Valley of Bones Read online

“Damned if I know,” said Paz and walked through to the little balcony terrace. He squatted low and peered at the thing. When he was sixteen and poor as dirt, Paz had rebuilt the blown engine on his first car, a ’56 Mercury, and so he knew just what he was looking at. It was a rod, the short, strong, steel forging that connects the piston of an internal combustion engine to the crankshaft, larger than the Merc’s was, maybe from a big diesel. It consisted of a ring designed to grip the crankshaft and a smaller ring that went around a fat pin inside the piston. There was a smear of blood along the side of the large ring and a few curly dark hairs that looked like they could have come off the head of the victim. He leaned closer, balancing like a chimp on the knuckles of one hand. The rod was brand-new, it seemed, and covered with a sheen of oil. Low on the shaft were several almost perfect fingerprints, where someone had gripped it. Well, well.

  He stood and looked over the wrought iron railing. He could see the impaled victim, ten stories below, with the CSU swarming around him, photographing and taking samples. Paz wished them well but thought that most of the relevant evidence would be found right up here in 10 D. He pulled out his cell phone, called the CSU team leader on her cell phone, and was amused that he could actually see the person he was cell-calling to. He waved and she waved back and he told her to get up to 10 D with all speed.

  He went back inside and pulled up a chair so that he was facing Emmylou Dideroff.

  “So, Ms. Dideroff—can I call you Emmylou?” She nodded. “Emmylou—what’s your connection to Jabir al-Muwalid? You a friend of his?”

  “Oh, no. He was our enemy.”

  “ ‘Our’ being…?”

  “My tribe. The Peng Dinka. The Monyjang.”

  “Uh-huh. And this was because…?”

  “Oh, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of people. I don’t mean just in the war. He was the leader of a kind of special death squad.”

  “I see. And this was where? Here in Miami?”

  Her face underwent a change, as if she had suddenly realized where she was and what was happening. Paz got a stare that could have come from any Overtown chippie. “Excuse me, but what’s going on? Where is he, and why’re you here in his room?”

  “He’s dead,” said Paz bluntly. “He went out that window there about twenty minutes ago and impaled himself on a spiked fence.”

  A swift intake of breath, a slight widening of the eyes. “Well,” she said, sighing. “God have mercy on his soul,” and then something in a clanging language Paz did not know. He studied the woman’s face. The surprise looked genuine, but then again if she was half the nut she seemed at present there was no telling what sort of unconscious states she could drop into. Paz had somewhat more experience with exotic mental phenomena than the average police detective. An annoying little prickle had begun a couple of inches in from his belt buckle.

  “And so, Emmylou…ah, do you know anything about how he came to go out the window?”

  “No. I never saw him. I told you, I came here, I found the door open, I came in and waited.”

  “And prayed.”

  “I saw the apparition. I hadn’t seen her for quite some time and I guess I drifted, you know, a little ways off.” He saw a little color appear on the bar of her high cheekbones. Embarrassment? Or guilt?

  “Right. Tell me, do you know what a connecting rod is?”

  “Sure. It’s part of an engine. Why?”

  “Do you have one? I mean not as part of a car, a separate one. Like a spare part.”

  “Not on me. Look, I don’t understand why you’re asking this about conn—”

  “But you do own one.”

  She shook her head. “There’s one in the foot well of my truck. I mean Jack Wilson’s truck. Wilson Brothers Marine on South River Drive. I work there. I do their office, and I’m a parts runner when there’s a rush. That’s how I came across the colonel. I was at Shattuck Machine on Southwest First, picking up a remanufactured C rod for a Mermaid Meteor they’re working on. And he was there, waiting by a pay phone outside the 7-Eleven across the street. So I followed him back here.”

  “Uh-huh. And basically you came up here and waited for him and you had the rod handy and you slugged him with it, hard, and after he went down you dragged him over to that balcony and tossed him over. Is that how it went down, Emmylou?”

  Her mouth became a little pink O. She was good, he had to admit, if this was an act. “You think I killed him?”

