Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel

by Tom Bouman

  “Was.”

  “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  The man smiled. The creases in his face stood out black, and I could hardly tell his teeth from his gums. In my mind, I saw him slide his knife back into his boot and disappear into the woods by the Stiobhard place. An ATV rider from the night before. “You know you do. And I know you. We been having all kinds of company this evening.”

  He turned his head in the direction of the bus. He lowered his voice. “You might find someone you’re looking for. Then you can continue your ‘rounds.’”

  I searched the man’s face for malice, and found amusement, the kind I’ve seen turn dark in an instant. I stepped to the door, turning several times to watch my back as I did. At the main entrance—a bolted-on storm door, not the original sliding thing—I drew my .40 from the shoulder holster, concealing it from the yard with my body.

  I pulled open the door. There was a sharp bang from deep within the bus. I spun out of the doorway and flattened myself against the side of the vehicle, scanning the crowd and readying myself for a dive under the front bumper. It didn’t sound or feel like a gunshot, but there are all kinds. The man by the fire shrugged theatrically. There was another bang, and one of the bus’s rearward emergency windows fell to the ground. A person slipped out and hit the ground running. I took off after him. He was headed for the road, and he was fast and wild as a rabbit. Like a rabbit, he chose a path through the thicket, but like a man, this slowed him down. I took a line through an unobstructed part of the yard and reached the road about the same time as I expected the runner to. He wasn’t anywhere. Trotting down to where his exit point would have been, and beyond, I scanned the road on both sides and worked my way back in the direction of the yard.

  In the darkness, I moved into the brush. There was no hope of taking anyone by surprise. I attempted reason. “This is Officer Farrell. Come out with your hands where I can see. If you don’t, when I find you, I swear to Christ, I’ll break a finger for every minute you make me wait.” I didn’t mean it and it didn’t work.

  I was at a disadvantage. He could hear me and probably see me, but not vice versa. If he moved I’d be able to pin him down. The junkyard pulsed up and down in time with the throbbing in my head.

  Stepping and pausing to listen, I made an arc to where I had seen the runner go in, and found his track of broken, brittle stalks, which led straight to a sedan that was so sunken in the cover that I hadn’t seen it from the other side. Taking three deep breaths, I rushed in, leading with my .40 through the glassless passenger window. My man was crouched inside. He scrambled for an exit through the open windshield, calling out, “I’m unarmed, I’m unarmed!” I opened the door and caught him by the ankle. Holstering my .40, I got my other hand around his leg and dragged. He kicked with his other leg, getting me a few good ones in the ribs until I could trap the loose foot between my body and my arm. I pulled. He whanged his face on the dashboard and got a hold on the steering column until I shoved him face-first into it, then hauled on his legs again. He yelped as some part of him caught on an exposed spring in the passenger seat, and then he was out on the ground, heaving on his hands and knees. In a moment of anger I slammed the car door on his ribs, then pressed my .40 into the base of his skull. Snapping a cuff on one wrist, I yanked it around to the other, flattening the runner on his front. Once he was secured, I shone a light in his face.

  “Hello again, Officer,” said Vernon Yeager, wild-eyed and wincing. He wore a too-large camouflage jacket, and his neck was gashed from collarbone to chin. The slightly built Okie mechanic lowered his voice to a whisper. “Get me out of here. I can help you. I know where he is.”

  I stood there stupidly, wondering who “he” was, not feeling very well and needing to be still.

  Yeager spoke again, this time more urgently. “You all right? Drag me out. Hit me if you have to. Just get me out of here.” I made to put away my weapon, and he hissed. “Keep that piece handy.”

  There was movement in the brambles a few meters to the right, and Yeager fell silent. I took his advice and moved. When we got to the edge of the brush, I shoved him, hard, so that he popped out of the waist-high cover like a lemon seed and fell on his face. The onlookers by the fire cheered derisively. I pulled him to his feet. He sold the bit, repeating, “No no no,” frantically as I half walked, half dragged him to my vehicle. He resisted all the way, like a child.

