The Night Bell

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  She went to lie down in her office. The full briefing was scheduled for four o’clock. Her head was swimming with pain and information, much of which was settling now as hard fact.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the life of the station house. There was a calm that came before announcing a dreadful truth. She listened to Melanie Cartwright’s printer spitting out sheets of paper. Briefing materials. The matter out of which the story gets stitched together.

  She went back in her mind to the day she and Gloria had taken their walk up the bluff. She saw the sky again, its zippers of white cloud. Felt the twigs underfoot and smelled the sunbaked leaves on the ground. She walked along the path that followed the edge of the bluff to the Lion’s Paw and she encountered Carol Lim there, standing looking out over the country below them. She said nothing to Hazel, but handed her the battered pewter flask and began to climb down. Hazel went to the edge and watched her as she gingerly picked her way down the rock face. When she was partway down, she slipped one leg, and then the other, into a space between boulders as big as cars, and disappeared into the dark. Then a bell chimed and she woke up. It was ten to four.

  Hazel stood at the back of the pen and called for quiet. The room settled. She thanked everyone. “Now, I have a number of important announcements to make. First, as you know by now, the body found in the rubble of the Lion’s Paw has been positively identified as Carol Lim. She vanished in October of 1957 and was never found, although it was until now impossible to prove that she was dead. As a department, we have offered our deepest condolences to the extended Lim family, who have waited a long time for an answer.”

  “What happened to your head, Hazel?” came a voice from the room.

  She touched her stitches with a finger. “Please save your questions until later. You will be aware of an ongoing – albeit until recently stalled – investigation by the OPS concerning unidentified remains found on the grounds of Tournament Acres. Now that the crime site has been reopened by our friends at the RCMP, you can expect to be sent back out there with finer-toothed combs.

  “We will be releasing the names of boys who are shown to have been taken in at Dublin Home, but whose names never appear afterward in any public record. Among those names, we believe, will be the names of the murdered children, and we are going to ask you to contribute to finding relations of these boys, no matter how distant, so they can give their remains proper burials.

  “Today we have arrested Gloria Whitman, sixty-four, originally from Port Dundas, and charged her with first-degree murder in the death of Carol Lim. We believe that her father, a well-known physician and prominent member of the community, is the person who orchestrated the abductions and murders of boys at Dublin Home.”

  Murmurs arose in the pen like a shudder. Hazel called for quiet again, but the unrest was spreading. Some officers had risen at their desks and were looking in the same direction: the front of the station house. Right in front of Hazel, at the back of the pen, Constable Eileen Bail put her hand on her holster.

  “What’s going on?” Hazel said. Half her officers were standing and blocking her view. She heard Sean Macdonald’s voice: “Drop your weapon!”

  Hazel shoved her way forward and got to the front counter as Leon Cutter came through the front door of the station house, pushing Sergeant Melvin Renald in front of him with a pistol against his temple. The sergeant looked enervated; his face was dirty and his eyes sunken, as if he’d been kept in the dark.

  “I’m keeping my word,” Cutter said. “Here’s your boy.”

  He shoved Renald toward the arms of his colleagues.

  “Now give me our killer,” he said.

  ] 30 [

  Wednesday, October 31, afternoon

  The day went by in a blur to Detective Sergeant James Wingate. The sight of Hazel with the side of her face gashed open had set his nerves jangling, and as soon as Gloria Whitman was locked up behind bars, he left the station house and drove back to his apartment with his head blaring. Michael came out of the office, surprised to see his brother back, and then his look turned from one of surprise to alarm. James looked like he was going to collapse.

  Michael took him into the bedroom and removed his jacket and shoes. “You look like shit,” he said.

  James lay there breathing slowly, but not slowly enough. “I just locked up Gloria Whitman,” he said, smiling weakly. “What have you got to show for your afternoon?”

  “Something that is going to blow your mind, actually. But I’m not telling you anything until you have a Xanax in your system. You’re coming apart.” He went into the bathroom to fetch the pill.

  They gave Renald water and an OPS jacket to keep warm. He shivered and hacked into his fist. “You fucking animal,” Hazel said to Cutter. “Was this really necessary?”

