The Taken

that thing.”

“Why?” She noticed Wingate was looking down at the ground.

“Well, your cubscout there was standing in a room full of things Eldwin’s touched, including a keyboard -”

“- how’m I supposed to smuggle a keyboard out of Eldwin’s house?”

“Anyway,” Fraser continued, “there are about two hundred imprints of the guy’s index finger all on the same spot – click click click! – a giant smudge where his thumb spends half its life, and a latent of half a pinky. Then there’s a partial print of the palm, from the base of the thumb. So Spere’s going to have to collect and collate digitally. He told me he’d have an answer by the end of the day.”

“Fine,” said Hazel, and she shot Wingate a look. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s focus on our next move.”

“Which is?”

“Geraldine, I have a job for you if you’re up for it.” Costamides turned her attention to her. Hazel didn’t get much chance to work with this sergeant, as Costamides preferred to work nights, but she liked her. “How’d you like to eat crow on behalf of your commanding officer?”

“I’m listening.”

“I browbeat Gordon Sunderland’s young deputy into cancelling yesterday’s instalment of ‘The Mystery of Bass Lake.’ I’d like you to go back over there and employ your charm in shaking loose the chapter that didn’t appear. And any others they’ve received since we visited their offices on Wednesday.”

“I think I can do that.”

Hazel knew she could. It was Gerry on whom the job of wrangling difficult favours often fell. She had a certain way of holding herself – solid and sad all at once – that made it hard for people to say no to her. The irony was that, unlike most people, Costamides did not have the face she deserved. She was one of the most joyful, vital people on the force. Hazel thanked her, and Costamides left right away for the newspaper’s offices.

“I’ll check up on Spere,” said Fraser, and he left too.

When the door was closed, Wingate said, “Sorry about the mouse. I didn’t know it would be that hard to get fingerprints off -”

“I told you not to worry about it,” she said, and she sat behind her desk.

“I’m sure Gerry will get you what you need from the Record.”

“Yeah. She will.” She pulled the cellphone off the table and pocketed it. “In the good old days, I would have had Ray handle it. He could be subtle.” She shook her head sadly. “You know he sent me a bottle for my birthday.”

“That was nice of him.”

“I guess that means I should call.”

“Maybe you should,” said Wingate. “Maybe if…”

“Don’t finish that thought.”

He didn’t. “You know,” he said quietly, “back in Toronto, people didn’t get as close as you guys do up here. We didn’t live on top of each other.”

“It’s probably better that way.”

“I’m not so sure,” he said. “I like the sense that everything matters here. I like people taking things personally.”

“Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to take things personally in Port Dundas, James. Be careful what you wish for.” She was looking at the computer screen. The dripping SAVE HER was revealing itself anew. An awful lot of planning had gone into what they’d seen over the last seven days, almost as if the people who had uploaded this material knew their audience better than it knew itself. Hazel entertained, for just a moment, an inside element, someone within these walls who was communicating, either on purpose or unwittingly, with the perpetrators. But what made better sense was that the people who were driving this macabre charade had a strong grasp of investigative process. They knew it would not take long after the mannequin was found for the police to make their way to the website. And at that point, they’d have the attention of the OPS for as long as they wanted it. It made her feel like there was a ghost sitting on her shoulder. That made her think of what was sitting on her other shoulder. “I don’t think I told you I met with Commander Willan. You know, Mason’s replacement?”

“You didn’t mention it. What’s he like?”

“Stalin with a surfboard.” She sighed. “He sees me as the rope bridge all you young folks are going to walk over to get to the promised land of efficient policing. He basically called me a dinosaur.”

“All the dinosaurs I’ve known were the best police, Hazel.”

“The dinosaurs may be good police, James, but they can never solve their own extinctions.”

Wingate found himself riven by the image of his superior officer looking crestfallen behind her desk. She seemed more defeated now than all the times he’d visited her at home, when she’d been in nearly unbearable pain, looking tiny on her couch in a terrycloth robe. “Skip? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

“Because you seem -”

“I know,” she said. “Apart from having a man trapped in my computer, live animals and body parts appearing on my desk, a CO who thinks I’ve outlived my usefulness, and expensive gifts coming from missing friends, I also happen to have a pill problem. And it appears I’m to quit in the midst of all this nonsense. So, I’m slightly less than okay.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Just do your job and don’t think about me. We need to get in front of this.”

“I should have thought through what I was doing at Eldwin’s.”

“You did. You’re not a dinosaur, remember that. Now go back to your desk and have a good think. At the rate things are going for that man in the chair, we all need to get on our game.”

18

Sergeant Geraldine Costamides had been successful, as Hazel knew she would. She returned to the station house looking slightly shame-faced, which meant that she’d spun a particularly good story for the benefit of Becca Portman and managed to shake loose everything they needed. There were two unpublished chapters now. Costamides made copies of them and passed them out to Hazel, Wingate, and Fraser. Then she stood at the lectern, her glasses hanging around her neck. She cleared her throat. “Are we ready? Everyone tucked in with their hot milk?” “Go ahead, Gerry,” said Hazel.

Costamides lifted her glasses clear of her long chin and settled them on the bridge of her nose. She curled the pages she held in her hands and clacked the bottom of them against the lectern before laying them flat. “The Mystery of Bass Lake,” she began, “chapters four and five.”

Nick Wise had been sitting at his kitchen table, the newspaper open in front of him, his pen hovering over the page, when his doorbell rang. Ah, he thought, “damaged,” but then there was the sound of a car driving off and he laid his pen down and went to the door.

What he saw on his front stoop froze his blood. Wise looked hurriedly up and down the street, but there was no one and he quickly stepped around the form and got his arms under the greasy tarp. There was a note pinned to it with a fishhook, but it would have to wait until he got inside. He struggled with the weight and finally got it into his living room, rivulets of sweat running off his chin. Then he went back to the door and shut it hard, turning the lock and putting on the chain.

He stood in the hallway looking at the grey thing staining his fireplace rug. He’d moved away to make sure she’d never find him again, but here she was. The bitch. He leaned over the tarp and unpinned the note. It said, “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours.” He put the note aside and slipped his finger under the edge of the wet tarp and slid it back. It fell away from its contents with a wet slap against the floor and there she was, at least, there was most of her. She lay headless on his floor, immutable as an eternal verity. He reached behind himself and pulled a chair toward him. “What am I going to do with you?” he said. Brackish water was damaging his floor. She stank. He sighed heavily. “Fine. Wait here.”

He went out the back, across the big lawn to the garage, and got into his car. The old house was almost two