The Woman in the Woods

by John Connolly

  She heard the sound of approaching vehicles, and headlights appeared in the window: the Weavers were returning. Without rushing, Mors took the book, walked through the kitchen to the open back door, and left the house, depressing the button on the handle so the door locked again behind her. She had been careful not to make a mess, so it was unlikely the Weavers would spot any signs of intrusion.

  Her car was parked nearby. Mors could see the shape of it through the woods, and the quickest way to get to it was through them, yet she hesitated. She couldn’t have said why, but the woods disturbed her, and she had learned over the years not to ignore her intuition. In the darkness, the naked trees took on skeletal forms: twisted men, a hunched woman. So Mors stayed at the boundary, away from the depths, and so by circuitous route returned safely to the car before making the first of two calls.

  “I found a copy,” she told Quayle, “but it may not be the correct one. The year of publication is 1909, and the bookplate is missing, but it has the additional pages.”

  “There was no other?”

  “None that I saw. Could they have sold the original?”

  “If they had, I would have heard. It might have become damaged over the years, and the pages could have been transposed into another edition. Only the insertions are important. I’ll know once I’ve had a chance to examine them.”

  “And if it’s not the one you want?”

  “Then,” said Quayle, “we shall have to ask the Weavers where it is.”

  The second call made by Mors was to Billy, because it was time to put him into play. She and Quayle had convinced Billy that it would be better if he didn’t use his own truck, just in case the vehicle was seen and remembered. Meanwhile, Mors would also be able to help Billy bypass the security around Parker’s house.

  “How do you know he has security?” Billy asked.

  “Because of who he is,” said Mors.

  Which made sense, when Billy thought about it.

  * * *

  MORS COLLECTED BILLY FROM the parking lot of the Tilted Kilt out by the Maine Mall. Billy was carrying a backpack, and Mors could smell gasoline as he placed the bag on the floor of the car.

  “I trust you brought a lighter,” she said.

  “A book of matches, too,” he replied.

  Mors headed east, Billy doing his best to breathe through his mouth while she drove, because the woman smelled rancid. The gasoline cut the stink some, but not enough. They took Route 1 to Scarborough, and passed Parker’s home. Seeing no lights or signs of activity, they made a U-turn and came around a second time, pulling into the next side road after the driveway and killing the lights. Billy grabbed the bag, climbed out, and waited for Mors to join him.

  “Did you bring a mask?” Mors asked. “There’ll be cameras.”

  “Shit.”

  Mors produced a cheap ski mask from her pocket and handed it to Billy before slipping one over her own head.

  “Stay in my footsteps,” she said.

  “You afraid of mines?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  So Billy followed Mors over a ditch and through some trees. She produced an iPhone and turned on the camera, scanning the ground before her as they walked. About a minute later, she stopped suddenly and raised her hand.

  “What is it?” Billy asked.

  A bright white light partially obscured the screen of the phone.

  “Infrared beams,” said Mors. “Break them, and it sets off an alarm. Probably takes a picture as well, either here or farther along.”

  The beams were set at different heights—one a foot from the ground, the second three feet higher—so a small animal wouldn’t break both simultaneously. With Mors guiding him, Billy eased his way between them, before taking the phone and doing the same for her. They evaded one more set of IR beams before reaching the perimeter of the house, where Billy was again stopped from proceeding by the sight of Mors’s raised right hand. She pointed out the security camera on the wall above the front door.

  “Kind of obvious,” said Billy.

  “That’s because the rest aren’t.”

  The Mustang wasn’t garaged, but stood to the right of the house under an all-weather cover. Maybe Parker was already hoping to make more use of it with the coming of spring. Mors pulled off the cover.

  “Do it,” she said.

  But now that Billy was here, with Parker’s car before him and payback in his hands, his will to act began to leach. Events had gone too far. If Billy did this, Parker would come looking for him, because he would know that only one person could be responsible. And the more Billy thought about it, the more he believed he had contributed in part to his own misfortune. It had been Heb Caldicott’s idea to add the flags to the truck in order to piss off the Negroes and the snowflakes, all the bleeding hearts dragging this country down into the dirt, making it a laughingstock. Heb said nothing would happen. Heb said the liberals would just roll over and take it, because that was what these people did. If you told them to go fuck themselves, they would. They’d be too frightened to do otherwise, Heb assured him, because they were always frightened. But Heb hadn’t reckoned on Parker and his kind, who didn’t seem frightened at all.

  “It’s a real nice car,” said Billy, and it was. Setting fire to it wasn’t going to make his world any better, or bring his truck back, or stop him from being everybody’s punch bag. It was just going to make him another fool adding to the ugliness of the world.

  “Do you want to try and find your way through those woods alone?” said Mors. “Do you believe you’ll get back to the car without triggering an alarm, and do you imagine I’ll still be waiting for you when you do? Burn it, Billy.”

