The Woman in the Woods

  Only when they had passed Augusta did Holly ask Karl where he was taking them.

  “Bangor,” had come the reply. “You’ll be safe there.”

  They were approaching the outskirts of the city when Karl left the highway. He made a couple of turns before pulling up in front of a pair of houses guarded by security gates, which opened at their approach. A woman stood silhouetted in the doorway of one of the buildings. She waited for Karl to help the Weavers from the car, Daniel woozy at being woken from his sleep. It took Holly a moment to notice that the woman had Down syndrome.

  “I’m Candy,” she said. “Welcome to the Tender House.”

  CHAPTER

  CXIV

  Parker was sure he’d made the correct call when the GPS took him along a road marked “Private,” the evergreens along its edges encroaching like shards of a greater blackness against the night sky. When the phone rang again, he pulled over to the side of the road, and did not look over his shoulder as the rear door on the right opened and Louis slipped out.

  “Why have you stopped?” said Quayle, giving Parker the final confirmation he required. Wherever Quayle was, he could see the Audi.

  “The road is dark. I don’t want to end up in a ditch.”

  Parker wondered if Quayle was using an infrared lens to observe the car. If so, Parker could only hope the trees would work in their favor, and that Louis was staying low. He held his breath, and released it only when Quayle began to speak again.

  “There’s a turnoff to your right, about a quarter of a mile ahead. Take it, and continue driving until you see two houses. You’ll spot an oil can in the yard. Don’t proceed beyond it. Stop, and wait, but be sure to keep your hands on the wheel. And leave the phone on speaker.”

  Parker did as he was told. He drove slowly along the road until he came to the turn, which took him uphill. The road was even rougher and narrower than before. If another car appeared from the opposite direction, one of them would have to learn to levitate, but he encountered no other vehicles, and eventually two dwellings came into view. The first looked like a pretty standard Maine camp: a single-story wood cabin that probably contained just a couple of bedrooms, a living area, and a bathroom. The other building was larger and older, consisting of two levels topped by a curiously ornate cupola, although the whole structure had long fallen into disrepair, and anyone taking up residence would have been forced to share with some of the local wildlife.

  Parker pulled up at the oil can, but kept the engine running. He didn’t think Quayle planned to kill him, or not before the book was safely in his possession, so when Mors emerged from the bushes to his left, a gun in her hand, he tried not to fear actively for his life. Of Quayle, he saw no sign.

  “Turn off the ignition,” said Quayle’s voice from the phone.

  Parker did so, and silence reigned for a time. Mors ceased her advance, but kept him under the gun.

  “Are you armed?”

  “Yes,” said Parker.

  “Get out of the car and kneel on the ground,” Quayle instructed. “Tell Miss Mors what you’re carrying, and she will relieve you of its burden.”

  Parker opened the door, keeping his hands raised once he was out, before easing himself onto the damp gravel. Within seconds, Mors was behind him.

  “Where is it?” she said.

  “Holster under my left shoulder.”

  She moved around until she was facing him.

  “Reach in and remove it with your left hand, thumb and index finger only.”

  Awkwardly, Parker took out the gun, and held it before him like a dead fish.

  “Gently throw it at my feet.”

  Parker did as he was told. The gun landed an inch from her right foot.

  “Any others?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to frisk you. If I find more weapons, I’ll shoot you.”

  Parker decided against dying.

  “Knife at my left shin, revolver in an ankle holster on my right.”

  “Lie flat, hands on the back of your head, fingers interlocked.”

  The ground smelled of spilled gas, and up close Parker could see the glitter of broken glass. He tried to avoid putting his face against it while Mors removed the knife and the revolver before frisking him anyway, just for her own peace of mind.

  “You should see a doctor,” Parker said, when her face was close to his and he could smell the foulness of her breath. “I think you may have cancer.”

  Mors didn’t reply, but seconds later she used a foot to spread Parker’s legs before kicking him hard in the balls. His vision went black, and he curled in upon himself, his eyes closed.

