Now there was another vacancy on the board. Under ordinary circumstances, the remaining members would have come up with the names of suitable candidates and presented them to the townsfolk for rubber-stamping, but Prosperous was in crisis and this was not the time for an election. The board would continue with only fve members, and Morland and Warraner would remain as observers who could offer advice and arguments, but were still not entitled to vote.
The soldiers, along with Valerie Gillson and Ben Pearson, were all buried in the new cemetery to the south. Nobody had been interred in the grounds of the old church since the end of the last century, not even deceased members of the senior families whose surnames already adorned so many stones in the churchyard. It was Warraner's father who had decreed that the cemetery was now closed to interments, and nobody had questioned his decision. The only reason he had given was this:
Why risk disturbing what is at rest?
In recent days his son had issued an even more restrictive edict. The cemetery and church were out of bounds to all. Nobody was to trespass there, and while the media was in town Morland and his deputies, aided by the most trustworthy of the younger citizens, had maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil to ensure that visitors and reporters were kept away. Had Warraner been asked for a reason, he would have given this one:
Why risk disturbing further what is no longer at rest?
Now here was his youngest daughter telling him that a man was walking among the stones, and taking photographs of the church with his phone. Warraner was so incensed that he did not even go to the house to get a coat but ran in his shirtsleeves through the woods, ignoring the cold, ignoring too the branches that pulled at him even as he recalled the fnal photograph on Valerie Gillson's cell phone, the image of a deer with its legs bound by briars, a deer that had been crippled and laid out as bait . . .
He burst from the woods and saw the intruder.
'Hey!' he cried. 'That's private property and sacred ground. You've no right to be in there.'
The stranger turned, and at the sight of him Pastor Warraner immediately understood that the town's troubles had just increased considerably.
I watched Warraner as he came to a halt at the iron railing that surrounded the cemetery. He was breathing heavily, and a scratch to his neck was bleeding into his shirt collar.
'What are you doing in the cemetary?' he asked.
I walked toward him. He watched my progress carefully.
'Same as last time,' I said. 'Trying to fnd a missing girl.'
'She's not here, and you're disturbing the peace of the dead.'
I sidestepped a tilting stone cross. The names and dates on it were so old and faded as to be entirely illegible.
'Really? I've found that it takes a lot to wake the dead, unless some were never quite asleep to begin with.'
'This is neither the time nor the place for mockery, Mr Parker. Our town has been through a diffcult period.'
'I'm aware of that, Mr Warraner,' I said. 'And I'm entirely serious.'
I was facing him now. His hands gripped the railing so tightly that his knuckles showed white against his skin. I turned to the right and continued walking, forcing him to keep pace with me.
'The gate is to your left,' he said.
'I know. That's how I got in.'
'It's locked.'
'It was locked. I found it open.'
'You're lying.'
'I suppose you could call Chief Morland and ask him to dust it for fngerprints. Or you could just buy a better lock.'
'I fully intend to call Chief Morland,' said Warraner. 'I'll have you arrested for trespassing.'
His hands searched his pockets for his cell phone but came up empty. I offered him mine instead.
'Feel free to call, but I was planning to pay him another visit anyway, just as soon as I've fnished here.'
I saw that Warraner was tempted to take my phone, but even he could appreciate the absurdity of doing so. The threat of police involvement was of limited effectiveness if the person being threatened was only a middleman away from calling the cops on himself.
'What do you want, Mr Parker?' he said.
I paused beside a hole in the ground. It was similar to the one that Euclid Danes had pointed out to me close to the edge of his own land.
'I was wondering what this might be?'
I had stumbled across the hole by accident – literally: I had almost broken my ankle in it.
'It's a fox den,' he said.
'Really?'
I knelt and examined it. An active den usually retained signs of the animal's comings and goings, but this had none. The ground around it was undisturbed.
'It's big for a fox hole,' I said, 'and I don't see any sign of foxes.'
'It's an old den,' said Warraner. Hostility fowed from him in waves.
'Do you have many old dens around here?'
'Possibly. I've never taken the time to count them. For the last time, I want you to leave this place. Now.'
If we'd both been nine years old and in a schoolyard I could have asked him to make me, or inquired about what he might do if I refused, but it didn't seem appropriate in a cemetery, and I'd annoyed him enough for now. He tracked me back to the gate, and examined the lock once I was back on the right side of the fence. I hadn't been forced to break it: two decades of friendship with Angel had taught me the rudiments of picking. Warraner wrapped the chain from gate to fence and secured it.
'Do you want to follow me to the police department?' I said.
