The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly
But the scent of the deer drew the wolf on. The wolf fattened his ears against his head and arched his back as a car passed. The light vanished, the sound faded, and he continued to pick his way through the trees until at last he came to a clearing.
In the clearing was a hole. Beside it, almost hidden by roots and branches, lay the deer. The wolf narrowed his eyes and pulled back his ears. His tail pointed straight out, parallel to the ground. The threat came from the hole. Now the wolf snarled, and his fur bristled. He crouched in anticipation of an attack. His senses were fooded by the smell of the deer. He would fght to eat.
And then the wolf's tail moved, withdrawing fully between his legs. He thrust out his tongue and lowered his hindquarters, his eyes still fxed on the hole but his muzzle pointing up. His back arched again, just as it had when the car passed, but this time it was a gesture not of fear but of active submission, the respect that one animal pays to the dominant other. Finally the wolf approached the deer while maintaining a careful distance from the hole. Briars entangled around the deer's hind legs came away easily as the wolf pulled at the remains. Despite his weariness and hunger, he did not start to feed until he had managed to drag the deer as far from the hole in the ground as he could. The smell of danger grew fainter. The threat from the dominant animal was receding, moving farther away.
Moving deeper into the earth.
The doorbell rang in Chief Morland's house. Morland's wife went to answer, but he told her that he would take care of it. He had barely spoken to her since coming home, and had not eaten dinner with the family. His wife said nothing, and did not object. Her husband rarely behaved in this way, but when he did he usually had good cause, and she knew better than to press him on it. He would tell her of his troubles in his own time.
Thomas Souleby stood on the doorstep. Beside him was a man whom Morland did not know. He wore heavy tan boots, and his body was hidden beneath layers of clothing. His red beard was thick, fecked here and there with gray. In his right hand he held a wolf trap on a length of chain.
The two visitors entered the house, and the door closed softly behind them.
III
KILLING
We humans fear the beast within the wolf because we do not understand the beast within ourselves.
Gerald Hausman, Meditations With the Navajo
31
They convened at the home of Hayley Conyer, just as they
always did when issues of great import had to be discussed in private. The board of selectmen conducted public meetings on a regular basis, but the agenda for such gatherings was decided well in advance, and sensitive subjects were resolutely avoided. They were also open only to residents of Prosperous, following an abortive attempt by Euclid Danes to hijack one session. The late Ben Pearson had advocated killing Danes following that particular incident, and he had not been joking. If it had gone to a vote of the board, the motion would almost certainly have been passed unanimously.
Luke Joblin arrived frst at Hayley's house, accompanied by Kinley Nowell. Kinley had checked himself out of the hospital following Ben Pearson's death. He was still weak, and his breathing was shallow and labored, but he walked into the house under his own steam, aided only by the walker that he had been using for the last decade or more. Joblin carried his respirator for him. After them came Thomas Souleby, and then Calder Ayton. Hayley was most solicitous of Calder, whose grief at the loss of Ben was etched on his face. She whispered to him as he sat silently at the table, the chair to his right, the chair that had always been occupied by Ben Pearson, now empty.
Pastor Warraner arrived at the same time as Chief Morland. Had Hayley not known of the animosity that existed between them she might almost have suspected them of collusion, but the two men stood awkwardly apart on the porch when she opened the door to them, their body language speaking volumes about their distaste for each other. She knew that Morland had been out in the woods that day, setting traps for the wolf with Abbot, the hunter brought by Souleby to the town. Morland looked exhausted. Good, thought Hayley: it would make him more pliable. She took him by the arm as he passed, indicating to Warraner that he should go on ahead into the dining room. Warraner did as he was told. He had no concerns about what Hayley Conyer might have to say to Morland in his absence. Even after their last meeting, when Hayley had sided with Morland against him, Warraner remained secure in his position as Hayley's spiritual adviser.
'Did you fnd the animal?' said Hayley.
'No, not yet, but it's still around. We discovered a deer carcass. It was all chewed up. Abbot reckoned it had been dead for a while, but the damage to it was recent – not more than twenty-four hours. We've laid bait and set traps. We'll get it soon. Abbot says that it's wounded. He could tell by the tracks.'
But Hayley was now more interested in the deer. Like the others, she had seen the photograph on Valerie Gillson's phone.
'The deer, was it—?'
'Maybe. There wasn't much of it left to identify. And there was a hole not far from where we found it.'
She nodded. 'Go inside. The others are waiting.'