  Kyle Leahey waited with an elbow on my hood. I showed him the gun in my hand; he looked at it as if it was a toad I’d caught. What got him to move was Yeager lurching forward and puking at his feet, as if on cue. Before I was able to shut Yeager into the cage, the man by the fire had joined us.

  “Vernon,” he said. “Remember what we discussed, now.”

  Yeager nodded and I shut him in.

  “Listen,” I said quietly, turning to the thin man. “If Jennie Lyn shows—”

  Running a hand through his long hair, he said, “See you, Henry.” He stooped to pick up a piece of deadfall to drag back to the fire, but never turned his back to me until I was on my way.

  ON A CLEAR hilltop beyond the Heights, I uncuffed Yeager, sat him on my front bumper, and dressed his cuts in the headlights. He sucked in a breath at the peroxide I poured down his neck. Other than the beads of sweat on his face and some slight tremors, he was hanging in there. Hanging in, but suffering for want of a fix. I taped a gauze pad over his neck. He picked at it.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He felt in his back pocket. “They have my wallet somehow.”

  I pulled on the collar of his camouflage jacket. “Looks like you got something of theirs too.”

  “Cold up north. Got a smoke?” He hunched over, his hands squeezed between his thighs, and his eyes began to close.

  I lifted his chin and smacked him with an open hand. “Talk.”

  He shook the surprise off and began. When he had finished, I got on the horn to the sheriff’s department.

  NOT TWENTY MINUTES later, Yeager was back safe and sound in my vehicle’s enclosure, cuffed and hidden in the foot space between the seat and the grille. We were near the New York border, parked in the trees, in a patch of skunk cabbage at the side of a mud track leading down to January Creek. Patrolman Hanluain’s car had beaten me there, and I had pulled in behind him. The stocky policeman and I stood on the track, listening to the occasional car swoosh by on 37; the temperature had dropped enough that ice was forming in a sugar-thin crust over the ground. Soon it would be thick enough to announce our presence as we approached. We had Dally’s blessing to go ahead, and it would only get tougher the longer we waited.

  Three hundred yards down the track, a pop-up camper stood on a bank overlooking where January Creek got big. It was an angling spot of some renown, one of those local secrets everybody knows, which is probably why Father and Mag and I had tended to avoid it, preferring to catch our fish deeper in. The camper had been there, in and out of use, for over fifteen years. It belonged to nobody and everybody. Adjacent, the shape of an automobile glinted in the starlight that reached the clearing.

  Our breath puffed out white against the dark woods.

  “Guy didn’t get too far, did he?” said Hanluain, taking a last look at the photo he’d brought with him, then showing it to me.

  “Let’s get going.”

  We walked slowly and softly down to the edge of the trees, sidearms out, making no sound and keeping covered anything reflective on our uniforms. The closer we got, the more the creek’s rushing helped to muffle our steps. We stopped facing the rear of the camper. I checked out the windows with my field glasses: no light, no movement. The automobile we’d seen was a compact, and I was impressed it had made the journey down that muddy road. We were just about to circle around and meet at the front when a door creaked; stopped; creaked again and clicked shut. A bundled-up figure crept toward the car, glancing back at the camper. An arm swung out, and something heavy splashed into t
he deepest part of the creek. I tried to mark the spot, but it was dark, the creek was fast, and I feared whatever it was, was lost.

  I gestured for Hanluain to get in position and ran for the car as quietly as possible, down low, badge in one hand and gun in the other. I was noticed, and the person took off for the car, not ten feet away. A hand rose toward the door handle, and I crossed the distance just in time to clutch it in mine. There was surprising strength there. I looked down into the broad, harried face of Tracy Dufaigh, held a finger to my lips, warned her with my eyes. In a long moment, her shoulders slumped and she looked toward the camper once, then back at me. “He’s in there,” she whispered.

  “Armed?”

  “He’s got a buck knife but ain’t fit to use it. You better cuff me. I want him to see that I’m cuffed too, if he’s going to see me at all.” She shook her head, and said, to herself, “Best this way.” She began to shake, and I wasn’t sure it was from the cold.

  I got her fixed in restraints and pointed to a flat stone on the lee side of her car. “Stay down until we give the all-clear, okay?”

