Valley of Bones (25 page)

LORNA HAS ASSEMBLED
a number of witty remarks about the visit to the Barlows, about how it was like an excursion to one of those attractions, common in the Northeast, that purport to show us how our ancestors lived. Only ten miles more to Pre-Modern Village! She also wishes to needle Paz about the religion business. She is a little ashamed of the way she behaved earlier, nearly blubbering about what she thought she had seen in the locked ward. She is papering this over, layer upon layer of logical denial and explanation, and she wants Paz in on it, to defend the threatened paradigm. Paz is cool, she thinks, he is slightly cynical and funny, and she imagines this attitude will help. If not, if he actually buys into the malarkey, then she assures herself that she’s not interested.

Except she can’t get out of her head that remark about dangerous men. Lorna has been careful to avoid dangerous men. Dangerous men are violent and stupid and tend to be male chauvinists, so she has always thought. Romantic is okay, preferred actually, but that only means a certain savoir faire, the ability to discuss the films and books of the day, the correct liberal ideas, and of course professional brilliance, the ability to take the risk of an unusual academic stance, to write a controversial paper.

But not anything like this, right now, which is driving down the center of a two-lane blacktop road at ninety miles an hour with the siren going. Now there is no lagging behind the trucks, now they whip around the trucks and play chicken with the oncoming traffic. Lorna has heard about pissing in terror but has never actually experienced the urge. Night falls in the theatrical manner of the tropics—a blush of red in the west and then black velvet, especially here in the lightless Glades—the world vanishes except for the headlights of Paz’s unmarked police car, the fearful beams of the near misses in the northbound lane, the red glow of swiftly overtaken tail-lights. The siren is boring into her brain, her muscles ache with the continual tensing for the crash. Paz has explained over the noise that he has to get to the crime scene to exert some control, even though he will have no official standing. The importance of this is lost on her, she thinks he’s crazy, she hates him. He is smoking a cigar, she can see his face in the red glow of its tip. She decides to hate that too, unhealthy, disgusting….

Now they head west on Alligator Alley, blasting through the official no-toll gate and accelerating on the ruler-straight freeway. Lorna has never traveled above one hundred miles an hour in a car. She finds it is almost like flying, the thumping of the wheels is now absent. Suddenly she is beyond fear; sinking into an almost sensual passivity. She slumps into the corner of the seat, her thighs lolling open.

A cluster of flashing lights appears ahead. Paz slows and pulls onto the shoulder, nosing among a cluster of police and emergency vehicles. He says, “Stay here, this won’t take long. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says. He vanishes.

She is not fine. She is shaking. It is stifling and humid with the car AC shut down, and her throat is raw with thirst, she has a headache and feels, really, quite ill. Despite this, and the damp heat, she sinks into a light doze.

She is awakened by the slam of the car door. Immediately afterward, the engine starts and a grateful frosty breeze dries the sweat on her face. Paz’s face looks grim as he moves the car off the shoulder.
State troopers are controlling traffic, and they are able to swing back onto the eastbound highway.

“What happened?” she asks.

“What happened is that our main suspect just got himself killed. This is probably the guy who hired the guy I shot, who was probably the guy who actually killed al-Muwalid. So we’re screwed, plus I called my major to report this and get him to use our chief to grab hold of the body, car, and contents, but apparently that’s not going to happen. The murder took place on an Indian reservation, so the FBI has jurisdiction, and apparently they don’t intend to cede it. In fact, the FBI is now showing a keen interest in the whole case—the Sudanese, Dodo Cortez, and Jack Wilson all getting killed seems to have lit up some kind of light on the big board in Washington. Anyway the feds are in it. Oliphant is pissed as hell, but I can’t see that he can do much about it.”

“What about Emmylou?”

“Unclear. There’re these new antiterror laws, which seem to let the feds do pretty much what they please. Maybe they’ll name her an enemy combatant and disappear her.”

