The Woman in the Woods

by John Connolly

  “If you’re planning on dying, you’d better leave him to someone else in your will,” said Parker.

  Angel ignored this. “Just for a while, until I’m back on my feet again.”

  “He’s doing fine. The world hasn’t stopped turning because you now weigh less.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “I know you are.”

  “He’s angry. Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

  “He’s already blown up a truck. Does that count?”

  Angel thought about this.

  “Okay, so more stupid.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Louis was waiting outside when Parker left the room. Angel was never truly alone at the hospital, even allowing for the ministrations of the staff. When Louis was not present, a pair of unlikely but effective guardians—the Fulci brothers—maintained alternate watches over Angel’s bed. Louis had acquired his share of enemies over the years, some of them through his allegiance with Parker, and it was not inconceivable that they might try to punish him through Angel.

  “Well?” said Louis.

  “He seems pretty lucid.”

  “Yeah? He was talking about religion yesterday, but that might have been the opiates. I don’t want him finding Jesus.”

  “I wouldn’t be too concerned. If Jesus thinks Angel is trying to find him, Jesus will just change his name.”

  This appeared to reassure Louis. Whatever Louis’s conception of the next world might entail—and Parker now had a clearer idea after their conversation in Maine—it made little allowance for holy rollers in this one.

  Parker left Louis with Angel, and went to have dinner with his ex-partner, Walter Cole, and Walter’s wife, Lee. She was aging gently, Walter less so, but they both appeared happy and well. Thanks to their daughter, Ellen, they were grandparents, and were enjoying all the benefits of a small child’s company without most of the drawbacks. Ellen had asked Parker to be godfather to the girl, Melanie. He had politely declined, but he knew Ellen understood his reasons. Years earlier, he had saved her from a predator named Caleb Kyle, and the trauma of those events still lingered for both of them. Yet he was touched that Ellen would think of him in such a way, and a bond would always exist between them, one that now extended to her child.

  There were others whom Parker could have seen while he was in the city, including the rabbi Epstein and his shadow, the beautiful mute named Liat, with whom Parker had once spent a single interesting night in bed. He didn’t want to turn his trip into some form of the Stations of the Cross, and so contented himself with calling by Nicola’s on First Avenue to say hello and pick up some imported Italian delicacies before taking a cab to JFK for his JetBlue flight back to Portland.

  Upon arrival at Portland Jetport, he bought a copy of the Press Herald with every intention of reading it when he got home, but tiredness got the better of him, and so he went to bed without reading of a woman’s semi-preserved remains found in the Maine woods.

  2

  The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returned to see how their children fare.

  —J. M. Barrie, The Little White Bird

  CHAPTER

  XXI

  Daniel opened his eyes. His room was dark except for the night-light shaped like a starship that burned in an outlet by the door, so he could find his way to the bathroom if he needed to go.

  On the nightstand by his bed stood a glass of water, a lamp, and a toy telephone made of wood and plastic. His mother had bought it for him when he was very little because he had been fascinated by it in the store. Its buttons bore animals instead of numbers, so Daniel heard clucking if he put the receiver to his ear and pressed the chicken button, and the sheep bleated, and the cow mooed. The phone rang if the handle at the side was turned.

  But Daniel hadn’t used the phone in a very long time. Truth be told, the novelty of hearing animals on the other end of the line had worn off pretty fast, although he had not yet reached the stage where he was willing to discard any toy, however neglected it might have become, and so the telephone sat at the bottom of the secondary toy box in his closet. There it would probably have remained until it was time to throw out the entire contents, or take them to Goodwill.

  Except two nights before, the telephone had started ringing.

  Daniel turned over on his pillow to regard the toy. The base was a smiling face, and the nose glowed red when the phone rang, or an animal was making noises, but it was silent now, and the nose remained unlit.

  It had taken Daniel a while to notice the sound the first time it happened. He’d been so deep in sleep that the ringing had to penetrate layers of unconsciousness to reach him, and he was confused when he woke. At first he thought the sound was coming from the smoke alarm in the hall, and he almost called for his mother, but it soon became clear that the source of the muffled jangling was somewhere inside the room. He supposed it was one of his toys malfunctioning as a battery died, but he couldn’t go back to sleep while the disturbance continued. He got out of bed and went to the closet, shivering because the heater was on a timer, and the temperature felt as though it was at its lowest point. The closet light turned on automatically as the doors opened, and he had to toss aside sneakers and a couple of jackets in order to get to the box. Once done, it was a moment’s work to find the phone.

  The toy didn’t have any batteries to remove—they were long gone—and yet somehow it was still ringing. But even with batteries it shouldn’t have been making a sound, because no one was turning the handle. Yet there it was, tinkling away, the red nose flashing on and off, demanding that he pick up the receiver and listen to the voice of the zookeeper asking him to identify a cow or a lion by pressing the correct button, which was what one heard if one answered the phone, although even at a younger age Daniel had wondered what kind of zoo kept chickens and cows alongside lions.

  Which was when Daniel decided, quite logically, that the only way to stop the phone ringing was to pick up the receiver.

