Carved in Bone

CHAPTER 13

The hills were showing their first signs of fall color as Art Bohanan and I wound along the river road in Cooke County. We had the windows of the UT truck cranked down, and the hum of the tires was punctuated by the crackle of sycamore leaves, the first to spiral down every autumn. I’d brought Art up to date on what I knew about my case, which wasn’t all that much. “Anyhow,” I concluded, “the sheriff seems to figure O’Conner for the killer, but I’m not so sure. O’Conner doesn’t strike me as the Lester Ballard type.”

“The what type?”

“Lester Ballard.”

“Who’s Lester Ballard?”

“Art, I’m disappointed in you. Don’t you read anything but police reports? Lester Ballard is one of the great characters of modern Southern literature.” From a jacket pocket, I pulled a ragged copy of Child of God, which I’d found in the used bin at the campus bookstore an hour before. I waved it knowingly. “Lester likes women. Dead women. Keeps ’em fresh in caves.”

“Don’t we all. So you think there’s a connection between that book and this murder? Copycat thing — true crime imitating weird fiction?”

“No, actually, I don’t think that. What I do think is that Jim O’Conner is mighty smart and well-read to be a murderous hillbilly. I’d bet my salary he knows that woman’s name; he sure got upset when he seemed to figure it out. So why won’t he tell us, if he’s not the killer?”

“So maybe he is the killer. Just ’cause he quotes mod-ren South-ren litra-ture don’t make him Dudley Do-right.”

“I know, but he doesn’t strike me as a killer. Call it anthropologist’s instinct.”

“Lotta anthropologists used to think Ted Bundy was a heckuva nice guy, too.”

“Okay, forget it. Judge for yourself. Hey, you said you’d heard back from your buddy in Army Records. What’d he find in O’Conner’s military file?”

“Army Ranger. Served with valor and distinction. Led a mission into North Vietnam to rescue a downed pilot. Got a promotion, a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, and a Medal of Honor nomination for it. If he were running for office, his opponent would paint him as a lily-livered coward, but he sounds like the kind of guy I’d want watching my back in the jungle.”

“Well, you can see if he looks that way, too, in just a minute.”

Or maybe not. All of a sudden, the meeting I’d brought us here for was looking problematic. A hundred yards in front of us, the road ended against a solid wall of green. Bluffs closed in on either side of the gravel track. I slowed the truck to a crawl. “Now what?” I asked.

Art shrugged. “You sure this is the way you came?”

“Well, I was pretty sure I was sure. I know we turned off the river road between those two hemlocks. I know we stopped at that big sycamore about a quarter-mile back, so Waylon could capfold me. After that, all I could see was the inside of his hat — but it didn’t feel like we made any stops or turns.”

“Well, then, I guess we keep going.”

“But where? How? It’s the end of the road.”

“Well, go till you can’t go anymore, then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

We crept forward. The wall of vegetation ahead was a clotted mass of kudzu vines. As we got close, I noticed that the road didn’t actually end at the kudzu; instead, it seemed to disappear beneath it. To the left of the gravel, a small stream tumbled out through a curtain of vines. I looked at Art, and he grinned. “Damn the tendrils,” he hollered. “Full speed ahead!”

I idled forward, and the truck nosed beneath the overhanging vines. They writhed across the windshield like some snaky nightmare, then rasped onto the roof, clutching at the mirrors and wipers and antenna with slithering, slapping sounds. The engine began to labor, not from the resistance of the vines, but from a sudden steepening of the road. Overhead, I thought I glimpsed a web of wires or cables — a sort of tensile arbor stretched between converging bluffs to support the kudzu.

