“You’re sure?”

I nodded. “The impresario of the circus from hell.”

“What does this have to do with Donna?”

“She’s Horace Cherry’s only surviving relative. She once called herself the last Cherry left on the tree.”

It took McCoy eight seconds to get it. His voice fell to a hush.

“Stone killed Beale as a stand-in for Daddy.”

“Now Cherry’s a stand-in for Uncle Horace,” I said. “She’s the only available symbol of the Colonel.”

“Why Colonel?” McCoy asked. “Horace was never in the military. Or anything else I can recall.”

I went to an arrangement at the far end of the wall, the framed-certificate subdivision. Cherry’s papers, mainly, a couple of diplomas, training certifications and so forth. I pointed to a framed document that looked straight from a physician’s wall.

“Right here, Lee. A certificate naming Horace T. Cherry a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels.”

McCoy scoffed. “I’m a Kentucky Colonel. Every third Kentuckian is a Colonel. It’s what Kurt Vonnegut called a granfalloon, a proud and meaningless association of human beings.”

“Burton was Coach. Tanner was the Preacher. Powers was the Lady. It makes sense for Horace Cherry to be the Colonel.”

“Come to think of it, that sounds right. Horace was a human granfalloon. A blusterer, full of himself. Loud. Drank too much. Gambled too much. Thought himself above everyone, the law included. He used to boast about screwing the government out of taxes.”

“Why does Cherry think so highly of him?”

“After high school she was rarely around Horace, just her memories of him. Memories have softer edges. And it seems like most people have someone - friend, relative - where they have a blind spot, right?”

“I, uhm, guess. How did Horace make his money?”

“Whatever turned a buck. He’d own a coin laundry for a couple years, sell it, buy a sandwich shop, trade it for a trophy store. To hear him talk, he was Donald Trump.”

“All the more reason to affect the Colonel moniker,” I said, not going into the insecurities involved. “How did he die?”

McCoy pointed to the overlook. “Conventional wisdom has Horace taking some kind of fainting spell at the edge of the cliff. He didn’t make bottom, but got hung up in a tree. I led the recovery team and had to rappel to the body.”

“Conventional wisdom?” I asked.

McCoy stared into my eyes as if weighing something. “When I was wrestling Horace into the basket I saw a scrap of paper pinned to his shirt. The words were so small they seemed whispered. He never whispered.”

“What did it say?”

“I’m sorry for everything.”

“What happened to—”

“I pulled it off and hid it. It would have produced nothing but hurt. And nothing would have changed.”

McCoy went to marshal his forces, rangers and park personnel driving every back road in the area, looking for anything that might lead to Cherry. He was going to alert the FBI and tell them that Cherry was missing. I advised that his people use alternate communications like phones unless an emergency, avoiding tipping their location over the police and emergency bands.

Finding anything was a tall order. Given the ability for concealment learned from Crayline, I figured Stone could stay invisible until his mission was accomplished.

But I had accumulated enough information to make a few conjectures.

They all led to my brother’s door.

52

I cut the engine and drifted up Jeremy’s drive. His car was in the side yard with a coiled hose beside it, the vehicle freshly washed. The residue was blue-gray, the color of the clay where Beale had died. I looked inside the Subaru as I passed and saw a stick shift.

My brother wasn’t on his porch or in the garden and I figured he was playing with his scared children and blustering drunkards. I turned the doorknob. Locked. I started to knock, but ended up kicking in the door. It swung around and banged the wall.

Coffee break: Jeremy sat in the living room, cup in hand, wearing a three-piece suit with a pink shirt and red striped tie. The Bloomberg channel was on television, stock quotes crawling across the screen.

Jeremy’s eyes went wide. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY—”

I strode to his chair. When he tried to jump up, I shoved him down. I said, “What’s the difference between a Hindu ascetic’s cave - a hole in a hill - and a hole dug in a barn floor when it comes to getting in touch with one’s inner self?”

“What are you babbling about?”

“Teeter Gasper, aka Jessie Stone. Crayline didn’t kidnap Stone, right, Brother? Crayline was hardening Stone for a warrior’s journey. Teaching him to turn off outer influences - like living in an open sewer.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Burying himself alive, that was Crayline’s magic. When his mama OD’d he sought refuge in a root cellar. Five years old and that’s where it started.”

“Where what started, Carson? You worry me when you get like this.”

“It’s where Crayline learned to shut off the outside. When he was eight years old he turned off time to get a larger share of candy. When he was being trained to fight, he stayed imprisoned in a lightless basement, tucking inside himself and getting stronger. When he escaped from the Institute, he lived in a pit under a house for weeks, waiting for the search to die down. So when Stone was readying to meet the past, Bobby Lee put him in a pit. Stone was to retreat inside himself and invent the symbolism necessary to destroy his tormentors, a rite of passage prescribed by Bobby Lee Crayline. Where did Crayline get that idea, do you suppose?”

My brother’s faced changed. The aggrieved professor-businessman-gardener mask fell away, as did the wisp of accent. His eyes were totally his: clear and blue and as cold as the laughter in his voice.

“Bobby had things clanging inside him, Carson. I told you that.” He looked at my hand on his chest. “May I stand? Or are you determined to be a boor?”

I stepped away. Jeremy stood and paced the room. There was no trace of a Canadian psychologist.

“The clanging inside Crayline was the horrors of his past?” I asked.

“Far worse, Carson. The horror that he’d never escape his past. He killed his tormentors in a rage, Carson. No symbolic journey and, consequently, no salvation.”

“Thus his crying to you at the Institute?”

“I had just confirmed Bobby Lee’s worst fears: his direct and simple vengeance lacked the power to destroy his past. He would never be free.”

I walked to Jeremy’s bookshelves, saw Jung’s Man and His Symbols and Modern Man in Search of a Soul. They nestled against Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion. A dozen similar books ran the shelf, held in place by Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

I ran my finger slowly down the covers, making a ticking sound. I turned to my brother.

“You got paid a helluva lot, Jeremy. Am I right?”

“Paid for what, Carson?” he crooned, almost a taunt, enjoying himself and proud of whatever he had done.

“To judge whether the murders met the proper criteria for danger, destruction and display. You said Taithering’s journey lacked only one element, the validation of a higher authority. Someone had to study the signs, produce the white smoke of success. You were Jessie Stone’s higher authority, right? A man who spouted all the right terms about magic and symbols and was regarded as no less than a past-killing wizard by Bobby Lee Crayline.”

My brother flicked a piece of lint from his cuff. “I did nothing wrong, Carson. I took innocent morning walks.”

“Innocent? You were a killing inspector,” I said, using Judd Caudill’s perceptive term. “Did you stand before the carnage and give a thumbs-up, Jeremy? You posted your acceptance on the geocache website, right? It was you who invented the visual pun of the athletic cup.”