The Calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  'Can you please keep your voice down?'

  'Or you could have sent back the whiskey sour and ordered a white wine spritzer instead. That would have done it.'

  He laughed despite the look on her face, or maybe because of it. Her mouth was twisted up in a ferocious scowl. 'I had no idea what was going on, Brenna, honest.'

  'But you're a detective.'

  'There's no crime here.'

  'I disagree. Look at you. You're yummy. And you're afraid of flying, how sexy is that? I'd been praying for rain all afternoon just so I'd have the chance to invite you to dinner, get you drunk, and see if you wear boxers or briefs. Now that I know you're gay—'

  'Please,' he said in a stage whisper.

  '—I'm guessing briefs.'

  He reached over and grabbed her hand, figuring it was going to be the best way to quiet her down. He didn't realize until that moment that he was drunk: his hand punched her water glass clear off the table. It crashed to the ground and shattered. 'Brenna, please. You can fly loop-the-loops tomorrow. Just let me off the hook.'

  She looked at him, shaking her head slowly. Her long brown hair fell over her mouth. 'Your secret's safe with me.'

  'It's not a secret. Not in general.'

  'Well, it's still safe,' she said. 'Although if you were a real gentleman ...' He squeezed her hand, just a little too hard. 'Okay,' she said.

  12

  Wednesday 17 November, 9:15 a.m.

  Ray Greene walked in through the front door of the station house, stopped, looked around, and for a moment thought he was in the wrong place. Almost every desk in the pen was full; there had to be an additional fifteen officers with their heads down, phones cradled against their shoulders, or their eyes fixed on a glowing screen. Detective Inspector Micallef came out of her office and saw him standing there, transfixed by the activity. She came down and held the gate open for him. 'We're a secondment factory now, Ray. If Ian Mason isn't going to send me what I need, I'll beg, borrow and steal it. Come meet some of the troops.'

  He went through, still shaking his head. She pointed out rough clusters of new staff. 'These folks are from Mayfair – they're on police frequencies and scanners from here to St John's.' She turned him by the elbow and pulled him toward two tables that had been pushed together. There were six officers arrayed around it. 'These folks are calling every town in this country with a population of less than fifteen thousand and making inquiries about unsolved murders in the last eight weeks.'

  'Nice gig,' Greene said to the officers. 'Welcome to the big time.' Hazel led him to the back of the pen, and they stood there looking at the buzz of activity. 'Someone should tell Mason that for what it's going to cost him in unwritten parking tickets in Mayfair, he could have given us one good man for two weeks.'

  'Would you really try to talk that kind of sense to Ian Mason?'

  'If I thought I had a chance ...'

  'You think it's bad having him for commander? Wait until he runs for premier. We'll be fighting the bad guys with wooden swords.'

  Greene laughed. 'Until then, why don't we focus on the task at hand.'

  'Let's go in the back.'

  In Hazel's office, Greene produced an old folding map with the logo of a local gas station on it. He opened it and tried to smooth it down on her desk. There were small, round yellow stickers on the towns of Gimli, Pikangikum, Port Dundas and Chamberlain. Then he'd put little blue dots on a series of towns to the east of Chamberlain, and red dots to the west of Gimli. 'I did some math. Chandler and Ulmer break a pattern, like we're saying, but we're still talking four if not five murders between the towns of Gimli and Chamberlain in ten days. That's two thousand kilometres, or a killing about every four to five hundred kilometres.'

  'There better not be any cube roots here, Ray.'

  He put his finger on the map. 'These red dots show distances from Gimli westward to the most distant part of Vancouver Island. It represents over three thousand kilometres. There could be at least eight more bodies.'

  'We're up to sixteen according to our lab results. Maximum five, let's say, between Gimli and Chamberlain, plus your eight, only gets us to thirteen. So you're missing three dots on this half of the map. And what about these—' She counted the blue stickers heading east. 'Six more?'

  'If he's doing the same math, at least.'

  Hazel Micallef leaned on her forearms against the edge of the desk. 'So twenty-two victims. At least. Sixteen of whom he's already killed. And all these little dots are what? Four hundred and fifty kilometres apart?'

