'We have to start somewhere, Hazel, and if you're not prepared to put out an APB, then a fair assumption is a good thing to hang your hat on. At least for a day.'
She mulled the idea a moment. 'Who's less likely to piss off the natives, you or Wingate?'
Greene held his palms up in a gesture of supplication. 'God, don't send me. I'll have my foot in my mouth the second I step onto the riverbank.'
Hazel picked up her phone. A moment later, Wingate knocked. 'Any luck with the PD in Pikangikum?'
'I'm waiting for a callback.'
'Don't wait any more,' she said. 'Go see Melanie and tell her to call Great Shield Air. You're flying to Red Lake this afternoon.'
'I'm not good on airplanes.'
'You'll love it. You get to sit beside the pilot. Go.'
* * *
Hazel zipped up the back of her mother's dress and looked over her shoulder at the two of them in the mirror.
'Do you think it'll cause a stir? My going to Delia's funeral?'
'It would cause more of one if you didn't, Mother. You're just being a good citizen.'
'There's not a man, woman or child in this town who doesn't know what Delia did.'
'Don't be ridiculous. Not everyone knows. Ray didn't know.'
'Oh, but you told him?'
'Look, Mum, Dad did it too. And you went to his funeral.'
Emily Micallef leaned forward to open her jewellery box. She had never been one for jewellery and pushed around the few trinkets she had before selecting a modest pearl necklace Hazel's father had given her when Hazel was still a child. 'Help me with this,' she said, baring her neck to her daughter. Hazel attached the two ends of the necklace together. 'You think the papers will be there?'
'I don't know, Mum. You don't have to worry about them.'
'They hounded me out of office only eight years ago, Hazel. You think they've forgotten how to sell papers?' Hazel thought of the Monday edition of the Westmuir Record and chose not to answer.
On the road leading to St George's Church, cars were parked in both directions – Hazel estimated more than two hundred cars, with their passengers, had descended on the church to hear Father Glendinning deliver his eulogy. Inside, Ray Greene had held a few seats in his pew, and the two Micallef women went to sit with him. He was dressed in a proper suit, but Hazel had decided that she would be expected to appear in the official capacity of Inspector Micallef, and so she had worn her dress uniform, a getup she had not put on since she'd become interim CO in 1999. The uniform made her feel powerful, and although she was the top-ranking officer in the Port Dundas OPS only by default, this was a moment in which she felt she was the real thing.
She shook hands as she walked down the central aisle, but behind these handshakes, and in the eyes of her fellow Port Dundasians, she saw the expectation that she would provide an answer to the dread mystery that had brought them all together on this day.
Father Glendinning cast his eyes over the congregation. 'Come in,' he said to those at the back, pressing against those standing. 'There is room for anyone who would be here. Come fill the sides.' He waited as people shyly filtered down the edges of the nave. 'Sed et si ambulavero in valle mortis non timebo malum. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,''' he said, '''I will fear no evil." What cold comfort that is to those of us who gather here today to mourn the death of Delia Chandler. For you may not fear evil, but it is afoot, and it has walked among us. The manner in which Delia was carried off is too well known to us, and I will not speak of it, my friends.' He looked down at the casket that lay below the dais. 'She was too modest a woman to suffer the additional indignity of having the horror of her dying bruited amongst the townfolk like so much gossip.' Hazel had squeezed her mother's hand in warning when the priest had said modest. 'But let us talk of evil. What is our responsibility when faced with evil? Is it to avert our eyes and hope that God will protect us? No, for God protects us only when we stand up to evil; when we allow it no purchase in our lives. Our police tell us that Delia opened the door to her killer, and in so many ways, we open our doors to evil. We make our homes welcoming to Satan. We must batten our doors against evil, lest it seek us out.'
'What an idiot,' said Greene at the gravesite an hour later. Hazel stood alone behind the crowd with her fellow detective. Before coming out to the cemetery, she'd driven her mother home when Emily said she'd had enough of mourning Delia Chandler. Greene was scuffing the dirt with his shoe. 'He has a chance to give these poor people some comfort, and instead he incites them. We'll have ten more Ken Lonergans waving their guns behind their peepholes before long.'
