The Woman in the Woods Read online

  “You want, I go check on him.”

  “Thank you.”

  Leila returned to her car, parked it, and walked to her front door. Only when the door closed behind her did Carlos turn his truck around and return to the diner.

  CHAPTER

  IV

  Parker and Louis left the bar together. Louis had walked downhill from his condo to the waterfront, but was in no mood to walk back uphill. They were the last customers, and the streets of the city were largely still, apart from the occasional car passing on Commercial.

  “It’s grown warmer,” Louis noted, and it had, even in the short time they’d been inside. Parker could hear water dripping from the surrounding rooftops.

  “Winter’s over,” he said.

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Parker’s car stood by the curb, but one vehicle still remained in the shared lot in front of the bar. It was a new Chevy Silverado, heavily customized, with oversized wheels and a big lockbox in the bed: a fuck-you truck. There were parts of the country, indeed parts of the state—although not many—where the ownership of such a truck might have been justified by terrain and necessity, but it was clear that this particular example had not been bought as a workhorse. Its very existence was an act of braggadocio, an effort to intimidate. And lest any doubt remained about the intentions of its owner, a pair of small Confederate flags flew from its wing mirrors, with a larger version pasted to the glass of the rear window. The truck had been visible from where they were sitting, but didn’t belong to any of the bar’s patrons. Parker had noticed Louis’s attention repeatedly drawn to it over the course of their time together, his expression unreadable. Now Louis paused in front of the truck, taking in its every detail.

  “How much you think one of these things runs?” Louis asked.

  “I’d say thirty grand basic, but this monster is a long way from standard. I’m guessing sixty or seventy before the customization, and five bucks for the flags.”

  “Hell of an outlay to advertise ignorance.”

  “Clearly you can do a lot with five bucks.”

  “South of the Line, I could understand it. Might not like it, but I could understand. My question is: What the fuck is it doing up here?”

  “Stupidity knows no boundaries.”

  “You think that’s just stupidity?”

  “No, I think it belongs to someone who defines a good day by how bad he can make someone else’s.”

  It wasn’t the first rebel flag Parker had glimpsed up here in recent times, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. He wasn’t so naïve as to believe that rage and intolerance were recent arrivals to the state, but he couldn’t recall them being worn so openly as badges of pride. Bigotry and hatred appeared newly empowered.

  “This is the time of benighted men,” said Louis.

  “Perhaps, but this particular one isn’t worth waiting around for.”

  “You know him?”

  “Only his kind. Listening to them is like sticking barbed wire in your ears.”

  Louis took in the empty streets.

  “I’ll be along momentarily,” he said.

  “Should I start the car?”

  “I believe that might be advisable.”

  Parker began walking. His Mustang had been waiting out winter under a cover, so he was driving a silver ’09 Taurus, one of two nondescript cars he used on those occasions when discretion was required for a job. He hated the Taurus, and had already decided to trade it for something marginally less functional come spring, but he was suddenly very glad to have it on this night. He sometimes struggled to remember the car himself, so it was highly unlikely that anyone else would recall it either. He got behind the wheel, hit the ignition, and waited. Two minutes later, Louis opened the passenger door and climbed in. He was twirling a small Confederate flag in his right hand.

  “What the fuck is this?” he asked, gesturing at the car.

  “It’s a Taurus,” said Parker as he pulled away from the curb. He resisted putting his foot down for fear of landing them in a bank of filthy ice, but he was dearly wishing that the Taurus had a little more fire in its belly.

  “You driving it for a bet? I’d have been better off on foot.”

  “Should I ask what you just did?”

  But there was no need for Louis to answer, because seconds later Parker heard the unmistakable sound of a truck exploding. He kept driving, keeping an eye out for any Portland PD black-and-whites, but saw none. It wouldn’t take them long to start arriving. He just hoped that the area around the bar was as empty as it appeared.

  “Bet he wishes he’d gone with diesel now,” Parker said.

