Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel (6 page)

“I’ll make sure they put you down like a dog. Step aside.”

Danny considered this and the air went out of him. Never taking his eye off me, he backed toward a rusted oil drum with several bullet holes in it, took my .40 out of his pocket, and dropped the weapon in; it splashed in the standing water and thumped when it hit bottom. Never letting me out of his line of vision, he stepped out of the yellow high beams. Then he was lost in the dark. I heard movement in the brush, then quick footfalls in what sounded like water. In an instant, those sounds were gone too.

I pulled out the shotgun and my own spotlight from the compartment under the passenger seat and made a slow circle, holding the light in my left hand, the handle of the shotgun in my right with the barrel crossed over my left forearm. For all the good it did, it also made me a perfect target. I killed the spot and my headlights too. When I knocked over the oil drum to retrieve my weapon, a few gallons of water rushed out. Had to upend the barrel completely for the .40 to tumble out. I holstered it wet, twisted on my Maglite, and walked to George’s radio car.

Whoever had laid him on his side in the back seat had done so with care, but he was dead, his weapons gone. The back of his head was matted and bloody, as was the rolled-up uniform coat somebody’d tucked under him as a pillow. His eyes were half open and there was an exit wound through his cheekbone.

Where Danny Stiobhard had disappeared into the woods, a narrow stream emerged from the earth. Stones covered in bright green moss marked the springhead, and the stream continued down into the dark. I followed it until it branched, then stopped to listen: heard the water at my feet, burbling onward to wherever it went. Condensation dripping from trees to a saturated forest floor covered with wet leaves. In the distance, a car moving fast and steady on what was probably 37, and a little closer than that, what could have been a four-wheeler. I headed back to the hollow. Had to drive about ten minutes in the hills before I could find a clear enough spot to radio the county.

H
UNTING DEER
since age eleven, I’ve gotten my share, but Father was a nose-to-the-ground dog when it came to the red menace. Need made him that way. A few years back, he and Ma packed it up for North Carolina to be near my sister Mag’s family, bringing his dominion over the whitetail population of Wild Thyme Township to an end; at the time he left, the number of deer he claimed to have shot was in the two-hundreds.

As I have mentioned, one of his hunting partners was Michael Stiobhard, Danny’s father. Hunting deer isn’t usually a solitary pursuit. Depending on the season, it takes at least two men but preferably more: one to sit still and wait in a tree stand or some elevated, downwind spot, and a couple more to drive the buck to where the sitter is. You want your partners to have sense and focus in the woods. If you’re lucky you’ll have a good tracker—a guy who can read a place’s changing story every day, the story of where the deer is that you want. You want a guy who knows the buck personally.

Mike Stiobhard and Father had both worked for the same machine shop in Wild Thyme, burring the edges off steel and aluminum parts that would then be shipped away to become pieces of something, nobody knew what. Every day Father’s hands came home laced with fine scratches from the parts’ edges, scratches filled with black dust that wouldn’t ever wash completely clean. He took me into the shop once when I was about six and let me try the sandblaster—the fingers of the rubber gloves were clammy from the guy using it before. It was thrilling to press the trigger and feel the force of the sand, heavy and permanent, and see it put a shine on a small aluminum square. He let me keep the square and I still have it. But the shop closed, and hunting changed from a pastime to a necessity.

I’m not sure Father and Mike were friends, exactly, but they were cut from the same olive drab. Good trackers, full of methods. Mike used to be able to stand stock-still under a tree, camoed to the eyelids, and call a deer in by whirling a white sock around, moving only his wrist. Father had a trick of confusing deer with balloons that he hasn’t shared with me yet. They had their secret ways, but mostly they were patient and determined.

About twenty-five years ago Mike and Father had got a beautiful eight-point, and the Stiobhards were cooking a roast and asked us to dinner to share it. I knew Danny from school but we weren’t friends—you’d think the other children calling us both woodchucks would have brought us together in solidarity, but I regret to say it didn’t. Still feel bad about it. But when I was ten years old I saw things differently, and wasn’t thrilled about dining with the Stiobhards; stepping in their house would be a for-all-time exclamation point on what everyone had been saying I was. I might as well have accepted it back then and saved trouble. Thankfully, Ma and Father had whacked enough manners into me so I don’t think my true feelings showed to my grown-up hosts, though Danny probably guessed how much I wanted to be there.