“No, seriously…”

“I’m being serious. I wish I wasn’t. Oliphant is sure taking it that way. He pointed out that Emmylou essentially belongs to the state’s attorney, who belongs to the governor of the state, who happens to be the president’s little brother. I don’t think the state’s attorney will put up much of a fight if they want to grab her up. Shit!”

Lorna feels a chill that has nothing to do with the air conditioner. Her modest and controllable life seems to have come apart. She seems to be involved, even if only peripherally, in something huge. Murder. International intrigue. Governors and presidents. She wishes none of this had happened. She wishes for it never to end. And there is something else happening to her. She is going into the most intense sexual heat she can readily recall.

They arrive at her house. She says, “Would you like a drink?”

“Oh, Jesus, would I!” he says.

Inside, she turns on the living-room AC, but the house has been sucking in heat all day and it will take some time for it to cool down. She makes two huge rum and tonics. They sit together on the couch and drink as if it were Gatorade, then catch themselves doing it and giggle.

“Want another?”

“I’m game.”

She brings out the cold-beaded tumblers and says, “You know, I’m dripping sweat out here. Aren’t you?”

Paz is nearly sweatless as always, but he agrees, yes, sweaty. She adds, “This time of year there’s only one cool room in the house.”

He follows her into the bedroom, which is like a meat locker. He perches carefully on an armchair. She says, “I feel like I have grease and slime all over me. I’m going to take a quick shower.” She does so, lickety-split. It might’ve been the fear, or the violence, or him, but she feels no need to resume her clothes as she returns to the bedroom.

When Georges died in 1889, all the family except for Alphonse were amazed at the size of the estate. De Berville et Fils was the largest refiner of kerosene in Europe and controlled the gaslighting companies in most French cities. Its founder had also owned, through his Rockefeller contacts, nearly 7 percent of the stock of the Standard Oil Company of New York as well as large holdings in other petroleum firms. Alphonse inherited the business, and Jean-Pierre was given stock and property worth many millions of francs. But two of his children were in Holy Orders and could not own significant property. For them, Georges had established a trust, named Bois Fleury after his beloved country estate, to “advance the cause of Christ through works of charity.” Into this trust he placed all the Standard Oil stock, and gave his son Father Gerard de Berville the responsibility for managing it.

It took nearly two years for Marie-Ange to put her plans into effect. Gerard had been as supportive as she might have wished: funds would not be a problem. But her superiors in Bon Secours and especially the anticlerical government officials to whom she applied were adamant that the idea was absurd. In that era, respectable women working at nursing was itself a suspect notion, but for such women to also travel unescorted into war zones? The idea was preposterous.

While affairs were at this stand, she went on with her preparations. An organization was formed, and young women were recruited into it. Most of these were tough, working women, from the mines around Lille or, like Otilie Roland, from the working-class quarters of Paris. A life of dedication to the sick, possibly at risk of death, was less daunting to such women than it would be to those more delicately raised, although the first twenty members included the daughters of a count and of a senator of France.

From the very start the order was established on military lines, and here the foundress was inspired both by her brother the colonel and her brother the Jesuit. She also recalled the ill-discipline of the Commune’s defenders. Her recruits would not melt away when danger threatened, and would meet death gladly if need be. During this time too she designed the habit of what she hoped would one day be
a religious order. The sisters were to wear essentially what she herself had worn at Gravelotte: a gray dress in cotton or wool, a cook’s apron, a simple white linen scarf tied behind the head, high-laced ammunition boots, and a blue cavalry cloak.

—FROM
FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH: THE STORY OF THE NURSING SISTERS OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST,
BY SR. BENEDICTA COOLEY, SBC, ROSARIAN PRESS, BOSTON, 1947.

P
AZ WAS HAVING
another nightmare, only this time he knew, in the peculiar way of lucid dreams, that he was having one and wished to get out of it. He was at a crime scene, some horrible crime, the atmosphere of horror hung in the air, all the worse for being unnamed. He was interviewing two little girls, both about seven. They were on the street, twirling a jump rope between them. He wanted them to stop twirling, but the thought came to him, as it does in nightmares, that they would tell him more if he started jumping himself, and so he did, faster and faster, the little girls smiling now, their eyes empty of joy, and he noticed that one of them wore a dress of wool, the other of cotton….

