The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  Euclid Danes’s house was the original bad-neighbor nightmare: poorly kept, with a yard that was a kissing cousin to wilderness and littered with pieces of unidentifiable machinery that, with a little work and a lot of chutzpah, might even have qualified as some form of modern sculpture. An original Volkswagen Beetle was in the drive. In an open garage beyond stood the skeleton of a second Beetle, scavenged for parts.

  I parked and rang the doorbell. From somewhere at the back of the house came the sound of excited barking.

  The door was opened by a stick-thin woman in a blue housecoat. A cigarette smoldered in her right hand. In her left she held a small mongrel puppy by the scruff of the neck.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I was looking for Euclid Danes.”

  She took a drag on the cigarette. The puppy yawned.

  “Jesus, what’s he done now?” she said.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to ask him a few questions.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  I showed her my identification. Even the puppy looked more impressed by it than she did.

  “You sure he’s not in trouble?”

  “Not with me. Are you Mrs. Danes?”

  This provoked a burst of laughter that deteriorated into a fit of coughing.

  “Jesus Christ, no!” she said, once she’d recovered. “I’m his sister. There’s nobody desperate enough to marry that poor sonofabitch, or if there is, then I don’t want to meet her.”

  I couldn’t see a wedding ring on her finger either. Then again, she was so thin that it would have been hard to make one fit, or, if it did, the weight would have unbalanced her. She was so skinny as to be almost sexless, and her hair was cut shorter than mine. If it hadn’t been for the housecoat, and the pale twig legs that poked out from under her skirt, she could have passed for an elderly man.

  “So, is Mr. Danes around?”

  “Oh, he’s around somewhere, just not here. He’s on his throne, holding court. You know where Benny’s is?”

  “No.”

  “Head into town and take the first left after the intersection. Follow the smell of stale beer. When you find him, tell him to get his ass home. I’m cooking meat loaf. If he’s not sitting at the table when it comes out of the oven, I’ll feed it to the dogs.”

  “I’ll be sure to let him know.”

  “Much appreciated.” She held the puppy up at eye level. “You want to buy a puppy?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You want one for free?”

  The puppy, seeming to understand that it was the object of discussion, wagged its tail hopefully. It was brown, with sleepy eyes.

  “Not really.”

  “Damn.”

  “What’ll you do with it?”

  She looked the puppy in the eyes.

  “Feed it meat loaf, I guess.”

  “Right.”

  She closed the door without saying another word. I remained where I was for a few moments, the way you do when you’ve just had something that might have passed for a conversation if you weren’t paying attention, then got back into my car and went to look for Benny’s.

  BENNY’S WASN’T HARD TO find. Dearden was no metropolis, and there was only one intersection of any size at the heart of town. It didn’t even have a signal, just a quartet of stop signs, and Benny’s was the sole business on its street. Actually, Benny’s was the sole anything on its street. Beyond it lay only woods. Benny’s was a squat redbrick building whose sign had been provided by the Coca-Cola Company at least thirty years earlier, and was now faded and yellowed. It also lacked a possessive apostrophe. Maybe Benny didn’t like to boast. If so, it was a wise move.

  A certain odor comes with a bar that isn’t cleaned regularly. All bars smell of it a little—it’s a product of spilled beer that has ingrained itself into the floors and storage spaces, along with whatever chooses to propagate in old yeast—but Benny’s smelled so strongly of it, even from outside, that birds flying above were at risk of alcohol-induced disorientation. Benny’s had added an extra component to the stink by combining it with rancid grease: the extractors at the back of the building were caked with it. By the time I got to the door, Benny’s had put its mark on me, and I knew that I’d end up stinking of the place all the way home, assuming my arteries didn’t harden and kill me first.

  Curiously, it didn’t smell as bad inside, although that would have been difficult under the circumstances. Benny’s was more of a restaurant than a bar, assuming you were prepared to be generous with your definition of a restaurant. An open kitchen lay behind the counter to the left, alongside a couple of beer taps that suggested microbrews were regarded as a passing fad. A menu board on the wall above had adjustable plastic letters and numbers arranged into the kinds of prices that hadn’t changed since Elvis died, and the kinds of food choices that had helped to kill him. The tables were Formica, and the chairs wood and vinyl. Christmas tree lights hung on all four walls just below the ceiling, providing most of the illumination, and the décor was old beer signs and mirrors.

  And, you know, it was kind of cool, once my eyes had adjusted to the gloom.

  Music was playing low: “Come Together,” followed by “Something.” Abbey Road. A big man in an apron stood at the grill, flipping burgers.

  “How you doin’, ” he said. “Waitress will be with you in a minute. How is it out there?”

  “It’s cold. Clear skies, though.”

  “Weather Channel says it could go down to ten degrees tonight.”

  “At least you’re warm in here.”

  He was sweating over the grill. Nobody was going to have to salt a hamburger.

  “I always got insulation.”

  He patted his massive belly, and I instantly recalled Candy, back in the Tender House in Bangor, watching her weight and counting marshmallows. It reminded me of why I was here.