  “Well, there’s a connecting rod out there with blood and hair on it. It looks like someone whacked Jabir across the head and then tossed him over. And you’re sitting here praying. And you said he was your enemy. And you followed him all the way back from the river. What am I supposed to think?”

  She stared at him. He looked into her eyes and felt a little shock: it was like looking into the eyes of two completely different people, one set being the icicles of a stone killer, and the other the sorrowful soft sky blues of the Blessed Virgin in a chapel.

  It was only for an instant, and Paz briefly thought that he had imagined it, but he’d felt the sweat pop out on his lip and in the small of his back. Weird shit, he said to himself, with an inward sigh. Weird shit again. This, however, passed; routine took over. Paz read Emmylou Dideroff her rights and Morales cuffed her.

  The woman seemed to be back in her trance. “She said there would be more afflictions.” She spoke in a soft wondering voice.

  “Who was that, Emmylou? Who said?”

  “Catherine. This is so strange. You never can tell what He has in store for you. Life is so interesting that way. But you know, really, I didn’t kill him. I wanted to, at one time, and it might even have been appropriate then, but not now.”

  “Then why did you follow him back here?”

  She said, “I wanted to forgive him.”

  Paz couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He made a little motion of his head, and Morales led her away.

  THE BOOKING TOOK some hours, as it always did. While they hung around the complaint room at the state’s attorney, Paz chatted with Morales, who turned out to be Tito. Tito and Iago: they shared a Cuban moment about their names. A little Spanish thrown in too, although Morales understood a good deal more than he could speak. He was a second-generation immigrant, or exile, depending on who in the community you were talking to. In his easy detective manner, Paz was able to find out nearly everything there was to know about Tito Morales, without revealing anything of himself, except for the stuff that was public knowledge. Morales was twenty-three, unmarried, living at home, had tried Miami-Dade for a couple of semesters, liked it all right, but wanted something more physical, more adventurous, had thought about the marines, but didn’t want to leave his mother, who was ailing. The cops seemed like a good deal. Paz asked him where he wanted to go in the cops, and Morales said that he liked the idea of being a detective. A little conversation about how one got into the detectives. Paz told the story of how he had got in, which was catching a guy from Overtown who’d killed a Japanese tourist, a story that Morales seemed already to know.

  It took a while, but two observations finally struck Jimmy Paz with some force: one was that although he was only about ten years older than Morales, the young cop was far more of an American than he himself was. Paz did not ordinarily think of himself as Cuban foremost, but he realized now that this was because he had been unconsciously comparing himself with his own mother and because he spent a good deal of time immersed in the cubanismo of her restaurant and milieu. But compared with Morales, he might as well have been wearing a straw hat and leading a donkey and a cart full of sugarcane. The other observation was that he was receiving hero worship, not obnoxiously, but it was clear that the kid was enormously pleased to be having a private conversation with Jimmy Paz, and that he was going to tell all his pals about it, and his mom, and that they in turn would be impressed. And the kid was white. Paz had been on the TV and had been on podiums, having his hand shaken by the mayor and a con
gressman and the state’s attorney for Dade County, but that was all connected with a particular event, or rather with a particular version of the event—the capture of the infamous Voodoo Killer, so called—which version Paz knew to be a fabrication. Paz was the only person in Dade County who knew what the truth was, and he was practiced in not thinking about it at all. Getting this flash of admiration from a patrolman was different somehow, more real. It really seemed to transcend race, which transcendence in Paz’s experience was so uncommon as to be hardly a blip on the radar screen of his life. He realized, not entirely with pleasure, that he was moving, in a tiny parochial way, into the realm occupied by the single-named chosen people of his race: Oprah, Tiger, Shaq.

