The Calling (17 page)

'You took four pints, you know. I had to steal
them from the hospital's blood bank. Luckily I'm
not afraid of being fired.' She screwed closed the
port on his arm and tied off the saline going into
his hand. 'You were practically hollow when I
found you.'

He grieved the thought of having taken
sustenance from unknown bodies. 'I'm not supposed
to take aid. I'm to go forth on my own
strength.'

'You'd be dead, then,' she said. He felt the plastic
stent slide out of the vein in his hand. 'This last
one is going to be a bit uncomfortable.' She
reached down below the sheets and he felt her
hand, warm, on the inside of his leg. With a sudden
motion, she ripped tape from his inner thigh and
then he felt the painful sensation of the catheter
being drawn out of his urethra. He felt as if he were
pissing fire. 'Sorry,' she said.

Like most of the houses he entered, Tamara
Laurence's was spotless. He could never be sure
if these houses had been cleaned for his benefit, or
if a terminal illness naturally made people want to
simplify their lives. He appreciated the respect it
showed, whether for him, or for the coming of
these many ends.

Her home was modest. Furnished in a spartan
manner, with a couple of adornments about: an
antique clock, a painting over the fireplace. No
mirrors anywhere. He sat at her bare dining-room
table as she put her kettle on and then came to join
him. The hair she'd lost over a failed course of
chemotherapy had grown in again, although it was
new hair rather than old growth: it was soft and
loose and thin. It had grown long enough that she
could tie it back into a short ponytail that came
down only to the nape of her neck.

At the table, he put his medicines down in a row
and explained in what order he would apply them;
what effect she would feel, and how long it would
take for these compounds to go to work. When
she'd thrown his bag, she'd smashed the bottles of
slippery elm and henbane, the latter of which he
used quite a bit, and he told her he was improvising
now. She handled the individual jars with care,
turning them in her hands. 'Do you find people are
ready when you come to them?'

'Most are,' he said.

'Are they frightened?'

'They have different reactions. Some are scared,
but most of them are resigned. Or even relieved.'

'I'm not relieved.' She set the vials back down on
the table in the order of their use and regarded
them. 'I liked being alive. I was good at it. I loved
well and I worked well. I was good at my job.'

'You helped a lot of people.'

'An oncologist with cancer,' she said. '
That's
not
ironic. Good thing I didn't choose a career in
explosives.' She laughed and drew the first vial
back toward herself. 'So, this one for tea, then?'

'Yes,' he said.

She brought it into the kitchen with her and he
told her how much of it to put into a cup and how
much water. She stood in the doorway of the
kitchen with the cup cradled in her hand.

'I'd like to die in bed. Is that okay?'

He followed her down the hall to her room. She
put the tea down and undressed with her back to
him. He had intended to release her from this
obligation, in return for allowing him to continue.
However, here she was, standing beside the bed,
her body giving off a greyish glow, like a stone lit
from within. She turned to face him, and he took
in the bones pushing out from under her flesh.
There were patches of liverish marks pocked over
the surface of her belly and chest. She sipped her
tea.

'I can't tell if you're examining a patient now or
actually looking at a woman.'

'When I ask people to undress, I look for scars.'

'You didn't ask me. But I did it anyway.'

'I had thought twice of it,' he said. His palms
were buzzing. 'But here you are.'

'I want to be seen. I want to be lit up in my last
seconds on this planet.'

She had answered her own question – he was
looking at a woman – and in doing so, he was
reminded of all the things he had once been, when
he'd been merely a man. He'd had no mission at all
then, and life had been a series of tasks that he fulfilled
with passion or without. Now it felt as if he
were bodiless; he had lost his corporeality when
his brother had fallen ill. He was a memory of his
brother's body that had been projected into the
world.

But this woman reminded him that he had once
wanted to express himself differently.

'I'm guessing you're not the kind of guy who'd go
to bed at a time like this,' she said.

'I'm sorry.'

'You'll hold me at least. Right?'

He said he would. He collected the two remaining
vials off the dining-room table and returned to
her with them. 'This is just pulverized ginger,' he
said, holding up his right hand. 'It's a natural
antiemetic.'

