The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  “And if I refuse to resign?”

  Souleby noted movement among the trees, and saw that many members of the senior families hadn’t left the environs of the cemetery. They were watching from the woods, and as he stared they began to turn their backs on him, one by one, until he could see their faces no longer. Then, and only then, did they begin to disperse.

  “The will of the people will prevail, Thomas,” said Morland, and Souleby knew that he was alone.

  Morland smiled sadly and walked away. Only when Souleby had seen Morland’s Crown Vic drive off, and was certain the chief was gone, did he join his wife outside the railings.

  “What did he say to you?” said Constance.

  “I want you to go and stay with Becky and Josh,” he told her.

  Becky was their eldest daughter. She lived down in Portsmouth. Her husband, Josh, was Calder Ayton’s nephew. Souleby trusted him.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You will,” he said. “All this will pass, but for a time things will be difficult. I can’t be worrying about you while I try to make this good.”

  “No,” she said. “No, no . . .”

  She started to cry. He held her.

  “It’ll be all right,” he lied. “Everything will be all right.”

  CONSTANCE LEFT LATE THAT afternoon. Becky drove up to collect her. Becky tried to question her father, but he wouldn’t answer her, and she knew the ways of Prosperous well enough to pursue the matter no further for now.

  Souleby poured himself a glass of brandy. He watched the sun set. He felt drowsy, but he didn’t sleep.

  It was Luke Joblin who came for him, shortly after eight. His son Bryan waited in the backseat. Souleby saw him when the interior light came on as Luke opened the driver’s door. He could have fought them, of course, but what would have been the point? Instead, the old Colt now lay under his wife’s pillow. She would find it there, and she would know.

  “Come along, Thomas,” said Luke. He spoke gently but firmly, the way one might speak to an elderly relative who refused to do what was best for him. “It’s time to go. . . .”

  CHAPTER

  LVI

  The call came through the following evening as Morland was preparing for bed. He was fresh out of the shower, and had changed into pajama pants and an old Red Sox T-shirt. He was quietly eating a late-night sandwich in the dark prior to hitting the sack and maybe spending some quality time with his wife. They hadn’t made love in more than a week. Understandably, Morland hadn’t been in the mood. His wife didn’t like him eating late at night, but Morland took the view that what she didn’t know, or couldn’t prove, wouldn’t hurt her. It was, he thought, true of so many things.

  He had just returned from a visit to Souleby’s bitch wife, Constance, at her daughter’s house, accompanied by Luke Joblin and three representatives of the most senior families. They’d commented on Constance Souleby’s lovely grandchildren, and the fine house in which her daughter and son-in-law lived, for the best kind of threat was the one that didn’t sound like a threat at all, the kind that planted bad pictures in the imagination. Becky, Constance’s daughter, offered coffee, but nobody accepted.

  “What have you done with Thomas?” Constance asked Morland, once the pleasantries were done with.

  “Nothing,” he said. “We just want him to stay out of the way until after the election. We don’t need him interfering, and you know he’ll interfere. He’s safe.”

  The election was scheduled for Saturday. Elections to the board were always held on Saturdays, just to be sure that the maximum number of people could vote.

  “Why hasn’t he called me?”

  “If you want him to call, we’ll have him do that,” said Luke Joblin, all reasonableness and reassurance. “We had to take away his cell phone. You understand why.”

  If Constance Souleby did understand, she wasn’t giving any sign of it.

  “You had no right,” she said. “No right.”

  “The town is changing, Mrs. Souleby,” said Morland. “We just barely survived the mess of the last couple of weeks. That can’t happen again. There can be no more blood spilled in Prosperous. The old board, and all that it did, has to be consigned to history. We have to find a way to survive in the twenty-first century.”

  A shiver of unease ran through the three representatives of the senior families—two men, one woman, all as old as any in the town. Morland had convinced them of the necessity for change, but this didn’t mean that they weren’t frightened by it.

  “Thomas can adapt,” said Constance. She was trying not to plead, but it bled into her voice nonetheless.

