The Calling (21 page)

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.'

Wingate shut the fridge, and the head contracted
back onto the frame of the napkin. 'Why do
I think he's not going to like that very much?'

'Because he won't,' said Hazel. 'But he's my problem,
not yours.'

'Forget Spere, come sit,' said Greene, patting the
seat beside him. 'You gotta get a load of what this
lady can do.'

Hazel screwed the cap off the beer and, glancing
around with a look of suspicion, she sat in the
chair. Jill Yoon picked up a digital camera from
the tabletop. 'I need three pictures of you,
Inspector. One with your mouth closed, one with
your mouth open wide, and one of your tongue.'

'Just do it,' said Greene. Hazel self-consciously
did as she was told. When the pictures were taken
– three quick flashes – Yoon connected the camera
to her laptop. 'Now we read a little,' she said. She
handed Hazel a thick book and a microphone.

'You want me to read poetry?'

'The computer needs to know how you make
sounds,' said Yoon.

Hazel read:

'I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.'