Valley of Bones

Fifteen

They drove north and then east for hours into a part of Florida where Lorna had never been. When they left the highway they seemed to enter a different world, one that had nothing to do with the jaunty vacationland image the state tried to project. Driving on two-lane blacktop bordered by murky canals they passed burning fields of sugarcane stubble and slowed often behind mesh-sided trailers piled high with cut cane. Once they passed a stake-bed truck full of standing cutters, men and a few women, scarfed against the dust that covered their clothes, that whitened their plum-black skin.

“My fate,” said Paz as they drove by, “although these are Jamaicans, not Cubans. They fly them in for the cutting season. Americans won’t cut cane.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“About Americans not cutting cane? It’s a national scandal.”

“No, about escaping your fate.”

“Duh, I feel good, I guess,” said Paz.

Lorna felt herself blush. “I didn’t mean?” she began, but he cut her off. “No, that’s okay, but I have to admit that once in a while I grab my machete and chop an acre or two just to keep in practice, in case you all decide equal rights was a bad idea. How about you? Did you escape your fate?”

“No, I’m solidly in the groove. My daddy designed me to be a bright little thing and accumulate academic honors and gain a respectable profession requiring a Ph.D. and do theTimes Sunday crossword puzzle in less than twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes is pretty good,” said Paz. “I do it in about three.”

“You don’t!”

“Yeah, I just leave it for a week and then they show you how to fill it in. It takes no time at all.”

“Laugh if you want to,” she said, laughing, “but it’s an important part of my pathetic teacup of self-respect. My brother, Bert, feels like you do about the sacred puzzle, though. He escapedhis fate.”

“Oh, yeah? What was he supposed to be?”

“A famous research scientist M.D. discovering the cure for cancer. It turned out he liked girls and money instead. He’s in bonds in New York, does fairly well, I think: nice apartment, a place in the Hamptons. He’s on his third wife, because I guess the first two were not quite vapid enough to suit his refined tastes. Fortunately, Daddy had a spare child. Unfortunately, a girl. Fortunately, much more academic talent than Bert. Unfortunately, not enough to get into medical school. Fortunately, just enough to snag an Ivy League Ph.D., so she can be introduced as my daughter, Dr. Wise.”

“So the cancer cure is pretty much out?”

“Afraid so. My sad story. What a stench! Whatis that?”

“Sugar refineries. Like a herd of brontosaurs got drunk on rum and puked up. We’ll be out of it soon. Here’s a point: as sad as your story is, you don’t have to breathe this in every day.”

“I’m not going to get any sympathy at all from you, am I?”

“No, although if I contract cancer I might be fairly pissed off at you. And your brother. Speaking of fate, this guy we’re going to see, totally designed by nature to be a police detective. Mozart, Michael Jordan, that level. Probably cleared more felonies than anyone else in the history of the Miami PD. And because of a situation outside his control he gets the boot.”

“What happened to him?”

Paz told her the story, the official one, about how Cletis had been driven crazy by African-style witch doctor drugs, and then she wanted to know more about the famous Voodoo Killer case, and he supplied more of the official version.

She said, “Why does your voice go all funny when you talk about this? It’s like you’re one of those brainwashed Korean War POWs talking about how they did germ warfare.”

“You detect prevarication.”

“My stockin-trade. What really happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Okay. There’s a tribe in Africa that can do real sorcery. They can give you dreams, become invisible, create zombies. They can create psychedelic drugs in their own bodies and make you see anything they want you to see. An African-American went over there and became a witch, and then came back here and started eviscerating pregnant women to get the power he needed to destroy America and we couldn’t stop him worth a damn. And the spirits exist.”

She laughed. “No, really.”

“See? I rest my case.” Then he changed the subject to Cletis Barlow in his prime, his amazing feats, his peculiar beliefs, his kindness to Paz. “I’d still be, as the saying goes in the department, chasing niggers up Second Avenue if he hadn’t dragged me into the detectives. I had a couple of nice collars, but no one was looking to promote me to detective. The ethnic politics of the Miami PD are a little weird. So I owe him a lot.”

