The Woman in the Woods

by John Connolly

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then I’m wasting my time, and Owen Weaver will be dead before morning, unless he learns to breathe through dirt.”

  “How can I be sure you have him?”

  Quayle closed his right fist and rotated it before him, like a sidewalk illusionist demonstrating a trick. When he opened the hand again, a gold signet ring lay on the palm.

  “It’s dated on the inside. You can show it to his daughter, if you like. She’ll confirm that it belongs to her father. But I doubt you’ll feel the need to do so. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  Quayle’s tone changed. It was neither hostile nor conciliatory, cajoling nor threatening. It brooked no argument, like a schoolmaster explaining the realities of life to an errant pupil.

  “I want the book, Mr. Parker. Give it to me, Owen Weaver lives, and no one will ever see me again. And if you say ‘What book?’ you’ll force me to conclude that you’re a cretin.”

  “I wouldn’t want that,” said Parker. He saw no point in denial. It would only condemn Owen Weaver, if he wasn’t dead already. The book was the only advantage Parker had. “Suppose I do know where the book is?”

  “Wonderful,” said Quayle. “We’re already making progress. Weaver says the only copy of which he is aware is the one we removed from a shelf in his daughter’s house. I’m inclined to believe this is true, after what we had to do to him to demonstrate our commitment to its recovery.”

  Parker breathed in deeply, and overcame the urge to strike Quayle. His effort at restraint was obvious to the other man.

  “Broken bones heal,” said Quayle. “Even older bones like his.”

  “We’ll want proof of life,” said Parker.

  “You’ll get it. He’ll be permitted to call his daughter. Which brings us back to the book. I didn’t realize my error until Miss Mors retrieved the copy from the Weaver house. It was a first edition, but not the one I was seeking. It was then a matter of establishing when the exchange occurred. Errol Dobey was a buyer and seller of rare books, and it would have been easy for him to trace a suitable replacement copy. He even went to the trouble of inserting some antique vellum pages, probably from his own collection, or picked up cheaply on the Internet. It was a crude effort at dissimulation, but then neither Dobey nor Karis fully understood what it was they were dealing with.

  “And when I learned you’d traveled to Indiana, I knew you wouldn’t have returned empty-handed. I’ve discovered a lot about you during my time here. You should be dead, but the fact that you’re not is indicative only of resilience, and a measure of good fortune. You’re a remarkable man, but that’s all you are, despite what others may believe. As for what you yourself believe, I couldn’t possibly speculate.”

  Parker didn’t bite, but quietly filed away the name of the woman: Mors. “The vellum additions,” he said. “What are they?” He gave Quayle no clue that he was aware of the larger work of which they were a part.

  Quayle’s dead eyes took on a new light, like flames igniting in a pair of polluted pools.

  “Maps, or parts of them.”

  “To hidden treasure?”

  “Of a sort.”

  “A lot of people have died because of them.”

  “You have no idea how many. So where is the book?”

  “It’s safe, but you’re not.”

  Quayle dismissed the threat with a wave.

  “No safer than Owen Weaver, perhaps. You could call the police, but they’ll find nothing to connect me to those killings, beyond the presence in Indiana of someone who might have borne a passing resemblance to myself. My background is in law, Mr. Parker. I know whereof I speak. But while all that is going on, Owen Weaver will be dead, and soon after so will his daughter, and Karis Lamb’s son, before we move on to everyone who matters or has ever mattered to you or your friends, until no one will be left to speak your names.

  “And it won’t change what is to come, because eventually the book will be traced. I’ve been hunting it for a very long time, and I’ve never yet been closer. I can wait a little longer. I’m very patient. You, by contrast, have no room to negotiate. You’ve already seen what we’re prepared to do. Don’t add your own child to the list of the dead.”

  With those words, any doubts Parker had entertained about killing Quayle vanished. Whatever might occur in the hours or days to come, he would eventually find Quayle and Mors, and put an end to their lives.

