The Taken

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  “Maybe he’ll light a flare beside Eldwin’s body.”

  She held her door open for him. He entered and she crossed the room to her desk and punched the intercom. “Did Childress get here yet?”

  “She’s waiting by my desk,” said Cartwright.

  “Send her in.”

  “What is going on?” Wingate asked.

  “We’re going to light a flare of our own.”

  Childress entered, her cap still on her head, and stepped only as far into Hazel’s office so as to officially be in the room without actually seeming to be in the room with them. “I just called down,” she said.

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “Maybe we should call again.” She took the phone off the cradle. “Ask your superintendent about Goodman. Maybe he can help put us in his mindset.”

  “What makes you think the superintendent knows the first thing about Goodman’s mindset? The man went off the deep end.”

  “You sound like a subscriber to the Ilunga theory of Goodman.”

  “You ask him if you’re not.”

  “I’m not sure he and me are talking.”

  Childress seemed to weigh which of her options would get her out of the room the fastest, and she crossed to the side of Hazel’s desk and dialled her boss’s number. Hazel stabbed the speaker button, and the voice of the woman with the clipboard who’d taken them to Ilunga answered. “Constable Georgia Childress calling,” she said. “Is the superintendent in?”

  “Hold,” said the officious voice.

  “Childress?”

  “Sir.”

  “I thought you were liaising with Sergeant Adiga.”

  “I, um…”

  “Christ,” said Ilunga. “What has she done now?”

  Hazel stepped forward toward the mic. “Is he a killer? Does your Goodman have it in him to kill?”

  “You’re getting all the assistance you’ll be getting from this office, Detective Inspector. Don’t look to me to water your theories.”

  “Why wasn’t he charged?”

  “With what? Being an asshole?”

  “He committed a B & E. He threatened a witness.”

  “We gave him a choice: dishonourable or quit. He chose to quit. We were happy to see him go. No lawsuits from the union, no paperwork. Just turn in your badge and off you go. You should be thinking along those lines about now, Micallef. Save everyone in the OPS brass some grief. Well, more grief.”

  “How crazy is he?”

  “If I try to quantify his craziness, how are you going to understand it from the point of view of your own? That he’s at least twice as crazy as you? Three times? Policework isn’t supposed to be this relative.”

  Hazel reached forward and took the receiver off the desktop, and cancelled the speakerphone function. “Listen, Cap. You and I do things differently, but do you really want an ex-cop from your division to be guilty of murder?”

  “Are you asking me if I care if one lunatic kills another? That’s a hard one to answer.”

  “What if you people were right all along? It’s not a murder?”

  “Choose your conspiracy, Micallef.”

  “Fine. What if it isn’t Colin Eldwin who committed it?”

  “It better be after that goddamned package you sent me.”

  “Is he capable of killing? Just answer me.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. “Yes,” Ilunga said finally. “I came to think he was.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Do yourself a favour and shoot him the next time you see him.”

  Hazel repunched the speaker button. “What was that again?”

  “Never mind.”

  She hung up and looked at Childress and Wingate.

  “What?” said Childress.

  “You have a cell?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there won’t be any land lines for a while.” She shifted her attention fully to Wingate. “Why did Goodman thank God for the rain?”

  “Because he needed the cover.”

  “No. Because it lets him set up his last puzzle. And I think if we don’t come up with the right answer this time, Eldwin dies.”

  “Why won’t there be any land lines?” said Childress, unhappily.

  “Because Goodman is going to let the rain do his work for him while he puts some space between himself and his mess. And he gets what he figures is a fitting punishment for Colin Eldwin’s crime.”

  “He’s going to drown him,” said Wingate suddenly, catching up with her. “And thank God for the rain because it will fill whatever Eldwin’s trapped in.” He thought for a moment. “Which is a boat.”

  “Go tell Fraser he needs to reroute his friend with the helicopter.”

