The Wolf in Winter

by John Connolly

  The Collector heard the sound of the lawyer Eldritch coughing and moving about in the next room. Eldritch slept more since the explosion that had almost cost him his life, and which had destroyed the records of crimes both public and private painstakingly assembled over decades of investigation. Even had the old man not been so frail, the loss of the fles would have seriously curtailed the Collector's activities. He had not realized just how much he relied upon Eldritch's knowledge and complicity in order to hunt and prey. Without Eldritch, the Collector was reduced to the status of an onlooker, left to speculate on the sins of others without the evidence needed to damn them.

  But in recent days, some of Eldritch's old energy had returned, and he had begun the process of rebuilding his archive. His memory was astonishing in its recall, but his recent sufferings and losses had spurred him still harder to force it to relinquish its store of secrets, fueled by hatred and the desire for revenge. He had lost almost everything that mattered to him: a woman who had been both his consort and his accomplice, and a lifetime's work of cataloging the mortal failings of men. All he had left now was the Collector, and he would be the weapon with which Eldritch avenged himself.

  And so, where once the lawyer had been a check on the Collector's urges, he now fed them. Each day brought the two men ever closer. It reminded the Collector that, on one level, they were still father and son, although the thing that lived inside the Collector was very old, and very far from human, and the Collector had largely forgotten his previous identity as the son of the ancient lawyer in the next room.

  The house was one of the newest of the Collector's property acquisitions, but also one of the best concealed. Curiously, he owed its existence to the detective, Parker. The Collector had arrived in Rehoboth as part of his exploration of the detective's history, his attempt to understand Parker's nature. It was an element of Parker's past – a minor one, admittedly, but the Collector was nothing if not meticulous – and therefore worthy of examination. The house, modest yet handsome, drew the Collector. He was weary of sparsely furnished hideouts, of uncarpeted rooms flled only with mementos of the dead. He needed a place in which to rest, to contemplate, to plan, and so it was that, through Eldritch, he acquired the house. It remained one of the few in which he still felt secure, particularly since the detective and his friends had begun tracking him, seeking to punish him for the death of one of their own. It was to Delaware that the Collector had spirited the lawyer away once his wounds had healed suffciently to enable him to travel, and now the Collector too was sequestered here. He had never known what it was to be hunted before; he had always been the hunter. They had come close to trapping him in Newark: the recurrent pain from the torn ligaments in his leg was a reminder of that. This situation could not continue. There was harvesting to be done.

  Worse, when night came the Hollow Men gathered at his window. He had deprived them of life, and returned their souls to their maker. What was left of them lingered, drawn to him not only because they erroneously believed that it was he alone who had caused their suffering – the dead being as capable of self-delusion as the living – but because he could add to their number. That was their only comfort: that others might suffer as they did. But now they sensed his weakness, his vulnerability, and with it came a terrible, warped hope: that the Collector would be wiped from the Earth, and with his passing might come the oblivion they desired. At night they gathered among the trees, their skin wrinkled and mottled like old diseased fruit, waiting, willing the detective and his allies to descend upon the Collector.

  I could kill them, thought the Collector. I could tear Parker apart, and the ones called Angel and Louis. There was enough evidence against them to justify it, enough sin to tip the scales.

  Probably.

  Possibly.

  But what if he were wrong? What might the consequences be? He had killed their friend in a ft of rage, and as a result he was now little better than a marked animal, running from hole to hole, the ring of hunters tightening around him. If the Collector were to kill the detective, his friends would not rest until the Collector was himself buried. If the Collector were to kill Parker's friends yet leave him alive, the detective would track him to the ends of the earth. And if, by some miracle, he were to kill all three of them? Then a line would have been crossed, and those who protected the detective from the shadows would fnish what he had started and run the Collector down. Whatever choice the Collector made would end the same way: the hunt would continue until he was cornered, and his punishment meted out.

  The Collector wanted a cigarette. The lawyer did not like him to smoke in the house. He said that it affected his breathing. The Collector could go outside, of course, but he realized that he had grown fearful of showing himself, as if even the slightest moment of carelessness might undo him. He had never yet been so frightened. The experience was proving unpleasantly enlightening.

  The Collector concluded that he could not kill the detective. Even if he were to do so and somehow escape the consequences of his actions, he would ultimately be acting against the Divine. The detective was important. He had a role to play in what was to come. He was human, of that the Collector was now certain, but there was an aspect to him that was beyond understanding. Somehow, in some way, he had touched, or been touched by, the Divine. He had survived so much. Evil had been drawn to him, and he had destroyed it in every instance. There were entities that feared the Collector, and yet they feared the detective even more.

  There was no solution. There was no escape.

  He closed his eyes and felt the gloating triumph of the Hollow Men.

  The lawyer Eldritch turned on his computer and returned to the task in hand: the reconstruction of his records. He was progressing alphabetically for the most part, but if a later name or detail came to him unexpectedly, he would open a separate fle and input the new information. The physical records had been little more than aides-mémoires: everything that mattered was contained in his brain.