After a quarter-mile that seemed to stretch for an eternity, the kudzu tunnel ended at another curtain of vines, and the road emerged into a small, high valley — a hanging valley, I’d heard these called — that opened before us, like something out of Shangri-la. But this was a valley I’d seen before: the valley where Jim O’Conner had watched a hawk surfing on a rising current of air. The valley where I, too, had stumbled into some unseen current, whose force now gripped me and swept me along. As Art and I eased to a stop before the weathered house, I saw a figure sitting motionless in one of the rockers on the porch. It was O’Conner — a slumped, much aged O’Conner. I nodded to Art, and we got out.

I felt the gun’s muzzle behind my ear before I heard or saw anything. For a big man, Waylon moved with remarkable speed and stealth. “It’s okay, Waylon; thank you, though,” murmured O’Conner. “Dr. Brockton, this is an unexpected pleasure. What brings you back this way?”

I held up a cautionary finger at Art, who I figured had a gun in an ankle holster and was looking for an opening to go for it. “Mr. O’Conner, I do apologize for intruding on you. I know people in the mountains value their privacy and their property, and I’ve just trampled on both of those uninvited. It’s just that this murder case has raised some hard questions, which I think maybe you can answer. That young woman who was killed deserves somebody to speak for her, and I can’t do it without some help.”

He sat silent. I plowed ahead. “I’ve brought a colleague, Art Bohanan. Art’s a Knoxville police officer, but he’s not here as a cop, he’s here as my friend. Could be yours, too, if you’ll let him.”

O’Conner turned slightly and inspected Art, who met his gaze openly, with neither fear nor challenge. Then he turned back to me. “No point,” he said. “She’s gone. Speaking for her won’t bring her back.”

“No, it won’t. But she deserves some sort of justice,” I said. “Somebody should be held accountable for her death, even if they’re already dead, too.”

He shook his head sadly. “I don’t think I’ve got it in me to dredge all this up. Missing or murdered, she’s gone. That’s it, and with all due respect, it doesn’t concern you.”

I hated what I was about to do. “That’s not entirely it,” I said, “and with all due respect, it does concern me. There’s another victim I have to consider.”

He looked away, out across the valley, then back to me. “What other victim?”

I steeled myself. “Mr. O’Conner, she was carrying a child. She was four and a half months pregnant when she was killed.”

I heard a ragged intake of breath, the sort of tearing sound that means a heart is being ripped apart. I couldn’t face him.

Art spoke up. “Mr. O’Conner, I checked your service records. You shipped out for Vietnam in June 1972. Was she pregnant when you left?”

“No!” O’Conner shook his head dazedly. “How could she be? We never…. We wanted to wait. Well, she wanted to wait. I never even…. Oh, Christ.”

Art gave him a moment. “How about when you got home?”

“I never saw her when I got home. She was gone by then. I don’t even know when she left — I didn’t even know she had the dog tag till Dr. Brockton mentioned it the other day. I sent it to her after I got promoted, but she never wrote back to say she’d gotten it. Her letters just stopped. It was like the earth opened up and swallowed her.”

And it had.

“How old was she when you left for Vietnam?”

“Twenty-two.”

It fit exactly with the skeletal indicators. I wanted to be sure I understood what he’d said earlier. “Mr. O’Conner, are you saying you never had sexual relations with her?”

“Never. She wanted to be a virgin when we got married. It sounds quaint in this day and age, but it was really important to her.”

“Would you be willing to provide a DNA sample to prove you weren’t the father of the baby?”

He stared at me bleakly. “How’s this?” He flipped open a pocketknife and drew the blade across the heel of his left hand. I saw a slit open, then brim with blood. He took a handkerchief from a hip pocket and soaked it in the blood, then held it toward me. I hesitated. “It’s okay, Doc,” he said. “No AIDS, no hepatitis, no syphilis. Pure as the driven snow.” Art produced a ziplock bag from somewhere and sealed the bloody cloth inside, then handed it to me.

During the long silence that ensued, I realized that I had delivered far worse news than I’d expected: not only was the woman he once loved a murder victim, but she’d been pregnant. By another man. A man to whom she’d given her prized virginity. “This must be a shock; I’m sorry.” He nodded grimly. “I hate to be blunt, but I don’t know any other way to ask this. She must have had sexual relations with someone, at least once. Do you have any idea who that might have been? The person who got her pregnant might be the person who killed her. Any idea who that might be?”

