Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel

by Tom Bouman

“If you think of it, let me know. So, Josh Bray, you two hunt together? He an all right neighbor?”

  “Yeah, okay. Far as hunting, useless. I help out here and there. The wife gives me ideas—wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers. You ever get a look at her?”

  I didn’t answer that. In the silence I became aware of the television that had been on in the background: a talk show with a loud audience had been replaced by the studied concern of a local news anchor. When I heard “Wild Thyme,” I rushed to the living room. The local news had just switched to a shot of Dally in the basement hall of the courthouse, his head inclined toward several microphones. The sheriff mentioned “a local officer” but not my name. The unidentified corpse was “maimed, and in a state of advanced decomposition.” He admitted the difficulty in a case as cold as this, but expressed confidence all the same. Since he had not named Aub, I was taken aback to see the wide shots of his farm that followed. There appeared to be nobody stationed to secure the scene. A reporter stood before a yellow police line that jerked in the breeze, giving the image of Aub’s place—beautiful, if dilapidated—overtones of horror.

  About George, Dally was more guarded. When asked the inevitable question, which you couldn’t hear in the broadcast, you could see his expression move from deadpan to stormy while the reporter was talking. His answer was short. He named Patrolman George Ellis as the victim and me as his superior, and concluded with a warning that the investigation was ongoing, and to respect the family’s privacy. They showed a blurry picture of George in uniform, and that was that. Grim news from over the border in Wild Thyme.

  “Guess it’s out there now,” said Nolan from the kitchen. “I can’t watch.”

  You could see how, with the information that had been doled out, the two deaths would be connected in a much grislier tableau than they might otherwise have been. Was George the officer mentioned who discovered the first body? Did he encounter the murderer out there in the woods, or in the bloody basement of some tumbledown barn? And so on. You could see.

  I bade Barry a quick goodbye and drove to a hilltop where my cell worked. The phone in the sheriff’s department rang thirteen times before Krista answered, sounding harried. She put me on hold, where I stayed for ten minutes, waiting for the sheriff or Ben Jackson or anyone. In the end it was Dally himself who picked up.

  “Henry, what is it?”

  “There’s nobody stationed at the Dunigan place. The press is out there. I had to chase hikers away from the site on the ridge. Where are the goddamn staties anymore?”

  Dally sighed. “A couple got called back, a couple are up in the Heights. We had some trouble up there. Ben was conducting some interviews and came back to the car to find two slashed tires and his lights busted. Changed one tire before rocks started flying from the woods on both sides of the road.”

  “Jesus. He okay?”

  “He took one on the ear but he’ll live. We’ve got to put a foot down on these people.”

  “I could pay a call or two this evening, try to mend some fences.”

  “Mend fences.” There was a pause on the line. “Well, we’ll be out there making what arrests we can.”

  “Can you send Lyons or Hanluain over?”

  “They’re busy, sorry.”

  “What about Fitzmorris PD?”

  “Over budget on overtime already this quarter. We’re just as screwed as always, Henry.”

  I sped down 189. Though it was against my nature, I turned the truck onto Fieldsparrow Road and eased it through the gauntlet of TV cameras and reporters at the foot of Aub’s driveway, snapping the yellow police ribbon like I’d just won a race in slow motion.

  You ever have your vision close in around you, that’s what it felt like with all those eyes on me. The left side of my head began to throb once more. I parked inside the perimeter, on the blind side of the barn. Taking a deep breath, I walked the twenty paces to the clutch of newspeople. As I attempted to retie the police ribbon, a blond reporter in a fake-fur-lined hood put a microphone in my face.

  “Could we have your name, Officer?”

  “Officer Farrell.”

  “You found the body?”

  “No comment.” I stood helpless, staring down, willing myself to complete a simple granny knot. My fingers wouldn’t cooperate. The microphones and voices came at me too fast.

  “Officer, how did George Ellis die?”

  “No comment.” My voice sounded small; I could barely hear it over my pulse.

  “Are the deaths related?”

  “I have no comment.”

  “How does it feel to lose your deputy? Were you close?”

