Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel

by Tom Bouman

  “Yes.”

  With John Doe out of the way, I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. “There’s something else, honey. You might want to sit.” She didn’t sit, and I told her about George. I forced myself to watch her face change as I broke the news. Actually, it started when I called her “honey,” a quizzical look verging on indignation that vanished with understanding, and then crumpled into grief, almost all at once. But she didn’t cry.

  “What the hell. Oh, George.” I watched her process the information. “Hey,” she said, “come out back. I don’t want to upset the horses. They pick up on this.” We passed between the horses and stepped over some hay bales half covered in a blue tarp. Toward the back of the stables, a collection of hand tools hung from the wall on spikes.

  Outside, she lit a cigarette, betraying a slight hand tremor. Away from the horses, I caught her scent: stale cigarette smoke mixed with sweat and something chemical, even metallic. I let her get about a quarter of the way through her smoke before picking up the conversation again. “You know anybody who’d want to kill George?”

  “No. Everybody liked him.” She shook her head and grimaced, exposing her stained lower canines. “You probably know he and Danny Stiobhard didn’t get along.”

  “Yeah. Why is that, do you think?”

  Her face and neck turned red.

  “So,” I continued, “there was a fight at the bar last week? You involved in that?”

  She shook her head with a hint of impatience. “You have to understand, I haven’t been with either of those fools in over four months. When I was . . . when I took up with George, I wasn’t quite through with Danny, and that started some shit. In the end it wasn’t about me at all, just . . . something that wasn’t going to stop on its own. Stupid fuckin George, it’s his fault for falling too hard in the first place.”

  “Is it possible that this is where it led?”

  “Is it? Anything’s possible.” She smeared her cigarette out on a flagstone. I noticed for the first time that she wore low-top canvas sneakers, her bare feet stuffed into them and looking like water balloons about to burst. Her fingernails were chewed. “I really can’t say.”

  I thanked her and asked for a number and address where she could be reached should I need her again.

  “I work here most days. I don’t have a cell right now, but you might find me at 1585 Upper Sloat Creek.” That was a Heights address; I made note of it. “There going to be a service for George?”

  “Yeah, I’m working that out with the brother.” I thanked her once more and walked past one of the big steel barns to a field that stretched back to meet the forest. My plan was to bushwhack up to the site where we’d found the corpse, to see how determined one would have to be to make the journey, lugging a body, in the snow.

  I followed a well-trod patch of lawn to where an old logging road led into the forest, blazed by a flash-orange ribbon; it was as good a place to start as any, though it wouldn’t be the only way. The slope was steep and the logging road switched back three times before I crested the ridge. I hit a crossroads of sorts at a windy clearing scattered with boulders and bordered on the east by a stand of hemlocks. Trails wandered away from the clearing in five directions. Stopping to mark where I had been on my map, I continued in the general direction of Aub’s place.

  The ground had turned spongy, and even my waterproof boots couldn’t keep my socks dry. I passed from the shade of second-growth forest to a clearing that was on its way to being choked out by white pine and red maple. The trail narrowed and I was raked by beech tag on both sides, brush so dense and brittle and full of secret animal paths that I almost missed the turnoff north, which I took instead of continuing east. Though I wasn’t conscious of why at first, I spent a lot of time scanning the ground in front of me and shuddered a bit when it dawned on me I was looking for John Doe’s missing arm. Soon I was back in the woods, where the logging road widened once again.

  The hot pink blazes I’d spray-painted the day before led me toward the site, and I followed them until I heard voices. Expecting to see two staties, I was taken aback to find three old people, dressed head to foot in expensive microfiber walking clothes, inside the perimeter. One of them, the only man, had flipped the floppy brim of his hat up in front, the better to take pictures with a large camera.

  “Stop right there,” I called. All three of them jolted. “Nobody take a step.”

  “Ahoy, Officer,” the man said.

