Thomas Souleby stood on the doorstep. Beside him was a man whom Morland did not know. He wore heavy tan boots, and his body was hidden beneath layers of clothing. His red beard was thick, flecked here and there with gray. In his right hand he held a wolf trap on a length of chain.

The two visitors entered the house, and the door closed softly behind them.

III

KILLING

We humans fear the beast within the wolf because we

do not understand the beast within ourselves.

Gerald Hausman,

Meditations With the Navajo

31

They convened at the home of Hayley Conyer, just as they always did when issues of great import had to be discussed in private. The board of selectmen conducted public meetings on a regular basis, but the agenda for such gatherings was decided well in advance, and sensitive subjects were resolutely avoided. They were also open only to residents of Prosperous, following an abortive attempt by Euclid Danes to hijack one session. The late Ben Pearson had advocated killing Danes following that particular incident, and he had not been joking. If it had gone to a vote of the board, the motion would almost certainly have been passed unanimously.

Luke Joblin arrived first at Hayley’s house, accompanied by Kinley Nowell. Kinley had checked himself out of the hospital following Ben Pearson’s death. He was still weak, and his breathing was shallow and labored, but he walked into the house under his own steam, aided only by the walker that he had been using for the last decade or more. Joblin carried his respirator for him. After them came Thomas Souleby, and then Calder Ayton. Hayley was most solicitous of Calder, whose grief at the loss of Ben was etched on his face. She whispered to him as he sat silently at the table, the chair to his right, the chair that had always been occupied by Ben Pearson, now empty.

Pastor Warraner arrived at the same time as Chief Morland. Had Hayley not known of the animosity that existed between them she might almost have suspected them of collusion, but the two men stood awkwardly apart on the porch when she opened the door to them, their body language speaking volumes about their distaste for each other. She knew that Morland had been out in the woods that day, setting traps for the wolf with Abbot, the hunter brought by Souleby to the town. Morland looked exhausted. Good, thought Hayley: it would make him more pliable. She took him by the arm as he passed, indicating to Warraner that he should go on ahead into the dining room. Warraner did as he was told. He had no concerns about what Hayley Conyer might have to say to Morland in his absence. Even after their last meeting, when Hayley had sided with Morland against him, Warraner remained secure in his position as Hayley’s spiritual adviser.

‘Did you find the animal?’ said Hayley.

‘No, not yet, but it’s still around. We discovered a deer carcass. It was all chewed up. Abbot reckoned it had been dead for a while, but the damage to it was recent – not more than twenty-four hours. We’ve laid bait and set traps. We’ll get it soon. Abbot says that it’s wounded. He could tell by the tracks.’

But Hayley was now more interested in the deer. Like the others, she had seen the photograph on Valerie Gillson’s phone.

‘The deer, was it—?’

‘Maybe. There wasn’t much of it left to identify. And there was a hole not far from where we found it.’

She nodded. ‘Go inside. The others are waiting.’

Morland joined them. The four surviving members of the board sat at either side of the dining table, with a chair left empty at the head for Hayley. Warraner sat at the other end of the table, leaving two chairs between himself and Kinley Lowell. Morland seated himself across from Warraner, leaving three chairs between himself and Calder Ayton. If he squinted his eyes he could almost see the ghost of Ben Pearson occupying one of them, tearing open a pack of exotic cookies or passing around some British candy, because it was Ben who had always taken it upon himself to provide a small treat for the board and the observers. But the chair remained empty, and the table bare. There were no reports to be considered, and no notebooks lay open. No true record of this meeting would ever be kept.

Hayley turned off the lights in the hall and took her seat at the head of the table.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘let’s begin.’

Harry Dixon knelt inside his bedroom closet and removed a section of baseboard. The house was quiet. Erin was at her quilting circle, where work had commenced on a quilt in memory of the town’s recent dead. According to Erin, so many women wanted to participate that they’d had to bring in more chairs. Bryan Joblin had gone with her, although he would be drinking in a bar while Erin sewed. Harry wondered how long the board planned to keep up this farce of imposing Joblin upon them: until he and Erin found another girl; until they proved themselves. Joblin was there only to make sure that they behaved, and continued their efforts to locate a replacement for Annie Broyer.

To that end, Harry had earlier gone out with Joblin, and together they had cruised the streets of Lewiston and Augusta, looking at women. It wasn’t exactly difficult work. Harry figured that Joblin would have been doing something similar in his spare time anyway, even if it were not a matter of some urgency. Hell, Harry had been known to cast a wistful eye at young beauties when his wife wasn’t around, but he was nothing like Bryan Joblin. The Joblin boy had a reputation in Prosperous for being a pussy hound of the first order, to the extent that Hayley Conyer herself had taken Bryan and his father to one side following a chance encounter on Main Street and warned them that, if Bryan didn’t keep his pecker to himself, or at least limit its use to the vast swathe of the United States beyond Prosperous, she would personally slice it off and hang it from the town’s welcome sign as a warning to others who might be similarly tempted to screw around with the feelings and, indeed, bodies of Prosperous’s generative future. Since then, Bryan Joblin had indulged himself largely in the relative fleshpots of Bangor, and still tended to cross the street in order to avoid any further confrontations with Hayley Conyer, as though fearing that the old woman might whip out a blade at any moment and make good on her threat.

That afternoon, Harry and Bryan watched schoolgirls and young housewives. One of them would be ideal, Joblin said. He was in favor of snatching a girl right there and then – a young, athletic-looking brunette out by the mall in Augusta – but Harry dissuaded him. These things needed to be planned properly, Harry told him. Taking a woman in broad daylight was too risky. They looked at some of the homeless women, but they were all too old or worn. Fresher meat was needed.

‘What about a child?’ said Joblin. ‘It’s gotta be easy to take a child.’

Harry didn’t reply. He just pictured Bryan Joblin dying in painful ways.

Joblin had bitched all the way back to Prosperous, but Harry knew he would inform his father that the Dixons looked like they were at least trying to fulfill their obligations to the town, and Luke Joblin would, in turn, tell the board. To add to the deception, Harry set Joblin to trawling prostitution websites: twenty-five or younger, Harry had stipulated, and they should be from out of state. No tattoos, and no ID requirements from prospective johns. Independents too, not agency girls. Bryan had dived into the work wholeheartedly. He even printed off a list of possible candidates for Harry.