stopped halfway out. “One more thing, Mizz Portman.” The young woman waited behind the officers, a benign smile on her face. “Regardless of when the next chapter comes in, don’t print it.”
“Sorry?”
“You heard me. I don’t want you to publish another word of this story unless you have permission, personally, from me.”
She looked to Wingate, hoping for a sign that Detective Inspector Micallef was joking. But she found no assurance in his eyes. “Well, I can’t do that,” she said. “I mean, I can send you the story as soon as we get it, but our readers are expecting -”
Hazel took a step back into the office, and Portman quickly retreated. “What your readers are expecting is seven interesting things to do with celery and cream cheese. But if you run any more of this story without my permission, you’ll be directly interfering with an open police investigation. Do you want to do that?”
“I, I’d have to ask Mr. Sunderland for permission to -” She stopped talking, staring at Hazel’s eyes. “If it’s that serious…”
“If I even see a
“I understand,” she said, making violent little metronomic nods with her whole face. “No story Thursday.”
Hazel offered her hand, and the girl took it immediately. “Nice talking to you,” she said.
Wingate walked with his hands in his pockets, his face pointed straight up the sidewalk. “What?” she said.
“You ever heard the saying that you catch more flies with honey?”
“Are you going to turn into my mother now, James?”
“No.”
“Because one is too many.”
“It’s not Rebecca Portman’s fault she works for a man you hate. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You’re the one who called her a fly.”
“It’s your call.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It is my call.” She looked at her watch. “I don’t think we can wait any longer to get news from Claire Eldwin. We better go up and see her. You call and make sure she’s there, but don’t tell her why we’re coming.”
He got out his cell and dialled. There was no answer. “I’ll keep trying her,” he said.
They turned down Porter Street and headed for the front doors of the station house. She walked into the detachment with her head down and went straight to PC Eileen Bail. “Tell me the web sequence now shows a map to where that guy is being held.”
“Not quite.”
“Not quite?”
“It just happened,” said Bail. She turned the screen to Hazel and Wingate. It was a solid dark frame now. But something was shuddering. The camera was pulling back slowly.
“What is it?”
“Blood,” said Bail. “It’s blood, I think.”
The zoom out took a full two minutes, revealing a number of shapes as it went. When the image was revealed, it was seven letters about fifteen inches high, and they spelled out the words SAVE HER. The letters were slowly flowing down the wall. They watched the image repeat a number of times. Hazel felt sick to her stomach. “Are you sure it’s blood?”
“I don’t want it to be,” said Bail. She waved Sergeant Renald over. He was a trained SOCO officer. “What do you think?”
He stared at the display. “‘Save’ who?” he asked.
“Tell us if you think it’s blood,” said Wingate.
Renald put his face close up to the screen. “The top edges are hardening as the fluid is washing down,” he said. “See the darkening line at the top of that round shape?”
“Paint would do that,” said Hazel.
“Paint dries,” said Renald. “Blood clots. Look at the lumps forming.”
She wanted to puke. “Jesus Christ.” There was a whirring, tinny noise coming from somewhere, and she turned her head to listen to the speakers built into the computer, but the sound wasn’t coming from the video.
“So, ‘save’ who?” Renald repeated.
She pulled her head away from the computer but she still saw the letters bleeding down the wall in a basement somewhere. “That’s it,” she said, talking to the room. “I’m getting heartily sick of being the dog wagged by the tail. I want
Bail said, “I don’t think any of us know where to start.”
“Begin by thinking it through. By the end of the day, I want one good idea from each of you… does everyone… what the hell is that sound?”
The irregular, metallic noise was coming from somewhere behind her. Without another word, she pushed into the back of the pen and went in the direction of the sound. It wasn’t a fan, it was too loose, too rattly. No one stopped her as she made her way to the coffee station behind Windemere’s desk. There, beside the creamers sitting in their little plastic tub of ice, in a cage, and spinning a tiny exercise wheel at top speed, was the mouse that had popped out of the box. There was a small black scab on its lower lip. Its fur had faded to pale pink. Windemere was standing beside her. “We named him Mason,” she said. “We gave him a bath, which he didn’t much like. But he’s a lot better now.”
Wingate was standing beside her. “Do you think someone is asking us to raise the dead?” he asked.
She put her hand into her pants pocket and pushed past the little pill-shaped ball of tinfoil between her thumb and finger to her car keys. She passed them to Wingate. “Go see Claire Eldwin. Right now.”
“On my own?”
“On your own. And come back with some answers.”
14
Claire Eldwin lived thirty kilometres away in a town he’d never heard of, Mulhouse Springs. There were so many small towns in this part of Ontario that he figured you could live here for thirty years and not find them all. He was driving along Highway 79, to the west, below Gannon. There was a road every five hundred metres leading to cottages. If you owned a cottage up along here, then you were from away. It was like having another country nestled inside this one and he could see how the summers changed what home felt like for those who actually lived here.
The disconnect between this landscape and what sometimes went on in it was still hard for Wingate to accommodate. In Toronto, it didn’t take a great effort to sense the seething chaos that moved beneath the surface of civilized life in the city. There was always something on the verge of happening: as an experienced police officer, you could scent it under the patina of order. You could almost move yourself to its contrapuntal beat, be in the right place just as something was about to happen.
Only in the neighbourhoods where there was enough money and white skin to presume a kind of harmony did crime ever surprise you. Although not enough: there was always someone breaking down, a domestic that went ugly, someone craving silverware. Even so, his life at Twenty-one Division was truly clockwork: a drug bust at ten, a stolen bike at noon, a gunshot at two, high-school students threatening more than mere unrest at the Eaton Centre at exactly three-fifteen.
But here, here in Westmuir County, everything had a fugitive nature. You couldn’t read those closest to you, and this was because everyone’s guard was down. (Well, except for Hazel. He felt naturally closer to Hazel than anyone, precisely because she was slightly paranoid.) And because it seemed no one had anything to hide, and not
