The Taken

the water. There were supposed to be fish.”

“And were there?”

“Just that thing we caught. That I caught. Then we went back, as you know.” “To Dean’s?” “That’s right.”

Hazel turned back a couple of pages in her PNB and read her notes from the interview with Barlow. “You came in separate cars. You and Bellocque.”

Paritas narrowed her eyes at Hazel. “So?”

“Just seems odd, if you’re living together, that you came in separate cars.”

“We’re not living together, Detective Inspector. I live in Toronto. Remember? You interrupted my drive home. I have my own car.”

“Okay, okay,” Hazel said, trying to mollify the other woman. She decided to try a curveball. “So it was Barlow who drove the two of you out to that shelf. But do you think you could find it again?”

“Me?” said Paritas. “You mean on my own?”

“Yeah. Could you direct us to that spot?”

“Why?”

“Well, we never found the thing you say isn’t a body, and Barlow is too scared, so she says, to go out there again. So I thought -”

Paritas shifted in her chair, looking alarmed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Could you find it?”

The woman, her mouth slightly open, stared at Hazel. “I probably could, but I don’t think I want to.”

“And why would that be?”

Paritas leaned forward over the table. “I didn’t see it, okay? I told you. It was Pat who insisted it was a body. And if there’s any chance it actually was, I don’t want to have to look at it, do you understand? I was a guest on that boat, there against my will to appease my… my friend. I’m not going back out on that lake to help you find some half-decomposed body. You can’t force me.”

She was scared. But Hazel could see, not in a way that was useful to her. “And you’re sure Dean didn’t somehow direct Pat Barlow to that part of the lake?”

“And then somehow ensure I fished a body off the bottom of the lake? So… what? Dean’s a killer and I’m his accomplice and he thought it’d be fun if we went out, with a witness, and just made sure one of his victims was right where we thought it was?”

“Well?”

“Am I charged with something, Detective Inspector? I’ve watched enough television to know that I’m here by choice, and that I can leave at any time, unless I’m to be charged with something.”

Hazel looked at her watch. She’d got fifteen minutes of questioning in – pretty good. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to look at something before you leave.”

“Do I have to?”

“No.”

Paritas stood and seemed to be lost in thought. “What is it?”

She followed Hazel out of the room, and they crossed behind the pen. The evidence room, such as it was, was a small chamber with a single file of metal shelves fitted against a wall. There was so little call to store anything meaningful in this room that over the years it had become a catch-all for sundry crap belonging to both the station and its personnel. There was a stack of notebooks and other paper goods on one shelf, a miscellany of police caps in different sizes still wrapped in plastic, and on a lower shelf, a roll of green felt that unfurled over a desk and became a poker table. It had been confiscated six years ago when Sergeant MacDonald broke up an illegal rake-game in a private home. Now, sometimes, it was pressed into duty at fundraisers. Or the occasional backroom game that broke out in the station house.

Hazel held the door open for Paritas, who peered into the room uncomfortably before entering it. She snapped on the overhead and gestured to the back of the room. There, now dried out but still faintly stinking, lay the mannequin on its tarp. “Recognize that?” Hazel asked.

Paritas stood over it, looking at the mannequin with an expression of blank surprise on her face. “Is this it? This is what I caught?” She turned to look at Hazel and Hazel nodded. “I thought you said you hadn’t found it?”

“We found it.”

“So Pat did take you there.”

“It was weighted down to the bottom of the lake.”

“Why?”

“So it would stay down. Or so it could be easily found.”

Paritas studied her face. “So you really do think I deliberately fished this stupid thing out of the lake? Do you have a theory why I’d want to?”

“Do you know Colin Eldwin?”

“Who?”

“Do you read the Westmuir Record?”

“The what?” Paritas was getting really exasperated now. Hazel felt the walls closing in. There was a man in a room somewhere either injured or dead and her only lead, so far, was a woman so desperate for companionship that she’d come to Westmuir County to find it. She’d even gone fishing for it. Hazel cast one more look at the strange, bereft form on the shelf and held her arm out to indicate to Paritas that she was free. She stepped out into the hallway.

“I can go?” Paritas asked.

“You can go.”

“I’ve never been questioned before,” she said. “It’s really not very pleasant.”

“It would have been worse if you’d actually done something.”

“And you’d have been able to tell? By browbeating me into contradicting myself or something?”

“Something like that,” said Hazel, leading her through the pen to the front of the station house.

“Nice to know the police have so much faith in the average citizen,” said Paritas, “that they have to trick them into telling the truth.”

“Would you trust the average citizen, Ms. Paritas?” Hazel asked her.

Paritas thought about it. “More than the police?” She smiled tightly and pushed the door open.

She was halfway to the sidewalk when Hazel asked, “What kind of name is Paritas?”

“Woman-stuck-in-traffic,” said Gil Paritas, smiling.

Hazel went back into her office, and Wingate was still there, watching the screen and absently signing reports with one hand. Hazel sighed and ran her hand through her hair. “Anything?” she asked him.

“No. Well, nothing else. I’ve got a knot in my stomach watching this guy get attacked over and over again. Although I take your earlier point – why hint at things? What do they want us to think of this?”

“We should be careful what we wish for.”

“What did you find out from Paritas?”

“She’s a tourist. She’s got no clue what it is she hooked on the lakebed. But I think she’s afraid her boy-toy might. So I have to go up and see this Bellocque guy.”

“You want company?”

“No. I’m going to go in the morning, when I have more energy. In the meantime, we have to have eyes on this screen twenty-four hours a day in case something changes.”

“She’s sure Bellocque is accounted for?”

“He’s big and bearded, so he’s not the man in the chair. Too bad we didn’t see the face of the knife- bearer.”

“That would have been accommodating of him.”

She sat heavily in the chair. “Listen, James -”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Your first week back, you deserved something easier than this.”

“It’s still not an excuse. I’m sorry I blew up at you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. “You should go home, Hazel.”

“Yeah. I feel a little…” A night of sleep would be a good idea, especially if any of this blew up further. “I do