The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  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 filled with jeans, shirts, and a new pair of boots in the spare toolbox in his truck, and these he added to one of the suitcases. He then went to the Walgreens on Broadway and replicated as many as possible of the toiletries and cosmetics 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 didn’t ask any questions. That 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 final step to take. After that, there could be no going back.

  Harry drove to the post office and, with only a slight hesitation, mailed the letter to Hayley Conyer.

  CHAPTER

  XXXII

  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 him 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 was, 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 chairs, and did his best to keep his temper in check as Hayley baited him. Almost an hour had gone by, and she hadn’t yet even alluded to the detective. 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 didn’t know how else he might have reacted to the detective’s interest in the missing girl. What did Haley 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 past 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 quiet, she asked him to contribute and then ceased to listen almost as soon as he began speaking, until finally, while he was still in mid-flow, she would begin to talk over him, or turn to one of the others 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. He guessed what she was planning to do, and he had to stop her. She hadn’t met the detective, and didn’t fully understand the danger that he represented. Even Warraner, who had twice encountered Parker, was guilty of underestimating him, but that was a function of Warraner’s own misplaced sense of superiority. Morland had watched him with the ­detective in the chapel, behaving like some glorified tour guide, almost inviting Parker to draw conclusions about hidden knowledge that might or might not be true. But the detective was subtler and more cunning than Warraner had first assumed, and by the time Warraner came to that realization—with the detective’s questions about the Familists and Vitel—it was too late.

  And then the detective returned, with his talk of blue cars, baiting Morland and Warraner just as Morland himself was now being baited. He’d spoken to Danes too, and Danes was much more than a simple nuisance. He had the ear of people in the state legislature, although he didn’t have much influence over the current governor, mainly because, as far as Morland could tell, the current governor didn’t listen to anyone. But Morland and the board knew that Danes had managed to scatter seeds of suspicion about Prosperous down in Augusta. True, most people still dismissed him as a flake, but he was a flake with money, and money bought influence.

  Morland recalled again the late Ben Pearson’s rage at Danes’s intrusion on the public meeting. The old bastard had been practically frothing at the mouth, and Souleby and the others weren’t far behind him, howling for blood like the high priests before Pilate. On that occasion, it was Hayley who proved to be the voice of reason. They couldn’t kill Danes, because who knew what trouble his death might bring on them if there was even a hint of foul play about it? They’d just have to wait for him to die naturally, but so far Danes had proved to be as stubbornly healthy as Hayley herself. Sometimes Morland even suspected that Hayley liked having Danes around. She seemed almost indulgent of his efforts to hamper the town’s expansion, as though their intensity were a reflection of Prosperous’s importance, and a vindication of her own stewardship.

  Prosperous had influence in Augusta as well. It was natural in a town as wealthy as this one, and even though its citizens differed politically, they still recognized that contributions to politicians of all stripes served the common cause. But that influence had to be used subtly and carefully. Morland sensed that a time was coming when the town’s investment in state politics might finally be required to yield profit. He would be happier if it could be saved for another moment, but he was growing increasingly ill at ease at this meeting. It was like watching a snake preparing to strike, unaware of the shadow of the blade behind it.

  The board had almost concluded its discussion of the recent fatalities. Hayley asked about the families, and how they were coping, and Warraner gave her chapter and verse about his pastoral role, and each vied with the other to appear the more sympathetic, the more understanding, the more pained by the sufferings of others. It was quickly decided that a fund should be established to aid the families in their time of need. The selectmen immediately offered generous contributions, and Hayley matched their combined total. Once they had tapped the rest of the town for sums both big and small, it would represent a significant source of financial consolation for the families.

  Call it what it is, thought Morland. Call it a bribe, a way of buying time and loyalty. There were already whispers among the townsfolk (for Morland was listening and, where possible, stoking the fires of discontent with the board). Why had this happened? Where had their protection gone? What was the board going to do about it? If the board could do nothing, or not enough, then it might be that it was time for others to step up and take the responsibility of running the town from these old men and this old woman who had served Prosperous so well for so long, but whose hour was now past.

