The Taken

“There’s that as well.”

“Maybe I’ll stub a toe and try to prolong my visit.”

He forked up a mound of white rice and dropped it into his mouth. “You are always welcome to stop by, Hazel.”

She felt the withdrawal symptoms still nibbling away at the edges: a faint sizzle behind the eyes, of worry, or dread. And then she realized it wasn’t the lack of Percs she was feeling: it was grief. And she permitted herself, at last, the thought in full that she’d only let flit on the periphery: that she wished the last three years had never happened. And not just because she missed him and still loved him, but because they were not done; they had not finished telling the great story of their lives. It was true that it had not always been great, but it was their story, and it was going to be the only story they had. Well, the only story she had. Of who she was with him, of who they’d been together and what they’d done. What she had of him and he of her made it impossible that anyone else could know them as they’d once been. Letting herself think this, a too-big space opened in her chest and she realized how much grief she had over losing this most important friendship of her life. And at the same time, she realized that he was happy and that there was nothing she could do, or should do, to change things between them.

“Hazel?”

“You have rice on your chin,” she said.

“Well, you don’t have to cry about it.”

“Wasabi,” she said. “It’s two o’clock. We should get ourselves home.”

Back in Port Dundas, she sat in her office with Wingate. The screen showed a black as solid as a moonless night with the little green arrow at the bottom. The scratching sound was repetitive, like it was on a loop. They let it run with the mic off. “They serve a thousand warrants a year on the anonymizing services registered in the Caymans,” Wingate said. “There’s like eight of them down there and another five or six in the Seychelles. All the addresses are post office boxes and when they pick up the mail down there, they systematically challenge the warrants. The detective I spoke to said they’re still trying to get records from 1998.”

“Why don’t they just walk in and bust these people?”

“They have no idea where they are.”

“What about the ISPs? Don’t the providers know who’s using their service and where they’re located?”

Wingate had raised his eyebrows at her, like she’d grown a third head. “I guess Mr. Mackie gave you a crash course?”

“Well?”

“I asked the detective,” he said, a little defensively. “About the ISP. These companies are their own ISPs. They’re totally untraceable.”

She slapped the desk. “Then get in touch with the company directly. Do they have an email address? Tell them what their service is being used for.”

“Okay,” he said.

She turned the laptop screen back toward them. “So what is this now? Why is there sound? What is it?”

“It sounds like someone scratching a tabletop.”

“And this triangle. Is it possible there’s a link open now? Why would they want us to connect?”

“Tell them what we know.”

“Forget it. I want to get one step ahead of these people if I’m being asked to make contact. I want to have something they don’t think I have.”

“You know who the captive is.”

“They sent us his hand, James. They know we know. They wanted us to know.”

He was lost in thought, tracing the top of her desk with a finger. “What about we let slip we’re onto them through Anonymice? See if they react. Maybe we can catch them changing directions.”

“They might just go to ground, James. Turn off the feed and hit the road. Where are we then?”

“But they want us to see them,” he said. “To hear them too. Whatever we’re being asked to do by proxy can’t be done if they break off contact.”

“If they’re smart enough to cover all their tracks, aren’t they going to know their friends in the Caymans won’t give them up?”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Man,” she said. “I’m starting to understand what Hutchins was talking about.”

“Who?”

“ Toronto cop. He made a comment about the difference between beat cops and dicks. I didn’t much like it, but I see now why he thinks that way. Because we’re both sitting here throwing bones. Street cops see it differently.”

“Yeah,” he said, “they call in investigators when they get stuck and then stand around on the other side of the squad room mumbling about voodoo. Don’t listen to the beat cops, Hazel.”

But she was thinking that the searchers and prognosticators were too much like what bothered her about Glynnis. Never before had she worried that her work entailed any kind of blind faith, and yet it did. To her mind, spiritual investigation drew on the loosest of the goosiest presuppositions, beliefs that were, in fact, wishes. She’d always thought policework was not like that. And yet, this case was becoming more and more like an act of fortune-telling, an extended tea-reading. The risk, as it was in interpreting the unseen world, was that you’d pay attention to the wrong things.

“What about the backyard?” she said.

“At the house?”

“Doesn’t it make sense we should be digging back there? Why don’t we ask them if we should dig? See what they say.”

“I see where you’re going. Nick Wise has buried her in his backyard.” They both fell silent, working it through. “We need to know if Eldwin ever lived in that house, Hazel.”

“I agree.” She looked across the top of the keyboard for the button that would unmute the microphone. The laptop made a popping sound to indicate the connection had been reopened. Hazel leaned down toward it. “How do we save her if she’s already dead?” she asked, and although it was difficult to make out at first, they could both see the camera already pulling away from its black field.

22

The darkness resolved into a texture and then a field of cloth appeared and they recognized the weft of a black peacoat seen from the back. The scratching sound continued as the picture widened and shoulders appeared at the top of the screen. A chairback swam into the frame at the bottom. The figure was seated at a table, its head lowered. One of the shoulders juddered in time to the scratching sound: an arm moving like a mechanical toy. The figure was writing.

The surface of the table broadened and when its farthest edge drifted down they saw beyond it, into the gloom of the basement, to the wall with its dark message scrawled. When the camera had completed its zoom- out, Eldwin appeared in his chair, at the distant right edge of the screen, his back to the camera as well, his head also lowered. He was motionless. The image of the compulsively writing arm in the foreground and the still, slumped figure in the background made for a contrast that gave Hazel a cold feeling on the back of her neck.

The figure continued to work and paused to lift a scribbled sheet off the table, holding it up to read it, and then placing it face down to the right. “I’m wondering how this story is going to end,” said a woman’s voice. They waited silently. “I know you can hear me.”

“It’s going to end with you in handcuffs.”

The voice laughed softly. “Oh, I have no doubt about that. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we, Hazel?”

“Show us your face.”