'No. None of that here. My guess is that it was the blow to the head. Is Wingate there?'
'Here, sir.'
'That was a good notion you had about the blood, son. It was Ulmer's blood on his head and neck, but the fresher blood, the blood on his hands, it wasn't his. Ulmer was B positive, but the blood on his hands was mainly O.'
A chorus of voices called out to the doctor at once.
'Do I still have your attention?' he said, and they fell silent. 'It's a mixture of blood. I mean, from more than one person. So I don't know whose it is.'
'What the hell,' said Greene. 'Are you certain?'
'I am.'
'Can you find out whose blood it is?'
'It's going to take a few days to unravel, I think. I sent a sample down to the Toronto lab. They can separate out the types and the DNA.'
'I want all the physical evidence associated with the first scene taken down to Mayfair,' said Hazel. 'Jack?'
'Ma'am?'
'You're going to test all the bloodstains from the Chandler site again.'
'I'll be waiting.' He rang off. Hazel stood over the conferencing device, rubbing her forehead.
'What is it?' asked Greene.
She sighed heavily. 'I'm going to have to call Mason now.'
'How's that going to go?'
'My guess is not well.' She shook the cobwebs away and stood straight. 'James, you go to Mayfair and get Delia's clothes out of evidence and take them right to Jack Deacon. Ray, we need to talk to Bob Chandler again. Unless you'd like to go with DC Wingate to Mayfair.'
'No,' said Greene, quietly. 'I'll go see Bob.'
Mason's secretary kept her on hold for twelve minutes. The average was fifteen. It failed to make her feel optimistic. 'I have Commander Mason for you,' said the secretary when she came back on. He was one for pomp.
'Hazel?'
'Hello, Ian,' she said. 'I won't keep you long. I need some more manpower up here. Maybe for a month, maybe less.'
'Manpower?'
'A minimum of two detectives.'
'I thought you folks said "personpower" these days. How's your mother?'
'She's well, thank you. Beth?'
'Terrific. Two detectives. Didn't I just send you one?'
'Yes. And thank you. But it's not enough right now.'
'See?' said Mason. 'Give an inch?' Ian Mason was the worst kind of police bureaucrat: capricious and jolly about it. In the early days, he seemed to delight in denying any and all requests. His standard rejoinder was is it really a rainy day? If you could prove there was a need that could not be dealt with in any other way but by spending money, you had a chance. But the best way to deal with Mason, Hazel had found over the years, was to appeal to his vanity. If his name could, in some way, be attached to a positive outcome, he was much more likely to acquiesce. Although 'likely' was a relative term.
'You've got twenty people up there already, Hazel.'
'Twelve, Ian, and only two detectives, not including myself, and I have the whole detachment to look after.'
'That's plenty. What on earth could you need two more good men for?'
'Commander, have you not heard what's happened up here?'
'Yes, of course I have. A nice lady with terminal cancer died.'
'Was murdered.'
'Yes.'
'And now there's a second one. In Chamberlain.'
She heard him moving some paper around. Probably he was signing something without reading it. 'Chamberlain's in Renfrew, Hazel. You're in Westmuir. Are you asking me to staff you so you can go digging in another county's dirt?'
'We believe these murders are connected. In fact, we have growing proof that they are, and that the killer ...'
She heard him breathing into the pause. 'Oh, do say it, Detective Inspector.'
'We have reason to believe we have a serial killer on our hands.'
Now Mason laughed. 'I love it,' he said. 'In a land without murder, two deaths within a thousand kilometres is obviously the work of a serial killer. You know what they call two murders close together in Toronto? The morning shift.'
She counted to five in her head. 'You could take control of this, Ian,' she said quietly. 'You're retiring in a year. You could put your mark on something like this; leave on a high note. Help us crack an important case.'
'Are you going to use the stick next?'
