The Calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  'Try not to soil the crime scene too much,' said Greene.

  'There is nothing. His mout' is just closed.'

  'You have an accent when you're terrified, Sevigny.'

  'If you was 'ere, Raymond, I bet you don't be able to talk English at all.'

  He heard a rustle and Hazel's voice telling Greene off. 'Take some pictures for us,' she said, 'and get out of there. There's an RCMP detachment up there?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Find out and get back here. Try not to tell them anything they don't need to know.'

  'Hold on,' he said. 'There is a desk in the corner. I didn't see it from the doorway.' He crossed the room to the desk and shone his flashlight onto its surface. 'There is a laptop here—'

  'A laptop?'

  'There's a computer in that shithole?' said Greene in the background.

  'And some books. Old books.' He opened one. 'This one is in Italian ...' he said. He pressed the cold pad to his face for a moment. 'No, Latin. I recognize it from the nuns.'

  'Take it all with you, Detective,' said Hazel. 'Do what you have to do and call us from your hotel.'

  They heard him helplessly puking.

  * * *

  He'd muscled her into the front seat of his rental and on the way back to town she neither protested her treatment nor made reference to her rights. He hadn't arrested her and he took her meekness as a sign that she thought herself in enough trouble that co-operation was her only option. That or she wasn't clever enough to know that he had no right to take her with him unless he was going to charge her with a crime. And he had no intention of leaving a paper trail in that town. Port Hardy would barely know he'd been there.

  He told her to direct him back to her house and she complied. Her place was just off the main drag, in an old wooden house painted light blue. 'Am I going to get my car back?' she asked.

  'What do you think?' She stared out the wind-shield at her house. 'Are you guilty of a crime?'

  'No.'

  'Are you sure?'

  She absently nudged a paper bag on the floor by her feet. An apple core rolled out of it. At last she said, 'I didn't know Peter was dead. All I did was bring his mail.'

  'Sure you did,' Sevigny said, 'because you knew nothing.' He threw open his door. She waited for him on the other side and got out when he opened her door.

  'What are we doing?'

  'We're going into your house.'

  She cast a frightened glance over the top of the car, as if she were worried someone might be watching them. 'Don't you need a warrant for that?'

  'I could get a warrant. Do you want me to get a warrant?' Another look up the street. 'Are you expecting someone?'

  'They don't like attention. Simon and Peter. They would be upset if they knew I was talking to you.'

  'Well at least one of them will never find out.'

  'I'm the secretary, okay? That's all. I volunteer my time.'

  'Why?'

  She shook her head slowly, her upper lip in her teeth. 'Look. I have nothing. I have the church and my government cheque and that's it. And my car.'

  He reached for his wallet in his back pocket, and she followed it with her eyes as he brought it up between them and opened it to take out two twenties. She made no sign of being disappointed that money was about to change hands. He folded the bills in his hands and held them out, then pulled them back just a little. 'How does a woman with nothing have a house?'

  'It's not my house,' she said. 'It's the church's.' He kept the money in the air. 'It's theirs, okay? They own the house.'

  He gave her the cash and led the way to the front door. 'When we're done here, if I think you've been helpful, I'll drive you back to your car,' he said.

  He got back to the motel just after 4 p.m. A low, dusky light was lying across the harbour and the die-hard pleasure-boaters were heading out in the cool fall air to fish or take in the sunset. The only thing between them and the giant evening sun was an imperceptible line separating the earth from everything else. He'd taken a small folder of paper from Jane Buck's house. Nothing that would incriminate anyone, but he had a sense that some of the information in that folder, at the right time, would cast a little light in the right direction. More pressing, however, was the laptop. He placed it on the little wooden desk in the motel room along with the books. The books were old; some were bound in leather. His mother had once had high hopes for him entering the priesthood, but even given his years in the seminary, his Latin was worse than poor. The only book in English was an old formulary, a guide to the uses of various plants. This made sense: it was clear by now to them all that the Belladonna was a self-taught pharmacist of some kind, except his specialization ran to the lethal. He checked all of the books for markings, but they were clean.

