Текст книги "Buried Alive"

Автор книги: Jack Kerley

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“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.

38

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 mop-up 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,” Cherry said. “Look at Crayline.”

Cherry paused the machine on Crayline’s face. He had turned back to look into the cage as Stone gave his victory speech. Crayline wore not the expected look of defeat, but a strange and smirking triumph, the oddest face I’d seen on a man beaten in a fight.

Almost six months from that day, Jessie Stone would be discovered in a deep-dug hole in a barn in West Virginia, imprisoned in filth and fed garbage, and only by good fortune rescued from death at the hands of Bobby Lee Crayline.

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.

39

“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?”

“Mista Prince is in the oh-uh-fus until tomorra aft’noon,” the receptionist had trilled in an accent thick enough to cause the caller to picture her in an antebellum dress and sunbonnet, sitting side-saddle in her chair. “He’ll be dee-lighted. Mista Prince luuuves a good steak.”

By ten thirty we were standing in the Louisville lobby of X-Ventures. The receptionist was not as pictured. “Did y’all have an appointment with Mr Prince?” the woman challenged, not calling up hoop skirts and bonnets. This Clydesdale-sturdy woman conjured images of Slavic prison guards named Ulga, only with nattier tailoring.

“Appointments are so gauche,” I told Ulga, trying a lighthearted approach. “They impair spontaneity.”

Humor was not her métier. “Mister Prince is a busy man. You must have an appointment.”

“I understand. But inform Mr Prince that we’re here, please. In case he finds an opening in his schedule.”

“And exactly whom shall I say is calling?”

We showed our badges. Ulga made a phone call. She said nothing, just pointed us toward the back of the building, through the gym area. I suspected it was for effect, to show visitors this wasn’t an accounting firm. It was obvious a re-location was in progress, large moving boxes stacked in corners, several of them with the THIS END UP arrow pointing at the floor.

We walked down a fenced-off corridor to the side. A round fight ring centered the gym, in it a compact black guy was chasing a towering white guy backwards with a series of snap kicks. We passed a man whose torso was blue with tattoos, punching a wall-mounted board wrapped with sisal rope. His knuckles looked like raw meat. Two guys with shaved heads and brick-muscled bodies stood beside the guy, bellowing, Go! Go! Go!

There were another dozen fighters either working on strength machines or pumping iron, huge stacks of weights clanking up and down. A couple more were in a corner doing sit-ups. The room reeked of sweat and liniment and socks rotting in lockers.

Cherry wrinkled her nose. “This place smells like where stink was invented.”

A door opened in a windowed office at the far end. The man who stepped out resembled Sylvester Stallone, only re-decorated for the new millennium. His glossy black hair was carefully cut to make it look carelessly cut. Diamond studs brightened the ear lobes. Though slender of waist, Prince’s shoulders looked wide enough to lay dinner settings for two, and I took it the CEO spent time aplenty in the gym. He wore a dazzling sky-blue suit and an embroidered silk shirt open to display a tanned and fluffy chest. The requisite gold chains nestled in the fluff.

“Let’s not lead with Crayline’s death,” I side-mouthed. “See how it works out. And if I get weird with accusations, play along.”

“Si, Jefe,” Cherry mouthed.

The man walked up, hand out. “I’m Mickey Prince,” he announced. It was unnecessary, as a large nameplate beside the door proclaimed his name in four-inch silver-flake letters.

“We got a couple questions about a fighter, Mr Prince,” I said. “No big deal.”

“Hey, if Alberto Ventura beat up his girlfriend again, I don’t want to hear. I’m sorry I signed his work papers. Send his sorry ass to the border and kick it back into Mexico.”

“Don’t know Ventura,” I said, turning to eyeball the boxes. “Looks like you’re moving.”

“Vegas. Be gone in two weeks. Got four full floors on top of one of the biggest buildings on the strip. We’re negotiating to buy the building.”

I hoped there were good breezes high up on the new building. Maybe if they opened the windows the new place wouldn’t smell like the old one.

Prince said, “OK, you’re not here about Ventura, so lemme guess. Did Ironman Michaels bust up a hotel room again?”

Cherry said, “We’re here about Bobby Lee Crayline, Mr Prince.”

Prince’s smile turned sour. “Bobby Lee never ever calls me. I always tell you guys I’ll let you know if he tries to get in touch. Why keep bugging me?”

Prince was thinking we were asking if Crayline had been in touch. I imagine he got called monthly by the investigators in Alabama.

