The Woman in the Woods

  Parker then tried Leila Patton again. This time the call didn’t go immediately to voice mail, but the number rang and rang until eventually it was ended automatically. Patton, it seemed, had turned off her messaging service. With nothing better to do, Parker put the phone on speaker and kept hitting redial while he boiled some water for instant coffee and ate a couple of Fig Newtons to stave off the hunger pangs.

  Finally, on the fourth attempt, the phone was answered by a female voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Leila?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Charlie Parker. I’m—”

  “I don’t want to talk to you. I have nothing to say. Just leave me alone.”

  Clearly Patton had reconsidered her decision to cooperate. Parker knew he only had seconds.

  “Errol Dobey,” he said. “Esther Bachmeier.”

  He could hear the sound of Patton’s breathing. At least she hadn’t hung up. “Don’t you care about what might have happened to them?”

  Still no reply.

  “Leila?”

  She began to cry, and the call was terminated. When Parker tried the number again, he received only a message asking him to try later. He took his coffee to his office, turned on his computer, and booked a round-trip ticket to Cincinnati.

  * * *

  HEB CALDICOTT WASN’T LOOKING well, which was hardly surprising under the circumstances. He’d taken one stab wound to his left side, another to his left arm, and his chest bore a slash mark that was about a foot long and a quarter of an inch deep, all thanks to Dale Putnam, who’d shown a certain amount of spirit in his final moments on this earth.

  Caldicott had decided to kill Putnam and Gary Newhouse as soon as they admitted shooting the state trooper. He wished he’d disposed of them before agreeing to give them shelter under his roof, and maybe he shouldn’t have suggested that his bitch girlfriend might like to fuck one or both of them in order to give him some time to think, but it was easy to be wise after the fact.

  Still, he’d quickly settled on a plan to get rid of them. He picked a van from the lot, concealed Putnam and Newhouse in the back under blankets and junk, handed them a bottle of Old Grand-Dad to help keep out the chill and ensure they stayed nice and relaxed, and drove south, keeping off the highway and below the speed limit. The van still bore the name and contact details of a decorating company that had closed down a year earlier, which made it less interesting to cops than an unmarked vehicle. As it happened, he wasn’t stopped once along the way, although he passed a couple of police cruisers with lights blazing, and reached his destination without incident.

  That destination was Pintail Pond, although it was many years since a pintail or any other bird had troubled its surface, Pintail Pond being as toxic a body of water as existed in the state of Maine, thanks in no small part to Heb Caldicott’s habit of dumping various forms of automotive filth, fluids, and containers in its depths, including carcinogenic used motor oil, empty bottles of engine coolant and refrigerant, and redundant batteries. His intention was to add the bodies of Putnam and Newhouse to this mix, and let nature take its course.

  Beside the pond was a hut that had long fallen into disrepair, but still possessed four walls and most of a roof. It was to this structure that Caldicott directed a reluctant Putnam and Newhouse, who were a little drunk, if not as drunk as Caldicott might have wished. Again in retrospect, Caldicott regretted not killing Putnam first, but Newhouse had been closest to Caldicott as the two men entered the hut ahead of him, so it seemed natural to put a bullet through the back of Newhouse’s skull before moving on to Putnam.

  Unfortunately, it quickly emerged that Putnam had a suspicious side. Caldicott had earlier managed to relieve him of his gun on the perfectly reasonable grounds that it was unwise to carry a weapon recently used to shoot a state trooper, and Newhouse had never been much for carrying a firearm. But Putnam had retained a knife, an implement of which Caldicott was unaware until Putnam decided to use it on him while Newhouse’s body was still twitching on the floor. Putnam managed to inflict a lot of damage on Caldicott before Caldicott got two shots into him, it being a lot harder to hit a moving target at close range than people liked to think, especially a moving target intent on gutting someone with a blade.

  It said a lot for Heb Caldicott’s physical and psychological resilience that although slashed, skewered, and bleeding, he was still able to drag Newhouse and Putnam to the edge of Pintail Pond and rope a weight to each of the bodies, even though he’d finally been forced to lie on the ground and push them into the water using the soles of his shoes. Putnam had made a kind of gasping sound before he went under. Caldicott didn’t know if this was just gas emerging from the corpse, or if Putnam might not have been dead when he started sinking, but he knew which one he was hoping for, and it wasn’t the first option.

  Then cold, exhausted, and in no small amount of pain, Caldicott managed to call his good friend Billy Ocean—his partner in prejudice, and co-conspirator in the rejuvenation of what passed for the Klan in Maine—to request that said Billy should come and get him. There were others whom Caldicott might have called, but they were all smarter than Billy. This meant that once they discovered the extent of the mess Caldicott had gotten himself in, they’d be likely to let him die, or even hasten his end before leaving his body somewhere it would quickly be found, thereby bringing an end to any police interest in the matter. But Billy was Heb’s boy, and had come through for him, which was why Caldicott was now residing in one of the less salubrious Ocean rentals while he tried to figure out how to avoid going to prison for the rest of his life.

