Michael Gruber - Valley of Bones

“What idea?”

“Get the two of them together, bug the place, see what they talked about.”

“Dave, that’s lame, even for you. The plan was to kill the Arab and frame Emmylou for it, period. You knew she was a religious nut and would go for mental evaluation, and you figured you could extract from the shrink’s notes what you couldn’t get in your torture session. That’s why you’ve been trying to lift those confession notebooks.”

No comment.

“Dave?” Paz pointed upward. Thump-thump of pacing feet and “He shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness, yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off.”

Paz picked up the knife. “Maybe I should make a start,” he said. “How hard could it be? I bet it’ll hurt a lot worse than gettingdinged.”

Packer’s face seemed to sag, and his shoulders. A tear trickled down from one eye. “Ah, shit,” he said, “I can’t do this kind of shit. Just let me go, okay?”

“When I have the story.”

“Okay, yeah, that was the plan. And we had someone in the nuthouse too, an orderly, watching the doctor.”

“Right, and who took the photographs of us at the beach?”

“Hardy. I told him it was dumb, but he doesn’t listen.”

“He’s the redhead.”

“Yeah.”

“What about Porky, Casper, and Bugs?”

“He’s one of them. He only has two men with him.” He saw Paz’s look. “Oh, God. Iswear. I don’t want to lie anymore. I want to go home.” He drizzled for a while and Paz let him while he dumped out the files from the portfolio and looked at them.

“What are all these?”

“Just receipts. There’s a checking account, besides all the cash. It’s a front we use, to pay for things like rental trucks and equipment.”

“This says you rented a storage locker yesterday. Tamiami Storage, Inc.”

“If that’s what it says. I sign a lot of vouchers.”

“They have her there, don’t they?” Packer’s face gave the answer. He nodded.

Paz picked up the attache case, grabbed the mini-tape recorder he had placed covertly on the shelf behind Packer’s head, and walked across the salon, stepping around the pool of gasoline.

“Where are you going?” Packer shouted. “Don’t leave! I swear I told you everything! Please!”

Out on deck, Paz motioned to Barlow, who stopped his declaiming and climbed down to the lower deck.

“Did he talk?” Barlow asked. They could hear Packer blubbering and screaming for Paz to come back.

“Yeah. They’ve got her in a storage place on West Flagler. Where’re you going?”

Barlow stepped through the shattered door. “My shotgun. And my knife. It’s a Randall.”

Packer gave an unearthly shriek and fell silent. Barlow emerged, wiping his blade.

“For God’s sake, Cletis…”

“I didn’t touch him,” said Barlow, replacing the blade. “Fella don’t have the nerves for this kind of work. He fainted away like my old grannie soon as he saw me. I sliced the tape on his wrists a little so’s he can get free and don’t have to mess his pants.” They started to walk back to the car and Paz asked, “Did you make up all that stuff you were spouting about killing and devouring fire?”

“Those’re Psalms, Jimmy,” said Barlow in an offended tone. “The word of the Lord.”

“I’m glad I didn’t know you when you were wild,” said Paz in an amused tone, and then checked when, by the light of a street lamp, he saw the expression on Barlow’s face. The lynch-mob guy had gone, replaced by a tired old man.

“You okay, Cletis?”

“Oh, I’ll survive. But you can’t do like I just done without letting the devil into you a little, and I still got the stench of him in my mouth.”

“I know this place,” Lorna said as they pulled to the curb in front of a modest commercial strip. “This is the world’s greatest Cuban sandwich joint. We stopped here when we went to the beach.”

“That’s right and there’s Tamiami Storage right next to it.” Paz swiveled to face the backseat. “How do you want to play this, Cletis?”

“You’re the cop,” said Barlow. “But I’d just go in that office and show the square-badge in there your tin and say you think you got a kidnap victim in such and such a locker. I’ll just set here with Lorna and watch the street.”

They watched Paz walk into the alley between the two four-story blank-faced cubes of Tamiami Storage, toward the lit sign that announced the office. Cletis loaded his shotgun.

“Do you think you’ll have to use that?” she asked.

“I sure hope not,” said Barlow. “But if someone shows with bad intent and they’re armed and they don’t throw down, I’m going to be thinking that they’re the fellas who beat up Edna, and woe to them.”

The square-badge was a dozy fat man who looked wide-eyed at Paz’s detective ID and made an effort to hide the porn magazine he had been studying. Paz showed him the rental receipt and demanded to be shown to the locker indicated. The man looked through a card file and led Paz down gray, ill-lit corridors to a door closed with a large padlock. Paz demanded a bolt cutter, snipped the thing off, and went in.

A long canvas package lay on the floor, wrapped with cords. He used his pocketknife to slice through the binding and peeled the tarpaulin back like a banana. At first he thought she was dead, but then he saw her eyelids flutter and heard her breathe. She sighed and opened her eyes.

“Edna…?”

“She’s okay,” Paz said. “Banged up, but fine. How are you?”

“Conked on the head one more time,” she said, and there was that smile again. He stripped away the rest of the wrapping and helped her stand.

“Did you recognize any of them?” he asked.

“No, they had cartoon masks on. Bugs was the one giving orders. I thought I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t tell for sure. He didn’t say much. They wanted the notebook. That’s why they beat Edna, may God forgive me.”

“Does the name John Hardy mean anything to you?”

She nodded and recited, ” ‘John Hardy was a desperate little man, he carried a six-gun every day. He kilt him a man on the West Virginia line, you ought to see John Hardy gettin’ away, good Lord, see John Hardy get away.’ It was Orne Foy’s favorite song. Why?”

“Packer said that was the name of the guy who ran the operation. Any idea what his real name is?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”

Liar, thought Paz, but said nothing, and led her out of the room, past the stunned guard, through the dim halls.

Outside, Cletis Barlow stood by the Taurus, cradling his shotgun. It was past two, and misty, the traffic light, the sidewalks deserted except for the occasional man or woman pushing a shopping cart. It was a great neighborhood for the homeless.

The sound of an engine roaring, and it came fast around the corner out of Nineteenth Avenue, a white Ford Explorer with dark-tinted windows. The driver pulled it to a sharp stop across the street from Tamiami Storage and jumped out, as did the man in the front passenger seat. They were big men, wearing black jeans and dark hooded sweatshirts. Their faces were covered with plastic masks, Porky Pig and Casper the Ghost. As they crossed the centerline of the roadway, Barlow stood in their path, pointing his old Ithaca at them.

The men stopped. They saw a skinny old guy with an old two-barrel shotgun and were not impressed. Barlow could see their thoughts spinning that way by the set of their bodies. Each cast a quick glance at his companion and both bolted, one going east, one west. Four steps and they spun around, pulling out heavy-caliber pistols. It was a good trick but not against a man who had been hunting dove for forty years. Barlow emptied both of his barrels, filling the air with sixteen.30-caliber pellets from each, one right, one left.