Wisdom of the Bones Page 11

  He’d been obsessed with the battle and everything about it, spending all his time after school looking through the pages of what few books on the subject there were to be had, realising that his dream was no dream, that it was accurate down to the sight of a marine with lieutenant’s tabs decapitated in front of a German machine-gun nest.

  In his dream the man had no name but in the pages of the Henrietta Independent for June 26, 1917, his name was William Heiser and he came from Petrolia, Texas, not many miles away. He told his father about the dream, and about the dead man’s name, but his father had told him never to speak of such things again and that it was all foolish superstition and Ray never had. Even so and even now Lieutenant Heiser and those ghostly woods came back to him, leaving him nine years old again, alone and in the dark.

  Ray reached East Barker Street and slowed almost to a stop, staring at what remained of the old Alamo Plaza Tourist Court, gone now, like the real Alamo, crumbled away to some rain-filled holes and a few arches of masonry and stucco rotting away to nothing year by year.

  It was more than an hour’s drive from home but still barely far enough to calm Cyn’s holy-Jesus terror that her father the reverend might burst in on them in the throes of passion after the prom that night. She was nineteen and graduating high school and he was twenty-eight, back for Homecoming. It had been the sweetest moment of his life and he had never forgotten a single detail of it, from the taffeta and chiffon bouffant dress that crinkled and whispered as she stepped out of it on the floor of the motel room to the instant when he’d entered her and found her so ready.

  He spent as much time with her as he could, coming up from Dallas on his off-shift days, spending his vacation days with her and any other holidays he managed to get off. At first the difference in their ages was a bother to both the Old Man and the reverend but they got over it eventually and everything seemed to be going perfectly. The only thing that got in the way was the Second World War. He spent three months in training, sixteen months in combat and six months in the VA hospital in Virginia. A month over two years, with lots of letters and never a hint of anything wrong, but when he got back things just weren’t the same. He moved back to Dallas and spent another two months taking physicals for the DPD, until he was finally reinstated as a detective sergeant.

  He gave the remains of the old Alamo Plaza Tourist Court one last look and smiled because he knew that the only way to get through what was happening to him was to seize each memory for what it was. No matter what came after, that night was still the greatest moment of his life, when he was young enough and alive enough to still think anything was possible.

  Chapter Nine

  Ray drove on for another hour. The interstate had long cut Henrietta off and he passed by without thinking too much about it. He drove around Jolly and Raymond and when he reached the Clay County line he turned off the interstate and went around the bottom of Wichita Falls heading south on Old 79, finally turning onto the Ranch Road that skirted Lake Wichita. At seven p.m. on the dot he reached Old Lake Road and headed for Triple Ridge.

  Ten years ago, when Audie joined the County Prosecutor’s Office, he and Cyn had moved out of Henrietta and into Wichita Falls, since living in Clay County while you were a junior prosecutor in Wichita County wasn’t politically very smart. Not to be undone, the Old Man had followed suit, sold the rambling old house in Henrietta and bought a two-hundred-acre ranch on the shores of Lake Wichita. The previous owner called the place Oak Farm, which the Old Man thought was stupid since there wasn’t but half a dozen oak trees on the place, so as soon as money was laid down he changed it to Triple Ridge Ranch, which was reasonable, since there were three ridges and you could see all of them from the main house.

  The ranch was on the other side of the road from the lake itself but the property had lots of water of its own, including a natural pool, a trout stream that fed down to the lake, a second, larger pond and a big heated swimming pool the Old Man put in when he heard that swimming in the winter was good for your arthritis. There were barns, sheds, workshops, a cabin that was easily a hundred years old nestling at the base of one of the ridges and Rose Cottage, a two-room guest house on the trout stream just before it went under the road and into Lake Wichita. There were enough stands of trees scattered around to make it private but mostly the two hundred acres were given over to feed hay the Old Man let his next-door neighbour, Charlie Warren, harvest. In the middle of it all, reached by a long driveway, was the house itself, a concrete-and-stucco monster that looked like a Bavarian farmhouse built into the side of a low hill, facing the lake for the view.

