Carved in Bone

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