The Wolf in Winter

by John Connolly

  'You still awake there?' said Morland.

  'Yes,' said Harry. 'I'm awake.'

  He didn't look at the chief as he spoke. He saw only his refection in the glass.

  I look like my mother, he thought. In Prosperous, we all look like our parents, and sometimes we look like the children of other folks' parents too. It's the gene pool. It's too small. By rights it shouldn't be deep enough to drown a kitten, and every family should have a drooling relative locked away in an attic. I guess we're just blessed, and he smiled so hard, and so bleakly, at his choice of the word 'blessed' that he felt his bottom lip crack.

  'You're very quiet,' said the chief.

  'I never had to bury anyone before.'

  'Me neither.'

  Now Harry did look at him.

  'You serious?' he said.

  'I'm a cop, not an undertaker.'

  'You mean nothing like this has ever happened before?'

  'Not to my knowledge. Seems this may be the frst time.'

  It didn't make Harry feel any better. There would be repercussions. This trip with the chief was only the beginning.

  'You didn't tell me what happened to the girl,' said Harry.

  'No, I didn't.' The chief didn't speak again for a time, stringing Harry along. Then: 'Ben Pearson had to shoot her.'

  'Had to?'

  'There was a truck coming. If she'd stopped it, well, we would have had an even more diffcult situation than the one we're currently in.'

  'What would you have done?' asked Harry.

  The chief considered the question.

  'I'd have tried to stop the truck, and I'd have been forced to kill the driver.'

  He turned his gray eyes on Harry for a moment.

  'And then I'd have killed you, and your wife too.'

  Harry wanted to vomit, but he fought the urge. He could taste it at the back of his throat, though. For the frst time since he had gotten in the car with Morland, he felt frightened. They were in the darkness out by Tabart's Pond, just one of many locations around Prosperous named after the original English settlers. There were no Tabarts left now in Prosperous. No Tabarts, no Mabsons, no Quartons, no Poyds. They'd all died early in the history of the settlement, and the rest had seemed set to follow them before the accommodation was reached. Now Harry was about to dig a grave in a place named after the departed, the lost, and a grave could accommodate two as easily as one.

  'Why?' said Harry. 'Why would you have killed us?'

  'For forcing me to do something that I didn't want to do. For making life harder than it already is. For screwing up. As an example to others. You take your pick.'

  The chief made a right turn onto a dirt road.

  'Maybe I'll have another look at that lock on your basement when we're done,' he said. 'Something about all this doesn't sit quite right with me. Kinda like the lock itself, it seems.'

  He grinned emptily at Harry. The beams of the headlights caught bare trees, and icy snow and—

  'What was that?' said Harry. He was looking back over his right shoulder.

  'Huh? I didn't see nothing.'

  'There was something there. It was big, like an animal of some kind. I saw its eyes shining.'

  But the chief was paying him no attention. As far as Morland was concerned, Harry's 'something' was just a ruse, a clumsy attempt to distract him from the business of the basement door. But Morland wasn't a man to be turned so easily. He planned to walk both Harry and his wife through their versions of the escape. He'd do it over and over again until he was either satisfed with their innocence or convinced of their guilt. He was against entrusting the girl to them from the start, but he'd been overruled. He wasn't a selectman, even though he could sit in on the board's meetings. No chief of police had ever been a selectman. It was always felt that it was better to have the law as an instrument of the board's will.

  The board had wanted to test Harry and Erin Dixon. Concerns were being raised about them – justifable concerns, it now appeared. But it was a big step from doubting the commitment of citizens of Prosperous to taking direct action against them. In all of the town's history, only a handful of occasions had arisen when it became necessary to kill one of their own. Such acts were dangerous, and risked sowing discontent and fear among those who had doubts, or were vulnerable to outside infuence.

  Morland now regretted telling Harry Dixon that he might have killed his wife and him. He didn't like Dixon, and didn't trust him. He'd wanted to goad him, but it was a foolish move. He'd have to reassure him. He might even have to apologize and put his words down to his justifable anger and frustration.

  But the test wasn't over. The test had only just begun. Harry Dixon would have to make amends for his failings, and Morland was pretty sure that Harry Dixon wouldn't like what that would entail, not one little bit.

  'So what was it that you thought you saw?' said Morland.

  'I believe I saw a wolf.'

  8

  The ground was hard. Not that Harry should have been surprised: he'd lived in Penobscot County for long enough to have no illusions about winter. On the other hand, he'd never had to dig a grave, not in any season, and this was like breaking rocks.