  The computer had been used for a single purpose: apart from the operating system, the only program was a web browser about five years out of date. It had even been stripped of the games that came with it. Sevigny clicked the open browser, but there was no signal here. The browser returned a grey screen with the news that the 'server was not found'. He was fairly certain the killer wasn't getting a signal out in the death shack either, so where was he hooking up to the Internet? There were no bookmarks in the browser, but when he pulled down the history, he saw links for an online email service and links to a site called Gethsemane. He knew what Gethsemane was. He was going to have to get online to find out what it meant to the Belladonna.

  He called the front desk, and they were happy to let him use their single computer, but there was no way to connect this laptop to the Internet. They wanted to help him. He told them he was looking for a good place to fish steelhead. 'The man in room five caught a lunker this morning just five kilometres out in Bear Cove.'

  'That's great,' said Sevigny. 'But I still need the Internet.'

  There was an Internet café in town, but it closed at four o'clock on Sundays in the winter. He asked the woman if she knew the name of the person who owned the Internet café, and she did. It was Kevin Lawton. 'Everyone calls him "Kev",' she said. There were five thousand people in Port Hardy. He called directory assistance and got the man's home number. He reached the man's daughter, who gave him her father's cell number. The man was on a boat.

  'Who?' said Kevin Lawton.

  'Se-vin-yee,' said Sevigny. He could hear the wind coming out over the ocean.

  'Well, I'm fishing tarpon, buddy,' he said. 'Not that they're interested in me, I'll tell you that.'

  'I'm on police business. This is what you would call an emergency.'

  'Bad connection,' said the man. 'You sound like a Spaniard.'

  'Close,' said Sevigny. 'I'll pay you two hundred dollars to open your café for one hour.'

  'Oh fer jeez sake,' said Lawton, 'if it means that much to you, I'll go fishing tomorrow.'

  Tomorrow was Monday, thought Sevigny. A regular business day, but then again, he didn't have much of a sense of what kind of world he was in now, anyway. Maybe they went fishing here anytime they wanted.

  He met the man at his café, and Lawton refused Sevigny's money and let him in. He snapped the lights on, revealing a small establishment done up in a Hawaiian theme. Sevigny was about to ask, but then thought better of it. The man put a pot of coffee on to brew.

  The laptop was set up for a wireless connection, and as soon as Lawton had his system running, the browser came to life. Sevigny clicked the link for Gethsemane and the page that came up showed a single image: the rough black stone he'd found standing on Peter Mallick's staved-in chest. He ran the cursor over the image, but there was nothing.

  He went back to the history menu and clicked on the Belladonna's webmail link. He got a home page with a login screen. The computer filled in the username. It was 'simon'. The password window was blank.

  Lawton came over with coffee and a thick piece of carrot cake. The smell of it made the back of Sevigny's jaw ache: he hadn't eaten since he'd been sitting in his car on Sewatin Road. Lawton looked over his sho
ulder, and Sevigny lowered the screen. 'This legal?' he asked.

  'Let's say the owner of this computer would not be happy to see me doing this.' He took a massive forkful of the carrot cake. It was salty-sweet.

  'You know the password?'

  'Not a clue.'

  'Sometimes there's a keychain in one of the preferences folders that'll tell you the password, or at least give you a bit of code you can paste in.'

  'I'll try that,' said Sevigny. Lawton began to move away. 'Can I ask you a question?'

  'Sure,' said the man, stopping.

  'You know the name Simon Mallick?'

  'I heard of him, but it's been a while. He was the pastor of a church up here.'

  Sevigny got out his notebook. 'Where is this church?'

  'There wasn't really a "where" to it, if you get my drift.'

  'I don't.'

  'More of a "what". It was him and a bunch of back-to-basics types. They were scattered all over Vancouver Island, but the Mallick place was sort of their Mecca. They'd assemble up here once in a while and go baptize a bunch of people in kayaks, that sort of thing. They were harmless ... there's about a thousand little religions festering in the trees out here, you know? Most of them disappear up their own assholes, excuse my French.' Sevigny narrowed his eyes. 'Mallick's group called themselves the Western Church of the Messiah. They were vegans, if that tells you anything.'