  They cleared the parking lot to make room for a landing pad, and she waited with Wingate and Childress in her cruiser. The constable, looking tired and irritated, sat in the back. Wingate’s hands were knotted in his lap. They’d called Tate and Calberson and told them to suit up. “Can they even fit six people in a ’copter?” asked Wingate.

  “You can ride on top if we run out of room.” She caught Childress’s eyes in the rearview. “It’s time to call your liaison again.”

  “I told you, it’s going to be morning before we know anything.”

  “Do they work through the night?”

  “If they have to.”

  “Constable?”

  “I don’t know if they’re there tonight. I don’t know what’s going on downtown, what the caseload is like, or anything. Remember, I’ve been seconded to Port Dundas.” She looked out the window at the starless sky.

  “You people would rather save face than break a sweat on this, wouldn’t you? What are you going to do when you play a role in cracking a cold case? You going to deny it was worth it?”

  Childress sprung forward in her seat, her eyes blazing. “No, I’m going to pin a fucking medal on myself!”

  Hazel said nothing, just waited for the constable to settle back into her seat. “Just keep your phone on.”

  Tate and Calberson were speeding up from Mayfair; Wingate said Tate had received his urgent call and responded agreeably. They expected them by nine-thirty. Right now, Fraser’s private pilot was coming back down from the area around Gilmore, where he’d been sweeping for the white van unsuccessfully.

  At nine o’clock, they heard the sound of rotors in the dark coming from the north and the helicopter, throwing a hard beam of white light through the rain, hoved in and came down. Wingate shuddered to see it sheering sideways as it came in and the pilot had to reascend a few feet and level out before setting down. A man stepped out and lit a cigarette. Hazel flashed her beams at him and he crouch-ran through the rain to the car and took one last hard drag before flicking the cigarette away and getting into the car. He shook hands with everyone and introduced himself as Gary Quinn. He was a solidly built man of about forty-five with a full head of grey hair and wild salt-and-pepper eyebrows.

  “We’re dropping the search for the van. We think they’re out on the water.”

  “Water? Where, though?” said Quinn.

  “The suspect’s been gone for more than three hours now, but my best guess is he hasn’t been driving this whole time. So somewhere within a ninety-minute driving radius.”

  “That’s a lot of lakes, Officer,” said Quinn. “We can look here, though.” He had a map, which he passed forward and they spread open on the dashboard. It showed all of Westmuir County. He leaned between the seats and pointed at the town of Gilmore. “If he started here, we’re going to want to do a sweep of every major lake within reasonable reach of the town. That takes in Lake MacKenzie, Rye Lake, Pickamore Lake, Inlet Lake, and a whole hell of a lot of littler ones too.”

  “How long will that take?” Wingate asked.

  “Even if it clears a little, maybe an hour per lake, but we’ve got to do a zed-pattern over everything and Pickamore and Inlet are huge. I wouldn’t bank on being
in bed before 3 a.m., folks.”

  “Hey, we never sleep anyway,” said Hazel. “What have we got in the way of lighting?”

  “Well, there’s the directional on the front of the bird, but it’s only got three positions. I’ve got a portable spot with a halogen parabolic in it, which would normally do the trick: it spreads a cone with a radius of ten feet from fifty feet up, but the problem tonight is that it has to pick through the rain. If we’re low enough, we’ll be able to see something, but it’s going to look like ten thousand glow-worms are jumping in it. And with the wind, I don’t think I can go lower than fifty feet or we might find ourselves climbing some trees.”

  “I need a Gravol,” said Wingate.

  Quinn clapped him on the shoulder. “You can always puke out the door.”

  “Great.”

  “There’s also one pair of thermal infrared binoculars. So one of you can wear those and watch the colours go by, but the rain’s going to put up a blue filter and everything in it is going to be pretty dim.” He leaned in toward Hazel. “Couldn’t wait until morning, huh? Anyone out in this weather is either half-sunk or capsized. Unless your guy’s got a bailing bucket.”

  “I doubt he has anything.”