  “No comment. Please.”

  The knot tied, I left the reporters and stalked up the driveway, pretending to have some business in that direction. The farther up the hill I got, the easier I breathed. When I reached the dooryard, I caught a slinking movement on the far side of the farmhouse. A photographer was poking his camera into Aub’s privy. He was youngish and thin, with long hair in a bun on the back of his head. I watched as he snapped a string of photographs. Jesus, not again, I said to myself. As he stepped inside the little shack, I crept up behind him, stood in the doorway, and said, “You’re under arrest.”

  Seeing the kid jump improved my mood slightly. I took his right wrist and cuffed it to his left, behind his back.

  “You’re serious?”

  By way of an answer I half dragged him down to the truck and helped him inside it, saying, “Don’t touch anything.”

  “This is never going to—”

  I shut the truck’s passenger-side door and stepped to the yellow line, where all those eyes—human and mechanical—waited for me. A hush of anticipation settled over the small crowd. Trying to bite down on my anxiety, and at the same time think of what to say to dampen curiosity and let us work in peace, proved difficult. “We are in the middle of two ongoing investigations, so . . .” A camera clicked. The silence deepened. “No comment. This line? Imagine that it extends all the way around Dunigan’s property. Cross it and you will be arrested. Everything there is to see, you have seen. Thanks for your cooperation.”

  Inside the parked pickup, I took deep breaths and gradually loosened my white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. The photographer introduced himself as Galen, and asked me a couple questions before understanding I wasn’t going to answer. Little by little and then all at once, the news teams flew their perches. Finally only one red hatchback remained, parked half in the ditch; without a word I got out of the truck, opened the passenger-side door, helped the kid out, and unlocked his cuffs. He thanked me.

  “Listen,” I said. “You invaded an old man’s privacy.”

  He nodded his head like a turkey. I didn’t quite believe his contrition but I had to credit his effort. “I’ll just keep whatever shots I took from the road.”

  “Tell your friends: don’t come around here.”

  The afternoon proceeded quietly. Apart from a few cars that slowed down as they passed the farm, then sped up when they saw me, we had no visitors. It was warm enough that I unzipped my coat and loosened my shoulder holster. Where the extra .40 pressed against my side, a patch of wet cooled in the breeze. After squeezing out my socks and attempting to dry them on the truck’s hood, I gave up and pulled them back on and took to the trails. The ridgetop caught a lot more sunlight that day, and after stopping in at the site, which looked emptier every time I saw it, I cut due east on a trail, hoping to connect with the smaller plots south of the Bray place. It took a few miles before I began to hear tires passing on a paved road somewhere below me. I slipped down a steep decline into a piece of land grown so marshy that even youngish trees were falling over. The larger ones—beech, mostly—had been diced up by a chain saw, leaving gnarled root systems and a stump on one end, tops on the other, and here and there on the soggy forest floor a spray of sawdust.

  I climbed the other side of the ravine and found a riot of orange POSTED signs, one to every tree, along
a dry stone fence that slumped into piles. Through the bare gray trees I could see dwellings or maybe barns. If my map was right and I wasn’t out of my mind, these places belonged to the Grady family—Grady the Elder and Grady the Younger. Choosing a dry boulder some distance from the yards, I surveyed both spreads for signs of activity, and in maybe fifteen minutes I saw none. A squirrel forgot I was there and traipsed along the wall not far from me. I stood and approached the clearings.

  At the border marked by the orange signs, I was able to pick out which household was which; in a corner of the yard to the left, or north if you will, was a small trampoline sagging from a pool of water in its middle, and a little soccer goal for practice. The newer home was a split-level ranch sided in vinyl. Next door, separated by a line of trees and undergrowth, was the original Grady farmstead. A pea-soup-colored farmhouse blended in to the wet gray of March almost as if it were camouflaged, along with a timber-frame shed that had fallen to its knees, several apple trees, and a few lines of firewood. Here and there rotting canvas tarps were becoming one with the earth, seeming to pull their contents down with them.

