Valley of Bones

about Emmylou, her background, where she’s from. Can you fill in any of that?”

“No, I’m afraid I can’t. Like I said, we weren’t pals. We exchanged small talk if we happened to pass and once a month when she brought the rent. Paid in cash, by the way, and always on the day.”

“Well, then, those mutual friends…”

“Hilda and Stewart Jameson. I have a P.O. box number for them at Methodist World Missions you could have, but I have no idea how you’d get in touch with them. They’re on the road a lot.”

“In Africa.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”

“Oh, just a lucky guess.” Paz did not appreciate being snowed, which he was pretty sure was what Packer was doing to him, but he had no leverage on the man at present, so he took his leave (noting the license plate number on the bike as he did so) and drove to the Wilson Brothers Marine engine shop to check out Dideroff’s employment. It was a big shed by the river, smelling of dank water and engine exhaust. He located the proprietor in his office, a small cubicle lined with cheap luan paneling. This was decorated with a whiteboard listing active jobs, framed photos of boats, a calendar supplied by Volvo Marine and another showing a naked woman, which was heavily marked with circlings and phone numbers. Jack Wilson was a big heavily tanned guy with a long back-sweep of golden hair down to the neck in back and not too clean, dressed in the usual grease-stained khaki cutoffs and sleeveless T-shirt of the Miami water rat. He had massive biceps on which were tattooedLIVE FREE OR DIE (left) and a marijuana leaf (right). A shark’s tooth on a thong decorated his neck.

“I’ve been expecting you guys,” he said after Paz introduced himself. “When Emmylou didn’t come back with my truck I figured something was up. I called and they told me she was arrested.”

“We’re questioning her. She may have witnessed a crime. So tell me a little about her. A good worker? Reliable?”

“Yeah. She was great. Is great. I mean everybody around here really liked her.”

“She ever mention any Arabs? Guy named Jabir al-Muwalid?”

“Not that I ever heard,” said Wilson. “What kind of crime?”

“Why don’t you let me ask the questions, sir? I’ll be out of your way a lot quicker. How did you come to hire her?”

“A guy we did some work for steered her here when my old girl quit.”

“So you hired her on a boater’s recommendation. A friend of yours?”

“No, just a customer. Dave Packer. She rents a houseboat from him.”

“I know. I met Mr. Packer a while ago. And so…she ran your office? Handled the petty cash. Looks like you got a lot of expensive stuff for sale. She cut your checks too?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Just that it seems an important job to give a stranger on the recommendation of some guy you hardly knew. Did she have references?”

Paz kept up the cop stare, buoyed by the cop instinct that he was in the presence of someone with something to hide, a violation of the criminal code type of something. This was the kind of leverage he did not have on Packer, and he was going to make the most of it. After a little pause, Wilson said, “Look, I’ll level with you. This is the Miami waterfront, huh? People come and go. I mean decent office help’s hard to find, and most people’d rather work in a bank, nice office, air-conditioning, quiet…I mean this place, a crummy little room, fumes from the shop…so I was paying her off the books?cash, no withholding. She wanted it like that anyway.”

“And why was that, do you think?”

“Hey, she was a good worker. And I’m not nosy.”

Paz waited, staring.

The big man shrugged. “It’s the black economy.” A little grin, here. “There’s thousands of people not in the system. They don’t pay taxes. They’re into cash, barter. A lot of them pass through Miami, and a lot of them end up on the water. You gonna turn me in to the feds for this?”

Paz didn’t bother to answer this. With a few more questions he determined that the woman had in fact been sent out after a connecting rod an hour or so before the murder.

Paz thanked Wilson and made to leave.

“What about my truck?” Wilson asked.

“You can pick it up at the police pound. I don’t think we’re going to need it.”

“And my C rod?”

“I believe you ought to think about getting another one of those,” said Paz with a smile, and left.

Paz sat in his car with the engine and the AC running and gave himself over to discontent. If this was a grounder, and the woman had done it in the way the evidence suggested she had, then these interviews should have been simple formalities. But both men were clearly lying. Now his view of the case began to shift; he tried to fight it, but the little nagging details kept adding to the mystery. Why the lies? Why was a cop right there when the victim went out the window? Someone had called the cops to report a disturbance was why, but the only disturbance had been the murder itself. Someone had wanted the police at the scene. And the strangeness of the woman herself…he didn’t really want to think about that. Instead he thought about his need for a new partner, and the face of the policeman from the hotel, Morales, was right there at the surface of his mind. Well, why the hell not?

For a long time after Sophie died Georges de Berville sat disconsolate in the darkened bedroom in the house on Rue d’Orleans in Sedan. He neglected his business, leaving the burden of his affairs to fall on his eldest, Alphonse, then barely sixteen. He rarely emerged and spoke to no one, not even the servants, for very long. Marie- Ange’s nanny, Mlle. Rosicre, was instructed to keep the child away from her father, for the sight of her little face, so similar to that of her mother, reduced him to such sobs and cries of grief that they feared for his sanity.

Yet, Marie-Ange, even at the tender age of seven years, had a powerful will and a mighty desire to bring comfort to the afflicted, and she loved her father very much. One evening, while Mlle. Rosicre nodded by the nursery fire, the child slipped out and trotted down the corridor to her father’s bedroom. She found him tossing in fitful slumber, often waking with a cry and then falling back into his uneasy dreams. She sat on the edge of the bed and held his hand, and prayed to the Blessed Virgin and to St. Catherine to give her dear father peace. Now her father opened his eyes and, as he later confided to his eldest son, he saw around his daughter’s head a halo of light, and heard a voice saying, “Be at peace, Georges de Berville, for your wife is with us in Paradise!” After that he fell into a deep and refreshing sleep, and when he awoke he was himself again. This occurrence was in later times regarded as a true miracle in the de Berville family, and was the first notable instance of the special favors the Bd. Marie-Ange was to receive from Our Lady during the course of her life.

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

Five

The confessions of Emmylou Dideroff Book I

I took up with Hunter Foy again, but it wasn’t exactly the same as it was before, because the little tiny part of me that was still able to love had got totally squashed by what all had happened at the house and there was nothing in my heart but gravel and old oyster shells. I started to help him in his dope business at that time and I was amazed to learn how big it was. Hunter used to make regular trips into Gainesville and Panama City to sell to his customers there, bulk sales, bricks of compressed seedless marijuana, shiny with brown resin. He had a very superior product, Hunter, and it made me curious. I watched TV like everyone else, and I wondered how he was able to do like that, without other drug gangs coming in and how he got it all organized and who his supplier was. I wondered pretty hard because it wasn’t long before I knew that Hunter Foy did not figure all of that out for himself, him being smart enough for a Foy but not by any means the sharpest knife in the drawer.

It was February 3, 1985, a Monday, when I found out the secret. I biked over to Hunter’s trailer, and there