  Billy didn’t want to face the woods by himself. He didn’t want to set off some hidden alarm and have the cops come for him, leaving his father to bail him out, to tell Billy that he’d made an idiot of himself once more, and idiots of his family along with it. Worse: What if Parker returned, him and the Negro?

  “Fuck it,” said Billy.

  He told himself that it was the gasoline making his eyes water as he poured the contents of the can over the car, as he doused a rag and set the match to it, as he tossed the material on the hood, as the flames caught, as the tarp turned to ash, as the fire swept across the body, as the glass cracked and the paintwork bubbled and the tires melted and the tank ignited, as black smoke and sparks rose into the night.

  As the car burned, and his future along with it.

  CHAPTER

  CII

  British?” said Parker.

  Leila Patton was recalling the customers that had passed through Dobey’s on the night its owner died. They were mostly locals, but a couple of strangers too. That was sometimes the way of it. Cadillac might have been off the beaten track, but a lot of folk preferred the ditch to the highway. It was like Neil Young said: you meet more interesting people there.

  “Yes, British,” said Leila. “English, actually. He was very specific on that. It was almost funny. We do get tourists through here. I mean, they’re often lost, but we do get them.”

  “Describe him to me.”

  “I told Chief Hillick all this, but he didn’t pay it much mind.”

  “Try telling me.”

  “Jeez, well, he was about six feet tall. Nicely dressed: velvet and tweed, and a scarf—not wool, more like a silk cravat. He reminded me of that actor, the guy who played the twins in that weird old gynecologist movie.”

  Parker knew the one.

  “He had, uh, brown eyes,” Leila continued, “and he wore red, round-framed spectacles. I remember because he was reading a book of poetry while he ate. We don’t get many people reading poetry in Cadillac, whether they’re eating or not.”

  “Brown eyes? You’re sure?”

  “Yes. I don’t usually notice things like that, but the spectacles were pretty unusual. They drew the eye.”

  It was the Englishman, Smith Two: it had to be, even allowing for the difference in eye color. The m
an at the Bear had blue eyes, but the change could easily have been achieved with colored contacts, just as the red spectacles had probably been chosen deliberately. Take away the lenses, throw away the glasses, comb the hair in a different way, and even sharp-eyed Leila Patton might have struggled to identify him as the individual who had wandered into Dobey’s on a quiet, early spring evening, there to read poetry while—

  That was the question. Why show himself? Why take that chance?

  “Was there a woman with him?” Parker asked.

  “No, he was alone.”

  “What about at another table? Very pale. Platinum hair. Eyes like bleach in water.”

  “Yuk. No, I don’t recall anyone like that.”

  Could the woman have been searching Dobey’s trailers for the book while the Englishman monitored the diner, just in case Dobey decided to call it a night and leave the staff to close up? Or did this visitor with his fine clothes and poetry simply wish to take a good look at he who had helped to thwart him; he who had offered aid and shelter to Karis Lamb, with no expectation of return; he who would, in the end, pay for this kindness with his life? Parker was leaning toward the latter. It was the same impulse that had drawn the Englishman to the Great Lost Bear. He was curious, but arrogant with it. Whatever his profession, he had been following it for too long. It had made him incautious, complacent.

  “He’s the one,” said Parker.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He killed Dobey, and probably Esther. The woman who tried to abduct you travels with him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve met them. They’re in Maine now, looking for this book, killing their way toward it.”

  “So they tried to abduct me because I’d seen this man at the diner?”

  “Did you serve him?”

  “No, Corbie did.”

  “And who else was working that night?”

  “Carlos, the chef.”

  “But no one has tried to hurt them?”

  “No, I’d have heard.”

  “Who was Dobey’s favorite? Who among the staff did he like the most?”

  “I don’t know. He was Dobey. He was the same with everyone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He was kind to us all. It was his way.”

  “Leila . . .”

  She relented.

  “Okay, so it was me. I got on best with him. I could play music. I read books. I watched old movies. I looked after my mom. Dobey liked me. He trusted me. Sometimes, after we closed up, I’d have a beer with him, and Dobey would smoke a joint, and we’d just sit and talk. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Would all this have been clear to a stranger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But Parker knew the answer was yes, or certainly clear to a stranger like the Englishman.

  “They probably threatened to hurt Esther if Dobey didn’t help them,” Parker said. “My guess is they threatened to hurt you, too.”

  “So?”

  “So: they’re people of their word. You could say they have principles, even if they’re the kind that give principles a bad name.”

  Leila stared at her hands. What she said next increased Parker’s respect for her even more, and left him more determined than ever that the Englishman, and the woman with him, would never set eyes on Leila Patton again.

  “That means Esther really is dead.”

  Because the danger to herself didn’t concern her, or not as much as the fate of Esther Bachmeier.

  “Yes, I think she is. Dobey didn’t convince them. They wanted to be sure.”

  Tears from Leila, although they were the kind that didn’t alter one’s expression, as though the emotions of which they were the outward manifestation ran so deep that the tears themselves were an irrelevance.