He looked up at the sky, and his eyes roamed back and forth, searching for something long ago and far away that didn’t want to be found. Then they froze, widened momentarily, and clamped nearly shut, in a look as black and menacing as a summer thunderhead. “Does the sheriff know all this?”

“He knows she was murdered. He knows she was wearing your dog tag. He doesn’t know she was pregnant. I’m fixing to go tell him.”

There was another long pause, long enough for me to make out the crowing of a rooster somewhere in the distance.

“You’re right, Doctor Brockton. She does deserve justice. And so does her baby. Go tell Sheriff Kitchings what you just told me. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you do.”

Art and I rode in silence down the valley and into the tunnel of kudzu. As we emerged into daylight once more, I spoke up. “Well?”

“He’s not the guy that killed her.”

My curiosity outweighed the urge to gloat. “What makes you say that?”

“Dog tag’s a pretty good alibi, at least on the front end. He had to have sent it to her after he was in ’Nam, ’cause he didn’t make first lieutenant until he’d rescued that pilot. Besides, he doesn’t strike me as a killer. Call it cop’s instinct.”

I grinned, until I remembered the menacing look on O’Conner’s face. “But he knows who did it?”

“I think he thinks he knows.”

“The sheriff?”

Art chewed on that awhile, looking troubled. “Chronology’s a problem. How old’s Kitchings?”

“Forty, give or take a couple years.”

“But the evidence suggests she was killed thirty-two years ago. You think little eight-year-old Tommy Kitchings knocked up a strapping twenty-two-year-old, then throttled her when she started to show?”

Not likely, I conceded. “So why’d O’Conner point us at the sheriff?”

“Maybe he figures the sheriff knows. Maybe he figures the sheriff’s protecting somebody.”

That would explain Kitchings’s reluctance to speculate about the victim’s identity. But something about that scenario troubled me. It took me a moment to put my finger on what it was. “That doesn’t make sense, though. If the sheriff’s involved or covering up, why’d he drag me into this in the first place?”

“Good question. Maybe he’s not connected. Or maybe he is, but he didn’t realize it at first. Not till you started pulling on threads and his sleeve began to unravel.”

“Hmm. You still got time for an informal visit with one of your law enforcement brethren?”

I saw worry flicker in his face for the briefest of instants, then he flashed me a forced-looking grin. “Damn the tendrils. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

The sun was shining on the granite blocks of the courthouse when we parked, but as we walked toward it, a cloud moved in. The stone took on a dark and sinister hue. So did the SUVs and the black-and-gold helicopter parked behind the building. “Uh-oh,” I said. “Not a good omen.” We were almost to the front door when I caught Art’s arm. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” I turned back toward a sagging bench under a dying oak tree. The dilapidated bench was inhabited by two equally dilapidated old men, whittling on cedar sticks. Piles of fragrant shavings lay at their feet, covering their boots to the ankles. I nodded deferentially as I ambled toward them. “Howdy, fellas,” I said, raising my voice a few decibels.

“We’re just old. We ain’t deaf,” said one of them.

“What’s that?” wheezed the other through a sunken, toothless mouth.

I turned my attention on the first one, who seemed like the better prospect. “You look like you probably know the ins and outs of Cooke County pretty well. Reckon you could help me remember a name from quite awhile back?”

“Well, I ain’t senile, either, but I cain’t make ye no guarantee.”

“Local girl — young woman, actually. Blonde, tall. Real tall. Lived around here in the nineteen-sixties, early seventies. Woulda been twenty or so by then.”

“Mister, I got no earthly idea.”