A big fighter who’d been kicking a bag a couple dozen feet away saw Prince’s unhappiness and appeared beside us. His neck was tattooed and his face looked like a shark.

“Need any help, Mr Prince?”

Cherry whipped out her shield, held it to the shark. “Private conversation, sweet-ums. Beat it before I ask your name and check your priors.”

The guy flared his nostrils as if breathing fire and slumped away. Prince nodded to the door at his back. “Let’s take this to my office.”

Which turned out to be a ponderous mahogany desk in a room cluttered with more boxes. He pulled a pair of folding chairs to the front of the desk, then sat in a black leather Herman Miller chair that looked as if it had been stripped from a jet fighter.

“You started out here?” Cherry asked. “In Louisville?”

“Over ten years back. The gym’s gonna stay open, one of our franchise training spots. We’re gonna have three dozen across the country by next year.”

“Sounds like you make decent money,” Cherry said.

“No,” Prince smiled. “We make big money.”

“Kinda big?” I asked. “Or kick-ass big?”

Prince leaned back in his sleek seat. “Last XFL bout on pay-per-view TV? We had one point seven million tune-ins at fifty bucks per. Plus we got magazines, posters, T-shirts. Action figures are next. And I haven’t even added in the arena revenue.”

“What kind of audience do you have?” I asked.

“Guys hot for action. Young guys, mainly. The best demo out there.”

“Demo like short for demonstration?” Cherry said, mystified by marketing-speak.

“Demo like demographic: age, income, education. There’s also the psychographic … basically the mindset of the consumer. What he or she needs to feel fulfilled.”

“Violence,” Cherry speculated. “Men tearing one another apart.”

“Action,” Prince corrected. “The real stuff.” He pointed through the window to the gym. In the round ring, two men were helping another man to his feet. Blood was dribbling from his mouth. The man who’d caused the leakage was leaning against the ropes, idly scratching his six-pack belly.

“This ain’t sports entertainment, like pro wrestling. These fuckers go at it like pit bulls because (a) the money’s good, and (b) they need to beat the shit outta another guy.”

“Need to?” Cherry asked.

“A lotta those guys got hornets in their heads. Issues, you know? Fighting lets the hornets sting someone else for a while. I spend half my time trying to keep their fighting in the gym and in the ring, not a nightclub or alley.”

“Why’s the ring round?” I asked, not unaware that traditional square boxing rings were oxymoronic.

“No corners to hide in,” Prince said. “The crowd likes to see fighters fight, not catch their breath in corner clinches.”

I looked over the floor, every body chiseled down to muscle, not an ounce of flab. “These guys live in the gym, Mickey?”

“If they wanna make it in the XFL they’ll be here ten hours a day, minimum. They pump up their bodies, I pump up the image, get them looking right, named right.”

“Excuse me,” Cherry said. “Named right?”

Prince smiled, leaned back in the chair, put crossed legs atop the table doubling as a desk, showed us the bottoms of his sleek, gunmetal-gray loafers.

“A kid walks in here with a name like Lester Doodle, we change that shit to something like Bruce Cartwright, a cross from Bruce Lee and the cowboys on that show Bonanza. Now that’s a fighter’s name.”

“You didn’t change Bobby Lee Crayline’s name.”

“It’s a great name already. Right away, you got the Southern feel.”

I shot Cherry a near-invisible nod. Her turn. “Bobby Lee’s got new problems on top of the kidnapping and deadly escape, Mr Prince,” Cherry said. “Seems like he’s suspect numero uno in three murders in eastern Kentucky and another three in Alabama.”

Prince closed his eyes, sighed, and shook his head. He looked honestly saddened but maybe he was a good actor. I waited several seconds and added the second punch, the pile driver.

“Ain’t it a crying shame, Mickey?” I said. “A lot of people dead, all because of the escape you helped plan.”

Prince’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

“We know you hired Slezak, Dunham and Krull to get Bobby Lee brought to the Alabama Institute for Aberrational Behavior. Bobby Lee escaped on a trip financed by your company. Coincidence?”

Prince’s feet pulled from the table and slapped the floor. The chair rocketed upright.

“I had NOTHING to do with—”

“You may want to call Mr Slezak,” Cherry said. “This time to defend you on an Accomplice to Murder charge.”

Prince looked shaken. He’d expected the standard questions about contacts from his former employee, not being linked to the executions of two prison guards. Not the kind of PR any growing empire needed.