  “That’s not the issue,” said Morland. “The decision has been made.”

  There was nothing more to be said. Morland, Joblin, and the three other visitors got to their feet. Someone mumbled an awkward goodbye, to no reply.

  Morland was almost at his car when he heard Constance Souleby begin to wail. Luke Joblin heard it too. Morland could see him tense, even as he tried to ignore the old woman’s cries.

  “Why did you tell her that her husband would call her?” said Morland. Thomas Souleby wouldn’t be calling anyone ever again. There would probably be no body. Once the elections were concluded, he would be reported missing.

  “I was trying to keep her calm.”

  “You figure it worked?” said Morland, as the cries rose in intensity and then were smothered. Morland could almost see Constance Souleby’s daughter holding her mother’s head, kissing her, shushing her.

  “No, not really,” said Joblin. “You think she knows?”

  “Oh, she knows.”

  “What will she do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sound very certain of that.”

  “She won’t turn on the town. It’s not in her blood.”

  NOW, AS MORLAND LISTENED to the ringing of his cell phone, he wondered if he had been right to sound so confident. Great change was always traumatic, and with trauma came actions that were unanticipated, and out of character.

  His wife appeared on the stairs, come to see where he was. She was wearing a sheer nightgown. Through it he could see the curves of her body. He tossed the remains of the sandwich into the sink before she noticed. He’d get rid of them in the morning. He was usually awake before her.

  “Can’t you ignore it?” she asked.

  “Just let me see who it is.”

  He went to the hall and looked at the display.

  Warraner.

  He had yet to tackle the pastor. Rumors of what Morland was proposing had certainly already reached him. Warraner would have to be convinced of the necessity of acceding to the will of the town, but it wouldn’t be easy. Still, he could continue to tend his church, and pray to his god behind the silence of its walls. Perhaps the pastor also hoped that, when bad times came, the town would turn once again to the church, and the old ways could resume. If that was the case, Morland thought that Warraner’s prayers to his god would have to be powerful as all hell, because Morland would send Warraner the way of Hayley Conyer and Thomas Souleby before he let another girl end up kneeling by a hole in the cemetery.

  Morland considered ignoring the call, but he remained the chief of police. If Warraner wanted to argue, Morland would put him off until morning, but if it was something more urgent . . .

  He hit the green button.

  “Pastor,” he said. “I’m just about to go to bed.”

  “There’s a homeless man on the church grounds,” said Warraner. “He’s shouting about a murder.”

  Shit.

  “I’m on my way,” said Morland.

  He looked to his wife.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  But she was already gone.

  WARRANER HUNG UP THE phone. In a corner of the living room lay the body of Bryan Joblin. It was Joblin’s mis
fortune to have been present at Warraner’s house when the men arrived, and to have reached for his gun at the sight of them. Joblin had died instantly. He had recently fixed his eye on Warraner’s eldest daughter, Ruth, a development about which Warraner had been deeply unhappy. That problem, at least, now appeared to have been solved.

  Nearby, Warraner’s wife and children were under a gun. One not dissimilar to it was only inches from the pastor’s face. If he focused on the muzzle—and he was focusing, because it was very, very close to him—the masked face of the man holding the weapon became a blur. Warraner could only see one or the other properly, but not both: the instrument of killing, or the man who might let him live.

  “You did good.”

  Warraner couldn’t reply. It was all he had been able to do just to keep his voice steady as he spoke to Morland. He managed to generate some spittle in his mouth, and found his voice.

  “What’s going to happen to my family?”

  “Nothing,” replied the gunman. “Although I can’t promise the same for you.”

  THE PROSPEROUS POLICE DEPARTMENT kept one officer on duty at night. In the event of an emergency, that officer could call the chief, or even the Maine State Police, but so far no nighttime incident had ever been sufficiently serious to require the assistance of the MSP. The officer on duty that night was Connie Dackson, and she was trying to rewire the plug on the coffee machine when two men entered the Town Office. One carried a shotgun, the other a pistol. Both wore black ski masks.