  'When's the last time you saw him? Simon?'

  'Oh God,' said Lawton, and he drew his hand over his mouth. 'It's been absolutely years. Him and his brother, Peter, live up in a little shoebox out in the forest. Is all this about the church?'

  'No,' said Sevigny flatly.

  Lawton looked at the empty plate in Sevigny's lap. While talking to Lawton, he'd devoured the entire slice. 'I could just put that back into the cupboard. You want another one?'

  Sevigny did but said no. He felt he couldn't waste his hands on anything but what was in front of him. Lawton dipped his head and told his guest that if he needed anything, he'd be at the front desk playing online poker. 'Good luck,' said Sevigny.

  So, a priest of some kind. He supposed that made some sense, but he didn't know how he could apply that information to the problem in front of him. He returned his attention to the little white box where the password went. The box was the keyhole. He typed in 'Peter', and 'Mallick', and 'PeterMallick', to no effect. He went back to the Gethsemane site and rolled his cursor all over the rock again. Nothing happened.

  The Garden of Gethsemane was where Jesus had been taken by the Romans the night before his crucifixion. It was an olive grove. Sevigny recalled that the night before his crucifixion, Jesus had bled in the garden. In the story, his blood was likened to olive oil. Sister Agata had raised her bony arm and cried out, 'Jésus s'est oint!' Jesus had anointed himself.

  Sevigny typed in 'Gethsemane' and nothing happened. He typed in 'Jesus' and 'Jesu' and 'Goddammit' and nothing happened. He felt like throwing the laptop across the room. He stared at the screen until it felt like the tiny dots of light there were going to burst apart. There was something behind that light; the barrier was an atom wide. He just had to lay the right word overtop of it and it would part for him. He typed in 'JaneBuck', and the page returned the error message again.

  He tried 'petersimon', and 'simonpeter' and 'simon'. Would this man, as smart as he was, make his username and his password the same thing?

  He would not.

  Sevigny sat back in his chair with a groan and closed his eyes. He'd barely slept since his plane had landed. It would be something unguessable. He leaned forward again and typed in the number of Jane Buck's rural postbox – '31290' – and the killer's inbox opened before his eyes like a blossom. He heard himself gasp. The inbox was empty. Sevigny, his hands quaking, checked the sent folder, but it was empty as well. There was nothing in 'outbox'. He clicked the 'deleted items' folder, and a list of emails trickled down the screen.

  Sevigny clicked on email after email. Name after name sang to him. After reading a dozen of the terse messages, he went back to the Gethsemane web page and added a forward slash and the word mashach to the url and the black stone evaporated like so much steam and revealed the world to him.

  'Braid Vincent's hair less.'

  'Cull those berry vines.'

  'Rave, you violent bears.'

  Jill Yoon looked up from her computer. Hazel Micallef, Ray Greene and James Wingate were staring at the fridge door, which was covered with a bedsheet. On it, the green ligature had been clothed with a human face. Yoon had explained that she'd developed a digital mouth that averaged together the measurements of the victims' sixteen mouths. The mouth that spoke to them from James Wingate's fridge was, she said, the visetic offspring of sixteen dead bodies. Now they spoke as one, in a computerized voice. But they said such things as:

  'Dave plows yearly,' and 'Cube the vibrations.'

  'Cube the vibrations,' said Ray Greene. 'That's going to come in handy one day, I feel certain of it.'

  'How many different things can it say?' asked Hazel.

  'Twenty-four hours isn't a lot of time for something like this. I haven't nearly exhausted all of the possibilities.'

  'But?'

  'But I've come up with a vocabulary of sixtyeight words,' said Jill Yoon, 'and I'm up to a hundred and fifty-five phrases.'

  'Do we want to hear any more of them?'

  Yoon searched down her list. They stared at the bedsheet, where their sixteen dead had been melted down into a living, electronic face. It breathed in and said, 'A cute doe saves belief.'

  'Fuck,' said Ray Greene. He walked into the living room and sat heavily on Wingate's couch. 'I liked this better when there was a possibility we could have programmed Hazel's lips to promise me a raise.'

  'We're not going to hit on it right off, Ray. It's not an exact science.'