  Morland left him to his own devices at the start. The chief sat in his car, the driver's door open but the heat on full blast, and smoked a series of cigarettes, carefully stubbing each one out in the ashtray. After a while, though, it became clear that Harry would be hacking at the ground until summer if he was forced to make the grave alone, and so Morland opened the trunk of his car and removed a pickax from it. From where he was standing, Harry caught a glimpse of something wrapped in transparent plastic sheeting, but he didn't look for long. He fgured he'd have seen more than enough of it by the time this night was over.

  Morland broke the ground with the pickax, and Harry cleared the earth away with the shovel. They worked without speaking. They didn't have energy to spare. Despite the cold, Harry felt sweat soaking into his shirt. He removed his coat and was about to hang it on the low branch of a tree when Morland told him to put it in the car instead. Harry assumed it was because the car would keep his coat warm, until Morland made it clear that Harry's health and well-being were the last things on his mind.

  'With luck, she'll stay down here and never be found,' said Morland, 'but you never know. Prepare for the worst and you won't be disappointed. I've seen crime scene investigators put a man behind bars for the rest of his life on the basis of a thread left on a branch. We take no chances.'

  Morland wasn't concerned about leaving tracks on the ground. It was too hard for that. Neither was he worried about being seen. Nobody lived nearby, and anyone who might be passing would, in all likelihood, be a citizen of Prosperous, and would know better than to go sticking a nose into Chief Morland's affairs if he or she was foolish enough to come and investigate in the frst place. Anyway, by now news of what had happened to the girl would have been communicated to those who needed to know. The roads around Prosperous would be quiet tonight.

  They continued to dig. When they got to three feet, they were both too exhausted to go further. The chief was a big, strong man, but Harry Dixon was no wilting fower either: if anything he'd grown ftter over the previous year, now that he was required to be more active on his construction sites than he had been in decades. It was one of the few good things to come out of the fnancial mess in which he found himself. He had spent so long supervising, and ordering, and taking care of paperwork, that he had almost forgotten the pleasure of actual building, and the satisfaction that came with it – that, and the blisters.

  Morland went to the car and took a Thermos of coffee from the back seat. He poured a cup for Harry, and drank his own directly from the neck. Together they watched the moon.

  'Back there, you were kidding about the wolf, right?' said Morland.

  Harry was wondering if he might have been mistaken. At one time, there had been wolves all over Maine – grays and easterns and reds – and the state had enacted wolf bounties u
ntil 1903. As far as he could recall, the last known wolf killing in the state was back in 1996. He remembered reading about it in the newspapers. The guy had killed it thinking it was a large coyote, but the animal weighed over eighty pounds, twice the size of the average coyote, and had the markings of a wolf, or wolf hybrid. There had been nothing since then, as far as he was aware: sightings and rumors, maybe, but no proof.

  'It was a big animal, and it had a doglike head, that's all I can say for sure.'

  Morland went to light another cigarette, but found that the pack was empty. He crushed it and put it carefully into his pocket.

  'I'll ask around,' he said. 'Wouldn't be a wolf, but if there's a coyote in the woods we'd best let folks know, tell them to keep a watch on their dogs. You done?'

  Harry fnished the last of the coffee and handed the cup back to the chief. He screwed it back on and tossed the Thermos to the foor of his car.

  'Come on, then,' said Morland. 'Time to put her in the ground.'

  The trunk light shone on the plastic, and the girl inside it. She was lying on her back, and her eyes were closed. That was a mercy at least. The exit wound in her chest was massive, but there was less blood than Harry might have expected. The chief seemed to follow the direction of his thoughts.

  'She bled out on the snow of Ben Pearson's yard,' he said. 'We had to shovel it up and spread some more around to hide what we'd done. Take her legs. I'll lift from the head.'

  It was diffcult to get her out of the trunk. She hadn't been a well-built girl, which was why the decision had been made to feed her up frst, but now Harry knew for the frst time what was meant by 'dead weight'. The heavy-duty plastic was slippery, and Morland struggled to get a grip. Once she was out of the car he had to drop her on the ground, put his foot under her to raise her upper body, and then wrap his arms around her chest to carry her, holding her to him like a sleeping lover. They stood to the right of the grave, and on the count of three they tossed her in. She landed awkwardly in a semi-seated position.

  'You'd best get down there and straighten her,' Morland told Harry. 'If the hole was deeper I'd be inclined to let it go, but it's shallow as it is. We don't want the ground to sink and have her head peeping up like a gopher's.'

  Harry didn't want to get in the grave, but it didn't seem as though he had much choice. He eased himself down, then squatted to grip the ends of the plastic. As he did so, he looked at the girl. Her head was slightly lower than his, so that she seemed to be staring up at him. Her eyes were open. He must have been mistaken when he frst saw her lying in the trunk. Perhaps it had been the refection of the internal light, or his own tiredness, but he could have sworn . . .

  'What's the problem?' said Morland.

  'Her eyes,' said Harry. 'Do you recall if her eyes were open or closed?'

