The Wolf in Winter (6 page)

CHAPTER

VIII

The ground was hard. Not that Harry should have been surprised; he’d lived in Penobscot County long enough to have no illusions about winter. On the other hand, he’d never had to dig a grave in any season, and this was like breaking rocks.

Morland left him to his own devices at the start. The chief sat in his car, the driver’s door open but the heat on full blast, and smoked a series of cigarettes, carefully stubbing each one out in the ashtray. After a while, though, it became clear that Harry would be hacking at the ground until summer if he was forced to dig the grave alone, and so Morland opened the trunk of his car and removed a pickax from it. From where he stood, Harry caught a glimpse of something wrapped in transparent plastic sheeting, but he didn’t look for long. He figured he’d have seen more than enough of it by the time the night was over.

Morland broke the ground with the pickax, and Harry cleared the earth away with the shovel. They worked without speaking. They didn’t have any energy to spare. Despite the cold, Harry felt sweat soaking into his shirt. He removed his coat and was about to hang it on the low branch of a tree when Morland told him to put it in the car instead. Harry assumed it was because the car would keep his coat warm, until Morland made it clear that Harry’s health and well-being were the last things on his mind.

“With luck, she’ll stay down here and never be found,” said Morland. “But you never know. Prepare for the worst and you won’t be disappointed. I’ve seen crime scene investigators put a man behind bars for the rest of his life on the basis of a thread left on a branch. We take no chances.”

Morland wasn’t concerned about leaving tracks on the ground. It was too hard for that. Neither was he worried about being seen. Nobody lived nearby, and anyone who might be passing would, in all likelihood, be a citizen of Prosperous, and would know better than to go sticking a nose into Chief Morland’s affairs even if he or she was foolish enough to come and investigate in the first place. Anyway, by now news of what had happened to the girl would have been communicated to those who needed to know. The roads around Prosperous would be quiet tonight.

They continued to dig. When they got to three feet, they were both too exhausted to go farther. The chief was a big, strong man, but Harry Dixon was no wilting flower either; if anything, he’d grown fitter over the previous year, now that he was required to be more active on his construction sites than he had been in decades. That was one of the few good things to come out of the financial mess in which he found himself. He had spent so long supervising, and ordering, and taking care of paperwork, that he had almost forgotten the pleasure of actual building, and the satisfaction that came with it—that, and the blisters.

Morland went to the car and took a thermos of coffee from the back seat. He poured a cup for Harry, and drank his own directly from the neck. Together they watched the moon.

“Back there, you were kidding about the wolf, right?” said Morland.

Harry was wondering if he might have been mistaken. At one time, there had been wolves all over Maine—grays and easterns and reds—and the state had enacted wolf bounties until 1903. As far as he could recall, the last known wolf killing in the state was back in 1996. He remembered reading about it in the newspapers. The guy had killed
it thinking it was a large coyote, but the animal weighed more than eighty pounds, twice the size of the average coyote, and had the markings of a wolf, or a wolf hybrid. There had been nothing since then, to his knowledge: sightings and rumors, maybe, but no proof.

“It was a big animal, and it had a doglike head. That’s all I can say for sure.”

Morland went to light another cigarette, but found that the pack was empty. He crushed it and put it carefully into his pocket.

“I’ll ask around,” he said. “Wouldn’t be a wolf, but if there’s a coyote in the woods we’d best let folk know, tell them to keep a watch on their dogs. You done?”

Harry finished the last of the coffee and handed the cup back to the chief. Morland screwed it back on and tossed the thermos to the floor of the car.

“Come on, then,” said Morland. “Time to put her in the ground.”

THE TRUNK LIGHT SHONE
on the plastic, and the girl inside it. She was lying on her back, and her eyes were closed. That was a mercy, at least. The exit wound in her chest was massive, but there was less blood than Harry might have expected. The chief seemed to follow the direction of his thoughts.