  “You mustn’t be rude,” said Mors.

  Parker stayed still for a while, until he was sure he wasn’t going to puke. He was just getting to his knees again when Quayle materialized from the old house and stepped down to the yard.

  “It’s not wise to goad her,” he said. “She’s led a difficult life.”

  Parker’s pain was slowly receding, but nausea was taking its place. He now wanted to hurt Mors very badly.

  Quayle squatted before him.

  “The book,” he said.

  “Owen Weaver,” Parker replied.

  “That’s not how it’s going to work. If I don’t have the book in my hands within the next thirty seconds, I’ll take my chances and tell Miss Mors to kill you.”

  Parker saw no sense in arguing.

  “The book is in the trunk.”

  “Get it.”

  Parker managed to rise to his feet. He was unsteady, and it hurt to walk, but at least he was staying upright. Mors and Quayle tracked him to the rear of the car, but from different angles. They were understandably wary of the trunk, just in case Parker had not come alone after all, but they were looking in the wrong place, which was all that mattered.

  Parker opened the trunk. The book lay in its shoe box, the front cover facing up.

  “Hand it to me,” said Quayle.

  Parker picked up the book, holding it so that Quayle could see the blank pages loosely inserted.

  “Owen Weaver,” Parker said again.

  “Mr. Weaver?” Quayle shouted. “Let us know you’re alive.”

  “I’m okay,” said a voice from inside the house. Parker guessed Weaver was on the second story, because one of the windows to the front was open.

  Parker extended the book toward Quayle, who reached for it. When his fingers were within touching distance, Parker relaxed his grip and the sections fell apart, the wind sending them skipping across the dirt.

  A number of things then happened simultaneously.

  Quayle followed the progress of the pages, already moving to try to catch them. Mors shifted the barrel of her gun and pulled the trigger, firing not at Parker but at the figure of Louis emerging from the trees. Parker, caught between two guns, dove to the ground, jarring his tender balls painfully in the process, and scrambled to where his own weapons lay.

  And finally, the first floor of the old house burst into flames.

  CHAPTER

  CXV

  Holly Weaver made her son a mug of hot chocolate in the kitchen of the Tender House, and brewed a cup of tea for herself. It was past Daniel’s bedtime, but he showed no signs of wanting to sleep. It was almost, she thought, as though he knew a conversation between them was both necessary and imminent.

  The Tender House was quiet. Four of the other bedrooms were occupied, two of them by women and children, and two by women alone. Holly had already exchanged words in passing with a couple of the women, and learned their names, but the kids—both girls of a similar age to her son—were in bed by the time she and Daniel arrived. Daniel might meet them over breakfast in the morning, according to Molly Bow, who introduced herself once Candy had shown Holly and Daniel inside.

  Holly had never heard of the Tender House, although she’d encountered her share of victims of domestic violence. It was hard to be a woman in this world and not pick up on rumors, or even glimp
se the evidence, but she never imagined she’d end up in a shelter herself. It made her feel ashamed. She wanted to knock on doors and explain that she wasn’t here because a husband or boyfriend had beaten her, threatened rape, or abused her child. She was hiding behind these walls because it was possible that a violent man might want to hurt her and her boy. But then she realized that had she made such an admission, the other women might well have nodded their heads in understanding, and pointed out that they were all in this place because of the fear of injury or death at the hands of men, and it didn’t much matter what mask their assailants might wear, or what their relationship to them might be. No one here was any better or worse than another, and there was no shame in seeking help when faced with male rage.

  Now Holly sat Daniel on the double bed that they were to share, in a room filled with just enough color and quirk, and held her son to her as he sipped his hot chocolate, and said:

  “I have something to tell you.”