'I guess the other one is pretty nasty, then?'

'This is ground amanita. It's a fungus.'

'My ex was an avid mushroomer. I know it.'

'Destroying Angel, some people call it.'

'Another exciting Sunday night in Pictou,' she
said, and she sat down on the edge of the mattress,
naked and shrunken, and looked up at him with
her ruined face. He felt suddenly uneasy, but he was
too focused to understand what it was that had
distressed him. It was a cloud passing over the sun.
'Let's get going,' she said.

He sat with her and administered the
belladonna. She grimaced at the taste of it. He
started to mix the amanita into what remained of
her tea, but she grabbed his wrist to stop him and
began to weep. He held her against him, anxious
now to be done, to be separated from her love of
life and her agony at leaving. 'I never prayed,' she
said. 'I don't believe in any of that. What's that
going to mean when you try me out on your God,
Simon? He's not going to be happy.'

'You can come home whenever you're ready,
Tamara, even now.'

She released her grip on his wrist. The
belladonna was already flowing through her – in a
dose that high, it was almost enough to put her
under. She took the amanita from his hand
and walked back into her kitchen, where she
poured a dram of the remaining hot water out of
the kettle and into a glass. 'How much?' she asked
him.

'The equivalent of one grain is enough.' He
watched her take twice that and mix it into the
water. She took his hand and drew him down
the hallway. In the bathroom, she cracked a syringe
and filled it.

'Let's not fool around now,' she said back in the
bedroom. He tied her off and she expertly found
the vein in the crook of her elbow and put the
needle in. They both watched the milk-coloured
liquid vanish into her arm. 'You said you'd hold me.
I want you to get out of your clothes.'

'Tamara—'

'You'll never have to do anything I ask ever
again.'

She reached for the button at the top of his shirt
and he pulled away from her. 'Get in,' he told her,
and she drew back the covers and lay down. He
undressed. In the bed, she folded herself around him.

'Tell me how long.'

'Minutes.'

They lay there in silence. 'Turn off the lamp.' In
the dark, he listened to her breathe.

He remembered what had disturbed him ten
minutes ago. 'It's not Sunday night,' he whispered
to her.

'You got here yesterday, Simon. You were out for
more than a day. You almost died.'

He tried to sit up, but she held him there against
the bed. She said, 'I'm still here.' And then, 'Still
here,' and ten seconds later, she was dead in his
arms and it was Sunday night and his plans were
destroyed.

He was furious with himself. He carried her form
down the hall, cooling against his nakedness, and
to the stairs and brought her into the room where
he'd lain insensate for twenty-four hours, hours
during which he was supposed to have been
making the final leg of his journey. He was meant
to be in Trinity Bay tomorrow afternoon, celebrating
completion, but now he was nowhere.

He'd followed his own rules, but instead of consecrating
himself, he'd woken up to find himself
fallen. He had not been right about his own
strength.

He laid her on the bed in the basement, her body
as light as air, this very body that had pressed itself
to him, held him back, spoken to him, begged him.
He dressed and went to the car and got his flensing
knife out from under the back seat and dragged the
tin cup through the stinking fluid he'd driven
across the country. In the house, he tilted her head
back and poured his brother's blood into her, the
blood of Victor Wente out of Oyen, Alberta,
the blood of Elizabeth Reightmeyer from Norway
House in Manitoba. Robert Fortnum, dead in
Hinton, spread in her. Delia Chandler, Port
Dundas, graced her. Father Price blessed her. He
filled her with the congregation.

He could not cut her, though. She'd transited
through human in his presence. She'd been too
much with him. His weakness had brought him
here and he could not bear it. He knelt by the edge
of the bed she lay on and brought up the curving
blade of the flensing knife, seeing the little light
that was there in that now-silent place glint in the
steel. He gave a cry of anger and brought the blade
down hard against the bottom knuckle of his right
thumb. With two levered sawing motions he had
the thumb off and the digit, as if possessed of its
own life, sprang free from him and bounced across
the floor. He cried out in agony and doubled over
onto Tamara Laurence's cold belly, cradling the
ruined hand between them.