  Any sensible person would have chosen to begin with the tidier place, so I did too. As I clambered over the wall into the neater property of Grady the Younger, my foot caught on something; I looked down and saw a silver wire stretching the length of the stone fence. I was able to disentangle myself before the shock arrived, for it was an electric fence, the kind you use to keep cows in and deer out. I stood in the shadow of some trees and tried to devise a way to get around front that wouldn’t seem skulking. While I was thinking and getting nowhere, a raspy woman’s voice called from off to my right.

  “You there!”

  I stood still.

  “You!” she continued. “In the trees. Can I help you?”

  “Mrs. Grady?”

  “Yes, and you’re on my son’s land.” Evelina Grady stood in her back doorway, her bulky body propped up by a medical cane.

  “Officer Henry Farrell here. We’ve, ah, had some trouble on the ridge.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Well, I was hoping to speak with your son, but it doesn’t look like he’s home.”

  “Nosir, he isn’t, but I’m free. Come over.”

  When an old lady gets me in her clutches, as happens down at the station about once a month, I figure, oh, well, at least we’re running at the same speed. I get along with them. I hopped the wall and waded through the tall grass in Evelina’s backyard.

  She ushered me into a parlor whose every surface was covered with something—magazines, sewing patterns, medical supplies, and so on. A series of fancy dolls stared out at me from a glass case. The window curtains were closed and it was quite dark inside, and smelled of cigarettes and cat litter. Several portraits of Jesus hung on the walls, and photographs of an old, fleshy man abounded. Ron Grady, I surmised, felled by cancer a while back. Though Evelina was probably pushing seventy, her curly brown hair showed no gray. She wore thick glasses with a chain to keep them around her neck, sweatpants, and a sweatshirt with a large butterfly embroidered on it. Pointing me to the couch with her cane, she took a low easy chair herself, settling into it with a groan. I put on my listening face.

  “Well, now I know what it takes for the law to check in on an old woman,” she said, not unkindly. “Two in one day. Lord.”

  “All you ever have to do is call.” I cleared my throat. “So I gather you saw the news.”

  “Yessir, and I’m hoping everything’s all right over there.” She leaned forward a fraction as if to continue, but her train got delayed.

  “Meaning over at Aub’s?”

  “Yes, at Aubrey’s is what I mean. Arriving the back way as you did, you may have noticed some signs? That’s a way to upset my son, coming through the woods. Why didn’t you come by the front, like a normal man?”

  “Just out walking. You know. About Aubrey . . .”

  “About Aubrey. He, my son, he put up those signs because of him.”

  “Yes? You have trouble?”

  “Yes and no. Now, I’ve been knowing Aubrey since I was a young woman and we moved here. He don’t talk much, but he’s harmless. Shoveled my drive when I was pregnant with that one”—she inclined her head in the direction of her son’s house—“and helped get wood in. I’d feed him every now and then. He came and went as he pleased; sometimes he had an old car, more often he was on foot.

  “Now, my son Ron’s got two girls. His wife come out early one morning to find Aub sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for a ride to town. It was something he used to do with me, and I warned her about, but still, she run in screaming like there was a rabid dog on the loose. Ron come running out, asks him what’s he doing. He says can you give me a ride. Ron says no, and don’t ever do that again. Well, sure enough a month goes by and Aubrey”—she patted her knees with a flourish—“sits right back in that passenger seat. I need a ride to town. Now, that got Ron mad.”

  “How old are the girls?”

  “Ten and twelve. Eight and ten at the time.” She showed me a picture: pretty, gap-toothed little girls on a summer day, making a show for the camera.

  “And Aub never . . . showed any interest in them?”

  “No. No. I can see why you might ask that, him being alone all these years.” She coughed and lit a cigarette. “No, there’s a lost love in his past, a woman many years ago. She threw him over and he never married. I don’t guess he had as many chances to get married as we do now.”

  “I’d never heard that about him.”

  “That’s all he ever told me. I asked him once. Pressed it out of him. There was a time I might have known him better than anyone.” Frustration crossed her face, and it seemed she made an effort not to look in the direction of next door. “Yeah, he didn’t always smell fresh or have nice manners. But he was a good neighbor. His mind started to wander some years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was permanently lost by now. A shame, the way he got. Not many like him left.”