“A father figure.”

“You could say that.”

“And the actual father? Not on the scene?”

A long pause here. Lorna thought that Paz was ignoring the question and she felt a small pang of regret for having asked it. They drove out of the sugar regions and into a pleasanter country, green pastures occupied by humped white cattle staring stupidly from behind wire fencing.

“The short version,” said Paz, after clearing his throat, “is he’s a rich white Cuban. He loaned my mom the money to get her started in catering, and used her ass as collateral. I was the product. He does not have paternal feelings. When I got a little famous around that case and was on local TV a lot, he took his family on a world tour, lest anyone make the connection.”

“That’s really sad. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. But,amor fati.”

“Pardon…?”

“Amor fati. Love your fate. A friend of mine used to say that. The secret of happiness.”

Lorna did not respond to this, as she did not wish to explore the source of the Latin tag, whom she suspected was on the staff of the University of Girl. She looked out the window. Soon they turned off the blacktop onto a gravel road and off that onto a narrow dirt track between rows of dusty pines, past a sign readingBARLOW Registered Charolais, and into a yard containing a red-painted, tin-roofed farmhouse with a wide screen porch, a barn, some outbuildings, and a tall, rangy woman in her early sixties, wearing a tattered straw hat and an apron.

Paz got out of the car and into this woman’s warm embrace.

Introductions then: Dr. Wise, Edna Barlow, Paz slipping the doctor in there, Lorna wondering why. She shook the woman’s hand, which was hard and strong, and looked into her face, which was plain, strong, seamed, tanned, a stranger to the spa, obviously, and equipped with sharp blue eyes. Lorna wore her formal face, as she did with people who might be offended by advanced ideas. She felt like she had walked into a 1930s movie.

They sat on the porch, which Mrs. Barlow called a veranda, and drank sweet iced tea from clunky glasses. Paz and Mrs. Barlow chatted about what he’d been doing and what they’d been doing, and the doings of the three junior Barlows (college, the marines, high school basketball), and although Mrs. B. attempted to bring her into the conversation, it was awkward, leaving Lorna wondering what she was doing here. She caught Edna looking searchingly at her several times and wondered what that was about.

A white Dodge pickup came dusting into the yard, and proved to hold Cletis Barlow and his sixteen-year-old son, James. More greetings, but apparently men didn’t hug chez Barlow. Lorna thought Cletis Barlow had the meanest face she ever saw on a man, the face of the leader of a lynch mob from central casting, except there was a nice person living inside it by mistake. It was all scars, lumps, bad teeth, and wrong angles, and the eyes were the color of a washboard.

They got a tour of the rancho then, the two guests in borrowed rubber boots moving gingerly among the big cattle in the barn, swatting, but not too obviously, at the many flies. Paz was trying to sense the mental status of his former partner; Lorna felt like she was on a school trip, a feeling enhanced by James, who seemed fascinated by her, although he called her ma’am and told her more about Charolais cattle than she wanted to know.

An early supper is the custom here. Through a manipulation that is proof against all of Lorna’s psych skills and feminist principles, she finds herself in the kitchen with Edna, preparing snap beans and tomatoes from their garden and peeling potatoes. Lorna realizes that she has never actually peeled a potato. At home she was an honorary boy, the children were called in to a laden board, the mother never requesting her daughter’s help. Message: This girl is for higher things, Dad things, feminism clearly not applying to Mom, although Dad talks a good game, and just as clearly she has fallen into a time warp here in south-central Fla. Who peels potatoes? Lorna’s entertainments are infrequent, and at those few that involve spuds, she bakes them, and while they bake she dispenses wit in the living room.

Edna is watching, incredulous. Finally, she speaks. “Honey, I believe you haven’t peeled many potatoes.”

“Not even one,” admits Lorna, and now she can put down the peeler and apply paper toweling to her wounds.

