The Calling (13 page)

Tuesday 16 November, 12 p.m.

Greene came in triumph with Ken Lonergan in
cuffs in his passenger seat. 'Christ,' said Hazel,
throwing her arms around him, 'I thought you were
dead.'

'He's got no right to arrest me!' said Lonergan
through the open window. 'Take these cuffs off me,
Hazel.'

She released Ray Greene and pressed her face
into Lonergan's. 'You're damn right you're cuffed,
you bloody fool. You discharged a firearm in a street
full of people!'

'Twice,' said Greene. 'I wouldn't have arrested
you, Ken, if you'd laid it down when I told you to.'

Lonergan muttered something and kicked the
dash under the glove compartment. 'Just write him
up and let him go,' said Hazel. 'Let me see this poor
thing now.' Greene unlocked his trunk and the two
of them stared at the sad, dead form of the cougar
lying on its side.

'Imagine having your life ended by Ken-fucking-Lonergan,'
Greene said. 'What a beautiful animal.
I've called Wildlife Services. They're going to
come and take it away.' He opened the passenger
door and Lonergan stepped out, ignoring Greene's
hand. 'Be grateful I went for a live capture in your
case, Ken.'

'Shut up, Ray. That thing ate three dogs before I
stopped it. What do you think it was going to go
after when all the dogs were gone?'

'I'm sure you were safe, Ken. I get the feeling it
didn't like its meat stringy.'

'Get done with him,' said Hazel, 'then come and
see me.'

Greene pushed his prisoner in through the doors
of the station house, and after one last look at the
cougar, Hazel closed the trunk on its motionless
form.

When Greene was caught up on the DNA reporting
from Toronto, he sat back in the chair opposite
Hazel and tried to figure out the answer to her
question. It was beginning to look like they had
worked out the Belladonna's modus operandi.
Wingate had located what looked like a fourth
victim after lunch, in Gimli, Manitoba. Here, too,
the victim was terminally ill, a woman in her
forties named Ruth Maris dying of ALS. They
found her headless body lying under the covers in
her bed. The head they found in Maris's freezer,
split in half down the middle and turned around so
the victim was looking herself in the eye. The
crime scene was so gruesome that it had made the
news in Regina, more than five hundred kilometres
away. This was 3 November, and if the death in
Pikangikum six days later was the next killing,
then of course no one would ever have linked the
two deaths. It was still uncertain if the Atlookan
killing in Pikangikum was his – the reserve police
were being unco-operative with Wingate, asking
for a warrant for release before they showed Port
Dundas anything. They were still stuck in second
gear.

Hazel's question had been this: given that they
had no way to predict where the killer was going to
strike next, was it a good idea to put out an APB
for all points east of Ontario? It could warn the
killer that the law was aware of his presence, but it
might also cause him to make another mistake.
And they needed him to make more mistakes. The
argument against it was simply that they didn't
have enough pieces of the puzzle to know, exactly,
what to warn people against. The side effect that
many thousands of terminally ill people east of
Ontario might begin doubly fearing for their lives
wasn't worth the exercise in awareness. And what,
exactly, should people and law enforcement be on
the lookout for? A man driving the countryside
with a bucket of blood in his trunk?

Ray Greene was staring at the ceiling. 'Well, I
know the RCMP would have had a bulletin out by
now.'

'If they'd ever clued into the fact that a serial
killer was at large.'

'We could clue them in,' he said.

She laughed softly. 'You want to take a back seat
to the Mounties in your own town, Ray? They've
had fourteen chances to pick up this guy's scent.
They have a deeper network than we do and,
clearly, they don't have any idea what's going on in
any of their jurisdictions.'

'How can you be sure of that?'

'I thought we were talking about our next move
here.'

'Anyway,' said Greene, 'an APB is the same as
alerting the RCMP.'

She thought about that for a moment. 'Then we
don't do it.'

'Someone's going to say this stinks of Central
Canadian arrogance. The OPS going it alone.'

