The Wolf in Winter

  To pass the time, he read. He had brought with him a copy of Bleak House by Charles Dickens because he recalled the detective recommending it to him once. He had bought it but never got around to reading it. Now seemed like the appropriate time.

  Shaky, like Jude before him, was convinced that Prosperous was rotten, and he had halfway managed to convince Ronald of the same thing, even before Ronald had ever come to the town. Shaky had accompanied Ronald around Portland and South Portland as he began quietly questioning the homeless about what they had seen in the days preceding Jude's death. Shaky had a way of calming folk. He was unthreatening, and generally well liked. It was, thought Ronald, a little like having a good dog with him: an old Labrador, maybe, something friendly and tolerant. He didn't share this with Shaky, though. He wasn't sure how it might be taken.

  Despite their efforts, they learned nothing of worth until the end of a long day of searching and questioning. It came from an unlikely source: the woman known as Frannie, with whom Shaky had witnessed Brightboy arguing on the morning that Brightboy had attacked him. Shaky usually did his best to avoid Frannie due to her intimidating nature, and the vision of a man having his nose gnawed off that she invariably conjured up, but Ronald Straydeer wasn't troubled by her in the least. He told Shaky that he knew Frannie from way back, when she still had most of her teeth.

  'Is it true that she once bit a man's nose off and spat it out in front of him?' said Shaky. After all, it seemed like Ronald Straydeer might know.

  'No,' said Ronald solemnly. 'That's not true.'

  Shaky was relieved, but Ronald wasn't done.

  'She didn't spit it out,' he continued. 'She swallowed it.'

  Shaky felt ill. During the subsequent conversation with Frannie, he found himself using Ronald's body as a bulwark between him and the woman. If she'd developed a taste for male fesh, she'd have to go through Ronald to get to him.

  Frannie was pleased to see Ronald, although she was less pleased when she learned that he was no longer dealing. Using mainly four-letter words, she expressed the view that Ronald was a grave disappointment to her. Ronald accepted the judgment without complaint, and gave her the name of someone who might be able to help fnd some pot, along with twenty bucks with which to treat herself.

  In return, Frannie told them about the couple she had seen near Jude's basement.

  Frannie wasn't a mixer. She avoided the shelters. She was always angry, or briefy coming down from being angry prior to getting angry all over again. She liked no one, not even Jude. She'd never asked him for anything, and he'd never offered, knowing better than to do so. Shaky couldn't understand why she was opening up to Ronald Straydeer, even allowing for the money, and the pot connection. It was only later that it dawned on him: Frannie had been fattered by Ronald's attention. Ronald spoke to her as he would to any woman. He was courteous. He smiled. He asked about a wound on her arm, and recommended something for it. None of this he did in a false manner: Frannie would have seen through that in an instant. Instead, Ronald talked to her as the woman that she once was, and perhaps, deep down, still believed herself to be. How long had it been since anyone had done that for her, thought Shaky. Decades, probably. She had not always been this way and, like all of those who ended up on the streets, never wanted it for herself. As she and Ronald spoke, Shaky saw her change. Her eyes softened. She was not beautiful – she would never again be that, if she had ever been – but for the frst time Shaky saw her as something other than an individual to be feared. She let her guard down while talking to Ronald, and it struck Shaky that Frannie lived her life in a state of perpetual fear, for however bad it was to be a homeless man, it was infnitely worse to be a homeless woman. He had always understood that, but as an abstract concept, and generally applied it only to the younger girls, the teenagers, who were more obviously vulnerable. He had made the mistake of imagining that somehow, for Frannie, it might have become easier over the years, not harder, and now he knew himself to be wrong.

  So Frannie told Ronald Straydeer of how she had walked past Jude's place the night before he died, and saw a car parked across the street. And because she was always desperate, and asking was free, she tapped on the glass in the hope that a dollar might be forthcoming.

  'They gave me a fve,' she told Ronald. 'Five bucks. Just like that.'

  'And did they ask for anything in return?' said Ronald.

  Frannie shook her head.

  'Nothing.'

  'They didn't ask after Jude?'

  'No.'

  Because they already knew, thought Shaky, and they were

  smarter than to draw attention to themselves by bribing a homeless woman for information. Instead they paid her – enough to be generous, but not too generous – and she went away, leaving them to wait for Jude to appear.

  Ronald asked what Frannie remembered about them. She recalled a silver car, and Massachusetts plates, but she admitted that she might have mistaken about the plates. The woman was good-looking, but in that way of women who try too hard to keep themselves in condition as they get older, and end up with lines on their tanned faces that might have been avoided if they'd resigned themselves to a little fesh on their bones. The man was balding, and wore glasses. He had barely looked at Frannie. The woman gave her the money, and responded to Frannie's word of thanks with the briefest of smiles.

