The Taken (31 page)

So she said, “You wanted to know what Ray Greene was doing at the station house.”

“Sure,” he said, as if he was going to sleep.

“He’s coming back.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Probably it will be. He’s going to be CO.”

“And you?”

“They want to give me the gold watch.”

“Will you take it?”

What she’d told Greene had been calculated to cause maximum discomfort. But now she told Wingate the truth: “I don’t know.”

He pushed his plate away. He’d taken two bites of his tuna sandwich. She wasn’t hungry anymore, either. “I hope you won’t,” he said.

They paid and left. When they were outside on the sidewalk, turning back toward the police station, she put her hand on Wingate’s shoulder and turned him to face her again. “James, look, I’m no good with the comforting word, but honestly, I feel sick right now. I just wish I could –”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m glad I told you. But I can’t talk about it anymore. If you’re worried I’m tempted to come back here, I’m not. I’m never coming back.”

She had been worried, and she was glad she didn’t have to ask.

As soon as they entered Twenty-one, the desk sergeant stood and waved them over. He looked at his watch. “Nice lunch?” he asked.

“It was fine,” said Hazel.

“I’m happy for you. The two of you have another date, this one with Superintendent Ilunga. He’d like to see you right away.”

Hazel hadn’t noticed a slender woman holding a clipboard standing at the end of the countertop. The desk sergeant gestured to her and they realized this was Ilunga’s administrative assistant: she was going to take them to him. Hazel’s sandwich gurgled in her gut. Something was wrong.

The assistant didn’t say a word as she led them up the stairs to Ilunga’s office, which was past the room they’d been given to
examine records in. There was a heavy wooden door at the end of the hallway with the single word
SUPERINTENDENT
on it. The assistant knocked and then stepped away and vanished into her cubbyhole.

After a delay of ten or so seconds, Superintendent Ilunga opened the door and gave them both a smile, his eyes lingering on them each individually. “Come in, come in,” he said, moving back toward his desk. “Close the door.”

They entered and stood in front of the man’s desk, waiting for the customary invitation to sit, but when he sat, he appeared to forget the etiquette, and they remained there, slightly uncomfortable and standing vaguely at attention.

“Do you mind if I eat?” he asked them, his hand hovering over a brown paper bag.

“Oh, not at all,” said Hazel, gesturing stupidly. She tucked her hand behind her back.

Ilunga took a tuna sandwich on whole wheat out of the bag and took an enormous bite out of it. He worked the corners of his lips around the bits that stuck out, manoeuvring a lettuce leaf into his mouth. His thin, muscular features distended powerfully as he chewed. After working the sandwich for a full minute, he swallowed and immediately took another bite as large as the first one. This too he chewed for a full minute, watching them both as calmly as if he was looking out a window. Hazel slid her eyes sideways toward Wingate without moving her head, but she couldn’t tell what his expression was.

When Ilunga finished his second mouthful, he held the sandwich out to them at arm’s length. They stared at his half-eaten lunch as if they were being hypnotized by a cobra. At last, Ilunga spoke. “Neither of you wants a bite?”

“We just ate, Sir,” said Wingate.

“So
neither
of you wants to eat my lunch?”

“No, Sir.”

“Strange.” He drew the sandwich back and bit the remainder in half. He seemed to be nodding thoughtfully to himself as he masticated the giant chunk of food. “See,” he said, with his mouth still partly full, “I went to Room 32 to check how the two of you were doing, and there were all your files – well,
our
files – but you were gone.”

“We did go out for an hour or so,” said Hazel. “Should we have notified you?”

“No, no,” Ilunga said, with an expansive gesture. “You’re free to come and go as you please.”

“Well, that’s good to know.”

“Of course, it’s also good to know if you’re coming or going.” He examined the edge of the remaining quarter of his sandwich. “Because some people get confused.”

Hazel shifted on her feet. “May we sit, Superintendent?”

“Oh,” he said, pleasantly. “I’d rather if you didn’t. I don’t want any of your slime to come off on the fabric.” He finished his sandwich in the stunned silence and then clapped the crumbs off his hands. He laid them flat on the desk and looked at them both with his head slightly lowered. “I thought we treated you rather well, James.”

“You did, Sir.”

“And is that what inspired you to hook up with the Hayseed Squad and come back down to cast aspersions on us? I’m curious.”

Wingate drew the side of his forefinger down the corner of his mouth. “Sir?”

