The Calling (3 page)

Dale brought her sandwich, and she tore into it.
It was hot and salty, with sweet red pepper hidden
in the folds. Her mother would kill her if she knew,
but at least now, she would have the energy to get to
lunch. Her mother was giving her protein and fibre.
That's what they put into kibble, she thought.

She paid Dale and got back into the car, drove
halfway up the rest of Main Street to Porter Street
and turned right. There, set back from the corner a
little, was the Port Dundas police detachment. Her
men and women covered the front line from
Dublin in the south to Fort Leonard in the north,
and from Georgian Bay to Temakamig – in other
words, the entirety of Westmuir County, an area
totalling 1,100 square kilometres. There were
community policing bureaus in many of the larger
towns of the county, but for anything major –
murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault – the
Port Dundas PD was called in. Her officers could
make it to most parts of their catchment in under
an hour, although many of the larger communities
of Westmuir County were within a half-hour drive.
They were well situated even if they weren't well
staffed: she had only twelve front-liners – eight
provincial constables and four sergeants leading
the platoons – and two detectives including herself.
(They'd been three, but DC Hunter had
retired in the summer. She knew how hopeless it
would be to try and get
him
replaced.) The Port
Dundas detachment was generally regarded the
best-run station in the region, despite its lack of an
official CO. The phrase 'copes admirably' was frequently
used in connection with them.

She went around the back and parked in her
spot. The sign said, Parking for Inspector of Police
Only, not her name, like some of the other signs.
Six years in the role, but she was still (and still
thought of herself as) the interim commanding.

Detective Sergeant Raymond Greene was standing
in her doorway the moment she went into her
office. Greene liked to dress the part: beige mackintosh,
shiny black shoes, a black homburg. He pushed
himself off the frame and came toward her. He
looked tense. 'Why can't you get a cellphone, Skip?'

'I don't like cellphones, Ray. It means people can
reach me whenever they want.'

'Exactly,' he said.

Melanie Cartwright, her assistant, came out of
her office farther down the hall. 'Detective
Inspector, I have a message for you from the community
office in Kehoe.'

'River or Glen?'

'River.'

'Can this wait?' asked Greene. 'I think I have
dibs.' He gave them both a toothy smile.

'I'm touched, Ray. Is it Ken Lonergan again?'

Cartwright nodded. She turned to Greene. 'He
wants permission to shoot a cougar.'

He smiled at Hazel. 'He's not talking about you,
is he?'

'Watch it, Ray.'

'Sorry.'

'Melanie, tell him to talk to someone in Parks
and Rec, please. I can't authorize a posse to kill a
cat. He knows that.' Cartwright nodded and disappeared
back into her office. 'What is it, Ray?'

'Jamieson got a call from Bob Chandler out in
Hoxley. He told him he'd been calling his mother
all morning and there's no answer.'

'So why is he still in Hoxley? It's only twenty
minutes.' Ray shrugged. 'Fine, then why is PC
Jamieson still here?'

'Well, you've known Mrs Chandler for ... and I
just thought—'

'Fine.' She strode partway down the hall.
'Melanie, I'm going back out. If Ken calls again,
you tell him that shooting cats is a felony today. I
don't want him wandering down the middle of
Kehoe River with a pistol like some cockeyed
Wyatt Earp, okay?'

'Got it,' said Cartwright.

'We'll take your car,' said Hazel.

'You have diced ham on your name tag.'

She plucked the offending meat off her chest
and put it in her mouth. 'Go,' she said.

Saturday, 13 November, 10:45 a.m.

Robert Chandler sat slumped forward onto his
mother's kitchen table, his head in his arms.
Detective Inspector Micallef laid her hand on his
forearm and squeezed it. In the room just beyond,
she heard the hiss and squawk of police radios and
the opening and closing of the front door. It
was the morning shift and constables Cassie Jenner
and Adrian Ashton had come to the call. Sergeant
Renald and Provincial Constable Kraut Fraser, two
of their three trained Scene of Crime Officers, were
also present.

