The Woman in the Woods

  “A girl who works in a coffee shop down in Covington, Kentucky,” said Karis. “Her name is Doreen: Doreen Peach Pie. She said that’s how you’d remember her.”

  Dobey did. As far as he could tell, Doreen had subsisted solely on coffee and slices of peach pie while she stayed with him. She ought to have come in at two hundred pounds, all the sugar and fat she was absorbing, but she hardly weighed anything. Dobey could only figure that the energy generated by the vast quantities of caffeine somehow served to cancel out the rest.

  “You say you’re pregnant?”

  “Eight months gone. Mr. Dobey, I need to put more distance between Covington and me. I’ve got this far on the kindness of strangers, but it’s not far enough. He’s probably already coming after me, and he’ll find me if I don’t get help. It could be he’ll find me anyway, but I can’t stop now. If I do, he’ll take me back, and he’ll kill me. He’ll wait until I’ve had his baby, but he will kill me.”

  “Who is ‘he’?”

  “I don’t even want to tell you his name. He’s bad, but some of the men he associates with are worse. I don’t want to share with you more than I have to. Honest, it’s better this way.”

  And Dobey believed her. Sometimes, you just knew. He told Karis Lamb to stay in the Starbucks and he’d come get her, which he did. She was a slim, dark-haired girl, with eyes too big for her face, but there was a resilience to her as well; a streak of hardness. Dobey put her in his truck and drove her to the diner. Over the days and nights that she stayed, she told Dobey and Esther a story: about a man who had at first seemed kind and different, a cultured, slightly older figure who taught literature at a private college; who was independently wealthy and collected books; who, when she finally moved in with him, made her a prisoner in his home; who, she realized, had groomed her for precisely that purpose, because he thrived on rape; who warned her that if she tried to run, he’d murder her mother and sister before cutting her open with garden shears; who claimed to consort with spirits; who—

  * * *

  QUAYLE INTERRUPTED DOBEY.

  “My own Scheherazade,” he said, “spinning tales, in your case speckled with truth, to buy the moments till morning.”

  “You asked me about Karis Lamb,” said Dobey. “I’m telling you.”

  “And you’re spouting lies: not many, but enough. Karis did tell you the name of the man she was fleeing: Vernay. The girl in Covington was not called Doreen but Ava, although I can’t attest to her dietary peculiarities. It was Ava who contacted you out of concern for Karis, who did indeed frequent her place of business, although it was a health-food store, not a coffee shop. Vernay believed he had worn Karis down and broken her will, which was why she was permitted some limited latitude, albeit with Vernay close by. And Ava, who had suffered abuse of her own, sensed something similar in Karis, and slowly, and very carefully, began to tease information from her, communicating with her through notes written on the backs of receipts, enough to confirm Ava’s own suspicions, if not to involve the law. But Karis remained unwilling, or afraid, to run.

  “And then Karis’s mother and sister were killed in an automobile accident, and suddenly part of the hold that Vernay had over her ceased to exist. It was probably the spur for what was to come; that and the pregnancy. Karis remained concerned that the police would not believe her claims of rape and incarceration. It would be her word against Vernay’s, and if she were unsuccessful, it would be the end of her. Even if she did manage to get away, she was afraid that Vernay or his friends would track her down. That was when Ava suggested she turn to you.

  “Karis couldn’t contact you directly because Vernay gave her no access to a phone, but you, Mr. Dobey, could contact Vernay. You made the first approach, using a shared passion for rare books as a point of entry into his life. Like many collectors, Vernay both bought and sold. You purchased from him, began a correspondence, and eventually you and he met. Vernay had very particular interests, mostly erotica and the occult. And you, from your trailer library, have contrived to become quite the expert in esoteric volumes, quite the bibliophile.

  “It took a lot of patience and effort for all of you to achieve what you did: to get a cell phone to Karis; to track Vernay’s routines for the most likely opportunity to get Karis away from him; to be available to move at a moment’s notice, but Vernay was always alert. His home was secured, and he worked not five minutes’ drive from it. It was Ava who came up with the idea of a medical emergency, an unexpected pain during the pregnancy, and a visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic where, thanks to Ms. Bachmeier’s contacts, a rear-door escape was facilitated, with Ava waiting to drive Karis north to Seymour, from where you did indeed collect her.

  “And all this you performed so successfully that it has taken me years to find the correct thread and begin to pull. I had never thought to look at Vernay’s book habit, which was foolish of me, but then your friend Ava moved north and helped a woman in Terre Haute, a housewife named Petra Flinn. You may recall her husband, Derrick. He certainly remembers you. So I now had Ava, and I had you. Ava, incidentally, filled in a lot of the gaps. Regrettably, there is now a vacancy at the health-food store.”

  Dobey couldn’t help himself. He lunged at Quayle and managed to get his hands on his throat, but Mors, both faster and stronger than she looked, was on him in an instant. Dobey took a blow to the head that sent him sprawling on the bed, and then Quayle was behind him, holding him down, while the woman squatted on Dobey’s belly like some pale sister to the demon in Fusili’s Nightmare. She looked to Quayle for guidance, and through blurred vision Dobey saw Quayle nod.

