The Wolf in Winter (24 page)

CHAPTER

XXIX

Garrison Pryor was on his way to the chef’s table at L’Espalier, on Boylston, when the call came through to his personal cell phone, the one that was changed weekly, and for which only a handful of people had the number at any time. He was particularly surprised to see the identity of the caller. Pryor hit the green answer button immediately.

“Yes?” he said.

There would be no pleasantries. The Principal Backer didn’t like to linger on unsecured lines.

“Have you seen the news?”

“No, I’ve been in meetings all day, and I’m about to join some clients for a late dinner.”

“Your phone has Internet access?”

“Of course.”

“Go to Channel Six in Portland. Call me when you’re done.”

Pryor didn’t argue or object. He was running late for dinner, but it didn’t matter now. The Principal Backer didn’t make such calls lightly.

Pryor hung up and found a spot against the wall by the entrance to the Copley T station. It didn’t take him long to find the news report to which the Principal Backer had been referring. He went to the
Portland Press
Heral
d
’s Web site, just in case it had further details, but
there were none.

He waited a moment, gathered his thoughts, then called the Principal Backer.

“Are you at home?” asked Pryor.

“Yes.”

“But you can talk?”

“For now. Was it one of ours?”

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely. Nobody would have made a move like this without consulting me first, and I would have given no such authorization. It was decided: we should wait.”

“Make sure that we weren’t involved.”

“I will, but there’s no doubt in my mind. The man was not short of enemies.”

“Neither are we. There will be consequences for all of us if we’re found to be anywhere near this.”

“I’ll send out word. There will be no further activity until you say otherwise.”

“And get somebody to Scarborough. I want to know exactly what happened at that house.”

“I’ll make the call now.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, then:

“I hear L’Espalier is very good.”

“Yes.” It took Pryor a second or two to realize that he had not told the Principal Backer where he was eating that night. “Yes, it is.”

“Perhaps you should inform your clients that you won’t be able to make it to dinner after all.”

The connection was cut off. Pryor looked at the phone. He’d only had it for two days. He removed the battery, wiped it with his gloves, and tossed it in the trash. As he walked on, he broke the SIM card and dropped the pieces down a drain. He crossed Boylston, heading for
Newbury. He stepped into the shadows of Public Alley 440, put the phone on the ground, and began grinding it beneath his heel, harder and harder, until finally he was stamping furiously on fragments of plastic and circuitry, swearing as he did so. Two pedestrians glanced at him as they passed down Exeter, but they didn’t stop.

Pryor pressed his forehead against the wall of the nearest building and closed his eyes.

Consequences: that was an understatement. If someone had made an unauthorized hit on the detective, there was no limit to how bad things might get.

IN AN APARTMENT IN
Brooklyn, the rabbi named Epstein sat before his computer screen, watching and listening.

It had been a long day of discussions, arguments, and something resembling slow progress, assuming one took a tectonic view of such matters. Epstein, along with two of his fellow moderate rabbis, was trying to hammer out compromises between the borough of Brooklyn and the local Hasidim on a lengthy series of issues, including the Hasidim’s desire for the separation of the sexes on city buses and their religious objections to the use of bicycles, mostly with little success. Today, for his sins, Epstein had been forced to explain the concept of
metzizah b’peh
—the practice of oral suction from a baby’s circumcision wound—to a disbelieving councilman.

“But why would anyone want to do that?” the councilman kept asking. “Why?”

And, to be honest, Epstein didn’t really have an answer or, at least, not one that would satisfy the councilman.

Meanwhile, some of the young Hasidim apparently regarded Epstein with little more affection than they did the goyim. He even heard one of them refer to him behind his back as an
alter kocker
—an “old fart”—but he didn’t react. Their elders knew better, and at least ac
knowledged that Epstein was trying to help by acting as a go-­between, attempting to find a compromise with which both the Hasidim and the city could live. Still, if they had their way the Hasidim would wall off Williamsburg from the rest of Brooklyn, although they’d probably have to fight the hipsters for it. The situation wasn’t helped by certain city officials publicly comparing the Hasidim to the Mafia. At times, it was enough to make a reasonable man consider abandoning both his faith and his city. But there was a saying in Hebrew, “We survived Pharoah, we’ll survive this too.” In the words of the old joke, it was the theme of every Jewish holiday: they tried to kill us, they failed, so let’s eat!

