The Woman in the Woods

by John Connolly

  “There’s no sign the fire was anything but accidental. Dobey liked to smoke a little pot late at night, and there had been one or two close calls in the past. He lost part of his collection to a fire back in 2008, but it seemed he’d been more careful since then.”

  “And Bachmeier?”

  “She wasn’t the sort to go starting fires, either deliberately or accidentally, or so I’m told. She and Dobey were good people. Well, Dobey was, and Esther, I guess, still could be. God, you know what I mean. I shouldn’t be speaking of her in the past tense.”

  “I did the same thing this morning, talking to the state police about Maela Lombardi.” He caught Bow’s look. “I didn’t mention your name, and Solange Corriveau didn’t press me on it, but if what you’re about to tell me is relevant to the investigation, I’ll have to share it with the police.”

  Bow didn’t raise any objections. Parker could see that she was rattled. He waited for her to continue.

  “The evening after the fire,” said Bow, “someone tried to snatch one of Dobey’s waitresses, a girl named Leila Patton, from in front of her home. Patton started screaming and fought back. She managed to gouge her attacker with a key. Patton thinks she might have caught her badly in the face, because there was blood on the key when she was done.”

  “Caught ‘her’?”

  “The attacker was a woman. Masked, but definitely a woman.”

  “So how does this connect to Lombardi?” he asked.

  “About five years ago—my Sioux City contact wasn’t entirely sure of the dates, because it’s not like anyone keeps formal records—Dobey and Bachmeier may have sent a woman on to Maine, via Chicago. She was heavily pregnant.”

  “Did this woman have a name?”

  “Karis.”

  “Second name?”

  “My contact didn’t know it, and at least one of those who did is now dead.”

  Parker was writing everything down in his notebook. In the good old days, back when he was younger and more vigorous, he might have trusted memory alone, but no longer.

  “I need the name and number of the contact.”

  “No. She told me all she can. I guarantee it. You can set the cops on me if you like, but it won’t make any difference.”

  “I’m sorry, but as I warned, I’ll probably have to. I don’t imagine it’ll involve a whole lot of trouble for you, but continuing to withhold your name will definitely cause problems for me.”

  “Whatever.”

  “What about Leila Patton? Anyone have a number for her?”

  Again, in the good old days, Parker would just have dialed 411, but half the people he knew now appeared to rely on cell phones alone, and that went double for those under thirty.

  “I’ll ask.”

  Parker could always try the Cadillac cops, assuming Patton had reported the attempted abduction, but in the past he’d enjoyed mixed experiences with small-town police departments, given that at least one of them had conspired in attempting to have him killed. Under the circumstances, a certain amount of caution on his part was forgivable.

  “You think you could do that now?” he asked.

  Bow stepped outside to make the call. Parker watched her as she walked back and forth. He could see she was engaged in a conversation, and not just leaving a message. That was good.

  He checked his notes. Karis was an unusual name, and there couldn’t be many missing persons who shared it. This assumed, of course, that Karis had been reported missing to begin with. The absence of a deluge of concerned individuals coming forward to offer that name as a possible identifier suggested she might not have been.

  Molly Bow returned.

  “She’s going to call Leila and make sure it’s okay to give her number to you. I didn’t tell her that you’d probably find Leila anyway. I didn’t think it would help.”

  Bow set her phone down on the table, but muted it so that if a call came through, it would light up without making a racket.

  “A woman after my own heart,” said Parker.

  “I sincerely hope not.” She worried at her lower lip. “I saw the Silver Alert for Maela. Do those things work?”

  “Sometimes, if a senior has just wandered off.”

  “But Maela hasn’t wandered off, has she?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would someone want to hurt Maela, Dobey, or anyone else because of this body found in the woods? All they could have known was her name.”

  “If Karis is Jane Doe, she was running from someone. As she was pregnant, maybe this person was hired by the father of the child, or is the father.”

  “But to kill someone, just to find out what happened to a baby?”

  “You’ve met men who were willing to kill their partners for trying to take their children away from them.”

  Bow thought about this.

  “I have. I can even understand the kind of rage and narcissism that could give rise to it. But if it is Karis who was buried in the woods, she’s long dead. Nothing more can be done to hurt her. So what is this person trying to achieve if Maela and the others have somehow been targeted?”

  “To discover where the child is. The rest could be revenge.”

  “Revenge?”

  Parker was thinking aloud now. Bow was only barely present to him.

  “For getting involved. For helping to hide Karis. For shielding the child. It’s the father. It has to be.”

  The phone before them lit up. Bow took it in hand and went back outside, but not before Parker gave her his pen and a page torn from his notebook. When she returned, a number was written on the paper.

  “Leila Patton will talk to you,” she said.

  * * *

  PARKER ACCOMPANIED BOW TO her car, the sun pleasantly warm on their faces. A man might almost have been tempted to venture out without a jacket, if he were prepared to trust in the continued clemency of the weather, and indeed God Himself. Parker wasn’t so inclined, on either count.

