The Taken

“If we’re marionettes,” said Hazel, “I think we better learn our parts. Whoever this is, they want people to see everything. Which is why they want this in the paper.”

“I don’t care what the fuck they want,” said Fraser. “Who’s in charge here?”

“You’re forgetting about their collateral,” she said to him. “We have to at least give the appearance of cooperation. Or we’re going to find a body on our doorstep, and I’m not sure it would stop there.” She jutted her chin at Wingate’s copy of the story. “What were you writing?”

He flipped back to the first page. “I don’t know what you’re all thinking, but I read chapters one and two, like, ten times, and I don’t think three through five were written by the same person. The beginning was, well, it was bad. This isn’t exactly…”

“Dickens?” said Hazel.

He smiled at her, a little shyly. “Yeah. But it’s better than what preceded it.”

“Practice makes perfect,” said Costamides.

“No,” said Hazel, “the agenda has changed since those first chapters. It’s not a story anymore. It’s… it’s a map of some kind.”

“If we choose to believe it,” said Fraser, harshly. “And mind you, even if we do, how the hell do we know exactly what we’re believing in?”

“We’re being asked to figure that out,” said Wingate. He spread his fingertips on top of the pages, making a bridge over them. “The story is our guide. The stuff on the internet is for us to keep track of how we’re doing.”

“And how are we doing?” asked Costamides.

“We fall any further behind,” said Fraser, “they might start to run out of body parts to send us.”

Wingate ignored him. “Well, I noticed that he uses the word damage a lot. He says it when he’s sitting at the table, and then he talks about the water damaging the floor. And he does it somewhere else too, but I can’t find it.”

“The box he digs up in the backyard is ‘damaged,’” said Hazel. “It might mean something.”

“He’s doing the crossword at the beginning, isn’t he?” said Costamides. They all flipped back to the first page of chapter four. “‘Damaged’ is in the clue.” She looked up. “What’s a word that means ‘damaged’?”

“Broken,” said Wingate. “Smashed.”

“Something that’s ‘damaged’ isn’t necessarily completely ruined.”

“Damn it,” said Hazel. “I know what it is.” They all looked at her. “It’s a cryptic clue, like for a crossword. Damaged or broken or messy – words like that – they signal anagrams.”

They all turned their eyes back on the page. “Surely we’re not thinking this whole thing is, like, a palindrome?” said Fraser.

“No,” she said. “But something has to be rearranged before it makes sense. A detail or a word.”

“Fine. What, though?”

“I don’t know,” said Hazel.

The four of them stared at the pages. To Hazel’s eyes, the longer she looked, the more the letters and words seemed like meaningless marks against a vast, empty field.

Her phone rang and she picked it up. It was Melanie. “I’m putting him on speakerphone,” she said.

It was Spere. “It’s official, people. The hand in Deacon’s freezer once held that computer mouse.” There was silence from the room. “We had to digitize the layers of prints, but we were able to separate and collate. We have a match.”

“Well, I guess that means I don’t have to play the rabid fan up at the missus’s house to shake loose a drinking glass,” said Fraser. “Good work, Howard.”

“Yeah, good work,” said Hazel. She reached forward and punched the disconnect. For the first time in this case, something was as it seemed. Her eyes were drawn to the computer screen, which continued to show its plea in blood. “What did you do?” she said quietly to it and then she slowly turned her gaze on the others. “What did Colin Eldwin do?”

19

She gave Melanie a couple of tasks. The first was to connect her with the Westmuir Record. A panicked Rebecca Portman came on the line. “Mr. Sunderland is on the warpath,” she said. “He just called from Atlanta and I had to tell him about our Thursday edition. I, um, have a message he made me write down. He told me to read it to you.”

“I didn’t call you, Miss Portman, to pick up messages from your boss.”

“I’m sorry, but, just the way he sounded…”

“I have a couple of needs you can take care of for me. Do I still have your attention?” Portman murmured that she did. “The first thing is, I’ve decided you can run Colin Eldwin’s story again. In fact, I want you to run both chapters four and five in Monday’s edition.”

“Both?”

“Yes. Is that going to get you in trouble again?”

“I’m afraid it will. Maybe I should read you Mr. Sunderland’s message, Ma’am? He asked me to read it to you.”

“Does it have the word feckless in it?”

“Um…” She was scanning the note. “Not exactly.”

“Is your boyfriend in today?”

“Who?”

“Beaker, Miss Portman, your nervous little friend in IT. I want him in my station house in fifteen minutes. Tell him to put all the emails Colin Eldwin has sent you – all of them – on a CD and have them bring it over to me. I have some questions for him.”

She thought she could hear Portman’s heart pounding over the phone. “He’s uh, not in today, Detective. Friday is usually pretty quiet.”

Hazel wanted to reach through the phone and wring the little dope’s neck. “Do you know where he lives?”

“Um -”

“Tell him I won’t keep him long. And I’m ‘Detective Inspector’ to you.”

“Sorry, Ma’am.” Hazel closed her eyes and held her tongue. “He really wants me to read this note to you.”

Cartwright appeared in the doorway. Hazel covered the mouthpiece. “What?”

“Mr. Pedersen says he’s having brunch with his wife. Is it urgent?”

“Tell him to come in when he’s done. And if he’s at Ladyman’s have him bring me a peameal bacon sandwich.”

She put the phone back to her ear. Portman was evidently reciting Sunderland ’s message. “‘… and don’t think I won’t.’ I’m sorry for the strong language, Ma’am. But he insisted.”

“My ears are burning. Tell him you could hear me swallowing nervously. Hey, do you want to know what we called your boss in high school?”

“No.”

“We called him ‘Pokey’ because he was always in other people’s business. Probably the boys called him that too because he had a small penis. He might still answer to it.” There was silence on the other end. “Send me your little friend, Miss Portman. Burn him his CD if you know how, and get him over here. He has thirteen minutes now.”

Hubert Mackie – that was the kid’s name – showed up fourteen minutes later, out of breath and looking panicked. Cartwright offered him a cup of coffee, but he told her coffee made him sweat and she gave him a glass of water instead. He was wearing a black cloth jacket with a broken zipper and his wispy hair kept falling over his forehead. “I guess we’re going to need a computer,” he said, and Hazel led him out to Wingate’s work station. The kid walked through the pen with his head down, muttering “hello” left and right and pushing his hair away from his