Upon entering, Ma and Father were handed cans of beer and Mag and I were dragged into the kids’ bedroom lair. The room was so small that even a few objects could crowd it, especially with the two sets of bunks, one of which had a sheet hanging over it, an illusion of privacy for Jennie Lyn, the daughter. After a show-and-tell of scuffed toys, we thumped outside to a rope swing where, in failing November light, Mag and I watched as the three Stiobhard children took turns swinging each other around and trying to pull or knock the one on the rope down. I was too chickenshit to join in and nobody asked Mag. No grass grew on the ground below the swing; the dirt was hard-packed, and knobs of oak root jutted up. Jennie Lyn, the youngest and also a girl, was thrown to the ground no less than four times. The fourth time, she got up crying. But she didn’t run back into the house, she just stood there huffing until she stopped, and then jumped back in the fray, popping an older brother neatly in the teeth.

We were called in to supper, and I remember tucking my legs under a tablecloth with floral embroidery around its edges. There was a feast on the table. Mag and I had eaten plenty of game at home, including squirrel pie and, in lean times, brown stew I suspected contained real woodchuck, but we had dreaded this meal the way kids dread most cooking that’s not their own mother’s. Still, it looked and smelled good. Venison roasted brown, surrounded by copper-colored potatoes. Pickled green beans provided a suggestion of a vegetable, and in a basket, probably fifty yellow rolls that magically looked both baked and fried; I’d heard Danny refer to these as “overnight rolls.” We bowed our heads for the blessing and then Mike Stiobhard took up a fork and knife to carve. Danny, sitting one away from me, grabbed the basket of overnight rolls and made to pass them to me—doubtless they were his favorite, a special treat that he wanted to share. Mike saw it and clouted his son on the ear with a sound like a branch snapping underfoot. The basket of rolls fell to the table, dislodging a spoon from a bowl full of mustard. A silence settled as Danny rubbed at the side of his head. We stared at our plates for a moment. I cut my eyes right to Father, who had not looked away, but instead held Mike in a gaze that wasn’t embarrassed or hot, but perfectly cool. Turning to Danny, he said, “You all right, bud?”

Danny was confused for a moment, as if he knew he should say nothing and keep his eyes to himself. But Father was a guest and an adult, and manners required an answer. He managed, “That wasn’t nothing.”

The table began to murmur again once dishes were passed, and we soon found conversation again. But nothing tasted as good as it looked after that; we Farrells never went back there, and though Father continued to hunt with Mike, Danny and I still weren’t friends at school.

SHERIFF DALLY HAD
met me in darkness where the trail to the junkyard joined the road. He was trying not to look tired. Patrol cars continued to scream along 37 and then lurch up Old Account. He suggested I go home; someone would be by to get my statement. I said no. He attempted to order me away but I dismissed him with a wave.

“We’ve got our K-9 unit on the way,” he said, “and part of a SERT team. I understand you wanting to stay, but we don’t need you.”

“A dog won’t help. He’s covered in liquid fence.” Dally looked blank, so I explained. “Coyote scent, probably. My truck still stinks of it. I know you’ve got to try, but he may be long gone by now and a dog won’t help. We can’t wait for people to get their stories straight. We should knock on doors and try to find a witness.”

“All right,” said the sheriff, as a black E350 pulled up. “All right, stay. Find Jackson out by the Stiobhards’ place. Do nothing until you hear from me, you follow?”

The sheriff left my side to speak with the van’s driver. I took the opportunity to head back down the trail to where Palmer and a couple forensic techs were combing the area around George’s patrol car; a generator thrummed, powering construction lights. I sat still on the hood of an abandoned car, well outside of the perimeter, and watched. In just a minute or two, a group of black silhouettes entered the floodlit area. Four men in all black, with vests, knee pads, and trousers bloused into high boots approached Palmer. Two of them carried what looked like M5s, and one had a tactical shotgun. As Palmer led them around the junk heap to where they’d marked my last sighting of Danny, the man with the shotgun, taking the measure of his surroundings, stopped short when he saw my form, peered closely, and nudged his neighbor. By the time they turned my direction I was back in the woods and out of sight.