  'What does it matter? She's dead. Whether we cover her up with her eyes wide open or squeezed shut is going to make no difference to her or to us.'

  He was right, thought Harry. He shouldn't even have been able to see her eyes so clearly through the plastic, but it was as though there was a light shining inside her head, illuminating the blue of her irises. She looked more alive now than she had in the basement.

  He shook the thought from his head, and pulled sharply on the plastic. The girl was dragged fat. He didn't want to see her face again, so he turned away from it. He'd tried. She'd been given a better chance than any of the others, of that he was certain. It wasn't his fault that Ben Pearson had put an end to her hopes.

  Suddenly all of the strength was gone from his body. He couldn't haul himself from the grave. He could barely raise his arms. He looked up at Morland. The chief had the pickax in his hands.

  'Help me up,' said Harry, but the chief didn't move.

  'Please,' said Harry. His voice cracked a little, and he despised himself for his weakness. His mother was right: he was half a man. If he'd been gifted with real courage, he'd have put the girl in his car, driven her to the state police in Bangor, and confessed all to them, or at least dropped her off in the center of the city where she'd be safe. Standing in the grave, he imagined a scenario in which the girl agreed to keep quiet about what had occurred, but it fell apart as soon as he saw himself returning to Prosperous to explain her absence. No, he'd done the best that he could for her. Anything more would have damned the town. Then again, it was already as close to damnation as made no difference.

  He closed his eyes, and waited for the impact of the pickax on his head, but it never came. Instead, Morland grabbed Harry's right hand, leaned back, and their combined strength got him out of the grave.

  Harry sat on the ground and put his head in his hands.

  'For a second, I thought you were going to leave me down there,' he said.

  'That would be too easy,' said Morland. 'Besides, we're not done yet.'

  And Harry knew that he was not referring to the flling in of the grave alone.

  The girl was gone, covered by the earth. The ground had clearly been dug up, but Morland knew that whatever remained of the winter snows to come would take care of that. When the thaw came in earnest, the ground would turn to mire. As it dried, all traces of their activity would be erased. He just hoped that they'd buried the girl deep enough.

  'Shit,' he said.

  'What is it?' said Harry.

  'We probably should have taken her out of the plastic. Might have helped her to rot quicker.'

  'You want to dig her up again?'

  'No, I do not. Come on, time to go.'

  He wrapped the blade of the shovel and the head of the pickax in plastic bags, to keep the dirt off the trunk of his car. Tomorrow he'd clean it inside and out, just to be sure.

  Harry had not moved from his place beside the grave.

  'I have a question,' he said.

  Morland waited for him to continue.

  'Isn't there a chance that she might be enough?' said Harry.

  Morland might have called the look on Harry's face hopeful, if the use of the word 'hope' were not an obscenity under such circumstances.

  'No,' said Morland.

  'She's dead. We killed her. We've given her to the earth. Why not? Why can't she be enough?'

  Chief Morland closed the trunk before he replied.

  'Because,' he said, 'she was dead when she went into the ground.'

  9

  It was just after fve on the evening after my return to Portland when I arrived at the Great Lost Bear on Forest Avenue. The bar was buzzing, as it always was on Thursdays. Thursday was showcase night, when the Bear invited a craft brewery to let folk taste its wares, always at a discount and always with a raffe at the end. It really didn't take much to keep customers loyal, but it always amazed me that so many businesses couldn't work up the energy to make the minimal extra effort required.

  I found Dave Evans, the Bear's owner, marshaling the troops for the assault to come. I hadn't worked there in a while. Like I said, business had been good for me in recent months, maybe because, like the Bear, I tended to go the extra mile for my clients. In addition, some ongoing litigation relating to the purchase of my grandfather's old house on Gorham Road had been settled in my favor, and a lump sum had found its way into my accounts. I was solvent, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Still, I liked to keep my hand in at the Bear, even if it was only once or twice a month. You hear a lot from people in bars. Admittedly, most of it is useless, but the occasional nugget of information creeps through. Anyway, my presence would allow Dave to take the rest of the night off, although he was strangely reluctant to leave.

  'Your buddies are here,' he said.

  'I have buddies?'

  'You used to. I'm not sure if the word still applies where those two are concerned.'

  He indicated a corner of the bar which was now looking signifcantly smaller than it used to thanks to the addition of two massive men in polyester jogging suits: the Fulci Brothers. I hadn't seen them since Jackie Garner's funeral. His death had hit them hard. They had
been devoted to him, and he had looked out for them as best he could. It was hard for men so large to keep a low profle, but somehow they'd managed it in the months since Jackie's death. The city might even have breathed a bit easier for a while. The Fulcis had a way of sucking the oxygen from a room. They had a way of knocking it from people too. Their fsts were like cinder blocks.