Thursday 18 November, 6 a.m.

ADDICT RAMPAGES THROUGH WESTMUIR
COUNTY screamed the headline of the
Westmuir
Record
Thursday morning. Ray Greene was on
Hazel's doorstep first thing, the proof that
all hell had broken loose drooping in his hand.
'I thought I'd better be the one to show you
this,' he said. Hazel held the door open for him
as she stared at the newspaper. She couldn't
move.

'What the good Christ do they think they're
doing?' she said.

Her mother was descending the stairs behind
them. 'What who is doing?'

'Your Honour,' said Greene, not joking, and
bowing ever so slightly. 'The
Record
has decided to
try out investigative journalism.'

'I can't believe this,' Hazel said. 'There's going to
be a fucking riot at the station.'

'I'm Mrs Micallef to you, Ray,' said Emily, heading
into the kitchen. 'Or Emily, if you must. Let's
put on some coffee.'

Hazel didn't look up once as she walked down
the hall behind Ray Greene. 'I guess I really pissed
off Sunderland,' she murmured. Greene said
nothing. The entire paper was devoted to the
murders of Delia Chandler and Michael Ulmer. All
their sources were 'unnamed', but the facts, such
as they were, were correct. It was their conclusions
that were going to cause all the trouble. 'Ray, they
think the Belladonna is killing for drugs.'

'Yeah, I know. Because who has better drugs than
the dying? Painkillers, sedatives, hallucinogens,
you name it.'

She fell into a kitchen chair, her forehead in her
hand. There were pictures of both houses.
Someone had even got a photo of Ulmer being
loaded into the morgue van. 'I thought we took
Ulmer out a back door.'

'It's not that easy to disguise an icewagon driving
down a side street, Hazel. Someone followed it.
These guys did their homework.'

She leaned in closer to an item on the second
page. It had a picture of her cellphone box lying in
a garbage can with the caption 'Second Murder
Jolts Chief into Twenty-first Century', and below
it: 'Questions? Call her on ...' and there was her
cell number for every last reader in the county to
see. She shoved the paper violently across the
table. 'Great! Now they're infiltrating our bloody
offices! They're supposed to be covering giant
pumpkin contests for Christ's sake!'

Emily put down two cups of instant. 'I don't
understand how you can be surprised, Hazel.'

'I suppose I'm not.'

'After I left your father, they asked the good
people of this town if I was the kind of role model
they wanted in city hall. They asked that question
all the way to the polls the following year. "Will
she abandon you next?" they asked. And you're
surprised they took a picture of your garbage can?'

Hazel pulled one of the coffee cups toward herself,
still holding the paper in the other hand.
'What is it about this place that inspires such
vindictiveness? Everything about Westmuir
County is a little pastoral dream except for the
fucking newspaper.'

'Don't forget the guy butchering the terminally
ill,' said Greene. 'He's not so nice either.'

Emily opened the fridge door. 'You hungry, Ray?
I can make you a couple of fried eggs.'

'Actually, I am kind of hungry. Thank you, Your
Honour.'

Emily shook her head, smiling, and turned to the
stove. 'Can I make a suggestion, officers?' They
waited. 'Hold a press conference. Now. This morning.
Not a statement on the station-house steps,
Hazel, a press conference. Eat and get into the
station house and act like public officials who care.
Grant an interview to Gordon Sunderland. Let
him sit down with you.'

'The son of a bitch.'

She turned from the stove with an egg in the
palm of her hand. 'Take control of the story. Don't
make the mistake I made.' They heard the crack
and sizzle in the pan. 'They'll ambush you if you
don't invite them in first,' she said.

'It's too late for that,' said Hazel.

Her mother swirled the pan on the stove. 'It's
almost
too late,' she said.

The station house was full when they got there, but
it was ruled by a fearful silence. Hazel walked out
into the pen and held the paper up. 'It's eight
o'clock right now, people. At nine, we're having a
press conference. Set this place up and get anyone
in here who wants to hear what I have to say.' She
checked to make sure her cellphone was still off
and retired to her office, surrounded by the only
people she was certain hadn't betrayed her.