  Frannie's information wasn't much, but it was some small reward for their efforts. Ronald prepared to take his leave of Shaky and return home. He would call on the detective along the way, and share what he had learned with him. Instead, he and Shaky saw the detective's face appear on the television screen of a bar on Congress as they passed. Ronald bought Shaky a beer while he sipped a soda, and together they watched the news. Shaky told him that it had to be connected to Jude and his daughter. If that was the case, then it was also connected to Prosperous, and if Prosperous was involved then it had something to do with the old church, which was how Ronald came to be lying in the woods eating MREs and reading Dickens. Even if Shaky was mistaken, at least Ronald was trying to do something, but he had to give it to the little homeless man: Prosperous felt wrong, and the old church felt multiples of wrong.

  There had been little activity since he arrived. Twice a police cruiser had driven up the road to the church, but on each occasion the cop had simply checked the lock on the gate and made a cursory circuit of the cemetery. Ronald had used the telescopic sight to pick out the cop's name: Morland.

  The only other visitor was a tall man in his forties with receding hair, dressed in jeans, workboots and a brown suede jacket. He arrived at the cemetery from the northwest, so that his appearance in the churchyard caught Ronald by surprise. On the frst occasion, Ronald watched as he opened the church and checked inside, although he didn't remain there for long. Ronald fgured him for the pastor, Warraner. Shaky had learned about him from the detective, as well as something of the chief cop named Morland. Both Jude and the detective had endured run-ins with each of them, according to Shaky. Ronald didn't follow Warraner when he left, but later he found the path that led from the churchyard to the pastor's house. Better to know where he was coming from than not.

  The pastor returned shortly before sunset on the frst day, this time with a rake and a shovel, and began clearing undergrowth from an area about forty feet from the western wall of the church. Ronald watched him through the scope. When Warraner was done, a hole just a little over two feet in diameter was revealed in the earth. Then, apparently content with his work, the pastor left and had not yet returned.

  Now darkness had descended again, and Ronald was preparing to spend another night in the woods when the car arrived. It approached slowly because it was driving without lights, and it stopped well before it neared the cemetery's railings. Two men got out. Ronald turned his Armasight night vision binoculars on them. One was Morland, although this time he was out of uniform. The second was an old scarecrow of a man wearing a long coat and a felt hat. They didn't speak as Morland unlocked the c
emetery gate, and the two men entered.

  A second car, a station wagon, came up the road. Morland and the scarecrow stopped to watch it come. It pulled up alongside the frst vehicle and an elderly woman emerged from the driver's side. Two more men climbed out of the back, although one of them needed the assistance of his companion and the woman to do so. He wore a small oxygen tank strapped to his back, and a mask covered his mouth. Supported by the others, he made his way into the churchyard.

  Finally, from the northwest, came the pastor, but he was not alone. There was a girl of eighteen or nineteen with him. She wore a padded jacket over what looked like a nightgown, and there were unlaced sneakers on her feet. Her hands were restrained behind her back, and tape covered her mouth. To her right walked another man, a decade or so older than the pastor. He held the girl's right arm above the elbow, guiding her so that she wouldn't trip over the old gravestones, whispering and smiling as he did so. The girl didn't struggle or try to run. Ronald wondered if she was drugged, for her eyes were drooping slightly, and she dragged her feet as she came.

  She was brought to the place by the western wall of the church from which Warraner had cleared the undergrowth earlier that day. Ronald tried to get closer to them, but he didn't want to risk making a noise and alerting the group below. He contented himself with shifting slightly so that he might see more clearly what was happening. It was a still, quiet night, and the voices of the group carried to him if he listened carefully. He heard Warraner tell the girl to rest, that they were almost done. The man who held her arm assisted her as she sank to her knees, and the others formed a halfcircle around her, almost obscuring her from sight. A blade appeared, and Ronald drew a breath. He put down the binoculars and switched to the night vision scope on his rife. It wasn't as powerful, and didn't give him such a wide view of proceedings, but if anyone tried to take the knife to the girl then, cop or no cop, he planned to cut them down before the metal touched her skin. The Browning was self-loading, which gave him four shots before he'd have to pause.

  But the knife was used only to cut the bonds holding the girl's hands. Ronald watched them fall loosely to her sides, and then the man who had been assisting her removed the padded jacket, leaving her with only the nightgown as protection against the cold. Through Ronald's scope she looked like a pale ghost in the churchyard. He fxed his sights on the man with the knife and waited, his fnger not quite touching the trigger of the rife, but the blade disappeared, and none of the others was holding a weapon.

  They backed away from the girl, partially obscuring Ronald's view of her. He could still see her nightgown, though, white against the dark. He moved his sights from one back to the next, watching for movement, waiting for someone to produce a weapon, to make a move on the girl, but nobody did. Instead they appeared to be waiting.

  Ronald moved back to what he could see of the girl, and a fnger of shadow crept across the pallor of her nightgown, as though the moon had suddenly shone on an overhanging branch.