“She bled out on the snow of Ben’s yard,” he said. “We had to shovel it up and spread some more around to hide what we’d done. Take her legs. I’ll lift from the head.”

It was difficult to get her out of the trunk. She hadn’t been a big girl, which was why they’d decided to fatten her up first, but for the first time Harry understood what was meant by “dead weight.” The heavy-duty plastic was slippery, and Morland struggled to get a grip. Once she was out of the car, he had to drop her on the ground, put his foot under her to raise her upper body, and then wrap his arms around her chest to carry her, holding her to him like a sleeping lover. They stood
to the right of the grave, and on the count of three tossed her in. She landed awkwardly, in a semi-seated position.

“You’d best get down there and straighten her,” Morland told Harry. “If the hole was deeper I’d be inclined to let it go, but it’s shallow as it is. We don’t want the ground to sink and have her head peeping up like a gopher’s.”

Harry didn’t want to get into the grave, but it didn’t seem as though he had much choice. He eased himself down, then squatted to grip the ends of the plastic. As he did so, he looked at the girl. Her head was slightly lower than his, so that she seemed to be staring up at him. Her eyes were open. He must have been mistaken when he first saw her lying in the trunk. Perhaps it had been the reflection of the internal light, or his own tiredness, but he could have sworn . . .

“What’s the problem?” said Morland.

“Her eyes,” said Harry. “Do you recall if her eyes were open or closed?”

“What does it matter? She’s dead. Whether we cover her up with her eyes wide open or squeezed shut is going to make no difference to her or to us.”

He was right, thought Harry. He shouldn’t even have been able to see her eyes so clearly through the plastic, but it was as though there was a light shining inside her head, illuminating the blue of her irises. She looked more alive now than she had in the basement.

He shook the thought from his head and pulled sharply on the plastic, dragging the girl’s body flat. He didn’t want to see her face again, so he turned away from it. He’d tried. She’d been given a better chance than any of the others, of that he was certain. It wasn’t his fault that Ben Pearson had put an end to her hopes.

Suddenly, all the strength was gone from his body. He couldn’t haul himself from the grave. He could barely raise his arms. He looked up at Morland. The chief had the pickax in his hands.

“Help me up,” said Harry. But the chief didn’t move.

“Please,” said Harry. His voice cracked a little, and he despised himself for his weakness. His mother was right: he was half a man. If he’d been gifted with real courage, he’d have put the girl in his car, driven her to the state police in Bangor, and confessed everything to them, or at least dropped her off in the center of the city, where she’d be safe. Standing in the grave, he imagined a scenario in which the girl agreed to keep quiet about what had occurred, but it fell apart as soon as he saw himself returning to Prosperous to explain her absence. No, he’d done the best that he could for her. Anything more would have damned the town. Then again, it was already as close to damnation as made no difference.

He closed his eyes and waited for the impact of the pickax on his head, but it never came. Instead, Morland grabbed Harry’s right hand, leaned back, and their combined strength got him out of the grave.

Harry sat on the ground and put his head in his hands.

“For a second, I thought you were going to leave me down there,” he said.

“That would be too easy,” said Morland. “Besides, we’re not done yet.”

And Harry knew that he wasn’t referring to the filling in of the grave alone.

THE GIRL WAS GONE,
covered by the earth. The ground had clearly been dug up, but Morland knew that whatever remained of the winter snows to come would take care of that. When the thaw came in earnest, the ground would turn to mire. As it dried, all traces of their activity would be erased. He just hoped that they’d buried the girl deep enough.

“Shit!” he said.

“What is it?” said Harry.

“We probably should have taken her out of the plastic. Might have helped her to rot quicker.”

“You want to dig her up again?”

“No, I do not. Come on, time to go.”

He wrapped the blade of the shovel and the head of the pickax in plastic bags, to keep the dirt off the trunk of his car. Tomorrow he’d clean it inside and out, just to be sure.

Harry had not moved from his place beside the grave.

“I have a question,” he said.

Morland waited for him to continue.