  CHAPTER

  CXVI

  Events move fast in a gunfight, particularly when the participants are in close proximity, as Heb Caldicott had learned to his cost. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral lasted just thirty seconds and left six of the nine participants dead or wounded at the end. So by the time Parker had retrieved his gun, and was ready to fire, Louis was already slumped against a tree, bleeding heavily from one wound to his right shoulder and a second to his groin; Quayle and Mors were disappearing into the woods with most of the book; and the yard was bathed in the glow of fire. Somewhere inside the old house, Owen Weaver was screaming.

  It had taken about fifteen seconds for everything to go to hell.

  Parker first tended to Louis. The injury to his shoulder looked like a bad graze, but the wound to the groin was serious. Parker took off his jacket, wadded it tightly, and forced Louis to maintain pressure on the injury. Louis moaned, but managed to hold the compress in place.

  “I hit her,” said Louis, “but she didn’t go down.”

  Parker wanted to head after Quayle and Mors. He wished for nothing less than to watch them bleed, but he would not leave Louis, and Owen Weaver was trapped by the conflagration. Parker thought he heard a car starting over the crackle and roar of flames, but he ignored it. Instead he called 911 and gave the dispatcher directions to the property, even as he was pulling a blanket from the trunk of the Audi and dousing it with the container of water he stored there in case of emergencies. He soaked a rag, tied it around his face as best he could, and headed for the house.

  The heat and smoke were already intense, and the fire was feeding on the staircase. It couldn’t have progressed so far, or moved so fast, without an accelerant, and Parker knew then that Quayle had never intended for him or Owen Weaver to survive the night. Parker placed the blanket over his head and upper body and tried to stay low, moving as quickly as he could up the stairs as the fire bit at his shoes. The ends of his jeans ignited, and he could feel the skin on his legs start to blister, but he held off until he got to the landing, which was still clear, before reaching down to pat out the flames.

  Owen Weaver was lying on his side in a room to the left, still tied to a chair. His feet were bare, the left foot badly swollen, its toes misshapen; the work of Mors, Parker guessed. He figured that Owen Weaver must have fallen while trying to free himself, and it might just have been for the best. The fire had not yet risen to this level, but the smoke had, and the floor offered the possibility of breathable air. Parker knelt beside the semiconscious man, and examined the plastic restraints used to bind him to the arms and legs of the old Carver. Parker’s knife lay on the dirt outside, and he couldn’t risk using a boot to break the arms and legs of the chair because he might well fracture Weaver’s arms and legs in the process.

  Parker searched the room and found some old cardboard. He rolled it into a cylinder and held it to the flames that were now spreading to the landing. The staircase and its walls were now entirely ablaze; he and Weaver wouldn’t be going out the way they’d come in, if they were lucky enough to escape at all.

  The cardboard caught, and Parker returned to Weaver, closing the door behind him. He placed the flame against the ties and watched them melt, burning Weaver’s skin in the process but also shocking him back to full consciousness. When he was free, Parker raised him up and helped him to the window.

  “I’m going to lower you down,” Parker told him, as Weaver kept his injured foot off the floor. “It’ll hurt when you land, but being burned alive will hurt a lot more.”

  Weaver nodded, but his eyes were glazed. Parker realized that Weaver would be largely a passive participant in what was to come.

  The window was painted shut, and Parker had to kick out its panes. He gazed into the night, hoping to see fire engines coming up the road, just as they would in a movie, but he could discover no trace of their approach, although he heard, or imagined, sirens in the distance. Louis was still sprawled against the tree, and lifted a hand to let Parker know he was holding on.

  Flames were sprouting from between the floorboards, and the smoke was now so thick that Parker could no longer see the chair to which Owen Weaver had been tied. He made sure the sharp edges of glass on the window were all removed before he maneuvered Weaver into position so that his lower body hung down and his upper half remained over the frame. Holding on to Weaver’s forearms, Parker managed to get him out of the window, his feet dangling about twenty feet above the yard.

  “I’m letting go,” said Parker. “Try to keep your legs bent.”