“Well, sit yourself down then. I only asked you to be sociable,” says Edna, who now stands by the sink and with rapid flicks of the instrument causes the skins to practically leap off the pesky tubers.

Lorna feels obliged to compliment the woman on this skill, which she does and then feels unutterably patronizing, so adds a personal slamette. “I’m not very domestic, I guess.”

“Well, you being a doctor and all, I figured you had enough to be doing. I just drug you in here so the boys could talk by themselves.”

“Are they telling secrets?”

“I don’t know, but they do like to get off alone. The two of them’re real close, and Cletis has missed it something awful, although he’d never say a word. Anyway, I can’t abide a man in the kitchen. It gets me all nervous.”

“But if you feel that way, you get stuck with all the cooking and serving. And the cleaning up.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘stuck,’ exactly,” says Edna. “There’s enough work to do in the world and I don’t see why it can’t be divided up so’s we all know what we’re supposed to do and get good at it. I believe the Lord intended it that way. I’ve changed truck oil, and greased bearings, and run farm machinery, and hauled feed. Who d’you think ran this place while Cletis was off being a policeman down south?” She holds up the peeler. “Honey, if you think this is hard, you try castrating a bull calf. No, thank you! Which is why I thank the good Lord for men. Although they can be a trial. How long have you known our Jimmy?”

The unexpected out-of-context question of the skilled interrogator. Lorna feels suddenly off balance. “Not long at all. We’re working on a case together.”

Edna seems a little disappointed in this answer, so Lorna adds, “He seems very good at what he does.”

Here Edna turns on her an unexpectedly radiant smile. “Oh, my, yes, he is. Oh, but we think the world of Jimmy Paz. He’s just the sweetest thing!”

The sweetest thing was at that moment in a sagging wicker chair on the porch vaguely wishing that Cletis had not added total abstinence to his skein of virtues. Paz wanted a drink and a cigar. He had told Cletis what Lorna had told him about the events in the locked ward, and was now relating what he knew about the Muwalid murder; it was tough going, Paz fearing that any moment Cletis would interrupt with a question about whether Paz had performed some action that might have broken open the case, which Paz had forgotten to do, and now it was too late. But when Cletis did stop him, it was about a detail from the first interrogation of Emmylou Dideroff.

“She saidwhat?”

“She said it would be an honor to be executed unjustly, like Jesus.”

“Well, well. If that don’t beat all! I’d sure like to meet this woman.”

“Yeah, the two of you’d get along real well, putting the pope to one side for a while.”

“You think she was serious?”

“I guess. That was the saint part talking, though. There’s another part in there that’s not so nice.”

“That don’t signify,” said Barlow dismissively. “There’s demons in us all. Go ahead, what happened then?”

Paz finished his tale, adding the business about Wilson and Packer and Cortez and the material from the first volume of the diaries. After that, Barlow thought for a while, leaning his ladderback chair up against the side of his house and chewing on a toothpick, staring into space. Paz knew better than to interrupt him at this juncture.

They were called to supper.

Barlow let his chair go forward with a thump. “It don’t work, Jimmy,” he said. “I can’t say for sure without seeing this girl, but she didn’t do it. The frame’s too obvious and sloppy. I think she was telling the plain truth. She was set up and she just walked into that room like she said. They knew you’d be up, and they knew you’d find her, and the murder weapon, and they knew you’d believe she was crazy. Uh-huh, I see you’re confused. That’s cause we always look at the victim, why was he killed, who were his enemies, what was he doing in the twenty-four hours before he died and so forth.”

“Boys!” from the house. Barlow opened the screen door.

Paz followed him in. “And…?”

“It ain’t him, it’s her. She was why he was killed. He was just a convenience. They wanted her, not him. Well ain’t this nice!”

The table was spread with food, steaming platters of mashed potatoes oozing butter, chicken-fried steaks the size of hubcaps, chunks of corn bread, enough bean salad to flatulate Orlando. Barlow went to wash up and Paz drew Lorna aside.

“And did you help cook all this?” he asked.