'Do you think that's what they heard?' said Hazel, watching the congregants surround the grave ten-deep. 'I thought they heard they were safe if they were clean. He said Delia had it coming to her.'
Greene thought for a moment. 'Is it possible that's what our guy is doing? Was this her sentence? But what did Ulmer do? The man could barely walk.'
'I doubt our guy is crossing the country punishing sinners. Surely there aren't people out there effectively committing suicide to expiate their sins.'
'Just a thought.'
'No, I think Father Glendinning just told us all that nothing bad will happen if we live our lives under God. He hasn't seen what people in our line of work see. If he did, he'd hang up his cassock.'
'We rarely see it ourselves, Hazel. I'm about as unfamiliar with murder as Glendinning is.'
'But you don't have a cassock to hang up, Ray.'
Glendinning was standing at the head of Delia's grave with his Bible open. 'Ashes to ashes,' he began, and the crowd of townsfolk pressed in and crossed themselves. Hazel looked through their numbers, hoping to see an unfamiliar face, but there was a sea of faces she knew too well – men and women whose houses she'd been to, whose children she'd warned and even arrested, whose neighbours she'd calmed. The whole town was here. She saw a couple of people standing in the back with notebooks. There was little enough to go on from an investigative perspective, and she was relieved to think that there was nothing to tell the press, such as it was here in Westmuir County.
Bob and Gail stood beside Father Glendinning holding hands, and Hazel tried not to look at Bob, who was weeping. Delia's other son, Dennis, had come in from Calgary, but Hazel hadn't seen him for almost thirty years. She recalled him as a reedy-looking jock, a shy kid known for how far he could hit a fastball. If she was remembering correctly, he'd gone off to Michigan on a sports scholarship, but she had no idea how he'd ended up in Calgary. She wasn't entirely sure which of the four or five adults standing near the priest he was. Presently, Glendinning nodded to Bob Chandler, and he, as well as another, larger, man, stepped forward and each took a handful of dirt and threw it into the grave. The second man turned to look at the mourners, and she saw the hint of that young man's face she'd been trying to remember. He'd gone to seed.
Afterward, Hazel made a point of seeking out Dennis Chandler. She introduced herself, and Bob's brother took her hand. 'I almost didn't recognize you,' she said.
'I tried to stay away as much as I could,' he said. 'Have you made any progress?'
'It's slow,' she admitted. 'He was very careful.'
'I appreciate everything you're doing here, Inspector.'
She didn't correct him. He released her hand, and Hazel found herself staring into the man's eyes. He was in his early fifties, younger than his brother, but he'd thickened. Thirty years was enough time for a person to change completely. In the midseventies, when she'd last seen this man, she was thirty pounds lighter herself. And married. 'Were you in touch with her very much?' she asked.
'We kept in touch through email,' he said. 'Once a week, or so. And before you ask: no. There was nothing in her emails last week or the week before to even suggest she knew her time was running out. Or that she was planning anything like this, if it was actually planned.'
'Can you see your mother asking someone for help ending her life?'
'I don't know what any per
son might become capable of once they know they're dying, Inspector. I suppose it's possible. It doesn't feel like her to me, but I haven't lived near my mother for fifteen years.'
'Did you see her much?'
Dennis Chandler lowered his head slightly. 'No,' he said. 'It was emails and a package a few times a year. I hate to say it, but it was enough. For me.'
Hazel saw Howard Spere standing in the grass near the road talking with Ray Greene. The two men started toward her. 'What would she send you? Birthday gifts?'
'Christmas too. The usual. I have a six-year-old daughter. She'd buy something here in town and wrap it up in butcher paper and send it out. Although the last couple of years, we'd get something from whatever online store she'd shopped at with her credit card. There wouldn't even be her handwriting on the package. And a computer-generated card in the box with her message.' He leaned in a little, and Hazel held her hand out behind her to warn Spere and Greene not to come any closer. 'You want to know the truth? My mother was lazy. She took the easy way out. That's why she could convince herself it was okay to do what she did with your father – she would have told herself it was preferable to suffering alone. And so, yes, maybe my mother turned into the kind of person who would have asked someone to help her end her life. I don't know.'