'Please, Ian. I wouldn't ask if—'
'Ah, the mantra of the small-town police chief. You wouldn't ask if you could think of another way.' She remained silent. If she said anything else now, his answer would be an instant no. But she knew, even though her reference to his ego needs was a craven one, he'd heard the upside. Playing Mason well was no guarantee of success, but playing him poorly ensured that you'd leave empty-handed. 'My retirement is actually six months away, Hazel. But I think you know that.'
'I must have forgotten.'
'I'm going to fly my plane and hunt moose. That's the plan.'
'It sounds great, Ian. Are we going to go ahead with this? A couple more hands?'
'Hazel,' he said, 'you've got a serial killer up there like I have a tail.' Her heart sank. 'But I'll see what I can do.'
Greene drove to Bob Chandler's office on Pearl Street. His law firm was in one of the offices at the back of the new strip mall behind the town. Everyone hated this development: box stores and sprawling parking lots lurking behind the main strip. At least it wasn't visible from town. He pulled up in front of the squat building where Chandler's small firm did business and buzzed him. Chandler said he'd come down.
The two of them sat on the side veranda of Alma May's, a stately old house on the main drag turned into a greasy spoon. It was almost too cold to sit outside, but Bob Chandler didn't want people listening in on any conversation he was having with the police. He looked at the name on the piece of paper Greene had passed him and said he didn't recognize it.
'She never told you about a friend in Florida?'
'I didn't even know she was on the Internet. I mean, me and Gail hooked her up because we thought if she was interested ... but she never mentioned it. I figured she was using the computer as a paperweight.'
'No, she was set up,' said Greene. 'She knew email and she could surf the web.'
'First your kids are a mystery to you, and then your parents,' he said.
'There are early adopters and late adopters, and then there's us. Hazel's done the same thing for her mother. She could spend the whole day on her laptop.'
Bob put his spoon back into his coffee and stirred it needlessly. 'How is Mrs Micallef?'
'She's fine.'
'I guess she probably wasn't totally heartbroken to hear. About what happened.'
'You'd have to ask Hazel.' He stirred his coffee. 'So you don't know how your mum might have known this Rhonda woman in Hallandale, huh?'
'She's never been to Florida,' Bob Chandler said. 'She must have met her online somehow.' He looked at the name again. 'Can I see the emails?'
'Not yet,' said Greene. 'But there's nothing in them, really. Unless they're all in code.'
'I think you can safely assume my mother wasn't writing some strange woman in Florida in code. She could barely remember a phone number.'
'I know, Bob. The emails were along the lines of gardening tips. It's probably just like you say.'
'Was there anything else?' Chandler asked.
'I don't think so,' said Greene, and the two men stood. Greene held out his hand and they shook. But he didn't release Chandler's hand.
'What?'
'I was just thinking. Did your mum talk about wanting new bedclothes or anything like that?'
'Bedclothes?'
'No, I'm just wondering. What did she sleep with?'
'About eight blankets,' Chandler said.
'She didn't have a duvet?' said Greene.
Chandler wore an expression of complete bafflement. 'I don't have a full list of all my mother's linens, Ray, but as far as I know, she didn't own one. Anyway, what does
this have to do with anything?'
'It's nothing,' said Greene, and he patted Chandler on the shoulder and started back to his cruiser. Back in the car, he called Spere. 'You're needed,' he said. 'Talk to your computer guys again.' He told Spere what he wanted.
Back at the station, Hazel was waiting for him in the parking lot.
'Well?'
'He has no idea,' said Greene. 'He told me she didn't own a duvet.' He shook a cigarette out of a brand new pack.
'Spere gives you one cigarette and suddenly you're buying packs?'
'They help me think.'
'Give me one,' she said. He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. 'Maybe I'll have a new thought myself.'
He lit a second cigarette off the end of his and passed it to her. They stood together in the parking lot, smoking like two kids outside of school.
'Don't inhale.'
She took a deep drag and inhaled the smoke. 'If you want to admit you're scared shitless, Ray, I will too.'
'I've never seen anything like it,' he said.