'You say you spoke with her around lunchtime
yesterday, Bob?'

'I was going to come by in the evening, but I
called to cancel. I had too much work to do last
night.'

'Did she say she had any plans herself?'

He lifted his head off the table and ran the side
of his face against his shoulder. 'When did you
know my mother to have plans, Hazel? If she was
out of this house, it was with me or Gail. Otherwise
she was here, watching the television or reading
her magazines. That was her life.'

'Do you think she might have come into contact
with someone you don't know? Maybe even over
the phone? Maybe in a waiting room somewhere?'

'If she did,' said Robert Chandler, 'then she
didn't say anything to me about it.' His eyes were
wild, moving back and forth over the table as if the
blank surface could reveal something to him. 'She
was just a peaceful lady, you know that. Biding her
time, trying not to be trouble to anyone. I can't
believe this,' he said, laying his arms out on the
tabletop. 'Who would want to hurt my mother?
Who would do this?'

'Do you want to go, Bob? One of the guys can
take you home.'

He stood, as if she'd told him it was time to
leave, but when he did, he rose above the level of
the kitchen-wall cut-out, and could see into the
living room where his mother sat surrounded by
policemen. He dropped back into the chair
as if his legs had been kicked out from under
him. 'I'd like to go out the back way, I think.'

'Of course,' said Hazel. She put her hand on his
neck and kept it there a moment, and then went
out into the scene. She took PC Jenner aside and
asked her to take Chandler around the back. 'Stay
with him at his house for a while, okay? Even if he
says he'll be fine. I'd like someone to be with him.'
She led the young constable back into the kitchen.
'Bob, this is Cassie Jenner. She went to high school
with your Diane, remember?'

'Yes, yes. Hi, Cassie.'

'I'm so sorry, Mr Chandler.'

'She's going to run you back up home, Bob.
She'll take care of you.' He rose and Jenner
collected him against her, wrapping her arm over
his shoulder. He was shrunken, like an old man.
'I'll come and see you and Gail tonight. I'll tell you
everything we find out.'

She watched them leave, and as soon as the door
was shut, she heard Greene's voice behind her. 'He
gone?'

'Yeah,' she said.

'Spere's here. The rest of his SOCO team's ten
minutes back. You want to hear this, I think.'

Hazel went back into the living room. Howard
Spere had made it up from Mayfair in just over
thirty minutes. She calculated he must have been
doing 180. He was a heavy-set man in his forties
with bad body odour and a habit of chewing his
nails. She'd remarked to herself on more than one
occasion that Detective Spere must have ingested
a fair proportion of crime scenes in his career:
having an oral fixation wasn't the best vice to have
if your job was poking dead things. Port Dundas
didn't have its own Ident unit, just three SOCO
officers who hadn't had cause to use their training
since they took it, and of course no forensic
investigator either. The detachment processed an
average of fifteen deaths a year, and it was a rare
year that one of them was a homicide. The last
time there'd been a murder anywhere in Westmuir
was four years earlier, a barfight that turned into a
stabbing. Up in Hants. Nothing else. Heart attacks,
cancer, strokes, a suicide every other year, car
crashes: these were death's stock in trade in the
county. Spere spent most of his time in Mayfair and
Barrie sticking his fingers into bullet holes and
pouring plaster of Paris into footprint impressions.
The last time they'd seen him in Port Dundas was
2003, and that was to interpret some tire tracks left
in the mud at the scene of a restaurant supply warehouse
robbery. (It had turned out to be a 2001
Chevy Malibu. They'd found it in East Milverton
still full of silverware.)

She brought herself to look at poor Delia
Chandler again. Sitting tall against the back of her
floral-patterned couch, a fine blue wool dress on,
with a bib of nearly black blood down the front of
it. Her throat had been cut in a straight line so
deep that her head had stayed on only because it
rested against the cushion behind it. There were
epaulettes of blood on each shoulder.