'I have to sit down,' she said when the door was
closed. She couldn't make it behind the desk and
sat down in the visitor's chair in front of it. Greene,
Wingate and Sevigny tried to arrange themselves
in front of her. 'We've lost complete control of this
thing.'

Greene reached toward her and gingerly slipped
the paper from her grasp. He folded it and put it
down on the side table. 'What are you planning to
say at this press thing?'

'I'm going to remind them what community
service means.'

'Should we maybe get Eileen in here? Go over
some talking points?'

'Eileen knows how to lead school trips, Ray. I
know what needs to be said.'

'She is the community liaison officer.'

She squared to him from where she was sitting,
her head tilted to one side to take the sting out
of her middle back. 'I was using the term
community
euphemistically, you know? When the local paper
decides to cash in by printing the results of their
own investigation, the concept of neighbourliness
is not one that interests me all that much. Just
make sure Sunderland is here in one hour.'

Greene went back into the hallway to organize
the conference. Hazel hoped he wasn't going to
warn Community Liaison Officer Eileen. She
turned to the other two men in her office.

'Do you need an aspirin, Skip?' said Wingate.

'I need a bottle of Scotch and a long blade,
Detective,' she said. 'But let's focus on what's
possible. Catch me up on what's going on out
there.'

'Crime scene and morgue photos are coming in.
We're getting a lot of digital images, and Detective
Spere is calling in some favours out west anywhere
we're getting resistance.'

'We're getting resistance?'

Sevigny spoke up. 'Little jugs,' he said. 'I spoke
to some of your people and told them to keep the
details of the investigation as vague as possible.' He
made
vague
rhyme with
bag
. Hazel pushed herself
up from her chair, ignoring the shooting pain that
went down through the back of her thigh and into
her foot. She felt she had better be behind her desk
now.

'Who gave you permission to talk to "my" people,
Detective?'

'I offer my apologies. But I felt it was important.'

'You're a guest here. You don't give orders.'

'I apologize. However—'

She waved her hand at him to stop him from
speaking, and lowered her head. She hoped it
appeared as if she was thinking, but sitting in the
padded chair behind her desk had introduced a
pain so exquisite that she was worried she would
cry out. She raised herself minutely out of the chair
and then slowly lowered herself back down. She
breathed out slowly. 'The both of you know what
Howard's people found on Delia Chandler's
computer, yes?'

They both nodded.

'Then what do we do about it?'

Sevigny came forward tentatively and pulled one
of the file folders on Hazel's desk toward himself.
He flipped it open and removed a sheet. 'The
delivery address is a post-office box which is part of
a rural array about five kilometres out of Port
Hardy,' he said. 'It's registered to a "Jane Buck" .'

'That's clever,' said Wingate.

'I don't care who it's registered to,' said Hazel.
'What do we do about it? I'm presuming, Detective
Sevigny, that you'd advise against deputizing someone
in the Port Hardy PD to go and look into it for
us.'

'If you want to maintain control ...'

'Someone has to look into it.' She turned her
eyes on Wingate, who visibly shrank back.

'Oh no,' he said. 'You can't ask me to do that.'

'I
would
if we had the budget for it. But I doubt
Ian Mason will spring for four flights in the same
month.' She flipped her fingers out at the paper in
Sevigny's hand. 'James, you take that and go lock
yourself in an empty office – if you can find one –
and track down this Buck woman.'

'She doesn't exist,' said Wingate. 'This is the
Belladonna's idea of a joke.'

'He's not killing John and Jane Does, however, is
he? So go find out. And if it's a dead end, I expect
you to push through into the woods. Find out who's
checking that mailbox.'

Wingate left with the sheet in his hand. Sevigny
watched him go and then turned back to the desk.
Hazel's fist was balled up on the blotter. He stepped
to the file cabinets on his left and opened the
bottom drawer. 'That's a cliché, Detective,' said
Hazel. Sevigny hesitated, then lifted his hand to
the drawer above, opened it and took out a bottle
of Jack Daniel's. He brought it over to the desk.
'Can you guess where I keep the knife now?'

