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.
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.
“Taithering’s dead,” he said.
I nodded.
“Tell me how it happened,” Jeremy’s voice was a ragged whisper, sorrow or anger or a mixture of both. I recounted the story. It took under a minute. My brother stood and walked to the nearest candle, on a tabletop. He stooped to blow it out, as if there was too much light in the room.
“Why did Taithering kill himself, Jeremy?” I asked. “Was it shame?”
“William didn’t make it all the way to redemption, Carson.”
“But that’s what he did with the beating: danger, destruction, display. A symbolic way of gaining the upper hand. That’s what you said.”
Jeremy continued to the next candle, on a counter between the living space and the kitchen. He snuffed it dead between spit-wet fingertips, moved down the counter and extinguished another.
“I said it’s what William started. He wasn’t finished. Taithering saw himself as insignificant, Carson. A man without significance can’t judge whether his private symbolism holds the potency to shatter the past. Even though he’d handled everything in his ritual correctly, the presence of risk, the destruction of the face, the public display, Taithering was lacking the final element.”
Jeremy walked to the fourth and fifth candles, on a shelf beside the stairs. Blew them dead. The only lit candle was the shivering taper on the table at my feet. Jeremy stepped back into the shadows. Outside, in the forest dark, barred owls were calling one another through the trees.
“What the hell element was left?” I asked.
“The validation of a higher authority.”
“Are you talking about God?”
“I’m talking about judgment from a guide who knows the forest, Carson.” He held his hand out into the light, thumb to the side like an emperor. He turned it down, then up.
My brother’s remarks were typically cryptic, and anger welled in my gut, at my brother and at myself. Yet again I was asking a mentally ill man for insights into the mental conditions of my fellow humans, again sucked into a world where image and symbol thudded together like blind whales in a black sea.
I stood, shaking my head. The past twenty-four hours had been nightmarish.
“I’m going back to Mobile,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m going home, Jeremy. I’m packing tomorrow, leaving the following morning.”
A long pause. “I bought you more time, Carson.”
“Ask for your money back, Jeremy. I’m gone.”
For the second time in the evening, I retreated from another human being, this time gladly. Back at the cabin I showered off the day and started to gather my belongings, but weariness overcame me like a wave and I fell asleep on the couch, a pile of clothes and a dog at my felt.
Morning brought the rude awakening of a siren outside my window. I bounced up to the window, saw Cherry behind the window of another cruiser, same color and vintage, like the Kentucky State Police had cornered the market on dark Crown Vics. Mix-up and I stumbled to the porch as Cherry cut the siren. I stared through hazy eyes and pushed hair from my face.
“Jeez, what now?”
“Sorry about the wake-up,” Cherry said, stepping from the cruiser. “Something’s happened and I thought you should know,” she said. “Zeke Tanner’s gone missing.”
My mind’s-eye showed me two medics leaning back from a corpse, putting away the cardiac paddles.
“Gone? Uh, isn’t he dead?”
“The state’s forensics people were sending transport this morning, taking him from the funeral home to the morgue in Frankfort. When the funeral director went to prepare the body for the trip, it was gone. A window got busted for entry.”
I shook my head; weirdness piled on weirdness. Cherry said, “Right now I’m running up to the funeral parlor to get a statement.” She nodded toward the passenger seat. “You in?”
“I’m planning to head back home. I’m packing today and leaving tomorrow.”
She looked stunned, caught it fast. “You’re booking in the middle of the battle?”
“This isn’t my war, Cherry.”
She pushed a half-smile to her face and shot a thumbs-up. “Gotcha. I understand. I’d do the same thing.” The smile started to waver.
“Maybe I could use a break from packing,” I said.