  Across the lot, a woman was putting an infant into the child seat in the back of her car. While she was occupied with this, her other child, a boy of about three, made a break for freedom. Parker was about to call out a warning when the woman saw what was happening, and headed off in pursuit.

  That was how easy it was, Parker thought: a moment’s inattention.

  Jane Doe now had a possible identity: Karis. How did she reach a point where she could have become lost without anyone caring what might have happened to her? Bad luck? Mental illness? Poverty? These were circumstances, not excuses. They could not be used to justify an unmarked grave. It was too late for her now, but perhaps not too late for her child. Moxie Castin understood this, and so did Parker.

  He patted the roof of Molly Bow’s car as she pulled away, any annoyance with her now departed entirely, because she cared too.

  A woman after his own heart.

  * * *

  MOXIE CASTIN WAS TRYING to recall the last time he’d been involved in a telephone conversation as frustrating as the one in which he was currently engaged. The man on the other end of the line was calling from a public phone, but appeared to be under the impression that Moxie enjoyed the same resources as the NSA when it came to establishing the whereabouts of those who communicated with him. The guy would stay on the phone for no longer than three minutes at a time, having decided—probably from watching too many movies—that three minutes plus was required by law enforcement to trace a call. Moxie tried to convince him that this hadn’t been the case since the 1980s, although Moxie wasn’t tracing calls back then, just as he wasn’t trying to trace this call now. But the caller pointed out to Moxie, not unreasonably, that this was just what someone who was trying to trace a call would say, and so another three minutes ended with the sound of a dial tone in Moxie’s ear.

  From the voice, and his knowledge of telephones and law enforcement, Moxie guessed the caller wasn’t young. He was a Mainer, too; that was clear from the accent. But more imp
ortant, Moxie believed this might well be the man responsible for putting Jane Doe in the ground, which meant the caller also knew the fate of her child.

  “We didn’t kill her,” said the man when he called for the third time.

  Moxie wrote “WE” in big letters on his legal pad, alongside the notes he was taking using his own shorthand, of everything that was said.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Moxie asked.

  The caller seemed to realize that he’d made a mistake, but couldn’t take it back now. Moxie glanced at the clock. Ninety seconds down, ninety seconds to go.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Okay.”

  “She was in trouble when we found her. She’d started giving birth alone in the woods, but she was bleeding a lot when we came across her. My— Well, one of us knew some first aid, but it wasn’t enough to save her, not by a long shot.”

  “What was her name?” Moxie asked.

  A pause, then: “Karis. That was her first name, and it’s all I’m giving you, for now.”

  “What about the child?”

  “The child was alive. He still is.”

  Moxie added “male” to his pad.

  “She asked us to look after him,” the man continued. “She wanted us to keep him safe.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police, or social services?”

  “She made us promise not to, right before she died. She said the boy would be in danger from the father if we did.”

  Moxie decided to make the big play.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth about this? No offense meant, but in cases like this we get a lot of odd people making outlandish claims.”

  “Why would I call you just to lie?”

  The man sounded genuinely puzzled. Under less taxing circumstances, Moxie might have shared the sad truth that a great many individuals called him just to lie, mostly in order to avoid going to jail. The law wasn’t a great business to be in if one valued truth, or even justice. It was all Moxie could do to keep from drowning in cynicism.

  “Well,” said Moxie, “folk make claims because they want to feel important, or they’re lonely.”

  “I know I’m not important, and I’m not lonely.”

  “Sometimes they’re just plain crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy either.”

  “You don’t sound crazy,” Moxie admitted, “but while what you’re telling me may or may not be true, I have no way of knowing either way without—”

  “I carved a Star of David on a tree near where I buried her.”

  “That’s been on the news.”

  “I carved it on a spruce, facing north. I started adding a date, then thought better of it, so the bark below the star is damaged.”

  This could easily be checked, so why would the caller lie about it?

  “Right,” said Moxie. “Now I believe you. Why did you carve the star?”

  “Because she wore a Star of David on a chain round her neck. I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “Do you still have the chain?”

  “Time’s up,” said the caller, and the phone went dead for the third time.

  Moxie used the interruption to call out to his secretary.

  “Get Parker on the line, then put the next call on speaker at your end so he can listen in on his cell phone. I want him to hear this.”

  But the phone did not ring again.

  CHAPTER

  LXVIII

  The Principal Backer did not leave the Colonial Club immediately after the conclusion of his lunch. Instead he took his time, and read the newspapers, before making some calls. As in so many other matters, the Colonial had strict rules governing the use of cell phones and other such devices in its environs. This was one of the benefits of membership as far as the Principal Backer was concerned, the world outside the club’s walls being increasingly inimical to silence, or even good manners, when it came to electronic communications.