“Isn’t there a chance that she might be enough?” said Harry.

Morland might have called the look on Harry’s face hopeful, if the use of the word “hope” weren’t an obscenity under such circumstances.

“No,” said Morland.

“She’s dead. We killed her. We’ve given her to the earth. Why not? Why can’t she be enough?”

Chief Morland closed the trunk before he replied.

“Because,” he said, “she was dead when she went into the ground.”

CHAPTER

IX

It was just after five on the evening after my return to Portland when I arrived at the Great Lost Bear on Forest Avenue. The bar was buzzing, as it always was on Thursdays. Thursday was showcase night, when the Bear invited a craft brewery to let folks taste its wares, always at a discount and always with a raffle at the end. It really didn’t take much to keep customers loyal, but it always amazed me that so many businesses couldn’t work up the energy to make the minimal extra effort required.

I found Dave Evans, the Bear’s owner, marshaling the troops for the assault to come. I hadn’t worked there in a while. Like I said, business had been good for me in recent months, maybe because, like the Bear, I tended to go the extra mile for my clients. In addition, some ongoing litigation relating to the purchase of my grandfather’s old house on Gorham Road had been settled in my favor, and a lump sum had found its way into my accounts. I was solvent, and likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. Still, I liked to keep my hand in at the Bear, even if it was only once or twice a month. You hear a lot from people in bars. Admittedly, most of it is useless, but the occasional nugget of information creeps through. Anyway, my presence would allow Dave to take the rest of the night off, although he was strangely reluctant to leave.

“Your buddies are here,” he said.

“I have buddies?”

“You used to. I’m not sure if the word still applies where those two are concerned.”

He indicated a corner of the bar that was now looking significantly smaller than it usually did, thanks to the addition of two massive men in polyester jogging suits: the Fulci brothers. I hadn’t seen them since Jackie Garner’s funeral. His death had hit them hard. They had been devoted to him, and he had looked out for them as best he could. It was hard for men so large to keep such a low profile, but somehow they’d managed it during the months since Jackie’s death. The city might even have breathed a bit easier for a while. The Fulcis had a way of sucking the oxygen from a room. They had a way of knocking it from people too. Their fists were like cinder blocks.

Dave’s concern was therefore understandable. But despite their appearance, and an undeniable propensity for violence that seemed resistant to all forms of pharmaceutical intervention, the Fulcis were essentially brooders by nature. They might not brood for very long, but they did tend to take some time to consider which bones they might enjoy breaking first. The fact that they’d stayed away from me for so long meant that they’d probably been considering the fate of their friend with a certain degree of seriousness. That boded either well or very badly for me.

“You want me to call someone?” said Dave.

“Like who?”

“A surgeon? A priest? A mortician?”

“If they’ve come here to cause trouble over Jackie, you may need a builder to reconstruct your bar.”

“Damn, and just as the place was coming together.”

I worked my way through the crowd to reach their table. They were both sipping sodas. The Fulcis weren’t big drinkers.

“It’s been a long time,” I said. “I was starting to worry.”

To be honest, I was still worrying, and maybe more than before, now that they’d shown up at last.

“You want to take a seat,” said Paulie.

It wasn’t a question. It was an order.

Paulie was the older, and marginally better adjusted, of the two brothers. Tony should have had a lit fuse sticking out of the top of his head.

I took the seat. Actually, I wasn’t too worried that the Fulcis might take a swing at me. If they did, I wouldn’t know a lot about it until I woke up, assuming that I ever did, but I’d always gotten along well with them, and, like Jackie, I’d tried my best to help them whenever I could, even if it meant just putting in a word with local law enforcement when they stepped over the line. They’d done some work for me over the years, and they’d put themselves in harm’s way on my behalf. I liked to think that we had an understanding, but Timothy Treadwell, that guy in the Herzog documentary who was eaten by the grizzlies he’d tried to befriend, probably felt the same way until a bear’s jaws closed on his throat.

Paulie looked at Tony. Tony nodded. If things were going to turn bad, they would do so now.