'No,' said Warraner. 'I know you'll go there. You have more questions to ask, don't you? Why can't you just leave us in peace?'
'Questions always remain, even when things work out. It comes with the territory.'
'With being a self-righteous prick who can't allow a town to mourn its dead?'
He savored the word 'prick'. I'd been called worse, but not by anyone with a degree in divinity.
'No, with being human. You should try it, Mr Warraner, or Pastor Warraner, or whatever title you've chosen to give yourself. Your dead are past caring, and your mourning will do them no good. I'm searching for a missing girl. If she's alive, she's in trouble. If she's dead, someone else is. As an individual who professes to be a man of God, I'd suggest that your compassion is currently misdirected.'
Warraner plunged his hands into the pockets of his jeans as though fearing the damage he might otherwise infict upon me. He was a big man, and strong as well. If he got his hands on me he'd do some harm. Of course, I'd shatter one of his knees before he got that close, but it wouldn't look good on my résumé. Still, all of his weight was on his left leg, which was ramrod straight. If he moved, I'd take him.
Warraner breathed deeply to calm himself and recover his dignity. The moment passed.
'You know nothing of my god, Mr Parker,' he said solemnly.
I looked past him and took in the ancient stones of his church, and the leering faces visible in the fading afternoon light.
'You may be wrong about that, Pastor.'
He stayed at the gate as I drove away, his hands deep in his pockets, his gaze fxed upon me, standing in the shadow of his church.
In the shadow of his god.
30
Chief Morland was looking out the window of his offce
as I pulled up outside his department. If he was pleased to see me, he was trying manfully to hide it. His arms were folded, and he stared at me without expression as I walked up the path. Inside there was a strained silence among the staff, and I guessed that not long before Chief Morland had been shouting into a telephone receiver at Pastor Warraner. Nobody offered me coffee and a cookie. Nobody even wanted to catch my eye.
Morland's door was open. I stood on the threshold.
'Mind if I come in?'
He unfolded his arms. 'Would it matter if I did?'
'I can talk to you from here, but it seems kind of childish.'
Morland gestured me inside and told me to close the door. He waited for me to s
it before doing the same himself.
'You've been keeping my phone busy,' he said.
'Warraner?'
'The pastor was just the most recent caller. We've had reports of a man in a car like yours casing properties, and I already sent a deputy out to take a look. If you'd been driving your fancy Mustang I'd have known it was you, but you seem to have left your toy automobile back in Portland today.'
'I was trying to be discreet.'
'The pastor didn't think so. Maybe you failed to notice the sign that read "Private Property" out by the cemetery?'
'If I paid attention to every sign that read "Private Property" or "No Entry", I'd never get anything done. Besides, I fgured that after the last tour I was practically a member of the congregation.'
'It doesn't have a congregation.'
'Yeah, I've been meaning to ask about that. I still fnd it strange that a religious sect would go to the trouble of hauling a church across the Atlantic, rebuild it brick by brick, and then just shrug and walk off.'
'They died out.'
'You're speaking metaphorically, right? Because the descendants of the original settlers are still here. This town has more old names than the Bible.'
'I'm no historian, but there are plenty of folk in this town who consider themselves one,' said Morland. 'The Familists faded away. I've heard it said that the worst thing to happen to the Family of Love was leaving England. They survived because they were hunted and oppressed, and there's nothing guaranteed to harden a man's convictions more than to be told he can't follow his own beliefs. With freedom to worship also came the freedom not to worship.'
'And where do you worship, Chief?'
'I'm a Catholic. I go to Mary Immaculate down in Dearden.'
'Are you familiar with a man there called Euclid Danes?'
'Euclid's a Methodist, although they'd disown him if they weren't so short on bodies to fll their seats. How do you know him?'
He didn't blink, didn't look away, didn't rub his left ear with his right hand or scratch his nose or whatever it is that men and women are supposed to do when they're lying or trying to hide knowledge, but he might just as well have. Morland was well aware that I'd been speaking with Euclid Danes. He wouldn't have been much of a chief of police if he wasn't, not in a town like Prosperous. So he pretended, and I let him pretend, and each of us watched the other act.
'I found him on the Internet,' I said.
'Looking for a date?'
'He's a little old for me, although I bet he cleans up nicely.'
'Euclid's not very popular in this town.'
'He wears it as a badge of pride. In his place, I might do the same. Are you aware that he's been threatened?'
'He's always being threatened. Doesn't do much good, though.'
'You sound almost as though you approve.'
'He's one stubborn man standing in the way of the expansion of a town and the money that would bring into the local economy.'