  “He can consider it a lesson learned.”

  Parker indicated the flag. “You keeping that as a souvenir?”

  “I made a note of his license plate number. I may find out where he lives and return it to him.”

  “By mail?”

  Louis examined the flag thoughtfully.

  “If he’s lucky.”

  CHAPTER

  V

  Carlos returned to the diner to find all the lights out, even the one in the back office. He drove to the staff lot and detected a warm glow from inside Dobey’s double-wide trailer, followed by the sight of Dobey himself in the doorway.

  “What are you doing back here?” Dobey asked.

  “Miss Leila ask me,” said Carlos. “Inquieta. She worry for you.”

  “They both get home safely?”

  “Sí.”

  “Then you should be home, too.”

  Carlos lingered, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot. He had cooked at Dobey’s for more than a decade, and owed the older man a lot. Dobey paid him well, and had offered to provide collateral when Carlos wanted to buy a place of his own for his family. Dobey was perhaps the best man Carlos had ever met, and they had spent so long working together that he was now able to second-guess Dobey’s wishes to an almost telepathic degree, and gauge his moods in a manner even Esther Bachmeier could not match. Right now, Carlos wouldn’t have said Dobey was frightened, exactly; yes, there was fear in him, but it was edged with fury.

  “Carlos, I swear, if I don’t see you and your truck heading into the night in the next thirty seconds, I’ll set you to scrubbing so many pans for the next week that you’ll be wiping your ass with a stump by the end of it, you hear?”

  “Entiendo.”

  “And Carlos, no foolishness. There’s nothing to be concerned about.”

  “Entiendo,” Carlos repeated. He didn’t want any police trouble. He and his immediate family had their green cards, but two cousins living with them did not. He told himself that Dobey knew what he was doing, because Dobey always knew what he was doing, even as the lie seemed to take physical form and fill Carlos’s tongue and throat so that he could no longer speak, not even to say goodbye.

  Dobey waited until he was certain Carlos was gone before pulling the door closed behind him. He turned to face the man seated in Dobey’s favorite armchair, flicking idly through a copy of Marcus Aurelius he had taken from a shelf, his navy overcoat once again folded carefully beside him, his brogues reflecting the lamplight. Behind Dobey another figure moved, this one shorter than the other, almost petite, yet with the sour-milk smell of old spilled sperm on her.

  “Very good,” said the man in the chair. “Now, if you’ll take a seat, we can begin.”

  CHAPTER

  VI

  Parker dropped Louis off at the latter’s apartment on Portland’s Eastern Promenade, although he took the scenic route to it via South Portland, and his stomach tightened every time they passed a patrol car. He approached his own house in Scarborough with similar caution, anticipating the presence of police, but it seemed that nobody had witnessed what was, by any measure, a quite spectacular act of criminal damage.

  He was due to meet Moxie Castin for breakfast the following morning. Parker wasn’t hurting for money, but he was bored. Recent weeks had been quiet
, and he’d resorted to process serving and employee background checks to pass the time. He was worried that if some more engrossing pursuits did not show up soon, he might be forced to make a habit of driving Louis around so he could set stuff on fire.

  Parker was concerned for Louis. For as long as Parker had known him, Louis had been with Angel, and each man rarely left the other’s side. They might have bickered, sometimes even fought, but their love and loyalty were never in doubt. Louis gave strength to Angel, and Angel tempered Louis’s hardness, but Parker had always secretly believed that while Angel could survive without Louis—not undamaged, and not unburdened by great sorrow, but survival nonetheless—Louis would not live long without Angel. Louis was a man of extremes, and it was Angel who gently tethered him to normality and domesticity, albeit in a form largely unrecognizable to most other human beings.

  Were Louis to lose Angel, Parker believed that Louis would in turn lose himself, and die visiting his pain on the world. Parker felt this because, although he was closer to Angel than to Louis, he had as much in common with the latter as the former. Parker knew all about pain, and the price to be paid for indulging it.