  “Put him somewhere safe, before I change my mind,” Cutter replied. He kept his gun trained on a single person: Macdonald. The rest of the detachment had their guns trained on Cutter. Hazel put Melvin Renald in her office.

  “You’re OK now, Mel. You’re home.” She took him inside and left him on her couch. He looked shell-shocked. “You’ll be safe in here, OK?”

  Back in the pen, Ray was trying to talk Cutter down. “You’re holding a gun on an officer in a police station. You must know every unit in the area is racing toward us. Don’t let this end badly, Leon.”

  “What are you going to do for me? For us?” Cutter asked, the gun shaking at Macdonald.

  “I can assure you that justice – as much as it is possible – will be our goal for you. But you can’t get it this way. You have to surrender.”

  “We don’t need the OPS to get us justice. Where were you in 1956, when he took three of us in one month alone? How come nobody knew?”

  “It was a different time,” Ray said. In the distance, the shrill whine of sirens was forming. “Come on, Cutter. Put the gun down.”

  “Give me the bones,” he said.

  “I can’t. Every effort will be made to repatriate the bones to family members and if that fails, then a dignified burial.”

  “What family members do Deasún and Shearing have?” he asked before spitting out the answer: “None!”

  “Eloy Maracle is back with his brother. The same is possible for all of these missing dead.”

  “If you won’t give me the bones,” said Cutter, “then give us the woman who’s locked up in that cell back there.”

  “How do you know who’s locked up or not locked up here?”

  “News travels fast. Give her to us and we’ll see what we can do with her bloodline. That’s the kind of justice we can accept. Symbolic justice.” The words end his line rang in Hazel’s head, but they were cut off by sirens. A white light flashed through the room. Tires screeched and doors slammed.

  “They’re coming,” said Greene, imploring Cutter.

  “WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED.” A giant voice shook the station house. “LOWER YOUR WEAPONS AND EXIT THE BUILDING WITH YOUR HANDS UP.”

  Hazel said: “They’re waiting for you, Leon. Don’t make a mistake.”

  The hubbub on the other side of the room intensified. Someone was coming in through the rear parking lot door. It was Wingate. But not James. Michael Wingate.

  “Sorry to interrupt! Can I come in?” He was crouched down, inching toward them and holding a piece of paper high in the air. “He was in Dublin Home for seven years!” he said.

  “Who?” said Hazel. “Where is your brother? What are you doing here?”

  “Ronald Melvin. He was born Ronald Melvin!” Wingate said.

  She snatched the paper from James’s brother. Cutter began to laugh. She scanned the information. It was a legal name change record. In 1977, Ronald Melvin had changed his name to Melvin Renald and joined the academy. Her jaw locked in a half-open position. “Oh, shit,” she said. She spun to see her office door was already wide open.

  “Ten-minute head start,” Cutter said, placing his gun on the countertop. Macdonald leaped ove
r and cuffed him.

  Hazel ran down the corridor to the cells. Gloria was gone.

  “THIS IS SUPERINTENDENT MARTIN SCOTT OF THE RCMP. WE WANT TO NEGOTIATE A PEACEFUL END TO THIS SITUATION.”

  Hazel ran out the front of the station house waving her hands. “Find Renald!” she yelled. Beside his car, Scott looked at her, perplexed. “He’s been working with Cutter the whole fucking time. He has my prisoner!” Greene and Fraser ran past her.

  “We’re going to fan out,” Ray said to her. “Bail, Macdonald, Wilton, and Windemere are already on the road.”

  “Call Victoria Torrance!” she shouted.

  “Already did!” His cruiser was parked in front. He and Fraser jumped into it. Hazel ran into the road and waved Superintendent Scott into his cruiser.

  “Get me to Tournament Acres,” she said.

  Martin Scott drove his cruiser at 165 kilometres an hour. “By permission of Her Majesty the Queen,” he said. Hazel sat in the passenger seat holding on to the dashboard. The road sped by under them. “Why do you think he’s gone back to the home?” he asked her.