  The Principal Backer supposed a significant backlash against the ubiquity of cell phones would occur in time, and it was one that he was in the process of accelerating through investments. He was the main investor in a proposed chain of boutique coffee shops that would forbid the making or receiving of cell phone calls, and would require headphones to be worn by those who insisted on watching movies or videos on their screens. The idea had come to him following a trip to Russia, where he was involved in a meeting at a Moscow restaurant that maintained just such a ban and insisted that all phones be deposited with the hostess at the door. In the event of a call being received by a customer, a messenger was dispatched to the table to inquire if the guest wished to take it, in which case he or she was invited to step into a booth in order to ensure that no one else was disturbed by the ensuing conversation. The Principal Backer was optimistic that his modest risk would pay off both financially and in terms of providing him with another refuge from the discourteous.

  Now, in one of only two rooms in the Colonial in which it was permissible to use a phone—discreetly, and at minimal volume—the Principal Backer convened a conference call to give two of his closest associates a précis of his conversation with Quayle.

  “Can we be sure he won’t target Parker?” asked the first, her voice echoing slightly over her Bluetooth speaker.

  “I made myself as clear as possible on that score.”

  “Which is no guarantee of good behavior.”

  “The difficulty is that Parker’s path has crossed Quayle’s. A confrontation between them may be unavoidable.”

  “Then let’s hope Quayle finds what he’s looking for, and leaves before that occurs.”

  “It seems,” the second Backer noted, “that we are going to considerable inconvenience and expense to facilitate Quayle, and all we seem likely to get in return is aggravation.”

  “I have made Quayle aware of the price for our assistance,” said the Principal Backer.

  “Which is?” asked the woman, this being news to her.

  “We have engaged,” said the Principal Backer, “the services of his tame murderess.”

  * * *

  FROM HER VEHICLE, MORS watched the limousine pull up on Commonwealth Avenue. Moments later, the Principal Backer appeared at the door of the club, his coat over one arm, and walked slowly down the steps to where a driver waited by one of the car’s rear doors.

  “What do you want me to do about him?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Quayle, from the backseat. “For now. And we’ll expedite his request for our help, unless you have any objections?”

  “None, but I can tell that you’re concerned. Has he lost faith?”

  “I think he’s frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of all that is to come.”

  Mors turned her head slightly so that she could see Quayle’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

  “When you die,” she said, “I will die too. I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  “I’m touched,” said Quayle, but he did not look at her as he spoke.

  “Don’t be cruel,” she said, “not to me.”

  And Quayle thought that in another life, he might almost have cared for her.

  CHAPTER

  LXIX

  Parker was sitting in Moxie Castin’s office. The lawyer had recorded each of the conversations with the man who claimed to have buried Jane Doe, and had now played them twice for Parker.

  “Mainer, and probably local to Piscataquis,” said Parker, confirming Castin’s own belief. “But we figured that from the location of the grave.”

  “And it sounds like he has the child, or knows where the boy is.”

  “He has him. He wouldn’t be calling otherwise.”

  “Which means he’s worried,” said Moxie. “Do you think it might lead to harm?”

  “If our guy is telling the truth, it was the mother’s last request that he should take care of her son. Why hurt the child now? If he were going to do that, he wouldn’t have bothered calling
you. I’m not even sure why he called you to begin with.”

  “It’s hardly secret knowledge that you’re looking into this, and you’ve been on TV in connection with the case. You’ve worked for me in the past, so it wouldn’t take much to realize that I might be involved, or could serve as a conduit. My guess is he wants to cut a deal, and it might go easier for him if he makes the first approach instead of waiting for the cops—or you—to come knocking on his door.”

  “I wonder if he’s married,” said Parker.

  “Sounds like it. He did say ‘we,’ so he is, or was, in some kind of relationship.”

  “Hard to give up a child you’ve raised since birth.”

  “Maybe he’s hoping it won’t come to that.”

  “What are the chances?”

  “Slim.”

  “Even with you on their side?”

  “Even then.”

  “That’s not what he’ll want to hear if he calls back.”

  “That’s why I won’t tell him,” said Castin. “And he will call back. You can be sure of it.”

  The sun was setting, and Parker was tired. He’d left a message for Leila Patton after saying goodbye to Molly Bow, but so far she hadn’t returned the call. He hoped Patton wasn’t reconsidering. He didn’t want to have to travel to Indiana to chase her down, and that was assuming she had anything useful to offer. But he’d traveled greater distances on thinner pretexts, and sometimes it paid off.

  “How are we going to handle the police?” he asked.

  “We need to draw in our mystery caller, and that requires trust,” said Moxie. “I’m not going to feed him to the cops until I hear his side of the story.”

  “At least he confirmed the name Molly Bow’s contact came up with.”

  “Karis,” said Moxie, testing the sound of it. “I don’t think I’ve ever known a woman called Karis.”

  “I think you’ve known enough women for one lifetime.”

  “My problem was I married most of them. I got alimony like the national debt.”

  “Tragic,” said Parker. “We should make the call to Corriveau about the Karis lead.”