  “He got what, forgetful?”

  “Yeah, forgetful.” In a motion that seemed to include the house, or maybe just the room we were in, she opened her arms wide and then brought them in close, making a little sphere with her hand. “It was as if his world had closed in on him. You couldn’t reach him. He didn’t know you. He’d talk about something made no sense, you couldn’t tell what. This had started maybe eight, ten years back. But between the time Ron shut him out and the next time I saw him on the road, he was about gone.”

  “What about Kevin and Carly? Anyone around to help him?”

  “They were never close. They did what they could, I think. The state helped a bit, my church helped a bit.”

  “Let me ask you something. You don’t think—”

  “Nosir. Don’t know who that fellow was you found on the ridge. I’m reasonably sure Aubrey don’t either.”

  “Seen anything unusual up there? Or down around here, for that matter?”

  “I don’t walk much anymore.” The old lady gave me a litany of health issues. I commiserated wordlessly until a pause came long enough to break in.

  “Well, there’s one last thing,” I said.

  “Surely you’re not leaving yet?”

  “Any firearms in the house?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and no. Ron Junior took his father’s collection off my hands. I said I’d be happy to hang on to them, I can shoot and we do get an occasional bear, but he, he felt he should have them. He left me a little revolver, the size you put in your boot, you know. A five-shot pistol.”

  “May I see it?”

  “I haven’t seen it myself in some time. When Ron left it, I said, what am I going to do with this? It won’t but tickle a bear. He says, you get an intruder, you don’t need to shoot him, just shoot the couch. Shoot the couch? I wouldn’t like to.”

  She rose and took her time getting up the stairs. I heard the sounds of boxes being taken down and opened, and some muttering. When she came back a fe
w minutes later, she was empty-handed. “I—it’s not where I thought it was. I’ll turn it up, and bring it around to you.”

  “Do you know the make? Caliber?”

  “I don’t know the make. It’s a .38.”

  We continued to talk for maybe ten minutes. She asked about George; I shut that topic down quickly. I sensed she was getting weary of me, but didn’t want to let me go, either. When headlights swept the house next door, I saw my chance and stood.

  “Oh, Officer.”

  “Henry.”

  “Henry, you can’t leave yet?”

  “Evelina, I must. I’ll check in on you.”

  “I’ll be waiting. I’ll hold you to it. Come by the front next time, won’t you?” She patted my shoulder. “Here, I’ll introduce you to my son.” Through the thin line of trees that separated the Grady yards she hallooed an SUV in the driveway, its doors open. “Ronnie?” Nothing. She called louder, and that time a man answered, terse. “Ronnie, honey,” Evelina said, “Officer Farrell is here about . . . about what-all’s been going on.”

  I heard him mutter something before saying aloud, “Good. Why don’t you send him over.”

  I slipped through the line of trees to Ron’s front yard. The family was unloading plastic tubs and cans of food in industrial sizes from the back of the vehicle. Over an armload of groceries, Ron’s wife gave me a thin smile and introduced herself as Dot. She hurried herself and her daughters into the house. I didn’t see or hear them again. Ron Grady turned to me with a plastic barrel of pretzels under one arm and cheese puffs under the other. He gestured with his head to the open SUV door. “Close that for me?” I did, and followed him inside, noting a lawn sign that read OUR WATER QUALITY IS FINE. NO TRESPASSING.

  Grady the Younger’s house was tidier than his mother’s. Shoes were lined up in a stone foyer, presumably to avoid staining the beige wall-to-wall carpet; I bent to take mine off but Ron stopped me. “Don’t worry about that. Just wipe them.”

  As I sat in a floral-print wingback, he disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two light beers, one of which he handed to me. Short but muscular, and fidgety, Ron appeared more distracted than nervous at the prospect of talking to a policeman. A long drink seemed to focus him, and he listened quietly as I went through the story of the previous day. When I was done, he whistled through his teeth but said nothing, as if waiting for me to continue.