The Woman in the Woods

by John Connolly

  On the other hand, he reasoned, Quayle might just be insane.

  Two waiters entered with the venison. It was so rare as to be almost gelatinous at the core, but neither diner offered any complaint. They resumed their conversation when the door was safely closed, as though the arrival of the bloody meat had reminded them of their purpose here.

  “One might almost believe you would prefer if we did not finish our work,” said Quayle.

  “ ‘Our’ work?”

  “Do we not have the same purpose, you and I?”

  “We do not. You serve your own masters.”

  “Of the same aspect and nature as the Buried God.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  Quayle leaned forward. He had consumed a little of the venison, and its juices flecked his chin.

  “Explain your position to me,” he said. “Please. I’m yearning to understand it—and you.”

  The Principal Backer regarded Quayle with open hostility, even disgust.

  “Your Atlas is a contaminant,” he replied. “If what you maintain is true, and it is restored, nothing will survive. The world will turn to fire and ash, and the Not-Gods will watch it burn before turning their attention to war with the Old.”

  “And in doing so will liberate the Buried God. Your god.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You’re a fool,” said Quayle.

  The Principal Backer showed no indication of taking offense. “Am I?”

  “You believe you can negotiate with the Buried God. You and your confederates, generation upon generation, have accrued wealth and influence, and now you are reluctant to relinquish your position. Or are you even serious in your search for the Buried God? Perhaps you would prefer to leave it wherever it lies, and postpone indefinitely the settlement of your account.”

  The Principal Backer allowed his gaze to stray across their surroundings, as though seeking strength and consolation from its dusty portraits of long-deceased members, its nineteenth-century depictions of cityscapes and scenery now so devastated by progress that the artworks bore the same relation to their subjects’ present status as a virgin might to a whore.

  It was ironic, the Principal Backer mused, that many members of this club, so in thrall to rules and proper behavior when it came to the Colonial, and so protective of its reputation and environment, should have achieved their elevated station in life by conspiring in the despoliation of the world beyond its walls. This was the haunt of men and women who routinely made million-dollar donations to museums and galleries, who regarded themselves—and, indeed, were regarded by others—as benefactors to, and guardians of, the cultural heritage of the nation, yet balked at the prospect of paying a living wage to their workers, or of funding the modest safeguards required to ensure that these same people and their families could enjoy breathable air and drink water untainted by bacteria and poisons. If it were indeed the case that behind every great fortune lay a great crime—and this was as true of the New World as of the Old, if not more so—then the membership records of the Colonial were a testament to criminality on a grand and continuing scale, and the Principal Backer was a greater criminal than any, because he was in league with forces that made the worst excesses of the Colonial’s members look like the actions of pickpockets and flimflam men.

  Now here was Quayle, reeking of antiquity, heavy with the rot of ages, reminding him that the bill must soon come due. Who could blame the Principal Backer for seeking to defer payment?

  “Our lives are short,” said the Principal Backer. “Yours are the words of a man who has lived too long.”

  “In that much, at least, we are in agreement.”

  The Principal Backer tried a little more of the venison. It was good—the food at the Colonial was always good, although he sometimes found the kitchen heavy-handed with the cream—and he wasn’t about to let Quayle’s presence interfere with his enjoyment of it, so he continued eating even as his dining companion sat and watched the remainder of his own meal grow cold, with only a sliver of exposed redness to indicate that he had tasted it at all.

  “Whatever my reservations about your purpose here,” said the Principal Backer, “we have offered you the assistance you sought. We gave you Giller, and he comes highly recommended. We facilitated your”—he searched for the correct word to encapsulate the relationship of Mors to Quayle, and the variety of services she doubtless provided: “cumbucket” seemed too crude, so he settled for a less pejorative term—“companion’s requirement of a firearm. I should have thought that a personal meeting between us was both unnecessary and, under the circumstances, a considerable risk. So I still don’t understand why I am dining with you.”

  “Tell me about Parker,” said Quayle.

  The Principal Backer took a moment to dab at his mouth with a napkin and collect his thoughts. To his credit, he had been aware that the possibility of such a question might arise, given Quayle’s intrusion on Parker’s territory, but he hoped Quayle might be able to obtain what he wanted without ever crossing Parker’s path. It was, admittedly, a pipe dream: the mere fact that Quayle’s search had led him to Maine meant Parker must somehow be involved, even if only peripherally. The detective was as implicated as Quayle and the Principal Backer in all that would transpire. The only question was how, and it remained unanswered for the present.

  “That you are asking about Parker suggests you already know a great deal. Did Giller tell you of him?”

  “Mr. Giller inadvertently enabled an introduction.”

  “You’ve met Parker? He’s seen you?”

  Giller had not informed anyone of this, despite being under strict instructions to relay any and all information relating to Quayle’s activities back to those who had organized his employment. Someone would have to remind Giller of his obligations.

  “For the first time, you actually sound anxious for my well-being,” said Quayle.

  “Our experience has been that it is best to keep Parker at one remove.”

  “Your experience with him is precisely what troubles me.”

  “How is he connected to your search?”

