Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel (11 page)

“I do kind of wish my husband was here for whatever it is. It’s not too serious, is it?”

“What’s he, at work?”

“He’s an engineer. BAE Systems.”

“We’ll need to talk to him, too. And you have kids, I gather . . .”

“Yeah, boy and a girl. At school now, of course . . .”

“Ah.” I looked around the kitchen at the ornate flatware on display, probably from Italy or France. “Listen. Yesterday we found a body. A young man up on the ridge, on Aubrey Dunigan’s land.”

“My god, what?”

“Hard to believe, I know. He’d been up there some time.” I waited but she stayed silent. “No, no sign of him on your end, nothing?”

“Um. No.” I watched her move from shock to something like bewildered acceptance. “What happened? Who is he?”

“We’re looking into that, of course. There’s some we still don’t know.”

“I’m—I don’t know what to say.” She stared into her water glass, unseeing.

“Can I ask you something, you see much of your neighbors? Aubrey Dunigan, I’m mainly curious about?”

“From a distance. We lead trail rides up on the ridge. Not in the winter, of course. Sometimes you see him puttering around his house. It was on his land?”

“Yeah, but it was near enough to your plot, and some others besides. Felt it best to let you know.”

“Naturally.”

I had been watching her for signs of prior knowledge, nervousness, deceit. There was nothing like that. “Mrs. Bray, have you seen or heard anything unusual this winter, had any trespassers, maybe trying to come in from 189?”

“Officer—”

“Henry.”

“Henry, how did this man die?”

“We’re trying to figure that out.”

She nodded, a tentative, unconscious motion. “We’re not in danger here?”

“I don’t think so. Couldn’t hurt to lock your doors at night.”

“Jesus, he was
murdered
?”

“Like I said, we’re determining that.”

She looked at me in silence for what felt like a long time. “Did Aub do it?”

“No. I highly doubt it.”

“Well, no. I haven’t seen or heard anything.”

I gave her a description of John Doe. “Does that sound familiar, maybe someone who had been riding out here?”

“No,” she said. “Of course, we have more day-tripping riders than regulars, people who come out for a onetime experience, so I might not remember. Or I might not have even been here.”

“You have regulars?”

“Yeah, little girls taking lessons and a few rich old ladies. I stable several horses that aren’t mine. Listen, is there . . . is there someone out there?”

“We’ve had state troopers on the ridge. Actually, part of the reason I’m here is to ask your permission to walk your land.”

“Yes. Of course. Please.”

“Shelly, I don’t think you or your family is in any real danger. The man died for a reason. Nothing to do with you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And there’s something else, a separate matter.” I took a deep breath and looked away and wished that I didn’t have to say it. “I had a deputy, George Ellis, who was shot and killed last night.”

“Are you . . . my God. I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t anywhere near here. It . . . but Tracy knew him, Tracy Dufaigh works for you?” You could see the nearness of all this violence affect her. I expected she was ready to gather her children and run to the nearest civilized county.

“When she shows up, yes. She’s here now, out at the stables.”

“This will be on the news this afternoon but I want her to hear from me as soon as . . . as soon as can be managed.”

“I understand.” Shelly led me to the front door and pointed to the stables.

“You didn’t know George?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

“He never came here to visit Tracy, or . . .”

“Not that I know of, Officer, sorry.”

“It’s Henry.” I left her a card.

Shelly made me promise to stop and see her once again before I left, in case she thought of anything. I strode up the hill to the stables, my boots slipping in the muddy driveway. Over top of the hill, I was taken aback by something I hadn’t seen from the house—a silver compact sedan, its sides splattered with mud, parked in a dirt patch. I made a note of the license plate. The interior was strewn with cracked CD cases and fast-food bags.

By the stable door, you could feel the horses inside, a thick presence almost like sound, almost like scent, separate from the smell of their hay and shit, and the gentle explosions of their breath. I have never been big on horses since a nag, drunk on rotten apples, bit me on the stomach when I was a boy. When I slipped through the partway-open door I heard a woman singing, but couldn’t make out the words; it was a nice, alto voice that avoided blue notes, the kind you hear in sixties folk records. There were about six horses tucked in shadowy stalls. I could feel their big eyes on me. Soon as I saw Tracy, I recognized her from the bar, a brawny girl with a lip ring, and short hair dyed jet black. She was brushing a chestnut mare. She startled when I called her name, spooking the horse a bit. After soothing the horse she held a hand to her heaving breast in a theatrical way.

“Sorry,” I said. “Tracy Dufaigh, right? You got a moment?”

“I got a choice?”

I smiled and knew it looked false. “I can come back in a few.”

She tilted her head forward and gave me a look from under her brow that said it all. This was not the first time she’d spoken with a cop. There was a hint of defiance in her that suggested a hard upbringing, like she mistrusted authority not taken by brute force. And a ready resentment of the world because it works that way. I know; I’m a little like that myself. She being younger was nearer to it, and it showed fresh in her stance and in the look in her eye. I’d have hated to be her high school teacher.

“No, no, it’s fine,” she said. “What’s up?”

I filled her in on John Doe first. She stood staring up at me in the semi-dark. When I’d said my piece she blinked twice and said, “That’s unusual. We don’t get many murders around here.”

“I didn’t say it was murder.”

She rolled her eyes at that and said, “Well, I sure didn’t do it and I don’t know who did.”

“Good. But you’re up on the ridge a fair amount with the horses, aren’t you? Seen anything I should know about?”

“Not this winter, haven’t been taking them on the trails much. Snow’s too deep and crusted over; they bloody their shins punching through the ice. Looks like they might finally get some trail work, though.”

I nodded. “That your car out there, the silver sedan?”

“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?”