His companion wheezed to life. “Hell, course you ain’t. You ain’t been livin’ here but twenty year. You don’t know jack shit about Cooke County.” He worked his gums together thoughtfully. “Blonde-headed? About six foot? Likely-lookin’ girl?” I nodded hopefully, though I couldn’t vouch for her prettiness based on the waxen death mask I had seen. His stubbled jaw slid from side to side. “Bonds.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bonds. That was that girl’s name. I disremember her first name. She was a looker, though, I ’member that real clear. Kindly high-spirited — sorta gal might need a little tamin’—but you could tell the ride would be worth gettin’ thowed off a time or two, if you know what I mean.”

“You remember what happened to her?”

“Just up and left. Run off, story I heard. Don’t know why. Wisht she hadn’t of — left a big hole in the scenery round here once she was gone.” The memory inspired more gum-grinding.

I thanked him and headed back toward Art, who was waiting on the steps. A wheezy voice called after me. “Sheriff might remember her given name. Ought to, leastwise. She was his kin.”

Tom Kitchings was cleaning a rifle when I flung open his door and stormed into his office. He looked up, startled at the intrusion, then startled at the expression on my face. “Easy there, Doc, you shouldn’t oughta startle a man holding a gun. What’s up? You come to bring me that skeleton?”

“No, I come—came—to see why you’re lying to me about this case.”

He laid the rifle down across the desk and looked up at me slowly. “Hold on a minute, Professor. Those are pretty strong words. You got something to back ’em up?” He looked over my shoulder at Art, who’d followed me into the office. “Who is this?”

“This is Art Bohanan, a criminalist with KPD.”

“What the hell is he doing in my county?”

Art spoke up calmly. “Just sightseeing. Just along for the ride.”

“Well, sightsee somewhere else. I hear there’s a big national park not far from here’s got some kickass scenery.”

“Maybe we can swing by there on our way home,” said Art amiably.

“Best get going, then.”

I slapped the desktop with a force that surprised everyone, including myself. “Goddamnit, what’s her name, Sheriff? You know damn well who she is.”

He reddened, glowering at me. “I haven’t finished checking the old files.”

“You don’t have to check your files. Check your family bible. Last name Bonds. This skeleton is dangling from your own family tree. What happened, Sheriff — she disgraced the family, so she had to be disposed of?”

Kitchings jumped to his feet. “Don’t you dare come in here and insult me and my family. Get the hell out of my office, the hell out of my county, and the hell out of my business.”

“The hell I will. This a murder case, and I won’t let you sweep it under the rug just because you don’t like where it’s going all of a sudden.”

The sheriff grabbed the rifle off the desk and began to swing it up. Instinctively I grabbed the barrel and wrestled for control. Suddenly the sheriff froze. I looked up to see Art Bohanan standing beside him, one hand clutching a fistful of hair, the other holding a pistol to Kitchings’s temple. “Okay, let’s everybody take a deep breath and calm down here,” said Art. “Sheriff, let go of that rifle.” He did. “Bill, set it over there by the door.” I did. “Okay, we’re gonna just head on back to Knoxville now,” Art continued. “We see anybody in the rearview mirror, and I’ll be on the radio like a duck on a June bug to the FBI, the TBI, and a couple undercover cops that would make your worst Cooke County badass look like a mama’s boy.”

Kitchings was panting through clenched teeth. “You listen up, Doctor. I’m getting a warrant for the arrest of Jim O’Conner. I’m bringing him in on a charge of murder, and I’m sending Williams over to retrieve those remains as evidence.”

I shook my head. “I’ll turn them over to the district attorney, if he subpoenas them, but I won’t turn them over to you.”

“You’ll do whatever the man says,” came a voice behind me. I turned to see a younger, slimmer version of Tom Kitchings, wearing a deputy’s uniform and a brass bar that read “Orbin Kitchings, Chief Deputy.” He was sighting down the barrel of the sheriff’s rifle, which was pointed straight at my head. “Put your weapon down,” he said to Art. “And I do mean right now.” Art kept his pistol at the sheriff’s head. “Put it down, city boy, or I’ll by-god blow his brains out.”

