Was Bobby Lee Crayline already planning his revenge?
“We’re out of tapes,” Cherry said, punching off the player. “Which is good, because I’m sick of looking at Bobby Lee Crayline, though I get the feeling he’ll be much on my mind until this case gets put to bed.”
She gathered the tapes and put them in a brown grocery bag, shoved the bag under the couch.
“There. Now I don’t have to look at the damn things.”
I checked my watch. Barely eight p.m.
“There’s a lot of night left,” I said. “What should we do now?”
“I’ll pour us a cognac,” she said quietly. “Seems that’s where we left off last night.”
I heard bees.
“You know what I can’t get out of my thoughts?” I asked Cherry.
“I surely do,” she replied. “Not that I mind.”
The sun was rising and Cherry’s home was redolent of fresh-brewed coffee. Her cup was on her bedside table, mine in my hand as I sat cross-legged, sipping and thinking.
I laughed. “Beyond that.”
She pulled the sheet over her face in mock exasperation. “You’re about to talk work, aren’t you?”
“Sorry.”
She popped out with a sigh. “Lay it on me. Uh, I mean continue.”
“Bobby Lee never had a good word for anyone that I can discern. But he was hugging that Prince guy like a brother.”
“And?”
“I wonder, did Bobby Lee ever have a confidant?”
“I can’t imagine it.”
I couldn’t either. But I also knew that for a brief period in the Institute, Crayline had confided bits of his past to my brother and was even, at one point, moved to weeping. The public tends to view serial killers as freaks of nature, which is wrong. They’re almost always freaks of nurture, or non-nurture, to be specific, coming from families and backgrounds so dysfunctional and often savage that the average person would find it hard to believe such treatment could be given an animal, much less a human being. Usually, the killers’ humanity got destroyed along the way. They might hurt and kill with impunity, but sometimes, deep within, beat a morsel of heart that craved contact with reality.
“I think you ought to talk to this Prince guy,” I told Cherry. “It’s possible Crayline confided in him.”
“Oh sure, Crayline told Prince he was going to kill people.”
“Not that. But maybe something to help us unlock Crayline. I remember Slezak saying the XFL was operated out of Louisville. How far is that from here?”
“Two hours. This means I have to get dressed, right?”
“Not quite yet.”
Before we committed to the trip, a friendly voice had called the organization, representing a company wanting to deliver Mickey Prince a case of steaks, the caller figuring Prince got lots of yummy gifts from people wanting to cash in on his success.
“Prime filets frozen in dry ice, ma’am,” the caller had claimed. “Will Mr Prince be in today to take them home? Or should we wait delivery to another day?”
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