The Taken

“Okay,” she said, watching the mouse eat.

“She might be crazy, that one.”

“You think so?”

“She thinks Chris Evert was gay, for one.”

Hazel squinted at him. “She wasn’t?”

“No. It was Martina Navratilova. Evert was straight.”

“They weren’t lovers?”

He sighed. “No, they weren’t. Evert married another tennis player. I think.”

“Why do you know this?”

“Tennis fan,” he said. “Anyway, she never had a place on Washington.”

“When was this Earles person in that apartment?”

Wingate unfolded the fax from his pocket. “January to August 2002.”

She took the sheet from his hand and studied it. “The rental was for eight months.”

“So?”

“So Earles moved out the beginning of September 2002.”

She waited for him to cotton on, but she’d lost him.

“That’s when the Eldwins moved to Mulhouse Springs. He rented that place for eight months and then got out of town.”

“How can you be sure it’s him?”

“Paritas sent us there for a reason. And the initials, the time frame… it all fits. That, or we’re being shined on for no reason at all.”

“That’s a possibility,” he said.

“Even so, between the choice of acting on what we think we know and doing nothing, what choice do we actually have?” She cracked a sunflower seed between her teeth and took the kernel out to feed the mouse. He took it from her between the bars with his tiny, pink paws. When he sat back on his haunches, he looked like a little old man eating a sandwich.

“So,” he said. “January to August 2002. That’s our starting time frame.”

“Right. We have a house, a picture of a sweater, and an eight-month window.”

“There must have been thirty homicides in Toronto in the first half of 2002.”

“No,” she said, and she came away from the cage. “It’s not a murder, James. That’s why we’ve been deputized. We’re investigating a murder, but whatever it was in 2002, that’s not how it was ruled. You get it? It was something else.”

“But some of this is pretty contingent, Hazel.”

“Something you can see right in front of your eyes doesn’t require a leap of faith.”

Wingate pulled a chair out from the desk behind him and sat. He stared at the mouse cage. “So it looked like a natural death,” he said. “Or an apparent suicide. Or maybe it was an accident that wasn’t an accident – someone messing around with the brake cables, you know? It’s not hard to set it up. Someone falls out a window, leaves the gas on, tips over a candle.” He disappeared into himself for a moment. “We’re not talking about a missing person here though, because that suggests foul play and there’d still be an open file. If I kill someone and then want to get married and move away, I don’t want anyone asking questions. I want to be sure the body is in the ground and the file is closed.”

“That’s right. So we have to find that file and reopen it.”

“That’s a needle in a haystack, Skip.”

“At least we have it narrowed down to a haystack.” She pushed herself off from the coffee table. “Let’s get back down to Toronto. Make an appointment to see them first thing tomorrow and sit down with them, show them some respect, get them onside.”

“We’re the ones who’re going to have to get onside,” Wingate said. “If there’s a case, it’s theirs.”

“Maybe I’ll let you do the talking.” He smiled uncomfortably at her. “Being the prodigal son’s got to be worth something,” she said.

Cartwright was waiting in the hallway by Hazel’s office door. The door was closed. As Hazel approached, her secretary seemed to move to block her. “Skip?”

“Melanie?”

“I just want to say I asked him to wait somewhere else, but he insisted on going into your office.”

“Who?”

“I didn’t think it was right to insist.”

Hazel leaned in and lowered her voice. “Is it that goddamned Willan with his fucking surfboard?”

“Who?”

“It’s your job to keep people away from me, Melanie.”

“I did what I could,” she said.

Hazel put her hand on the doorknob, straightening and pushing her shoulders back. She opened the door and the man sitting in the chair on the guest’s side of her desk turned and it was Ray Greene. She jerked to stillness and stood paralyzed in the doorway. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to start people talking by waiting around somewhere they could see me.” He stood up and turned to face her. He was in a dark blue suit, civilian uniform, and she saw he’d lost a good fifteen pounds. She couldn’t speak. “Did you get my bottle?”

“I did,” she said. “That was thoughtful of you.”

“I hear not all your gifts were as welcome.”

“No,” she said, and she finally entered the room, closing the door behind them. “Where’d you hear that?”

“I’m not totally out of the loop.”

“The fact that you’re sitting in my office speaks volumes to that. You didn’t pour yourself a drink, though.”

He smoothed down the front of his jacket. “I didn’t want to take liberties. But if you’re offering -”

She took her seat behind the desk and reached down into a drawer to her left. It had been almost six months since she’d spoken to Ray Greene, and apart from his gift, she’d had no proof he was still in Westmuir. She had just the one glass and she poured and pushed it over to him before shaking her coffee cup over the garbage can and putting a shot in it. He held his glass up to her in an awkward, incomplete gesture and then drank it back. She put her mug down untasted. “You’re not here to ask for your job back.”

“No,” he said.

“You’re not the kind of person to butter someone up with a twenty-sixer and then show up hat in hand, are you?”

“You know me that well.”

“I guess I do. Then what is it?”

“I wanted you to hear it from me.”

“Shit,” she said.

“Willan’s going to put me in as the CO of the amalgamated Westmuir force. Port Dundas is going to be headquarters.”

“When?”

“January one.”

“Fucking hell.”

He looked down into his empty glass. “I don’t like amalgamation any more than you do, Hazel, but standing on principle is just another way of doing nothing and being nothing. And I need to work.”

“You couldn’t work under me, Ray, you think it’s going to be easier with the reins?” He hadn’t made eye contact again, not since he’d tried to toast her. “Jesus,” she said. “Are they just going to pasture me or are they hoping I’ll resign in a snit?”

“They’re hoping for a resignation.”

“And if I don’t?”

Now he looked up. “Then you’ll have me backing you. I don’t want you to quit.”

She pushed the meat of her palm into her forehead. “I can’t handle this right now. There’s too much going on -”

“I can come back -”