“Danger, destruction, display?” Cherry shuddered and looked to me. “You studied psychology, Ryder. You agree with this?”

In truth they were not connections I would have made so quickly. But when it came to sailing through the dark waters of the human mind, my brother was an Odysseus. I nodded the affirmative.

“Let me talk to Taithering by myself,” Cherry said.

“This is truly insane,” Cherry said as we drove back to Woslee County, Taithering still home in Augusta. “If Krenkler finds out, she’ll tear me apart. My superiors will have no choice but to pull me from my position and … jeez, I don’t even want to know.”

“William Taithering was telling you the truth,” Jeremy said.

Cherry nodded. “Burton was a mentor, a big-brother type, supposedly providing a role model. What Burton provided was increasing amounts of liquor and pornography. His bonding culminated on the floor of the snack truck during a weekend camping trip. The date, as you might expect, was June 23rd. The confused kid let Burton have his way for a couple of months, until Burton found another fish, I imagine.”

“Taithering never told anyone in authority?” I asked.

“You know how it works. Burton convinced Taithering that he initiated the relationship. Plus it would have gotten to Taithering’s parents, very religious folk who …”

“Who would never look at their son the same way again,” I said.

“That’s what used to happen to raped women,” Cherry said, her voice simultaneously sad and angry.

“You’re doing the right thing,” I assured Cherry.

“Would you do the same thing, Ryder? Take that kind of—”

I heard Cherry gasp. I looked down the road. A quarter-mile ahead and coming at us like a flying rage were two black cruisers with grille lights blazing and sirens blasting.

“Get off the road,” I said.

“Where?” Cherry said.

“There,” I pointed. “A farm lane.”

Cherry whipped off the road, skidding on to the lane. She pulled ahead and we turned to watch as the two cruisers howled past. We saw Krenkler in the lead cruiser. And then they were over a hill and gone.

“Is it what it appears?” Jeremy said.

Cherry nodded. “Yes, Doctor. The Feds have discovered William Taithering.”

24

We returned to the road and drove for several miles before anyone spoke, Cherry taking the honor.

“What happens when Taithering mentions the cop who let him go?” she whispered. “Me.”

“He won’t mention our visit,” Jeremy said. “I suspect that, given Mr Taithering’s mental state, he’ll …” Jeremy paused, settled back in the seat. “Never mind.”

A hushed and pensive Cherry drove back to Woslee, turning down into the hollow to drop Jeremy off, then to my place where I picked up a lonely Mr Mix-up and followed Cherry to the ECKLE office. Whatever was happening in Augusta would get back to her soon enough.

The hour hand swept slowly and the sun dropped in the sky. There was a field behind the office and I walked its perimeter with my dog. He seemed to have absorbed my tension, padding at my side rather than bounding madly through the furrows of earth. Twice I saw Cherry wandering outside her small dank office, as if needing sunlight to clear the shadows left by William Taithering’s tale of menace and grief at the hands of Sonny Burton.

I wasn’t convinced we’d done the right thing in not bringing Taithering back to Woslee. But that was part of the potency of my brother: he had with spellbinding wizardry created a scene where we had bonded with Taithering, a sort of reverse Stockholm syndrome.

I kicked a clod of dirt, sending Mix-up racing after broken clumps of earth. I turned back toward the highway, saw Cherry waving frantically from the door of her trailer office.

News had arrived.

I was running by the time I got to her, Mix-up churning at my heels. Cherry’s face was blank.

“You heard something?” I asked, climbing the metal steps, stepping into the trailer.

“Taithering’s dead.”

“What happened?” I blurted. “How?”

She laughed without humor. “Krenkler put everyone on her team and the Woslee PD to calling florists shops in an expanding radius.”

“The flower box Taithering brought.”

“Had to come from somewhere, right? The calls crept outward, county by county. Someone at a florist shop in Augusta recalled selling a single rose to a man named William Taithering. It stuck in her mind because he asked for a larger-sized box to hold a single flower.”

“The Feds raced up there on that info alone?”

Cherry waved her hand, wait. “Taithering’s purchase seemed odd, so they looked closer at his most recent credit-card purchases. He’d been at a sporting-goods shop two days ago. Guess what he bought?”

My head drooped. “A ball bat.”

“They also found that, an hour before the attack, Taithering purchased fuel and antacids at a gas station eight miles north of the church.”

I remembered my phone conversation with John Morgenstern. He’d said Krenkler was thorough. I hadn’t expected her to be fast. I didn’t like the woman, and because of it had underestimated her.

“Anything else?”

“Here’s where it gets a little sketchy. I called my buddy again, the ex-cop from the area. Seems Krenkler radioed the locals that she was coming, making it sound like a visit from the Queen. The Augusta cops were to put all their resources at her fingertips. Except the sheriff up there isn’t Roy Beale. The guy has a backbone. Plus he knew Taithering - the guy did his taxes - and he wanted a pow-wow to see what the Feds had on Taithering. If it looked solid, the sheriff himself was planning on visiting Taithering, letting his people handle the take-down and trying for peaceful.”

“That didn’t sit well with Krenkler, I take it?”

“Long story short: the Feds bypassed the locals and surrounded Taithering’s house. Krenkler did the bullhorn bit for a few minutes, then they tossed in the flash-bangs and tear gas and stormed the place.”

“Taithering?”

“His body was swinging from a joist in the basement. He’d hanged himself with a loop of electrical wire. By the way, there was another loop on the joist beside the first one: broken clothes line.”

I saw the picture, felt my heart fall away.

“Yep,” Cherry said, seeing my stricken face. “The tragic little man even screwed up his first suicide attempt. The cheap rope broke, so he had to cut the cord off a lawn edger. ”

Cherry looked at me and her eyes were wet. I wanted to hold her and tell her nothing was her fault. That the sad and broken man named William Taithering had his fate sealed two decades ago in a snack truck parked outside a youth camp. That there was only one person responsible for the tragedy of Taithering’s life, and that was the grinning and malevolent beast known as Sonny Burton. I wanted to go with Donna Cherry to a place where everything was still and quiet and we could share the feeling of another human heart inches away.

But a voice called between the hearts and said I was using the sorrow of another to gain a momentary pleasure. That it was my way, part of my condition.

I told Cherry I hoped to see her soon and retreated without looking back.

25

I took Mix-up to the cabin, then reluctantly returned to Jeremy’s. It was full night and a gibbous moon blazed above. I knocked and entered. The electric lights were out, a smattering of white tapers lighting the downstairs, my brother’s favorite form of illumination. I had long ago recognized that candlelight best approximated the darting shadows and darkened recesses of my brother’s head. Nothing was quite real nor visible in the round.

Jeremy was sitting in a chair in the corner, in deep shadow. He wore his gardening outfit, white shirt and dark Levis, with the long white gardener’s jacket that reached to his knees.