  “It seems he’s been hired to find Karis Lamb’s child.”

  “You’re certain that the body is Lamb’s?”

  “Few doubts remain.”

  “Then I recommend you start paying Giller double, to encourage him to speed up his efforts on your behalf. You don’t want Parker to find the child first.”

  “Perhaps I should have hired Parker to begin with.”

  “I’m sure you could always ask him,” said the Principal Backer. “I imagine he’d be intrigued to hear your side of the story.”

  “Your sarcasm rings hollow coming from one who has allowed this threat to persist. Why is Parker not dead?”

  “He was dead. Apparently he was resuscitated on the operating table—more than once. So his continued presence in the world is not for want of attempts to remove him from it.”

  “Attempts on your part?”

  “Not directly.”

  “Why not?”

  “No single reason, but mostly because he has allies, and to act against him would bring them down on us. Even though we had nothing to do with the attack that almost finished him, the repercussions affected us. As a consequence, I continue to spend valuable time trying to hobble a federal investigation.”

  Quayle drank his wine. He waited. When no further information appeared to be forthcoming, he prodded.

  “And?”

  This was deeper than the Principal Backer wished to delve, but while he detested Quayle, and might have preferred to believe the lawyer was an isolated figure, he knew better: Quayle was the agent of the numinous.

  “And,” said the Principal Backer, “Parker may be different.”

  “In what way?”

  Having proceeded thus far, the Principal Backer had no option but to continue, even though it pained him.

  “There are some among us who believe Parker’s nature to be partly divine.”
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  For a time there was silence in the room, until Quayle broke it with laughter.

  “Why: because he survived a gun attack?”

  “Because he has survived any number of attacks.”

  “You and your associates are even more unsound than I thought.”

  The Principal Backer didn’t react to the insult. Americans had endured centuries of patronization by the British. One became inured to it after a while.

  “You’ve met Parker,” said the Principal Backer. “What was your impression of him?”

  “Perceptive. He picked up on my interest in him, although I barely glanced in his direction. He also detected Mors’s presence. He’s dangerous, I suppose. The evidence would suggest as much. But divine? No.”

  The Principal Backer didn’t try to argue.

  “Even if we’re mistaken,” he said, “it was felt that the risks involved in removing him outweighed the benefits.”

  “Until now.”

  The Principal Backer gave up on obtaining any further enjoyment from his meal, and cast aside his knife and fork.

  “Let Giller do his work,” he said. “He can be relied upon, and he has cash to spend. Parker doesn’t pay bribes. Giller does. He’ll find the child.”

  “And if Parker finds it first?”

  The Principal Backer showed his teeth, literally and metaphorically.

  “You’re a visitor to our country, and there are certain rules you are obliged to observe. Do what you have to do. Set your silver drab to work if you must. But I’ve already informed you: Parker is not to be harmed.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. What if Parker finds the child before Giller?”

  “Listen to me, Quayle. I don’t care about your missing pages. I don’t care about your search. I don’t care about your Atlas. I don’t care how long you’ve lived, or imagine you’ve lived. I have no interest in seeing what may come to pass if, or when, your damned book is restored. I hope even my most distant descendants are long in the ground before that happens.

  “We didn’t invite you into this country, but you may well need our help in leaving it. Believe me when I say that such aid will be given gladly—although it comes at a price, of which you and Mors have already been made aware. But Parker is a piece of a puzzle, a single, perhaps crucial element in a complex construct, and he will not be harmed until we can be sure of the consequences of this action. Are we clear?”

  “Oh, very,” Quayle replied. He set aside his napkin, and arranged his silverware on his plate, before carefully inverting his glass of milk, spilling its contents over the dish before him.

  “It stops the help from feeding on the same food as their betters,” he explained. “Just in case they’re tempted to forget their place.”

  Quayle stood.

  “Thank you for your hospitality. You’ll forgive me if I don’t stay for pudding, but as you’ve so helpfully pointed out, it ill behooves me to tarry if I’m to find the child before Parker. Mors will take care of your other problem as recompense for your efforts on our behalf. Parker I will leave to you, and I hope he kills you for your cowardice.”

  The Principal Backer didn’t stand, or offer a farewell. As Quayle opened the door, a factotum appeared to escort him from the premises, and the door closed again behind them, leaving the Principal Backer briefly alone with his thoughts, his wine, and the smell of blood and milk.

  CHAPTER

  LXVI

  With no sign of Maela Lombardi, and all calls to her cell phone continuing to go straight to voicemail, Kes Carroll decided that a Silver Alert was warranted. Newspapers and local TV channels were contacted, and a recent photo of Lombardi was distributed, along with her physical description, and the make, model, and license plate number of her car.

  Meanwhile, Parker received a call from Lieutenant Solange Corriveau. Parker was cooperative with Corriveau, withholding only Molly Bow’s name for the present, although even then he made it clear to Corriveau that he was doing so.

  “You want to tell me why?” Corriveau asked.

  “Because Lombardi was Jane Doe’s contact in Maine, which means Lombardi is the only one who might be able to identify her. I don’t see any reason to breach confidentiality when it comes to others involved in sheltering troubled women.”