Morland joined them. The four surviving members of the board sat at either side of the dining table, with a chair left empty at the head for Hayley. Warraner sat at the other end of the table, leaving two chairs between himself and Kinley Lowell. Morland seated himself across from Warraner, leaving three chairs between himself and Calder Ayton. If he squinted his eyes he could almost see the ghost of Ben Pearson occupying one of them, tearing open a pack of exotic cookies or passing around some British candy, because it was Ben who had always taken it upon himself to provide a small treat for the board and the observers. But the chair remained empty, and the table bare. There were no reports to be considered, and no notebooks lay open. No true record of this meeting would ever be kept.
Hayley turned off the lights in the hall and took her seat at the head of the table.
'All right,' she said, 'let's begin.'
Harry Dixon knelt inside his bedroom closet and removed a section of baseboard. The house was quiet. Erin was at her quilting circle, where work had commenced on a quilt in memory of the town's recent dead. According to Erin, so many women wanted to participate that they'd had to bring in more chairs. Bryan Joblin had gone with her, although he would be drinking in a bar while Erin sewed. Harry wondered how long the board planned to keep up this farce of imposing Joblin upon them: until he and Erin found another girl; until they proved themselves. Joblin was there only to make sure that they behaved, and continued their efforts to locate a replacement for Annie Broyer.
To that end, Harry had earlier gone out with Joblin, and together they had cruised the streets of Lewiston and Augusta, looking at women. It wasn't exactly diffcult work. Harry fgured that Joblin would have been doing something similar in his spare time anyway, even if it were not a matter of some urgency. Hell, Harry had been known to cast a wistful eye at young beauties when his wife wasn't around, but he was nothing like Bryan Joblin. The Joblin boy had a reputation in Prosperous for being a pussy hound of the frst order, to the extent that Hayley Conyer herself had taken Bryan and his father to one side following a chance encounter on Main Street and warned them that, if Bryan didn't keep his pecker to himself, or at least limit its use to the vast swathe of the United States beyond Prosperous, she would personally slice it off and hang it from the town's welcome sign as a warning to others who might be similarly tempted to screw around with the feelings and, indeed, bodies of Prosperous's generative future. Since then, Bryan Joblin had indulged himself largely in the relative feshpots of Bangor, and still tended to cross the street in order to avoid any further confrontations with Hayley Conyer, as though fearing that the old woman might whip out a blade at any moment and make good on her threat.
That afternoon, Harry and Bryan watched schoolgirls and young housewives. One of them would be ideal, Joblin said. He was in favor of snatching a girl right there and then – a young, athletic-looking brunette out by the mall in
'What about a child?' said Joblin. 'It's gotta be easy to take a child.'
Harry didn't reply. He just pictured Bryan Joblin dying in painful ways.
Joblin had bitched all the way back to Prosperous, but Harry knew he would inform his father that the Dixons looked like they were at least trying to fulfll their obligations to the town, and Luke Joblin would, in turn, tell the board. To add to the deception, Harry set Joblin to trawling prostitution websites: twenty-fve or younger, Harry had stipulated, and they should be from out of state. No tattoos, and no ID requirements from prospective johns. Independents too, not agency girls. Bryan had dived into the work wholeheartedly. He even printed off a list of possible candidates for Harry.
'You know they can trace all those searches back to our computer?' Erin told Harry when she learned of what Bryan was doing. Her quilting bag was on the bed behind her, ready for use. They were whispering. They spent most of their days in near silence now because of their unwanted houseguest. It was like living in some kind of religious retreat.
'It doesn't matter,' said Harry. 'It's all just smoke anyway.'
'Well, I still don't like it. It makes the computer seem dirty. I won't feel the same about using it.'
Give me strength, thought Harry.
'The computer won't be coming with us,' he said. 'I'll buy you a new one when we get—'
'Get where?' she asked.
'Get to wherever we're going,' he fnished.
'When?'
'I don't know.'
'When?' she repeated. There were tears in her eyes. 'I can't do this for much longer. I can't stand having Bryan Joblin around. I hate the smell of him, the sound of him. I hate the way he looks at me.'
'Looks at you? What do you mean?'
'Jesus, you see nothing. Nothing! It's like you can't imagine that another man might fnd me attractive.'
And with that she stormed out to start work on the great quilt. Harry had watched Erin as she walked to her car, Bryan Joblin trailing behind her. Of course she was still a good-looking woman. He knew that better than anyone. It shouldn't have surprised him that Joblin might appreciate her too.
Now he placed the section of baseboard on the carpet and reached into the space revealed. His hands came out holding a red freproof box, a smaller version of the one in which he and Erin kept their passports and valuable documents. The key was in the lock. He had no fear of anyone fnding the box, and he didn't want Erin coming across the key by accident and asking what it was. They didn't have many secrets from each other, but this was one of them.
