The Woman in the Woods

by John Connolly

  “Be seeing you,” said White, as the dog recommenced its snarling, but Giller didn’t reply. He walked to his car in silence, as the rain fell and washed his footprints away.

  CHAPTER

  LXXVI

  Garrison Pryor was having a bad day, but then he’d been having bad days ever since some concerned Maine citizens had taken it into their heads to contract out the killing of the private detective named Charlie Parker. The result was not only the annihilation of those citizens, the destruction of half their town, and the continued survival of Parker, but also the unleashing of a greater storm of retribution by Parker’s allies—or more accurately, the use of the attack, by elements within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as an excuse to squeeze the Backers.

  Pryor Investments, one of the Backers’ main instruments in the search for the Buried God, immediately found itself targeted by the FBI’s Economic Crimes Unit—and if Pryor Investments was being targeted, that meant Garrison Pryor himself was being targeted. As a consequence, Pryor was currently under indictment for a range of crimes including falsification of financial information, late trading, securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy. At least some of the charges were spurious at best, but calling “bullshit” wouldn’t stand up as a defense in federal court. The scandal had forced Pryor to step aside temporarily as chairman of his own company, although he ensured that the board issued a statement expressing its confidence in him before he did so. Admittedly, he had to draft the statement himself, and force it on the board by pointing out to its members that his problems were their problems, and their support was not only requested but also demanded.

  Yet to Pryor’s relief, and the surprise of his lawyers, the FBI had made him stew for a couple of months, requesting the pleasure of his company for repeated interviews but otherwise permitting him to remain at liberty on minimal bail, and so far showed no signs of moving to arraignment. His passport had been confiscated, and he was under orders from the court not to leave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts without notice, but these were the sole restrictions to his liberty. True, truckloads of documents had been removed from the company’s offices, and its computers seized, but a great many federal agents would have to spend thousands of man hours working their way through the records before they found evidence of even modest improprieties, and then only infractions common to the financial services industry and therefore unworthy of anything harsher than a slap on the wrist, and a fine that could be paid from petty cash. This caused Pryor to wonder if the whole affair might not simply have been a fishing expedition on the part of the feds, based on the mistaken belief that Pryor would buckle and try to cut a deal by naming names in an effort to avoid trial.

  But in recent weeks disturbing rumors had begun to filter down to Pryor through his lawyers, whispers that Pryor was supplying information on his co-conspirators to the FBI, and pointing agents toward named individuals about whom the feds should be concerned. Pryor denied everything, but arrests followed, which seemed to give the lie to his protestations. The board, under instruction from its own lawyers, immediately cut off all contact with him, and his access to the company’s systems and records was suspended. More worryingly, the Backers isolated him entirely, and this ostracism was mirrored by the actions of the larger financial community. Suddenly Garrison Pryor was a man without friends. He could no longer even secure reservations at his favorite restaurants, and memberships to three clubs had been revoked.

  He knew what the feds were doing, of course. Similar strategies were regularly pursued in business. Stories were carefully seeded about the inefficacy of a certain product, the declining health of a long-serving company president, safety issues with a pioneering new drug, all to affect share prices or hamper the competition. The substance of the assertions was irrelevant. Once out in the world, they took on the appearance of truth. No amount of denial could entirely undo the damage caused.

  Now Pryor found himself compelled to rebut allegations of complicity where there was none, and by doing so reinforced the effect of the lie; and pressured into attempting to disprove something that could not be disproved because no empirical evidence of its reality had ever been offered to begin with. Even his latest girlfriend had ceased taking his calls. The only people who did sound happy to hear from him were his lawyers, because he was paying them by the hour for conversation. Sometimes the price was worth it just for some civil discourse.

  Pryor had money. The lawyers’ fees were eating into his funds, but he was in no danger of penury, not by some distance. But what good was money when a man couldn’t eat where he wished, travel when he desired, socialize with those whom he once called friends? What good was money without influence? His life was in limbo. He was doing nothing with his days, yet had to take pills to help him sleep. Despite his awareness of the strategies being used to pressure him, he could not deny their effectiveness. Why should he protect those who had lost faith in him so quickly? Why not simply make an approach to the feds and offer to tell them what he knew of the Backers in return for a new life far from here?

  Because I would be exchanging one form of restriction for another. I would never be able to sit with my back to a door. I could never close my eyes at night without armed men to guard me. I would always be fearful, and they would find me in the end.

  Pryor entered his apartment building. The doorman was absent, but the mailroom behind the reception desk was open, and music played softly from inside. Pryor was content not to have to exchange pleasantries with the man, even in his current state of isolation. The feds had searched his apartment thoroughly as part of the investigation, and his name had been in the papers, so the doormen knew of his troubles, just like everyone else on the block. They looked at him differently now, and their greetings were offered reluctantly, when they came at all.

  He took the elevator to the sixth floor. No one joined him, which was a further mercy. He shifted his bag of groceries as he reached for his key. The contents didn’t amount to much, nutritionally speaking, but he took his consolations where he could. He still retained membership to his health club, but he was too well known there to be able to concentrate on exercise, and so had put on ten pounds since the start of the investigation. His suits no longer fit as comfortably as before, but this was a minor inconvenience since he no longer had any reason to wear them.