  “Not a move,” said the one holding the shotgun, which was now pointing at Dackson.

  Nobody had ever pointed a gun at her before. She was so scared that she couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to. She was forced facedown onto the floor, and her hands were secured with her own cuffs. A gag was placed over her mouth, and she was shown into the town’s single holding cell. It was more than a hundred years old, just like the building that housed it. The bars were green, and Dackson had a clear view through them as the two men began disabling the department’s entire communications system.

  MORLAND COULDN’T RAISE Connie Dackson on her cell phone as he drove. He wasn’t worried, though, not yet. She might have left it in her vehicle if she was patrolling, or simply be in the john. She might already even be with Warraner, trying to coax some bum out of the churchyard, a bum who was muttering about murder. That was when Morland knew that he was tired: Warraner wouldn’t be dumb enough to call Dackson if there was a chance that she might hear something she shouldn’t. This was up to him, and him alone.

  The first thing that struck him as he reached the churchyard was the fact that the door of the church was open. The gate to the churchyard was unlocked, the chain lying on the ground. The chain had been cut, just like the one farther down the road.

  The second was that he could find no trace of any bum.

  He didn’t call out Warraner’s name. He didn’t have to. He could now see the pastor kneeling in the doorway of the church. Beside him stood a tall man in a ski mask. He held a gun to the pastor’s head.

  “Chief Morland,” said the man. “Glad you could make it.”

  Morland thought that he sounded like a black man. Prosperous didn’t have any black residents. This wasn’t unusual in such a white state. Maine was one of the few places where nobody could try to blame blacks for crime. The white folk had that one all sewn up.

  Morland raised his own gun.

  “Lower your weapon,” he said.

  “Look around you, Chief,” said the man.

  Morland risked a glance. Three other figures, also masked, materialized from the gloom of the cemetery. Two were armed, their weapons pointing in his direction. The third held a coil of wire, and the sight of it caused Morland to notice for the first time the cables that crossed the cemetery and hung over some of the gravestones. He moved slightly to the right, and saw one of the holes that had so interested the state police investigators when they’d come looking for Kayley Madsen. A length of wire led into its depths.

  “What are you doing?” said Morland.

  “Putting the finishing touches to thermite and Semtex devices,” said the man. “We’re about to destroy your town, starting here. Now put down your gun. I want to talk. The pastor has been telling me a lot about you.”

  But Morland wasn’t about to talk to anyone.

  Instead, he simply started shooting.

  NOBODY LIVED ON PROSPEROUS’S Main Street. It was strictly businesses only. As midnight approached, the street and its surround stood empty.

  Slowly, men began to emerge from the shadows, eight in all. Ronald Straydeer led them, his features, like those of the others with him, concealed.

  “You sure you’re okay to do this?” asked Ronald.

  “I’m sure,” said Shaky.

  He held an incendiary device in his good hand. A cold wind was blowing from the east. That was good. It would fan the flames.

  There came the sound of breaking glass.

  Minutes later, Prosperous started to burn.

  MORLAND WAS RUNNING FOR his life. Shots struck the old gravestones, or whistled past his ear to vanish into the forest beyond. He stayed low, using the monuments for cover—weaving, dodging, firing blindly, but never stopping. He was outnumbered, and these men could easily surround and kill him, but he knew the woods and they did not. Anyway, staying in the cemetery was not an option, for it was now one massive explosion waiting to occur.

  He didn’t head for the gate. That would be too obvious. Instead, he sprinted for the railings and scrambled over them. He took a shot to the upper arm but didn’t pause. The woods were ahead of him, and he lost himself in their darkness. He risked only one look back, and saw that the church door was now closed. The shooting had stopped, and in the silence Morland heard Warraner’s voice raised in song from behind the old stone walls. Somehow, in the confusion, he had managed to lock himself inside.

  “When men begin to weed,” sang Warraner, “the thistle from the seed . . .”