  The booking completed, he bid Morales good-bye and went back to homicide, where he ran the name Emmylou Dideroff through the National Crime Information Center. It came up with a blank, which meant the woman had never been convicted of a crime as an adult. How many crimes she’d committed without being convicted the computer did not say. Although Social Security numbers are not supposed to be used for purposes of identification, this rule is now something of a joke, so Paz ran her name through a commercial agency to get a credit file for her and was somewhat surprised to draw a blank again. Same with driver’s license records. The woman did not exist on paper, which was impossible, so the name had to be a fake. He had an address, though, of a sort, and he quickly obtained a search warrant.

  Before executing it, Paz attended the autopsy of the late Colonel Jabir Akran al-Muwalid, and learned that the victim had indeed been bashed on his occiput by a blunt instrument, which instrument could very well have been a connecting rod. The theory was clinched later that same day by the crime lab report, which found that the hair and blood on the connecting rod matched that of the victim. Cherry on top? The prints on the rod matched those taken from Emmylou Dideroff.

  Whistling a happy tune, Paz took this material down to the interview room at the Miami PD’s Fifth Street headquarters, where they had parked the woman. He found her in the company of a female detective. The detective was reading a worn copy of People. Emmylou was reading a Bible. Paz was heartened to observe that there was no counsel present. He pulled up a chair across from her and watched her for a moment. She was reading intently, moving her lips. Paz wondered whether she was a poor reader or if this was something to do with prayer.

  “Emmylou,” he said at last, when it had become clear that she was not going to respond to his presence. She closed the book and regarded him benignly.

  “What does I.X. stand for?” she asked, pointing to the picture ID that, like everyone in the building, he wore on a chain around his neck.

  “Iago Xavier,” he replied.

  “That’s a lovely name. Which saint do you consider your patron?”

  “Let’s talk about you first, Emmylou,” he said. “You’re in a lot of trouble.” And now he laid out the evidence against her—the blunt instrument, the forensics on it, the autopsy, her presence at the murder scene, the absence of any evidence that anyone else had the opportunity to whack Mr. al-Muwalid across the skull and toss him to his death.

  “The thing of it is, we sort of got you on this. I don’t know what this guy did to you to get you mad enough to kill him, but you did it, and the only thing you got going for you now is your story. The only story we have now is that you were lying in wait and killed him in cold blood. No signs of a struggle, if you get what I’m driving at. That’s a special circumstance.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s like multiple murder, or murder with extreme cruelty, or murder for hire. It allows them to go for the death penalty. I got to say, when the state’s attorney shows what happened to the victim here, what he looked like on that fence, I think the jury will go for it. I mean, it’s something to think about. Whereas, if you tell your story, write out your confession, save the state the expense of a trial, that’s a whole different situation.”

  “You mean confess to murdering him?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “But that would be a lie. I couldn’t lie. And it would be under oath, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled, and he thought, Why am I feeling bad? She’s the killer. She seemed to pick up his discomfort. “I’m really sorry. I just couldn’t. I mean, lie like that. Also, it would mean you’d stop looking for the killer, and that wouldn’t be right. He might kill someone else—”

  “Oh, cut it out!” Paz cried, rising and slamming the thick case folder he was holding down on the table, hard, and was glad to see her jump. He stood over her and yelled in her face. “For crying out loud, Emmylou! We’re not talking lying here! You killed him, you know you killed him, and I am giving you your one damn chance to keep out of that little room up in Raiford. The needle? Do you want to die?”

  She seemed to consider this for longer than, in his experience, anybody had ever considered the question. “Do you really think that there’s a possibility that I’ll be executed?” she asked quietly.

  “Damn right!” said Paz, trying to get more conviction in his voice than the facts warranted. Florida had only killed one woman in recent years. “They executed Aileen Wuornos, and they’ll do the same to you. You want to kill someone and you don’t feature getting the needle, don’t do it in the state of Florida.”

  The woman seemed to consider this proposition. She cleared her throat and said, “I guess I should consider it an honor.”

  “What?”

  “To be executed unjustly, like Jesus himself. What more could I ask?”