  How had the FBI targeted those whom it was investigating and arresting? This was the question that troubled Pryor as the feds continued to spread their net. Despite what the Backers believed, the names had not come from him. It was possible someone else was leaking information, but the targets were so random—politicians, clergy, police, government employees, business executives—that the source could only be an individual with knowledge of the Backers’ entire network. And the targets were deeply embedded. Some had been compromised, or had allied themselves willingly to the cause, decades before. None was a recent convert.

  An old list of conspirators, then. The old list. It was believed to have been lost or destroyed, but what if this was untrue? What if someone had found it and shared its contents with the FBI? Yet if that were the case, surely the feds would have moved against everyone on it? Why this picking and choosing of unconnected individuals, other than as part of an ongoing effort to turn the screws on Pryor himself? Could someone be feeding selected names from the list to the FBI while retaining possession of the actual document? Who might that be?

  The answer came to him as he opened the door. Why had he not considered it before? Because he had been too absorbed in his own problems, too mired in self-pity. Now, at last, he was beginning to think clearly.

  Parker. It had to be. He had the contacts, and the will.

  Pryor closed the door behind him, placing the groceries on the kitchen table before moving into the dining room. It was still early afternoon. He would call his lawyers and ask for a meeting to be arranged, that evening if possible, with a representative of Grainger & Mellon, who acted for the Backers in all legal matters.
He would present his suspicions to them. He didn’t even have to establish a pattern. The pattern was that there was no pattern.

  He stopped. A peculiar smell came to him: perfume, and whatever the perfume was imperfectly disguising. He turned as a shadow moved against the wall to his left, and a pain entered his neck and spread quickly through the rest of his body. Within seconds he was on the floor, and oblivion followed.

  CHAPTER

  LXXVII

  In the nineteenth century, a seam of fine-grained schist—a seam of layered metamorphic rock that can easily be split into plates—was discovered in the vicinity of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. A schistose structure is generally unsuited to construction materials, but in the case of the Cape Elizabeth schist the rock broke readily into jointed blocks ideal for building. This led to its use around Portland, although the Cape Elizabeth stone later became identifiable through severe staining caused by the oxidation of the pyrite in the blocks.

  Two quarries were opened in Cape Elizabeth to access the schist, one larger than the other. The smaller and shallower of the two—known as the Grundy Quarry after its former owner, the Grundy Granite Company—was now the access point for a nature trail popular with residents and tourists during the summer months, but relatively unused in the off-season. With the change in weather, and the return of migrant birds, birders and hikers would soon be tramping its pathways once again, and local volunteers were already preparing to cut back some of the vegetation and pick up the trash.

  But for now the Grundy Quarry was still a useful spot for teenage drinking, pot smoking, and necking (if teenagers still necked, which they probably didn’t, necking being a too-quaint term for the kind of activities that would have caused Austin Grundy, a staunch Baptist, to spin in his grave had he known of the uses to which the environs of his quarry were being put by the youth of today).

  Four male representatives of that same demographic were currently availing themselves of the Grundy Quarry in order to drink and smoke, if not to neck, each of the quartet being resolutely heterosexual, even if two of them had not yet managed to explore this inclination to any practical effect. Although it was raining, three wooden shelters stood around the quarry’s circumference, each with a bench table, making them perfectly suited to the illicit consumption of beer, while the damp weather meant that the chances of being disturbed by adults, particularly cops, were slim to none.

  The water at the base of the quarry was relatively shallow but very murky. Nobody in recent memory had tried to swim in it, and during the summer its surface bore a permanent haze of insects. But a combination of rain and snowmelt had served to raise the water level, and it was into this pool that Josh Lindley—at seventeen the youngest, brightest, and shyest of the group—was now gazing from high above.

  Josh was feeling philosophical, although that might just have been an effect of the alcohol. He had a High Life—the Champagne of Beers—in hand, although Josh figured that if champagne tasted like High Life, he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. On the other hand, High Life tasted better than some of the stuff they’d been forced by necessity to imbibe at their little gatherings. He still recalled the two-day hangover he’d endured after Troy Egan secured for them six 40-ounce bottles of Olde English 800, N.W.A. playing through the speaker of Troy’s phone as they toasted the late Eazy-E, who had favored OE800 back in the day. Only later, when he was once again able to hold down solid food, did Josh discover that OE800 was regarded by some experts as possibly the worst beer in the world, although it hadn’t tasted so bad to him at the time. It was beer, and how bad could beer be?

  Pretty bad, as it turned out.

  The sound of a huge splash broke his contemplation: Troy Egan and his cousin, Devin, hoisting another gray block over the quarry edge. Someone had dumped a bunch of them behind one of the shelters. Assholes sometimes did that because the area around the quarry was so easy to access from the road. Folk could drive up to it and toss their old recliners, refrigerators, or ovens into the water, although most just left their crap on the grass for the town to haul away.