Harry opened the box. Inside were fve thousand dollars in tens and twenties: it was Harry's emergency fund. He had resisted dipping into the cash until that week, even when his business was at its lowest. Harry didn't know how long fve thousand dollars would last once he and Erin started running, but their main priority would be to put some distance between themselves and Prosperous. After that he'd make some calls. He still had friends beyond Prosperous.
The box also contained a letter written and ready to mail. The letter was addressed to Hayley Conyer, and its contents could be summarized as a promise to keep quiet about Prosperous if he and Erin were left in peace. Even after all that had occurred, Harry continued to remain loyal to the town. He didn't want to betray its secrets.
The fnal item in the box was a handgun, a fve-shot Smith & Wesson 638 with a concealed hammer, a barrel length of less than two inches, and a weight of just fourteen ounces when empty. It had been acquired for him by one of his subcontractors, a plumber with a string of convictions who owed Harry because Harry gave him work when nobody else would. Harry had been afraid to purchase a legal frearm. He was worried that word would get back to Chief Morland, and then questions would be asked, and with questions came suspicions. The gun ft easily into the pocket of his favorite jacket, and was powerful, accurate and easy to fre, even for a neophyte like him. Erin didn't approve of guns and wouldn't tolerate them in the house. If she'd discovered that he had the S&W, he'd have found a fast use for the box of self-defense round nose loads that sat alongside the pistol.
Now he transferred the entire contents of the box to a small black canvas sack and hid it on the top shelf of the closet behind a stack of old T-shirts. He hadn't told Erin, but preparations for their departure were almost complete. He had spoken to a used car dealer in Medway and arranged a trade-in, with some cash on the side, for his truck. One morning, while Bryan Joblin was watching Erin, Harry had driven to the T. J. Maxx in Bangor with a list of his wife's measurements and bought various items of underwear and casual clothing and sneakers, along with a pair of cheap suitcases. He didn't need to buy much for himself: he'd hidden a plastic garbage bag flled with jeans, shirts and a new pair of boots in the spare tool box on his truck, and these he added to one of the suitcases. He then went to the Walgreens on Broadway, and replicated as many of the toiletries and cosmetics that he had seen in their bathroom and on his wife's dressing table. When he was done, he paid a quick visit to Erin's sister and asked her to take care of the cases for him. To his surprise, she hadn't asked any questions. It made him wonder how much she already knew, or suspected, about Prosperous.
Harry restored the empty box to its space behind the closet, and replaced the baseboard. It seemed to him that by removing the cash and the gun he had made his decision. There was only one fnal step to take. After that, there could be no going back.
Harry drove to the post offce and, after only a slight hesitation, mailed the letter to Hayley Conyer.
32
Hayley was playing with him, Morland knew, trying to put
him off guard and make him ill at ease. He had seen her do this more than once with those who displeased her, and his father had warned him about it when it came time for his son to take over as chief of police.
'She's a clever one, you mark my words,' his father said. 'You watch yourself around her, and never turn your back on her. She's crossed swords over the years with a lot of men and women who thought they were smarter than she is, and she's left them all lying dead in the ground.'
Even then, Morland had wondered if his father was speaking literally or metaphorically.
Now Morland made himself as comfortable as possible in the creaky old dining chair, and did his best to keep his temper in check as Hayley baited him. Almost an hour had gone by, and she had not yet even alluded to the detect ive. She was building up to it, allowing the tension in the room to coalesce around Morland, constraining him so that when at last they came to the issue at hand he would be both wound tight internally and compressed by her implied disapproval of his actions, although he did not know how else he might have reacted to the detective's interest in the missing girl. What did she expect – that he should kill anyone who so much as glanced curiously in the town's direction? Perhaps so: she had always been paranoid, although she tried to justify it by claiming that the fate of the town, and the responsibility for its citizens, lay in her hands. What was that line about power corrupting? Whatever it was, it was true, but also incomplete: power didn't just corrupt. After a time, it could also drive a person mad.
So it was that, over the last hour, Hayley had ignored Morland's interjections, even when it was clear that she had left space in the discussions for him to offer an opinion. If he remained silent, she asked him to contribute and then ceased to listen almost as soon as he began speaking until fnally, while he was still in mid-fow, she would begin to talk over him, or turn to another for an alternative view or simply change the subject altogether, leaving Morland to wind down slowly into silence. It was humiliating, and Morland was certain that Hayley's ultimate intention was to drive him from the meeting entirely, but he refused to be forced into giving her what she wanted. It was crucial that he remain present