  And if any of them objected—and by “any” they could be referring only to one, Hayley Conyer—then, Morland thought, the town would understand if some bad luck were to befall her, for old women had ­accidents, and Prosperous would accept her passing as a different kind of sacrifice. So this was an important meeting, perhaps the most ­important in nearly a century. The town’s survival might not have been at stake, not yet, but the survival of the current b
oard certainly was.

  “Well, so that’s decided,” said Hayley at last. She would write it all down the next day, creating inconsequential minutes for a meeting of great consequence. Let the town, and those whose eyes were upon it, see how it handled itself in times of strife. Meanwhile, the truth would be communicated in quiet words at gas stations, and on street corners, and in kitchens when the children were asleep. The whispers of doubt would be smothered. The board had acted. All would be well.

  “That brings us to the main business of the evening.”

  There was shuffling around her. Heads turned toward Morland. He felt the wires tighten around him, and instinctively he breathed in, swelling his upper body, tensing his arms and hands against unseen bonds, making himself larger, gaining himself room to move.

  Hayley sat back in her chair. It was a Carver, the only chair at the table that had arms. She rested her right elbow on one arm, her thumb beneath her chin, her index finger to her right temple, and stared thoughtfully at Morland, like a queen waiting for the courtier who had disappointed her to explain his way out of an appointment with the executioner.

  “So, Chief Morland,” she said. “Tell us about this detective. . . .”

  CHAPTER

  XXXIII

  Ronald Straydeer came by my house while I was once again reading through the material about the Familists culled from the archives of the Maine Historical Society. Ronald was a Penobscot Indian out of Old Town, north of Bangor. He had served with the K-9 Corps in Vietnam and, like so many men who fought in that war, he came back with a fracture running through his soul. In Ronald’s case, that fracture was caused by the decision of the U.S. military to classify its war dogs as “equipment” and then leave them behind as “surplus to requirements” when the United States fled South Vietnam. Thousands of war dogs were either transferred to the South Vietnamese Army or euthanized, and many of the handlers, like Ronald, never quite forgave their country for its treatment of the animals.

  The Vietcong hated the K-9 teams because they made surprise attacks almost impossible to carry out, and both the dogs and their handlers were hunted by the enemy with extreme prejudice. The bond between the K-9 soldiers and their dogs was immensely strong, and the emotional and psychological damage caused by the attitude of the U.S. Army toward the teams was impossible to quantify. A wiser military, one more attuned to the effects of combat on the psyche, would have allowed the men to adopt their dogs, but such legislation would not come into effect until 2000. Instead, the K-9 soldiers watched South Vietnam fall to the North Vietnamese, and they knew that their dogs would be slaughtered in revenge.

  Now Ronald worked with veterans, but he did so almost entirely without the assistance of the U.S. government or its military. He wanted little to do with either. I think that was one of the reasons he sold pot. It wasn’t so much that he cared one way or another about drugs; it was just a means of quietly socking it to Uncle Sam for sacrificing Elsa, Ronald’s German shepherd, back in Vietnam. He was largely a recreational dealer, though; he probably gave away more than he sold, and smoked the rest himself.

  I hadn’t seen him in a while. Someone told me that he’d left town. His brother up in Old Town was ill, or so the story went, and Ronald was helping his family out. But, as far as I knew, Ronald didn’t have a brother.

  Tonight his eyes were brighter than usual, and he was wearing a blue sports jacket over jeans, a matching shirt, and off-white sneakers.

  “You know,” I said, “the denim shirt-and-jeans look only works if you’re a country singer, or you own a farm.”

  Ronald gave me a hard look.

  “Should I tell you of how, long before the white man came, my people roamed these lands?”

  “In matching denim?”

  “We move with the times.”

  “Not fast enough.”

  He followed me into my office. I offered him coffee, or a beer if he was in the mood, but he declined both. He took a seat in one of the armchairs. He was a big man, and he made the chair look too small for him. Actually, the way he had to squeeze himself into it made me start worrying about how we were going to get him out again when he tried to stand. I had visions of injecting Crisco down the sides from a pastry-icing bag.

  “So, how have you been?” I asked.

  “I stopped drinking,” he said.

