The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly

Author:John Connolly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781444755343
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The headlines in the newspapers over the days that followed were all very similar: TRIPLE TRAGEDY STRIKES SMALL TOWN; MAINE TOWN MOURNS ITS DEAD; TROUBLE COMES IN THREES FOR CLOSEKNIT COMMUNITY …

In Afghanistan, a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter carrying four US ‘military advisors’ and crew went down in Kandahar. Three of the men survived the crash, which was caused by a mechanical failure, but they did not survive the firefight with the Taliban that followed. In the shadowy corners of the Internet a photograph circulated of three severed heads placed in a line on the sand. Two of them were identified as Captain Mark Tabart and Staff Sergeant Jeremy Cutter, both natives of Prosperous, Maine.

On the same day that the two soldiers died, a woman named Valerie Gillson rounded a bend between Dearden and Prosperous and saw a wounded fawn lying in the middle of the road. The animal appeared to have been struck by a vehicle, for its back legs were twisted and broken. It scrabbled at the road with its front hooves and thrashed its head in agony. Valerie stepped from her car. She couldn’t leave the animal in distress, and she couldn’t run it over to put it out of its agony: she’d never be able to drive her car again. She took out her cell phone and called the police department in Prosperous. Chief Morland would know what to do. The number rang, and Marie Nesbit, who was on dispatch duty that day, picked up the call.

‘Hi, Marie? This is Valerie Gillson. Yes, I’m fine, but I’m about a mile south of town and there’s a wounded deer in the middle of the road. It’s in a lot of pain and I don’t—’

She stopped talking. She had just noticed that there was something tangled around the back legs of the deer. It looked like wire. No, not wire: roots, or thick briars – she wasn’t sure which. They extended into the undergrowth. It was almost as if the wounded deer had been placed there as bait. Instinctively she raised her phone and took a photograph of the deer’s legs.

She heard Marie’s voice asking if she was still okay.

‘Sorry, Marie, I just noticed—’

Valerie Gillson never got to tell Marie what she had seen because at that moment a logging company truck took the bend behind her just a fraction too fast. The driver swerved to avoid the car and struck Valerie instead, killing her instantly. Her cell phone was recovered in the aftermath. On it was the last photograph that Valerie had taken: the hindquarters of a deer, its legs entwined with dark roots.

But of the deer itself, there was no sign.

And in the gunsmithery at the back of his store, Ben Pearson was carrying his favorite hunting rife to the workbench. The gun was the same one that he had used to kill Annie Broyer. Chief Morland had advised him to get rid of it, and Ben knew it made sense to do as Morland said.

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