He opened his eyes and discovered where he was: in Lorna Wise’s bed, with the AC chilling the room enough to make it cozy under her duvet. He recalled the previous night. Very nice, and now he was awake, unless, of course…the thought rippled his belly and broke sweat from every pore. He turned his head slowly. The blond locks of Lorna were on the pillow next to his. He could hear the gentle sighing of her breath. He brought his nose close to her head and sniffed. Herbal shampoo. He sniffed lower down, at the warm wafts from beneath the quilt. Essence of girl, the world’s most entrancing fragrance. Had to be real, dreams don’t have smells, he recalled hearing that somewhere; on the other hand he could be off the charts in some way, and that neat little head could now turn around in
an unnatural fashion and exhibit a grinning skull or a dog’s muzzle saying “Surprise!” He could feel his heart knocking in his chest and then he thought to himself, just in passing, no, if this wasn’t real he would go to his mother, let her do what she had to do, and if that failed he’d check out of the job, let the shrinks play with his head, because he couldn’t stand it anymore. He sincerely believed that people who carry weapons ought to have a firm grip on reality.

Such were Paz’s thoughts as he breathed in Lorna Wise as if sucking oxygen from a mask. Minutes went by. She murmured, stretched, and rolled over. It was, he observed with vast relief, her regular face. He thought he had never seen such a beautiful face, although he had actually seen plenty, and in just such situations. He sat on the side of the bed and stared at her for some time until his eye beams stirred her awake. She opened her eyes, saw him, started to smile, and then, observing his expression with a trained eye, she knitted her brow and said, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Something. Did you have a nightmare?”

“Yes, a strange one with characters out of a poem. I thought I was still in it. Did you ever have one of those, when you wake up and you’re still in it?”

“No, I never have bad dreams. And as your personal therapist I have to tell you that there’s only one sure cure known to medical science.”

“And what would that be, Doctor?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to lie on top of a naked woman for a certain period of time.”

“No, no, not that!” cried Paz, although he began the therapy immediately. “How long do I have to?” he asked after the necessary slippery adjustments had been accomplished.

“Until the naked woman says to get off,” said Lorna.

LORNA IS NOW
floating in the most pleasant phase of post-coital hypnopompic semisleep. She is awake enough to realize that
she is not lying in the dreaded wet spot for a change, and not awake enough to start obsessing about the future of her relationship with Jimmy Paz, a nearly perfect combo, promoting cosmic well-being. He is not in bed just now, but that’s all right too. She slips back into dreamland, surfacing only when the sound of clinking crockery and silver intrudes. Paz is entering the room with a tray, upon which is the container of her Krups coffee machine filled with sloshing blackness, assorted jugs, mugs, napery, and utensils. The delightful smell of coffee and fresh baking arises from the tray. Paz places it on the side of the bed. He is naked except for a pair of slight black Hugo Boss underpants.

“What is that?” she says, sliding herself up to a sitting position and pointing.

“It’s a plate of magdalenas,” says Paz, taking one. “You didn’t have rum so I had to use cognac. They’re not bad, though.”

“Oh, well, the hell with it, then. You expect me to eat magdalenas without rum? What kind of girl do you think I am? God, this is beyond delicious.”

“Are you thinking of your great-aunt’s house in Combray yet?” asks Paz.

“Oh, he reads Proust too? Or is that something you picked up from one of the many?”

“From Willa Shaftel, as a matter of fact. We were watching a rerun of a Monty Python, the summarizing Proust contest? And afterward she actually summarized Proust for me during the rest of the weekend.”

“Uh-huh. You know, bringing up previous girlfriends all the time can get old real fast.”

“As can needling me a little every time I say something you figure is beyond the normal range of a dumb cop.”

“Oh, are we having our first fight now?”

“Yes, and now it’s over. Have another magdalena.”