“Oh, right! I was put in a corner like a porcelain doll while Edna did all. She considers herself lucky not to have to castrate bull calves too.”

“You disagree, obviously. I hope you gave Edna the full feminazi treatment.”

“I know you’re loving this. In fact, I personallywould like to castrate bull calves. According to any number of my boyfriends I’ve been doing it figuratively for some time.”

“You shared that point with Edna, of course.”

“What is this, some kind of test? You’ve brought the whole University of Girl through here to bounce them off Edna?”

Paz thought about this. With some surprise in his voice he said, “No, you’re the first one.” Lorna did not know what to say to that.

They sat down, Cletis at the head of the table, and he said grace. Lorna had heard grace said at the Waitses’ house before this, but it was a routine, with one of the children rushing through it. But here there was a silence before, and Cletis Barlow really seemed to be communicating his thanks to God. As always, Lorna was faintly embarrassed. She looked over at Paz, who seemed to be in a trance. Grace concluded, she turned to the food. She was unfortunately not at all hungry, although she had been too upset by Emmylou’s fit to think about lunch. There was something wrong with her gut, and it was an effort to get down enough food to avoid insult. The Barlows, who obviously ate such meals all the time, were all lithe and gnarly as vines. Maybe God kept them thin. It was a possibility. Paz was eating like a machine. Bright chitchat was apparently not expected at the Barlow table.

Paz was eating hard so as to avoid unprofitable mental excursions. Of course it was the girl, or woman, Dideroff, and not the hapless Sudanese official. He had discussed that very thing with Oliphant, but as one of a number of baffling possibilities, and had Cletis still been his partner, they would have nailed it the first day, and of course Cletis would’ve taken one look at the woman, had a nice talk about Jesus and the saints, and come up with the right answer in about six minutes. He had to talk to Cletis some more, but not just now; Barlow placed a Chinese wall between home and work, not that it was his work anymore, but still….

The clattering of cutlery and other eating noises slowed. Mrs. Barlow urged further consumption. They tried, faltered, failed. Mrs. Barlow sighed, observed they would just have to throw it away, and stood up, casting a meaningful eye on Lorna, who felt herself pulled to her feet by tidal prefeminist forces. She began to help clear, although when collecting Paz’s things, she was inspired by his self-satisfied grin to pour a little iced tea onto his lap. Oops! He had the nerve to laugh.

Dessert was pineapple upside-down cake sweetened fully as much as the laws of physical chemistry allowed and thin sour coffee. Talking was apparently allowed during dessert. James was on Lorna’s right, and he told all about his recent Boy Scout trip. He was an Eagle and an assistant scoutmaster. Lorna had never sat next to a Boy Scout before. Waves of wholesomeness wafted from him, and he blushed whenever Lorna spoke. Then Cletis said, “Lorna, Jimmy here tells me you saw a lady drive out a demon.”

Now it was her turn to blush. “I’m not sure what I saw,” she said.

“I take it you don’t believe in demons.”

“I don’t believe that’s the cause of mental illness, no.”

“What’s the cause then, would you say?”

“A variety of things. If you’re talking about frank psychosis, schizophrenia, most authorities believe it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain.”

“And what causes them?”

“Genetics in some cases, maybe environment; it’s not clear. They used to think it was bad families, but they don’t think that anymore.”

“Hmm. So what’s your explanation of what you saw?”

“I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I might have been confusing what I observed after the orderlies sedated him with what happened just before, when Emmylou was touching him.”

She saw a look pass between Barlow and Paz, a sly smile from the former, and on the face of the latter an expression that could have been embarrassment.

“Yeah, you might’ve been confused. Witnesses sometimes are. But what’re you going to think when you go back to that hospital and find what’s-his-name, Masefield, is as sane as you are?”

“That’s really unlikely.”

“But just suppose.”

“Well, in that case, I’d have to put it down to spontaneous remission. It’s rare but it does happen.” She paused. Everyone was watching her, not like a gang of inquisitors, but like a family watching to see baby try something new. “But I still wouldn’t believe in demons.”