“What happened to Jackie, we don’t blame you for it,” said Paulie.

He spoke with great solemnity, like a senior judge communicating a long-considered verdict.

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it, not only because my continued good health appeared assured but because I knew how important Jackie was to them. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d held some residual grudge against me, but it appeared there would be none. With the Fulcis, it was all or nothing. We had a clean slate. “Jackie done something very bad,” said Tony, “but that didn’t mean he should have been shot down from behind because of it.”

“No,” I said.

“Jackie was a good guy,” Tony continued. “He took care of his mom. He looked out for us. He—”

Tony choked. His eyes were tearing up. His brother patted him on a muscled shoulder.

“Whatever we can do,” said Paulie, “whatever help you need to find the man who did this, you let us know. And, anytime you want us to step up for you, you just call. Because Jackie would have stepped up, and just because he ain’t around no more don’t mean we ought to let these things slide, you understand? Jackie wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“I hear you,” I said.

I reached out and shook their hands. I didn’t even wince, but I was relieved to get the hand back.

“How’s his mom doing?” I asked.

Jackie’s mother had been given a diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease the previous year. Her illness was the only reason Jackie had committed the acts that led to his death. He just needed the money.

“Not so good,” said Paulie. “Even with Jackie she would have struggled. Without him . . .”

He shook his head.

Jackie’s insurance company had invoked a clause in his life-­insurance policy relating to criminal activity, arguing that his death had resulted from participation in a criminal enterprise. Aimee Price was fighting the case on a pro bono basis, but she didn’t believe the ­insurance company was going to modify its position, and it was hard to argue that it didn’t have a point. Jackie was killed because he screwed up: he was careless, somebody died, and vengeance fell. I made a mental note to send a check to Jackie’s mother. Even if it helped only a little, it would be something.

The Fulcis finished their drinks, nodded their goodbyes, and left.

“You’re still alive,” said Dave, who’d been keeping one eye on pro
ceedings and another on his bar, in case he didn’t get to see it again in its present form.

“You seem pleased.”

“Means I get my night off,” he said, as he pulled on his overcoat. “Would have been hard to leave otherwise.”

I ENJOYED THAT EVENING
in the Bear. Perhaps it was partly relief at not having incurred the wrath of the Fulcis, but in moving between the bar and the floor I was also able to empty my head of everything but beer taps, line cooks, and making sure that, when Dave returned the next morning, the Bear would still be standing in more or less the same condition it was in when he left it. I drank a coffee and read the
Portland Phoenix
at the bar while the night’s cleanup went on around me.

“Don’t tax yourself,” said Cupcake Cathy, as she nudged me with a tray of dirty glasses. “If you strained something by helping, I don’t know how I could go on living.”

Cathy was one of the waitstaff. If she was ever less than cheerful, I had yet to see it. Even as she let off some steam, she was still smiling.

“Don’t make me fire you.”

“You can’t fire me. Anyway, that would require an effort on your part.”

“I’ll tell Dave to fire you.”

“Dave just
thinks
we work for him. Don’t disillusion him by making him put it to the test.”

She had a point. I still wasn’t sure how the Bear operated, exactly; it just did. In the end, no matter who was nominally in charge, everyone just worked for the Bear itself. I finished my coffee, waited for the last of the staff to leave, and locked up. My car was the only one left in the lot. The night was clear, and the moon bright, but already there was a
layer of frost on the roof. Winter was refusing to relinquish its hold on the Northeast. I drove home beneath a sky exploding with stars.

OVER BY DEERING OAKS,
the door to Jude’s basement opened.

“Jude, you in here?”

A lighter flared. Had there been anyone to see, it would have revealed a man layered in old coats, with newspaper poking out of his laceless boots. The lower half of his face was entirely obscured by his beard, and dirt was embedded in the wrinkles on his skin. He looked sixty but was closer to forty. He was known on the streets as Brightboy. He once had another name, but even he had almost forgotten it by now.

