The Taken

“Nothing,” said Hazel. “It’s just there, floating in space.”

“Man,” said Wingate under his breath. “We’re nowhere.”

“Not quite.” She moved away from the desk, exhausted from monitoring the image. “I got Gil Paritas on the phone. She was in her car driving back to Toronto. City girl, I gathered.”

“You question her?”

“Not yet. I told her to be here by four. That’s” – she consulted her watch – “ten minutes ago.”

“What are we going to do? Do you think the person who’s uploading this knows we’re watching?”

“Oh, I think so. I think someone is getting right off on this.”

He looked at her carefully. “Why though?”

“I don’t know. But we’re not really being shown anything. If this person’s in danger, you’d think, having our attention now, they’d want to prove it. This is all just… innuendo. Why bring us here and show us nothing except cheap tricks?”

His eyes flicked to the screen momentarily. “I guess if this gets updated and we see some guy twitching in a pool of blood, we’ll know for sure.”

“Or not. Keep your eye on this, okay? Do you mind?”

“No,” said Wingate. “Your interview is probably waiting for you. I’ll holler if anything changes.”

She thanked him and went back out into the hallway, told Melanie that Wingate wasn’t to be disturbed for any reason. There was a woman waiting on the other side of intake. Hazel watched her carefully. She was a strong- looking woman of about fifty-five, in an expensive, light shearling coat. She wore a faded layer of lipstick. Hazel couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn lipstick, or even had a reason to. Paritas was obviously put out, taking deep, frustrated breaths. Hazel felt like making her wait another ten minutes. She picked up the nearest extension and dialled Wilton at the front desk and told him to bring Paritas into interview one. She waited there for the desk sergeant to bring her in.

“Ms. Paritas?” she said.

“Detective Micallef?”

“Detective Inspector. Have a seat.”

Paritas took her coat off and draped it over the chair before sitting down. She was wearing a grey silk shirt and a long beaded necklace. There was a second necklace tucked inside the shirt. She was a good-looking woman, not the type you’d expect to find on Gannon Lake holding a fishing rod. “Ms. Paritas, do you mind telling me where your boyfriend is this afternoon?”

“I told you -”

“Whatever you call him. Where is he?”

“He’s at his house… why?”

“Describe him for me.”

Paritas’s brow creased. “What’s going on here?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“He’s big. People call him bearlike. But not fat, just a big man. He has a beard and -”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yeah, that’s all I need to know.”

Paritas kept her gaze on Hazel, and then decided she wasn’t going to press her luck. She crossed one leg over the other. “Are we allowed to smoke in here?”

“Not since 1998. Let’s talk about your fishing expedition. You say you didn’t see a body coming out of Gannon Lake, but it was on the end of your line. So what did you see?”

“I really have no idea,” said Paritas. “By the time it was coming out of the water, Pat had taken over. It was too heavy for me to reel in. I just caught a flash of it. It was round and sort of orange and green. It had lines on it, I think.”

“You know, you don’t strike me as the kind of person who goes out for bass.”

“I’m not. It’s Dean’s thing. He has about twenty stuffed fish on the wall of his house. He doesn’t even eat them. I go out with him once a year and he goes to the craft show with me. It’s a trade. It would be different if he ate them, but he says he’s into the ‘sport’ of it.”

“Did Dean see what was on your line?”

“Yeah. He said it was a buoy or something.”

“Don’t buoys float?”

Paritas sighed. “I’m honestly not an expect, Detective. Inspector, I mean. If you want to talk to Dean, I can give you his number.” Hazel turned her notebook to Paritas and laid her finger on the number they had for Bellocque. “That’s it,” said Paritas.

“It’s out of order.”

“Oh. I’ll mention it to him.”

Hazel smiled at Paritas with a tilted head. “Handy, huh, the two of you go out fishing, find something that might have been a body on the lakebed, and then you’re unreachable for the rest of the weekend.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Does Dean have internet access at his house?”

Gil Paritas laughed. “That’s funny.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know Dean, obviously.”

“No… no, I don’t,” said Hazel. “Tell me about him.”

“He can fix anything with his hands, any mechanical little thing. He’s got projects all over the house. It’s how he makes a living. Fixes people’s washing machines, wires houses, digs septic tanks. It’s how we met.”

“He dug your septic tank?”

“It was more romantic than it sounds.”

“It would have to be.” She poised her pen over the PNB. “What’s the address?”

“Of what?”

“The house where Mr. Bellocque dug your septic tank?”

“Oh,” said Paritas, waving her hands in front of her. “That place is long gone. It was just outside of Gilmore. But I sold it after my divorce.”

“You’re divorced, are you? When was that?”

“What’s my divorce got to do with anything?”

Hazel thought about that. “Nothing, I guess. So you stay with Dean now if you come up to Gilmore.”

“That’s right.”

“Fine, then. You were saying he’s good with tools.”

“Well, he’s good with real things. But computers? The internet? Forget it. He thinks it’s modern witchcraft.”

“So your boyfriend wouldn’t have a webcam or anything like -”

“Honestly, I told you, he’s not my boyfriend. I’m fifty-four, for god’s sake. I don’t have a boyfriend. He’s just a… a friend. He lends me a hand once in a while.”

“I’m sure he does. So what is he then? What is the nature of your relationship?”

Paritas looked down at the tabletop, wiped away some invisible smudge with her finger. “Can I ask what my relationship with Dean has to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” said Hazel, brightly. “Let’s move on. Why were you fishing where you were fishing?”

“There was nothing biting. Pat said she knew a better spot.”

“So it was Pat’s idea to fish there.”

“She’s the one who knows the lake.”

“Did she seem… eager for either of you to fish that spot? Did she tell you exactly where to fish?”

“No,” said Paritas, “she just said there was fish there. She had a radar-type thing on the boat that could read