  He turned the map to face himself. 'I accounted for proximity to large centres and factored in how accessible these towns are. They're best guesses.'

  'He got into Pikangikum.'

  'I know.'

  She stared at the map another moment and then pushed herself upright. 'Okay, let's get back out there.' She swept the map off the desk and he followed her into the pen. The sound of the map crackling caused a general raising of heads. 'Listen up people,' Hazel said, 'we're trying to narrow down likely landing spots for our man.' She spiked the map on the back wall of the pen. 'Any of you assigned to calling small municipalities west and north of Gimli, Manitoba, start consulting this map. Start calling the red dots and then move out in a spiral from them. We're looking for at least eight more victims now.' The six men and women at the desk near the back stood up nearly in unison. 'I want results, people. Five dead bodies – minimum – by the end of today.' She turned to Ray. 'You and I are going to hole up in my office and call the blue dots until we find our next victim.'

  They were about to close the door when one of their own, PC Windemere, put her hand against it. 'Sorry,' she said, pushing a stray hair back up under her cap. 'I was assigned to electronic bulletins. I found something I think you're going to want to look at.'

  'Where?'

  'Eastern border of Quebec.'

  Now Cartwright was standing in the doorway too. 'And I have Mason for you on line one.'

  Ray and Hazel traded a look. 'Everything's heating up all at once, huh?' she said.

  She shook his hand and passed him his pack. 'Nice flying with you, sailor,' she said and winked at him.

  The solid ground beneath him felt slightly unstable. They'd flown clear blue skies, but the entire way it had seemed to him that the air was full of invisible medicine balls, buffeting the tiny craft.

  'I guess I don't have to say "call me".'

  'Don't take it personally.'

  'Is it about my airplane or my X chromosome?'

  He smiled for her and hoisted his pack over his shoulder. There was a payphone beside the hangar and he called the station from it. 'Find a chair,' said Ray Greene. 'We're sending you a Frenchman.'

  'Just what I need,' said Wingate.

  'Hard day, James? Wait till you get back here.'

  'Who's the Frenchman?'

  'A gift from Commander Mason. Son-of-a-bitch actually came through. The French guy's a detective out of Sudbury. Name's Sevigny.'

  'How long do we have him?'

  'Skip didn't say. He should be to you in about an hour.'

  Wingate hung up and watched Brenna circle on the tarmac and take off for some point west. The craft shrank against the clear sky in an agonizing slow fade. Wingate hadn't been propositioned by a member of either sex in well over seven years. For the last five, it would have been entirely unwelcome, but even now, he wondered if he'd know what to do if someone eligible came along. He told himself to view Brenna's invitation as a form of kindness, but instead he felt troubled by the fact that someone had found him out. Not his sexuality, but just him. He'd had to act like a person for a few moments, rather than the Job. His uniform and badge could stand in for a lot if he wanted them to. He could even mask a personal reaction with these trappings, as he had with the young Joe Atlookan. It was possible that Joe was accepted for who he was on the reservation, but then again, maybe no one knew. When Atlookan had pushed the bread basket toward him that second time and looked him in the eyes,
Wingate's suspicions were confirmed. It had made Brenna's advances seem even sadder. What a lonesome night it had been.

  Wingate stayed lost in these thoughts for another half-hour, his mind turning down into the dark cul-de-sac where the worst memories were, and when he was next aware of the outside world, it was because a plane identical to Brenna's was touching down. For a moment, he worried it was Brenna herself, come back to take another crack at him, but a towering man came out of the plane, stooped over. 'Detective Sergeant Sevigny?' he asked.

  'Se-vin-yee,' said the man, offering his hand.

  'Welcome to the Port Dundas Police.'

  The man almost didn't fit in the car – his knees pressed up against the glove compartment. It was as if Wingate had bagged a moose and instead of tying it to the grille, he'd put it in the passenger seat. There was very little conversation on the way; Sevigny told him only that if he never saw Sudbury again it would be fine with him. 'A toilet', is what he said. He sat in the passenger seat with a neat pile of folders on his lap, details of the case had already been faxed to him. Wingate was tempted to try his French – he'd been nearly fluent by grade eleven – but he intuited that the behemoth in his passenger seat probably wasn't going to be interested in a Berlitz moment.