  “So,” said Parker, “how do we do this?”

  CHAPTER

  CXII

  Quayle departed first, and didn’t appear worried about turning his back on Parker. He stepped outside, a car appeared, and Quayle climbed into the passenger seat. By the time Parker got to the sidewalk, the car had turned down Forest Street at speed and vanished into the night.

  Parker first called Louis, and waited for him to get out of earshot of the Weavers before updating him.

  “It’s like I thought,” Parker said. “Quayle doesn’t care about the boy. He only wants the book.”

  “Are you going to give it to him?”

  “What choice do I have? It’s a simple trade: the book for Owen Weaver.”

  “And no police.”

  “No police. He says the woman will kill Weaver if they see blue. And he’s only given us an hour to get moving, so there’s not enough time to call in outside contractors.”

  “Which, unless I’ve miscounted, just leaves the two of us.”

  “Quayle told me to come alone.”

  “Doesn’t mean you have to.”

  “Call Moxie. Get him to move the Weavers again, just in case. I’ll meet you back at the Inn.”

  Parker next called Bob Johnston, and told him he was on his way to collect the book.

  “It’s still in pieces,” said Johnston.

  “Then stick them together again.”

  Parker hung up, but didn’t return to his car. He crossed the street to the taxi stand by the bus station, hopped in the only cab waiting, and asked the driver to cruise around while gradually making her way toward the East End. He kept an eye on the traffic behind as they pulled out, but could detect no signs of pursuit. He didn’t want to lead Quayle straight to the book.

  “Worried about being followed?” the driver asked. She was small and white-haired, and her cab smelled of the kind of perfume that stores didn’t bother to tag against thieves. Parker had seen her around town over the years. Her license declared her to be Agata Konsek, and she looked old enough to have once driven horse-drawn carriages.

  “Not with you at the wheel, I hope.”

  “Okay. Just so’s I know.”

  Agata Konsek had missed her calling as a spy—or, given her name, maybe she hadn’t—because she demonstrated a skill at elusion that was obviously hard learned. She ran red lights, cut down one-way streets, and took shortcuts through alleyways, all while watching the rearview for signs of pursuit, before making a bootlegger’s turn after a blind curve and crossing two lanes of 295 at speed. Parker might have been even more impressed if she hadn’t caused him to fear for his life. Eventually they reached Bob Johnston’s building, where Parker asked Konsek to wait. He could see no lights burning, but Johnston must have been watching for him, because Parker was buzzed in before he pressed the bell. He walked up to the top floor and found Johnston seated at his desk, the book loosely assembled beside him, although the vellum leaves remained separate from it.

  “I didn’t even bother trying,” said Johnston.

  “What did you want me to look at?”

  “Where would you like to start?”

  “Bob, I don’t have time for games. Just give me the simple version.”

  Johnston opened the book at the plate from “The Frog Prince,” and handed it to Parker.

  “There isn’t a simple version,” he said. “Unless you can explain the changes.”

  Parker instantly spotted the alteration. The tapestry on the wall was once again indistinct, the bull-heade
d creature no longer visible. He flipped through a couple of the others, including “Snow-White and Rose-Red,” with the same result. None of the figures that previously appeared to have been added to the plates could now be seen.

  “They’re all gone,” said Johnston. “Every one of them. And that’s just the appetizer. This is the entrée.” He showed Parker the third sheet of vellum, about six inches in length and an inch wide. “It was concealed in the spine of the book. My guess is it’s of the same age and provenance as the other two.”

  “Have you opened it out?”

  “It’s blank—kind of.”

  “Bob . . .”

  “Look, I can’t be certain. At first I thought I was looking at veins from the original animal, whatever that might be, because blood collects in the skin at death. Also, natural flaws in the parchment can sometimes resemble topography. I began to wonder if I’d just been looking at the pages for too long, but I took a break to rest my eyes, and when I came back they were still there: rivers, islands, coastlines.”