  He turned into the driveway and took his foot off the gas, feeling his stomach clench at the thought of dealing with his father and, worse, of sitting through dinner with Cyn. Audie had almost certainly told her about his condition and the last thing he wanted to do was spend the evening with her across the table, her brown eyes half filled with tears for him, her face soft with pity.

  He parked beside his father’s brand-new aspen-white Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz and his brother’s dark green Studebaker Avanti on the paved lot at the side of the house. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, telling himself that this was a necessary thing, that it would take his mind off the killing of Jennings Price for a while and that it was almost sure to be the last time he ever laid eyes on any of the people there.

  He went around to the other side of the building and climbed a short flight of steps up to the second-floor kitchen, which stood at the top of the slope. He let himself in and the first thing he saw was Cuquita, the maid and cook his old man had kept since shortly after his mother left. She had made a pot of coffee in the big silver pot the Old Man used and was getting cups and saucers together on a big wooden tray with bone handles. Spotting Ray she stopped what she was doing and came across the room, giving him one of her five-foot-tall bear hugs with plump little arms that didn’t connect around his back.

  ‘Dinner is finished, Mr Ray. They are having cake and now coffee on the dining balcony.’

  ‘How’s the Old Man?’

  ‘Seventy-five years old. Cranky.’ She shook her head. ‘I can do nothing with him. He is a goat and he drinks too much.’

  ‘I’ll second that.’ Ray smiled. Ever since he’d known what sex was he’d been pretty sure that Cuquita and his father were sleeping together but he’d never known for sure and he’d never had the balls to ask either one of them. Maybe if she was still up when he left, he’d finally ask her.

  ‘You want coffee too, Mr Ray?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Cuquita got another cup and saucer, fully loading the tray. Ray tried to edge around her and pick it up himself but she slapped him hard on the back of his hand. ‘Go away. Go see your family and let me do my job!’

  ‘You go first.’

  ‘All right.’ She patted Ray softly on the cheek. ‘It is good to see you again, Horalito,’ she said gently, using the pet name she’d given him decades before.

  ‘You too,’ Ray answered.

  Cuquita picked up the tray and turned to use her broad backside to push open the swinging door that led out to the dining balcony that loomed above the first-floor living room. Ray was right behind her.

  The Old Man was seated at the head of the long table, his back to the floor-to-ceiling display case of stuffed birds and smaller animals he’d shot over the years. The living room walls downstairs were filled with the heads of larger creatures, while the floors were adorned with rugs made out of a bear, a mountain lion, a zebra and a tiger. According to the Old Man he’d killed something in every country of the world except the communist ones and fished in every ocean at one time or another. It was the kind of place Ernest Hemingway would have liked.

  Audie and Cyn were seated across from each other close to the Old Man. Audie was cutting himself another slice of the big chocolate birthday cake and Cyn was using her fork to push hers into smaller and smaller pieces. The only choice he had was to sit down next to his brothe
r or to Cyn and he didn’t want to do either. Cuquita made the decision for him, taking the place setting beside Audie and sliding it down to the far end of the table facing his father. She put the coffee down between Ray and Cynthia and served Ray first, adding cream and two sugars, just the way he liked it. When he had his cup in front of him Cuquita began serving everyone else.

  ‘I thought I was the goddamn guest of honour and I don’t even get my coffee served first?’

  ‘Ray’s the guest, Daddy,’ said Cynthia. Hearing her calling his father Daddy was almost more than Ray could bear. He sipped his coffee and stole a glance in her direction. She’d added no more than five pounds over the years and her hair was still the glorious reddish brown he remembered.

  She’d be forty-one or forty-two now but she hadn’t aged so much as she’d grown into herself somehow.