  “So why didn’t Lombardi come forward when the body was found?”

  “Maybe because Jane Doe never made contact, in which case Lombardi had nothing to tell.”

  “But if that’s the case, where’s Lombardi?”

  Parker didn’t need to go through the possibilities with Corriveau, because he knew she would be thinking along the same lines. The first was that Lombardi might have been complicit in what befell Jane Doe—and her child—and decided to run when the investigation began to gather steam. But given Lombardi’s commitment to women in danger, this seemed unlikely, if not entirely out of the question.

  The second possibility was that Lombardi did indeed know Jane Doe’s identity, but was choosing to keep it concealed in order to protect the child. This still didn’t explain Lombardi’s absence, unless she was now on the road with the child somehow in tow.

  The third possibility was that Lombardi’s knowledge of Jane Doe meant she was a danger to those who had put her in the ground and caused her child to vanish, which meant that Lombardi might now be dead.

  The final possibility was one that Parker would need to discuss with Molly Bow before either he or the police could pursue it further: that someone else was interested in Jane Doe or her child, and had traced her flight along the network.

  Which also presaged no good for Maela Lombardi.

  Parker promised Corriveau he would stay in touch. It struck him that he was making a lot of similar promises to law enforcement. He might have to start billing the state for calls.

  He had barely hung up on Corriveau when his phone rang again. Caller ID gave him a name.

  “Molly,” he said.

  And Molly Bow replied: “I think we should talk.”

  CHAPTER

  LXVII

  Moxie Castin had largely put thoughts of Jane Doe to one side. By hiring Parker, he was doing what he could for her and the child—if that child still lived. Moxie was not a good or particularly observant Jew, but he appreciated the subtle distinction between a mitzveh and a mitzvah. Technically, a mitzveh was something done for someone else, a good deed; a mitzvah represented the will of God. By privately funding a search for Jane Doe’s child, Moxie figured he was killing two birds with one stone: it was a good deed, and probably also represented God’s will.

  A considerable number of Moxie’s colleagues in Maine’s legal community were of the opinion that he was crazy to involve himself with Charlie Parker. Sometimes Moxie was inclined to share this view, but generally he tended to disagree. In its way, Moxie thought, Parker’s ongoing presence in his life might also cover a couple of mitzvot.

  Plus Parker made Moxie’s professional life interesting, and occasionally worthwhile. Right now, by contrast, Moxie was reviewing the file of a woman who claimed to have slipped on artificial snow at a shopping mall, resulting in a fractured ankle, a dislocated shoulder, and sexual assault by a plastic elf. Moxie wasn’t entirely sure that a plastic elf could commit sexual assault, being an inanimate object shaped as a mythical being, but it was quite clear from the woman’s statement, and the testimony of a number of shocked witnesses, that she had landed intimately and uncomfortably on the outstretched foot of one of Santa’s elves. That foot represented at least an extra ten grand in compensation, so Moxie had ordered the elf in question to be wrapped in plastic and held as evidence. It was an open-and-shut case, the only issue to be decided being the extent of damages, but it hardly represented a mitzveh, and was certainly not one of the 613 mitzvot. Moxie didn’t have to check to be sure of that.

  So when his secretary came on the line, Moxie was grateful for the distraction from the intimate details of the bruising sustained in the elf incident, even before his secretar
y told him what the caller wanted to talk to him about.

  The Woman in the Woods.

  * * *

  PARKER MET MOLLY BOW in Augusta, which, while not quite equidistant from Portland and Bangor, represented a similar degree of inconvenience for both of them, Parker being disinclined to drive all the way to Bangor to hear something that Bow should have told him when last they met.

  Bow was already waiting when Parker arrived at Fat Cat’s on State. She was sipping something that looked healthy and organic, and probably contained soy milk, which always struck Parker as defeating the purpose of going to a coffee shop to begin with. He approached her before heading for the counter, held out his hand, and asked for three bucks.

  “For what?”

  “For my coffee. I figure I should make you pay for my gas as well, but I’ll wait to hear what you have to say before I start calculating.”

  Bow muttered, but eventually came up with a five from her bag.

  “I want change,” she said.

  Parker ordered an Americano, tipped well, and brought back a quarter.

  “Your change,” he said.

  “You are a frustrating man.”

  “You have no idea.” He sipped his coffee. “So what didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

  Bow didn’t enjoy being forced into an admission, so every word was like a thorn on her tongue.

  “That Maela’s wasn’t the only name I knew.”

  Parker had suspected as much.

  “Someone else in Maine?”

  “No, that much was true; Maela is it as far as this state is concerned. The other name is for a woman in Sioux City. She’s also been struggling to reach Maela, so she contacted me instead.”

  “And?”

  “She told me that a couple of weeks ago, a fire in Cadillac, Indiana, killed a man named Errol Dobey. He owned a diner, as well as dealing in, and collecting, rare books. He was heavily involved in what we do. His girlfriend, Esther Bachmeier, went missing at about the same time. She was also part of it.”

  “What do the police think?”