  They got into Port Dundas at two in the afternoon. Driving down the main street, it felt to James as if he'd been away for a month. He'd only been in the town for four days, but his relief made him feel like he was coming home. The station house was overflowing with men and women on phones. Ray Greene waved off his questions: all would be explained. There was a kind of neighbourliness to the whole place, Wingate thought, like it had been transformed into some kind of telethon headquarters. There was a map at the back of the room, and beside the map a white board had a series of place names written on it. He read Milk River, Grimshaw and Quesnel before he had to catch up with Greene and the French officer. DI Micallef was waiting in one of the meeting rooms. There was a laptop in front of her. She turned the screen to Sevigny. There was a picture on it of a sickly looking woman with blood all over her face. It was a frontal view, and Wingate could see the wooden handle of a hammer sticking up behind her head. The woman's mouth was cast in a huge, thin grimace. 'Her name is Gladys Iagnemma. The daughter – Cecilia – spoke to her this morning in anticipation of seeing her with a friend of hers. When she went over, this is what she found. Spere is waiting in Mayfair for a courier delivery of her clothing.'

  'Although we already know what's on it,' said Greene.

  'What is that?' said Sevigny.

  Hazel pulled out a chair for the man, who fit himself into it, and she began to slowly lay out the facts of the case as they understood them. Sevigny was a quick study. 'This guy,' he said, 'he thinks no one is paying attention.'

  'That's right,' Hazel said.

  Sevigny jerked his chin toward the door. 'Now a lot of people are paying attention.'

  Greene crossed his arms. 'We're being careful, Detective Sergeant.'

  The French policeman unfolded himself from his chair. 'A lot of little jugs, eh?' The three others stared at him, uncomprehending. 'Is my English so bad? They have big ears, little jugs.'

  Hazel was staring at him like he was changing colour. 'I've never understood that saying.'

  Wingate was amused to see this massive man lose his composure a little. He held his hands up like he was surrendering. 'The more people talking about your case, the more ears to hear. We don't want this man to hear anything we are saying.'

  'Well, you're not saying anything yet, officer,' said Greene, and he came forward to shut the laptop where Gladys Iagnemma's face continued to leer out at them. 'You're getting caught up, then you're pitching in, and then you're going home.'

  'I'm not going anywhere,' said Sevigny, and he took a tiny step forward, toward Ray Greene. Greene instinctively stepped back before he could tell himself to stand his ground.

  'Boys?' said Hazel, and Sevigny thrust his hand out toward Greene. Everyone flinched.

  'Detective Sergeant Adjutor Sevigny,' he said. 'I will be at your service until I decide I am no longer needed.'

  'What the hell's an "adjutor"?' said Greene, refusing the man's hand. Sevigny kept it out.

  'That is my name, Raymond,' he said. 'Now shake my hand, and let us all work together.'

  Hazel Micallef sat alone at the back of The Laughing Crow, toying with the plastic swizzle stick in her bourbon. This was Andrew's local, and she'd deliberately chosen a table near the back where she would not be seen by any of his colleagues. But it entailed turning around in her chair in an obvious manner to see if he'd come in and failed to see her. Twenty minutes after the time he'd agreed to meet her she was still sitting alone. The bartender leaned over the bar to hand her a second bourbon. 'You can sit at the bar with me, Chief,' he said, gesturing to the countertop. 'I can keep 'em coming.'

  'I'm waiting for someone,' she said. 'But thank you.' She wondered if he believed her, and then decided she didn't care. If she was going to be tonight's story, so be it. It was impossible to go for a drink anywhere within two hundred kilometres of Port Dundas without being spotted. In uniform or not, it was like a sign was hanging around her neck. She pushed the ice down with her finger and at that moment felt Andrew's hand on her shoulder. This was one of the ways he'd touched her; that spot on her shoulder could mould itself to his hand from memory.

  'Do you want my excuse?' he said.

  'Whatever it is, I forgive you.'