She did and said, “This is well worth seventeen additional hours on the StairMaster. Where did you get them?”

“I made them.” As he pours coffee.

“Wha…you
made
them? In
my
kitchen? You carry a madeleine pan around with you?”

“No, I used yours. It was in the back of the closet outside the kitchen. It was still in the box. It must have been a present.”

“It was. From my brother, in whose fantasies I am ever a baker of cookies.”

“Well, I broke it in for you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I certainly do mind! Never
ever
break in a madeleine pan in my house again! Christ, this is strong coffee!”

“Weak,” says Paz. “It barely sticks to the spoon.”

Lorna eats another madeleine and falls back against the pillows with a sigh. She feels, to be honest, a faint nausea, but otherwise so good that she decides not to pay any attention to it. “I really wish something interesting would happen to me. Having terrific sex and then being brought breakfast in bed by beautiful naked men morning after morning, I mean, sometimes I want to scream with the tedium of it all.”

“Humor me,” says Paz.

“You’re really gay, right? That’s the catch.”

“I’m afraid so. I have to pretend to love women so the guys down at the police station don’t make fun of me.” They laugh, but in the midst of it Lorna feels the first twinges of real life. The devil speaks into her inner ear: Yeah, this is great, but you know you’ll go out another couple of times, fuck like minks, have fun, conversations, and then he won’t call for a day, three days, a week, and then, desperate to know what’s happening, you’ll call him and leave a half-dozen increasingly irritated messages and then he’ll call and it’ll be, what? As from a stranger.

Paz senses the change. He says, “I’ll clean this up,” and picks up the tray.

“No, leave it,” she says. “I’ll do it.”

Lorna is nearly overwhelmed with the urge to say something nasty and disruptive of this thing that seems to be developing, far too
nice for the likes of her. As she fights against it, there is a beeping from Paz’s jacket where it hangs on a chair: the first bars of “Guantanamera.” Thank God, she thinks, something tacky at last.

Paz answers the phone. There is a lot of listening interspersed with gnomic utterances from Paz. Lorna rises, slips into a light robe, takes the tray to the kitchen. It is spotless and smells of coffee and sweet bakings. As she rinses the dishes she feels tears well in her eyes and recalls feeling the same way when she was with him on the beach at Bear Cut. No, she thinks, this is too cruel, my heart won’t take this. As if her body agrees, she feels a bolt of sharp pain through her middle, a kind of pain she does not recall ever having before. Sweat breaks out on her face and back. It passes, and for the first time in a while the old fear returns. Something wrong, something wrong
inside
. Again she suppresses the thought.

She goes back to the bedroom and hears the shower going, so she drops the robe and joins him. After some fooling around with soapy skin surfaces, he sighs and says, “I have to go to work.”

“The phone call.”

“Yeah, my partner. The autopsy on Jack Wilson found a blood alcohol level of point three six.”

“My God, that’s paralytic.”

“Yes, and they also found traces of Nembutal. Plus an empty bottle of cheap vodka in the car. The feds are treating it as an accident, and Broward County is going along. We were lucky to get as much as we did out of them.”

Paz turns the shower off. She senses he is somewhere else already.

They dress in silence, he much faster than she. Paz is in her study, looking at her books and possessions with his consuming policeman’s eye when she emerges from the bedroom in one of her bland suits.

He says, “Listen, are you going to see Emmylou today?”

“Yes, I want to check on her condition. Why?”

“Could you ask her something for me?”

Lorna hestitates. “A police question, you mean.”

“Not really. I just want to know who connected her with David Packer.”

“Jimmy, I really can’t help you in your investigation. It’s unethical.”

“Okay, no problem. You going to find out if she did the cure on what’s-his-name?”

“That’s not very likely, is it?”

He looks at her without answering for a while, then crosses the room and embraces her. “You have any plans for Sunday evening?”

She did not. “We’ll go have dinner at the restaurant. You should meet my mother.”

“Uh-oh.”