  'That's right, it's witchcraft.'

  Wingate was standing beside the fridge, staring at the inhuman face. 'What if it's not in English?' he said. 'You made DI Micallef talk French earlier.'

  'It was a party trick,' said Jill Yoon. She'd borrowed one of Wingate's sweaters from the dresser in his bedroom and moved around in it like a clapper inside a bell. She'd raided his bed for its sheet. He'd felt sick when she called them back to his apartment at five in the afternoon and seen that she'd all but moved in. The sink was full of dishes from some kind of pasta meal she'd made herself from shrimp in his freezer, olive oil, fresh peppers, and a sundried tomato pasta he'd hidden at the back of a cupboard and never imagined she'd find. For a tiny thing, she ate like a bear. He wanted her out as soon as possible. 'I have highschool French, that's it.'

  'How does the program know English?' asked Hazel.

  'I taught it. I read it A Midsummer Night's Dream, half of Executioner's Song, and Snoopy comics. I still read to it sometimes, like it's my kid. It wants to learn.'

  'We need Sevigny,' she said.

  Ray groaned from the couch. 'What, we're going to wait until our man in B.C. flies back, then get him to read the collected works of Voltaire into this thing just so it can tell us how to trim raspberry vines in French? Honestly, Skip, I think you were right. We should seriously consider distributing the drawing that girl made. If he's in the Maritimes, then it's only a matter of days before he's finished what he's doing, and by the looks of it, he's the only one who really knows what he's doing.'

  'I'm calling Sevigny,' Hazel said, and she pulled her cell out of her pocket. 'Damn it, does he even have a cellphone?' As she was saying this, she heard a voice calling to her from her hand. She put the phone back to her ear. 'Hello?' she said. 'Sevigny, is that you?'

  Wingate and Jill Yoon watched her straining to hear Adjutor Sevigny. She covered the phone with her hand and said to them, 'He's in a shack somewhere.' Wingate could hear the man's clipped voice cutting in and out from the mouthpiece. He was terrified, that much was clear. He watched Hazel's face, then Greene's, for some clue as to what had happened. Sevigny was far away. Ha
zel had passed the phone to Greene, but grabbed it back from him. He said, 'There's a computer in that shithole?' and with that, Wingate knew a door had swung wide.

  'Take it all with you, Detective,' said Hazel Micallef. 'Do what you have to do and call us from your hotel.' She snapped the phone shut. 'He found a body. He found Jane Buck and she took him to a body.'

  'Sev was going to give him mouth-to-mouth,' said Greene, 'but he said he hates the taste of maggots.'

  'Ray.'

  'Sorry.'

  'Strike French,' Hazel said to Jill Yoon. 'We don't need it. James, go pluck Father Glendinning from his Sunday roast and bring him to me. Tell him to find his oldest Bible. We're going to teach Miss Yoon's computer how to speak Latin.'

  17

  Sunday 21 November, 8 p.m.

  Three hours later, they were huddled over Father Glendinning, who, still in his coat, was telling Jill Yoon's computer about the miracle of the loaves and fishes in Latin. At precisely 8 p.m., Hazel's cellphone rang again. She listened to the voice of Detective Sevigny spill into her ear from the other coast. He was highly agitated. 'Hold on,' she said after a moment. 'Stop.' She turned to the room. 'James, does your phone have a speaker on it?'

  'Why would I have a speaker phone? I don't even have a clock radio.'

  'I have VoIP,' said Yoon, and everyone looked at her at once. 'Just give him this number, I can take his call on my computer.' She handed Hazel a piece of paper and she read the number out to Sevigny. A minute later, the bridge from 'Disco Inferno' erupted out of Yoon's computer speakers, and she connected Sevigny to the room.

  'Start from the beginning again,' said Hazel. 'Go slow.'

  Sevigny was breathless. His voice manifested on Wingate's fridge as a black bar with a violent line waving down the middle of it. 'He is a priest, Simon Mallick. He run some kind of a church out here called' – there was a pause as he consulted his notebook – 'Western Church of the Messiah.'

  'What, like cowboys for Christ?' said Greene.