The Woman in the Woods

  “I’ll allow—even encourage—you to rephrase.”

  “You draw attention. Your history draws attention.”

  “So they came just to see the lion at the circus?”

  “Well, when you put it like that, maybe not.” Louis chewed a bacon-dusted French fry. “Damn, these fries are good. They’ll kill you, but they’re good.”

  A man joined the woman at the bar. He kissed her on the lips before taking the stool beside her.

  “She smiled at me as I came in,” said Louis.

  “She also smiled at me.”

  “Which is disappointing. Maybe she’s just real welcoming.”

  “It’s a welcoming environment.”

  “Not that welcoming,” said Louis. “Back to the spectators from the Bear.”

  “Gone to ground.”

  “Permanently?”

  “I didn’t get that feeling.”

  “Concerned?”

  “Marginally.”

  “And no hits on Smith One?”

  “None. I asked Dave Evans, but Smith One kept his face hidden from the Bear’s cameras. I think he knew where they were.”

  The server arrived to clear their table. Parker ordered coffee.

  “I still don’t get coffee with wine,” said Louis.

  “In a world of hurt, you choose odd battles to fight.”

  “I’m not fighting, I’m just saying. When do you leave for Indiana?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You think this Leila Patton will still be around when you get there?”

  “If she’s a regular person,” said Parker. “Regular people find it hard to run at short notice. And Portland probably seems a long way from Cadillac. She might be worried about more calls, but not about me turning up on her doorstep.”

  “You want some company? I’ve never been to Indiana.”

  “I thought you’d been most places.”

  “Most places, except Indiana.”

  “Funny, I’ve been hearing that a lot.”

  Parker’s coffee came. He chose to ignore the pained expression on Louis’s face.

  “Under ordinary circumstances,” Parker continued, “I’d accept the offer, but instead I have a favor to ask. Moxie Castin is trying to get the man who buried Karis to come in, and if anyone can persuade him to show, it’s Moxie. But if someone is looking for Karis’s child, for whatever reason, this guy and the boy could be at risk.”

  “You can let Moxie know I’m around if he needs me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What about the country’s northernmost Confederate?”

  “Billy? According to Moxie, he’s got himself new wheels.”

  “Same taste in decoration?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Nice to think previous events might represent a positive learning experience for him.”

  “Nice, but unlikely.”

  Louis picked up the check. Parker thanked him.

  “Don’t thank me, thank Moxie. I’m going to bill him for my expenses.”

  “Moxie,” said Parker, “is going to be so pleased to see you.”

  CHAPTER

  LXXIV

  Since it seemed unwise to stay overlong in Dover-Foxcroft, Giller had sourced for Quayle a base from which to work: a vacation cabin in Piscataquis near Abbot, from a snowbird owner down in Hilton Head, South Carolina, who wouldn’t ask questions so long as he was earning a little walking-around money. It made sense for Quayle to remain close to where Karis Lamb’s body had been discovered. Quayle continued to believe that if her infant had survived, it was somewhere in the region.

  Quayle was in the cabin alone, because Mors was temporarily elsewhere, fulfilling their obligation to the Backers. She would return the following day, once the task was completed. Giller, meanwhile, believed he might be closing in on the child. His tone had betrayed a certain excitement when last he and Quayle spoke on the phone. A possible lead, Giller said, but a cash payment would be required. How much? Five thousand dollars. Mors had delivered the money to Giller on her way south, her very appearance a warning that results were expected in return for the outlay.

  How close was Parker to finding Karis Lamb’s child? If Parker was continuing to search, he was following different paths from Giller, because Giller assured Quayle that those to whom he had spoken had yet to be contacted by the private detective.

  But Giller also provided an interesting tidbit about Parker. He and a black man named Louis, who acted as Parker’s shadow and gunman when required, were suspected of committing an arson attack on a truck in Portland. There was no proof of their involvement, and so action was unlikely, even had the will to arrest either man existed in the Portland PD, which Giller claimed was open to debate. Meanwhile the owner of the truck—one William Stonehurst, otherwise known as Billy Ocean—was very keen to establish the identity of those responsible. According to Giller, Billy Ocean was a jingoist and a borderline simpleton. Either of these character flaws provided some scope for manipulation, but both combined represented usefulness on a grand scale. Quayle did not wish to antagonize the Backers by acting openly against Parker, but that did not preclude working through a third party. When Mors returned from Boston, she and Quayle would have a conversation with Mr. Ocean.

  And from a corner of the cabin, where no light intruded, the Pale Child regarded Quayle with unblinking eyes, and kept its secrets close to its hollow heart.

  CHAPTER

  LXXV

  Ivan Giller was discovering the difficulty, if not inadvisability, of attempting to serve two masters.

  Technically he had been engaged to assist the Englishman Quayle in tracking down a child now in the care of a family unrelated to the birth mother. But the middleman had also advised Giller that important people were very interested in the status of his inquiries, and any discoveries should be communicated to them before being shared with Quayle.