  But there was no branch, and there was no moon.

  A second shadow came, and a third, like cracks on ice. There was a furry of movement, a blur of white, and single dull snap, as of a twig breaking. The watching elders came together, and for an instant the girl was entirely hidden from Ronald.

  When they separated again, she was gone.

  Ronald removed his eye from the scope and blinked. It wasn't possible. He scanned the ground, but there was no sign of the girl in the white nightgown. Even had it somehow been stripped from her, her naked body would still have been visible on the ground, but Ronald could see nothing.

  Now the group was dispersing. Warraner was heading back to his house, while the man who had come with him joined the others as they returned to their cars. Within minutes, the gates were locked once again, and the vehicles were making their way back down the road to the highway, still driving dark.

  Ronald waited for ffteen minutes, then headed for the cemetery. He climbed the railing, heedless now of any hidden sensors, and approached the spot where he had last seen the girl. He knelt, and discerned signs of disturbance. Clumps of earth had been dislodged from the dry ground, and there were marks in the dirt where something had briefy been dragged through it. They ended where the hole once lay, but it had now collapsed, leaving only a slight depression in the ground.

  Ronald put his rife aside and started to scrabble at the dirt with his bare hands. He dug until one of his fngernails cracked, but there was no trace of the girl, only earth and thick roots, although Ronald could not tell their origin, for there were no trees in the cemetery. He sat back on the ground, breathing heavily. Above him, the old church loomed.

  A fragment of something pale caught his eye in the dirt. Lodged against a small stone in the dirt was a piece of pale cloth about half an inch square. Ronald held it between his fnger and thumb.

  I am not mad, he thought. I am not mad.

  He picked up his rife and, using his boots, tried to hide his efforts at digging. When he felt that he had done all he could, he returned to his hiding place, gathered his belongings, and prepared to leave. He checked to make sure that he had not left behind any trash or possessions, even though he knew himself to be more careful than that. Still, it paid to take the time to be sure. When he was done, he started walking. It was not yet 11:00 PM, and by traveling carefully he made it to the town of Dearden shortly before midnight, where he huddled down at the outskirts and made himself as comfortable as possible against a tree. He called just one number along the way, but it was not 911. He used a cup of coffee to warm himself, but it did not stop his shivering, and his whole body was aching by the time the truck arrived. The Fulci brothers helped him inside, and drove him back to Scarborough.

  45

  Angel and Louis were parked close to the intersection of

  Amity and Henry, about four blocks south of Hunts Lane. They spoke as they walked, heads down against the rain.

  'So?' said Angel.

  'He's not telling us all he knows,' said Louis.

  'But you believed what he did tell us?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why?'

  'Because there was a percentage in keeping information back from us, but none in lying, and he's a man who works the percentages. He wasn't the middleman on the hit, but he has more information about who was responsible than he's shared with us.'

  'You could tell that just by looking in his eyes?'

  'I understand him. And I know that he's scared of me.'

  'It's not a very exclusive club.'

  'No, but not everyone in it has the resources to make a move against one of my friends. Cambion does, but he's smart enough to know that if he involved himself then he'd have to take me out as well, and that didn't happen.'

  'Which means that the shooters either don't know about you, or don't care.'

  'And you just know that it can't be the latter.'

  'God forbid. You'd have no reason left to live.'

  'Exactly.'

  'So what is Cambion holding back on the shooters?'

  'Their names. Cambion doesn't trade in rumors. Maybe

  they crossed his path once. He might even have tried to recruit them.'

  'And, like you, they turned him down.'

  'But, unlike me, they sound like religious zealots.'

  'True. Nobody could ever accuse you of darkening church doors, not unless you were planning to shoot somebody from the shadows. So Cambion is waiting for you to get the contract voided, and then he'll give you more?'

  'That would be my guess, theoretically.'

  'Can you do it? Can you burn the contract?'

  'No. It's gone too far. There are too many people with an interest in seeing Cambion dead, either for what he's done or for what he knows.'

  'But if Cambion is as clever as you say, then he must realize that.'

  'Probably.'

  'Then what's the game?'

  'He's trying to buy time. Like I told you, he works the percentages. I think he kn
ows exactly who we're looking for, so right now he's trying to fgure if the people who were sent after Parker are more dangerous than I am. If they are, then he can sell me out to them in return for whatever it is he needs: money, a hiding place, or most likely the heads of some of those who are hunting him. If Cambion doesn't believe that the shooters are good enough to take me out then he'll feed them to us, but he'll wait until we have more to offer him. I don't think he was lying when he said he wanted to live out the rest of his days in peace. He wants a guarantee of protection, but he knows that's more than I alone can give him.'

  Angel considered this.

  'Feds,' he said, after a time. 'He wants a government screen.'

  'Feds,' confrmed Louis.