With that in mind, Epstein was hungry when he arrived home, but all thoughts of food were gone now. Beside him stood a young woman dressed in black. Her name was Liat. She was deaf and mute, so she could not hear the news report, but she could read the anchorman’s lips when he appeared onscreen. She took in the images of the police cars, and the house, and the picture of the detective that was being used on all the news reports. It was not a recent photograph. He looked older now. She recalled his face as they had made love, and the feel of his damaged body against hers.

So many scars, so many wounds, both visible and hidden.

Epstein touched her arm. She looked down at his face so that she could watch his lips move.

“Go up there,” he said. “Find out what you can. I will start making inquiries here.”

She nodded and left.

Strange, thought Epstein: he had never seen her cry before.

CHAPTER

XL

It was Bryan Joblin who told them the news, just as he was running out the door. His departure at that moment, leaving them alone, seemed a godsend. Harry and Erin had been growing increasingly fractious with Joblin as his perpetual presence in their lives began to tell on them, while he had settled happily into his role as their watcher, houseguest, and sometime accomplice in a crime yet to be committed. He still pressed Harry to find a girl, as if Harry needed to be reminded. Hayley Conyer herself had stopped by the house that morning while they were clearing up after breakfast, and she had made it very clear to the Dixons that they were running out of time.

“Things are going to start moving fast around here pretty soon,” Conyer said, as she stood at the front door, as though reluctant even to set foot once again in their crumbling home. “A lot of our problems are about to disappear, and we can start concentrating again on the tasks that matter.”

She leaned in close to the Dixons, and Harry could smell on her breath the sour stink that he always associated with his mother’s dying—the stench of the body’s internal workings beginning to atrophy.

“You should know that there are folk in Prosperous who blame you for what happened to our young men in Afghanistan, and to Valerie
Gillson and Ben Pearson, too,” she said. “They believe that if you hadn’t let the girl go”—Conyer allowed the different possible interpretations of that conditional clause to hang in the air for a moment—“then four of our people might still be alive. You have a lot of work to do to make up for your failings. I’m giving you three days. By then, you’d better produce a substitute girl for me.”

But Harry knew that they wouldn’t be around in three days, or, if they were, it would probably be the end of them. They were ready to run. Had Bryan Joblin not told them of what had occurred, then left them for a time to their own devices, they might have waited another day, just to be sure that everything was in place for their escape. Now they took his news as a sign: it was time. They watched him drive away, his words still ringing in their ears.

“We hit the detective,” Joblin told them. “It’s all over the news. That fucker is gone.
Gone
!
”

And, within twenty minutes of Joblin’s departure, the Dixons had left Prosperous.

HARRY MADE THE CALL
on the way to Medway. The auto dealership closed most evenings at six, but Harry had the dealer’s cell phone number and knew that he lived only a couple of blocks from the lot. He’d told the guy that, if it came down to the wire, he might have to leave the state at short notice. He had spun the man a line about a sick mother, knowing that the dealer couldn’t have given a rat’s ass if Harry’s mother was Typhoid Mary, as long as he paid cash alongside the trade-in. So it was that, thirty minutes after leaving Prosperous, the Dixons drove out of the lot in a GMC Savana Passenger Van with 100,000 miles on the clock, stopping only at the outskirts of Medway to call Magnus and Dianne and let them know that they were on their way. The van was ugly as a mud slide, but they could sleep in it if they had to, and who knew how long they might be on the road, or how far they might
have to travel? They couldn’t stay with Harry’s in-laws for long. Even one night would be risky. In fact, the closer Harry got to the house in Medway, the more he started to feel that perhaps he and Erin shouldn’t stay with them at all. It might be wiser just to pick up their stuff, arrange some way of remaining in contact, and then find a motel for the night. The more distance they put between themselves and Prosperous, the better. He expressed his concerns to Erin, and he was surprised when she concurred without argument. Her only regret, as far as he could tell, was that they hadn’t managed to kill Bryan Joblin before they left Prosperous. She might have been joking, but somehow Harry doubted it.

