The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  “And he had money. We have nothing. You don’t think they’re watching our spending habits, our patterns of deposits and withdrawals? They know, or at least they suspect. We’re vulnerable, and that means they’re concerned about how we might act. No, we have no choice. We have to wait this out. We have to hope that our situation improves. When it does, we can start putting money away. We can plan, just like Charlie must have done. You don’t leave Prosperous on a whim. You don’t—”

  And then there came the sound of the car. Lights washed over the house, and the words died in Harry Dixon’s mouth.

  CHAPTER

  XIV

  Rosie’s wasn’t too dissimilar from Ruski’s, but your chances of getting a seat at Rosie’s were greater than at Ruski’s simply because Rosie’s had more chairs. I didn’t want another beer, so I ordered coffee instead, and watched the cars go by on Fore Street. Music was playing, a song that I thought I recognized, something about seas of charity and unchosen exiles. I called Rachel while I waited, and she put Sam on. We chatted for a while about events in elementary school, which seemed to involve a lot of painting, and a certain amount of argument with a boy named Harry.

  “His mom and dad named him after Harry Potter,” Sam explained. She didn’t sound as though she approved. A whole generation of adults who had dressed up as wizards when they should have known better now seemed destined to inflict whimsy on their offspring. I wasn’t a big fan of whimsy. Whimsical people were the type who got run over by cars without anybody really noticing or caring that much beyond the damage to the vehicle, which was usually minimal anyway, whimsical folk being kind of lighter than most.

  “He draws lightning on his forehead,” said Sam.

  “Does he?” I said.

  “Yeah. He says it’s real, but it comes off when you rub hard.”

  I decided not to ask how she knew this, although I was pretty certain that, however she’d discovered it, the boy named Harry had been an unwilling participant in the experiment. Talk moved on to the trip to Florida that she was taking the following weekend, where she and Rachel would join Rachel’s parents in their new winter vacation home. Rachel’s current boyfriend, Jeff, wouldn’t be going along with them, Sam informed me.

  “Oh,” I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible. I didn’t like Jeff, but it didn’t matter. Jeff liked himself enough for both of us.

  “Daddy!” said Sam. “You don’t have to pretend you’re sad.”

  Jesus.

  “Are you sure you’re just in elementary school?” I said. “You’re not studying psychology on the side?”

  “Mom knows psycottagy,” said Sam.

  “Yes, she does.” Not enough of it to avoid dating a jackass like Jeff, but solving other people’s problems was often easier than taking care of your own. I considered sharing that insight with Rachel but decided against it. Maybe I was learning at last that discretion was the better part of valor. “Just put your mom back on. I’ll see you when you get back.”

  “Bye. Love you,” said Sam, and my heart broke a little.

  “Bye, hon. Love you too.”

  I chatted with Rachel for a minute or two more. She seemed happy. That was good. I wanted her to be happy. If she was happy, Sam would be happy. I just wished Rachel could be happy with someone other than Jeff. It reflected badly on her good taste, but then there were those who might have said the same about her time with me.

  “What are you working on?” asked Rachel.

  “Nothing much. Process serving. Errant husbands.”

  “Is that all? It won’t keep you out of mischief for long.”

  “Well, there’s this thing with a homeless guy too. He hanged himself, and I can’t figure out why.”

  “I’ll bet he didn’t pay you in advance.”

  “You know, it’s funny you should say it, but someone in this city might have the money that he would have used to hire me.”

  “Do I need to tell you to be careful?”

  “No, but it always helps.”

  “I doubt that, but for the sake of your daughter . . .”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “You in a bar?”

  “Rosie’s.”

  “Ah. A date?”

  Macy arrived. She had some photocopied pages in one hand and a mug in the other. Like me, she had sought coffee.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  Rachel laughed. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Go on, get lost.”

  I hung up. Macy had been hanging back in an effort to give me privacy. Now she stepped forward and laid the papers on the table as she sat.

  “You can read,” she said, “but I’m not leaving them with you, okay?”

  “Understood.”

  It was the ME’s report on Jude’s body. I could probably have bargained a look at it out from the ME’s office, but this saved me the trouble of a trip to Augusta. The rope used in the hanging was cotton, with a running knot placed above the occipital region. Some rope fibers and remnants had been found on a table nearby, along with marks in the wood that were consistent with the cutting action of a sharp knife.

  “Did you find a knife at the scene?” I asked Macy.

  “No, but it could have been with the other possessions that were taken.”

  “I guess.”

  Rigor mortis and postmortem staining on both legs, distal portion of upper limbs, and area of waist above the belt line. Both eyes partially open; conjunctiva congested and cornea hazy. Mouth partially open, tongue protruding.

