50

Her words were a Zen punch that left me reeling with a drunken clarity, like the world was spinning, but in perfect focus. My fingers were shaking so much it took me two tries to dial the number fished from my notebook.

“Mickey Prince, please,” I told the receptionist. “It’s Detective Ryder.” A pause as the call was announced. I could almost feel Prince’s hand hovering over the phone. He picked it up and launched his false bonhomie.

“Hey, Detective Ryder. Great to hear from you. We still cool?”

“We’re as cool as we’ll ever be, Mick.”

“Uh, sure. Good, I guess. S’up?”

“You put new names on most of your fighters, right?” I asked.

“Like I said, you can’t seem tough if your name is Lester Doodle.”

“I’m gonna read you a list of names, all right?”

“Go for it, Detective.”

I turned my notepad to the boys in the Solid Word program and commenced my recitation, omitting Hawkes’s name because we knew his history.

“Jessie Collier … Elijah Elks … Bemis Smith … Creed Baines … Teeter Gasper … Donald Nunn.” I finished, said, “Well, Mickey, know any of them?” I held my breath and looked at Cherry.

“Sure,” Prince said. “Teeter Gasper. Ain’t that a silly fucking thing to name a kid? I guess if he was twins the other’d be Totter.”

“Who did Teeter become, Mick? What did you name him?”

“Teeter was the guy that whipped Bobby Lee,” Prince said. “Then got stuck in the ground for his efforts. Teeter turned into the Mad Dog … Jessie Stone.”

I set the phone down, stunned.

“What?” Cherry said.

“Jessie Stone never went to Ireland,” I said. “He came home to the mountains to destroy his past.”

“Stone and Crayline had to know one another as kids, right?” Cherry said after taking several head-shaking moments to process the information. “They were fighters from different camps?”

I saw in my head the Appalachian mountain range stretching from the Talladega mountains in north Alabama up to, and past, Kentucky. Saw nondescript vehicles ferrying young fighters under cover of backwoods darkness. Vans pulling beside barns filling with raucous drunks, pockets thick with rolled bills, yelling odds as they sucked down bottles of beer, shots of whiskey. The kids stripping off their clothes and pulling on their cups as their trainer-coaches bellowed incentives.

I nodded. “Forced to beat the shit out of one another. Only two kinds of bonds come from that: Fierce hatred or total allegiance.”

“I’ll put out an All Points Bulletin on Stone,” Cherry said. “Then I’m gonna go fill everyone in, even Krenkler.”

“I think she’ll be happy with this news. You’re saved from a life sentence at Wal-Mart.”

“You coming?” she asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Bask in some of the glory?”

“You can have my share. I’ve still got thinking to do. Be careful out there. Stone’s lost his buddy and it may cause an explosion. He killed Beale, who had no part in the fights except for his genetic connection. It’s an insane jump, but…”

“But Stone’s insane,” Cherry completed. She zipped away to brief the county guys. I paced the room, writing down all the information on the murder scenes instead of the victims. I made coffee and studied timelines. Compared them to sunrise data. Scribbled, erased, scribbled again.

Nearly an hour passed. I was making ties and conclusions when my cellphone rang.

“Detective Ryder? This is Judd Caudill. Detective Cherry left there yet? She was heading over here to give us some new infor—”

I looked at my watch. It was a ten-minute drive. Cherry should have been there forty minutes ago.

“She hasn’t shown?” I asked, feeling sweat prickle beneath my arms.

“Huh-uh. Any idea where she could be?”

I told Caudill to get some cruisers on the road, check for an accident. I also advised to avoid usual communications modes, switching to alternate channels or phones when possible. I didn’t want the info broadcast on the air.

I called McCoy. He was out on a trail but showed up twenty minutes later, fear darkening his eyes.

“Let’s not start worrying yet, Lee,” I said. “A lot of little things could have happened. A flat tire. A stop at the store. A visit to her home to pick something up.”

“Those are rationalizations,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

When another hour passed with no sign of Cherry, McCoy and I went to check her home. The door was locked. “She keep a key anywhere?” I asked.

“I’ve never been here. She kept trying to have me over for supper, but schedules never worked. We always ended up at a restaurant.”

The oak door built by Cherry’s Uncle Horace was castle-quality. I broke a side window and unlatched it, crawling through and opening the door. It was cool and dark inside, scented with a woman’s potions. A plate and coffee cup sat in the sink. The bed was made. I looked at the wall and saw Cherry’s favorite photo, her with Uncle Horace. She beamed her bright child’s smile into the empty room.

“Everything looks like it would have when she left this morning,” I said.

“There’s a couple of messages on the phone machine,” McCoy said. He pressed the Play button. The first was a bank trying to upgrade Cherry to the new Super Titanium credit card. A pause and the machine beeped to a woman’s voice with a central Kentucky accent, warm vowels, consonants softened at the edges. The time signature placed the message as arriving fifteen minutes back.

“Hello, Detective. This is Daisy Lutes at the state property evaluator’s office. I’ve been trying your mobile phone and can’t get you. Give me a call when you get a chance, please.”

Lutes finished by leaving her number. I sat on the couch and called, explaining that Cherry and I were working together.

Lutes said, “Detective Cherry wanted me to check on a parcel of land. I guess it’s about forty-six acres.”

The fight camp.

“See, what happened was a foreclosure,” Miz Lutes continued. “The owner stopped paying.”

“Who was the owner?”

“Allen Eckles.”

“Who?”

“This was … lemme see, twenny years back. I’m looking at the paperwork. Right here, Allen Eckles. Lived in West Liberty back then. Looks like Eckles died and the government foreclosed.”

“The state owns the property?”

“That’s what I couldn’t find out because things back then aren’t on the computer. We had to root through boxes. What I found was the land got bought at auction seven weeks later. Price was eighty-seven thousand dollars.”

“Who bought it?” I asked.

“Now I just had that sheet here … daw-gone, bet I left it in the copier. Hang on a second.”

I held the phone to my cheek and looked over at McCoy. He stood riveted before the wall of photos and objects. “I wish I’d gotten over here for supper,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why?”

He nodded to an arrangement of wood and metal implements on the wall, the odd tools that had given me an uncomfortable feeling.

“Donna didn’t have any idea what this stuff is, did she?” he said.

“She found it in Horace’s shed. Some kind of farm gear, she supposed. You know what it is, Lee?”

He blew out a breath. “That piece of wood on the right is called a break stick, used to separate dogs when they’re fighting. That lead and leather gizmo is a weight collar to build a fighting dog’s neck strength. Beside it is a—”

Miz Lutes popped back on the phone. “Mr Ryder? I got the name of the guy that bought the place from the government.”

“Horace Cherry, right?” I said, feeling lightheaded.

“Horace Thurgood Cherry,” Miz Lutes said, adding, “Ain’t that some fine kind of name?”

51

“Horace Cherry was the Colonel?” McCoy asked.