  He unfolded the sheet, and pulled the magnifier and its light into place.

  “See?”

  Parker stood over the glass, and saw that Johnston was right. The lines were very faint, but not random. It confirmed the truth of what Quayle had told him: these were pieces of a map.

  “If it’s a country,” said Johnston, “it’s none that I know.”

  Parker stepped back from the desk. “Why would this have been hidden?” he asked.

  “Why is anything hidden? Someone didn’t want it to be found, but didn’t care for it to be lost either. The concealment might have been done in a hurry. The stitching on the spine wasn’t perfect, but if the binding had been properly reinforced, I might not have spotted it at all. Maybe the other two pieces are less important than this one, or are incomplete without it. You know: the book is found, the visible sheets are removed, the remnants are discarded, but whoever has only those two pieces is still denied all the information.”

  Although time was pressing, Parker took a few moments to think. He wondered how much Quayle really knew about the book and its contents. Had Quayle ever seen it? How detailed were the available descriptions? Judging by what Karis Lamb had shared with Leila Patton, the man from whom she stole the book had spent years searching for it, and he wasn’t the only one looking. Was Vernay aware that it contained three fragments, or was he under the impression it held only two? And if so, was Quayle also laboring under the same misapprehension?

  Suddenly, Parker had an advantage.

  “Just what is this thing?” Johnston asked, his gloved hands lightly moving over the cover of the book like a blind man searching for braille, the question more rhetorical than anything else. “Those fragments aren’t vellum. It’s skin of some kind, but it doesn’t burn. Well, it does burn, but it doesn’t stay burned.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It reconstitutes itself. I reduced a sliver to ash, and an hour later I had the sliver again.” He took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes. “I have to admit I haven’t slept much since you brought it to me. It’s intruded on my rest. But my interest is piqued. I want to know more.”

  “You know what they say about curiosity?”

  “Do you see any cats in here?”

  “Just a stuffed one.”

  “It died, but I’m alive and well. Curiosity hasn’t done me any harm.”

  “Yet.”

  “Yet,” Johnston agreed. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to keep looking into this.”

  “I can’t leave you with the book—or the insertions. You may never see them again.”

  “I don’t need them. The additions to the illustrations didn’t reproduce when I tried to make copies, but I got one of the ‘DD’ plate inside the cover. I’ll start with that.”

  “Then find out what you can—unobtrusively.”

  Johnston walked Parker down to the street.

  “Can I ask what you’re going to do with it?”

  “I’m going to trade it for a life.”

  “Sounds dangerous. You taking your friend Louis with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Probably a good idea. Tell him I wasn’t kidding about that list, if he’s looking for work.”

  “He’s semi-retired.”

  “But if he finds himself getting bored.”

  Parker was beginning to feel concerned about Bob Johnston, and made a mental note not to cross him at any point.

  “I’ll let him know.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  By the time Parker reached his cab, the door had closed, and all the lights were out once again.

  CHAPTER

  CXIII

  The proof-of-life call came through to Holly Weaver’s phone while Parker was with Bob Johnston. It was short, but confirmed Owen Weaver was still breathing, although Holly told Louis that her father sounded as though he were in some discomfort. By then Moxie had sent a driver to move Holly and Daniel to a new location, although Parker instructed Moxie not to tell Louis where they were being taken. If events went south, and it turned out Quayle was lying about his intentions toward the Weavers, Parker didn’t want either Louis or himself to be in possession of information that might put mother and child in danger.

  Parker knew he might well be making the wrong call by declining to involve the police. Unfortunately, it was the only call he could make. Quayle was deliberately squeezing him, restricting Parker’s options. Neither did he doubt for one moment that Quayle and Mors would be willing to dispose of Owen Weaver before disappearing, if only temporarily. They would return for the book eventually, perhaps under new names and guises, and then the killing would commence again.