“Well, that’s interesting. So you’re closed off to any way of accounting for what your eyes see and your ears hear, except where it fits into your kind of explanation, even when that explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense. Spontaneous remission? Why, that sounds like a fancy way of saying ‘Heck, it beats me!’ “

“It beats believing in demons,” snapped Lorna, her temper rising.

Barlow said, ” ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ Isaiah, 55:9. Let me tell you a story, explain where I’m coming from. One time there was a wild young man. He cursed, he drank, he committed acts of violence and fornication, he broke every commandment but number six. He hadn’t killed anyone yet, but that was just because he hadn’t met anyone who he thought wanted killing. Well, one day that changed. He’d run a load of moonshine down from Georgia for this fella, and the fella had paid him some money and promised him more at delivery. Well, he delivered it all right, but the fella said he didn’t owe him nothing more, and he just kind of grinned and passed looks around at all the men who were there waiting to get their liquor, and our young man couldn’t do a thing, on account of the fella was armed and so were all the other men, they were that kind of men. So he was angry as a kicked-up nest of hornets and he goes running back to his truck, and takes his sixteen-gauge shotgun down from the rack and loads it up and he’s got his hand on the door on the way to murder, when he sees that he ain’t alone in that pickup truck. Lord Jesus is sitting right there on the passenger seat, looking just like a regular man. And Jesus looked that young man in the eye and all the love and forgiveness in the world flowed into him and he heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Son, put up your weapon and go on home and sin no more.’ And he did. Well, that’s a true story and that young man was me, praise the Lord.”

James and his mother murmured, “Praise the Lord,” and Barlow added, “Well, what do you think of that?”

Lorna said, “I’m sorry, this is really very difficult for me. I don’t want to offend your religious sensibilities…”

Barlow grinned at that. “Oh, we’re used it it. ‘But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock and unto the Greeks foolishness,’ First Corinthians, 1:23. Go on with what you’re going to say. We won’t bite.”

Paz said, “No, but after they clear the table they’re going to hold you down on it and torture you with hot irons until you convert.”

“Yes, and I believe we’ll need the extra-large size irons for her,” said Edna, deadpan. “James, why don’t you go get them ready in the torture room.”

“Aw, Ma, do I have to?” whined James. “Ialways have to do the tortures.”

There was laughter then, in which Lorna joined, but uncomfortably. At the parties she normally attended, people like the Barlows were the butts of jokes, and while she saw the irony in thus having the tables turned, it was not particularly pleasant. So she spoke with more asperity than she otherwise might have. “Yes, well, no offense, as I said, but we would regard what you experienced as an hallucination brought on by stress. Blood pressure rises, adrenaline and other hormones are released, these have an effect on the medial temporal lobe and you hear voices and see visions. We can reproduce the same effects in the laboratory with electrical stimulation.”

“And does it make you happy to believe that?” asked Barlow, fixing her with his colorless eyes.

“Happy has nothing to do with it. It’s the truth. It’s the way the world is. We just have to live with it.”

“Hm. Well that’s a point of view. But just because they figured out how the sun works, and just because they can build a bomb that works the same way, that don’t mean that there’s no sun in the sky, does it?”

While Lorna was thinking about this, Barlow said, “Jimmy, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at those confession notebooks you’ve got. I might come up with something, since I don’t guess I’m going to get to see this woman.”

Paz said, “If it’s okay with Lorna. They’re her property. I’m just guarding them.”

Lorna assented, not without some secret irritation at the irregular aspects of this case, although she was happy that the theological discussion seemed to be over. The line between what was confidential therapeutic material and what was a public legal document had become hopelessly blurred, and it annoyed her. She grabbed up the dessert things somewhat roughly and stalked into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry we were such teases,” said Mrs. Barlow, after five minutes of Lorna’s stiff face and short answers. “It’s just what we always do with Jimmy. I guess it’s something of a family joke. I hope you weren’t offended. That’s the last thing we meant to do.”

