'We now have fifteen pictures, including the Atlookan images, which I understand came in this afternoon, right, James?' Wingate nodded. 'Good, now, judging from the blood samples we have, we're short two victims. But we can work with what we have, and what we have is all due to your hard work. So again, I thank you. As you were.'
The Mayfair cops gathered their things and began to file out. Many shook her hand as they went and thanked her for letting them be a part of the investigation. Thank me, she thought, for putting pictures in your heads that will give you nightmares for years to come.
When the place was cleared out, it looked empty. The nighttime shift began to filter in. She tried to dismiss Greene and Wingate, but they weren't hearing any of it. Greene was eating an Oh Henry! for supper. 'Where's Sevigny?' she asked him.
He peeled the candy like a banana and spoke without looking at her. 'He left on a four o'clock flight out of Toronto. He had to take the dog down to the airport.'
'You speak to him?'
'Yeah, we traded recipes.'
In her office, she took Rose's drawing out of a file folder and put it down on her desk. 'A kid did this?' said Greene. 'Maybe we should hire her.'
'What's your problem, Ray!'
He stared at her for almost five full seconds, his eyes dead. 'Nothing.'
Wingate stepped between them. 'When are we going to hear from Sevigny?'
Hazel looked at her watch. 'He won't be in Port Hardy until late tonight at the earliest. He's got to get a car and then he could be up north for days. By now, the Belladonna's at his next stop, or even the one after. Ray's chart shows at least two more killings after Havre-Saint-Pierre. One somewhere in Nova Scotia, and one in PEI, Newfoundland, or both. We don't have time.'
'Anyway,' said Ray Greene. He sat in Hazel's chair to find the garbage can under her desk. He threw his candy wrapper at it. 'I don't think we can tip our hand now.' He was looking at Rose's drawing again. 'I don't think these eyes miss a lot,' he said.
'When does Ms Turnbull's friend get here?'
'She's getting on a bus first thing tomorrow,' Hazel said.
'Buffet-style policing,' said Greene, leaning back in Hazel's chair. 'I like it. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. All four policing food groups.'
'Get out of my chair, Ray.'
He took his time standing up. She felt like she was going to grab him by the shirt and wrench him out of it. 'This is what I'm saying: don't you think it's time to stop accepting the kindness of strangers and catch this guy?'
'You're the one who wanted me to be open to "the new".'
'I meant cellphones,' he said.
'Well, you'll be thrilled with me then,' said Hazel. 'Because our lipreader's friend is coming here with some kind of supercomputer that makes instant cartoons. Miss Turnbull even said it was cool. So show me some respect.'
'Cartoons,' said Ray Greene, his mouth pursed into mock wonder. 'Well then, we must be close.'
'Sorry,' said Wingate. 'Cartoons?'
'What kind of state is your apartment in, James?'
'My apartment?' She waited him out. 'I'm still in boxes.'
'Stash 'em,' she said. 'When our guest arrives, we'll be working from your place.'
Wingate gave Ray Greene a look. 'Hey, I didn't know anything about this,' Greene said. 'It's a whole new world for me, too.'
'That's my home, Skip. I like to go there after work.'
'Look,' said Hazel, 'I don't want to be a bear about this, but Sevigny is right. You weren't here for my press conference, but you wouldn't have liked it. Only God knows what kind of shit people are going to think up. It's star-chamber time now. I want privacy with this woman, and you live alone, James, so it's got to be you. When her bus gets here, I want you to pick her up at the station, call us, and we'll all meet you at your apartment.'
'You do things differently here,' he said.
'I'm making it up as I go along, James.' Greene made a huffing sound. Hazel held the door open for Wingate, but stood in it when Greene started to leave. 'What the hell is your problem, Ray?'
'I don't have a problem, Hazel. And if I did, I'm sure it wouldn't be anything a few dozen extra people couldn't solve.'
'You think this was a job for you and me and a couple of duty officers?'
'No,' he said, 'it was a problem for the RCMP. But since we took a pass on—'
'Don't start with that again, okay?' He shrugged, like he couldn't be bothered to get into it with her, but this gesture upset her even more. 'You let me know when you want to sit behind this desk, with no commanding to help keep you out of the soup, and a whole county scared out of its wits, okay?'
He squared to her, the look of sarcastic defiance gone from his eyes, replaced with a glint of real anger. 'When did you lose faith in your own abilities, Hazel? Huh? When did you lose faith in mine? Because I don't recall a time when we couldn't handle what happened in our own town.'
'This isn't just in our own town any more.'
He flung his hands into the air. 'Yeah, and now I got fucking Howard Spere in my rearview mirror all day long, a rookie with theories, appointments with lipreaders and comp-sci grads, and about twenty strangers in uniform stalking the halls of my station house. I haven't had a drink out of my own coffee mug in three days—'
'I'll get you a new mug, Ray—'
'But the thing is,' he said, running over her, 'is that any of it would be bearable if not for that wild goddamned look in your eyes. You look like someone who heard her name called from a tree.'