  So he said a prayer for these two men, sending it forth to a God whose existence—if not the benignity of His nature—he no longer doubted. He prayed, too, for his living daughter and the one who had predeceased her, the child who still haunted the marshes, who moved between worlds.

  He checked the weather before going to sleep. The temperature was definitely on the rise for the coming week. The state was done with winter. Good, Parker thought. Although he was a northern creature, more comfortable with dark and cold than light and heat, he had long since passed the annual point of weariness with the elements, and yearned to see expanses of earth and grass unsullied by patches of grim ice.

  He slept, blessed by an absence of dreams.

  CHAPTER

  VII

  Dobey sat on the edge of his bed, his knees almost touching those of the man opposite. They were so close that Dobey could inhale his scent. It was subtle, clean, and expensive, even to Dobey’s unpracticed nose. It reminded him of pipe tobacco, and the High Church services of childhood.

  Dobey figured that he, on the other hand, smelled only of grease and sweat. He had ceased to notice the diner’s particular aroma on his clothes and skin, but he suddenly found himself ashamed of it, as though, despite being the victim of intrusion, even invasion, he was guilty of some failure of manners and hygiene.

  If the visitor felt uncomfortable at their enforced intimacy, he gave no sign of it. Instead, despite his earlier indication of a desire to commence, he continued to turn the pages of the Commentaries with concentration. Finally, he raised the book in triumph.

  “It is remarkable,” he began, “how much we are haunted by faint recall. It has been many years since I opened a copy of Aurelius, but the echo of his wisdom has lingered. Let me share this with you, in part because its relevance is inescapable under the present circumstances.”

  He took a breath, and began to read.

  “ ‘If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any time.’ Isn’t that wonderful? From it we may infer that we amplify pain by our responses to it. Rather than obsessing over the nature of the suffering, and blaming oneself or others for it, it is better to establish the cause and then work to eliminate it. Does that raise any questions in your mind?”

  “What do you want?” Dobey asked.

  “I meant questions about Aurelius. Incidentally, this is a very fine copy: London, Parker, 1747. My, my.” He ran his fingers over the binding. “Calfskin?”

  Dobey nodded.

  “Beautiful. For someone who spends his days serving slop to hicks, you appear to possess remarkably cultured literary tastes. Unfortunately, they’re partly responsible for bringing us to your door.”

  “You still haven’t told me your name,” said Dobey, “or why you’re here.”

  “Oh, the ‘why’ you can probably guess. We’re here to establish the current whereabouts of one of the many mongrel bitches to have passed through here over the years, but we’ll come to her in a moment. As for who I am, I go by the name of Quayle. I am a lawyer—or I was, once.”

  “And her?”

  The woman had not moved from her station by the window. Although she was young, her hair was a platinum color that had not come from a bottle, and her porcelain skin bore the faintest of sheens. Even her eyes were gray. Dobey imagined taking a knife to her and watching it glance harmlessly off, leaving only the minutest of scratches.

  “If she ever had a proper name,” said Quayle, “it’s lost even to her. Let’s test your knowledge to establish if you’re truly a scholar, or simply a salesman. Were you to be informed that one had chosen to christen her ‘Pallida,’ what surname might you ascribe in turn?”

  Dobey stared Quayle in the face as he replied.

  “Mors.”

  Quayle slowly clapped his hands in appreciation.

  “Very impressive. Have I missed Horace on your shelves?”

  “Behind your head.”

  Quayle turned and perused the shelves until he spotted an aged copy of the Carmina.

  “You are,” he said softly, “a most unexpected delight, but I fear that you may yet be required to concede the aptness of her nomenclature. She is death’s very personification.”

  Dobey folded his hands in his lap.

  “You talk fancy,” he said. “My father told me never to trust a man who talked fancy.”

  “Most wise. And I admire your equanimity, or perhaps you think I’m joking about the imminence of your mortality?”