  “Don’t . . . don’t ahoy me. You know you’re trespassing?” The three of them stepped back under the tape, looking guilty. “Seriously, what in hell you doing out here?” I hadn’t any sleep in a day. “Goddamn it, I should fine you.” Two days, actually. “In fact, I will.”

  As I took names and addresses, it dawned on me who these people were, and that maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on them: Mark and Freida Moore, and Mary Loinsigh. Leading citizens of the township, always busy with preservation societies and parks, they were neighbors to each other and, more distantly, to Aub. Mrs. Moore ventured, “We were trying to help.”

  “You were?”

  Mr. Moore lifted his jaw. “You’ve got a dead body, a missing arm, and a lot of acres to go through.”

  His mention of the arm surprised me. I gave him a look and said, “You want to be a good citizen, try the volunteer firemen. I see you or anyone else who doesn’t belong out here again, they’re spending a night in jail.” I didn’t know if I could make that happen. But they seemed to take me to heart, and when they turned tail and loped southwest, I believed they wouldn’t be back.

  As I sat there on a rock, my thoughts turned to George and what he might have seen in Tracy Dufaigh that I couldn’t. Maybe it was just like she said, that she was just who she was, and George and Danny ended up two old bucks locking horns over her, neither one giving ground. But I didn’t think that was entirely true. Not that she’d outright lied to me, I can smell a lie, but there was almost definitely something she wasn’t volunteering.

  The walk back to Bray Stables was shorter because I knew where I was going. The sun was climbing already and I had much to do that day, so I didn’t plan to linger there. I made my way down an open trail, my vision swimming among the shadows. Because I had been hearing a lot of echoes that morning, and things sounded far-off, I didn’t trust my first impression that someone was in the woods with me, to the east, to my nine. I stooped as if I were tying my shoe and listened: silence. When I walked again, the extra set of footfalls continued with me.

  I reached the trailhead and a man was there waiting at the edge of the field. He was dressed in business casual and had a pair of hiking boots on, with the cuffs of his woolen pants rolled and pegged. There was a cell phone clipped to his belt. I approached him with some wariness; he smiled and extended a hand and introduced himself as Joshua Bray.

  “Your wife said you were at work,” I said.

  “I came straight home,” Bray said. “I’m sorry to hear about . . .”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Listen,” he said, “I know what you told Shelly, but can you give me anything more? My family is here. Right here.”

  “I understand. All I can say is, the . . . the deaths don’t seem random. They’re not motivated by money, at least not by robbery. You don’t have any history of a bad element on this ridge, or any too nearby. I’d lock my doors at night and just don’t let the kids wander alone.”

  He sighed. “So there is someone out there.” Before I could respond, he continued. “What do you recommend as far as protection?”

  “You have firearms in the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep them locked up?”

  Bray nodded.

  “Mind if I have a look?”

  “What for? Oh, Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding.”

  He led me to a side door in their house, and down a set of stairs to a carpeted basement. There he pulled open a desk drawer and began to rummage through it.

  “Get a d
eer this year?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “But you did go out.”

  He turned to me with some impatience. “Yes.” He leaned over the desk drawer.

  A flat-screen television sat, monumental, in an entertainment center loaded with speakers and electronics. Posters of models in swimsuits hung in frames here and there—from the eighties, judging by the hairstyles. I found it an odd way for a man of Joshua’s age and circumstances to decorate his walls, and particularly odd that he had bothered to frame them. The whole basement felt awfully neat.

  What Bray was looking for turned out to be a key; he led me to an alcove, where a five-foot gun safe stood against a wall. He opened it to reveal a row of rifles, shotguns, and muskets. Among the deer rifles and over-unders I saw an AR-15, the country cousin to what I carried in the 10th. Five handguns were mounted on the inside of the safe’s door, including a .45 revolver, a six-shot .38, and three automatics. Bray shifted from foot to foot as I cataloged everything in my mind.

  “Can I handle them? Pick them up?”

  “If you must.”

  I hefted a couple of the automatic handguns for show, then the .38, which I examined for signs of recent use and, with my back turned, sniffed. Gesturing at the rifles, I said, “It’s a lot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anybody else have access to the safe? Know where the key is?”