“We have our own internals to keep us in check. We don’t need any small-town cops keeping an eye on us.”

“As you’re not my commanding officer anymore, Sir, I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking frankly,” said Wingate. Ilunga remained silent and still, as threatening a stillness as either of them had ever witnessed. “I’m an OPS now, and Toronto is in our jurisdiction. Your division is in our jurisdiction. If a crime we’re investigating brings us to your doorstep, you’re obligated to assist us. We appreciate that assistance, and we thank you for it. And if there is nothing else, we’ll get back to what we were doing.”

Ilunga laughed. “Oh, I don’t believe you will, son. If you’re investigating the conduct of my officers or calling into question our results, then you can get yourself a subpoena and then we’ll talk. Maybe.”

“We’re not investigating your officers or your division. We’re investigating an abduction. The facts have brought us here.”

“Dana Goodman brought you here. You’re a pair of country suits doing triage for a disgraced officer and a certifiable lunatic. You’re just the Angels to his Charlie, yes? I hope he’s sent you your divining rods, because you’ll need them to find your way out of the pile of shit you’ve got yourselves into. Now, my advice is that you scouts pack up your knapsacks and your canteens, say your dib dib dibs, and proceed to get scarce.”

Hazel had felt an electric shiver when Wingate spoke. She wanted him to finish this arrogant prick off, but instead, Wingate appeared thoughtful. “Why was he disgraced, Sir?” he asked. “Detective Goodman.”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you, did he?”

“We haven’t spoken all that much.”

“First he appointed himself judge, jury, and almost executioner when he was a beat cop. We don’t mind turning a blind eye to some dealer who ends up with the stuffing beat out of him in some alley – hell, some junkie could have done that. But you can trace a bullet.”

“He killed dealers?” Hazel asked.

“No, but there are a few of them out there with some of Goodman’s metal still in them. We took him out of there, but of course one of his favourite crack feebs has to top herself on his new watch and he goes off the reservation. After it was ruled a suicide – and let me tell you, the evidence was conclusive, in case he’s got you both trying on your merit badges – he took it on himself to keep investigating the case. And a month after it was put to bed, he committed a home invasion on one of the victim’s associates and threatened to kill him unless we reopened the case. It took blind bombs and tear gas to get him out of that house.”

“Colin Eldwin’s house.”

“Well, he told you that much at least.”

“That’s who he’s abducted.”

Ilunga’s upper lip quivered a little. “Well, I guess he got his man then. Good for him. You want something on q.t.? Colin Eldwin is a piece of garbage – we looked into him long and hard at Goodman’s insistence. That man would have fucked a snake if he could have got it to hold still, but he had an alibi the night of Cameron’s death and it was watertight, if you’ll excuse the choice of words. If Goodman’s managed to snatch him a second time, you two should just stay out of his way and let the law of the jungle run its course.”

Now Hazel finally had something to say. “He doesn’t just have Eldwin. He has Cameron’s mother as well.”

“He’s
abducted
the victim’s mother?”

“Not physically. But emotionally, yes. He’s co-opted her. She’s the other suspect in the abduction.”

“You see? You see what a clusterfuck Goodman is? He worked under me for
fifteen
years and he was a great cop.” Ilunga pushed his forefinger against his head. “But if
this
goes rogue, because you think too much and you don’t have any discipline, then you start thinking the walls are passing on their secrets to you and only you. Goodman lost it, and you will too if you follow him into his rabbit hole.”

She took in what he was saying. “Superintendent … we owe you an apology. We didn’t know any of this.”

“You should have asked.”

“We didn’t know to ask. We didn’t know any of this until we got here.”

Ilunga laid his electric gaze on both of them, one at a time. “So what are you going to do?”

“We’re going to find some way to let him know we’ve gotten ourselves off his hook. And hopefully we’ll find Eldwin before Goodman kills him.”

“Don’t sweat it if you can’t,” said Ilunga. “One less piece of shit on the planet won’t make a difference. And frankly, if Goodman gets satisfaction, maybe I’ll never see him in my rearview mirror again.”

She turned to Wingate. “Well?”

“Well, what?” he said angrily.

“Let’s go.”

“You’re kidding me.”

She didn’t answer him and he left the office without another word. Hazel extended her hand to Superintendent Ilunga. “We were just trying to do our jobs, Sir,” she said.

“Do them elsewhere,” he said, smiling again. “And call ahead if you need anything next time.”