He hustled to the windows, closed the blinds. “No way I tried to spring Bobby Lee,” he said. “I was trying to help him. Both times I only wanted to help him. You gotta believe me.”

I gave Prince my most piercing cop stare. “I believe you, Mick. That you wanted to help Bobby Lee. But now I want you to help me.”

Prince looked confused. “With what?”

“Bobby Lee died yesterday. He drove off a cliff while trying to kill me. I’m kinda interested in finding out why.”

40

“Let’s start with the chronology, Mick,” I told a more-chastened Mickey Prince. “Tell me about Bobby Lee’s first incarceration. His six-month sentence.”

“It was an accident. He killed a man in combat.”

“Oh?” Cherry said. “I thought he killed a man in an entertainment event.”

“People die in boxing. People die in football. People die in bicycle races, for crying out loud. Do they spend six months in prison?”

“Crayline didn’t go to prison,” I corrected. “Because of his history of violence, the judge sent him to the Alabama Institute for Aberrational Behavior for evaluation. They’re prisoners in prison, Mickey. They’re patients at the Institute, safe from each other and treated as humanely as their conditions permit. It’s not close to prison.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Prince nodded. “I’ll give you that.”

Cherry said, “Then Bobby Lee got out and picked up where he’d left off: fighting. There were no problems with the audience because he’d killed a man?”

“Bobby became an even bigger star. Don’t look at me like that. It’s how things are.”

“Let’s move ahead, Mick,” I said. “Bobby Lee fights for another couple years, winning every bout. Becomes a top XFL star, the champ. But then he loses a fight. It must have crushed him.”

Prince shrugged. “No big deal. Jessie Stone was a damn good fighter, but Bobby was the best. Bobby would have won the next time. I woulda promoted it as a grudge match and everybody’d make even more money.”

I pulled my feet from the table and went to lean against the wall beside Prince. I looked down on him while he had to crane his head up to talk to me. Control.

“Instead,” I said, “Crayline suddenly quits and dis-appears. Six months later he kidnaps Stone and imprisons him in a pit, killing him through exposure and deprivation. Bobby Lee’s sent to prison. But you pull political strings and get him returned to the Institute. You hire a high-caliber law firm—”

“I wanted Bobby to get real mental help,” Prince said, actually sounding sincere. “I owed him, since he helped make me rich. Slezak wanted a shrink on Bobby Lee’s case. Bobby Lee laughed and said, sure, try it out, figuring he’d never go under. Turns out hypnotizing Bobby Lee was easy as turning a light on and off. Dr Neddles pulled the story out in little pieces then put it together so it’s right in time. It’s nasty shit. You really want to hear it all?”

“I think we can take it.”

Prince started pacing, as though motion helped tell the story. He crossed and re-crossed the room as he spoke.

“Bobby Lee’s daddy took off when he was five. His mama died of an OD a couple months later, at home. A relative stopped by one day, found Bobby Lee’s mom on the couch half rotted away. They found the kid under the house, hiding in a root cellar.”

“Lord,” Cherry said.

“Bobby ended up with an aunt with mental problems and her husband. His uncle made a living staging cockfights and dogfights. The dogs lived in shit-filled cages. He starved the animals, beat them, zapped them with cattle prods.”

“To make them better fighters,” I said, my stomach going sour.

“Then one day …” Prince took a deep breath. “Then one day, the uncle wondered if an eleven-year-old kid could be made into a fighting dog.”

I closed my eyes. Felt my guts turn over.

“To start with,” Prince said, “the uncle made Bobby Lee live in a tiny dirt storm cellar. There was no light. Bobby pissed and shit in a washtub that got emptied maybe once a week. The uncle fed him scraps. Beat him to get him used to pain.”

“Who the hell could an eleven-year-old fight?” Cherry asked, aghast.

“Other kids. Bobby never knew where they came from. Once every couple months he’d be yanked out of the basement and trucked off, sometimes on the road for hours, to an old barn or abandoned mine tipple. Other kids would be there, fighters.”

“Were there gloves? Rules?”

“The kids fought naked except for athletic cups to protect their balls. The fighters didn’t have names, numbers were pinned to the cups. The kids were put in a long, narrow pit – they nicknamed it the grave – and beat the shit out of each other while the audience bet on the action.”

“No kid said, I’m not doing it?” I asked.

Prince’s eyes rose to mine, held. “You know what a breeder does to a dog that won’t fight? Kids that didn’t fight weren’t ever seen again.”