  His ears ached. His hearing had been damaged in the explosion that killed the woman and destroyed his fles, and now he had to endure a continuous high-pitched tinnitus. Some of the nerves in his hands and feet had been damaged as well, causing his legs to spasm as he tried to sleep, and his fngers to freeze into claws if he wrote or typed for too long. His condition was slowly improving, but he was forced to make do without proper physiotherapy or medical advice, for the Collector feared that if he showed himself it might draw the detective down upon them.

  Let him come, thought Eldritch in his worst moments, as he lay awake in his bed, his legs jerking so violently that he could almost feel the muscles starting to tear, his fngers curling so agonizingly that he was certain that the bones must break through the skin. Let him come, and let us be done with all this. But somehow he would steal enough sleep to continue, and each day he tried to convince himself that he could discern a diminution in his sufferings: more time between the spasms in his legs, like a child counting the seconds between cracks of thunder to reassure himself that the storm was passing; a little more control over his fngers and toes, like a transplant patient learning to use a new limb; and a slight reduction in the intensity of the noise in his ears, in the hope that madness might be held at bay.

  The Collector had set up a series of highly secure e-mail drop boxes for Eldritch, with fve-step verifcation and a prohibition on any outside access. Telephone contact was forbidden – it was too easy to trace – but the lawyer still had his informants, and it was important that he remain in touch with them. Now Eldritch opened the frst of the drop boxes. There was only one message inside. Its subject line was in case you did not see this, and it was only an hour old. The message contained a link to a news report.

  Eldritch cut and pasted the link before opening it. It took him to that evening's News Center on NBC's Channel 6 out of Portland, Maine. He watched the report in silence, letting it play in its entirety before he called to the man in the next room.

  'Come here,' said E
ldritch. 'You need to look at this.'

  Moments later, the Collector appeared at his shoulder.

  'What is it?' he said.

  Eldritch let the news report play a second time.

  'The answer to our problems.'

  39

  Garrison Pryor was on his way to the chef's table at

  L'Espalier on Boylston when the call came through to his personal cell phone, the one that was changed weekly, and for which only a handful of people had the number at any time. He was particularly surprised to see the identity of the caller. Pryor hit the green answer button immediately.

  'Yes?' he said.

  There would be no pleasantries. The Principal Backer didn't like to linger on unsecured lines.

  'Have you seen the news?'

  'No, I've been in meetings all day, and I'm about to join some clients for a late dinner.'

  'Your phone has Internet access?'

  'Of course.'

  'Go to Channel Six in Portland. Call me when you're done.'

  Pryor didn't argue or object. He was running late for dinner, but it didn't matter now. The Principal Backer didn't make such calls lightly.

  Pryor hung up, and found a spot against the wall by the entrance to the Copley T station. It didn't take him long to fnd the news report to which the Principal Backer had been referring. He went to the Portland Press Herald's website, just in case it had further details, but there were none.

  He waited a moment, gathered his thoughts, then called the Principal Backer.

  'Are you at home?' asked Pryor.

  'Yes.'

  'But you can talk?'

  'For now. Was it one of ours?'

  'No.'

  'You're certain?'

  'Absolutely. Nobody would have made a move like this without consulting me frst, and I would have given no such authorization. It was decided: we should wait.'

  'Make sure that we weren't involved.'

  'I will, but there's no doubt in my mind. The man was not short of enemies.'

  'Neither are we. There will be consequences for all of us if we're found to be anywhere near this.'

  'I'll send out word. There will be no further activity until you say otherwise.'

  'And get somebody to Scarborough. I want to know exactly what happened at that house.'

  'I'll make the call now.'

  There was silence on the other end of the line, then:

  'I hear L'Espalier is very good.'

  'Yes.' It took Pryor a second or two to realize that he had not told the Principal Backer where he was eating that night. 'Yes, it is.'

  'Perhaps you should inform your clients that you won't be able to make it to dinner after all.'

  The connection was cut off. Pryor looked at the phone. He'd only had it for two days. He removed the battery, wiped it with his gloves, and tossed it in the trash. As he walked on, he broke the SIM card and dropped the pieces down a drain. He crossed Boylston, heading for Newbury. He stepped into the shadows of Public Alley 440, put the phone on the ground, and began grinding it beneath his heel, harder and harder, until fnally he was stamping furiously on fragments of plastic and circuitry, swearing as he did so. Two pedestrians glanced at him as they passed down Exeter, but they did not stop.

  Pryor put his forehead against the wall of the nearest building and closed his eyes.

  Consequences: that was an understatement. If someone had made an unauthorized hit on the detective, there was no limit to how bad things might get.

  In an apartment in Brooklyn, the rabbi named Epstein sat before his computer screen, watching and listening.

  It had been a long day of discussions, arguments and something resembling slow progress, assuming one took a tectonic view of such matters. Epstein, along with two of his fellow moderate rabbis, were trying to hammer out compromises between the borough of Brooklyn and the local Hasidim on a lengthy series of issues, including the separation of the sexes on city buses and religious objections to the use of bicycles, mostly with little success. Today, for his sins, Epstein had been forced to explain the concept of metzitzah b'peh – the practice of oral suction from a baby's circumcision wound – to a disbelieving councilman.