  A compact middle-aged woman with huge hair materialized out of the darkness. I had already begun to make out half a dozen figures scattered around, but it would have taken a flashlight shined on their faces to discern their features.

  “Table, hon?” said the woman.

  “I was looking for Euclid Danes,” I said. “His sister told me he might be here.”

  “He’s in his office,” she said. “Table at the back. She send you to bring him home?”

  “Apparently she’s cooking meat loaf.”

  “I can believe it. She can’t cook nothing else. Get you a drink?”

  “Coffee, please.”

  “I’ll make it extra strong. You’ll need it if you’re going to stay awake listening to his ramblings.”

  Euclid Danes looked like his sister in male drag. They might even have been twins. He was wearing a shabby blue suit and a red tie, just in case he was suddenly required to interfere in someone else’s business. The table before him was covered with newspapers, clippings, random documents, assorted pens and highlighters, and a half-eaten plate of french fries. He didn’t look up as I stood over him, so lost was he in annotating a sheaf of reports.

  “Mr. Danes?” I said.

  He raised his right hand while the fountain pen in his left continued to scrawl across the page. His notes were longer than the report itself. I could almost hear the rise of frustrated sighs at some future meeting as Euclid Danes stood, cleared his throat, and began to speak.

  A long time went by. My coffee came. I added milk. I took a sip. Oceans rose and fell, and mountains collapsed to dust. Finally, Euclid Danes finished his work, capped his pen, and aligned it with the paper on which he had been working. He clasped his hands and looked up at me with young, curious eyes. There was mischief in them. Euclid Danes might have been the bane of life in Dearden, but he was smart enough to know it, and bright enough to enjoy it.

  “How can I help y
ou?” he said.

  “You mind if I take a seat?”

  “Not at all.” He waved at a chair.

  “Your french fries?” I said, pointing at the plate.

  “They were.”

  “Your sister is going to be annoyed that you’ve eaten.”

  “My sister is always annoyed, whether I eat or not. Is she now hiring detectives to monitor my habits?”

  I tried not to show surprise.

  “Did she call ahead?”

  “To warn me? She wouldn’t do that. She’s probably at home praying that you make me disappear. No, I read the papers and watch the news, and I have a good memory for faces. You’re Charlie Parker, out of Portland.”

  “You make me sound like a gunfighter.”

  “Yes, I do, don’t I?” he said, and his eyes twinkled. “So how can I help you, Mr. Parker?”

  The waitress appeared and freshened my coffee.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Prosperous,” I said.

  CHIEF MORLAND PICKED UP Harry Dixon at his home. He didn’t inform Harry as to why he needed him, just told him to get his coat and a pair of gloves. Morland already had a spade, his pickax, and flashlights in the car. He was tempted to ask Bryan Joblin to join them, but instead told him to wait with Harry’s wife. Morland didn’t want her to panic and do something stupid. He could see the way she was looking at him while Harry went to fetch his coat, as if he was ready to put her husband in the ground, but it hadn’t come to that, not yet.

  “It’s all right,” said Morland. “I’ll bring him back in one piece. I just need his help.”

  Erin Dixon didn’t reply. She sat at the kitchen counter, staring him down. She won, or he let her win. He wasn’t sure which. In either event, he simply looked away.

  Bryan Joblin was sitting by the fire, drinking a PBR and watching some dumb quiz show. Bryan was useful because he didn’t think much, and he did as he was told. A purpose could always be found for men like that. Empires were built on their backs.

  “How long is he going to stay here?” said Erin, pointing at Bryan with her chin. If Bryan heard her, he didn’t respond. He took another sip of his beer and tried to figure out on which continent the Republic of Angola was situated.

  “Just until the next girl is found,” said Morland. “How’s that coming along?”

  “I’ve driven around some, as has Harry,” said Erin. “It would be easier if we could move without that fool tagging along with us everywhere.”

  Bryan Joblin still didn’t react. He was lost in his show. He’d guessed Asia, and was smacking the arm of his chair in frustation. Bryan would never serve on the board of selectmen, not unless every other living thing in Prosperous—cats and dogs included—predeceased him.

  Morland knew that Bryan alternated his vigils between Harry and his wife. He was currently helping Harry out with an attic conversion on the outskirts of Bangor. Bryan might not have been smart, but he was good with his hands once he worked up the energy to act. In practical terms, there wasn’t much Bryan could do if either Harry or Erin decided to try something dumb while he was with the other spouse, but his presence was a reminder of the town’s power. It was psychological pressure, albeit with a physical threat implied.

  “As soon as we have a girl, he’ll be gone,” said Morland. “You brought him on yourselves. You brought all of this on yourselves.”

  Harry had reappeared with his coat. He’d taken his time. Morland wondered what he’d been doing.

  Harry patted his wife gently on the shoulder as he passed her. She reached out to grasp his hand, but it was too late. He had moved on.

  “You have any idea how long we’re going to be?” he asked Morland.

  “Couple of hours. You got gloves?”

  Harry removed a pair from his pocket. He always had gloves. They were part of his uniform.

  “Then let’s go,” said Morland. “Sooner we get started, sooner we finish.”