The room was so still you could hear a toothpick drop. Finally Art broke the silence. “You can’t do it, Deputy.”

“The hell I can’t.”

“You can pull the trigger, but you can’t shoot him,” Art said levelly. “The chamber’s empty. Sheriff was just cleaning that rifle. Might be some rounds in the magazine, but by the time you can lever one in, I’ll have two bullets in you and one in the sheriff.” I saw the sheriff give a slight nod to his brother, which I fervently hoped was confirmation of Art’s empty-chamber theory. “Put it down, Deputy, and step over here with your hands out in front of you.”

“Go on, Orbin, do what he says,” sighed Kitchings.

Orbin complied.

Kitchings spoke, and he sounded like a different man — a much less certain and much more weary man — than the one who had tried to turn a rifle on me moments before. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Doc. You’re right, she was my cousin. Leena Bonds — Evelina, actually — was her name. She lived with our family for a few years after her folks died, and then she left town. At least, that’s what we’d always thought, right up until now. Leena dated Jim O’Conner. Hell, I think she was even engaged to him. In my book — in anybody’s book — that makes him the prime suspect.”

“Not if he was in Vietnam when she was strangled,” I said.

“Do you know when she was strangled?”

“Not precisely. But the dog tag suggests it was sometime after he left for Vietnam.”

“So maybe he did it once he got home. Any proof it didn’t happen then?”

“Not that I know of. But I suspect a DNA test will show it wasn’t his baby she was carrying.”

The revelation burst like a bombshell in the office. I hadn’t intended to broach the subject of Leena’s pregnancy quite that way, but then again, I hadn’t expected to find myself in a Mexican standoff with two law enforcement officers, either.

Tom Kitchings sagged backward against a filing cabinet, looking as if he’d been struck. “She was pregnant?”

“Yes. Four and a half months, best I can tell from the fetal skeleton.”

The sheriff remained thunderstruck. His brother spoke up. “Hell, there’s your motive right there, gents. G.I. Jim comes home, finds out his sweetie’s been takin’ her love to town — got knocked up in the process — and he goes apeshit. Might have a hard time making murder one stick, but I guaran-damn-tee you we got enough right now to make a strong case for murder two.”

“I don’t think he did it,” I said.

The sheriff hauled himself upright from the filing cabinet, then leaned toward me, both palms flat on his desk. “Nothin’ personal, Doc, but I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think. You may be a fine bone detective, but you’re an outsider here. You don’t know the first thing about Cooke County or Jim O’Conner and what he might or might not be capable of. I’ll be gettin’ a warrant for his arrest. I’ll be gettin’ a subpoena for those bones. And I’ll be takin’ it real personal if I catch you messin’ around in this case any further.”

I decided this might be a good time to make our exit. I looked at Art, and he seemed to agree, as he cocked his head toward the door. “Sheriff,” I said, backing out of the office, “I’ll be on the lookout for that subpoena. Orbin, good to meet you. Y’all have a nice day.”

“Remember,” said Art, “we’ll have one eye on the rearview mirror and one hand on the radio.”

As we dashed out the front door of the courthouse, Art said, “Go get the truck and swing around back and pick me up.” I started to ask him why, but he cut me off. “Just do it. I’ll tell you later.”

The tires squealed as I backed out of my parking space. They squealed again when I slammed the gearshift into forward, and again when I slung the truck around the corner to the rear parking lot. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the two old-timers had ceased whittling and were staring at me, slack-jawed and mostly toothless.

As I pulled into the lot, I saw Art at the door of the helicopter. As I skidded to a stop beside him, he pocketed a small bottle, then leapt into the truck. “What were you doing?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Just buying us a little time.” He pulled the bottle back out of his pocket, and I recognized its shape: superglue.

“You superglued their door locks?” He grinned proudly. “The cars? The helicopter?” He nodded happily. “They are gonna be furious.”