  I moved on to the ligature mark. The ME found that it encircled the whole neck, apart from a small gap beneath the knot, consistent with the drag weight of the body. The ligature ran backward, upward, and toward the occipital region. The ligature marks were slightly wider on the left of the neck than on the right, but only by about a fifth of an inch. Dissection of the neck revealed no evidence of fracture of the thyroid cartilage or hyoid bone, as is often the case in forced strangulation, which seemed to rule out the possibility that Jude had been attacked. Likewise, there was no extravasation—forced flow—of blood in the neck tissues. The ME had concluded that the cause of death was asphyxia due to suicidal hanging by ligature.

  The only other noteworthy inclusion in the report was a list of bruises, scars, and abrasions to Jude’s body. They were considerable enough to make me wince. As if to compound the issue, Macy slid another sheet of paper across the table. It was a color copy, and the quality wasn’t great. This was a small mercy, given what the two photographs on it revealed about the battering that Jude had taken over the years. Falls, fights, beatings: all were recorded on a map of skin and flesh, and all were concealed beneath the trappings of a thrift-shop dandy. Anyone who was dumb enough to imagine that life on the streets of Portland was some kind of state-funded outdoor vacation needed just one look at the picture of Jude’s torso and limbs to be set straight.

  “The ME says some are recent, but most are pretty old,” said Macy. “One or two might have been received in the hours prior to his death. These here are interesting.”

  She pointed to marks on Jude’s upper right and left arms.

  “What are they?”

  Macy handed over a final sheet. She had a flair for the dramatic. The pictures showed enlargements of the marks.

  “They look like grips,” I said, “as though someone held him hard from behind.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Macy. “But it doesn’t mean they’re connected to his death. This was a man who took knocks on a regular basis.”

  “You going to ask around?”

  “I wasn’t until you showed up. Look, I still think he took his own life, but I’ll admit that you’ve raised enough questions to make me wonder again about why he did it. Might be useful if we could find the contents of his pack, though—or, better still, talk to whoever made that cal
l. You never know what we might learn.”

  “You try asking around?”

  “Nix did, as best he could. If anybody knew anything, they were keeping quiet. But if I came across a dead man, and then rifled his belongings and stole what little money he had, I’d probably keep quiet about it too.”

  Macy gathered up the photocopies and finished her coffee.

  “So, you doing much pro bono work these days?”

  “No, but I hear it’s good for the soul.”

  “Which is why you’ll keep on this—for the good of your soul, and the fact that you think you might owe Jude some hours?”

  “Whatever I owe him, it’s not hours,” I said.

  “You still have my number?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I thought you might have lost it, seeing as how you never called and all.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. It was a good dinner, and you did pay for it.”

  “It was, but I still should have called. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  “I do,” she said. “The same things that stopped me from calling you. Life. Death.”

  She stood.

  “You know how to find me,” she said. “I’d appreciate a heads-up if you learn anything.”

  “Done,” I said.

  She turned back briefly as she walked away.

  “It was good seeing you again.”

  “And you,” I said.

  I watched her go. A couple of other guys did too.

  Damn.

  CHAPTER

  XV

  Morland sat on one side of the kitchen table, Hayley Conyer to his right. Harry and Erin sat on the other side, facing them. The Dixons had never entertained Hayley in their home before. They had never entertained her anywhere. Neither had they ever set foot in her house. They had heard that it was beautiful and ornate, if gloomy. Erin was secretly pleased that, while their own home might not have been anything special, it wasn’t lacking in cheer. The kitchen was bright, and the living room that connected to it was even brighter. There was a shadow over all of it now, though. Hayley Conyer seemed to have brought something of the night in with her.

  “You have a lovely home,” she said, in the manner of one who was surprised at how far the little people could stretch a nickel but still wouldn’t want to live like them.

  “Thank you,” said Erin.

  She had made coffee. She had a vague recollection that Hayley Conyer preferred tea, but she deliberately hadn’t offered her any. She wasn’t even sure that there was tea in the house. If there was, it had been there for so long that nobody would want to drink it.

  “I noticed that the paintwork on your windows is flaking,” said Morland. “You ought to do something with it before it gets much worse.”

  Harry’s smile didn’t waver. It was a test. Everything was a test now, and the only thing that mattered in a test was not failing.

  “I was waiting for winter to pass,” he said. “It’s hard to paint a window frame when your hands are shaking with cold. You’re liable to end up with windows that you can’t see much out of.”

  Morland wasn’t about to let it go.

  “You could have taken care of it last summer.”

  Harry was finding it hard to keep his smile in place.

  “I was busy last summer.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Making a living. Is this an interrogation, Chief?”

  Hayley Conyer intervened.

  “We’re just worried about you, Harry. With this downturn in the economy, and the way it’s hit construction—well, you’re more . . . ­vulnerable than most. Businesses like yours must be suffering.”

  “We’re getting by,” said Erin. She wasn’t going to let her husband be cornered alone by these two. “Harry works hard.”

  “I’m sure he does,” said Conyer.