I gave the SERT team a good head start in case they were using NVS, and followed their tracks into the vale. If Danny was still in the area, he could avoid them, but he might not expect me following. The officers’ tracks headed west, so I pushed a little east of them, back toward the Stiobhards’, listening for the little snaps and wet footfalls that told me where their four-man line was to my right.

A whitetail buck is going to see and hear and smell you before you know where he is. You can push him down into a white pine patch. He won’t like it if you follow him in, so he’ll move up into some tag where he thinks you won’t want to go. With luck and patience you’ll push him to where your partner can take a shot. Four men weren’t going to cover much ground compared to what Danny could do up here, and they were heading toward habitation. I followed them across a dirt road and caught up outside a single-wide, where they were pulling out a family—a long-haired man and his wife stood with their hands on their heads as the team leader addressed them, and one of the SERT guys had a struggling boy of about ten by the elbow, chicken-winged up. The remaining two made entry into the trailer. I gave up following them.

The Heights concealed much besides Danny Stiobhard, and the sheriff certainly knew that. An opportunity to kick a lab or two down—without papers, without consequences—might not arise again for some time. Dally would never have admitted to this agenda but I’m sure that’s what he was thinking.

My attention was undivided. I slipped through the woods to my vehicle and drove back on Old Account. Deputy Jackson had parked his car on Mike and Bobbie’s lawn, leaving deep muddy tracks; he had kept his lights spinning, and stood glowering at the house. I pulled up in the yard and got out, pausing long enough to ask him to turn off his flashers. Before he could stop me, I was knocking on the aluminum screen door and pulling it open all at once.

It was not the original house I remembered, but it contained what looked like the same hook rugs and religious watercolors. A prefab log cabin had been set up on the original stone foundation, and two garden sheds were tacked on the side, with mismatched windows installed, aftermarket. Glancing back out the front door, I could see red-and-blue lights through the trees; I counted six so far. Mike and Bobbie sat side by side on a black leather couch that could only be secondhand. They had a couple worn chairs in there, heaped with folded clothes.

Mike started to rise, but the effort subsided into a gesture. I touched the brim of my hat and asked who else was in the house.

“Just Jennie Lyn,” said Bobbie.

“Jennie Lyn,” I called. “Come out where I can see you, please.”

A floorboard in the kitchen spoke and a ropy woman in her thirties appeared in the living room doorway, hanging her hands on the lintel. She was dressed in camo, same as her brother, and her narrow face was shadowed by long sandy hair. “Evening,” she told me, and there was something ugly in the way she said it that I can’t explain.

“Coffee, Jennie-girl,” said Mike. His hair had turned from black to silver since the last time I’d seen him.

I turned again to look out the window. County and state cars bumped by. In the yard, Deputy Jackson’s top half had disappeared into his driver’s-side window; doubtless he was raising Sheriff Dally on their two-way and telling him what I was up to.

“We just have a short time here,” I said, turning to Mike and Bobbie, and speaking loudly enough that Jennie Lyn could hear me in the kitchen. “Jennie, come on. Come out.” Danny’s sister refused to join us in the living room, but met me halfway by sitting down at the kitchen table in my sight, hands wrapped around a coffee mug.

“I’m going to head you off a moment, Henry,” said Mike. “If you mean to go after my son, you’ve got it wrong. Danny and George weren’t friendly, I grant, but their problem is with a woman named Tracy Dufaigh, nothing to do with this. Danny is no killer.”

“I can’t take that on faith. Tell me. Anything that can help, anything you’d prefer to keep from the county. What happened to my deputy: that’s my concern. I’ll get there with or without you, but if I get no help, I swear to God I’ll tear down everything I see.”

Their storm door squeaked open and Deputy Jackson stepped in, removing his hat. “Evening,” he said. He gave me a look that everyone in the room must have caught. “Officer, you are needed elsewhere.” He held an arm out to lead me through the door.

I made him wait. “Jennie Lyn, I’ll take that coffee. Don’t worry, I’ll return the mug. You know where I live if I don’t.”