  A little jolt of rage flashed through Paz, and then a wave of regret. He really needed his old partner Barlow on this one, Barlow would know how to handle the woman, they’d have a nice chat about the Holy Spirit and the end times or whatever, and then she’d sign a confession. Paz had his doubts about the death penalty, given what he knew about how the cops collected evidence, but he liked that you could wave the flag of death in a murder interrogation. He found it concentrated the minds of the suspects. Unless they were nuts, as in the present case.

  “Provided it’s unjust,” said Paz. “And that’s interesting, Emmylou. Most people are afraid of death.” A nod and a murmur. “But you’re not?”

  “I’ve been there. It’s not much.”

  “So what are you afraid of, Emmylou? Help me out here. I can’t threaten you if I don’t know what scares you the most?”

  He saw a small smile bend her mouth. “Oh, you know I talk a good game, but I’m not really that brave. I’m a runner and hider. Sneaky. And what I’m afraid of you can’t threaten me with, I don’t think.”

  “Try me. What is it?”

  “Do you believe in the soul?” This almost in a whisper, her head down. Paz could hear the female detective turn a page in her magazine.

  Paz was actually not sure what he believed in this regard, but he thought that the right answer now was yes.

  “Then you could say I fear for my soul, I fear being dragged down to hell.”

  “The devil’s chasing you, hmm?”

  She raised her head slowly and looked at him. “Not chasing, no.”

  Their eyes locked. Paz saw the small pupils expand, covering the blue wash of the iris, then expand impossibly to consume the whites the whole face the whole room, he saw the deadly beauty of hell revealed, he felt its pull, the events of his life spun in his head, changing meaning, yes, he was meant for this, the lovely power of it, the moral compass spun like a pinwheel….

  Paz stood up violently, knocking the chair backward. At the noise, the other detective glanced up from her magazine, a puzzled look on her round face. He felt nauseated, he was going to puke on the table, lose control of his functions, blackness closed in, red rimmed, he was looking at the suspect down a tunnel, at a face now entirely ordinary.

  Post-traumatic stress, he’d read about it, some flashback from all that voodoo stuff, it went with the nightmares, oh yes indeed, triggered by this lunatic woman
and the talk of devils, and the whiff of African weirdness he’d experienced earlier.

  “Are you all right, Detective?” the woman asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Paz. He took out a pocket handkerchief and wiped his face. He made himself look at her. She was back in Blessed Virgin mode. “So you’re worried about your soul—well, I always heard that confession was good for the soul.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” She emitted a deep sigh. “All right.”

  “All right what?”

  “I’ll confess.”

  “Good. You make a full confession and the state’s attorney is a lot more flexible on leniency, on—”

  “I’m not interested in that,” she said. “I’ve been told to do it.”

  “By…?”

  “The saint, I told you. I had to forgive and confess.”

  “To the murder.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “No, I didn’t murder al-Muwalid, I told you that. I mean to my other sins and crimes.”

  Paz pushed a legal pad and a ballpoint across to her. She didn’t touch them.

  “No, I need a bound notebook, not a spiral, nothing I can tear pages out of.”

  “Because…?”

  “I’ll lie. I’ll write down the truth and then I’ll tear it out. It has to be bound so you can tell if any pages are missing.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay, bound notebooks. Like in grade school? Black with those little white dots?”

  A blazing smile that made her look eight. “Yes, perfect. I think I’ll need…say, four.”

  “You got ’em. You wouldn’t want to give me a little teaser now about some of these crimes?”

  “No. I have to write it. In that kind of notebook.”

  A sinking sensation in his gut. A nut, it was clear, and she’d probably work an insanity plea behind it, and all the beautiful evidence he’d collected would be moot. Was she in fact crazy? Paz knew he’d seen something for a second there in the hotel room that wasn’t crazy at all, that icicle woman, but that meant zero in a court of law. Paz didn’t think at all about what had seemed to happen a few moments ago, and except for the drying sweat on his back, he would have believed that it hadn’t happened at all. Some kind of attack, low blood sugar or stress or something, nothing to worry about, nothing compared with this loony getting away with it. In any case, not his business anymore. Paz felt like he’d wasted his whole day.