She looked him in the eye. 'This is a big case,
Ray. And I've got the RCMP asleep at the switch
on one side of me and Ian Mason on the other, so
unless you're absolutely sure we can't handle our
own shit, maybe you should get onside. We're the
last thing standing between this guy and his
remaining victims, and if Central Canadian
arrogance gets the job done, I'm all for it.'

Greene had come to complete stillness, lost in
thought.
With me or agin' me?
she wondered. She'd
never made Ray Greene for anything but an ally,
but for a moment here, her faith was being tested.
Then he ran his hand through his hair and put his
cap back on. 'So no RCMP and no APB,' he said.
'For now.'

She felt her shoulders fall back into place.
'Right. For now. We have to think like hunters in
a blind here. We don't show ourselves until we
absolutely have to. We're going to get one chance
to catch this guy. We have to find who his other
victims were, figure out how he found them, and
get to him before he's finished what he's doing.
Because if he finishes, he's done. He'll disappear.'

'Fine.' He looked at his palms. 'You said this guy
had to get to Pikangikum by boat, right?'

'That's right.'

'So he's an unfamiliar non-native face crossing
over twice in one day.'

'We presume. Maybe he crossed at two places,
though. If I was as smart as he seems to be, that's
what I'd do. And anyway, who says he
isn't
native?'

'Do
you
think he's native?'

'No, but any assumption that cancels out
another possibility is a dangerous one.'

'We have to start somewhere, Hazel, and if
you're not prepared to put out an APB, then a fair
assumption is a good thing to hang your hat on. At
least for a day.'

She mulled the idea a moment. 'Who's less likely
to piss off the natives, you or Wingate?'

Greene held his palms up in a gesture of supplication.
'God, don't send me. I'll have my foot in my
mouth the second I step onto the riverbank.'

Hazel picked up her phone. A moment later,
Wingate knocked. 'Any luck with the PD in
Pikangikum?'

'I'm waiting for a callback.'

'Don't wait any more,' she said. 'Go see Melanie
and tell her to call Great Shield Air. You're flying
to Red Lake this afternoon.'

'I'm not good on airplanes.'

'You'll love it. You get to sit beside the pilot. Go.'

* * *

Hazel zipped up the back of her mother's dress and
looked over her shoulder at the two of them in the
mirror.

'Do you think it'll cause a stir? My going to
Delia's funeral?'

'It would cause more of one if you didn't,
Mother. You're just being a good citizen.'

'There's not a man, woman or child in this town
who doesn't know what Delia did.'

'Don't be ridiculous. Not everyone knows. Ray
didn't know.'

'Oh, but you told him?'

'Look, Mum, Dad did it too. And you went to his
funeral.'

Emily Micallef leaned forward to open her
jewellery box. She had never been one
for jewellery and pushed around the few trinkets
she had before selecting a modest pearl necklace
Hazel's father had given her when Hazel was still a
child. 'Help me with this,' she said, baring her neck
to her daughter. Hazel attached the two ends of the
necklace together. 'You think the papers will be
there?'

'I don't know, Mum. You don't have to worry
about them.'

'They hounded me out of office only eight years
ago, Hazel. You think they've forgotten how to sell
papers?' Hazel thought of the Monday edition of
the
Westmuir Record
and chose not to answer.

On the road leading to St George's Church, cars
were parked in both directions – Hazel estimated
more than two hundred cars, with their passengers,
had descended on the church to hear Father
Glendinning deliver his eulogy. Inside, Ray Greene
had held a few seats in his pew, and the two
Micallef women went to sit with him. He was
dressed in a proper suit, but Hazel had decided that
she would be expected to appear in the official
capacity of Inspector Micallef, and so she had worn
her dress uniform, a getup she had not put on since
she'd become interim CO in 1999. The uniform
made her feel powerful, and although she was the
top-ranking officer in the Port Dundas OPS only
by default, this was a moment in which she felt she
was the real thing.

She shook hands as she walked down the central
aisle, but behind these handshakes, and in the eyes
of her fellow Port Dundasians, she saw the expectation
that she would provide an answer to the
dread mystery that had brought them all together
on this day.

