He smiled at the co-opting of the word. ‘Some. Enough. They keep quieter about it than I do, though. It doesn’t pay to cross the folk up in Prosperous. It starts with small things – a dog going missing, damage to your car, maybe a call to the IRS to say that you’re taking in a little work on the side to cover your bar tab – but then it escalates. It’s not only the economy that has led to businesses closing around here, and families leaving.’
‘But you’ve stayed.’
He picked up his fountain pen and unscrewed the cap, ready to return to his papers. I glimpsed the name on the pen: Tibaldi. I looked it up later. They started at about $400 and went up to $40,000. The one that Euclid Danes used had a lot of gold on it.
‘I look like the crazy old coot who lives in a rundown house with more dogs than bugs and a sister who can only cook meatloaf,’ he said, ‘but my brother was a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, my nephews and nieces are lawyers and bankers, and there’s nothing anyone can teach me about playing the markets. I have money and a degree of influence. I think that’s why they hate me so much: because, except for an accident of birth, I could have been one of them. Even though I’m not, they still feel that I should side with wealth and privilege because I’m wealthy and privileged myself.
‘So Prosperous can’t move against me, and it can’t frighten me. All it can do is wait for me to die, and even then those bastards will find I’ve tied so much legal ribbon around my land that humanity itself will die out before they find a way to build on it. It’s been good talking with you, Mr Parker. I wish you luck with whatever it is that you’re investigating.’
He put his head down and began writing again. I was reminded of the end of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, when Gene Wilder dismisses Charlie and tries to lose himself in his papers until the boy returns the Everlasting Gobstopper as a token of recompense. I hadn’t shared all that I knew with Euclid because I was cautious. I had underestimated and misjudged him, although I thought Euclid might have done the same with me.
‘A homeless man named Jude hanged himself down in Portland not long ago,’ I said. ‘He was looking for his daughter before he died. Her name was Annie Broyer. He was convinced that she’d gone to Prosperous. There’s still no trace of her. I think she’s dead, and I’m not alone in believing it. I also think that she may have met her end in Prosperous.’
Euclid stopped writing. The cap went back on the pen. He straightened his tie and reached for his coat.
‘Mr Parker, why don’t you and I take a ride?’
It was already dark. I had followed Euclid Danes to the northwestern limit of the town of Dearden. His fence marked the boundary. Beyond it lay woodland: part of the township of Prosperous.
‘Why haven’t they built here?’ I asked. ‘The land’s suitable. It would just mean knocking down some trees.’
Euclid took a small flashlight from his pocket and shone it on the ground. There was a hole in the earth, perhaps eighteen inches in diameter, or a little more. It was partly obscured by undergrowth and tree roots.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I’ve found three of them over the years, but there may be more. I know for sure that there are a couple around that old church of theirs. I haven’t seen them myself for some time – as you can imagine, I’m persona non grata in Prosperous – but I have it on good authority from others who’ve been there.’
‘You think the ground is unstable?’
‘Might be. I’m no expert.’
I was no expert either, but this wasn’t karst terrain, not as far as I was aware. I hadn’t heard of any Florida-style sinkholes appearing in the area. The hole was curious, unsettling even, but that might have been a vague atavistic dread of small, enclosed places beneath the earth, and the fear of collapse they brought with them. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but then I’d never been trapped in a hole below the ground.
‘What made it?’
Euclid killed the flashlight.
‘Ah, that’s the interesting question, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’ll leave that one with you. All I know is that I have meatloaf waiting, with a side of indigestion to follow. I’d ask you to join me, but I like you.’
He began to walk back to his car. I stayed by the fence. I could still make out the hole, a deeper blackness against the encroaching dark. I felt an itching in my scalp, as though bugs were crawling through my hair.
Euclid called back a final piece of advice when he reached his car. He was driving a beautiful old ‘57 Chevy Bel Air in red. ‘I like them to know I’m coming,’ he had told me. Now he stood beside its open door, a chill breeze toying with his wispy hair and his wide tie.
‘Good luck with those people up there,’ he said. ‘Just watch where you put your feet.’
He turned on the ignition and kept the Chevy’s lights trained on the ground in front of me until I was safely back at my own car. I followed him as far as his house, then continued south, and home.