  'But why would anyone want to do that?' the councilman kept asking. 'Why?'

  And, to be honest, Epstein didn't really have an answer or, at least, not one that would satisfy the councilman.

  Meanwhile, some of the young Hasidim apparently regarded Epstein with little more affection than they did the goyim. He even heard one of them refer to him behind his back as an alter kocker – an 'old fart' – but he did not react. Their elders knew better, and at least acknowledged that Epstein was trying to help by acting as a go-between, attempting to fnd a compromise with which both the Hasidim and the borough could live. Still, if they had their way the Hasidim would wall off Williamsburg from the rest of Brooklyn, although they'd probably have to fght the hipsters for it. The situation wasn't helped by certain city offcials publicly comparing the Hasidim to the Mafa. At times, it was enough to make a reasonable man consider abandoning both his faith and his city. But there was a saying in Hebrew, 'We survived Pharoah, we'll survive this, too.' In the words of the old joke, it was the theme of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, they failed, so let's eat!

  With that in mind, he was hungry when he arrived home, but all thoughts of food were gone now. Beside him stood a young woman dressed in black. Her name was Liat. She was deaf and mute, so she could not hear the news report, but she could read the anchorman's lips when he appeared on screen. She took in the images of the police cars and the house, and the picture of the detective that was being used on all of the news reports. It was not a recent photograph. He looked older now. She recalled his face as they had made love, and the feel of his damaged body against hers.

  So many scars, so many wounds, both visible and hidden.

  Epstein touched her arm. She looked down at his face so she could watch his lips move.

  'Go up there,' he said. 'Find out what you can. I will start making inquiries here.'

  She nodded and left.

  Strange, thought Epstein: he had never seen her cry before.

  40

  It was Bryan Joblin who told them the news, just as he was

  running out the door. His departure at that moment, leaving them alone, seemed like a godsend. Harry and Erin had been growing increasingly fractious with Joblin as his perpetual presence in their lives began to tell on them, while he had settled happily into his role as their watcher, houseguest, and sometime accomplice in a crime yet to be committed. He still pressed Harry to fnd a girl, as if Harry needed to be reminded. Hayley Conyer herself had stopped by the house that morning while they were clearing up after breakfast, and she had made it very clear to the Dixons that they were running out of time.

  'Things are going to start moving fast around here pretty soon,' Conyer said, as she stood at the front door, as though reluctant even to set foot once again in their crumbling home. 'A lot of our problems are about to disappear, and we can start concentrating again on the tasks that matter.'

  She leaned in close to the Dixons, and Harry could feel the warmth of her breath, and smell with it the sour stink that he always associated with his mother's dying, the stench of the body's internal workings beginning to atrophy.

  'You should know that there are folk in Prosperous who blame you for what happened to our young men in Afghanistan, and to Valerie Gillson and Ben Pearson too,' she said. 'They believe that, if you hadn't let the girl go' – Conyer allowed the different possible interpretations of that conditional clause to hang in the air for a moment – 'then four of our people might still be alive. You have a lot of work to do to make up for your failings. I'm giving you three days. By then, you'd better produce a substitute girl for me.'

  But Harry knew that they wouldn't be around in three days or, if they were, then it would probably be the end of them. They were ready to run. Had Bryan Joblin not told them of what had occurred,
then left them for a time to their own devices, they might have waited for another day, just to be sure that everything was in place for their escape. Now they took his news as a sign: it was time. They watched him drive away, his words still ringing in their ears.

  'We hit the detective,' Joblin told them. 'It's all over the news. That fucker is gone. Gone.'

  And within twenty minutes of Joblin's departure, the Dixons had left Prosperous.

  Harry made the call on the way to Medway. The auto dealership closed most evenings at six, but Harry had the dealer's cell phone number and knew that he lived only a couple of blocks from the lot. He'd told the guy that, if it came down to the wire, he might have to leave the state at short notice. He had spun him a line about a sick mother, knowing that the dealer couldn't have given a rat's ass if Harry's mother was Typhoid Mary, just as long as he paid cash alongside the trade-in. So it was that, thirty minutes after leaving Prosperous, the Dixons drove out of the lot in a GMC Savana Passenger Van with 100,000 miles on the clock, stopping only at the outskirts of Medway to call Magnus and Dianne and let them know that they were on their way. The van was ugly as a mudslide, but they could sleep in it if they had to, and who knew how long they might be on the road, or how far they might have to travel? They couldn't stay with Harry's in-laws for long. Even one night would be risky. In fact, the closer Harry got to the home of Magnus and Dianne, the more he started to feel that perhaps he and Erin shouldn't stay with them at all. It might be wiser just to pick up their stuff, arrange some way of remaining in contact, and then fnd a motel for the night. The more distance they put between themselves and Prosperous, the better. He expressed his concerns to Erin, and was surprised when she concurred without argument. Her only regret, as far as he could tell, was that they hadn't managed to kill Bryan Joblin before they left Prosperous. She might have been joking, but somehow Harry doubted it.