She laughed good-naturedly and closed the door behind her.

She had to speedwalk down the hall to catch Wingate. “Slow up,” she whispered hoarsely to him.

“For what? You got other asses to kiss?”

“James.” Her tone made him stop. “You don’t fight little Napoleons like Ilunga. You go along. They’re deaf to any subtlety if you flatter them a little.”

“Is that what you were doing?”

“He doesn’t know how far we’ve gotten. He thinks we’re trying to read tea leaves. Let him sit and stew in there – in the meantime Toles is working for us and if he gives us half a reason to reopen the case, Ilunga can shout all he wants, but we’ll have carte blanche.”

“And if the lab comes back a bust? That thing’s been in a bag for three years.”

“Then we’re done down here.”

“And Colin Eldwin is a dead man.”

She waited for two constables to pass behind them. “The results don’t matter, James. If Goodman wants to know what we find out from CFS, he’s going to have to show himself. And we’ll be back on our own turf when he does.”

“It doesn’t sound like a plan, yet.”

“Have some faith, James. We’ve gotten this far.” She looked at her watch. “In the meantime, I’ve got to track down Toles
and make sure he’s as green as he looks. We’re not going to get this all done in one day.” She looked back toward Ilunga’s door and then quickly stole forward to Room 32. She went in and out quickly. “I hope you weren’t planning on sleeping in your own bed tonight.”

“Skip?”

“I mean get us a couple of rooms somewhere, Detective.” She grinned at him. “I like you, James, but I just don’t think it would –”

“– I knew what you meant.”

“I know you did.” She started off down the hallway and then spun on her heel and walked backwards a couple of paces. “You should have seen the look on your face, though.”

Hazel called in first thing in the morning and got Monday’s report from Costamides. As she’d expected, nothing had appeared on the website, in fact, the feed was dead. She salted this away: with both Goodman and Cameron in Toronto, that suggested the basement they were looking for wasn’t in the city. That bird was going to have to be killed with another stone. Costamides told her the
Record
had done as instructed: both of the missing chapters of “The Mystery of Bass Lake” had appeared in the Monday edition. Hazel wasn’t sure what value appearing to follow instructions would have now, but the abductors had threatened more bodily damage to their victim if the chapters didn’t run, and Hazel hoped they would keep their word, at least for the time being. The least powerful impression she’d formed over the last twenty-four hours was the one concerning Eldwin’s guilt. Whether he’d committed a murder or
not, she was intent on bringing him out of that basement alive. If he was a killer, then he could stand trial; she would not let Goodman or Cameron mete out their own brand of justice. That would constitute the ultimate failure on her part.

She thanked Costamides and got Toles at his desk. He’d been able to work his charms: the results of the examination of the sweater would be ready sometime before lunch. Hazel thanked him copiously and then suggested that since he’d messed with CFS protocol, it might be a good idea for them to get his friend to fax her results somewhere unofficial. “Cover your tracks in case someone thinks ill of a new DC jumping the queue on his own say-so.” Toles saw merit in the suggestion. He called back half an hour later to say that his contact was faxing the results to the Kinko’s on University, above Dundas. He’d told her to use a cover sheet addressing the pages to “D. Hammett.”

“Good one,” said Hazel.

“The whole escapade is costing me dinner at Lucy Than’s new restaurant. Not that I’m complaining,” he added.

“Dinner’s on Westmuir County, Detective. With our thanks for a job well done.”

She waited until noon and then, under dark skies, she walked from the hotel to the Kinko’s Toles had told her the fax would be waiting at. The geniuses behind the desk searched through a pile of papers and insisted there was nothing for a Mrs. Hammett. Hazel went around the corner for a coffee, thinking perhaps Toles’s connection at CFS had a later lunch than most people. Wandering down Dundas toward Yonge Street with her hot coffee, she found herself thinking of Hammett and his
heavily alcoholized detective Nick Charles: she knew why she felt the kinship. She’d always loved the elegance of
The Thin Man
, despite the sheer level of stupefaction in it. She hadn’t read it in years and wondered if Wingate had ever read it: she could repay his Dickens with something she loved. There was a used bookstore just down the street she’d seen wandering the day before and she went in and perused the crime section. No Hammett. But she browsed a bit longer, thinking if she was going to have to stay over another night in Toronto, she might want a book to read. A paperback with the title
Utter Death
caught her eye and she brought it to the counter to pay. “Is he very popular?” she asked.