  “You didn’t hear Cutter. They’re after poetic justice now. Dublin Home’s got to be the backdrop.”

  “I can go faster.”

  “This is fast enough,” she said.

  He put on the cruise control and focused on weaving in and out of lanes. Normally, such wild driving would have made her sick, but she trusted Scott, and as fast as he could go was the speed she wanted to go. She wondered where Wingate was if he’d had to send Michael. He was going to get another commendation if she had anything to do with it.

  “Who killed the Fremonts? Are you going to tell me it was Willan?”

  “He didn’t do the killing. Bellefeuille did.”

  “Givens?”

  “Same.”

  “Willan had these people executed?”

  “He claims Bellefeuille was acting on his own. You should hear what Bellefeuille claims.”

  The mileage signs for Dublin ticked down. “So, are you married?” he asked her at the ten-kilometre sign.

  “Divorced,” she said. “You?”

  “Inevitably.” He turned onto Concession Road 7. They stopped speaking until the old boys’ home came into view. Hazel saw Renald’s cruiser parked under the gnarled apple trees.

  “Cover me,” she said, getting out of the car.

  “Can we have a drink afterward?” he asked her, taking the safety off his sidearm.

  “Maybe you are going too fast.” She moved forward lightly on the tips of her toes and came into line with the door of the home. The plywood barricade had been prised off and it was open a crack. Scott trailed behind her at fifty paces. She waved to him to stay farther back.

  The foyer of the abandoned building was still lit with late-day sun, and Hazel stepped inside with her gun drawn. Immediately, she saw Renald on the upper landing with his arm around Gloria Whitman’s throat. He pulled her away and they disappeared through one of the doors to the upstairs dorms.

  “Mel!” she shouted. “We have Leon. This was all his idea. I don’t know what he told you, but you are a police officer first!” Another door closed distantly. She began up the stairs. When she got to the landing, Martin Scott was standing inside the front door. She went into the first dorm room and walked through it to the door leading to the one beyond.

  “Sergeant Renald?” she called. “This isn’t you. You believe in justice. You’ve spent thirty years in the force.”

  “Waiting for my chance,” he said, but she couldn’t tell which of the other rooms he was in. “Like Lionel. Like Rex. Cutter always said we were going to need the law if the truth was ever going to be known! About what happened to us.” Hazel put her hand on the doorknob.

  “Let her go,” she said.

  “Is that what you would do?”

  She felt the vibration of his voice in her palm and she threw open the door. He was standing silhouetted against the back window, with Gloria Whitman in front of him, his arm around her midsection. When he saw Hazel, he shoved Gloria away and turned his gun on his colleague.

  “Shoot him!” Gloria said. “The sick fuck!”

  Hazel ignored her. “It’s over,” she said to Renald.

  “Get your gun off me and put it on her,” he told her. She didn’t. “She’s just going to go free?”

  “No. She’s going to jail.”

  “It’s you or her,” Renald said. “Make a statement, Hazel. Shoot her.”

  “Why?”

  “Full circle.” He wagged the gun at her. “Justice comes and has its fill. You end the killer’s line, just like he tried to end ours.”

  “He’s already dead, Melvin.”

  “Not so,” he replied. “He lives on.”

  She put her gun on the floor.

  He looked disappointed. “Well,” he said, “they must be on their way. Time’s a-wasting.”

  “Drop it,” Martin Scott said from the other doorway.

  “Not a chance,” said Renald, and he spun and fired a single bullet through Gloria Whitman’s forehead. Hazel lunged for him and Scott held fire. She knocked Melvin Renald to the ground and he simply let go of the gun. Gloria lay on her side, one eye open and one closed. She looked surprised.

  On Main Street there were children dressed as cartoon characters and spacemen and all manner of evil spirits. The scene was cheerful and dark at the same time. So much fake blood. Hazel walked in the direction of the Kilmartin Bridge.

  Herbert Lim Grocery had long ago changed hands. It was called Kilmartin Convenience now, and a neon sign in the window said INTERNET. Buzz Lightyear and a gorilla came out of the shop and a large peanut went in. She listened for a moment to all the happy chatter.