  “No.”

  I picked up a Thompson muzzle-loader that looked expensive and unused and had a scope—I held it to my shoulder as if in appreciation, and the lens was dusty. Next to it was what I was most interested in: a .50-caliber Hawken with brass fixtures in the stock; I guessed it was about thirty years old. “Oh,” I said. “Beauty. You go out this year?”

  “Not for flintlock.”

  “Do you usually?” I picked the musket up, cocked it, and set the frizzen, scraping a nail along the pan. Clean, far as I could tell. I pulled the trigger and the hammer snapped down.

  “I’m beginning to think I need a lawyer.”

  “Hey, come on. You got a kit for this? Patches? Balls? Powder?”

  “No.”

  “How can you go out if you don’t have a kit?”

  “I just told you, I didn’t. Last season I went out with Barry Nolan, our neighbor over the way. This past one we didn’t get around to it.”

  “Ah.”

  “He’s got everything. We get a deer, he processes it, gives me the backstraps and a loin, and keeps the rest.”

  “Get one last season?”

  “He did, not me.”

  I set the flintlock back down, saying, “I appreciate it.”

  Before closing the safe, Joshua Bray stroked his chin and contemplated the handguns. He selected a 9mm, put it in a vest pocket, where it sagged halfway down his thigh. Then he locked the safe and led me back outside.

  “All right,” he said. “Nice meeting you. Let us know of anything. I’m off to walk the property line.”

  “Mr. Bray, please don’t go up there now. There’s an ongoing—”

  “See you, Officer.” He turned his back and headed into the woods.

  Shelly Bray must have been watching for me; as I approached the old pickup she stepped out of the stables and cut me off at the pass. She produced a little card with the stables’ logo on, good for one free horseback lesson. On the back she’d written what I took to be her personal number.

  “It’s selfish of me, I know,” she said. “With all that’s going on, I’d feel so much better if you’d check in on us from time to time. And who knows, once this is all over with, you may want to take me up some lunch hour.” She nodded toward the card in my hand. “Horses are good for you, you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, “thank you, Shelly. I may.” As I stepped into the truck, I said in farewell, “It’s a nice place.”

  “We’re trying to keep it that way.” She returned to the stables, and I drove away in a thunderous cloud of smoke and noise.

  Sometimes I suspect I am not good company. In fact, I know I’m not. My natural response to an invitation is quiet disbelief and I often decline in order to spare the other party my presence. But sometimes you have to say yes or you wind up like Aub Dunigan. I said yes to Ed and Liz when I moved back East, because they wouldn’t take no, and thank God I did. It helps me to have something other to do than talking. I couldn’t, for example, sit across a table from someone and drink coffee at a coffee place and talk about life. Even though I disliked and feared horses, I’d rather ride a horse than talk.

  I turned onto 189. Barry Nolan was a friend of George’s I’d often seen at the horseshoe pits in summer, but I never had much to do with him myself. Even among the dedicated boozers at the bar he was considered something of an alcoholic, slow, ill-tempered, and not a man to cross. For gainful employment he worked rotating shifts at a precision machine shop in Kirkwood and served as caretaker of Camp Branchwater. Nolan lived on a slim parcel of land that abutted Aub’s ridge to the north and the Brays to the west. An avid hunter and tracker, he was one of the breed who work just as much as they must in order to fund their real lives outdoors. Sheriff Dally had asked me to wait before sitting him down, but that seemed wrong to me. My instinct was to get as many people as I could unawares.