  She pursed her lips, and then pulled from memory the semblance of a concerned expression.

  “You see, it’s the job of the board to protect the town, and the best way we can do that is by protecting the people of the town.”

  She didn’t look at Harry. She had her eyes on Erin. She spoke to Erin as though to a slow child. She was goading her, just as Morland had goaded Harry. They wanted a reaction. They wanted anger.

  They wanted an excuse.

  “I understand that, Hayley,” said Erin. She didn’t allow even a drop of sarcasm to pollute her apparent sincerity.

  “I’m glad. That’s why I asked Chief Morland here to look into your affairs some, just to be sure that all was well with you.”

  This time, Erin couldn’t conceal her anger.

  “You what?”

  Harry placed a hand on her arm, leaning into it so that she felt his weight.

  Calm, calm.

  “Would you mind explaining to me what that means?” said Harry.

  “It means,” said Morland, “that I talked to some of your suppliers, and your subcontractors. It means that, when the mood has struck me, I’ve followed you around these last few weeks. It means that I’ve had a meeting with Allan Dantree at the bank, and we had a discreet conversation about your accounts.”

  Harry couldn’t help but close his eyes for a moment. He’d tried so hard, but he’d underestimated Morland, and Hayley Conyer, and the board. He wasn’t the first to have tried to hide his difficulties, and he wouldn’t be the last. He should have known that, over the centuries, the town had learned to spot weakness, but he had exposed himself by applying to the town’s fund for that loan. Perhaps they’d all just been more alert than usual to strange patterns, blips in behavior, because of the economy. So many folk were struggling in the current climate. That was why the board had acted. That was why they had taken the girl.

  “Those are our private affairs,” said Erin, but her voice sounded hollow even to her. In Prosperous nothing was private, not really.

  “But what happens when private difficulties affect all?” said Hayley, still speaking in that maddeningly reasonable, insidiously patronizing tone. God, Erin hated her. It was as though cataracts had been removed from her eyes, the old clouded lenses replaced with ones that were new and clear. She saw the town as it really was, saw it in all its viciousness, its self-regard, its madness. They had been brainwashed, conditioned by centuries of behavior, but it was only when it arrived at their own door, in the form of the girl, that Harry and Erin realized that they could no longer be a part of it. Releasing the girl was an imperfect solution, the action of those who were still not brave enough to take the final step themselves and hoped that another might do it for them. The girl would go to the police, she would tell her story, and they would come.

  And what then? The girl would have been able to give the police a description of Walter and Beatrix, and of Harry and Erin. All four would have been questioned, but Walter and Beatrix wouldn’t have buckled under interrogation. They had been responsible for finding and taking the last two girls, but they were now nearing death. They were as loyal to the town as Hayley Conyer was, and they weren’t likely to roll over on it in the final years of their life. At best, it would have been their word against that of Harry and Erin.

  They threatened us. They told us to get them a girl or they’d burn our house down. We’re old. We were frightened. We didn’t know what they wanted with the girl. We didn’t ask. . . .

  And Hayley Conyer, and the selectmen, and Chief Morland? Why, there’d be nothing to connect them to the girl, nothing beyond the word of Harry and Erin Dixon, who’d kept her trapped in their basement before leaving a door unlocked, and it could be that they did so only because they’d lost the courage to follow through on whatever it was they had planned for her. They would have been liable to felony charges of kidnapping and criminal restr
aint—a Class A crime, or a Class B if the prosecution accepted that they’d voluntarily released the victim alive and in a safe place, and not suffering from serious bodily injury. It was the difference between ten years behind bars and thirty years, but it would still have been more time than either of them wanted to spend in a cell.

  And maybe, just maybe, someone might have believed their story.

  But no, that was the greatest fantasy of all.

  “Harry? Erin? You still with us?”

  It was Morland speaking.

  Erin looked at her husband. She knew that their thoughts had been running along similar lines.

  What if, what if . . .

  “Yes,” said Harry. “We’re listening.”

  “You’re in financial difficulties—far more serious difficulties than you chose to share with Ben when you asked for a loan—and you tried to keep them from us.”

  There was no point in denying it.

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we were ashamed.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. We were frightened as well.”

  “Frightened? Frightened of what?”

  There was no going back now.

  “Frightened that the town might turn against us.”

  Now Hayley Conyer spoke again.

  “The town does not turn against its own, Harry. It protects them. That’s the reason for its existence. How could you doubt that?”

  Harry squeezed the bridge of his nose with the index finger and thumb of his right hand. He could feel a migraine coming on.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “With all that was going on, with all our problems . . .”

  “You lost faith,” said Conyer.

  “Yes, Hayley, I suppose we did.”

  Conyer leaned across the table. Her breath smelled of mints and dying.

  “Did you let the girl go?” she asked.

  “No,” said Harry.

  “Look me in the eye and tell me true.”

  Harry took his hand away from his nose and stared Conyer down.