“More furious than when they tried to shoot us?” He had a point there.

Despite Art’s stratagem, I wasted no time getting out of town. Careening along the river road, I glanced in the mirror as often as I could without running off the embankment or making myself carsick. “Better get that radio out, just in case,” I told Art.

“What radio?”

“The radio you’re going to call for help on.” I looked at him; he shook his head and held out his empty hands, palms up. “So what was that big line you were feeding them about radioing the FBI and the TBI if they came after us?”

“That, my friend, is called a bluff. A successful bluff, to be precise.” I was not nearly as pleased with Art’s gamesmanship as he was. “Hey, what was I supposed to say—‘Oh, please don’t come after us, because if you do, we’re screwed’? I’m glad you weren’t doing the talking at that moment.” Chalk up another point for Art.

We rode in nervous silence awhile, until we turned onto I-40 and the mileposts began flashing past at a hundred miles an hour. For once in my life, I was hoping I’d get pulled over by a state trooper. “Art, I’m in unknown territory here,” I said. “I’ve never had a case where I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

He nodded. “I remember the first time that happened to me. I was still pretty new in homicide when this cocaine dealer gets shot in the projects in East Knoxville. Shot by a rival dealer, the vice cops tell me. But little things about it start to bother me. No other dealer moves in on the territory. The missing coke — supposedly some hot new stuff — never hits the streets in Knoxville. Instead, pretty soon it starts showing up in Memphis. Turns out one of the vice cops ambushed him, sold the cocaine to a dealer he knew in Memphis. Scary when you realize you can’t always trust the guys on your own team.”

Scary indeed. “So what should I do?”

“Depends. What do you want to happen?”

“I want to find out who killed that girl. I want to do right by her, if it’s possible.”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t have expected anything less. So just do what you always do: speak for the victim, tell the truth, and use your brain. Oh, yeah — watch your back from now on, too.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me, Supercop?”

“Hey, it’s all I’ve got for me, too. Seems to be working okay. So far.”

“Such a comfort. No wonder I wanted you with me.”

“Damn right. But wait, there’s more. I’m not just a comfort and a lifesaver; I’m also a primo evidence gatherer.” Art reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded handkerchief, which he handed to me.

“This hanky is primo evidence?”

“Shit, no, Sherlock. Look inside.”

I unfolded it. Tucked in the folds was a hank of human hair.

“Whose is it?”

“Fresh from the scalp of Sheriff Thomas Kitchings. Remember when I saved your skin back there? I had a pretty good grip on his curly locks while I was holding my gun to his head. Seemed like long as I was there, might as well bring a few strands home as a souvenir. You still got that former student working up at the Pentagon’s forensic lab?”

“Bob Gonzales? Yeah, but why?”

“Might be interesting to see if there’s any links with your cavewoman or the baby.”

“I say again, why? The sheriff just admitted he’s her cousin. And you already convinced me that he was too young to have fathered the baby.”

“Bill, this is Cooke County. Never say never. You never know what might turn up.”

“Whatever you say. You’re the primo criminalist. Thanks, by the way, for saving my skin back there.”

“Anytime. Except probably not for the next day or two. I’m still working that child abduction.”

“Any luck?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. We’re three weeks out without a trace, and we’ve been tailing the bastard for two-point-nine. Unless we’ve badly misjudged this slimebag, the kid’s been dead since the night he nabbed her. We’ve got the cadaver dogs searching for a body.”

I could think of nothing heartening to say.

The sky had clouded as the day wore on, but suddenly — just as we crossed the big bridge over the French Broad River — spokes of sunlight shot from behind a tower of cumulus. Against a purplish-black storm front to the west, the nearer clouds and the forested river banks glowed with such luminescence my heart tightened in my chest. “God’s light,” my mother had always called such displays.

I wasn’t at all sure I believed in God anymore. But I believed this: despite its pockets of darkness, the world can be a beautiful place.