“How long did this go on?”

“Three years. Then the uncle welshed on a gambling debt. Got his throat slit one night. Bobby Lee was sent off to a group home. Later, of course, he showed up here. Looking to fight professionally. I gave him a spotlight. He made himself a star.”

Prince fiddled with his chains. Cherry and I sat in stunned silence until a question crossed my mind. “The time he returned from his first trip to the Institute, Mickey. How was he during that period?”

“I was hoping he’d be calmer. But Bobby Lee seemed even angrier.”

“Angry because he’d killed a man?” Cherry asked. “Self-anger?”

Prince looked drained, exposed. He sat heavily.

“Look, Detectives, I’m not a bright guy in math and geography and all that. I couldn’t tell you where in the water Hawaii is, and I don’t care. I know about people, like I can see through doors most people can’t. It helps me understand my fighters and how to shape them according to what they need. With Bobby it was different. He got to be champ, but that wasn’t what he needed. He needed something else. I’m not sure I can explain.”

“Try,” I said.

“I always needed to be rich,” Prince said, almost like an apology. “It took time, but now I am. It feels good and makes me happy. But I think, what if God opened the clouds when I was poor and said, ‘Mickey, I hate to tell you this, but no matter what you do, you’re always gonna be poor as dirt.’” Prince raised his eyes to me. “That’s the feeling I got from Bobby. Does that make any sense?”

“Like Bobby Lee Crayline knew something was to be forever denied him?” I said.

“Yeah. Exactly. Just like that.”

Cherry aimed the big cruiser back toward Woslee County. We didn’t know the Whys of the murders, but we were steadily discovering the Who of Bobby Lee Crayline. I pulled my ballcap down over my eyes, leaned back, and tried to dope-out what had been denied Bobby Lee, getting nowhere. Around Lexington Cherry broke my haze with a question.

“The kidnapping – how did Crayline get found out?”

“Pure luck,” I yawned. “A surveying firm was determining the best route for a gas pipeline. One of the workers needed permission to survey a corner of the farm Crayline was renting. The worker ignored about a dozen No Trespassing signs, and walked the long drive to the house and barn. He was about to walk into sight when he saw Bobby Lee, buck naked except for a jockstrap, step into the barn. He watched Crayline pull some boards off a hole in the dirt floor and start yelling into it. The surveyor scooted and told his tale to the law. Why?”

“I was just thinking … Crayline was going to kill the guy he kidnapped. Was it revenge for beating him up in front of an audience, you think?”

“I think Crayline always needed to win, no matter what Prince said. Bobby Lee’s driven to come out on top.”

“So why didn’t Crayline finish up where he left off? With the guy he left off on?”

I pulled my cellphone, rang the number for X-Ventures. Got through to Prince. He started with, “Please tell me you figured out I had nothing to do with Bobby Lee’s escape or anything else.”

I said, “You’re dealing straight, Mick. But we got to thinking, what if Crayline wanted to pick up where he left off. With the Stone guy.”

“Too late. Jessie Stone’s somewhere in Ireland. He booked after Bobby Lee busted out. Maybe now he can come home.”

I thanked Prince and rang off. Cherry shot me the questioning eye. I said, “It seems Jessie Stone retreated to the Emerald Isle to avoid seeing Bobby Lee again.”

“Probably the smartest thing the guy ever did,” Cherry said.

We crossed the Woslee County line at seven thirty p.m., putting at our backs a company that created fighting humans in much the way that Bobby Lee Crayline’s uncle bred fighting dogs, though Prince did it with his fighters’ consent and without deprivation and cruelty. There was a ready market for bloody combat, though the dog-and child-fights were hidden away in backcountry arenas while those who satisfied their bloodlust on national pay television made millions of dollars.

But at base, they seemed to me the same.

Cherry had been thinking along the same lines. “Prince reckoned people paid fifty bucks to watch two guys knock each other senseless in a cage,” she said. “Did I hear that right?”

I nodded.

“And Crayline was an even bigger draw after knocking a guy dead in the ring?”

“Sure enough.”

Cherry thought a long time. Shot me a glance. “You ever read any early human history, Ryder?”

“Some.”

“Ever come across the theory about two main proto-human tribes way back there? One was cruder and less evolved, the other smarter and more advanced? And how the advanced tribe conquered the lesser beings, then went on to become who we are today?”

“I recall the theory,” I said.

“You ever think maybe the other tribe won?”