  Which was fine, and not unusual in Giller’s line of work, particularly where his regular paymasters were concerned. But matters had grown complicated when Giller was taken aside by the woman named Mors, who instructed him to keep his mouth shut when it came to the child, and to deal only with her and Quayle. It was, Giller thought, as though she and Quayle were fully aware of the instructions he had been given; or perhaps they simply operated on an assumption of duplicity in all dealings, which struck Giller as very wise, all things considered. On the other hand, it did nothing to alleviate his concern for his own well-being once Mors and Quayle departed these shores, leaving him alone to face the displeasure of those others who had been cut out of the loop by Giller’s reticence.

  The resulting dance gave Giller migraines, and—along with the slowly fading memory of the malformed child glimpsed in Portland—came between him and his sleep. With no other option, he’d come clean with Quayle about the conditions of his employment. As a result, Quayle was now permitting Giller to feed carefully filtered information back to the middleman. A reckoning might still take place once Quayle’s business was completed, but Giller could point to all he had shared while pleading ignorance about the rest.

  But Giller was making progress in his search for the child. Partial information obtained from adoption agencies had enabled him to winnow away some families, and local contacts eliminated a few more, leaving him with a core of about twenty children, based on a late winter or early spring burial of the mother’s body. Now, amid light yet unrelenting rainfall, he was driving to Brunswick to meet with a woman who might be able to narrow the search still further, perhaps even to a single child.

  The lead’s name was Connie White. A couple of years prior, White had been fired from her clerk’s job in Piscataquis for leaking information on bids for county contracts and soliciting bribes from contractors. Consequently, she was now filled with enough piss, bile, and vinegar to fuel ten lifetimes of resentment. Although White never dealt directly with the registration of births, which was why Giller hadn’t bothered to contact her before, one of his s
ources claimed White knew as much as anyone about the workings of the county. If she could screw someone over, and make a little money along the way, Connie White would be open for business.

  White lived in a double-wide trailer in a small field surrounded by trees, with a stream running along its western perimeter. The whole setting might have been pretty, even bucolic, but only without the trailer, which was shitty looking and brought the whole pastoral vibe down. A big brown mongrel dog was chained to a post set into the ground not far from the door. The dog began barking and straining at the chain as soon as Giller pulled up, which in turn caused the post to wobble alarmingly in the ground. Beside the mongrel was a kennel daubed in bright red paint with the words THIS DOG WILL KILL YOU.

  Giller decided to stay in his vehicle until someone arrived to deal with the dog.

  The trailer door opened, and a woman stepped out. She wasn’t what Giller had been expecting, although he was prepared to accept he had prejudged Connie White on the basis of the trailer, the dog, and the stories of piss, bile, and vinegar. She was slim and blond; probably in her late forties but looking good for it. Her jeans were blue and close-fitting, tucked into tiny yellow high tops, and she wore a blue Red Sox hoodie over a white T-shirt. She raised one hand in greeting and used the other to hush the dog by clamping its muzzle.

  Giller stepped from the car, still keeping a close eye on the dog.

  “I’m Giller,” he said.

  “Come on up. Don’t worry about Steeler here. He’s a sweetheart, as long as I tell him to be.”

  Giller didn’t find this particularly reassuring, and made a mental note not to cross Connie White. The dog growled at him through White’s hand as he neared the trailer, showing sharp teeth and pink gums. At least, Giller reasoned, it would probably be a clean bite.

  White waited for him to enter the trailer before releasing the dog and following Giller inside. The exterior of the trailer belied the interior, which was as neat and clean as the woman who lived in it, although it boasted too much knit work for Giller’s liking. A large plastic bag filled with balls of yarn sat in one corner, and the table before him bore wool, needles, and the beginnings of what might have been a throw.

  White saw him looking.

  “I make some money from it,” she said. “Not much, but enough. Speaking of.”

  Up close, Giller could see the steeliness to her: the tightness around her mouth, the eyes without warmth. A little flesh on her bones might have helped matters, but not by much. Connie White was all sharp edges: a man could cut himself on her if he wasn’t careful.

  Giller produced an envelope, the smaller of the two he was carrying, and displayed its contents: $500. He was prepared to go up to $2,500, if her information was good, but no more than that. The rest he intended to keep, possibly for additional expenses, but mostly because he might need it if everything went south and he were forced to disappear.

  “That’s not what we agreed,” said White.

  Giller took a seat. He was on familiar ground here. He had spent many years negotiating, and was skilled in the art.

  “We didn’t agree to anything,” he replied. “You told me how much you wanted, and I said I looked forward to speaking with you.”

  He slid the envelope across the table, and waited for her to pick it up. He didn’t have to wait long.

  “Take it as a down payment, a token of goodwill,” said Giller. “You get to keep it one way or another.”

  Just as quickly as it had been grasped, the envelope was gone, vanished into a front pocket of White’s jeans. She didn’t exactly soften—Giller didn’t believe she was capable of it—but a new light entered her eyes, even if only the glow of avarice.

  “You want coffee?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  This, too, was part of the negotiating process: take whatever hospitality was offered, as long as it didn’t look like it was going to cost you in the end.

  White filled two small cups from a pot on the stove. Giller declined cream and sugar.

  “Have you lived here long?” he asked.