  His brother, on the other hand, now had a bowling-ball belly and the beginning of dewlaps hanging from his cheeks. His hair was thinning and going grey and he was wearing glasses. The Old Man didn’t look particularly good either. He still smoked and his face bore the evidence in leathery skin and deep-cut grooves and lines, running here and there without much pattern except for the three deep notches in his deeply tanned forehead and the spread of chicken tracks leading away from the corners of his dark blue eyes. There was a wine glass on the table a quarter full of something honey coloured, like sherry, and there was the ruins of another drink beside it, this one in a cut-crystal whiskey sour glass.

  ‘You’re late,’ said the Old Man, looking down the table at him.

  ‘Couldn’t be helped.’

  ‘Coulda left earlier.’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Work too much. Should have been a man of leisure like me.’ The Old Man was slurring a little but he still had his head screwed on straight. Just because he’d been drinking didn’t mean he was drank.

  ‘I didn’t strike oil like you did.’

  ‘’Came a cop, didn’t you? All that homicide shit. No wonder you caught a sickness in your chest.’

  ‘Daddy!’ scolded Cyn but she was looking at Ray.

  ‘I’m supposed to pussyfoot around all of this?’

  Ray laughed. ‘No P. L., pussyfooting just isn’t in your nature, is it?’

  ‘Have you heard any more from your doctors?’ asked Audie.

  ‘Haven’t been to one in a while.’

  ‘You sure that’s wise?’

  ‘I’m not sure of very much any more, Aud.’

  ‘What do they have you doing?’ said the Old Man. ‘Light duty, I’d guess.’ He didn’t even wait for an answer. ‘Audie here’s forming a committee to look into running for the Senate. We’re thinking, what the hell, state senator’s the long way around, whyn’t we just shoot for the bullseye, see if we can get our boy and girl all the way to Washington the first go-round.’

  Ray looked at his brother. ‘Think you can pull it off, Audie?’

  ‘Hard to say. Daddy thinks I can do it.’

  ‘Of course I do or I wouldn’t be pouring all this money into it.’

  Ray turned to Cyn. ‘What do you think about all this?’

  ‘I don’t really understand much of it.’

  ‘You do what the sumbitch Kennedy did. Or at least his father. You spend money getting his face shown and his good points pointed up and his bad points disappeared altogether.’ The Old Man laughed, the laugh turning to a cough and then a rough caw of phlegm, which he hawked discreetly into his napkin, folding the linen and putting it down neatly beside his plate. ‘It was money that got that Northern smart-ass into the White House and it’ll be money that keeps him there along with that pretty wife of his.’

  ‘You don’t think any of his programmes are valid?’ asked Cyn.

  The Old Man looked at her like she’d dropped out of the sky from Mars. ‘Programmes? You mean all this civil rights crap he’s pushing for? It’s shit and no amount of glue’s going to make it stick. He’s not talking to a bunch of old ladies in Boston at that Trade Mart tomorrow, he’s talking to businessmen whose daddies were Klan and whose daddies before them were Klan.’ He looked down the table at his elder son. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you, Horatio?’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘How many Klan you think still in the police in Big D?’

  ‘Never counted the pointy hats but there’s at least a few.’

  ‘Bet your Texas ass, boy. And we’re not just talking beat cops, are we?’

  ‘No, I guess you’re right.’

  Audie interrupted, trying to change the subject and distance himself a little from a father who knew far too much about the Klan and its members. ‘What exactly are you working on, Ray?’

  ‘Homicide,’ he answered. ‘A local antique dealer.’

  ‘Somebody shoot him during a robbery?’ Audie asked.

  Ray shook his head. ‘I wish it was that easy. No. He was found at the dump inside a refrigerator. Cut up and wired back together like a puppet.’ Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cyn’s features screw up with distaste.

  The Old Man looked thoughtful as Cuquita came and cleared away the last of the dessert and coffee dishes. Audie took out a pack of Luckies and lit one with an expensive-looking lighter. Ray stared down the table at him, biting back a twitch of envy at his easy, thoughtless inhaling of the smoke. Then the Old Man spoke up.

  ‘The little black girl in Oklaunion. Now I remember.’