  The wound in his side was the problem. The puncture to his arm was barely worth mentioning, and a combination of antiseptics and drugstore sutures seemed to be taking care of the gash to his chest, but Caldicott had felt the blade twist inside him as it entered under his ribs, either intentionally on the part of Putnam or because of Caldicott’s own reaction to being penetrated by steel. Billy had cleaned the wound out as best he could, and even applied some stitches, but it was starting to stink, and now walking, or even standing for very long, was agony for Caldicott.

  As soon as the door was closed, Caldicott tore into a bag of potato chips, washing them down with mouthfuls of Johnny Drum. Billy started unpacking the rest of the groceries.

  “Who are you,” said Caldicott, “my mother?”

  Billy didn’t dislike Heb Caldicott—he wouldn’t have been in this situation if he did—but neither did he regard being Caldicott’s mother as an admission to be shouted from any rooftops. This opinion, though, he kept to himself.

  “Just trying to keep things tidy,” said Billy.

  “Have you looked around here lately?”

  Okay, so the apartment wasn’t exactly pristine, but it wasn’t Billy’s fault that Caldicott had strewn it with cigarette butts, beer cans, and food wrappers. The smoking was a particular source of concern. If the building burned down with Caldicott inside, questions would be asked to which Billy would not be able to provide satisfactory answers.

  “You want me to book you into a hotel?”

  “Don’t be smart. And it smells like a latrine.”

  Once again, this was largely Caldicott’s doing. Billy had left him with some bleach for the bathroom, but he didn’t appear inclined to use it, or even to open a window for a while to let some air into the place.

  “I’m just saying. It’s the best I can do.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  It was as close to an apology as Billy was likely to receive.

  Billy finished with the groceries, put the beers in the refrigerator, and sat across from Caldicott. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and produced two boxes of Vicodin and a pack of antibiotics. The Vicodin had cost him, but he’d found the antibiotics in his mother’s medicine cabinet. Billy was no doctor, but he guessed an infection was an infection, and the wound in Caldicott’s side was clearly septic. Apart from the smell, and the pain, Caldi
cott was running a fever. His clothes were damp with sweat.

  Caldicott waved the packages.

  “You did good,” he said, before popping two of the Vicodin and sending them on their way with a little more Johnny. The antibiotics he swallowed dry.

  “I think I might have found someone to take a look at that wound,” said Billy.

  In the movies, men like Heb Caldicott knew tame doctors to whom they could turn, or waved guns in the faces of veterinarians to bully them into offering treatment. But Caldicott didn’t know any doctors who might be willing to risk jail to help him, and Billy couldn’t see himself allowing someone to point a gun at Dr. Nyhan, who looked after his mother’s Bichon Frise, Toby, and was a very nice woman.

  “No need,” said Caldicott. “Now that I have the antibiotics, I’ll be back on my feet in a couple of days.”

  Billy wondered if Caldicott actually believed this. Maybe the Vicodin was working faster than expected.

  “We still ought to get it seen to so you can start thinking about moving on,” Billy insisted. “I can’t keep coming over with supplies. Someone will notice.”

  “You got every right to come here. It’s your place, isn’t it? Far as I can tell, the only reason you stand out on this street is because you’re white.”

  This was true. The particular area of Auburn in which the apartment building was situated reminded Billy of Kennedy Park in Portland, which was a mix of Somalis, Ethiopians, and Southeast Asians, and was where Maine news shows went when they wanted a guarantee of ethnic diversity for the cameras.

  “This guy, he was thrown out of medical school, but he got through the first three years. He’s—”

  “Billy,” said Caldicott, “let it go.”

  It made Billy sad, this hint of resignation. He didn’t want Caldicott to give up. It wasn’t just sentimentality on Billy’s part: he really wanted him gone from the building, just in case Billy’s old man took it into his head to check on it himself, in which case all hopes Billy entertained of managing the Gull, or any other bar, would vanish like the morning dew. But he also knew from experience that there was no point in arguing with Caldicott, who was of a naturally stubborn and recalcitrant disposition.

  “Okay,” said Billy.

  He ate some potato chips before taking a Coors from the refrigerator. It wasn’t cold, but it didn’t matter.

  “I think a Negro blew up my truck,” said Billy, by way of conversation.

  “Shit. How’d you find out?”

  “Someone who works for my old man.”

  “Which one?”

  “Dean Harper. He got fired because he told me.”

  Billy was feeling sorry for Dean. He also worried about bumping into Dean when he was on a drunk, because he was certain Dean would beat the shit out of him.

  “I meant which colored?”

  “I got no idea.”

  “You aiming to find out?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “If I was feeling more myself, I’d offer to help. Even if we didn’t get the right colored, we could just pull another from the street, make him pay for the sins of his brother. They all look the same anyhow.”

  Caldicott laughed, and Billy laughed along with him, even though he didn’t think they all looked the same. He didn’t like them, but he didn’t think they all looked the same.

  Billy turned on the TV, and together they watched a cop movie until Caldicott began to drift into a haze. He wasn’t sure if Caldicott noticed him leave. Billy looked up at the apartment windows. The blackout drapes concealed the glow of the TV, and the light fixtures had no bulbs in them. For the present, the only indications of habitation were the grocery drops.