  * * *

  FROM OUTSIDE DANIEL’S WINDOW came the steady dripping of ice melting from the roof. Daniel didn’t mind the sound the ice was making. It was comforting, like rainfall.

  He wanted the phone to ring.

  He didn’t want the phone to ring.

  He’d had no intention of putting the receiver to his ear when the phone rang that first time. He simply figured that the noise would stop if he picked up, after which he could set the toy aside and ask his mom to fix it in the morning, or just get rid of the phone—although he was concerned that this might precipitate, on his mom’s part, an effort at a more organized reduction of his collection, and Daniel was reluctant to encourage such a project. He decided he might be better off detaching the receiver and leaving well enough alone.

  But when he held the receiver to his ear he heard not the zookeeper but falling rain, and buried somewhere within it, like a signal fighting through static, the voice of a woman.

  hello? said the woman. hello?

  Daniel dropped the receiver and scuttled backward to his bed, but he could still hear the voice.

  can you hear me?

  He could have gone to his mom, but he was as much intrigued as frightened. An unexpected man on the other end of the phone would simply have been disturbing, but this—this was odd, and there was something in the voice that was almost familiar.

  Daniel picked up the receiver again.

  “Hello?”

  The woman’s voice seemed to catch, as though she were trying to keep from crying.

  is that you?

  “Who is this?”

  what did they name you?

  He wasn’t sure whether to answer. Any conversation would certainly fall into the category of talking to strangers, which his mom always made clear to him was very bad, although this was a stranger on the other end of the phone, which wasn’t as bad as speaking to someone in person, and a woman, which was less troublesome again.

&n
bsp; “Daniel,” he said.

  The woman repeated his name, over and over, savoring it like candy.

  it’s lovely to be speaking to you at last

  Daniel wasn’t sure that he felt the same way, but he’d come this far, so . . .

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  my name, said the woman, is karis

  CHAPTER

  XXII

  Parker met Moxie Castin at the Bayou Kitchen on Deering Avenue. Moxie was enjoying the morning sunshine at the big window table, which was usually reserved for larger parties, but since the lawyer virtually constituted a larger party all on his own, an exception had been made for him. Parker noticed that this seemed to happen a lot where Moxie was concerned: rules were discreetly bent to accommodate him, perhaps because he refused even to acknowledge, never mind obey, most of them. This meant that the only options for those involved in their creation were either to dispense with the rules entirely, which could potentially lead to anarchy; attempt to impose them on Moxie, which would definitely lead to sorrow and despair; or decide that they shouldn’t apply to Moxie, which seemed the most sensible course of action. Most businesses in Portland figured it was probably better to keep Moxie Castin sweet. Everybody would need a lawyer at some point, and better to have Moxie on your side than the other guy’s. And if Moxie did happen to be on the other guy’s side, he might go easier on you if you hadn’t crossed him in the past.

  Moxie was wearing a powder-blue suit, and a necktie so vibrant it was almost a cry for help. He was drinking coffee and reading the Press Herald, although copies of The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post were also stacked beside him. If newspapers eventually vanished entirely, it wouldn’t be Moxie’s fault. He and Parker had that much in common.

  “I already ordered for you,” he said, as Parker took a seat across from him.

  “How did you know what I wanted?”

  “What does it matter? Everything’s good here.”

  Parker had to concede that Moxie was correct, but still, a man liked to be consulted.

  Moxie turned a page of his paper.

  “Take a look in the bag, see what I scored at Pinecone and Chickadee,” he instructed.

  Pinecone + Chickadee was a gift store of more than usual eccentricity down on Free Street. One of its paper bags lay on the bench seat by Moxie. Parker examined the contents while coffee was poured for him. He tried to find the right words for what he saw, but they wouldn’t come, so he settled for a simple declaration of fact.

  “They’re Heroes of the Torah drinking glasses,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  They were four in total, each decorated in blue with a portrait of one of the heroes in question: A. Hildenseimer, Yitzchak Spector, R. Elizer Goldberg, and S. Y. Rabinovitch. Parker had no idea why these men might be considered heroic in Torah circles. All he could say for certain was that the glasses weren’t necessarily improved by their visages.

  “I didn’t know you were Jewish,” said Parker.

  “It never came up, and I’m only kind of Jewish. I’m Jewish-ish. Anyway, you don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate these bad boys.”

  He appeared to be entirely serious.

  “Well,” said Parker, “they’re quite a find.”

  Swap ’em with your friends, advised a line under each portrait.

  “Seems you can swap them,” said Parker.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess if you have doubles, you can exchange one, like baseball cards, or go for a Torah MVP. You know, like swapping a John Wasdin for a Manny Ramirez.”

  “Why would anyone pick up two of the same glass?”

  “Moxie, in this case I don’t know why anyone would pick up one of the same glass.”

  Moxie returned his purchases to the bag in what Parker could only have described as an aggrieved manner.

  “You sadden me,” said Moxie.