  “Henry, he’s—”

  “Just do it, please.” I turned away, then back. “Where were you headed?” I asked.

  Dufaigh looked up at me. “I don’t know. Not home. Maybe the Brays, sleep in the stables? Cold as shit out here. I’m tired of it. I was going to call it, call it in.” Her right leg was working an imaginary sewing machine at a furious pace, but her tone was falsely light, as if it were completely normal to be in handcuffs, taking cover behind a car in the cold and dark.

  “Call what in?”

  She shrugged.

  I pressed her. “What’d you throw in the creek?”

  “Trash,” she said.

  I shook my head and took a deep breath. “So you’re what, just along for the ride here? We’ve got some talking to do. Stay down.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Officer,” she said. “I’ll be good.”

  Hanluain kicked the camper’s door half off its hinges and we rushed in, shouting the usual, but the resistance we’d expected wasn’t there. Pat McBride was out, curled in a sleeping bag up to his eyes. The air smelled faintly rotten. I placed a hand on the unconscious man’s chest and pulled the sleeping bag’s zipper down, while Hanluain patted his body for guns and sharps, finding none. We each picked up a long end of the sleeping bag, using it as a kind of litter, and, once outside, set him on the hard ground of the bank. There was a steady flow of clear mucus from his nose. His breathing and his pulse were regular.

  “Jesus, what happened to him?” said Hanluain, as McBride opened his eyes quarter-mast, seeing nothing.

  The patrolman headed back into the camper as I rolled McBride on his side to put his cuffs on. He’d shat his pants. A watery shit. I did myself a favor and pulled a pair of latex gloves from a coat pocket, and called to Hanluain to do the same. “Ahead of you,” he said.

  I heard movement from behind and turned to watch Tracy push herself standing against the car. She surveyed McBride lying with his face slack against the river stones. “All clear?” she said.

  “What’d he take?”

  “He got mixed up, didn’t cut it right. He ain’t OD’d, though?”

  “Go back over to the car and sit on the hood and don’t move.”

  In the camper we found chocolate bars, two empty bottles of crème de menthe, potato chip bags, and singles of American cheese. Also a large stash of what we were pretty sure was methamphetamine, wrapped in a gallon bag and stuffed in a vent. In with the crystalline powder was a smaller bag of finer white stuff; given McBride’s condition, we had to assume it was heroin. The aforementioned buck knife was lying out on a counter. Hanluain took a number of interior photographs with a disposable camera, opened every drawer, and examined every dark place he could get to. I had hoped for firearms, but that hope was settling somewhere in the deep part of the creek. Hanluain wanted to linger and pull everything apart, but I led him to a window and showed him McBride lying out on the bank. He hadn’t moved, and it was hard to tell if he was even breathing.

  I said, “Eamon, this guy’s in rough shape. We need to get him back to the station, get a doctor to look at him. That’s first. We don’t, he’s nothing more than a lawsuit for your department.”

  “My department?” He sighed and nodded. “So, you take McBride and I take Dufaigh?” he said, all innocence.

  I laughed. “I can’t put Yeager with either of these two, they’ll know he talked. Sorry, you’ve got to handle both.”

  “Aw, my back seat. Shit.”

  “Yeah, sorry about it.”

  We bagged and labeled the stashes and put them in a duffel, then carried McBride between us up the trail, his feet dragging in the mud. Tracy Dufaigh walked in front of us, eyes on the ground and saying little. We buckled McBride into the cage in Hanluain’s patrol car; his head flopped back against the seat, and then made a slow rotation forward. Heavy fluids drained out of his nose and mouth.

  When it came time for Tracy to take a seat in the car, she took issue. “What, you’re going to keep me cuffed? Where you think I’m going to go?”

  “Get in the car, miss,” said Hanluain.

  “What’d I do, that you’re keeping me in handcuffs? What if you need me to look after him? How am I supposed to do that?” She continued to protest, but allowed herself to be maneuvered into the back seat. As the door shut, I heard her say, “Oh, goodness,” as she caught a whiff of McBride.