  Mrs. Lim still owned the building and lived in the apartment above it. Hazel had been here a few months ago, just to check in. Mrs. Lim had offered her tea and gingersnaps, and they’d spent an hour together. She’d given up on a happy life, she told Hazel. Being alive was almost enough after the disappearance of her daughter. Almost.

  It would be all over the papers tomorrow, even the big ones. Hazel opened the gate and climbed the stairs. She rang the doorbell and after a brief wait Mrs. Lim answered. She moved slowly; she was brittle and bird-like. “Hazel.”

  “I’ve come to bring you some news.”

  Mrs. Lim blinked a couple of times. “I see. Are you coming in?”

  “Yes.”

  This time no tea was offered. Hazel sat at the kitchen table trying to think of how to say it. Mrs. Lim watched her with glassy eyes, her hand a fist over her mouth. “You found her,” she said.

  Hazel couldn’t look up. “Yes.”

  “I want to bury her.”

  “You’ll be able to do that soon, Mrs. Lim. I’m sorry to bring such sad news.”

  “Thank you,” the old woman said. “I prayed for this, that god would let me know in my lifetime. Yes, thank you. It is good news.”

  “Mrs. Lim –”

  “Now I know she is dead I will stop thinking about the life she had in my dreams. The children she had. She was happy, but I was alone. I am glad I’ll be able to put flowers on her grave.”

  Hazel suddenly covered her mouth. Mrs. Lim put her hand on Hazel’s arm and stroked it. She felt deeply embarrassed to cry, and she tried to apologize, but Mrs. Lim stopped her by squeezing her arm hard. “You have never forgotten her,” she said. “You didn’t know her very well, but you have always acted as her friend.”

  “The message wasn’t from her,” Hazel said.

  “No, dear. It wasn’t.”

  Hazel tried to grapple with the enormity of Mrs. Lim’s kindness. “Part of me still really believed she was alive.”

  “You were a good girl, Hazel. And you are a good and compassionate woman. Thank you for coming to see me.”

  Hazel walked back to her car among the older kids, the ones who’d put little or no effort into their costumes. Most of them were no older than she and Gloria had been when Carol di
sappeared. At that age, Hazel had not yet developed a grounded belief in human evil. When you’re fourteen, death is abstract. A vague and distant place. She’d been happy to troop in these streets with her bag full of candy. When she got too old for it, she took Alan, whose preferred costume – even when it was too small to wear any longer – was a skunk. For a while, before he left home, Hazel had called him Stink. Affectionately and accurately.

  She went back to the station house but didn’t go in. She got into her car and drove back to Pember Lake. Her mother seemed to be living in 2007 when she arrived home. Tiny mercies, Hazel thought. She made a quick plate of scrambled eggs for them both and they ate together in a companionable silence. “Do you remember Carol Lim?” Hazel asked.

  “I still think about her.”

  “We found her body. Yesterday.”

  Emily put her fork down on her plate. “No end of bad news. Can’t do anything about it.”

  “We got the person who killed her.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” Emily said with a distracted air. She pushed a couple of curds of egg around her plate.

  Hazel changed the subject. “I was thinking we might have Martha and Emilia here this year for Christmas. Would you like that?”

  “If you do the cooking,” her mother said. “And the cleaning up. And will it be a dreary, dry Christmas?”

  “I don’t know what the weather will be like.”

  “I mean will there be liquor?”

  Hazel laughed. “If we don’t top you up sooner or later, you won’t stay so beautifully preserved.”

  That night, after her mother had gone to bed, Hazel went to the end of the second floor hall and pulled down the attic stair. She tested its solidity and climbed up. At the top, the light switch was where she remembered it. Attics were where things you couldn’t let go of spent their decades hidden and misremembered.

  A warm, orange light flooded the cramped space filled with boxes and a dress form and paintings everyone had stopped liking. Blocking the only window in the place were bankers boxes, piled three deep. Both she and her mother were meticulous about such things as packed boxes. Not only did every one have written on it a summary of its contents, but somewhere up here there was also a manifest that collected the details in one place. Emily could file with the best of them from her years in public service.