  Their breakfasts arrived. Moxie had settled on Smokin’ Caterpillar omelets for both of them: three spicy eggs, hash, grilled onions, Swiss, with toast and a side of homies. The Bayou Kitchen deemed itself to have failed its customers if they could see their plates under all the food.

  “Eat up,” said Moxie. “You’re getting thin.”

  Moxie, by contrast, remained a big man yet somehow contrived to run half marathons and not die. Either he was a medical miracle or God was afraid to call him in case of litigation.

  Moxie filled his mouth with hash and egg, and tapped a knife on a page of the Press Herald. It was a short article indicating that the police still had no leads on the immolation of an expensive truck on the waterfront the previous weekend.

  “You happen to hear that someone blew up Billy Ocean’s truck in a parking lot off Commercial?” asked Moxie.

  “Billy Ocean the singer?”

  “Funny. You think the ‘Caribbean Queen’ guy drives around in a Chevy tricked up with the rebel flag? No, Billy Ocean, Bobby Ocean’s son.”

  Bobby Ocean’s real name was Robert Stonehurst, but everyone knew him as Bobby Ocean because he kept an office down by the Portland Ocean Terminal, and was deeply invested in various enterprises connected to boat ownership, fishing, tourism, restaurants, real estate, and any other way of turning a buck while still being able to look out his window at the sea. Bobby was smart, but his son was reputedly dumber than a stump.

  “Is this a matter of concern to you?” Parker asked.

  “Only because Bobby Ocean turned up at my office yesterday. Said he figured the truck business for an act of terrorism, but didn’t trust the Portland PD to do anything about it. He wanted me to hire someone on his behalf to investigate the crime.”

  “Did he suggest a motive?”

  “Bobby suspects it was an assault on his son’s First Amendment rights, and on patriotism in general, owing to Billy’s desire to celebrate certain aspects of his white Anglo-Saxon heritage, such as displaying the flag of the Confederacy.”

  “In Maine.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because where else would he choose to display it?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And why did Bobby Ocean come to you?”

  “Because we’re both GOP donors. We sat at the same table at a fund-raising dinner before Christmas. He complained about the soup. Bobby Ocean gives the party a bad name.”

  “I may be missing something here, but since when was flying the Confederate flag in downtown Portland an act of patriotism?”

  “Don’t ask me. If I could outlaw one concept, the obvious others apart, it would be fucking ‘patriotism.’ It’s nationalism in better clothing. You know who were patriots? The Nazis, and those Japanese fucks who bombed Pearl Harbor, and the Serbs who rounded up all those men and boys and put them in holes in the ground outside Srebrenica before going back to rape their women, at least until someone tried bombing sense into them. Patriots built Auschwitz. You start believing that ‘my-country-wrong-or-right’ shit, and it always ends up at the same place: a pit filled with bones.”

  Moxie jammed another forkful of food into his mouth. To give him credit, he didn’t let his feelings get in the way of his appetite.

  Parker let a few moments go by before he said:

  “I take it you didn’t offer to help Bobby in his quest for justice.”

  “No, but I could have made easy money just by telling him straight-out who did it. I hear stories, some of them more believable than others, like the one about who might have been drinking in a bar on Commercial the night Billy Ocean’s truck was reduced to a burned-out shell.”

  Parker looked at Moxie. Moxie looked back at him.

  “You need me to say it aloud?” asked Moxie.

  “Not really.”

  “I think we can agree that the gentleman in question is not the kind to smile kindly on some oversized Johnny Reb wagon parked in his line of sight.”

  “Possibly not.”

  “So: Were you with him?”

  “You
think I could have stopped him if I was?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

  “I didn’t know he was going to blow up the truck.”

  “What did you think he was going to do, write the owner a strongly worded letter? You must have realized he was going to inflict some kind of damage.”

  “He might just have slashed the tires.”

  “If I thought you really believed that, I’d be looking for a new investigator, in case someone tried to offer you some magic beans in return for a head start.”

  “Louis’s going through a tough time. He needed to vent.”

  Moxie tried to compose his features into something resembling a sympathetic expression. Tried, and failed.

  “A lot of folks have it tough, but they restrain themselves from committing acts of arson. God forbid I should accuse the Portland PD of even considering engaging in racial profiling, but if you think the cops haven’t already asked around and come up with a description of a black man who happened to be drinking near Billy Ocean’s truck shortly before it exploded, you’re all out to sea. I hope he paid cash at the bar.”

  “He always pays cash,” said Parker. “When he pays at all.”

  “I’m glad you can joke about this. Bobby Ocean and his idiot son can go fuck themselves as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t believe the police care for either of them any more than I do, but nobody wants trucks burning on the waterfront. It sends out the wrong message, which means this isn’t going to slide easily, and your friend doesn’t need that kind of attention. Rein him in. Better yet, tell him to indulge his firebug impulses down in New York, or even Jersey. Someone’s always burning shit in Jersey. He’ll blend right in.”

  Parker knew Moxie was right, although he wasn’t certain that Louis could be reined in, not in his current mood. At least up here Parker could potentially keep an eye on him, and there was a limit to the amount of trouble he could cause in Maine compared to New York—or indeed, Jersey.