'May I ask you another question?'
'Sure.'
'Did your mother send you anything recently? A gift?'
'If she did, I haven't got it yet. But there's no birthdays in our household after October, and Christmas is still a month and a half away ...'
'I'm sorry for your loss,' she said, and she put her hand on his shoulder. 'I'm glad we talked.'
Dennis Chandler nodded to her, and passed on his way. Her two colleagues were standing right behind her. 'Who was that?' said Ray Greene.
'Delia's younger son.'
'That's Dennis Chandler?'
'Yeah.'
'That kid could skin a hardball. What did he tell you?'
'He wasn't her biggest fan. He said she was lazy around birthdays and Christmas. That she had her gifts shipped directly off the web.'
'I'd call that convenience, not laziness,' said Spere.
'Howard, will you think in a straight line for once? That duvet cover Delia bought on Bidnow ...'
Spere blinked a couple of times. A stream of people flowed past on either side of them, like water around a stone. 'I'll have one of my guys find out who the seller was. I presume he'll know where the item was shipped.'
'You "presume"?' sneered Greene.
The big man picked a fleck of something out of the corner of his mouth. He fixed Ray with a hooded gaze. 'Beg your pardon, Ray?'
'I'm just saying. I thought you guys weren't supposed to presume anything.'
'It's a figure of speech, Ray.'
'Fine.'
'Are you boys done?' said Hazel. They turned to her. 'What were you loping over here to tell me?'
'Good news, sort of,' said Spere. 'The RCMP up in Gimli sent me some digital images of the Maris murder. It's our guy for sure. He did her mouth.'
'But he cut her head in half.'
'He did, but they took the crime-scene pics and put her back together digitally. She looked like she was whistling.'
Hazel unconsciously pursed her lips. 'Whistling.'
'Or blowing a kiss.'
'Good Christ,' said Greene. The three of them began walking back to Hazel's car.
'We have to find the rest of these victims now,' she said. 'Gimli makes four in eleven days.'
'He's working quickly,' said Greene. 'If Gimli is 3 November, the Atlookan murder 9 November, Delia the twelfth, and Michael Ulmer 14 November, then he's killing almost every three days.'
'If you're right, then we've missed one between Gimli and Pikangikum,' said Spere.
'So you presume.'
Spere ignored him. He'd taken out his notebook and was writing dates furiously. 'There'll be another one within five hundred kilometres east of Chamberlain, anytime now.'
Hazel stopped beside her car. 'Howard, I want some spare personnel from Mayfair. Quietly. I want everyone we can get on this – phones, email, police frequencies.' She tapped Greene's notebook. 'Ray, get a map and start triangulating towns around these times and distances. If he's killing every three days or so, and he's coming from the west, we should be able to figure out how many more visits he's planning on making. We have to get to him before he's done.'
'I'll do it right away.'
He began sprinting for his car. Spere was standing in front of her, unused to action. 'As for you, get someone in to Delia's Bidnow.com account. That duvet cover was not for her.'
Lake Superior looked like the ocean from twelve thousand feet. 'It's about the size of Nova Scotia,' said the pilot into her microphone. Wingate picked her up in his headphones. 'It's a biii-iig cuppa water,' she said.
Wingate had stopped gripping the armrest sometime back around the northern shore of Manitoulin Island, but he wasn't getting used to it. The plane was an old Cessna 180 and it had room for the pilot, Wingate and a briefcase, although the pilot claimed she could carry five people in the craft, if she had to. Her name was Brenna. 'Luckily, it's just the two of us, or I might have trouble getting all the way there on one tank,' she'd said. 'Red Lake's just on the edge of my range.'
'But we'll get there.'
'Even if we have to glide down to the runway, I'll getcha there.'