On the outskirts of Prosperous, Lucas Morland and Harry Dixon were staring at another hole in the ground. At first Harry had been struck by the absurd yet terrible thought that the girl had actually dug herself out, just as he had dreamed, and what had crawled from that grave was something much worse than a wounded young woman who could name names. But then their flashlights had picked out the big paw prints on the scattered earth and the broken bones and the teeth marks upon them. They found the head under an old oak, most of the face gnawed away.
‘I told you,’ said Harry to Morland. ‘I told you I saw a wolf.’
Morland said nothing, but began gathering up what he could retrieve of the remains. Harry joined him. They couldn’t find all of the girl. The wolf, or some other scavenger, had carried parts of her away. There was an arm missing, and most of one leg.
Evidence, thought Morland. It’s evidence. It would have to be found. For now, all he could do was put what they could collect of the girl into more of the plastic sheeting, put it in the car and refill the grave. Nothing like this, nothing so terrible, so unlucky, had happened in Prosperous for generations. If the girl hadn’t run. If Dixon and his bitch wife hadn’t let her escape …
Morland wanted to punch Harry. He wanted to kill him. It was the Dixons’ fault, all of it. Even if Harry and Erin located a suitable girl, Morland would find a way to make them pay. Hell, if Erin herself wasn’t so fucking old and worn, they could have used her. But no, the town didn’t feed on its own. It never had. Those from within who transgressed had always been dealt with in a different way. There were rules.
They taped up the plastic, forming three packages of body parts. After that they drove north for an hour, far beyond Prosperous, and reburied what was left of the girl. The stench of her stayed with them both all the way to town. Later, back in their own homes, both men scrubbed and showered, but still they could smell her.
Erin Dixon knocked at the bathroom door fifteen minutes after the shower had stopped running and her husband had still not emerged. Bryan Joblin had fallen asleep in the armchair by the fire. She had thought about killing him. She was thinking about killing a lot lately.
‘Harry?’ she called. ‘Are you okay?’
From inside the bathroom she heard the sound of weeping. She tried the door. It was unlocked.
Her husband was sitting on the edge of the tub, a towel wrapped around his waist and his face buried in his hands. She sat beside him and held him to her.
‘Can you smell it?’ he asked her.
She sniffed him, smelling his hair and his skin. She detected only soap.
‘You smell fine,’ she said. ‘You want to tell me what happened?’
‘No.’
She went to the bathroom doorway and listened. She could still hear the sound of Joblin snoring. She closed the door and returned to her husband, but she kept her voice to a whisper, just in case.
‘Marie Nesbit called me earlier on my cell phone while that asshole was snoring his head off,’ she said.
Marie was Erin’s closest friend. She worked as a secretary at the town office, and was from one of the founding families, just like the Dixons. Her husband Art was an alcoholic, but gentle and sad for the most part rather than violent. Erin had long provided her with a sympathetic ear.
‘She told me that a detective came to town, asking about the girl.’
Harry had stopped weeping.
‘Police?’
‘No, a private investigator, like on TV.’
‘Did she say who had hired him?’
‘No. She only overheard the start of what he had to say. She didn’t want to be seen spying.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Parker. Charlie Parker. I googled him on my phone, then erased the history. He’s been in the newspapers.’
So that’s why Morland wanted the girl’s body moved. The detective had come, and Morland had gotten scared. No, not just Morland. He might have been chief, but Morland did what he was told to do by the board. The order to dig up the corpse had probably come from Hayley Conyer herself, but a wolf had reached it first. First the girl, then the detective, now the wolf. The town was starting to unravel.
‘Harry,’ said Erin. ‘I’ve decided: I’m not going to find them another girl.’
He nodded. How could they, after setting the last one free? How could a couple who had wished for, but never been given, their own daughter collude in the killing of someone else’s child?
‘They’ll be monitoring the detective,’ said Harry. ‘That’s how they work. We can’t contact him, not yet. Maybe not ever.’
‘So what will we do?’
‘It’s like I said. We’ll leave, and soon. After that we’ll decide.’
Erin gripped his hand. He squeezed it in return.
‘When?’
‘A couple of days. No more than that.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
She kissed him. His mouth opened beneath hers, but before they could go any further they were disturbed by a knocking on the door and Bryan Joblin said, ‘Hey, are you two in there?’
Erin went to the door and unlocked it. Joblin stood bleary-eyed before her, smelling of his cheap beer. He took in Erin, and Harry standing behind her, his towel around his waist, his body angled to hide his now diminishing hard-on.
‘Havin’ some fun?’ said Joblin. ‘Shit, you got a bedroom. We all got to use this room, and I need to piss …’