  “I’ve seen your faces. I know what’s coming. Maybe I should tell you both to go fuck yourselves. In fact, why don’t I just do that? You and the tin woman over there can go fuck yourselves six ways to Sunday.”

  “Well,” said Quayle, “allow me to explain why that’s not going to happen. You’re not the only one to have seen my face this evening. You’re one of four, counting your staff but excluding your hayseed customers, and it’ll be five if you also force me to pay a visit to Ms. Bachmeier, the lady whom I believe shares both your vocation and your bed. If you tell me what I want to know, none of them will ever be troubled by us. If you don’t, then later tonight my colleague will gut your friend Carlos and bury the widow Bachmeier alive. And I liked the waitress—not the one who served me, but the other. I saw the way she looked at you. She’s fond of you, and you of her. Not in any improper way, of course, but I could discern the bond between you. Leila: that was her name. I saw it on her badge. I’ve never had a predilection for rape, but in her case I’ll make an exception. When I’m done with her, I’ll let Mors start cutting.”

  Dobey closed his eyes.

  “How do I know you’re not going to kill them anyway?”

  “If we were going to do that, we’d have started with Carlos while he was standing on your doorstep.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of being identified?”

  “Mr. Dobey, I’ve been doing this for a very long time, longer than you can imagine. A great many people have seen me, some of them under similar circumstances to your hired help, yet I have endured, and so I remain unconcerned. My colleague’s face, on the other hand, tends to be the last that anyone sees.”

  Quayle placed a hand on Dobey’s knee and gripped it gently, a gesture that was equal parts reassurance and threat.

  “The name of the girl we seek—the woman, if you prefer—is Karis Lamb.”

  CHAPTER

  VIII

  Far to the northeast, a warm, hard rain began to fall, working at compacted snow and stubborn ice. As the water did its work, the white seas parted in fissures to reveal the greens and browns beneath. Ground grown hard slowly softened, and the sound of the rain called to bud and branch, seed and root.

  It called to buried things.

  CHAPTER

&nb
sp; IX

  Outside of exceptional circumstances, Dobey rarely asked how the waifs came by his number, or by what means they knew where to find him. It wasn’t as though he advertised, leaving his card tucked in the masonry at street corners, or slotted behind restroom mirrors. But as the years went by, he came to understand that those whom he helped find their way to somewhere better often considered it part of their duty to assist others in turn (“There’s this guy in Indiana . . .”), while friends and associates of Esther also filed away his number and location, to be passed on when required.

  What made him special—no, Dobey would correct himself (because vanity, preying on a weak mind, produces every sort of mischief), what made his position special—was that he wasn’t part of the regular web of charities and shelters. He stood at one remove from them, and so provided a particular place of refuge for those who, for whatever reason, were not yet ready to be absorbed into the system.

  But he was aware of how it had all begun.

  * * *

  THE GIRL WAS SITTING on the bench outside the CVS on Cadillac’s Main Street, her backpack at her feet, her hands buried deep in her coat pockets against the cold. A faded sign attached to the streetlight beside her proclaimed this to be the location of a bus stop, but no bus had passed through Cadillac in two years, not since funding cuts did away with the route. The girl, unfamiliar to Dobey, was probably in her late teens, but her face wasn’t developing at the same pace as the rest of her, and so was still that of a child. She was pretty, going on beautiful, but hers was a fragile grace, easily broken. Perhaps that was why Dobey stopped. Had she been harder-looking, he might have kept on driving, and his life would have taken a different direction.

  By then Dobey was in his early fifties, and knew that he would never be a father. He’d come close to marriage a couple of times, but the final step proved difficult in each case, once because of him and once because of the other party. He had no regrets about this; better the doubts and difficulties manifest themselves before rather than after the ceremony. Had they been surmountable, he might, once again, have found himself on another journey. But now the widow Bachmeier was circling, and a chaste dance that had commenced during her husband’s final illness was about to become a more intimate engagement.