Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel (21 page)

“Everyone can have a new life,” I said, even as I made a note to look up Francis Dufaigh’s record. Everyone has something they don’t tell, and his sounded like a big one. “Everyone has the right to start over.”

“I hope that’s true. For her, I mean.”

I hoped so too. But I said it more to be kind than because I believed it. We stood and Dufaigh showed me out; I bade him good night at his front step. He closed the screen door gently and disappeared back into his home, just as an older woman in a nightgown appeared on the stairs inside.

I stopped above the power-line cut where I’d been the night before, and picked my way down to the spot where Jennie Lyn Stiobhard’s upturned ATV would have been. It was gone.

I drove to Westmeath Road. The sheriff had described McBride’s trailer as “derelict.” I wondered if there was a special word for a trailer that a fallen oak tree has crumpled at the midsection, because that’s exactly what had happened to this one. Standing in the yard, with the bare treetop reaching out to me like a drunk lying in the gutter, I tried to imagine what kind of life made this place a home. I walked all the way around the clearing, through some swampy woods full of beer cans, garbage bags, and junk too bulky to fit into garbage bags. There was newly charred wood in the fire pit out back. The smell of it was not enough to mask the cat-piss odor of a lab.

When I stepped under the yellow police tape and got next to the single-wide, I found that the tree formed a natural border between what had been the meth lab—until SERT and Dally had busted and collected it—and a tiny crash pad. McBride had duct-taped blue tarps over the wound in the structure, effectively sealing one side from the other. On the back end of the trailer a garden hose snaked from a kitchen window to one on the lab side.

I yanked open a door that barely fit in its misshapen frame. Flipping on a light switch, I found that the electricity was still hooked up. The living side of the trailer was about what I expected. Its denizens had not been big recyclers, and empty tallboys of cheap light and ice beer littered the kitchen, along with dead soldiers of schnapps. There was a couch heaped with stained sleeping bags. In the bathroom, orange mold crept up the shower walls and stained the sink. At the far end was the bedroom; the bed had been removed, presumably to make room for more people to crash out. Blankets were heaped along the walls and the room smelled strongly of cigarettes. I opened the door to a built-out closet. In a set of coveralls hanging from a hook on the door, a lifelike rubber dildo protruded from the fly—probably a nasty little jolt for the SERT team who first searched the place. Atop a pile of dirty men’s laundry, I found a woman’s bag with toiletries and clothing inside. The clothing was on the larger end, about Tracy’s size. There were several pairs of women’s boots and shoes on the floor. I remembered Tracy Dufaigh tending to horses in her canvas sneakers. In a paper sack, there were several pornographic DVDs and a glass marijuana pipe.

If Tracy had wanted, she could have returned for her things almost anytime. We didn’t have the manpower to watch the place day and night. She hadn’t, and I figured McBride had holed up somewhere and taken her along. Nobody was home, and nobody would return while I was around.

My car passed cobbled-together homesteads. Dogs leapt from their houses and bounced short at the ends of their chains. Groups of people on porches and in yards paused their conversations to follow my progress, cigarette tips glowing. As I rolled by a larger gathering of men in full camo, a crushed can pinged off the side of my truck.

Westmeath Road was sparsely populated. I passed a burned-out farmhouse whose one remaining barn had gone so far diagonal it looked like a dog on point. Around the bend I could see where I was going, in the glow of a bonfire reflected against silver trees. I pulled to the side of the road and turned off my headlights. Some dangerous people were up ahead, folks I called the People of the Bus. In daylight, the turquoise school bus looked like a relic of some 1960s adventure. Why else, you might ask, would anyone have painted it that strange color, if not to roam the country in psychedelic regalia? In fact, the bus was at one point the hunter-green of Midhollow High School, had been bought for a song, and simply faded where it stood, disused among more conventional automobiles, also long abandoned. A metal chimney protruded from the roof, leading down to an old woodstove. In what might be termed the front yard, an iron hand pump marked the location of a water well.

I don’t know exactly who first made a domicile of the place, presumably a son or nephew of the absent landowner. Over the years someone or perhaps several different people had taken out the seats and installed bunks, hanging old sheets over the windows. I’d seen Jennie Lyn, or her car, a number of times when I passed by in my own pickup—not the township police truck—on my own time. A lot of observation I do has to be that way. I rolled down my window and listened. Men’s voices clamored over each other, rough-sounding and half frantic. I couldn’t make out any words. I sat and took deep breaths.

With methamphetamine you can’t assume that any of the usual rules are in place. Everyone knows it destroys the people who take it, but it also has destroyed plenty who don’t. It’s not a peaceable drug. Best not to go startling it, I reasoned, especially so outnumbered. I rolled up my window, flipped on my headlights, and began a slow roll around the bend.

They’d stoked the bonfire to about six feet high, and the flame danced off the glass in the windows of the bus and what was left of the other cars, made cavern walls of the surrounding trees, against which the shadows of the men in the yard were black cave paintings that came alive. The shadows went still as my vehicle came into view. Nobody ran. Some remained standing where they were, and two or three lounged in bus seats around the fire. At the edges of the clearing, a thicket of spirea and crabapple separated open space from forest; it had grown in and around a fleet of dead cars and appliances. A few ATVs and rusted pickups looked to be the only working vehicles there. One of the trucks had its doors open and was blasting metal from maxed-out speakers. I unzipped my jacket and stepped out of the truck.

Standing too quickly caused blood to race from my head. As my vision corkscrewed shut, I focused on the one thing that remained, the bonfire, flickering alone in the black. Something approached, loud and primordial, in a different register from the violent music. Unseeing, I tucked the open jacket back to expose not only the .40 on my hip, but the one holstered under my arm.

My vision cleared enough to reveal one of the men moving in my direction. He didn’t stop until his face was about six inches from mine. It was a face lined and hollowed, old before its time but still patched with a young man’s beard. His eyes vibrated in place. It was Kyle Leahey, my old friend from the county drunk tank. I swallowed the affront of his closeness and aggression, and stepped to the side. He stepped with me. I was thinking about where and how to hit him when a man called out from the fireside.

“You’re a little far afield, ain’t you, Officer?” As Kyle turned his head at the voice behind him, I stepped past and approached the fire. He snorted in anger and I heard him coming up behind me. I flipped open my holster, but with a glance and a sharp whistle, the man lounging by the bonfire kept Kyle at bay. “Have a seat,” he told me. I remained standing, and followed my would-be attacker across the yard with a look.

“Making my rounds,” I said. I picked out two women among the men, one skinny with a grown-out dye job, the other plump and blond, neither of them Jennie Lyn nor Tracy. Everyone seemed to defer to the man I was talking to, so I kept my attention on him. “You having a good time tonight?”

“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.