He had to admit it was occasionally pleasant being in a plane the size of a minivan, although he could feel the bumps as if he were riding a bicycle down a potholed road. And Brenna kept him fairly distracted, pointing out towns like Wawa and Rossport as they passed over them. 'You can make out the geese down there,' she'd said over Wawa.
'What?'
'They've got a couple huge goose statues down there. You can see 'em from up here.' He couldn't see that far, but he took her word for it. It was going to end up being a four-hour flight, and he needed all the distraction he could get. There was no talking but through the intercom system wired into their headsets. The plane was so loud he couldn't hear himself sneeze. They were approaching a town called Marathon.
'How much longer?'
'You gettin' bored of my stories, hon?'
'Not at all.'
'Check this out,' she said, and she put the plane into a sudden dive and then pulled it up again. Wingate almost vomited.
'God,' he said.
'You can drive this little shitbox like a race car. It'll do anything.'
'Please don't do that again,' he said.
She put her hand on his knee. 'Oh, come on – I could crash this thing, and we'd jump up and throw the pieces over our shoulders.'
'Well, I'd just the same—'
'—rather not, I know. Everyone says the same thing. Don't worry, Officer Wingate, this thing is safe as houses. I'll have you into Red Lake in one piece, I promise.'
11
Tuesday 16 November, 3 p.m.
The ferry from Berens Landing to the reserve went over three times a day: once in the morning, once in the mid-afternoon, and once around suppertime. Wingate bought a newspaper and a bag of chips and waited inside the small, sour-smelling terminal. His pilot had been instructed to stay in a motel in Red Lake and wait for him to come back. DI Micallef was going to have him in the air twice in one day; there was no time to wait. The date on the newspaper he was reading was 13 November, the day after they found Delia Chandler; the locality was too small to support a newspaper that came out more frequently than once a week. He opened it and scanned the news pages, knowing he would find nothing about what had happened in Port Dundas. Next week's paper would have nothing on it either. As Hazel had said, the Belladonna was ensuring that none of those who mourned his victims would have cause to know each other.
He'd been driven here in a squad car out of Red Lake. A surly constable named Jackman had been assigned to him, and he whipped along the highway at 140 kilometres an hour just to limit the amount of time he'd have
to spend with a cop from 'Toronto-way'. That Port Dundas was a full three and a half hours north of Toronto made no difference to this guy, and Wingate kept his mouth shut about the fact that he'd only just been transferred from the city. Jackman kept his transmitter on the whole time, listening in on his station's frequency but not commenting to Wingate on anything they both heard. The only thing the constable said of any note to Wingate was to watch his wallet once he got to the reserve. 'No compunction on these guys,' he said, 'cop or no.' He told Wingate to call his dispatch when he was heading back to this side and someone would be there to meet him. Some lucky person, no doubt, thought Wingate.
There was nothing in the paper to keep his attention, so he went out to where the ferry would tie up. He and two other men were the only people waiting. He noticed them noticing him. It was cold by the Berens River, a hard slant wind driving the water up against the pilings. It made him think of Lake Ontario in late fall, the way the wind over the lake could push you down the boardwalk. That was a place he didn't think he'd be able to walk again anytime soon.
'You being posted?' said a voice behind him. It was the younger of the two men. 'You coming to live with us?'
Wingate turned to face the man. The second one was still standing over by the door to the terminal, smoking. 'I thought the reserve had its own police service.'
'It does, but they always send us one solid citizen from Red Lake or Sioux Lookout. Keep an eye on us.'
'I'm from Port Dundas. I'm visiting.'
'You're in costume for a visit, officer.' He leaned in to look at Wingate's badge. 'Detective, I should say.'
Wingate debated how much he should tell this man, then thought if he gave anyone cause to doubt his honesty, this whole trip could be for nothing. The cover story Detective Inspector Micallef had suggested he use seemed particularly ill-advised. He told the man he'd come to learn a couple of things about Joseph Atlookan. There'd been a suicide on a reserve near Port Dundas, and they wanted to rule out foul play.
'You talking M'njikaning?' said the man. Wingate nodded. 'Nobody died in that community by their own hand for over a year. And if they did, what would it have to do with us?'
The Calling Page 12
