‘Then the next world can’t be any worse than this one.’
Quayle knew all about her past, of what had been done to her before she came under his protection. Her loyalty to him was deep and unconditional, but not unrelated to what his influence had enabled her to inflict upon her abusers. Quayle had regarded it as part of her conditioning, and Mors was intelligent enough to recognize that by indulging her desire for revenge, she had made herself Quayle’s creature. But for her, it was a price worth paying. Whatever torments she had suffered as a child, she returned tenfold on her tormentors, and all thanks to Quayle. He had brought her a kind of peace.
You’re mistaken about this world, just as you are about the next, Quayle wanted to tell her, although he kept his counsel. Who was he to argue degrees of suffering with one who had already been through her own hell?
And you are damned.
32
The fallen tree responsible for exposing the gravesite was gone. It had not been possible to bring a crane into woodland that might conceal another body for fear of causing a further collapse, or the destruction of any evidence that might remain under the topsoil, even after all this time. Instead the tree was cut into pieces with chainsaws and hauled away, leaving only the wound on the ground caused by its upheaval, now protected by a tarp that hid it entirely from view.
This was peatland, with a degree of tree cover over nutrient-poor soil. Parker had spent his youth exploring such places with his grandfather, seeking out palm warblers and yellowthroats, and the larvae of elfin butterflies among the spruces. But the ground coverage here was pitted and uneven, and marked by patches of exposed earth. It was an alopecic landscape.
Parker placed a pair of blue polyethylene covers on his boots before stepping off the main trail and following Allen to the canopy over the grave. Allen unhooked the rope securing the main flap, and pulled it aside so Parker could view the interior.
‘I’d prefer if you didn’t step in,’ said Allen. ‘We’ve taken photos and video, and searched all around, but you know …’
Parker understood. For now, the scene was still active. Any kind of contamination had to be kept to a minimum, and Allen was already doing him a favor by being so cooperative. In any case, Parker didn’t need to proceed. He could see all he needed from where he stood.
The collapse of the tree had left a massive circular gouge, since widened in the course of the search for further remains. The interior smelled of dampness and dirt, and a faint mustiness that might just have been stale air trapped by the canopy, but was probably something more mortal.
Just slightly off-center was the grave, the position of the body unmarked by tape or rods since forensic mapping was now done electronically, using the head and groin as markers. The hole was smaller than Parker had anticipated. The restricted volume of the space occupied by her for so long seemed to accentuate the poignancy of her passing, as though in death she had huddled until such time as she might be discovered. Parker squatted and clasped his hands between his legs, almost like one in prayer. Allen didn’t disturb him by speaking, but stood back in silence.
Eventually Parker said, ‘I was just thinking how small she was.’
‘She was found with her legs folded up to her chest. Less of a hole to dig. But even allowing for that, she was still just a little thing.’
Parker stepped away from the canopy, and waited for Allen to reseal it.
‘Are you the same Allen who faced down Gillick and Audet outside Houlton back in – what was it, ninety-eight?’
Ryan Gillick and Bertrand Audet were, respectively, a serial rapist and a mid-ranking meth dealer who escaped from custody when they were transferred to Maine General following a gas leak at the old state prison in Thomaston. They headed for the Canadian border, armed with a pair of pistols picked up from an ex-girlfriend of Gillick’s, presumably one of those he hadn’t raped. At Houlton, just a few miles south of the border, Gillick and Audet rear-ended a truck, an incident that attracted the attention of a passing state trooper from the Houlton barracks. Audet panicked, and shots were fired. Gillick ended up dead, and Audet was languishing in the new state prison at Warren.
‘Ninety-nine,’ Allen corrected. ‘Yeah, that was me. Sounded more dramatic on the news than it was. I couldn’t recall much about it when the AG’s people came for my report. I just remembered being scared.’
The attorney general retained exclusive jurisdiction for the investigation of police use of deadly force. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for any officer, although in more than one hundred reviews of deadly force shootings conducted over almost thirty years, the AG’s office had yet to recommend that criminal charges be filed against any officer in the state of Maine.
‘I heard you took a bullet,’ said Parker.
‘Nope, took a piece of masonry from a ricochet. Hit me in the small of the back. Still hurts if I sit for too long.’
‘The body does take such intrusions amiss.’
‘Figured you’d know.’
‘More than I care to.’
Together they walked back to the trail, and Allen showed Parker the Star of David hacked into the gray-brown bark of a black spruce on the other side. It was an older tree, approaching fifty feet in height, its branches short and upturned at the ends. Beneath the star was another indentation, but less clear. It looked as though someone might have begun carving an inscription before obliterating the marks.
‘And you’re sure this was made at the same time that the body was buried?’ said Parker.
‘Only God can be that certain, but close enough, according to the forestry people.’
‘What about the tree that fell?’
‘Probably of a similar age to this one. Most of this thicket is black or red spruce, with some larch. It dates back to the early seventies.’
Furrows appeared in Allen’s massive brow. It was like watching one of the faces on Mount Rushmore frown.
‘What?’ said Parker.
‘It’s easier to show than explain. Just odd, that’s all. I’ll point it out to you when we go through the data.’
Parker watched one of the searchers rise from a kneeling position and stretch, her hand against her lower back. Beside her, a chocolate Labrador yanked at its leash, eager for the game to continue.
‘Do you have an opinion on all this?’
‘If anyone was asking,’ said Allen, ‘I’d tell them that if the child died at birth, it would probably have been buried with its mother. If someone was going to take the time to put her in the ground, and carve that star as a grave marker, why not do the same for the baby?’
‘And if the child died later?’
‘Then I’m not sure I’d risk digging up one perfectly good grave just to add a small corpse, wouldn’t matter how sentimental I was feeling. I’d bury the child someplace else. You mind if I ask how you fit into all this? You looking for whoever laid her in the dirt?’
‘I’m working for a lawyer. He’s Jewish. He’s concerned for the infant, living or dead. So I suppose I’m looking for the child.’
‘Mighty Christian of him. That’s a joke, by the way. And if you’re looking for the child, and it isn’t buried somewhere here, then it seems to me that you are looking for whoever interred that girl.’
Allen let his gaze drift from the dig to the trees and beyond, taking in fields, towns, cities unseen.
‘And her child could be anywhere,’ he added.
But Parker said nothing. Like Allen, his mind was roving further than the dig.
Why here? he thought. Why this place?
‘You want to look at the pictures now?’ said Allen, which brought Parker back – back to the hole in the ground, and the smallness of the body it had once contained, of absence and loss delineated. He thought one word, but spoke its opposite.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘let’s do that.’
33