  “Then I suggest we go find him.”

  34

  The divers arrived fifteen minutes later and they were six. Quinn led them to the helicopter and they clambered in, slipping on the slick rails. Wingate got as close to the pilot as he could. “Is the front better if it’s a rough ride?”

  Quinn was starting up the engines. “This ain’t a 737, Detective, it’s like flying a bathtub. Everyone gets the same ride.”

  Hazel smiled at him. “Good times!” she said.

  “We better find him,” said Wingate.

  Quinn passed back headphones with wraparound microphones. “Everyone hear me?” He passed Hazel the thermal binoculars. “A warm, living body is going to be reddish-orange – 37 Celsius is calibrated to show up red, but anything alive in this weather isn’t going to read that hot. A cold, living body is going to be closer to yellow. You start seeing purple or dark blue, then we’re talking rocks, logs, fish, or something that’s going to need putting in a pine box. Okay everyone? Ready for take-off…”

  The blades whined into high speed and the tail of the helicopter rose off the ground, followed by its giant, insect-like body. It took to the air with its head lowered, and Wingate grabbed the arm of his seat with white knuckles. He mouthed the words I hate you to Hazel, who nodded once to acknowledge reception. The team of Tate and Calberson sat quietly in their seats and Childress did her best to hide a terror that was clearly at least as profound as Wingate’s.

  Quinn broke away toward the northeast; the helicopter tilted to the right and pushed hard through the dark. In the headlight, the rain seemed to be falling up, an endless flow of jewel-like flashings. On the windows, it streaked sideways and flew off in silvery ripples. It didn’t feel like an airplane; there was no impression of moving forward through a resisting space; the helicopter felt like it was being lifted up and side-to-side by means of ropes attached to it. It made Wingate feel like a shoe in a dryer and he had to look down at his knees to keep his stomach.

  Quinn’s voice came over the headsets, barely audible over the roar of the machine. “We’re heading to Inlet Lake first. Fifteen miles long, up to two miles wide in places. There’s an inaccessible second and third lake, and I think we should presume with your guy that if he’s out in this that he got to where he is from a shoreline accessible by a local road. We’ll do a quick flyby in any of these lakes with multiple bodies, but lingering in them is going to be a waste of time.”

  Through the rain, they saw a black shape lying on the ground, a greater darkness lying at the centre of the night. This was Inlet, so named for the finger-like bays that poked off the main body. Quinn descended to about fifty feet and flew back and forth in diagonals over the water as Hazel clicked on the binocs and pointed her face through the open door at the lake. The beam from the directional – pointed over Hazel’s side – was like a moving pillar of marble in the rain. Its iris spread out over twenty feet from their height, riding choppily over Inlet’s surface. Calberson had clipped her off to a heavy metal ring on the inside of the craft, and she could lean out into the weather and look down through the bright column of rain, which, stirred by the helicopter blades, whipped around her head and body cyclonically. “I see some green and blue, some faint yellow…”

  “Where’s the yellow?”

  “Off your window. About eleven o’clock.”

  “I want a spot on it.”

  Wingate began to rise slowly, but the pallor of his face convinced Calberson to take over. He armed the spot and turned it in the direction Hazel had been looking. It was at the shoreline where it appeared as if a tributary of the lake ran off into a swampy background. Quinn, holding the helicopter in place, was leaning out his window, squinting. The helicopter seemed to lean over as well and Wingate and Childress both grabbed the edges of their seats. He looked over at her in what he hoped would be a moment of grand commiseration, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “What are you seeing, Detective Inspector?”

  “Four shapes, two large, maybe the size of a cocker spaniel, and two small. All yellowy.”

  “Too warm to be body parts,” Quinn said. “Any movement?”

  “Yes,” she said, hesitating. “One of the bigger ones actually seems to be moving. It is. Moving away from the shoreline.”

  Tate held his hand out for the glasses and looked through them, then passed them back. “Beavers,” he said. “That’s a dam down there.”