  “Really?”

  Ronald had never been a big drinker, from what I could recall, but he had been a steady one, although he stuck to beer, for the most part.

  “Yeah. I quit smoking weed too.”

  This was news.

  “You stop dealing as well?”

  “I got enough money in the bank. I don’t need to do that no more.”

  “You didn’t fall off a horse on the road to Damascus, did you?”

  “No, man. I don’t like horses. You thinking of the Plains Indians. You ought to read a book, educate yourself.”

  Ronald said all of this with an entirely straight face. It was generally hard to tell if he was serious or joking, at least not until he started punching you in the gut.

  “I heard you’d been out of town for a while,” I said. “I guess now I know what you were doing. You were self-improving.”

  “And thinking.”

  “Mind if I ask what about?”

  “Life. Philosophical shit. You wouldn’t understand, being a white man.”

  “You look good for it, even to a white man.”

  “I decided it wasn’t positive for me to be drinking and smoking and dealing when I was working with men for whom all of those activities might prove a temptation. If I was going to help them get straight and clean, I had to be straight and clean myself, you understand?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I kept up with the newspapers, though. You weren’t in them. Looks like you haven’t shot anyone in months. You retired?”

  “I could be tempted to break my spell of gun celibacy, under the current circumstances. Are you just here to yank my chain, or is there something I can help you with?”

  “I hear you been around the homeless shelters asking questions,” said Ronald.

  In his dealings with veterans, Ronald was often to be found working in the shelters, trying to form bonds with men and women who felt abandoned by their country once their period in uniform was over. Some of them even ended up staying with him on occasion. Despite his somewhat stony demeanor, Ronald Straydeer had a seemingly infinite capacity for empathy.

  “That’s right.”

  “Veterans?”

  Ronald had helped me out in the past with cases involving soldiers or the military. It was his turf, and he was conscious of protecting it.

  “Not really, or only by association. You knew Jude, right?”

  “Yeah. He was a good man. Dressed funny, but he was helpful. I hear he died. Suicide.”

  “I don’t think he killed himself. I believe he was helped into the next world.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Can I ask why you’re interested?”

  “Someone’s got to look out for these people. I try. If the city’s homeless are being targeted for any reason, I’d like to know.”

  That was as good a reason as any.

  “It’s early,” I said, “but I think he might have been killed because he went looking for his daughter. Her name was Annie, and she was following in her father’s footsteps, in both senses of the term. She’d lost her way, and ended up on the streets. I believe she was trying to draw him to her, while at the same time keeping him at a distance. She was staying at a women’s shelter in Bangor, but she’s not there any longer. There’s nobody around to report her missing, but I have a feeling that she might have been snatched. Jude was concerned about her before he died.”

  “And what’s this to you?”

  “A friend of Jude’s, a man named Shaky, to
ld me that Jude had saved up to buy a few hours of my time. Call it an obligation on my part.”

  “I know Shaky. Any idea who might have taken the girl?”

  “You ever been to the town of Prosperous?”

  “No. Heard of it. Don’t think they have much time for the natives, or anyone who isn’t white and wealthy.”

  “Annie told someone up in Bangor that she’d been offered a job by an older couple from Prosperous. She collected her things from the shelter before taking a ride with them, and that was the last anyone saw of her.”

  “The couple might have been lying,” said Ronald. “It’s easy to say you’re from one place when you’re actually from another.”

  “I had considered that.”

  “It’s why you’re a detective.”

  “That’s right. I like to think of myself as wise for a white man.”

  “That bar is set low,” said Ronald.

  “Not for all of us, and perhaps not for Annie Broyer. I get the sense, from the people I’ve spoken with about her, that she wasn’t dumb. Otherwise she wouldn’t have survived on the streets for as long as she did. I think she would have asked for some proof that these people were on the level. If she said she was going to Prosperous, then I believe that’s where she ended up. Unfortunately, according to the local police there’s no sign of her, and never has been.”

  I hadn’t told Ronald anything that Shaky or the cops in Portland didn’t already know, for the most part. Any other thoughts or suspicions, including the peculiar history of the Familists, I kept to myself.