  The gun was set aside. From her jacket Mors removed a leather pouch, which opened to reveal a small set of sharp surgical instruments. She took a thin scalpel between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, and suspended it over Dobey’s face.

  “I did warn you,” said Quayle.

  And Pallida Mors used the scalpel to puncture Dobey’s right eye.

  CHAPTER

  XIV

  The rain revealed twisted roots.

  The rain revealed stone and dark fresh soil.

  The rain revealed a skull.

  CHAPTER

  XV

  The pain had dulled, but only compared to the intensity of the initial agony.

  Dobey was once again seated on his bed, his back to the wall, a towel filled with ice pressed to what remained of his right eye, the material stained with blood and ocular fluids. In his free hand Dobey held a glass of bourbon, poured for him by Quayle. Mors had resumed her vigil by the window, while Quayle had returned to his chair.

  “I’m sorry,” said Quayle, “but you brought that on yourself. In a way, you brought all this on yourself. Consider it a punishment for good deeds, or for one good deed. I don’t care about the others, only Karis.”

  Quayle ran a finger along the spines of the nearest volumes.

  “I never imagined that the interior of a trailer could be so elegant,” he said, taking in the oak shelves that Dobey had made and fitted himself; the items of antique furniture sourced from dealers over the years, according to the fluctuating state of Dobey’s finances: the Persian rugs; the ornate lamps.

  And the books: all of the books.

  “We’ll leave you here among your volumes,” said Quayle. “I promise you. We’re almost done.”

  He leaned forward, gazing up into Dobey’s downturned face.

  “Vernay is dead. I thought you might like to know that. He was, even by the lowest of standards, a wretched specimen, although perhaps Karis told you enough about him for you to be aware of this already. He thrived on rape, but a taste for rape will eventually land a man in jail, so Vernay decided to forsake the lure of fresh meat for the security of the familiar. I think Karis was perhaps the second or third woman he’d taken, although he claimed to have held her in genuine affection. It was what made her different, he said, although eventually she’d have ended up like the others, sleeping in the dirt beneath his basement fl
oor. I believe he was considering letting her child live. I didn’t bother to ask him why, for obvious reasons. As you yourself noted, there’s only so much a man can bear to hear.

  “Of course, it’s possible that one of the others might also have become pregnant by Vernay, but didn’t carry to term. Again, it wasn’t a subject I cared to pursue. Clearly, though, Karis’s pregnancy caused Vernay to take a new approach. Perhaps he just liked the idea of growing his own victim, because he never struck me as the paternal kind.

  “But when Karis disappeared, it became important that Vernay should also vanish. If she began talking to the right people, who knew what forces might arrive at Vernay’s door? Karis, Karis: what trouble you have caused us all.”

  Quayle checked his watch.

  “We really must be going, Mr. Dobey. Think of your fine widow. Think of your young staff. Tell us the truth, and we’ll be far from here before they wake to the dawn. But if I find out later that you’ve lied, I guarantee we’ll come back and continue our investigations through them.”

  Dobey began to sob. He’d managed to restrain himself until now, but it was all coming to an end, and he did not want his last act on this earth to be the betrayal of Karis Lamb.

  “We sent her to a safe house in Chicago,” he said, “but she only stayed one night. When the volunteer went to check on her, she was already gone. But she called me about a week later. She wanted to thank me, and let me know she was okay.”

  “And where did she call from?”

  “Portland, Maine.”

  “Who was the contact there?”

  “There was none, or no one I can name. By then, Karis was on her own. She said she was heading to Canada.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “Yes, I swear.”

  Quayle stood.

  “Then we’re done.”

  Mors approached Dobey for the final time, still holding her surgical pouch. Dobey tried to pull away, fearing the scalpel, but Quayle restrained him while the woman produced not a blade, but a bottle and a syringe.

  “It won’t hurt,” said Quayle. “It will be just like falling asleep.”

  Mors filled the syringe, tapped the needle, and reached for Dobey’s left arm. And as the point pierced his skin, Dobey spoke to Quayle.

  “You’re dead and you don’t even know it.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Dobey felt the drug invade his veins, progressing rapidly up his arm to his shoulder, but he still retained the strength to speak. As his eyes began to close, he said, “Out there is someone who will put an end to you. You’ll be torn apart, and no one will give a damn except to celebrate your passing.”

  Dobey’s eyes began to close.

  “I’m sorry,” said Quayle. “The world does not work that way.”

  “You know,” said Dobey, “you talk too much.”

  And thus he died.

  CHAPTER

  XVI

  Not only a skull now: ribs, a femur, finger bones intertwined over a female pelvic cavity, here and there the yellow masses of saponification, partly shrouded in brownish gray skin and the tattered remnants of the clothing and sacking in which the woman had been interred.

  Because sometimes the dead rise, and wake to a dream of life.

  CHAPTER

  XVII

  Parker’s meeting with Moxie Castin was postponed for a few days due to an indisposition on the lawyer’s part, which Parker put down to Moxie’s consistent ingestion of sugary carbonated beverages, but which the lawyer claimed was flu.