  “Everyone loved Esther,” she said, “or everyone worth knowing. The people who didn’t care for her were just dicks.” She looked through the window toward the foothills, now lost to the dark. “I wonder where they left her. She deserves a proper burial. She deserves to be remembered.”

  “I’ll try to find her,” said Parker.

  “How will you do that?”

  “I’ll make them tell me.”

  Leila gave this some thought.

  “I’ve never really wished for someone to suffer before,” she said. “I’ve seen too much of what my mom has gone through to want anyone else to experience that kind of pain.”

  “But?”

  “But for the ones who killed Esther and Dobey, I’m inclined to make an exception.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Parker. “And I know this won’t help, but I’ll say it anyway: whatever Dobey told them wouldn’t have saved him or Esther. These people weren’t just hunting for Karis or the book. They were erasing all those who might have come into contact with either, and probably inflicting some hurt along the way for putting them to so much trouble.”

  He glanced at his watch. He might yet make the last Delta flight to Boston, but he’d be cutting it tight. At worst, he could fly out first thing in the morning. It would mean having to overcome his dislike of airport hotels, but if he kept his attention fixed on the desk, the elevator, and his room, in that order, he might be able to manage.

  “I guess you have to go,” said Leila.

  “I should.”

  “I’m glad I spoke to you.”

  “Likewise.”

  He picked up the box containing the book.

  “No one will ever know you had this,” he said.

  “If what you say is true, it won’t stop them from coming back.”

  “No: I’ll stop them from coming back.”

  Leila Patton kissed him softly on the cheek in farewell.

  “I believe you will.”

  CHAPTER

  CIII

  Billy could smell gas on his hands as they drove toward South Portland. It was making his head spin. He wanted nothing more than to shower and change his clothes, not only to rid himself of the taint of the fuel but also as a prelude to removing the images of burning from his mind. When he closed his eyes, it was not Parker’s Mustang he saw in flames, but his own form.

  He and Mors had been able to glimpse something of the conflagration in the rearview mirror before the trees finally concealed it. Billy noticed that the wind had picked up, and was blowing west. He wished the evening was still; it was one thing to set fire to a man’s car, another to burn his house down. He didn’t hate Parker that much. In fact, Billy realized, he didn’t hate Parker at all. He simply wanted to understand why Parker had seen fit to aid in the torching of Billy’s truck. Billy could just have asked him. They might even have come to some kind of understanding.

  Billy was really sorry for burning the Mustang.

  “Maybe we should call the fire department,” he suggested.

  “Do you have an unregistered cell phone?” said Mors.

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps you’d prefer to just hand yourself over to the police and confess what you’ve done, because if you make that call, it will be traced.”

  Billy didn’t want to confess. He’d learn to live with his iniquity.

  “And I don’t think you can go home either, or drive your own truck,” said Mors.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you know as well as I that you’ll be the prime suspect for what’s just happened, and you’ll struggle to provide an alibi.”

  “I don’t care about that,” said Billy. “There’ll be no proof, and cops need evidence.”

  “I’m not talking about the police: I’m talking about Parker. Do you think he’ll need proof?”

  No, Billy thought, he sure as hell won’t.

  “I’ll head away from here,” he said. “I’ll leave the state for a few days.”

  “That could be viewed as the behavior of a guilty man,” said Mors. “The fire will be reported. Parker will be asked for the names of those he might have cross
ed recently. He can point to you and claim that your family appeared intent on linking him, incorrectly, to an act of criminal damage. Then the police will start looking for you, and whatever vehicle you were last seen driving.”

  Billy’s unhappiness was growing, and with it his confusion. He wanted Mors to stop talking and give him time to think. There were holes in her argument, but he needed to be alone and undisturbed to find them. Billy wasn’t good at reasoning under pressure.

  “Do you have a place near town you can go, somewhere quiet, even just for a couple of nights?” Mors asked. “It may be that Parker will take the smart view, and decide this has all spiraled out of control. An accommodation might be reached between him and your father, on your behalf. Mr. Quayle and I have no interest in seeing this situation deteriorate further. We only want Parker to be diverted. As long as you don’t mention our involvement, you’ll never hear from us again.” She gave Billy a look that spoke volumes. “And that, I don’t need to tell you, would be for the best.”

  Billy got the message, but he was still prepared to ignore its contents. If Parker chose to seek his head in retribution, it might be that Billy could buy himself out of trouble with what he knew of Quayle and Mors. But for the present, Mors was right: the best decision Billy could make would be to lie low for a couple of days and see what transpired. At some point he’d have to admit to his old man what he’d done. It might even be wise; his father retained a number of high-powered lawyers, and once they became involved, Parker would have to back off and seek a compromise.

  “What about my money?” he asked.

  “In the glove compartment.”

  Billy opened it, and found a thick envelope filled with fifty-dollar bills.

  “A thousand dollars,” said Mors. “Not bad for a night’s work.”

  Billy started to feel a little better about the world.