'When you talk to your newspaper men,' he said,
'remember that you are really talking to your staff.
Tell them that nothing can get in their way now.
They will find him. They will win.'

She opened her hand to accept the bottle as he
slid it to her. 'They make you guys pretty confident
where you come from, huh?'

'My mother had eleven children,
Chef
. I learn to
make myself heard.' He looked at his watch. 'I'll be
in the audience listening.'

'I'll try to impress you, sir,' said Hazel with a
crooked smile.

She sat with the bottle in her hand. The
palpable sensation that things were truly coming
apart was upon her now. Perhaps at one time in her
life, when she was just starting out, a case this big
would have been a dream come true. Eager people
all around her, the puzzle pieces dropping into
place. But the most pressing thought she was
having right now was that here a person she'd
known her whole life was dead. Underneath the
grandeur of the crimes they were now confronting,
under the cipher of this man's intentions, was the
simple thought that Delia Chandler had been
murdered. Dead bodies were the coin of the realm
for every entertainment she knew of: television
mysteries, Hollywood bloodlettings, celebrity
magazines, pocketbooks (what her father would
have called 'dime-store' novels) – all of it was so
general that it was as if everyone lived in the midst
of a bloodbath. But here she was, so-called chief of
police of a small-town police detachment, a
woman who'd seen bodies, the profoundly unentertaining
facts of death, and she still couldn't
wrap her mind around the fact that someone had
passed through
her
town and drained a woman
she'd known her whole life of almost every drop of
blood in her body.

She twisted the cap off the bottle and poured a
full inch into her coffee cup. She thought twice of
making her desk drawer the new hiding place, but
if Sevigny ever thought of bartending out of that
drawer, it would look even worse than if the bottle
had
been in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.
She got up and hobbled over to the file cabinet and
put the bottle into the bottom drawer. He'd look
there last. But, she felt quite certain, he'd
look there eventually.

Exactly one week ago, 11 November, she'd been
on the phone in this very office arguing with Patti
Roncelli, who with her husband, Steve, was the
owner of the town's main pizza joint, and she had
been telling Patti if she didn't want kids congregating
in the parking lot in front of the pizzeria at
midnight, revving their engines and smoking, that
she should consider closing earlier. Patti had
wanted her to come down and issue some warnings,
but apart from annoying the hell out of Patti
Roncelli, these kids weren't doing anything wrong.

It had been the height of excitement the week of
8 November. When she'd hung up the phone that
Thursday one week earlier, the Belladonna was
completing his drive from Pikangikum and
was almost in central Ontario. The next day, he'd
keep his appointment with Delia Chandler, and
the present would change shape for them all. Hazel
doubted that there were many kids cluttering the
Roncellis' parking lot this week.

She drained her coffee and looked down at her
notes. She was going to remind these people what
their supposed jobs were. There was a knock at the
door. 'Come,' she said.

PC Eileen Bail popped her head in. 'Can I have
just a moment?'

Hazel sighed. 'What is it, Bail?'

Her community liaison officer crept around the
door and closed it behind her. 'Inspector? Listen, I
know you're awfully mad about the paper this
morning—'

'Are they here?'

'Yes, but—'

'Is Sunderland here?' Bail, one finger in the air,
paused and said nothing. 'Fine. What were you
going to say, Eileen?'

'We have a slightly larger crowd than you did on
Monday, but Sunderland is not here. Not yet. I just
wanted to say, Detective Inspector, that you have
every reason to be upset, but I don't
feel
,
necessarily, that you need, that this press
conference, which I think is a very good idea, that
you need—'

'That I need
what
?'

'It's not the right place to make your feelings
known.'

'I see,' said Hazel. 'And what is it the right place
for, Eileen? If I were to ask you?'

'Well, Ma'am, maybe you should give them
something. A bit of information. How the investigation
is coming.'

'Why would I compromise our investigation by
telling that pack of dogs what we're doing?'