  The figures in the churchyard started to run. Morland reloaded his gun and drew a bead on the nearest man. Perhaps he could yet stop this. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  But he didn’t fire. Was this not what he wanted, what he sought? Let this be an end to it. He lowered his gun, and retreated deeper into the trees, faster now, putting as much distance between him and the church as he could. If he could get to his car and return to town, he and Dackson could hole up in the Town Office while they called for backup.

  He reached the road and saw an orange glow rising from Prosperous. The town was already burning, but he barely had time to register that fact before a massive blast rent the night. The ground shook, and Morland was knocked off his feet by the force of it. Debris was hurled high into the air, and earth, stone, and wood rained down on him where he lay. He could feel the heat of the detonation, even from the road.

  He covered his head with his hands, and prayed to every god and none.

  CHAPTER

  LVII

  Main Street was gone, reduced to brick shells and vacant, charred lots. At least one of the ruined buildings had dated back to the eighteenth century, and others were only marginally younger. Historians and architecture experts described it as a tragedy.

  The Chapel of the Congregation of Adam Before Eve & Eve Before Adam was scattered over woods, roads, and what was left of the cemetery, which wasn’t much at all. Charred human remains, most of them long interred, would be discovered for years after. Incredibly, the total number of fatalities amounted to just three: Pastor Michael Warraner, who had been inside his church when it was blown sky high; Bryan Joblin, killed in cold blood at Warraner’s house; and Thomas Souleby, the senior selectman of the town, who was said to have accompanied Chief Morland to the cemetery when the original call was received about a homeless trespasser, and who had not been able to get clear of the cemetery before the explosion
occurred. Frank Robinson conducted the autopsy on Souleby, just so that there could be no confusion about the matter. Unlike Pastor Warraner, Souleby’s body remained undamaged enough to allow for a proper burial. Morland had suffocated Souleby, just as he had done with Hayley Conyer. If nothing else, the chaos at the church had given him a way of avoiding another cold night of burying a body.

  It was not much, but it was enough.

  The newspapers and TV cameras were back. It would be a long time before they left. When asked about plans to rebuild, Morland told them that work would begin on Main Street almost immediately, but he was unsure about plans for the church. The damage caused by the high explosives used meant that rebuilding the original structure would be ruinously expensive if it was possible at all, which was doubtful. Perhaps a monument might be erected in its place, he suggested. Discussions on the issue would begin, said Morland, once the new board of selectmen was elected.

  It remained unclear who might have been responsible for what was described, almost immediately and inevitably, as an “act of terrorism.” Attention was focused variously on Muslims, fascists, secessionists, opponents of the federal government, radical socialists, and extreme religious organizations, but Morland knew that none of those avenues of inquiry would ever yield any results.

  The truth was that they should never have gone after the detective.

  The Town Office had suffered significant damage, mostly in a successful effort to destroy the engines in the fire department. Officer Connie Dackson had watched it burn. Her captors had removed her from her cell and left her tied up at a safe distance from the conflagration. She thought that they might have been Asian, judging by their accents and their unusual politeness, but she couldn’t be certain. The Prosperous Police Department had immediately moved to temporary lodgings at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting hall.

  On the third day after the attack on his town—for that was what it now was, “his” town—Lucas Morland watched the thawing snow from his window in the local hall. Meltwater ran down what remained of Main Street, starting clear at the top and ending up black as oil by the time it reached the bottom. More snow might come, but it wouldn’t last long. They were done with winter, and winter was done with them. They had survived—he had survived—and the town would be better and stronger for this purging. He felt a deep and abiding sense of admiration for its people. No sooner were the fires extinguished than the cleanup operation had begun. Buildings were being assessed for demolition or restoration, according to the damage they had sustained. Pledges of aid numbering into six figures had already been received. Calls had been made to the heads of the insurance companies involved, warning them that any weaseling out of their commitments would not be tolerated, those calls having significant impact, since they came from members of their own boards who had ties to Prosperous.