But it was not the gore that was most upsetting
to Hazel. It was the look on Delia's face. Her eyes
were closed, as if she were taking a pleasant nap,
but her mouth was rent open in a silent cry, the tip
of her tongue behind her upper teeth, its underside
a pale lavender streaked with livid white lines.

Spere was bent over, swabbing the oral cavity.
Hazel's officers stood behind him awkwardly,
letting him work. 'This is unusual, to say the least,'
he said. 'She's upright, no signs of trauma except
for the throat, nothing under her fingernails, no
marks anywhere in the room, and yet she looks like
she died in the middle of calling out. You gotta
wonder how that happens.' He turned to take in
the room. 'This exactly how you found her?'

'I took some pictures,' said PC Fraser, the one
they called 'Kraut'. His real name was Dietrich. He
tolerated his nickname as a gesture of goodwill.
'But this is exactly how she was when I got here.'

'Who got here first?'

'I did,' said Ashton. 'With Jenner. We didn't
touch a thing.'

Seemingly satisfied, Spere turned back to the
victim. 'So how do you talk with your throat cut?'

'A good question,' said Greene.

'Should she be that pale?' asked Hazel. 'Even if
she's dead?'

Spere stood up and took a long look at Delia
Chandler's body. He snapped his latex gloves off
and put them into his pocket. 'Well, that's the
other thing. There's not enough blood here.'

'What?'

Spere telescoped his pointer and touched it to
the blood on Delia Chandler's clothing. 'The blood
patterns are wrong. You cut a person's carotids and
you expect to see a burst pattern out vertically
and laterally. There's no jetting here at all.' Hazel
and Ray Greene leaned in. 'You know those old
water fountains with the spigot in the middle that
always had a burble of water flowing out of it? This
is what happened here. Almost no pressure at all.'

'She had cancer,' said Hazel.

'Cancer doesn't explain this. Bleeding gums
wouldn't explain this. There's almost six litres of
blood in a human being. A little old lady like this,
somewhat less, like five, but in any case, it tends to
shoot out when you slice a person's throat.' He used
the pointer to stroke the insides of Delia's arms.
'There are no cuts here, none on her wrists, and no
blood anywhere else. So we won't know exactly
what happened here until they unzip her in Barrie.'

Hazel stared at the wreck of her father's old
friend. What would he have said at this sight? She
looked at the dead woman's feet, clad in beige hose.
She wore no shoes. 'Lift her dress,' she said. Both
men turned to look at her. 'Pull her dress up,
Detective Spere.'

Spere tugged a latex glove back onto his right
hand and crouched down for the hem of the dress.
His discoloured mackintosh pooled over the dead
woman's feet. He folded the blue material upward,
into Delia Chandler's lap. Her legs were still
covered in her pantyhose, but after a moment,
Spere noticed a small tear at the very top of her
right stocking, at her pantyline.

'What is that?' said Greene.

Spere leaned in between Delia's legs, and carefully
pushed the fabric open. Her skin was bruised
purple under it, a concentrated little bruise, like an
insect bite. 'It's a needle site,' he said.

'So she's been injected?' asked Hazel.

'It's hard to tell if she's been stuck in the
saphenous vein or the femoral artery, so I don't
know if the killer was putting something in or
taking something out. But given that she looks like
a sheet, I'm going to guess femoral.' He ran his
hands lightly down her legs. 'I want to take these
hose off.'

'Do what you have to do, Howard.' She had the
impulse to turn around, to give Delia Chandler her
privacy. Spere gestured for help and two officers
stepped forward and lifted Delia slightly off the
couch so he could unroll her pantyhose and reveal
the woman's legs. The skin was almost translucent.

'What do you notice about her feet?' said Spere,
touching his pointer to one of Delia's arches.

They stared at the pale, bluish foot. 'There's
almost no lividity,' said Sergeant Renald.