“Jude?” he called again.

The heat from the lighter was burning his fingers. Brightboy swore hard and let the flame go out. His eyes were getting used to the dark, but the basement was shaped like an inverted “L,” which meant that the moonlight penetrated only so far. The dogleg to the right remained in darkness.

He hit the lighter again. It was a cheap plastic thing. He’d found a bunch of them, all still full of fluid, in a garbage can outside an apartment building that was being vacated. In this kind of weather, anything that could generate heat and flame was worth holding on to. He still had half a dozen left.

Brightboy turned the corner, and the light caught Jude’s brown boots dangling three feet above the floor. Brightboy raised the flame slowly, taking in the reddish-brown overcoat, the green serge pants, the tan jacket and waistcoat, the cream shirt, and the carefully knotted red tie. Jude had even managed to die dressed like a dandy, although his face was swollen and nearly unrecognizable above the knot in his tie, and the noose that suspended him above the floor was lost in his flesh. A backless chair was on its side beneath his feet. To its right was
a wooden box that he had been using as a nightstand. His sleeping bag lay open and ready next to it.

On the box was a plastic bag filled with bills and coins.

The lighter was again growing hot in Brightboy’s hand. He lifted his thumb, and the flame disappeared, but the memory of its light danced before his eyes. His left hand found the bag of money. He put it carefully into his pocket, then dragged Jude’s pack into the moonlight and rifled it for whatever was worth taking. He found a flashlight, a deck of cards, a couple of pairs of clean socks, two shirts fresh from Goodwill, and a handful of candy bars just one month past expiration.

All these things Brightboy transferred to his own pack. He also took Jude’s sleeping bag, rolling it up and tying it to the base of his pack with string. It was better than his own, newer and warmer. He didn’t even think about Jude again until he was about to leave. They had always got along okay, Brightboy and Jude. Most of the other homeless people avoided Brightboy. He was untrustworthy and dishonest. Jude was one of the few who tried not to judge him. True, Brightboy had sometimes found Jude’s obsession with his appearance to be an affectation, and he suspected that it helped to make Jude feel superior to his brothers and sisters on the streets, but Jude had been as generous with Brightboy as he had been with everyone else, and rarely had a harsh word passed between them.

Brightboy thumbed the lighter and held it aloft. Jude seemed frozen in place. His skin and his clothing were spangled with frost.

“Why’d you do it?” said Brightboy. His left hand dipped into his pocket, as though to reassure himself that the money was still there. He’d heard that Jude had been calling in loans. Brightboy himself had owed Jude two dollars. That was one of the reasons he’d come looking for him; that and a little company, and maybe a swig of something if Jude had it to spare. Someone had said that Jude wanted the money urgently, and it was time to pay up. Jude rarely asked for anything
from the rest of his kind, so few resented him calling in his debts, and those that had it paid willingly enough.

So why would a man who had succeeded in putting together what Brightboy guessed to be at least a hundred dollars suddenly give up and take his own life? It made no sense, but then a lot of things made no sense to Brightboy. He liked his street name, but he had no conception of the irony that lay behind it. Brightboy wasn’t smart. Cunning, maybe, but his intelligence was of the lowest and most animal kind.

Whatever had led Jude to finish his days at the end of a rope, he had no need for money where he now was, while Brightboy was still among the living. He walked to St. John Street, ordered two cheeseburgers, fries, and a soda for five dollars at the drive-through window of McDonald’s, and ate them in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. He then bought himself a six-pack of Miller High Life at a gas station, but it was so cold outside that he had nowhere to drink the beers. With no other option available, he headed back to Jude’s basement and consumed them while the dead man hung suspended before him. He unrolled Jude’s sleeping bag, climbed into it, and fell asleep until shortly before dawn. He woke while it was still dark, gathered up the bottles for their deposit, and slipped from the basement to seek out breakfast. He stopped only to make a 911 call from a public phone on Congress.

It was the least that he could do for Jude.