  I pulled onto a driveway leading past a row of fir trees and drew up beside Nolan’s olive split-level. His truck was there, and so was he; as I climbed the stairs leading up to his back deck, he pushed open the storm door and gestured me inside. He was a big guy, and tall. A short beard covered the wattle of his neck. Without asking, he poured me a coffee and set it down on the kitchen table, where it slopped out and pooled around the mug. By the door there was a mountain of empties—liquor and beer—rising out of a recycle bin, and several more on the floor ringing the receptacle. The refrigerator was layered with photographs and newspaper clippings. Most were about Wild Thyme High School sports and Lehigh University football. My eyes settled on a portrait of Nolan’s son, about age ten: the kid’s hair was buzzed and braces spanned his upper teeth. In subsequent pictures he had grown into a bruising defensive tackle. Now a college junior playing D-1 ball, he—and the town—had some expectations of an NFL career.

  The house was cold, and Nolan wore a brown work vest with threads escaping from the armholes. His hair was damp. Leaning on a counter, he rubbed his swollen, bloodshot eyes.

  “Fuck me,” he said.

  “Yeah. So you know?”

  “I know. Tell me this motherfucker’s going to get his.”

  “He will.”

  “Yeah,” Nolan agreed, “he will. One way or the other.”

  “Can I ask how you found out?”

  He yawned and shook his head. “I’m all off schedule, late shift, I can hardly think. Koz called this morning. What he knows, I know.”

  “So you, you aren’t aware of . . . the boy we found yesterday? Up on the ridge?”

  He blinked, almost expressionless. “What?”

  “We found a young man dead on Aub Dunigan’s land.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “I know. But . . .”

  He shook his head again, bewildered. “I know everything that goes on up there. No way.” He saw I was serious. “What happened to him?”

  “We’re figuring that out. Looks like he may have been shot. Best keep that to yourself.”

  “Course I will.”

  “Can I ask you about Aub? You see much of him?”

  “Not too much, considering we’re neighbors. He a suspect?”

  “What about at the camp—I gather he visited there sometimes?”

  “Not in recent years. He fuckin loved baseball; I’d let him know when the boys were scheduled to play. Sometimes he’d get a free lunch from the mess. But he’s getting old, you know. Non compos.”

  “So he was welcome there?”

  “More or less. Harmless, far as I know.”

  “Barry, you’re not going to like this. I need to see your gun locker.”

 
His expression darkened. “They’ve been saying on the radio this day would come.” I caught the briefest glint of humor in his eyes, but it disappeared. He led me to a side room and opened a closet door. Tucked behind a row of camouflage and flash-orange outfits he had a .30-06, a .240, and a .22, a newish in-line muzzle-loader, and a Browning twelve-gauge, all in good repair, plus a compound bow and a quiver of evil-looking arrows. High on a shelf, a black case was nestled among boxes of ammunition and spray bottles full of scent. Nolan retrieved the case and showed me the chrome .44 automatic inside. “Never had much use for this, but I guess it’s good to have one around.”

  “Where’s your flintlock?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, you didn’t go out this year?”

  “No, flintlock, I gave that up. Can I tell you, it’s just a bitch? Last year I had a doe dead to rights, a beautiful young one. Crossed right in front of me on the trail up there. So I pull the trigger and the pan flashes, and nothing. Hang fire. I stand there, the doe stands there, and she jumps just as the musket goes off. Got her somewhere on the haunch, and she limped off into the swamp to die. Couldn’t get to where she was. The worst thing was, soon as I shot, out comes her little one I hadn’t seen. With the double-lock triggers it went off early just as much as late, or never. I sold the damn flintlock.”

  “But you bought tags this year.”

  Nolan regarded me with suspicion. “Jesus, you got my phone tapped too? You look through my trash? Yeah. My son loves the season, god help him. It’s when he’s home from college, you know. He wasn’t interested this year.”

  “Huh.”

  “Look, and I got bills. Obviously. Between a kid in school and the . . . the divorce. Something had to pay for Christmas, and keeping the lights on, and, you know. Everything. Getting by.”

  I hadn’t known about his breakup, or what his wife’s name was, hadn’t ever even seen her. It had seemed like there was a marriage still in the house. I was embarrassed, and only nodded.

  “So,” said Nolan. “That all?” We went back to the kitchen.

  “Who bought the flintlock?”

  “Some New Yorker. I forget his name.”