She'd never seen him this pissed off. At anyone. They'd had disagreements in the past, but she could always joke her way out of it. Ray Greene was one of the easy parts of her life, one she could always predict. She stepped toward him and he backed up to the door, and she found herself raising her hands and showing him her palms, as if to demonstrate she was unarmed.
'You're angry.'
'Sure ...' he said uncertainly, aware of her proximity.
'I understand,' she said. 'But the thing is, you and me, we could never have done all this on our own. We needed the help. Which is not to say that I could have got through any of this without you.'
'Well, thanks for that.'
'No,' she said. 'Listen. You're the one I don't worry about, Ray. I know that might sound a little callous right now, but I keep an eye on a lot of things here. Not you, though. I tell myself you're okay, and usually you are.' He was looking away from her now. 'I thought it was trust, Ray, but if you're telling me it was neglect, I'm sorry for that.'
He put his hand on the doorknob. 'All right,' he said. 'I appreciate you saying that.' He wouldn't look at her. She'd embarrassed him. 'I should get home for dinner. I'll see you at James's.'
She let him go and went back to her desk. The chocolate wrapper was on the floor beside the garbage can. Had he done that on purpose? She knew after today that she'd be searching for the truth behind everything he said. She stared at the desktop, lost. Had he accepted her apology? She knew for certain he wasn't going home. They simulcast the trots out of Fleetwood down at the track at seven o'clock.
She looked at her watch: it was almost six. She needed a drink and a big serving of starch. She dialled the house to negotiate a meal with her mother that might include a potato, but then she remembered that it was Friday, Emily's regular poker night. She was on her own.
The next morning, at nine, her mother was still asleep. She didn't know what to think about the fact that her mother had more exciting Friday nights than she did, but there it was. Emily Micallef still knew how to party. Hazel knew these poker nights were rye-soaked affairs, and on the last Saturday morning of every month, her mother got up well after she did.
This was going to be a day off if it killed her. The girl from Ottawa wasn't going to be in town until late in the day, and there was nothing worth doing but being alone. She put the coffee on and changed into a tracksuit. She couldn't run any more; her back would not allow it. But she had to get the air moving through her or
she would bog down in everything that was closing in on her now. She drove the road leading to Little Bass Lake and walked down Stott's Lane toward the water in brisk, short steps. Wet leaves lined the roadway, great heaps of them piled up in gleaming, orange mounds. It smelled of the end of fall: no longer crisp or sharp, just wormy, dank and heavy. Winter on its way to bring it all to stillness. Only a month earlier, it had all looked like it was about to burst into flame. Now it had guttered.
It was an unpaved road with only a few houses on it. No one had any neighbours here, and there wasn't a window between the main road and the lake that offered a view of anything but trees. The sun was already strong, but the air was frigid. She kept her hands in the pouch of her sweatshirt and pulled her cap down over her eyes. She could hear a motor around the next bend.
It had been more than three weeks since she'd spoken to either of her daughters. Emilia was in Delta, B.C., occupied with her new husband, a man she'd actually said thrilled her. Hazel couldn't imagine. She was not close to her eldest; she had the feeling Emilia sided with Andrew, and it wasn't something she wanted confirmed. Being happily married to a thrilling man probably predisposed her to think of Andrew as the victim here. Probably he was, she thought, she just didn't need her first child underlining it for her.
As for Martha, she hadn't spoken to her since she'd called in tears to say Scott had broken up with her. Hazel didn't know what kind of advice to offer a brokenhearted girl of thirty-three. She didn't believe in 'other fish', and right now wasn't sure she believed in the sea, either. But she was certain her silence was hurting the girl. She was a fragile plant, that one. In need of just the right amount of water and light. She believed, without knowing for certain, that Andrew was staying in regular touch with her.
Her own mother had never wavered from tough love, and it was all Hazel knew. It had worked with her, or so she thought; she presumed the person she'd become was satisfactory. No doubt others would disagree. She saw in her mind's eye her youngest daughter's weeping face, the blue veins under her fair skin like shadows of those wet streaks.
She made her way around the curve and saw a woman wielding a leaf blower. Clumps of dead leaves shot into the air as if alive. The woman was aiming everything at a huge orange tarp. Hazel waved as she strode by. Her own yard was spotless; she realized she didn't know if her mother had raked the yard, or if she'd hired someone. It wasn't just the distractions of the previous week that left these strange lacunae in her mind: she'd been this way since the divorce. As if a thin line of light shot out from her and illuminated only the near view of things. It was a good quality if your job was to solve problems. It didn't lend itself so well to living, however, which came at you from all directions.
The road sloped downward past the last house. She leaned back a little, and as she did, small sparkles of pain burst in her sacral area. Sometimes it felt as if someone had cut out her lower back and replaced it with a steel plate. She slowed. The lake lay behind the trees at the bottom of the road, constantly moving, shape-catching, and redistributing light. It looked alive. If she'd wanted to live in the midst of murder and suffering, she could have had a job in Toronto, she thought. She'd stayed here in Westmuir County because it promised an ordered life. It had kept this promise until a week ago, but even so, she felt tricked. She'd undergone almost forty years of marriage only to have it come apart, and maybe the events of this November were meant to send her off at the end of her career under a similar cloud.