  She looked through the binoculars again and the shapes resolved into animals, two adults and two kits. The secret life of the lake. Quinn passed overtop and then turned steeply, aiming thirty degrees above his previous tack. Through the sights, Hazel saw a miasma of blue and black shapes; nothing that suggested life at all.

  In this manner, with the six of them packed tightly inside, Quinn swept back and forth over Inlet Lake, suturing one shoreline to the other in lines of thrown light. The helicopter shook, jolted, slid sideways in the air, dropped suddenly, and generally shook them like a bartender making cocktails. For all this, they saw nothing. On his last pass, Quinn pulled the nose of the helicopter up and powered over the trees, pointing them in the direction of Lake MacKenzie. The sudden heave upwards made them feel like their stomachs had flattened out against their spines. It was well past eleven o’clock and the dark was full and thick with rain and they were all cold. Finally, at midnight, Wingate thrust his face out of the open door, gripping a cold steel reinforcing bar behind him, and vomited into the forest below. When he sat down, Constable Childress passed him a small white pill.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Hazel leaned over and looked. She laughed. “Ativan. How fitting.”

  He chewed it, grimacing.

  By two in the morning, they’d covered MacKenzie and Rye, and they were heading for Pickamore Lake. If anything, the rain had intensified; the sound of it in the dark made it seem a huge presence, an omniscient force conveying them through its violent mind. Even Calberson looked green, and he spent half his working life under water. When they’d criss-crossed Lake MacKenzie, Hazel had already begun to go blind to the thermal translation of the world beneath them, and she passed the glasses to Wingate, now becalmed by Childress’s white pill. He pressed his face to the eyepiece and said wow quietly under his breath. Rye came up a blank under his inspection, and they doubled back to the southwest to get to Pickamore, the largest of the four lakes in the radius. Quinn had to refuel at a twenty-four-hour depot outside of Mandeville. When he put down, Hazel pinned Wingate with a look. “You’re not getting out, you know.”

  “You’re a horrible lady.”

  She grinned curiously at him. “You’re stoned.”

  “Is this how she felt? Brenda Cameron?”

  “She had at least three times the dosage you
took. And her belly was full of alcohol, too. So, no. But can you imagine?”

  “I couldn’t kill myself in this state. I’d screw it up.”

  “You could do anything if you were desperate enough.”

  He wiped the back of his neck. “We’re never going to find this guy. Alive.”

  “We’ll see.” She signalled to Childress. The shared horror of the evening had softened her somewhat. “Call your people again.”

  “It’s three in the morning.”

  “See if anyone’s there. Leave a message or page someone. I want your people on line in case we find Eldwin. If he’s alive, he’s going to be in rough-enough shape – I don’t want to have to presume he’s also a murderer. I’d like to know.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Childress, and she started dialling.

  Quinn detached the refuelling hose and clambered back up into the cockpit. “My guess is we see daylight in two and a half hours, and right about then, the rain stops too.”

  “Two and a half hours might be all this guy has left. Let’s get back up there.”

  Childress was shouting into the phone, but Hazel couldn’t make out what she was saying. She hoped there was someone on the other end. The constable hung up and pocketed the cell. She lifted the headset’s mic to her mouth. “There’s one guy there, not attached to our case. But he’s going to nose around and see what might be ready. He’s going to call me back.”

  “Thank you,” said Hazel. Childress just nodded.

  Quinn passed high over the town of Mandeville. The ’copter dipped down over the treelines and burst out over Pickamore Lake. Wingate pressed the binoculars to his face again as they began their sweep. At 4 a.m., at about four hundred metres off the northern shoreline, he saw a shape outlined in dark violet: unmistakably a canoe. There was a form in it. The middle of the form glowed pale orange and then began to fade to light purple at its extremities. He lowered the thermal binoculars to his lap and pulled the mic up over his mouth. “There he is,” he called, pointing toward the rain-wreathed island. “That’s him.”

  35