'As you yourself said, there's nothing likely to make a certain kind of man more resolute than to fnd himself threatened for his beliefs.'
'I don't think the First Amendment guarantees your right to be an asshole.'
'I think that's precisely what it does.'
Morland threw his hands in the air in despair. 'Jesus, if I closed my eyes I could almost be talking to Danes himself, and you don't know how unhappy that makes me. So you talked to Danes? Go you. I'll bet he told you all about how rich old Prosperous is bad, and its people are jerks just because they look after their own. I could give a fuck what Danes says. We're weathering the recession, and we're doing okay. You know why? Because we support one another, because we're closeknit, and that's helped us get through the bad times.
'In case you haven't noticed, Mr Parker, this town has taken a kicking recently. Instead of busting into old cemeteries, you should go to the new one and pay your respects to the two boys we just buried there. Their crosses won't be hard to fnd. They have fags beside them. Close by you'll fnd fresh earth over Valerie Gillson's grave, and the messages her kids left on it for her. Look to your right and a pile of fowers marks where Ben Pearson is resting. Four dead in twenty-four hours, a town in mourning, and I have to deal with your bullshit.'
He had a point. I just chose to ignore it.
'I'm looking for an older couple,' I said, as though he had never spoken. 'Sixties at least, at a guess, although you know how young people are: when you're in your twenties, everyone over forty looks old. This couple owns a blue car. I saw a few blue cars during my ride through your very clean town, but I resisted the impulse to start knocking on doors until we'd spoken. You could save me time by giving me the names and addresses of anyone who might ft the criteria.'
I took a small hardback notebook from my pocket, slipped the minipen from the spine, and waited. I felt like a secretary poised to take dictation.
'What are you talking about?' said Morland.
'I have a witness who says that the people who took Annie Broyer to this town were an older couple in a blue car. I thought I might try talking to older couples with blue cars. Sometimes the simplest options are the best. You're welcome to come along, unless you're preparing some more stump speeches.'
There was a knock at the door behind me.
'Not now,' said Morland.
The door opened a fraction. I turned to see one of the secretaries poke her head in.
'Chief, I—'
'I said, "Not now!"'
The door quickly closed again. Morland hadn't taken his eyes from me throughout the brief exchange.
'I told you when you came through last time that there's no evidence the woman you're looking for ended up in Prosperous.'
'I think she did.'
'Has she been reported missing?'
'No,' I admitted.
'So you're looking for a street person, a former junkie, who has probably fallen back into her old ways, and you want me to help you accuse seniors of kidnapping her?'
'Seniors, and younger,' I corrected. 'And only ones with access to a blue car.'
'Get out.'
I closed my notebook and restored the minipen to the spine.
'I guess I'll just have to go through the DMV.'
'You do that. Nobody here fts your bill. That girl is not in Prosperous. If I see you within the town limits again, you'll be charged with trespass and harassment.'
I stood. I'd flled my aggravation quota for the day.
'Thank you for your time, Chief,' I said, as I left the offce. 'You've been a big help.'
He took it as sarcasm – I could see it on his face – but I was speaking the truth.
I had never told Morland that Annie Broyer was an ex-junkie.
The wolf continued to circle the town. He had returned to the place in which he found the store of meat and bone below ground, but only the scent of it remained now. For a time the streets had been flled with even more light and noise and men than before, and the activity had caused the wolf to fee into the woods, but his hunger had driven him back. He tore apart a garbage bag and fed on the chicken carcasses he smelled inside before slipping back into the woods. He remained thin, and even through the double layer of his fur his ribs shone sharply carved. The temperature had started to drop again: that night it would plummet to -7 degrees. The wolf's thick sub-cuticle of fat had become depleted over the winter months as his body fed upon itself. The food from the town was sustaining him, but the damage had already been done. Instinct warned him to seek shelter from the cold, to fnd a dark hidden place with warmth. In his youth, members of the pack had sometimes colonized abandoned fox dens, and the wolf now sought a hole in the ground in which to hide. The pain was spreading through his body, and he could put no weight on his damaged limb.
South of the town, he picked up the smell of a deer. The spoor was old, but the wolf identifed the pain and panic that had marked the deer's fnal moments. He paused, wary now. The deer had died in terror, and beneath the sweet stink of prey the wolf could d
etect another smell, one that was unfamiliar and yet set his senses jangling. The wolf had no predators, aside from man. He would even take on a grizzly in a fght for food, and his pack had once come upon, and consumed, a hibernating black bear. The fear that the wolf now felt reminded him of his fear of man, yet this was no man.
The Wolf in Winter Page 21