  “So,” said the patrolman, “meet you at the station?”

  “I got to take care of—” and I jerked my thumb in the direction of my truck, where Yeager was stowed. “Tell you what, I’ll call Liz Brennan, tell her to meet you over there to get samples and do an exam for you.”

  “Ah, good.”

  “If you can’t wake him up, you get his samples and the product before a judge in six hours, so we have them on possession, at least. Call Dally if you have to.”

  “Right.”

  “I want a chance to talk to Dufaigh—to both of them.”

  “I hope you get it. Ain’t up to me.”

  Yeager had fallen asleep or passed out, and his breathing was slow and deep. I drove toward Wild Thyme, and when my cell phone connected with service I pulled to the side of the road. After three rings I raised Liz, filled her in, and asked her to check in at the sheriff’s department.

  “I’ll check vitals and take blood. County gets the bill.”

  “That’s all I’m asking, just make sure this asshole is going to live until tomorrow. And there’s one more thing.” I asked her to meet me at the clinic.

  Liz waited a moment before saying, “Clinic’s closed, Henry. What is it, ten?”

  “I need a favor. I got a guy who can’t be seen by the others. I just want to be sure he’s all right.”

  “Jesus Christ. All right, see you there.”

  It was close to eleven-thirty by the time Liz showed up in her station wagon. Hanluain had had to call the sheriff, and the sheriff had to raise a judge, and the judge had to get down to the courthouse. I had been waiting with Yeager—who was still asleep—in my vehicle, with the heat on and the radio low. It had been hard to stay awake myself. Yeager was just a little guy, so I slung him over my shoulder. He’d pissed himself and maybe more, so I held his thighs away from my chest. My legs complained as I climbed the stairs to the second floor. By coming here instead of to the distant state trooper outpost in Dunmore or an actual hospital, I’d already made my bet that this guy was a relative innocent. Putting him in restraints meant I’d dicked up the chain of arrest, but that didn’t matter if all we’d ever have on him, at best, was possession. He hadn’t said everything he knew, and I wanted everything. He wouldn’t have enough to lose if I put him into the system now.

  Liz had prepared a gurney bed in an examination room, with a waterproof conduit sheet and blankets close by. I laid my charge on his side, uncuffed one of his wrists, and shackled him to a rail. “Is this normal?�
�� I asked.

  “Hell if I know. I mean, some people when they’re in withdrawal—I gather this is methamphetamine—just shut down. It’s a natural defense against overstimulation or physical stress.”

  “Well, it’s not a very good one.”

  “It’s working for this guy,” she said. She drew blood from a vein in Yeager’s wiry arm. He stirred a bit when the needle went in, but settled back into slow, rhythmic breathing soon after. His vitals were normal, with an elevated heart rate masked by his placid exterior. “He’s fine. If I know anything, he’ll need a smooth-over tomorrow morning. He’ll try to work you. Probably try to get away. Watch him.”

  “Thanks, I—he’s not my first crank . . . he’s not my first user.”

  “No, of course not.” Liz looked in my eyes. “Woah. You feeling all right, bud?”

  “Me? Fine.”

  “Take off your coat. You have some dilation. Let me check you out.” She led me to the other examination room and bade me remove my hat. The light she shone in each eye produced a stabbing pain, which I tried not to show. “Any blurred vision, ringing in your ears? Headaches?”

  “No.”

  She extended her hands to either side of my head, and then ran them through my unwashed hair and over my skull. It felt good. Safe. But when she reached the pulp right-rear of my head, the place I’d dared not touch for two days, my vision closed in. I heard her say, “Jesus,” from a distance, as if she were standing in another room. I turned my head to the side, moved off the exam table, found a wastebasket, and threw up the soup I’d had for dinner.

  I came back to myself hearing Liz say, “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re going to be fine.” Her hand made warm circles on my back.

  I looked up at her guiltily.

  “Any memory loss?” She rattled off a phone number, and asked me to repeat it. I did so, missing only two digits. “That’s right,” she said. “That’s your own phone number. You’ve got a concussion. I’m going to get ice for your head, but what you need is rest.”