  The delay was fortunate, because the black dog came upon Parker, a sadness that turned the world to gray. He retreated to his home, turned off his phone, and waited for Jennifer to come.

  * * *

  AND TO THE NORTH, the men and women gathered in ever-greater numbers: police and wardens; experts in bodies and experts in bone; all in the service of nameless remains.

  All for the woman in the woods.

  CHAPTER

  XVIII

  Holly Weaver stood by Daniel’s bed. She hadn’t read him a story that night, or the night before. When she offered, Daniel replied only that he was tired, and she could read to him another time. Holly tried to hide how grateful she was for the respite, and especially that she would not have to recite the story she had written for him. She was not certain she could have made it to the end without breaking.

  Holly wondered if Daniel was already growing out of the need to have her near him before he slept, and if this was the unpicking of the first stitch, presaging a time when she would no longer have him beside her at all, when he would leave for college, or work, or a lover’s bed, perhaps never to return.

  But what if it happened before then? What if they took him away?

  She kissed Daniel, and tried to silence the voice in her head. It had been with her since Daniel’s birth, but it was speaking more insistently since the discovery of the body in the woods.

  What if they find out what we did?

  “Good night, Daniel. I love you.”

  “Good night, Mom. I love you too.”

  What if they come?

  CHAPTER

  XIX

  Parker watched the sun shine low on the marshes, shedding gold upon the sea. It rose, set, and was gone. One day, then two. The house echoed to the sound of his footsteps, and his alone. He embraced the solitude. He was a man still grieving, and a grief so old could no longer be shared. It had to be endured alone.

  How long now since they had been taken from him, his wife and first child? Did it even matter anymore? His years with them were slowly being stolen away, months coalescing into minutes, days into seconds. He felt himself losing memories. Susan and Jennifer, mother and daughter, were drifting into dream. This was why he had to close his door to the demands of others, even if only for a little while. In silence could he mine for recollection, and restore the beloved to remembrance.

  And if he waited long enough, a different hush might descend, a listening quietude.

  He sat in stillness by his window as daylight paled, anticipating the cusp, the moment when the shadows teetered on the brink of absolute absorption by descending night, until he thought he glimpsed her: movement where no movement should be, a lost girl flitting like a moth against the landscape, her ruined face blessedly hidden by hair and forest and almost-night.

  Jennifer: the lost daughter.

  The dead daughter.

  Only then did he speak.

  “Tell me.”

  And in speaking he caused motion to cease, all but the gentle tilt of the child’s head as she heard her father’s words through the barrier of walls, through the mesh of bare branches, through the mists that tried always to smother them.

  tell you . . . what?

  “Tell me who I am.”

  you are my father

  “Tell me why I am here.”

  to die

  “To what end?”

  i cannot say

  “I am tired of not knowing.”

  you mustn’t be afraid

  “And yet I am.”

  i will be with you when it comes

  “And Sam?” His other daughter, the living child, to whom the dead also spoke.

  she will not be there at the end

  “But will she be safe?”

  she is always safe

  “I’m sorry I failed you.”

  you did not fail me

  “I’m sorry I was not there to protect you.”

  you could not have protected me

  “Had I been with you—”

  then you would have died beside me, beside us

  “I wanted that. I wanted the pain to end.”

  you mustn’t be selfish, daddy

  Daddy.

  “You don’t understand.”

  i do

  “I cannot go on like this.”

  but you must

  “Why?”

  because they’re gathering

  “Who is ga
thering?”

  because they’re close

  “Who is close?”

  the not-gods

  “The Not-God?”

  no, daddy, you’re not listening

  not one, but many

  “I don’t understand.”

  there are gods within gods, three entities in one, mirrors of the old

  “And what do the Not-Gods want?”

  they want to put an end to all things

  “And how am I supposed to stop this?”

  by living

  “Living is hard.”

  dying is harder

  He strained to see her now. The shadows were renewing their claim on her.

  and you will die

  “Stay.”

  there will be pain, but i will be there to share it

  “And then?”

  we will go together, you and i, to the sea

  The blackness became complete, and she was gone.

  He closed his eyes. All these dreams, all these sorrows. No end in sight.

  But it was coming.

  CHAPTER

  XX

  Parker woke in his bed the following morning, with no memory of leaving his chair by the window. He washed, dressed, and consumed more than coffee and toast for the first time in days. The black dog had retreated.

  Because Jennifer had come.

  He caught up with some paperwork before booking a last-minute flight to New York. It was time to visit the patient.

  * * *

  THE HOSPITAL ROOM STANK of suffering. Angel was still weak, and whatever he was being fed wasn’t entering his system through his mouth, but he was able to speak for minutes at a time before briefly lapsing into sleep, and his grip on Parker’s hand when they were about to part was firm.

  “You need to look after Louis for me,” he said.

  Parker and Angel had already shared at least one version of this conversation prior to the operation, but Parker wasn’t surprised that the other man could remember nothing of it.