  ‘Little black girl?’ Audie said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Old Man. ‘The funny thing is she wasn’t from Oklaunion at all, she was from Haynesville. Little girl, maybe ten years old. Pretty as a picture, little ribbons in her pigtails like they used to do back in the old times.’

  And sat out on the lawn singing spirituals while Massah and Massah’s wife rocked on the front porch and sipped juleps, thought Ray, except those times ended long before the Old Man was born.

  ‘What about the little girl?’ Cyn prompted, putting her hand out and touching the Old Man’s wrist. Once again Ray felt an ache in his chest.

  ‘Well, for one thing, she was murdered. Summer 1937 or ’38, I think. Can’t remember exactly. You were in law school and Horatio was already in Dallas. You wouldn’t remember.’

  ‘Sure I do,’ said Ray suddenly, amazed at himself for not remembering sooner. Was that the Peter Pan he’d written in his notebook? ‘They found her chopped up in an old icebox.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Old Man, nodding so deeply his chin almost touched his chest. He jerked back his head and reached out for his drink.

  ‘At first they didn’t know who she was,’ Ray went on, remembering some of the details. ‘All they knew was she wasn’t from Oklaunion because there was no one missing there. Took a while to put a name to her.’

  ‘Wasn’t much easier with the others,’ the Old Man said.

  ‘Were they all black?’ asked Audie.

  ‘First three, as I recall. No one really gave it much thought.’

  ‘How many all told?’ Ray asked.

  ‘Can’t remember,’ said the Old Man. ‘Seven?’ He nodded. ‘Sounds right. Anyway, after the first three they were white. Trash, mind you, but still white.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Pieces cut out of them? Squares and rectangles?’

  ‘Seem to remember something like that.’

  ‘Anything ever done about it?’ Ray’s father had been a justice of the peace back then and he would have known.

  ‘Not much. Nothing about the black kids. Jurisdiction problem too. Some of the kids were killed in Clay, some in Wichita, some in Archer.’

  ‘What about that, Audie? Would that make a difference?’

  ‘Not now. Back then maybe. Complicate things.’

  ‘Would you have files on the killings?’

  ‘Probably. Buried in the basement somewhere.’

  ‘I need to see them.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now would be good but I gu
ess I can wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘You really think there’s some kind of connection? Those cases have gone pretty cold, Ray.’

  ‘Kids killed, chopped up, put back together again like puppets and hidden in iceboxes with chunks cut out of them. Pretty distinct M.O.’

  ‘A long time ago,’ offered Cyn.

  ‘Twenty-five years.’ Audie nodded.

  ‘People go away,’ said Ray quietly, looking at Cyn. ‘They come back too.’

  ‘You really think this is important?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let’s go now and get it over with,’ said Audie. ‘Cyn and I are supposed to be in Big D at the Trade Mart tomorrow for the President’s luncheon speech.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re flying high, brother.’

  ‘Connally offered the invite,’ said the Old Man, giving off a choking little laugh. ‘Been kissing ass since he found out we were taking the short route to Washington and not going after the governor’s spot next go-round.’

  Ray glanced at his watch. It was almost nine. His brother saw the look.

  ‘Come on,’ said Audie, standing up, obviously a little liquid on his legs. ‘Get you those files if we can find them.’

  ‘Why don’t we take my car?’ said Ray. ‘No sense in taking yours too.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead with you in that old heap. We’ll take mine.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Aud, but let me drive.’

  ‘Fuck you, Ray. You think I’m drunk?’

  ‘Audie!’ said Cyn, colour rising into her cheeks.

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re drunk. Give me the keys.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Audie grumbled. He put one hand out, fingers splayed on the edge of the table to keep himself balanced.

  The Old Man rapped the table with his knuckles. ‘Give him the keys, Claudius.’ Grumbling, Ray’s brother dug into his trouser pocket and tossed him the keys to the Avanti.

  ‘I’ll get him back as soon as I can,’ Ray said, looking towards Cynthia.

  ‘We were going to stay here overnight anyway,’ she answered. ‘Get an early start in the morning.’