Now he was back in Conyer’s house, sitting at that same table in that same room, sipping tea from the same cups. Sunlight flooded through the trees. It was the first truly warm day in months. The air was bright with the sound of snow and ice melting, like the dimly heard ticking of clocks.
‘You’ve done well, Lucas,’ Conyer told him as she sipped her tea. Morland had barely touched his. He had begun to resent every minute he was forced to spend in Conyer’s presence. ‘Don’t think the board doesn’t appreciate all of your efforts.’
He was there only because that old bastard Kinley Nowell had finally given up the ghost. He had died that morning in his daughter’s arms. It was a more peaceful passing than he deserved. As far as Morland was concerned, Kinley Nowell had been severely lacking in the milk of human kindness, even by the standards of a town that fed young women to a hole in the ground.
But Nowell’s death had also provided him with what might be his final chance to talk some sense into Hayley Conyer. The board would need a replacement, but she had vetoed the suggestion that the young lawyer Stacey Walker should be Nowell’s replacement, despite the majority of her fellow board members being in favor. Instead Conyer was holding firm on Daniel Cooper, who wasn’t much younger than Nowell had been when he died, and was among the most stubborn and blinkered of the town’s elders, as well as an admirer of Conyer’s to the point of witlessness. Even after all that had occurred, Conyer was still attempting to consolidate her position.
‘We just need to stand together for a little while longer,’ Conyer continued, ‘and then all this will pass.’
She knew why he was here, but she wasn’t about to be dissuaded from her course. She’d already informed Morland that she felt Stacey Walker was too young, too inexperienced, to be brought on to the board. Hard times called for old heads, she told him. Morland couldn’t tell whether she’d just made that up or if it was an actual saying, but he rejected it totally in either case. It was old heads that had gotten them into all this trouble to begin with. The town needed a fresh start. He thought of Annie Broyer, and a question that had come to mind after he and Harry Dixon had spent a cold night burying her.
What would happen if we stopped feeding it?
Bad things, Hayley Conyer would have told him had she been there. She would have pointed to the misfortunes that had blighted Prosperous so recently – the deaths of those boys in Afghanistan, of Valerie Gillson, of Ben Pearson – and said, There! See what happens when you fail in your duty to the town?
But what if this was all a myth in which they had mistakenly chosen to believe? What if their old god was more dependent on them than they were on it? Their credence gave it power. If they deprived it of belief, then what?
Could a god die?
Let the town have its share of misfortunes. Let it take its chances with the rest of humanity, for good or ill. He was surprised by how much Kayley Madsen’s fate had shaken him. He’d heard stories, of course. His own father had prepared him for it, so he thought he knew what to expect. He hadn’t been ready for the reality, though. It was the speed of it that haunted him most, how quickly the girl had been swallowed by the earth, like a conjurer’s vanishing trick.
If Morland had his way, they would feed this old god no longer.
But Hayley Conyer stood in his way: Conyer, and those like her.
‘We have to put old disagreements behind us and look to the future,’ said Conyer. ‘Let all our difficulties be in the past.’
‘But they’re not,’ he said. ‘What happened to the Daunds proves that.’
‘You’re making assumptions that their deaths are linked to their recent efforts on our behalf.’
‘You told me yourself that they worked only for the town. There can be no other reason why they were targeted.’
She dismissed what he had said with a wave of her hand.
‘They could have been tempted to take on other tasks without our knowledge. Even if they did not, and they were somehow tracked down because of the detective, they would not betray us.’
‘They might, to save their child.’
But Hayley Conyer had no children, had apparently never shown any desire to be a mother, and to possess such feelings for a child was beyond her imaginative and emotional reach.
‘Hayley,’ said Morland, with some force, ‘they will come here next. I’m certain of it.’
And it’s your fault, he wanted to tell her. I warned you. I told you not to take this course of action. I love this town as much as you. I’ve even killed for it. But you believe that whatever decision you take, whatever is right for you, is also right for Prosperous, and in that you are mistaken. You’re like that French king who declared that he was the state, before the people ultimately proved him wrong by cutting off the head of his descendant.
Morland was not the only one who felt this way. There were others too. The time of the current board of selectmen was drawing to a close.
‘If they do come, we’ll deal with them,’ said Hayley. ‘We’ll …’
But Morland was no longer even listening. He drifted. He was not sleeping well, and when he did doze off his dreams were haunted by visions of wolves. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket. Hayley Conyer was still talking, lecturing him on the town’s history, his obligations to it, the wisdom of the board. It sounded to him like the cawings of an old crow. She mentioned something about his position, about how nobody was irreplaceable. She talked of the possibility of Morland taking a period of extended leave.
Morland stood. It took a huge effort. His body felt impossibly heavy. He looked at the handkerchief. Why had he taken it from his pocket? Ah, he remembered now. He walked behind Hayley Conyer, clasped the handkerchief over her nose and mouth, and squeezed. He wrapped his left arm around her as he did so, holding her down in the chair, her sticklike arms pressed to her sides. She struggled against him but he was a big man, and she was an elderly woman at the end of her days. Morland did not look into her eyes as he killed her. Instead he stared out the window at the trees in the yard. He could see the dark winter buds on the nearest maple. Soon they would give way to the red and yellow flowers of early spring.
Hayley Conyer jerked hard in her chair. He felt her spirit depart, and smelled the dying of her. He released his grip on her face and examined her nose and mouth. There were no obvious signs of injury: a little redness where he had held her nostrils closed, but no more than that. He let her fall forward on the table and made a call to Frank Robinson, who operated the town’s only medical practice and who, like Morland, felt that the time for a change was fast approaching. Robinson would make a fine selectman.
‘Frank,’ he said, once the receptionist put him through. ‘I’ve got some bad news. I came over to talk to Hayley Conyer and found her collapsed on her dining table. Yeah, she’s gone. I guess her old heart gave out on her at last. Must have been the stress of all that’s happened.’
It was unlikely that the state’s Chief Medical Examiner would insist on an autopsy, and even if one was ordered, Doc Robinson had the designated authority to perform it. Meanwhile, Morland would take photographs of the scene to include in his report.
He listened as Robinson spoke.
‘Yeah,’ said Morland. ‘It’s the town’s loss. But we go on.’
Two down, thought Morland. Three, and he could take over the board. The one to watch would be Thomas Souleby, who had always wanted to be chief selectman. Warraner, too, might be a problem, but it was traditional that the pastor did not serve on the board, just as Morland himself, as chief of police, was prevented from serving by the rules of the town. But Warraner did not have many friends in the town while Morland did. And perhaps, if Morland were finally to put an end to this madness, he would have to take care of Warraner as well. Without a shepherd, there was no flock. Without a pastor, there was no church.