“Listen to this, Ryder: when the experimenter told Crayline one marshmallow now or two in fifteen minutes, the kid looked up and asked, ‘How many do I get if I sit here until tomorrow?’”
“What?”
“The researchers put Bobby Lee to the test with a dozen marshmallows. Not all night, of course. But three hours.”
“Crayline waited three hours to pounce on the candy?” It was unheard of.
“The kids are observed through a one-way mirror, naturally. When the experimenter left the room, Crayline closed his eyes and didn’t move a muscle for three hours.”
“Jesus.”
“The prof said he’d never seen anything like it. They might have let the test continue, but little Bobby was starting to spook them.”
I pictured Bobby Lee Crayline sitting motionless at the table, the delicious reward an arm’s length away. It seemed to defy everything I knew of the man.
Krenkler continued. “So either Crayline has enormous willpower and self-control …” she let the words hang, waiting for my conclusion.
“Or he could invent an interior world so lavish that time meant nothing. When he stepped inside himself, time stopped.”
“How’s that for weird?” Krenkler asked. “Anyway, thought you’d like to know.”
I couldn’t tell whether Krenkler actually thought I should know that tidbit about Crayline, or she just wanted to display the FBI’s power to dig. Like maybe I’d made contributions to the case, but she wanted me to know that the Bureau was on top, nonetheless.
Did it matter?
The sedan kicked gravel and spun away. I stiff-legged my way back to the cabin, made fruitless calls to the local animal shelters, and finally went to bed.
I awoke at four in the afternoon and called Cherry, asked what she was up to now that the threat of Bobby Lee Crayline had blown past like a hurricane. The destruction had been severe, but all that remained was the mopping up.
“Krenkler’s got me studying Crayline’s backstory,” she said. “Still trying to find the connection between him and the victims, other than Charles Bridges.”
“Where you going to start?”
“By thawing a couple of steaks.”
“Excuse me?”
“I also have some potatoes the size of footballs. Two, to be exact. Know anyone with an appetite?”
It was unsettling to re-visit Cherry’s drive and see Crayline’s tire impressions in the grass, two straight lines that disappeared off the cliff. I saw the tree that had stopped me dead, peeling off my front fender. My truck looked disheveled, but ran fine, a trouper.
Cherry met me on the porch.
“Nice to see you arrived fully dressed. And without company. You hungry?”
I was ravenous. I followed her into her home. We polished off a beer and ate soon thereafter, planks of rare meat and fluffy Idahos with butter, sour cream and crumbled bacon troweled within. In twenty minutes I filled a six-month cholesterol quota.
We headed into the living room, the windows wide. The rain that had bedeviled me last night was paying penance by freshening the grass and trees and filling the air with a gentle balm of chlorophyll.
“I’ve got to do a little homework yet today, Carson,” she said. “If I can keep feeding Krenkler information, I figure she’ll book back to Washington. I think with the threat gone, her thrill’s gone.”
She pulled a canvas bag from beneath the swing, shaking a clattering handful of DVD boxes to a small table. I saw slick photos and graphics and titles like XFL Championship III: The Battle in Seattle, and XFL Highlights: Blood in the Cage.
“From a video store in Winchester,” Cherry said. “I don’t know jackshit about Crayline. So I wanna see him moving. Hear his voice. I want to look at the audience. You think that’s strange?”
“I understand completely.” It was the way I worked: suck up detail like the mother of all vacuum cleaners and learn the quarry on a cellular level. Though Cherry’s perp was dead, his history was a living entity, and she could follow it like a trail if she was diligent or lucky or usually – I’d found from experience – a combination of both.
We watched six of the seven bouts Cherry had rented, taped after Crayline became one of XFL’s rising stars, a man who deserved his own specials. He won them all in brutal fashion. And even when hit hard – punched, kicked, pummeled – he always roared back as if pain were fuel. Or maybe pain was just a passing sensation, like mild hunger, or the errant thought of a long-dead acquaintance.
His countenance was always one of anger – deep, visceral, frightening. The only time we saw anything bordering on happiness was when Crayline was with a guy who looked like a body builder with a hefty jewelry and Armani suit allowance. Twice we saw Crayline wrap the guy in a bear hug after winning a match.
“You catch who the suit with the steroid shoulders is?” I asked.
“Mickey Prince, the owner of the XFL. The P.T. Barnum of extreme sports or whatever. Likes cameras, being in People Magazine, stuff like that. Big shoulders. Bigger mouth.”
Cherry reached to the floor and picked up the final DVD, tossed it to me.
Emblazoned over the cover were the words, XFL World Championship XII: River of Blood.
It was the championship bout. The only fight Crayline ever lost.
Cherry fast-forwarded through announcer hype to the introduction of the fighters in the cage: Bobby Lee Crayline and Jessie “Mad Dog” Stone.
Stone was not a tall guy, five-ten or so, but he resembled a doctor’s anatomical wall chart covered with a film of tanned and oiled flesh. His face was square and looked younger than the body somehow, even with cauliflower ears and a nose lowered and fattened by repeated breaks.
The clang of a bell. Stone and Crayline circled, firing jabs, attempting kicks, measuring one another. Crayline dumped a couple hard shots in Stone’s direction, the blows dying on Stone’s big forearm. Stone shot back, catching Crayline in the side of his head, causing him to go for the clinch. I saw Crayline grinning as he jabbered into Stone’s ear, jumped back, firing a kick at Stone’s head.
The bell pulled the fighters to their corners for mopup and various instructions. Stone seemed to listen to his corner man; Crayline just aimed eagle eyes across the ring at Stone.
The next round started. Another clinch, Stone pressed against the cyclone fencing of the cage, Crayline’s mouth running like a set of chattering toy teeth. In the background the crowd was in bloodlust, howling, screaming, waving fists. Men built like XFL fighters stood beside guys looking like they lived on lard fondue.
“What an audience,” Cherry said. “These people would have loved the Roman Coliseum.”
A flurry of blows. Stone feinted left, dodged right. Stepped forward with an uppercut, his cleanest shot of the match. It knocked Crayline two steps backward and allowed Stone the straight-arm punch that set Crayline on his ass. Crayline tipped over, his mouth spitting red foam across the mat. The camera zoomed in tight to adore the spectacle.
When the referee called the fight in Stone’s favor the crowd, predictably, went rabid. Stone’s people came into the cage, wrapped him in a robe. Crayline was below the raised cage, being led away by handlers, wiping his face with a towel. He paused to again hug Mickey Prince.
“Wait,”