The Taken

own house for his story. There was nothing strange about that – writers had to draw on something. What was strange was that he’d had a fictional character bringing a dead body here, to his house.

He looked back toward the bungalow. He was imagining Mrs. Eldwin ranging madly through that huge backyard, waving a half-empty bottle of Grand Marnier at the heavens. They needed something else to fall into place now, something that would bridge the unknowns. He reached into his pocket with a gloved hand and removed the computer mouse he’d stolen from Eldwin’s office. He felt he already knew what Fraser would tell him when he ran the prints. He got back into his cruiser and pointed it east.

15

Thursday, May 26

Her alarm went off at 5 a.m. Someone had reprogrammed the LED clock beside the bed to flash HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLD GIRL. She was sixty-two.

She brushed and washed up and in the time between getting out of bed and coming out of the bathroom, a glint of red dawn had appeared in the corner of the window. For the rest of Wednesday, she’d waited by her phone in her office like some disappointed prom queen, but no one of interest had called. She’d spent part of the afternoon obsessing over how much blood, exactly, it would take to paint the message they’d seen. Surely, it was too much blood? For the rest of the day, the site had shown the vile sequence over and over. By the time the night shift came in, Bail and Renald and Wilton had figured that the quantity of blood required to make such an image was at least two pints. That was a fifth of a normal person’s blood. They were killing him. And she was waiting for news that wasn’t coming. She felt that she was being played for a fool and for the first time on this case, it began to feel personal.

She’d taken her cruiser home and planned to make a drive-through breakfast at the Timmie’s on 41, a birthday breakfast, perhaps, a double-double and an actual donut. Yes, a Boston Cream for her birthday, even if it was going to be 6 a.m.

You catch more flies with honey. She’d sugar herself up and go to meet Chip Willan and be super-sweet. That never worked with Ian Mason, but Mason had been spiritually diabetic: niceness never worked with the man. Maybe the new commander could be charmed.

Just the same, a pill to pave the way, she thought. She dressed – full uniform – and opened the sidetable drawer, but she realized she’d left them in a jacket pocket. Or she thought she had: they weren’t in the jacket either. Strange. She got down on all fours (not so bad, she thought, an impossible pose even a week earlier) and searched under the bed, but it was dark, and even with all the lights on, she couldn’t see into the middle of the space. She checked the other side. Nothing. Well, there was still the loose stash of Percs and Ativans and sleeping pills piled in a little pyramid inside the bathroom medicine cabinet. But when she opened the mirror, instead of the jumble of welcoming blue and white and yellow pills, there was a little bottle of extra-strength Tylenol and a note taped to it. “Fuck,” she said, snatching it down.

The note, in her mother’s hand, said, “Happy birthday old girl. It’s a brand new day. See you at dinner.”

She gripped the red-and-white Tylenol bottle in her hands, squeezing it to keep from shouting, and then she threw it against the wall behind her. She pulled a muscle in her middle back doing it, and found herself on one knee on the bathroom floor. “Goddamnit, Mother.” The top of the bottle had burst off and a spray of white, useless pills was rolling around on the cold tiles. “Goddamnit.” She reached forward carefully, grabbed a small handful of them, and stood. The space between her shoulderblades was cramping and uncramping. She popped three of the pills and washed them down with a handful of water. Just for that, she was going to have a greasy breakfast sandwich, too.

The sun was fully up as she pulled onto Highway 41 and headed south. She had to drive with her arms locked out straight in front of her to keep her back pressed against the seat. She was seething. What right did anyone have to take away her comforts? By acting on her own, her mother had ruined Hazel’s plans to wean herself off, and she was ready to wean herself off, she’d even thought she’d begin on her birthday. But Emily had taken the choice out of her hands. She’d be getting a mouthful at dinner, that was for sure.

She pulled into the Timmie’s below Kehoe Glenn, but she no longer had a taste for anything solid, all she wanted was a coffee. She’d have to manufacture her own sweetness with Willan. She was out of practice talking to others, she knew this, she didn’t even need yesterday’s experience at the Record as proof. Or her shortness with Wingate afterwards.

She wasn’t entirely sure why she’d behaved the way she did. Threatening that girl. Partly because she was on Gord Sunderland’s turf and that naturally made her lip curl, and of course there was the building stress associated with the case. But if she was being honest with herself, it was Becca Portman alone who’d triggered her anger. She was Martha’s age, and shiftless and stupid. Martha hadn’t found her way in the world yet, and girls of Martha’s age, perceiving diminishing returns, are as likely to cut their hair badly and go work for idiots as they are to dig in and try harder. She saw the possibility, in Martha, of a future of accepting second best just to have something and it terrified her. Emilia, the elder, was fully formed, even if she didn’t realize it, even if, like all first children, she felt like she’d been sent out into the world without a complete set of tools. But Emilia always landed on her feet; she was like her namesake, unflappable, possessed of solid common sense, and skeptical enough to avoid being taken in by dreamers and fools. Not so Martha, whose life had, thus far, been stocked by a rotating cast of lightweights, druggies, actors, depressives, and charlatans. She’d taken one look at Becca Portman and wanted to pound some sense into her. At least she hadn’t done that.

She paid for the coffee and pulled around the corner to buy a Record from one of the boxes. Maybe Portman had disobeyed her, or Sunderland had overruled her, and Wingate would get his chance to see things unfold in a more measured fashion. But she opened the paper and the story wasn’t there. There was no mention of its returning, nor a reason given why it hadn’t appeared. So, whether Hazel liked it or not, the next phase of the game was afoot.

She pulled back into traffic, the paper tossed into the back seat. There was no traffic at 5:45 in the morning, and she could have bombed down to Barrie in an hour, but she decided to drive at the limit and give herself some time to think, to go over her points. She found her mind too busy with the details of the mannequin and the man in the chair to focus. But she would have to put all of it aside if she wanted to get her message across to Willan.

She pulled into OPSC headquarters at ten after seven. Twenty minutes early might look desperate, she thought, and she sat in the car for another ten minutes before going in through the front doors. The middle of her back had relaxed, finally, and she was grateful she wouldn’t have to look like a hunched old woman in front of her new boss. She had to be buzzed in by Willan’s assistant: the building didn’t open until eight. “Chip’s been here since six,” said the assistant, whose name was Jeremy. He calls his boss Chip? thought Hazel.

At seven-thirty on the button, Commander Willan came to get her from the waiting area. He offered her a hearty handshake, and she took his hand and shook it distractedly, taking in the man who had come down the hallway to meet her. Willan was no older than thirty-five, tall and lean, with a glossy head of long black hair tied back into a ponytail. He wore a dark blue powersuit instead of a uniform, and he had brilliant white dress sneakers on his feet. He looked like the head of an animation studio, not a police commander. He put a light hand on her back and led her into his office. She’d only seen Mason’s office twice in all his reign, and it had been cluttered with official regalia, including the force’s colours on a staff behind the desk. All of his awards and medals had been framed on the walls to the left and right. Nothing about Mason’s office let you forget that he had it over you in rank, experience, and decoration. It had been an office to cow all opposition.

Willan’s office, on the other hand, was almost bare. Gone was the dark furniture, the leather chairs, replaced by a thick glass desktop supported by heavy silver legs. The only decoration in the room was a marble pillar with a sleek black ball on top of it, turning endlessly on a jet of water. A cord from the back of it ran discreetly along the side wall to a plug.

The commander’s chair was a strange, ergonomic device that he kneeled on, tucking his feet beneath him, the seat itself tilted forward at about sixty degrees. When he sat in it, it gave the impression that he might spring out