'We had two murders in the four years I was in Kehoe Glen, and in all the time I've been back in Port Dundas, I've had five more, and all seven of them were open and shut. Christ, six of them were domestics. Now two in one week, and we have no idea where this guy is right now. He could be in Texas for all we know.'
'He could be anywhere.'
'I get the feeling he's not thinking of getting caught.'
He flicked the spent cigarette onto the asphalt. 'How far along is he? What's your guess?'
He'd put into words the thought she'd been dreading: that Delia Chandler and Michael Ulmer were not this person's first two victims. But which ones were they? The fifth and sixth? The twentieth and twenty-first? She ran her hand through her hair. 'Any number you say could be right. And he could be beginning or ending or right in the middle, and we're exactly nowhere. This woman in Florida is probably some knitting champion Delia met online somehow. But just the same, if Spere can figure out where she lives, maybe we can get in touch with her.'
She crushed the cigarette under her foot.
'I had a question for you.' She waited. 'Bob said something about your mother not being heartbroken about Delia's death. What did that mean?'
The last uninformed soul in town. 'My father and Delia,' she said. 'It went on for about five years.' Before Greene could reply, she walked straight into the station.
8
Monday 15 November, 9 p.m.
The house was dark when Hazel got home. She could hear her mother's music coming from upstairs – she couldn't sleep without CBC Two playing, and Hazel made out the sounds of a Bach sonata wafting out from under the closed bedroom door. The kitchen was spotless, and a plate of cold chicken was wrapped in the fridge. She sat alone at the small table and ate it with her fingers.
Her head was swimming with details. Everything they knew now had a relationship with everything they did not know. What they'd learned stood like a range of trees on a lakeshore, reflected in reverse on the water below. Hazel dreaded the journey it would require to get to those dark shapes. A dead woman, a dead man. A pact of some kind. Was it being kept? Were these deaths, at least, part of something longed for? As she got older and acclimatized herself to her own failures, she had begun to understand death's draw. At the worst of times, even those who were not inclined to consider death an escape could still look at it as a point beyond which they could do no more wrong, would suffer no more. Death brought with it more than just the mere cessation of cellular life: it meant the end of action, and on days like this, Hazel felt that it would be a welcome change – sometime in the future – to be permitted to stop thinking and making choices and waiting for their outcomes.
Her back was killing her. She pushed herself out of the chair and went upstairs to get a Percocet. She was almost out and she took the cap off to leave on her bedside table as a reminder. The drugstore could call in a renewal to Dr Pass in the morning – it bothered her that she could only get fourteen pills at a time; it meant nuisancing Pass twice a month, but she understood that such a dangerous substance as one that could rid you of pain had to be carefully monitored. She went back downstairs and took the pill with a glass of milk. Go now, little pill, she thought. Go find those knives and blunt them.
Wingate had come back from Mayfair after lunch with the bewildering news that none of the blood on Delia's clothes had been hers. He'd described Deacon's face as 'blanched' when he'd emerged from the downstairs lab at Mayfair Grace. The clothes had gone to Toronto to be tested further, but Deacon had said that there was more than one person's blood on the victim's dress. Whoever had killed Delia Chandler had enacted something so precise that he'd been capable of painting a pattern on his victim's body, clothes and furniture with another person's blood. This killer's attentiveness and creativity were beginning to give them all a sense that he could see them in his audience, was aware of their growing amazement. Greene had said that the killer was making it impossible for them to categorize any of their evidence as purposive behaviour on his part, or, alternatively, accidental. Because everything that looked like mayhem was turning out to have been carefully planned. Made was the word Wingate used. The killer was making the crime scenes. So even if they lucked out now and found a hair or a fingerprint, they wouldn't know if they had been meant to find it, or if the killer had made a mistake.
They didn't even know if these bloody tableaux they'd found in Port Dundas and Chamberlain were even meant for them. The most terrifying possibility was not that the killer was leaving complicated clues behind to taunt the police, but that he was not talking to them at all.
