Caudill arrived as the sole representative of the Woslee force. He didn’t look comfortable with command, pushing the furthest chair back even further and avoiding eye contact.

“Christ Jesus,” Krenkler barked as she strode into the room, looking at Cherry and me like we did this on purpose, producing a body after she had most likely told HQ the case was wrapping up. “How many nutcases are loose in this goddamn wilderness?”

“One more than Bobby Lee Crayline,” I said. “At least.”

She fed the red mouth a strip of Juicy Fruit and shot me the hard eye. “You got no anonymous calls this time, Ryder?”

She was flogging that horse again, obsessed with that damn call. “I’ll answer for the next fifteen times you ask, Agent Krenkler, and I’ll say it slow so you can understand it. I - never - received - any—”

“Not funny. Answer the goddamn question.”

A light dawned in my head. “Wait a minute,” I said, staring her full in the eye. “There’s something you’re not telling us, isn’t there?”

She looked at the floor. I hadn’t figured Krenkler capable of guilt, but there it was.

“What?” I pushed. “Out with it.”

“Someone called us here anonymously,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Just like you.”

“Wait a minute … you’re just now telling us that—”

“Sheriff Beale didn’t call us in. I’m not sure Beale - rest his dull soul - could have found the FBI’s telephone number without a guide dog. The Bureau got a call three days before Charles Bridges was found. The caller predicted a string of murders here and invited us to take a look. The Bureau gets more weird calls than Jerry Springer. By the time we checked into it, the victim now known as Charles Bridges had shown up. We called Beale and convinced him it was in his best interest to request our presence.”

Cherry stared at Krenkler. If looks could kill, hers were cyanide laced with strychnine.

“What kind of lunatic killer invites the FBI to a killing spree?” I said. “And why didn’t you share the information from day one, so we could all know—”

“Here’s the way it’s going to work,” Krenkler barked, over-voluming my question. “Everything will continue to be run directly from this office with my full—”

“No way,” Cherry said.

Krenkler froze as if slapped. Surprised faces turned toward Cherry.

“You surely weren’t talking to me?” Krenkler said.

“I’m talking to exactly you.” Cherry stood and put her palms on the table. “Detective Ryder and I may have found a new investigative path. We are going to look into it. WE, as in Detective Ryder and me. I can’t have you treating people like ignorant savages because they don’t live in a city, Agent Krenkler. We need them to talk, not stare at their shoes and mumble.”

Krenkler snapped her gum like gunshots. “How good are you at running a cash register, Detective Cherry? You’re digging your grave here, career-wise.”

Cherry said, “Only if I screw up, and I’m not planning on screwing up. If we discover something, we’ll tell you immediately, a gesture of professional respect you seen incapable of giving to us.”

The room was as silent as the far side of the moon. The cluster of agents were too stunned to do anything but stare at the backs of their hands. Krenkler’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I’m not used to being spoken to like this.”

Cherry said “Guess what, I’ve got four years of college, eight years of on-the-job training, a host of commendations. And I’m not used to being a copy machine.”

Krenkler stared but found no response. Cherry nodded for me to follow and the door closed at our backs. “Tell me you have something,” I side-whispered as we hightailed it out of the cabin before Krenkler sent the agents after us. “Either that or I’m going to have to send you to store-clerk school.”

Cherry nodded to her vehicle. Amazingly, she was smiling. She patted my back. “It’s just wonderful what some folks can leverage with a handful of dirty pictures. Get in my ride and I’ll show you what Powers meant by education.”

We jumped in. Cherry pulled a few pages from her briefcase.

“A friend who’s a clerk in a state office came in early and started digging for me, bless her bureaucratic heart. Turns out the state keeps a record of kids being home schooled so districts don’t send out truant officers to the homes. It’s just a list of names, but names nonetheless. I did some cross-checking, some elimination because of dates and ages, and presto …”

She snapped a page in my face with a flourish and assumed a look of detectively success. That or she’d recently devoured a canary.

“Seven names from way back when …” she said. “Jessie Collier, Elijah Elks, Bemis Smith, Jimmie Hawkes, Creed Baines, Teeter Gasper, and Donald Nunn. Seven names of boys aged eleven through thirteen listed as attending the Solid Word home schooling and camp program under the stewardship of Ezekiel Tanner, pastor, the Solid Word Church of Campton, Kentucky.”

My heart skipped a beat. Maybe several.

“Jesus, Cherry, you struck gold.”

“Silver, maybe. Let me read what it says under Purpose. ‘The Solid Word School Program and Wilderness Camp is a rigorous and extensive program of care and discipline designed to strengthen students in mind, body and spiritual teachings.’ I’ve heard both Tanner and Powers talk and I can tell you that phrase got stolen from a legitimate home-school program somewhere.”

“We’ve got to find those kids,” I said. “They’re the key.”

“I’ve already started: Jessie Collier and Donald Nunn are deceased. Collier of an OD when he was twenty, thirteen years back. Nunn got shot in a drive-by in Ashland eight years ago; I’m thinking that he might be the Donald remembered by Daddy Coggins. I’m just crosschecking names and approximate ages with crime stats. Hawkes is in the state pen. Nothing yet on Smith and Nunn.”

“Our only source is in prison?” I said.

“Maximum security at LaGrange.”

“Which is where?” I asked.

She jammed the vehicle in gear, whipped away from the FBI cabins. “Buckle up. We’ll be there in a couple hours. I got things covered.”

We booked for the prison, me looking out the back window for the FBI every few miles. If it looked like a parade of hearses, it was them. But it appeared we were on our own.

Cherry knew the warden at LaGrange and arranged a private room for meeting Jimmie Hawkes, twenty-nine years of age, and a one-time student of the Solid Word home school and camp for disadvantaged children. I hoped Mr Hawkes would have plenty to say.

We stopped at the guard station outside the visitation room. A heavyset guard with caterpillar eyebrows sat at a desk absentmindedly thumbing through a Bass Pro Shops catalog.

“We’re here to see Jimmie Hawkes,” Cherry said.

The caterpillars flicked up from a page of camo hunting gear. “You ain’t eaten recently, have you?”

“Could you explain that, please?” Cherry asked.

The guard walked to the control plate on the wall and pressed a button. The steel door at his back rolled open. “Hawkes is here for trying to rob a Korean grocery in Paducah. Trouble was, the store owner kept a twelve-gauge under the counter. The guy whipped that shotgun up and fired. Took the docs eight years just to git Hawkes where he is now.”

“I can’t wait,” Cherry muttered.

We took our seats at the table. The door opened and Hawkes entered the room in profile, all we saw was the right side of his face. He seemed a series of jitters, each part of his body driven by a different rhythm, spasms in motion.

When he turned to us I heard Cherry stifle the gasp: Hawkes looked like a character from a Batman movie, if there’d been a character called Half-face or maybe just Nightmare. The shotgun blast had torn off the left side of his face from mid-cheekbone outward, blowing away bone, flesh, ear, hair, a third of the mandible.