  Billy wondered what might happen if he stopped visiting, like ceasing to feed a bird in a cage. Perhaps Heb Caldicott would just die. Or he might try to leave, painfully working his way down the steps until he got to the fifth from the bottom, which with luck would collapse under his weight and, combined with the already damaged fourth step, send Caldicott to his doom in the basement. Then again, he might make it to the street, which would leave Billy screwed.

  Billy got in his truck and started the engine, but he didn’t drive away, not for a good five minutes. He stared out at the night and thought that maybe things were not going to get any better for him.

  Not ever.

  CHAPTER

  LXXIII

  Nosh was quiet when Parker arrived, the bar settling comfortably into the lull between dinner and the arrival of the night owls who would drift in after music shows or late shifts in restaurants. He found a table with sufficient light by which to read, and flipped through the latest edition of The Portland Phoenix. Al Diamon, one of the state’s leading political commentators, and certainly the crankiest, was getting worked up over the quality of the prospective candidates for governor. Whatever their failings, at least the present incumbent—voted “America’s Craziest” by Politico magazine back in 2014, before he’d even begun his second term, one that would include a claim that out-of-state drug dealers were coming to Maine to sell heroin and “impregnate white girls”; challenging a Democratic lawmaker to a duel; and allegedly cutting in line to deprive a sexual assault victim of a therapy dog, which he subsequently named Veto—would have to recede into political anonymity, and Mainers could stop blaming one another for electing him. Except, of course, for the ones who had voted for him, although it was hard to figure out who they might be, seeing as how they now tended to keep quiet about what they’d done, probably out of a sense of embarrassment.

  As for Al Diamon, Parker thought that it must take a lot of energy to be so exercised all the time, even if Diamon managed to be amused—and amusing—along with it. Like the Duc de Saint-Simon in the court of the Sun King, it was probably not a question of whether Al Diamon was annoyed on any given day, but simply with whom Al Diamon happened to be annoyed.

  Parker flicked through the listings for upcoming performances at the various music venues around town before deciding he was too old for most of them because he didn’t recognize any of the acts. He’d long ago figured that you knew you were aging when you couldn’t hum any tune on the Billboard Hot 100. A woman seated alone at the bar smiled at him, and he smiled back before returning to the Phoenix. Perhaps that was another sign you were getting old: when you’d rather read the paper than take the time to talk to a strange woman in a bar. But he was also waiting for Louis, whose interest in conversing with strangers of either sex was negligible.

  As if to silence any further debate on the matter, the man himself appeared. The woman smiled at Louis, too, making Parker feel a little less special. Louis ordered a dirty martini. Parker had barely touched his wine.

  “Angel?” Parker asked, once Louis was settled.

  “Sleeping a lot. The infection set him back some, but the doctors say he’s a whole lot stronger than he looks.”

  “We could have told them that.”

  “But good to have a professional opinion.”

  They ordered burgers, and fries to share. Parker felt his arteries hardening pleasantly in anticipation.

  “Does that mean you’re worrying less about him?” Parker asked.

  “No. I’m just worrying in a different way.”

  “Ah. How long are you planning to stay up here?”

  “A couple of days. Just, you know. . .”

  Parker let it go. They spoke of other things, including Louis’s growing affection for this coastal city.

  “It’s the sea,” said Louis. “Once you get used to looking out on it from your window, you start to miss it when you can’t.”

  Parker understood. It was why, no matter how often he considered selling the Scarborough house and moving to Portland itself, he always ended up remaining where he was, even after the sanctity of his home, and his own sense of security, had been undermined by the attempt on his life. It was the marshes, and the tidal channels running through the
m, and the smell of salt on the air. It was the light on the water, and the distant sound of the sea, like a whispering at the edge of the world.

  And it was the knowledge that he and his dead daughter were connected by water. He had sat with her by a lake that fed into a sea, caught between living and dying. He had held her hand, and watched with her as a car pulled up on the road above, the shades of Parker’s departed mother and father within, inviting him to go with them, to take the Long Ride.

  But he did not join them. Instead he returned—to pain, memories, the living. But still the sea called to him, just as it called to Jennifer. He remembered a child’s nursery rhyme, one he would read to Jennifer when she was barely more than a baby, as he knelt by her bedside and lulled her to sleep: “If all the seas were one sea, what a great sea that would be . . .” His sea and Jennifer’s were one, although each viewed it from a different shore. But when the time came they would enter it together, and all pain would cease.

  The food arrived. The woman at the bar was still smiling, but now only to herself. Louis ordered a second martini while Parker shared with him the events of recent days, choosing to omit only what he had seen as he tried to follow Smith One from the Great Lost Bear. It was not that he feared Louis might doubt him—Louis, by now, had few illusions about the nature of Parker’s world—but because it was a component he himself did not yet understand.

  “Any particular reason to believe the two Smiths might be linked to the discovery of the body in the woods?” asked Louis.

  “I can’t think of any other cause for circling me. I have nothing more interesting on the books right now, unless the Smiths are fans of insurance fraud.”

  “You’re interesting.”

  “You say the sweetest things, but you’re not my type.”

  “You know, if I could take back those last two words . . .”