In the afternoon, Hazel had put the new kid on a national canvass, asking him to look into killings elsewhere in the country that had any of these hallmarks, specifically terminally ill victims who had been murdered in their own homes. Anything that fit this description would be worth following up. By five o'clock, Wingate had completed his calls to all the major centres in the country, and none of them were surprised to learn that nothing fitting the MO of their guy had shown up. This confirmed one supposition: that this killer was staying out of cities, even the small ones. He was taking advantage of the state of police affairs in smaller communities: a single murder in a minor municipality – even if it were referred to a larger jurisdiction – was unlikely to appear as a pattern to anyone. If Delia Chandler had lived in Toronto and Michael Ulmer in Ottawa, it would not be long before the lines between the two police services would light up. As it was, the Renfrew County cops had called them not only to share information, but because two cops accustomed to fishing in the afternoon needed serious backup.
'We have to call him something,' Greene had said. 'Make him more real so we can hold him in some way in our minds.'
'How's "Satan" hit you?' said Howard Spere.
'What about Destroying Angel?' said Wingate, and Greene had almost sneered.
'Sure: Look out! It's Destroying Angel!'
'Fine,' said Wingate. 'It was only a suggestion.'
They'd finally settled on calling him the Belladonna Killer, and before the end of the day, they were calling him, simply, the Belladonna.
The Percocet was starting to work. Hazel poured herself a shot of Bushmills and turned on the television in the living room. There was a report on the news out of Mayfair that a killer had 'struck' in the 'small town' of Port Dundas. They had shots of both Delia's house and Bob's. There was nothing on the Chamberlain killing. At least that was still under wraps. Hazel was pleased to have confirmation that the information dykes were still holding at the station house. They'd got the officers in Chamberlain to agree on a story for the time being: people stopping by on the sidewalk in front of Ulmer's house had been told that there'd been a break-in, and the canvass on Ulmer's street was conducted with a burglary as a cover story. Again, no one had seen a thing.
There was nothing on the Toronto news except some folderol about how much time a waterfront revitalization program was going
to take. Maybe it would make more sense to build condos. The phrase 'income-per-vertical-square-metre' was used by an expert. She pictured people – maybe old women like herself – piled up practically to the sky on the edge of Lake Ontario, pacing the rest of their lives to the rate of vertical acreage going up on all sides. Penned in, hemmed in, like animals. Maybe people like her mother were going to be the very last generation in history to have any chance of growing old with dignity. Most of her mother's friends were either dead or living in retirement homes in towns like Port Dundas and Kehoe Glen, playing cards and making crafts in little gingerbread houses quietly staffed by bored nurses. Suddenly, she felt terribly lonely.
She dialled Andrew's number. Glynnis, his new wife, answered. 'Hi, Hazel,' she said. 'He's just gone to bed.'
'Is he asleep?'
'You want me to check?'
'Do you mind?'
She waited on the line for longer than a minute. A call this time of night meant a drunken Hazel; she knew this was the content of the conversation Glynnis was having with Andrew. She hated being seen as a kind of occupational hazard, the occupation being married to Andrew. 'I'm not drunk, for Chrissake,' she said when she heard Andrew pick up the phone.
'Who said you were drunk?'
'You've been married three years and already you go to bed before your bride?'
'At least she's home at bedtime.' Hazel laughed into her glass. 'You said you weren't drunk.'
'I'm having a nightcap, Andrew.'
'How's your back?'
She knew what that meant. The first warning on the pharmacy fact sheet was not to mix alcohol with oxycodone. 'It's much better now, actually,' she said. 'Although I guess you're aware that I'm spending a great deal of my time running pillar to post to catch a murderer.'
She heard Glynnis's voice in the background, and for a moment, the mouthpiece on the other end was muffled. 'It's terrible about Delia,' Andrew said. 'It's a real shock.'
'I think it was to everyone but her.'
'How do you mean?'
'We think she let the killer in. That she knew what was going to happen.'
The Calling Page 9