  EUCLID DANES ASKED ME why I was interested in Prosperous.

  “I’d prefer not to say,” I told him. I didn’t want the details to end up in one of Euclid’s files, ready to be raised at the next meeting.

  “You don’t trust me?” said Euclid.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “So how did you find out about me?”

  “Mr. Danes, you’re all over the Internet like some kind of cyber rash. I’m surprised that the residents of Prosperous haven’t paid to have you taken out.”

  “They don’t much care for me up there,” he admitted.

  “I’m curious to know what your beef is with that town. You seem to be expending a lot of energy to insert splinters under the fingernails of its citizenry.”

  “Is that what they are—citizenry?” he said. “I’d say ‘cultists’ was a better word to use.”

  I waited. I was good at waiting. Euclid pulled a sheet of blank paper from a sheaf and drew a circle at the center of the page.

  “This is Prosperous,” he said. He then added a series of arrows pointing out toward a number of smaller circles. “Here are Dearden, Thomasville, and Lake Plasko. Beyond them, you have Bangor, Augusta, Portland. Prosperous sends its people out—to work, to learn, to worship—but it’s careful about whom it admits. It needs fresh blood because it doesn’t want to start breeding idiots in a shallow gene pool, so in the last half-century or so it’s allowed its children to marry outsiders, but it keeps those new family units at arm’s length until it’s sure they’re compatible with the town. Houses aren’t sold to those who weren’t born in Prosperous, or businesses either. The same goes for land, or what little the town has left to develop. Which is where I come in.”

  “Because Prosperous wants to expand,” I said. “And you’re in the way.”

  “Give that man a candy bar. The original founders of the town chose a location bounded by lakes and marshland and deep woods, apart from a channel of land to the southeast. Basically, they created their own little fortress, but now it’s come back to bite them. If they want their children to continue to live in Prosperous, they need space on which to build, and the town has almost run out of land suitable for development. It’s not yet critical, but it’s getting there, and Prosperous always plans ahead.”

  “You make it sound like the town is a living thing.”

  “Isn’t it?” said Euclid. “All towns are a collection of organisms forming a single entity, like a jellyfish. In the case of Prosperous, the controlling organisms are the original founding families, and their bloodlines have remained unpolluted. They control the board of selectmen, the police force, the school board, every institution of consequence. The same names recur throughout the history of Prosperous. They’re the guardians of the town.

  “And, just like a jellyfish, Prosperous has long tentacles that trail. Its people worship at mainstream churches, although all in towns outside Prosperous itself, because Prosperous only has room for one church. It places children of the founding families in the surrounding towns, including here in Dearden. It gives them money to run for local and state office, to support charities, to help out with donations to worthwhile causes when the state can’t or won’t. After a couple of generations, it gets so that people forget that these are creatures of Prosperous, and whatever they do aims to benefit Prosperous first and foremost. It’s in their nature, from way back when they first came here as the remnants of the Family of Love. You know what the Family of Love is?”

  “I’ve read up on it,” I said.

  “Yeah, Family of Love, my old ass. There was no love in those people. They weren’t about to become no Quakers. I think that’s why they left England. They were killing to protect themselves, and they had blood on their hands. Either they left or they were going to be buried by their enemies.”

  “Pastor Warraner claims that may just have been propaganda. The Familists were religious dissenters. Th
e same lies were spread about Catholics and Jews.”

  “Warraner,” said Euclid, and the name was like a fly that had somehow entered his mouth and needed to be spat from the tip of his tongue. “He’s no more a pastor than I am. He can call himself what he wants, but there’s no good in him. And, to correct you on another point, the Familists weren’t just dissenters; they were infiltrators. They hid among established congregations and paid lip service to beliefs that weren’t their own. I don’t believe that’s changed much down the years. They’re still an infection. They’re parasites, turning the body against itself.”

  This was a metaphor I had heard used before, under other circumstances. It evoked unpleasant associations with people who unwittingly sheltered old spirits inside them, ancient angels waiting for the moment when they could start to consume their hosts from within.

  Unfortunately for Euclid Danes, his talk of jellyfish and parasites and bloodlines made him sound like a paranoid obsessive. Perhaps he was. Euclid guessed the direction of my thoughts.

  “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” he said. “Sounds like the ravings of a madman?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that strongly.”

  “You’d be in the minority, but it’s easy enough to prove. Dearden is decaying, but compared to Thomasville it’s like Las Vegas. Our kids are leaving because there’s no work, and no hope of any. Businesses are closing, and those that stay open sell only stuff that old farts like me need. The towns in this whole region are slowly dying, all except Prosperous. It’s suffering, because everywhere is suffering, but not like we are. It’s insulated. It’s protected. It sucks the life out of the surrounding towns to feed itself. Good fortune, luck, divine providence—call it what you will, but there’s only so much of it to go around, and Prosperous has taken it all.”

  The waitress with the big hair came by to offer me yet more coffee. I was the only person in the bar who seemed to be drinking it, and she clearly didn’t want to waste the pot. I had a long ride home. It would help me stay awake. I drank it quickly, though. I didn’t think there was much more that Euclid Danes could tell me.