  “About six months. My brother owns the land. That’s his house you passed back on the main road. I lost my home after I lost my job. I tried to hold on to it as long as I could, but, you know, fucking banks.”

  Giller knew. The judge had given White probation on the corruption charges, but in this glorious Internet age her name was now dirt. She’d be lucky to get a job hawking hot dogs outside ballparks, and bankers habitually looked unsympathetically on convicted criminals, unless the criminal in question was one of their own.

  “You keep the place nice,” he said. “Uncluttered.”

  “That’s because I’ve had to sell most of my possessions to make ends meet. I can’t clutter it with what I don’t have. Are we done with the pleasantries?”

  Giller figured they were.

  “Tell me what you know,” he said.

  White sat back, her arms folded. Jesus. Giller relented, and showed her the second envelope, containing a further $1,000. The final $1,000 he’d hand over later if the information turned out to be good.

  “There’s a guy, Gregg Mullis, lives over in Medford,” said White. “He was married to a woman named Holly Weaver, but they split up about six or seven years back. She’s up by Guilford now. Has a kid, a boy, aged five or so, name of Daniel. No father’s name on the birth certificate, only the mother’s.”

  Giller gave no indication that the name was familiar to him, but Daniel Weaver was on his list of twenty children.

  “After his marriage broke up, Mullis went out for a while with a friend of a friend of mine. He wanted kids, my friend’s friend didn’t—or not with him—and he moved on. It happens. He wasn’t a bad guy, she said, just not her pony for the long road.”

  She paused, waiting. Giller counted out five fifties, and handed them over. They went the way of the first five hundred, except into a different pocket, and White resumed.

  “Mullis was sore, though. He and his ex-wife tried to have kids, but nothing ever took. Mullis was afraid it might be his fault, but they both got tested and it turned out it was his wife who was infertile. They talked about adopting, but Mullis didn’t want someone else’s child. He wanted his own. Funny how some men are.”

  Giller agreed that it was funny.

  “And then, a couple of years later, his wife registers the birth of a son,” White concluded. “So how does that happen?”

  “Maybe she got treatment.”

  “Or maybe the kid is Jesus.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Isn’t it enough?”

  “I don’t know, and I won’t until I speak with Mullis.”

  “I have an address for him, and a copy of the birth certificate. I’m sure you could find both yourself, but what’s your time worth?”

  “Another two fifty. If Daniel Weaver is the child I’m looking for, I’ll give you the remaining thousand.” Giller thought he might even throw in the extra five hundred, if White’s information brought his dealings with Quayle to a successful conclusion.

  “You’ll give me another two.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because it isn’t your money. I know who you are. You work for people, so you don’t care one way or another about this child beyond finding it for whoever is paying you. I got no idea how much you’re skimming off the top, but I won’t be short-changed, or not by so much that it hurts. You’re not just paying for information: you’re buying my goodwill, and my silence, because I’ll bet your employer means no good for the boy, unless you’re going to tell me he’s the lost son of a billionaire and you’re just trying to make sure he receives his inheritance, in which case I’ll want a whole lot more than three grand.”

  It was quite a speech, the substance of it uncontestable. Connie White was almost admirable in the purity of her corruption.

  “I don’t know why they want to find the boy—if Daniel Weaver is even he,” said Giller. “They’re not the kind of p
eople one asks.”

  The warning was clear.

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” said White.

  “Be sure you do.” He paid her the final two fifty, before reconsidering and throwing in another fifty on top.

  “What’s that for?” White asked.

  “The coffee,” he said.

  White folded the bills, and recited Gregg Mullis’s address from memory while pulling a photocopy of a birth certificate from a sheaf of bills and invoices beside the microwave. Giller wrote down the address in a notebook barely bigger than the palm of his hand, placed the birth certificate in his pocket, and stood to leave.

  “You can stay awhile, if you like,” said White, resting the palm of her right hand against Giller’s chest. The money had clearly set her juices flowing. Idly, Giller wondered why she wasn’t married. She was attractive enough to snare some fool, so long as he didn’t look too closely into her eyes and glimpse what remained of her soul.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but I have to leave.”

  She didn’t take the rejection personally. The cash warming her pockets presumably eased the pain.

  “Another time,” she said. “Maybe when you bring me the rest of my money.”

  “Maybe.”

  But he didn’t think so. If Daniel Weaver turned out to be the missing child, he’d have to share the source of the lead with Quayle and Mors. The abduction of a minor—and this, he felt certain, was their ultimate intention—was not the kind of act that passed unnoticed. When it occurred, it was possible that Connie White might perceive a financial benefit in coming forward with what she knew, which would not suit Quayle or Mors at all. It wouldn’t suit Giller either. He hoped White spent the money quickly.

  But the consideration of White’s possible fate also caused him to contemplate his own. If Quayle and Mors might be prepared to act in order to silence White, where did that leave him? It was another reason to hold on to as much of the cash as he could, and also keep a bag packed, just in case.

  White opened the door and stepped out in front of Giller to secure the dog. He’d have to warn Mors about it. He didn’t think Quayle would be the one to come calling when the time came.