'Two points, officer. You'd expect pooling along
the whole perimeter of this woman's foot. But
there's nothing here.' With his index finger, he
traced back up to the needle site. 'This is a
venipuncture, like when you donate blood.' He
looked up at them again. 'He's bled her.'

Greene was shaking his head. 'She
let
him do
this?'

Spere lowered the dead woman's dress. 'It's
impossible to say what she permitted or not at this
stage. But from the look of things, there certainly
appears to have been
some
co-operation.' He
pulled off his glove and stuck a finger into his
mouth, chewing the nail thoughtfully. 'We'll know
more when she gets to Barrie.'

'I don't want her taken away from here,' said
Hazel sharply. 'She was a citizen of this town for
every minute of her eighty-odd years, and she'll be
treated that way. Not like any old victim to be
stuck in a fridge.'

'This is a homicide, Inspector. I don't know how
much say we'll have in it.'

'When the scene is locked down, you take her to
Mayfair Grace. Your people can come up here for a
change.'

Spere's Ident team arrived then and came in
wearing their green latex gloves. One of them
started dusting, while the other bagged the
cushions from the couch. 'Leave the one holding
her up for now,' said Spere. He turned to Greene
and Detective Inspector Micallef. 'It took me forever
to find a body bag at your station house. I'll go
get it from the car.'

Hazel called the station house to assign three
officers to a canvass and sent them out immediately.
By the middle of the afternoon, they had
covered both sides of Maitland Avenue and
had nothing. A call to the office just after lunch
had reported a late-model Buick parked on Taylor
the night before, three streets over from Delia's
house, but the caller had not taken down the
licence plate number and couldn't remember
whether the car was silver, blue or black. In a
peaceful town like Port Dundas, the notion of a car
being 'strange' wouldn't be common. The news of a
special on Folgers Coffee at the No Frills went
around town like wildfire, but an unknown car on
Maitland or Taylor or any of the streets around
Delia Chandler's house would never cause any
concern.

Hazel and Ray stayed on through the afternoon
as the SOCO team dusted, bagged and photographed
the scene and the rest of the house.
There was almost nothing to bag but the couch
cushions, the meagre contents of the fridge, and
the slightly sticky bar of soap at the kitchen sink.
They took two hundred pictures of the scene,
pictures that, later, would tell them nothing about
the killer. There was no sense at all, despite the
thoroughness of the search, that anything had been
disturbed in or stolen from Delia Chandler's house.
Phone records showed no calls in or out after
Robert Chandler's at lunchtime, and because she
was on a cable modem, there was no way to tell
whether or not Delia had been on the Internet at
any specific time, as the connection was
permanent. Her web history would show where
she'd visited at least, and when. Hazel had hooked
her own house up with DSL, which was much the
same, as her mother had bought a laptop and
insisted that they get connected. 'What do you
want with the bloody Internet, Mother?' she'd
asked her. 'It's nothing but filth and collectibles.
And chat rooms – what do you need with a chat
room?'

'You sound like
my
mother,' Emily Micallef said.
'I need more in my day than cooking you meals and
Oprah
. You should lose your hatred of technology,
Hazel. You might learn something.'

She'd acquiesced and hooked the house up, but
she insisted her mother cancel her credit cards just
in case. 'Whatever you want, I can get you in town.
I don't want you buying garbage on the Internet.'

Ident had taken Delia's computer with them, but
it would be a while before they reported. There had
been no more calls during the day – not even to get
a cat out of a tree – and when Hazel and Greene
drove back to the station at six o'clock, she saw
why: the streets were busy with people, people
standing at street corners, smoking cigarettes and
talking, people driving slowly by in their cars. She
knew there was no way of keeping the news of
Delia Chandler's murder under wraps, but still, she
was surprised to see this many people out in the
early evening air. 'What a day,' she said. 'I don't
know what to do with myself right now.'

'I've got a bottle of rye back at my desk.'

'Are you "enabling" me, Ray?'

'There are times that call for a drink, Hazel, and
then there are times that demand a drink. But I'll
take no for an answer, too.'