we’d put a couple miles between us and the tongue.

“I want to make sure I get everything tight for Bob, I mean Agent Dray. So I’m heading back to Sonny Burton’s crime scene to make sure there’s nothing I missed.”

“Deep in the woods, right?” I didn’t like the idea of Cherry alone in the forest with a psychopath on the loose. There had been cases of law officers being stalked and cut down when the moment presented.

“I’ll be fine. Lee McCoy said he’d go along.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I said.

We arrived at Sonny Burton’s murder scene a half-hour later, back a long fire lane. The nearest house was a mile away, down a long hollow. Hemlocks soared above, filtering the light into a gentle yellow that turned the nearby creek to gold. The upslope on the far side of the creek was covered with ferns so delicate they seemed more a green mist than rooted plants. The air smelled of pine. I found the beauty of the setting at horrible opposition to what had happened here.

Burton’s case file described a good ol’ boy, as we called them in the South. He worked hard and played harder. He liked to fight and had been a boxer in high school, earning a partial boxing scholarship to a small college. He hunted and fished and owned the best bass boat in Woslee County, the finest shotgun. His Dodge Ram 350 dualie pickup boasted more chrome than any other truck for miles. He loved Vegas. When time was limited, he’d hit the gambling boats on the Ohio River. Burton gave to local charities. Bought ads in high school yearbooks. He drove his snack truck in the county’s Fourth of July parade, the white step-van third in line behind the honor guard, the fire truck and police cars, and ahead of the band, VFW marchers, and the winners of the “Cutest Baby” contest.

Burton had been married four times, each link in the marriage chain under two years in length, with one union lasting all of six weeks. From a psychological standpoint, serial marriage could mean several things, none of them attractive.

Cherry and I inspected the area as she detailed what she’d found upon arrival: Sonny Burton’s body beneath the truck tire, chest almost flattened, innards squeezed out through his mouth and lower opening. Lee McCoy - the first to notice the murder scene’s location on the geocache website - had been pacing beside the truck when Cherry arrived, frustrated by his helplessness.

I knelt beside a flat chunk of stone, three feet by five or so. Faint but fresh-looking scratches were inscribed in the stone, geometric, like something square had rested on the rock, scarring it.

“What are these, Cherry? The scratches on the rock?”

“I figured they came from the killer moving the truck around. Driving over the rock.”

I scratched at the stone with my fingernail. “It’s dolomite, a dense sandstone. Rubber tires wouldn’t scratch dolomite.”

“My, my, Ryder. You’re a geologist as well as a detective?”

On our hike McCoy had pointed out dolomite layers in the Gorge strata and demonstrated how hard it was for sandstone. I probably should have mentioned that fact. Instead, I patted the stone as if drawing secrets from it with my fingertips.

“Something hard rested here, metal, I suspect. The object would have been a couple feet from Burton’s head. That would place it beneath the forward section of the truck’s frame. Would you know if the frame is—”

“Don’t ask. I didn’t study truck design.”

I paced a circle around the stone, eyes not leaving its surface. “I’ve got a hunch about these scars. But we need to go to the Woslee impound and look inside Burton’s truck.”

“I got another idea.” Cherry pulled out her phone and dialed. Tossed the phone to me. “Tell Caudill what you need.”

The young officer arrived soon after, cradling a black cylinder and a two-foot metal pole beneath his arm. “A twenty-ton bottle jack,” Caudill said. “Bolted behind the driver’s seat in Burton’s step van. The handle was back there, too.”

The hydraulic cylinder was welded to a square steel base. I set the base on the stone. The scratches lined up with the base. Cherry studied the match-up and I saw the pictures enter her imagination.

“Oh lord, Ryder … the truck wasn’t driven on to Burton. It was lowered.”

I nodded and pushed the handle into the jack, marking the jack post with a pencil. I cranked it up, checked the distance traveled. Six or seven cranks moved the post an inch. I stood back and looked between the scene photos and the ground.

“Crank the truck up eighteen or so inches. Put Burton beneath the tire with his hands behind him, helpless. Lower the truck in one-crank increments. With each crank the tire dropped a fraction of an inch. Burton might even have been conscious to hear his ribs break as his chest caved in.”

“Tortured,” Cherry whispered. “Like Tandee Powers. And John Doe with the soldering iron.” She crouched beside the stone. “Why use his truck? There have to be easier ways.”

“The truck was symbolic to the killer. He was probably talking to Burton as he lowered the truck, getting off on the control. Making Burton beg and scream.”

Cherry grimaced. “What the hell would the killer say, Ryder? ‘Here comes the snack truck’?”

We turned to a roar of engines and crunch of gravel. Beale raced up in his SUV. Behind him was a second SUV from the sheriff’s department driven by a fat guy with stained teeth and the weasel-eyed look of a natural sycophant; every department had at least one. I saw outlines of two tall people in the second, figured it was more of Beale’s small force.

Beale skidded so close to my feet that I stepped back. He jumped out and strode to Caudill.

“What the fuck you doing here?” Beale spat.

“R-Ryder needed a jack from Sonny’s truck,” Caudill stammered. “He wanted me to bring it out.”