Father Glendinning cast his eyes over the congregation.
'Come in,' he said to those at the back,
pressing against those standing. 'There is room for
anyone who would be here. Come fill the sides.' He
waited as people shyly filtered down the edges of
the nave. '
Sed et si ambulavero in valle mortis non
timebo malum
. "Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death,''' he said, '''I will fear
no evil." What cold comfort that is to those of us
who gather here today to mourn the death of Delia
Chandler. For you may not fear evil, but it is afoot,
and it has walked among us. The manner in which
Delia was carried off is too well known to us, and I
will not speak of it, my friends.' He looked down at
the casket that lay below the dais. 'She was too
modest a woman to suffer the additional indignity
of having the horror of her dying bruited amongst
the townfolk like so much gossip.' Hazel had
squeezed her mother's hand in warning when the
priest had said
modest
. 'But let us talk of evil. What
is our responsibility when faced with evil? Is it to
avert our eyes and hope that God will protect us?
No, for God protects us only when we stand up to
evil; when we allow it no purchase in our lives. Our
police tell us that Delia opened the door to her
killer, and in so many ways, we open our doors to
evil. We make our homes welcoming to Satan. We
must batten our doors against evil, lest it seek us
out.'

'What an idiot,' said Greene at the gravesite an
hour later. Hazel stood alone behind the crowd
with her fellow detective. Before coming out to the
cemetery, she'd driven her mother home when
Emily said she'd had enough of mourning Delia
Chandler. Greene was scuffing the dirt with his
shoe. 'He has a chance to give these poor people
some comfort, and instead he incites them. We'll
have ten more Ken Lonergans waving their guns
behind their peepholes before long.'

'Do you think that's what they heard?' said
Hazel, watching the congregants surround the
grave ten-deep. 'I thought they heard they were
safe if they were clean. He said Delia had it coming
to her.'

Greene thought for a moment. 'Is it possible
that's what our guy is doing? Was this her sentence?
But what did Ulmer do? The man could barely
walk.'

'I doubt our guy is crossing the country punishing
sinners. Surely there aren't people out there
effectively committing suicide to expiate their
sins.'

'Just a thought.'

'No, I think Father Glendinning just told us all
that nothing bad will happen if we live our lives
under God. He hasn't seen what people in our line
of work see. If he did, he'd hang up his cassock.'

'We rarely see it ourselves, Hazel. I'm about as
unfamiliar with murder as Glendinning is.'

'But you don't have a cassock to hang up, Ray.'

Glendinning was standing at the head of Delia's
grave with his Bible open. 'Ashes to ashes,' he
began, and the crowd of townsfolk pressed in and
crossed themselves. Hazel looked through their
numbers, hoping to see an unfamiliar face, but
there was a sea of faces she knew too well – men
and women whose houses she'd been to, whose
children she'd warned and even arrested, whose
neighbours she'd calmed. The whole town was
here. She saw a couple of people standing in the
back with notebooks. There was little enough to go
on from an investigative perspective, and she was
relieved to think that there was nothing to tell the
press, such as it was here in Westmuir County.

Bob and Gail stood beside Father Glendinning
holding hands, and Hazel tried not to look at Bob,
who was weeping. Delia's other son, Dennis, had
come in from Calgary, but Hazel hadn't seen him
for almost thirty years. She recalled him as a reedy-looking
jock, a shy kid known for how far he could
hit a fastball. If she was remembering correctly,
he'd gone off to Michigan on a sports scholarship,
but she had no idea how he'd ended up in Calgary.
She wasn't entirely sure which of the four or five
adults standing near the priest he was. Presently,
Glendinning nodded to Bob Chandler, and he, as
well as another, larger, man, stepped forward and
each took a handful of dirt and threw it into the
grave. The second man turned to look at the
mourners, and she saw the hint of that young man's
face she'd been trying to remember. He'd gone to
seed.

Afterward, Hazel made a point of seeking out
Dennis Chandler. She introduced herself, and
Bob's brother took her hand. 'I almost didn't recognize
you,' she said.

'I tried to stay away as much as I could,' he said.
'Have you made any progress?'

'It's slow,' she admitted. 'He was very careful.'

'I appreciate everything you're doing here,
Inspector.'