Lorna felt close to tears, for unknown reasons, which made the feeling worse. “Oh, it’s not that. I’ve felt a little nuts ever since I met this woman. And Iasked for it.” Here Lorna unburdened herself about the various oddities of her relationship with Emmylou Dideroff, all of it pouring out into the steamy kitchen air.

“Y’all’re being led to something,” said Mrs. Barlow.

“But I don’tbelieve in any of that!” Lorna wailed.

“You know, it don’t much matter what you believe. You heard Cletis’s story. Whatever y’all say about brain chemicals, there was a real change there and it came out of nowhere. I knew Cletis Barlow before that and I can tell you. He was the wildest boy in Okeechobee County and that includes the Indians.”

“Were you going out with him then?”

“Oh, heavens, no! My pa would’ve had my skin if I’d even’ve looked at Cletis Barlow. We were hard-shell twice-on-Sunday church people. But I did look anyway. I guess I was sweet on him from third grade. When he showed up at our church afterward and got saved, I declare I nearly fainted with thanksgiving.”

“What did you like about him? I mean before.”

“I liked the way he moved. And if he was wicked, he wasn’t mean wicked, if you know what I mean. And to tell the honest truth, I reckon I just couldn’t love a man who wasn’t a little bit dangerous. Could you?”

Again Lorna was at a loss for words.

Paz spent the next hour playing horse with James at the backboard nailed to the barn. He got creamed, a first, and felt cranky and old. Again he wished for a drink of something other than iced tea. Cletis was on the porch, in his chair, with the two notebooks on his lap.

“Slowing down, Jimmy?”

“He’s getting taller. What do you think about our girl?”

“I’ll tell you, son, I don’t often lust to be back on the job, but here’s one makes me feel like an old lame hound on a frosty night when the coon is out. She won’t talk to you at all?”

“No, she says the devil’s in her and it’ll make her lie unless she writes it all down in order.”

“I’ll believe that. But she’ll lie in writing too. Just once, maybe, hoping it’ll slip by them.”

“Them?”

“Sure, whoever’s behind all this. Whoever’s got your Major Oliphant from the FBI so agitated. Anyhow, you ain’t going to find the bottom of this in Miami.”

“No? Where, then?”

“Where she’s been. Up to Virginia where she stayed, talk to those nuns of hers…but they’re not going to let you do that.”

“You think?”

“Heck, no! She didn’t kill that Arab, but you got a dead man they can stick with it, which is always real handy, and you got this Wilson fella as the mastermind. That’s as far as it’ll travel. Kind of a shame, to tell the truth. I’d sure like to know what all got it moving.”

Paz said that he’d like to know it too. He went into the kitchen to say good-bye to Edna and collect Lorna. He found Edna alone.

“So, when’s the wedding?” she asked.

“Edna, I just met the woman. You know, you should get together with my mother.”

“What makes you think we ain’t getting together already, plotting and cackling and praying for your salvation and a mess of grand-kids?”

Paz laughed, but a little uncomfortably. “Stop it, Ed, you’re giving me the willies.”

“She likes you. I can tell.”

“She’s a pleasant colleague is all. I brought her up here because she had a weird experience and because I was coming up anyway because I wanted to talk to Cletis. How’s he been?”

“He pines a little, but the place keeps him busy enough. Oh, here you are!” said Edna brightly, in just that tone that informs the newcomer that she has been the subject of discussion.

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Paz, and then, “Just a second…” because he felt his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He stepped into the hallway to take the call.

“Where are you?” asked Morales.

“North of the lake. What’s up?”

“You need to get back here, boss. Jack Wilson’s car went into a canal off Alligator Alley. It looks like there’s a driver in it.”

“Oh, terrific! What’s the location?”

“It’s just west of the Miccosukee line.”

“I’ll meet you there in an hour or less,” said Paz and gave his young partner a complex set of instructions on how to deal with the state police and those of Broward County and the Indian tribe involved.

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 taillights. 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.