She walked out onto one of the docks at lake edge. But for the soft lapping of the water, there was silence here. Martha was almost certainly still abed in her apartment in Toronto. There was no work to keep Hazel's mind off what had happened to her daughter. Hazel imagined her wandering the rooms of her apartment in her pajamas for an entire day. Emilia was probably still in bed too, but Hazel turned her mind from that thought and walked back up the dock to the road.
When she got home, her elderly party animal of a mother was still in bed. The house smelled of coffee. Hazel poured a deep mug of it and checked the time: it was almost nine-thirty. She dialled Martha's number and let it ring until her heartsick daughter picked up.
Her day off effectively ended at three that afternoon.
'We got another one,' said James Wingate on the phone. 'A priest in New Brunswick.'
She'd been making soup. Her mother had eyed the concoction with suspicion and said, 'How much eye of newt have you got in there?' It was minestrone. Hazel hadn't cooked a thing in nearly a month.
'He's one of ours?' she asked Wingate.
'PC Ashton has a digital photo. It's the Belladonna.'
'We should get that picture to Marlene Turnbull right away.'
'I took the liberty of sending it to her already, Skip. I hope that was okay.'
She was pleased but said nothing.
'Apparently ...' continued Wingate, who seemed to be consulting some notes, 'the victim, Father Price, is an "obvious voiceless palatal fricative".'
She scraped something off the bottom of the pot. Her mother called from in front of the television: 'Smells burnt!'
'I know, Mother!'
'Should I call back?' said Wingate.
'No. Where's Marlene's friend?'
'She's due in at five.'
'Fine, call me then.' She put the phone down.
'You know what they say about a woman who burns soup,' said Emily Micallef from behind the kitchen wall.
'I don't want to hear it, Mother.'
'They say that woman doesn't know the first thing about making soup.'
Hazel had an instinct that she might want to save some energy for the evening. She turned off the ruined soup and went upstairs to bed and curled up under the layers of blankets. No matter how many blankets were on the bed, though, she still had to wear socks. She dropped off almost immediately but within moments, her mother was knocking at the door. 'Good Christ,' she said.
'Officer Wingate wants to know when they can expect you,' her mother said, opening the door.
'I told him five. Go away.'
'It's six-thirty, Hazel.'
She threw the covers off and grabbed the alarm clock off the bedside table. Three and a half hours had passed. She did not feel rested in the least.
James Wingate opened his door and offered her a look that said You are going to make this up to me. The room behind him was dark, but she could hear Ray's voice and another one, a high, excited voice twittering on about something she couldn't make out. Like any room where police business is happening, this one smelled of coffee.
Wingate's place looked like he was selling it, rather than moving into it. Although the lights had been dimmed, she could see there was nothing on the walls and nothing on the floors. A bookshelf stood beside the living-room window with only one shelf filled. The door to the bedroom was closed. Greene and their guest were sitting at the kitchen table behind an L-shaped counter that extended off the wall beside the stove and defined the cooking and eating area as a rough, square horseshoe. The table was littered with metal boxes and wires, all of which led to an open laptop casting its bluey light against the wall behind them. How her world had gone from rotary phones and two eight-year-old computers in the pen to this glossy high-tech litter on James Wingate's kitchen table ... she was never going to make sense of it. She tossed her jacket over a chair and squeezed Greene on the shoulder, passing him a paper bag. 'I brought you some flowers,' she said, and he slid a bottle of bourbon out of the bag. 'You know how I love flowers,' he said.
She held her hand out to the woman sitting behind the computer. 'I'm Jill,' said the woman, extending an impossibly long hand to Hazel. 'Jill Yoon.' She was a tiny woman, small enough to be folded into a suitcase. 'This is very exciting,' she said.
'We're talking about a serial killer,' said Hazel.
Yoon racheted her energy down a rad or two, as if Hazel were messing with her high. 'Okay, that part is pretty sad. But I think I can help you guys.'
'I hope so,' said Hazel
, moving around to look at the machinery. Was this stuff even machinery? Is that what they called information technology? It still looked like a pile of machines to her, but she was aware, faintly, that these steel boxes and gleaming windows could form an opinion about her. Maybe that's why she didn't like any of it.
A shimmering green light emanated from a box placed there. It was a projector of some sort, and they'd taped a large white linen napkin to the fridge to catch its light. 'What is that?' She was looking at an image of a human head made out of green, criss-crossing lines. It was hollow. The lines sizzled against the linen like something unstable.
'We call this a ligature,' said Jill Yoon. 'It's like an electronic mannequin or something like that.'
'Wingate, maybe get her a beer for this part,' said Greene, and Wingate reluctantly opened the fridge. The green light tracked across its contents, lines shooting over his milk cartons and condiment bottles. He took out a beer and handed it to Hazel.
'Where's Spere, by the way?' he said. 'Wouldn't he want to see this?'
'Howard works for Mayfair,' said Hazel.
'Ah,' he said, nodding approvingly. 'Members only?'
'He'll know when he needs to know.'
The Calling Page 19