  But Weaver was already deadweight, his eyes closed and his chin at his chest. Parker dropped him. Weaver landed awkwardly, but by some miracle he came down on his right side, largely sparing his left foot further injury.

  Seconds later, Parker followed him down.

  This time, he heard the sirens for real.

  CHAPTER

  CXVII

  Daniel left Holly sleeping in their shared room. The Tender House was quiet as he walked down the stairs. He didn’t know where he was going, or what he was looking for. He just knew he needed to be alone for a little while.

  He was trying to process what he had been told, even though some small part of him had always suspected it; had felt it as a dislocation, and glimpsed it in the way his mom looked at him sometimes when she thought he would not notice. She was his mother, yet there was also another. She had lied to him, she and Grandpa Owen both, but Daniel was not angry. Confused, yes, and sad, but not angry. He could not have said why, but it was so.

  He found the toy room and sat down amid dolls, and board games, and jigsaw puzzles. Before him was a large painting of mountains against a blue sky, the landscape rendered in big bright colors, the kind that existed only in cartoons.

  Cartoons, not fairy tales.

  Daniel heard a noise from one of the toy boxes. It was almost as though he had been hoping for it, and his hope had made it happen.

  It was the sound of a toy phone ringing.

  He rummaged among wood and plastic until he found the source: a plastic phone on wheels, not entirely dissimilar to the one he had owned, the one on which Karis would call him.

  But she was no longer just Karis. She was something more.

  Daniel put the phone on his lap, lifted the plastic receiver, and held it to his ear.

  “Mommy?”

  * * *

  JENNIFER WATCHED THE GRAY form kneeling amid the trees, speaking in a voice that sounded like the rustling of dead leaves.

  Jennifer had been mistaken. She believed it would be for her father to name the woman, and thus bring her peace, but she was wrong. In these final moments, she was no longer a vestige of Karis Lamb. Karis Lamb was Before, but with the crying of a child she had been transformed. What came After was another.

  What came after was Mommy.

  And as she listened to the voice of her child acknowledge her at last, the gray being began to slip away, disintegrating into splinters, dirt, and dust, carried off into the darkness until all th
at was left was the memory of her, held in the heart of a boy.

  * * *

  DANIEL HUNG UP THE phone. He was tired. He wanted to sleep now.

  Candy stood at the door. Daniel did not know how long she had been there.

  “Come,” said Candy. “I’ll bring you back to your mother.”

  And after only the slightest of hesitations, Daniel took her hand.

  CHAPTER

  CXVIII

  Owen Weaver survived. His lungs were damaged, and he would always walk with a limp, but he would live.

  Louis survived. He was concerned that his principal sexual organ might never be the same, but the doctors assured him it would continue to function as well as before, just not for a little while. Parker, nursing a busted ankle, advised Louis to think clean thoughts. Louis told Parker to go fuck himself.

  And Angel survived, although he was quieter now, and sometimes he found himself numbering his days.

  In the matter of Daniel Weaver there would be pain and recriminations, court cases, and custody hearings. Moxie Castin would do what he could for all involved, and because Moxie was a most accomplished attorney, nobody would serve jail time, and Daniel Weaver would call Holly Weaver, and no other, his mother. The tale of the “Woman in the Woods” would enter the lore of the state, and like all good stories much of the truth of it was destined to remain hidden.

  The man named Quayle vanished, and the woman called Mors vanished with him, although she left a trail of blood in her wake, both figuratively and literally.

  Louis was right. He had hit her.

  For the time being, Parker chose to store in a safe-deposit box the single vellum page he had kept from Quayle, while Bob Johnston worked on establishing its provenance.

  And eventually, Parker sat down with SAC Edgar Ross of the FBI, and shared with him most of what he knew about Quayle and the vellum leaves. Parker did so with some reluctance. Ross had once sent a private detective to spy on Sam, Parker’s daughter—why, Parker did not know—although Parker had decided to keep his knowledge of the surveillance to himself, for now.