He thought of Smith One and Smith Two, and the woman with them. Smith One he might be able to trace. Someone had to know of him, and where to find him. But the other two, they were interesting. Maybe he should have stayed with them, and left Smith One for another occasion.
But all this was just a temporary distraction, a means of avoiding the contemplation of what he had witnessed on Cottage. A child, or just a patch of ice in the shape of one, distorted by Parker’s tiredness and the tones of the night? But Smith One had seen it, too. What’s more, it had scared him. Whomever, or whatever, Smith One was involved with, he’d neglected to examine the small print on the contract.
Parker felt a drowsiness begin to descend. He knew he should go to bed, but he didn’t want to leave his chair, didn’t want to look away from the marshes. He understood why. He was hoping to catch a glimpse of Jennifer, the gossamer reassurance of her presence. This was her time: night, with her father caught between wakefulness and unconsciousness.
But Jennifer did not appear, and soon Parker slept.
56
Quayle walked alone by the shore of the Piscataquis River, the lights of the inn now distant. Mors was asleep in her own bed, in her own room. If he wanted to be with her later, he would summon her.
The drive back to Dover-Foxcroft had not been a pleasant one. Meeting Giller in Portland was a mistake because it had exposed them to Parker’s regard. Quayle could understand why Giller considered it important for them to know about the private detective; could even, at a stretch, accept that Parker had to be encountered in person to understand his strangeness, and therefore the potential threat he posed; but Giller should have found another way.
Quayle was smoking, a vice he deeply enjoyed but one that was growing harder to indulge in these intolerant times. He smoked only Chancellor Treasurer cigarettes, silver-tipped, and housed in a gunmetal case. They were expensive, but money was not an issue for Quayle. He had more of it than a man could spend in ten lifetimes.
And Quayle would know.
He cared little about this world beyond the square mile or so of London that he thought of as his own – cared little, in truth, for the world beyond his own rooms, for they contained infinities within themselves. He maintained only sporadic contact with those whose concerns impacted his own. Quayle’s obsession was the Atlas, and the Atlas alone.
Therefore the fact of Charlie Parker’s existence had passed Quayle by until now; but everything he had learned from Giller, confirmed by his own brief encounter with the detective, provoked in him an unease of such intensity as to be almost refreshing. In a life so long-lived, even fear was a welcome distraction from the mundane.
What troubled Quayle most was the inability of anyone, but particularly the Backers, to deal conclusively with Parker. According to Giller, any number of individuals had tried and failed, with a cadre of concerned citizens in a small Maine town named Prosperous coming closer than most to neutralizing the detective. Yet the Backers possessed pressing reasons to kill Parker, and the resources to accomplish it. Why, then, had they not yet done so? What was lacking?
A possible answer came to Quayle as his cigarette burned down to the butt. He flicked it into the dark, the hiss of its destruction lost in the river’s tumult, and turned back toward the inn. A conversation was required. The Principal Backer would be called upon to justify himself.
Reasons: yes, these the Backers had.
Resources: yes.
But the will?
That remained to be seen.
57
Parker drove up to Bangor shortly before noon the following day. The air was bright and clear, and when he stopped for coffee along the way, the conversations of those at the diner counter appeared infused with the kind of hope that he always regarded as unique to northern states. It came with spring, surged with summer, and was entirely spent by the coming of winter.
Because of Dave Evans’s birthday celebration, and the less welcome events that followed, Parker had missed most of the coverage of the most recent press conference held by the state police. The conference had been postponed from earlier in the day due to what turned out to be a false sighting of Heb Caldicott up by Crouseville, close to the Canadian border, which meant the news teams had struggled to put together packages in time for their evening broadcasts. As a result, Parker was forced to flip between his phone and the Portland Press Herald as he played catch up.
It was clear that the hunt for Caldicott and his associates had dominated proceedings, with only a few minutes at the end given over to the ongoing mystery of the ‘Woman in the Woods’. A state police lieutenant named Solange Corriveau was now the lead investigator on the case, following a reorganization of MSP resources following Allen’s murder. Parker didn’t know Corriveau, so she was either new to the force or recently promoted. It stood to reason: the main focus was on the hunt for Allen’s killers, so the less pressing investigation was always destined to be handed off to whomever could be spared. On the other hand, the condition in which Jane Doe’s body was discovered – buried after recently giving birth, the remains of the placenta interred with her – meant that, by police reasoning, a female officer would present a more appropriate public face.
And in this case, police reasoning might have been correct. Parker went to the Channel 6 website and pulled up the video of the conference, making sure to use earphones to listen in order to avoid bothering the other diners. Corriveau was in her early thirties, and spoke slowly and clearly. She shared with the press almost every detail already known to Parker, and emphasized that law enforcement had a number of aims in the investigation: to identify the woman; to establish the circumstances of her death; and to confirm the whereabouts of her child, because the search of the area around the grave had revealed no trace of the infant.
‘Is this a homicide investigation?’ asked an unidentified male reporter.
‘We have no evidence to suggest it was a homicide,’ Corriveau replied. ‘It appears most likely that the woman died as a result of complications in childbirth, but we’d very much like to find out how she ended up in that situation.’
She then changed her tone, making it softer, less formal.
‘It may be that someone out there believed he or she was doing good by giving this woman a burial, and taking care of her child. Sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons, and we understand that. But there may be a mother, a husband, or a partner who cared about this woman, and they have a right to know what happened to her and her child. So if you have information that might help us in this, anything at all, we’re asking you to come forward so we can start setting some minds at rest. We’re not looking to put anyone behind bars, and we’ll be as sympathetic as we can, but the longer this goes on, the harder it will become for us to reach a resolution that’s best for everyone involved.’
With that, the clip ended. Parker was impressed. Corriveau had done well: no threats, but just enough steel at the conclusion. He put his phone and newspaper away, folded his reading glasses, and ordered a second cup of coffee in a to-go cup. Once outside, he made a call to Gordon Walsh.
‘I watched the press conference,’ he said. ‘Where’d you find Corriveau?’
‘Presque Isle PD.’
‘She’s good.’
‘Tell that to the boneheads screeching about affirmative action. We’d still have hired her if she was a Martian. Like you say, she’s good. Did you call just to compliment us on our progressive hiring policies?’
‘I felt like passing the time of day. Whatcha doin’?’
‘Seriously.’
‘I crossed paths with a guy at the Bear last night. Small: five-two, five-three, looks like a rat that’s figured out the basics of tailoring. Not local to Portland, but my guess is he’s a Mainer, although you couldn’t tell from the accent. I think the term is “studiedly neutral.” He was accompanied by an Englishman claiming to be a lawyer, and a woman who hasn’t seen sunlight since Reagan died.’