“No, she’s a charming woman,” says Paz. “Everybody loves Margarita.”

FRANK WILSON LIVED
in a condo, a modern eight-story building off Le Jeune in the Gables. When Wilson let them in, Paz could see that he had been crying. His eyes were red and his face seemed to have fallen away from the bone, gone spongy. He kept dabbing at his nose with a wad of tissues. Paz thought it was a strange reaction, but then he’d never lost a sibling, or had one. Wilson collapsed onto a leather couch. He neglected to offer the two detectives seats, but they took them anyway. Both pulled forth notebooks. The tan meshwork drapes on the big picture windows were tightly drawn, and Wilson hadn’t switched on any lights. The room was consequently dim, which made it hard to observe their informant’s face.

“It’s like a kick in the gut, this is,” Wilson said. “I still can’t believe it. It’s just so not Jack.”

“What isn’t, sir?” asked Paz.

“Oh, drinking, driving…” The voice trailed off.

Morales asked, “He drink much vodka, Mr. Wilson?”

“Couldn’t stand the stuff,” said the brother. “He thought it tasted and smelled like rubbing alcohol.”

The two detectives considered this for a moment and then Paz asked, “How would you describe your brother, Mr. Wilson? What kind of man was he?”

Wilson sat up a little and stared at Paz. “What kind of…I don’t understand. This is a traffic death in Broward. I mean why does a Miami cop want to know that?”

“Well, sir, as I guess you know, Jack was peripherally involved in another case and we’re just trying to tie up the pieces on that. Also…we think your brother’s death might stand further investigation. You say your brother had no head for liquor and hated vodka, so, ah, you could ask what he was doing with a point three six blood alcohol and an empty vodka bottle in the car.”

Wilson goggled at him. “What…you think someone killed him? They forced him to drink all that vodka?”

“That or they knocked him out with Nembutal and ran a naso-gastric tube into him.”

Wilson gaped and stammered, “But that’s crazy! Who would do something like that?”

This was of course the very question that now engaged Paz and Morales. They were driving to Jack Wilson’s domicile, having obtained the keys from the brother, along with a description of the late Jack’s character. A little wild, bored with the business, a ladies’ man, a good conscientious mechanic, if a little too ready to party after hours. On the assumption that Jack Wilson had been murdered and that no one was going to let them near the case, not the tribe, and not the FBI, then the whole thing had come to more or less a dead end. Wilson had been the last thread that led from al-Muwalid’s murder. Whoever had arranged that killing knew how to cover their tracks. Paz shared with his partner the observation that Cletis Barlow had made, that the point of all this was not the Sudanese but Emmylou Dideroff, and that all this bloodshed was designed to draw from her something that she knew.

Morales said that it sounded far-fetched, but what did
he
know, Cletis Barlow was the great detective. Paz detected a little envy here
but let it go. He might have agreed with Morales about far-fetched, had he himself not traveled personally over even farther fetches, but he declined to mention this now. They arrived at the Wilson house, a small, tile-roofed Spanish colonial over Coral Way not far from the Palmetto Expressway. Jack Wilson had fancied a nautical theme: signal flag upholstery, marine landscapes on the walls, captain’s chairs around a hatch-cover table in the dining room, ship models in a glass display case. “Everything looks shipshape,” said Paz. They laughed, but everything actually did. Wilson was something of a neat freak, in his home if not his personal appearance. He liked Peg-Board, and where the pots and kitchen implements hung on one of these, he had painted a silhouette of each implement under its hook, lest one be hung out of place.

They tossed the place rapidly, Paz with the skill of long practice, Morales learning as he went. Paz took the master bedroom and got a little shock off what he found there; Morales searched another bedroom fitted out as a den or home office and was intrigued by what he didn’t find. His partner called out to him, and he walked into the master bedroom, where he found Paz staring at a brightly painted statue. It was nearly two feet high and depicted a haloed woman in a gold dress and a red cloak holding a sword and a chalice, which rested upon a vertical cannon.

“Somebody’s been through the place,” said Morales.