“How long did this go on?”

“Three years. Then the uncle welshed on a gambling debt. Got his throat slit one night. Bobby Lee was sent off to a group home. Later, of course, he showed up here. Looking to fight professionally. I gave him a spotlight. He made himself a star.”

Prince fiddled with his chains. Cherry and I sat in stunned silence until a question crossed my mind. “The time he returned from his first trip to the Institute, Mickey. How was he during that period?”

“I was hoping he’d be calmer. But Bobby Lee seemed even angrier.”

“Angry because he’d killed a man?” Cherry asked. “Self-anger?”

Prince looked drained, exposed. He sat heavily.

“Look, Detectives, I’m not a bright guy in math and geography and all that. I couldn’t tell you where in the water Hawaii is, and I don’t care. I know about people, like I can see through doors most people can’t. It helps me understand my fighters and how to shape them according to what they need. With Bobby it was different. He got to be champ, but that wasn’t what he needed. He needed something else. I’m not sure I can explain.”

“Try,” I said.

“I always needed to be rich,” Prince said, almost like an apology. “It took time, but now I am. It feels good and makes me happy. But I think, what if God opened the clouds when I was poor and said, ‘Mickey, I hate to tell you this, but no matter what you do, you’re always gonna be poor as dirt.’” Prince raised his eyes to me. “That’s the feeling I got from Bobby. Does that make any sense?”

“Like Bobby Lee Crayline knew something was to be forever denied him?” I said.

“Yeah. Exactly. Just like that.”

Cherry aimed the big cruiser back toward Woslee County. We didn’t know the Whys of the murders, but we were steadily discovering the Who of Bobby Lee Crayline. I pulled my ballcap down over my eyes, leaned back, and tried to dope-out what had been denied Bobby Lee, getting nowhere. Around Lexington Cherry broke my haze with a question.

“The kidnapping - how did Crayline get found out?”

“Pure luck,” I yawned. “A surveying firm was determining the best route for a gas pipeline. One of the workers needed permission to survey a corner of the farm Crayline was renting. The worker ignored about a dozen No Trespassing signs, and walked the long drive to the house and barn. He was about to walk into sight when he saw Bobby Lee, buck naked except for a jockstrap, step into the barn. He watched Crayline pull some boards off a hole in the dirt floor and start yelling into it. The surveyor scooted and told his tale to the law. Why?”

“I was just thinking … Crayline was going to kill the guy he kidnapped. Was it revenge for beating him up in front of an audience, you think?”

“I think Crayline always needed to win, no matter what Prince said. Bobby Lee’s driven to come out on top.”

“So why didn’t Crayline finish up where he left off? With the guy he left off on?”

I pulled my cellphone, rang the number for X-Ventures. Got through to Prince. He started with, “Please tell me you figured out I had nothing to do with Bobby Lee’s escape or anything else.”

I said, “You’re dealing straight, Mick. But we got to thinking, what if Crayline wanted to pick up where he left off. With the Stone guy.”

“Too late. Jessie Stone’s somewhere in Ireland. He booked after Bobby Lee busted out. Maybe now he can come home.”

I thanked Prince and rang off. Cherry shot me the questioning eye. I said, “It seems Jessie Stone retreated to the Emerald Isle to avoid seeing Bobby Lee again.”

“Probably the smartest thing the guy ever did,” Cherry said.

We crossed the Woslee County line at seven thirty p.m., putting at our backs a company that created fighting humans in much the way that Bobby Lee Crayline’s uncle bred fighting dogs, though Prince did it with his fighters’ consent and without deprivation and cruelty. There was a ready market for bloody combat, though the dog-and child-fights were hidden away in backcountry arenas while those who satisfied their bloodlust on national pay television made millions of dollars.

But at base, they seemed to me the same.

Cherry had been thinking along the same lines. “Prince reckoned people paid fifty bucks to watch two guys knock each other senseless in a cage,” she said. “Did I hear that right?”

I nodded.

“And Crayline was an even bigger draw after knocking a guy dead in the ring?”

“Sure enough.”

Cherry thought a long time. Shot me a glance. “You ever read any early human history, Ryder?”

“Some.”

“Ever come across the theory about two main proto-human tribes way back there? One was cruder and less evolved, the other smarter and more advanced? And how the advanced tribe conquered the lesser beings, then went on to become who we are today?”

“I recall the theory,” I said.

“You ever think maybe the other tribe won?”

41

We stopped by my place and I got the same answer on Mix-up.

“He’s probably dead,” I said. “Or taken by someone.”

“He’s a big dog, Carson,” Cherry said, patting my back. “On size alone he probably scares the coyotes. And, uh, he’s not the sort of adorably cute critter people want to snatch up. He’s out there and he’ll come back.”

I nodded, thankful for Cherry’s optimism, but not convinced. We returned to her place. “I’m going over the lives of Burton, Tanner and Powers with a fine-tooth comb,” she said. “Find out what they could possibly have had in common with Crayline, where paths crossed … It’s a nightmare.”

“It’s tough,” I sympathized, yawning. “But basic detective shoe leather. I usually start with interviewing neighbors, move on to—”

Cherry interrupted me by taking my hand. She led me outside, pointing to the west. “What do you see?”

I smiled, unsure of what was happening. “Uh, mountains, more mountains. Trees, valleys.”

“And all around us? East, North, South?”

“More of the same.”

“Woslee County is almost three hundred square miles of area, Carson. With a population under six thousand people. The biggest town is Campton, four hundred people strong. The tallest building is three stories. There’s two small apartment complexes, a few trailer courts. Most everyone else is scattered over the remaining three hundred square miles. People come and go as they please, no eyes around to see. Except for a few nosy-parkers, no one keeps tabs on anyone else.”

“Ah,” I said, getting her drift. “Not a lot of neighbors to interview.”

“It’s hard for urban folks to have secret lives; they’re surrounded by casual onlookers, curious eyes, surveillance cameras. They might have a hundred neighbors in a single apartment wing. In country as sparse as this, secret lives are a lot easier. Bobby Lee Crayline could have dated Tandee Powers for all I know. Or played poker at Sonny Burton’s house three nights a week. The thing is, no one would ever know. I can’t get that through Krenkler’s head.”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize.”

She kissed my cheek. “You’re forgiven. But only because you’re cute. I’ve got to take the sparse input on the vics and squeeze it like a stone, see if I can get out that little extra juice that turns the case. All in between Krenkler’s running me ragged.”

I went to the porch swing and sat, doing my part to revisit the cases. In my head I listened to people we’d interviewed, re-walked the murder scenes. Ten minutes later I was replaying my tag-along to Berlea Coggins’s house and the input from the Tongue.

“I want to visit Mr Tongue again,” I said.

“Miz Coggins’s daddy? I thought he bounced off Powers a few times and that was that.”

“I remember him saying he gave her up because she got too nasty for him. I thought he meant her lesbian tendencies. In retrospect, I’m thinking it would take more than that to be nasty to Coggins.”