  “Thar she blows!” Troy shouted, and Devin laughed, even though Josh was sure that Devin Egan had no idea what the phrase meant, and was only laughing because Troy was laughing. Over at a shelter, the fourth member of their little band, Scott Vetesse, was trying to find the right dance playlist on Spotify.

  “Come on, guys,” said Scott. “Enough.”

  “One more,” said Troy. “This one will be like a depth charge exploding. It’s a monster.”

  And it was. No way were Troy and Devin going to be able to lift that block between them.

  “Josh,” Troy called. “Get over here. You too, Betty.”

  Josh wandered over to join them, as did Scott, even though he was pissed at being called Betty, rhymes with Vetty. Josh had to admit that the block was likely to make a hell of an impact. He drained the last of his beer and put the bottle on the ground. Although he could not have known it, this was the final High Life he would ever consume. From that day forth, even looking at the label would bring back unpleasant memories.

  Together the four boys managed to maneuver the block to the rim of the quarry, where it teetered, waiting for the final push.

  “Bombs away!” said Troy, and Devin laughed again, and down the block went, striking the rock face as it went, dislodging a chunk of stone before bouncing out to strike where the quarry was deepest. An enormous eruption of water followed, just like a depth charge, as Troy had promised. Devin whooped, and the others joined in, but their cries faded away until only Devin’s voice could still be heard, before he, too, grew quiet.

  The rear of a car had emerged from the water, forced up from the uneven quarry bed by the impact of the block on the hood. The trunk popped open, revealing the body of a woman tied up inside.

  Josh Lindley didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t puke. He didn’t even want to keep staring, but he did because he couldn’t look away, no matter how hard he tried. And then he realized that he had turned away, but he was still seeing the body in the trunk, and he knew that he would keep seeing it no matter what, and this was one of the burdens he would bear into adulthood, into old age, into the grave.

  He took out his cell phone and dialed 911.

  Over by the shelter, Troy Egan was already disposing of the beer.

  CHAPTER

  LXXVIII

  Garrison Pryor opened his eyes. He was lying naked in his bathtub, his hands restrained behind his back, his legs and mouth bound with tape. A woman was sitting on the toilet seat next to him. Pale skin, gray eyes, near-white hair beneath a light blue plastic skullcap: less a living being than a washed-out image of one, like a picture fading from the world.

  Pryor’s head felt too heavy. He forced himself to lift it, and it banged sharply against the faucet behind him. The effort exhausted what little energy he had left, so he stayed as he was, with the faucet digging uncomfortably into his skull. His extremities hurt, and it was all he could do not to throw up against the gag for fear that he might choke if he did.

  He watched the woman, and the woman watched him. The more he looked, the worse she appeared, as though the profound ugliness within her could not conceal itself from close regard. Her hands were folded before her, making her seem almost prim in her posture. Pryor could see no weapon, and experienced the first stirrings of hope. Perhaps this was just a warning, the Backers reminding him of his obligations to them. They had to be responsible for this woman’s presence in his apartment, because no one else would dare to risk such an incursion. If he could only induce her to take the tape from his mouth, he could tell her what he had deduced about the list, about Parker. He would ask her to make a call, and this would all be over. He tried to speak, using his eyes to indicate the gag. He just wanted the chance to explain.

  The woman raised her hands from her lap, revealing a slim leather pouch. She opened it on the marble countertop to her right, exposing a series of blades, hooks, and pliers that gleamed i
n the artificial light. Next to them was a square of plastic, which she unfolded into a poncho before slipping it over her head. She stood, allowing the material to settle as far as her knees, protecting her clothing. Finally, she donned a pair of gloves.

  Only then did she speak.

  “Just so you know, they stipulated that it should be painful.” She selected a long-bladed scalpel from the pouch. “I’m afraid we’re going to make a mess.”

  CHAPTER

  LXXIX

  Parker took the call from Moxie Castin while waiting to board for Cincinnati. He regretted not taking an earlier flight from Logan, because this one was a zoo, but he’d been unable to reschedule a morning meeting regarding witnesses in an assault case due to go to trial in a couple of days.

  “Bad news,” said Moxie. “They found Maela Lombardi’s body.”

  Parker stepped out of line and walked over to an empty gate so he could speak without being overheard.

  “Where?”

  “The bottom of the Grundy Quarry. There’s no positive ID yet, but it looks like someone rolled Lombardi’s car into the water with her locked in the trunk.”

  Parker watched the line grow shorter as the plane filled. Moxie was paying for a first-class ticket, so he wasn’t concerned about finding space for his hand baggage. The question was whether he should board the flight at all, but it didn’t take him long to come up with an answer. There was nothing he could offer the police that might help with the Lombardi investigation. What he could do was travel to Indiana as planned to find out what Leila Patton knew, or suspected, about the death of Errol Dobey and the disappearance of his girlfriend, Esther Bachmeier. Karis linked Dobey, Bachmeier, and Lombardi; and Leila Patton, who had worked for Dobey, was frightened. Parker wanted to ask her why that might be.