They pulled up in the driveway of the house. The lights were on inside, and Harry could see Magnus watching TV in the living room, the drapes open. He saw his brother-in-law stand as he heard the sound of the engine. He waved at them from the window. They were still getting out of the van when Magnus opened the front door.

“Come in,” he said. “We’ve been worrying ever since we got your call.”

“Where’s Dianne?” said Erin.

“She’s in the bathroom. She’ll be right down.”

Magnus stood aside to let Harry and Erin enter.

“Let me take your coats,” said Magnus.

“We’re not staying,” said Harry.

“That’s not what you told us.”

“I know what I told you, but I think it’s better if we just keep driving. They’re going to come looking for us once they find that we’ve gone, and it won’t take them long to make the connection to you and Dianne. We need to put ground between Prosperous and us. I can’t tell you why. We just have to leave the town far behind.”

Magnus closed the front door. Harry could still feel a draft on his face, though. It was coming from the kitchen. A gust of wind passed through the house. It blew open the dining room door to their left. Inside, they saw Dianne seated in the dark by the table.

“I thought you were—” said Erin, but she got no further.

Bryan Joblin sat across from Dianne. He held a gun in his right hand, pointing loosely at her chest. Behind him was Calder Ayton. He too held a gun, but his was aimed at the head of Dianne’s daughter, Kayley.

Harry’s hand slid slowly toward the gun in his jacket pocket, just as Chief Morland appeared from the living room. He laid a hand on Harry’s arm.

“Don’t,” said Morland, and his voice was almost kindly.

Harry’s hand faltered, then fell to his side. Morland reached into Harry’s pocket and removed the Smith & Wesson.

“You have a license for this?” said Morland.

Harry didn’t reply.

“I didn’t think so,” said Morland.

He raised the gun and touched it to the back of Erin’s head. He pulled the trigger, and the cream walls of the hallway blushed crimson. While Harry was still trying to take in the sight of his wife’s body collapsing to the floor, Morland shot Magnus in the chest, then advanced three steps and killed Dianne with a single bullet that entered her face just below the bridge of her nose.

It was Kayley’s screams that brought Harry back, but by then it was all too late. Morland swept Harry’s feet from under him, sending him sprawling to the floor beside his dead wife. He stared at her. Her eyes were closed, her face contorted in a final grimace of shock. Harry wondered if she’d felt a lot of pain. He hoped not. He’d loved her. He’d loved her so very much.

Morland’s weight was on his back now. Harry smelled the muzzle of the gun as it brushed his face.

“Do it,” said Harry. “Just do it.”

But instead the gun disappeared, and Harry’s hands were cuffed loosely behind his back. Kayley had stopped screaming and was now sobbing. It sounded as if there might have been a hand across her mouth, though, for the sobs were muffled.

“Why?” said Harry.

“Because we can’t have a multiple killing without a killer,” said Morland.

He lifted Harry to his feet. Harry stared at him, his eyes glazed. Morland’s features formed a mask of pure desolation.

Calder Ayton and Bryan Joblin emerged from the second entrance to the living room, carrying Kayley between them. They walked through the kitchen to the back door. Shortly after that, Harry heard the trunk of a car closing, and then the vehicle drove away.

“What’s going to happen to her?” he asked.

“I think you already know,” said Morland. “You were told to find us a girl. It looks like you did your duty after all.”

Bryan Joblin reappeared in the kitchen. He smiled at Harry as he approached him.

“What now?” said Harry.

“You and Bryan are going to take a ride. I’ll join you both as soon as I can.”

Morland turned to leave, then paused.

“Tell me, Harry. Did the girl really escape, or did you let her go?”

What did it matter, thought Harry. The girl had still died, and soon he would join her.

“We let her go.”

The use of the word “we” made him look down at Erin, and in doing so he missed the look that passed across Morland’s face. It contained a hint of admiration.

Harry felt as though he should cry, but no tears would come. It was too late for tears, anyway, and they would serve no purpose.

“I’m sorry it’s come down to this,” said Morland.

“Go to hell, Lucas,” said Harry.

“Yes,” said Morland. “I think that I probably will.”