  The parking lot was dark when the cab returned Parker to the Inn. Someone had broken the main outside light in the interim, casting in shadow the section of the lot in which Parker’s Audi stood. He opened the door, and noted that the interior bulbs did not activate. He said nothing as he got in the car, nothing as he drove away.

  Nothing to the figure lying uncomfortably on the floor in the back, concealed by a dark blanket, gun in hand.

  * * *

  QUAYLE CALLED PARKER’S PHONE while he and Louis were heading toward Piscataquis County, just as Quayle had instructed him to do before leaving Salvage.

  “You have the book?” Quayle asked Parker.

  “Yes.”

  “Then take down this zip code.”

  Parker repeated the zip as he input it into the car’s GPS, which immediately began calculating the route, guiding Parker toward Waterville.

  “Is someone in the car with you?” said Quayle.

  “No, but I’m old and I mishear.”

  “Don’t be clever, not if you want Owen Weaver returned alive.”

  “If Owen Weaver dies, you’ll never see the book again.”

  Quayle hung up, and Parker headed northwest. Waterville was a little more than an hour from Portland. If Parker guessed right, this would be only the first in a possible series of stops. He was pretty certain that he wasn’t currently being tailed, but he’d probably pick up a spotter when he reached Waterville: either Quayle or the woman, depending on who was watching Owen Weaver. That was how Parker would have done it, just as he would have tagged the vehicle in which he was traveling, given time, or installed a listening device; anything to gain an edge. For now Parker had no way of knowing if his car had been tampered with, which was why he was staying silent. He did not want to give away Louis’s presence. Quayle might have his suspicions, but if Parker handled everything right, suspicions they would remain.

  He found 1st Wave on Sirius, turned the volume down low, and let the sounds of eighties British synth music fill the car.

  He ignored the small moan of torment from behind.

  * * *

  PARKER WAS SKIRTING WATERVILLE when the phone rang again.

  “Get off the interstate and take the 104 into town,” said Quayle, and Parker did as instructed. Quayle stayed on th
e line, and told Parker to pull over across from the McDonald’s on Main. Vehicles were parked on both sides of the road and in the surrounding lots, including three or four outside the McDonald’s itself. Parker waited until Quayle gave him an address on Ash Street, farther down off Main. This time, Parker did not repeat the address aloud. Louis, who had been following their progress on his own phone, would have to trust him. Parker watched the road behind, and spotted no signs of pursuit, but at least one of the cars in the McDonald’s lot had been occupied, the shape of a driver clear at the wheel. He was prepared to lay good money on someone checking to make sure he was alone. This was confirmed when he received two more calls in quick succession, sending him back on his previous route before proceeding through a series of residential streets, until finally he was left to wait at a dead end on Butler Court.

  Parker tensed. He heard Louis shift position, and the rear door clicked as it was opened slightly in case of trouble. The agreed signal was a cough from Parker, but this place didn’t feel right for a handover, or an attempt to seize the book. When the phone rang again, Parker was not entirely surprised. The delay, he felt, was probably to allow whoever had been monitoring Parker to go on ahead.

  “New destination,” said Quayle, and something in his voice told Parker that this was it. They were coming to the end. The GPS was giving an hour and fifteen minutes to Piscataquis County as he pulled away from the curb.

  And as though speaking to himself, he said:

  “Here we go.”

  * * *

  DANIEL WEAVER WAS ASLEEP, lulled by the motion of the vehicle. His head lay on his mother’s lap. The driver had given her a blanket with which to cover him, although the car was warm. Other than to tell them that his name was Karl, inquire about the temperature, and point out the bottles of water in the side compartments of the doors, the driver spoke little to them. He was not uncaring—quite the opposite: Holly regularly caught him glancing at them in the rearview, his eyes soft—but he was careful not to intrude. The car was a Mazda Hatchback; clean, but nothing fancy. Light jazz played on the radio.