Buried Alive by J. A. Kerley Read Free Book Online Page A

carrier pigeon?” I asked.
    “Not your business.”
    “The hell it isn’t. Someone called me with your voice and sent me to a crime scene and now I’m halfway to being accused of the murder.”
    “No one’s accusing you of anything, Ryder,” she said, adding: “Not yet.”
    “Then I can escape the Donna Cherry Memorial Madhouse, right?”
    The eyes blazed, the jaw clenched. She stood stiffly and nodded toward the door.
    “You’re free to go.”
    I stood, started to walk away, paused in the doorframe. I turned round and lit my eyes with false bonhomie.
    “The next time you know I’m in the neighborhood and want a consultation with the hotshot hard-on from Mobile, Detective Cherry, just call and use your real name. It won’t be hard …” I made the thumb-pinkie phone sign, wiggling it beside my cheek. “You’ve got the number, right?”
    I winked and walked out the door.
    The next morning I awoke to birdsong and the cackling of crows, the sound so full and rich it pushed aside the weirdness of the preceding day’s events. The air through my open window smelled of pine and rising dew. The clock showed 6.23. Mix-up scampered out for the performance of his morning duties.
    After showering and dressing and gulping down my coffee, I met Gary for a two-hour lesson on the cliffs. I returned feeling pumped and happy at half past ten, noting a man sitting in one of the rockers on the porch, patting my dog’s head.
    It was the ranger who had been with Sheriff Beale the day before I’d been summoned to the murder scene. He smiled and stood as I pulled up. I stepped to the porch and shook hands with Lee McCoy, senior ranger for the Red River Gorge area of the Daniel Boone Forest.
    “I heard about what happened yesterday,” McCoy said, producing a zip-locked bag with a two-inch stack of pink ovals inside. “I figured it’d be good to give you a more proper mountain welcome.”
    “Country ham?” I asked, studying the package.
    He grinned. “Pepper-rubbed, cob-smoked, finished off with a year’s hanging. Fry a minute in hot butter starting to brown, flip over for another minute. Your mouth’ll think it’s stepped into heaven.”
    I cradled the ham to my chest like a cache of diamonds and ran it to the fridge. The best country hams rarely see store shelves but are traded in the shadows by cognoscenti. I poured coffee and we sat on the porch, chatting about weather and light topics. Something seemed a bit amiss in the proceedings – I was, after all, a man with an unknown connection to a dead body, but McCoy seemed oblivious to my conflicts, more concerned that I was having a good vacation experience. But perhaps his loyalties rested with the tourism industry. I asked McCoy how long he’d been with the Forest Service.
    “Twenty-seven years. All in the Daniel Boone Forest, a good half stationed here in the Gorge. I grew up in Clay City fifteen miles west. I used to ride my bike here before I could drive.”
    “You must know every step in the Gorge.”
    He winked. “The Gorge keeps a few places hidden. That’s its nature. Today I’m heading into the backcountry to check a stand of white-haired goldenrod.”
    Maybe it was something in me that harkened to childhood, Smoky the Bear and Ranger Rick or whatever. Maybe it was McCoy’s spiffy, hard-creased uniform, or the cool wide-brim hat, but my cynicism melted and my heart skipped a beat at the prospect of hiking alongside a for-real forest ranger.
    I sighed like a jilted teen. “Jeez, I’d give my eyeteeth to tag along.”
    He smiled. “We’ll be out for a few hours. Best to pack a sandwich.”
    I grabbed my daypack and a canteen before McCoy had a chance to change his mind.
    “You bringing your pup?” McCoy called through the door. “Dogs aren’t allowed in Natural Bridge Park, but they’re fine in the Gorge.”
    I whistled Mix-up to my side and we jumped into McCoy’s official Jeep Cherokee, driving out of the long valley, coming to the split where