  'Okay,' he said, 'thanks.' He gave the bartender a thumbs-up and then reached behind her to receive his drink: a gin and tonic.

  'Aren't you worried about the bartender across the street stealing your signs?' she asked Andrew.

  'It's just a shorthand we've developed over the years.' He sipped his drink and held it up in front of him. 'Thumbs-up is this, anything else, I have to go up and order.'

  'I don't know if I'm relieved or sickened,' she said.

  'I come here almost every day after work, Hazel. There's nothing sinister about it.'

  'With Glynnis?'

  'With my wife? Yes, Hazel. I go out for a drink with my wife quite frequently.'

  She reached across the table and put her hand on his. 'Please don't,' she said. 'I didn't mean to start anything.'

  He gave her a soft look, but pulled his hand away out from under hers. 'Okay. Meter's reset. Let's toast to something neutral.'

  Hazel laughed without smiling and lifted her glass to him. 'To fog.'

  'Uhh, okay. Fog, Hazel. To fog.' They clinked and drank and Andrew's gaze fell on the swizzle stick lying at the base of the ketchup bottle. 'What fog are we drinking to?'

  'The one that's coming in about an hour, dear.'

  This caused the light to go out of his eyes. 'I don't want to be part of some kind of masochistic ritual, Hazel. I've seen enough of that for this lifetime. If that's why you wanted to see me, I don't think I'm okay with it.'

  She wiggled her drink at him. 'It won't be from this,' she said. 'In an hour, when I go home, I have to take three pills to counteract the pain I've been in all day. They turn out my lights.'

  'Doesn't sound like something you feel neutral about,' he said. He stirred his drink. 'I didn't know it was that bad.'

  'If it gets any worse, they're going to cut me. I'll be in bed for ten weeks. Or more.'

  'Your mother'll love that.'

  'Maybe.' The ice melting into the liquor looked like smoke. She suddenly remembered some homework Emilia had brought home in grade eight or nine that purported to show hidden messages in an advertisement for Canadian Club. Someone had carefully outlined the word SEX about fifty times in the ice cubes. This was the difference between policework and other fields that called for interpretive powers: in her line of work, what you saw had to actually be there.

  'I didn't mean to be flip,' said Andrew. 'About your problems.'

  'Nothing's happened. They're not real problems yet.'

  'But the pain is real.'

  'It is.'r />
  He held his hands steepled over his glass. 'What was it you wanted to talk about, Hazel?'

  'I just wanted to see you. See how you were.'

  'Uh-huh. Are we eating tonight?'

  'You're willing to spend an entire meal with me?'

  'I put in thirty-six years. Dinner is nothing.'

  She waved down a waiter and took a menu, then passed it to him. 'Order me whatever's good.' He asked for two New York strips, medium rare. 'Mother'll kill you,' she said.

  'She got you eating alfalfa?'

  She hung her tongue out of her mouth. 'My God, I'd kill for a bowl of alfalfa. It's just little pebbles and dehydrated water for me, Andy. I gotta get me a husband.'

  He smiled, recognizing her. She saw it in his face and a swell of raw fear went through her that felt like someone had jumped out at her. The base of her tongue was throbbing with it. She lived most of her days and nights now unaware of the kind of need that once animated her; the need for touch, for comfort. Her mind was home now, not her body.

  'Andrew ...'

  'Oh-oh.'

  'We're out of practice. It used to be you could read my mind. But you can't now.'

  'Certain skillsets fade, Haze.'

  'You wanted to know why we were here, and I told you, but then we went past it.'

  He lowered his drink from in front of his mouth to his throat. 'I don't remember that part of the conversation.'

  'And it even happened when you were here.'

  'Give me a hint.'

  'It was the part that should have triggered images in your mind of my eighty-seven-year-old mother carrying me to the bathroom.'

  The drink went the rest of the way down to the table. He made a little sound in the back of his throat. 'Right,' he said. 'I did miss that part.'

  'But now I hear the sound of a coin rolling down a ramp.'

  His mouth, which had fallen open into a soft O, slowly closed. 'God, Hazel. How can you even ask me this?'

  'We don't have the money for live-in help, Andrew.'