The Calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  At home she'd smelled proper food cooking and heard voices when she stepped through the door. When she poked her head around the corner from the kitchen, she saw her mother and four other women sitting at her dining-room table. Was it an intervention? No, Hazel realized, it was poker night. Her mother was hosting. She gestured to her furiously from the cover of the kitchen, and her mother, a displeased look on her face, got up and came over. 'Why didn't you tell me you were doing this tonight!'

  'It's on the calendar, Hazel,' her mother said.

  'I need this kind of noise tonight like ...' She couldn't think of what she needed it like. A murderer visiting a little girl? 'Look, can you maybe finish up and go to Clara's? I need one hour of peace and quiet.'

  'I am not asking my friends to pack up in the middle of their supper and move on. And anyway, Paula Spencer is late, as usual. Do you plan on giving her her supper when she shows up and then playing stud with her?' She stared her daughter in the eye. 'I thought not. Go shower. You smell like a locker room.'

  'Fine,' said Hazel, throwing her hands up. She stepped forward into the dining room. 'Clara,' she said, waving. 'Grace. Margaret. Mrs Eaton.' Sally Eaton did not approve of Hazel calling her by her first name. 'Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to say hello.'

  The women called their greetings.

  Hazel stepped back into the kitchen. 'There. I was nice. Now you can repay me by keeping it to a dull roar. And by making me a plate of whatever it is you old ladies are eating.'

  'There's a salad in the fridge.'

  'Christ, Mother.'

  'Go shower and rest. I have to put the pie in the oven.'

  She leaned into her mother, her voice strained. 'I'm catching a killer and you're baking pie and playing nickel poker? Do you think you might cut me just a little bit of slack?'

  'We don't play for nickels, dear,' her mother had said, and then switched the stove to 250 before walking back to her friends.

  It was dark and snowing hard. Wingate had brought three trays of coffee from town, and she watched him passing them out. In her doorway, Terry Batten was refusing his offer. She'd been standing in her parka on her front step staring at all the activity around her house and occasionally shooting Hazel a look. 'She's one angry lady,' said Wingate.

  'Do you blame her?'

  'She wants to know how many men are going to be in the house.'

  'I'm thinking five guys in radio contact at all access points coming toward the house from the town itself and the highway' – she turned to look at a house behind her – 'one of the shooters there and a second one on the neighbour's roof. That leaves three constables, not including you and me.'

  'So three in the house?'

  'Four. I want you there, James.'

  'Where are you going to be?'

  She beat her hands together for warmth. 'It's not a good idea for me to be there. You've built some trust with her and if I'm around too much, she might change her mind.'

  He nodded. 'You're going to have to go in there eventually. We can't hold a briefing out here on the lawn.'

  'I know,' she said. She looked at her watch. It was nine-thirty now. 'He told Rose midnight. But with the snow coming down and the roads the way they are, we might be here all night. I'm going to do a final briefing at ten-thirty, and then I want everyone in position and ready to go right after that. We're just going to have to deal with the cold.'

  'Should I tell Mrs Batten all that then?'

  Hazel looked toward the house. Terry was still standing on her front stoop. She was smoking a cigarette with her arms crossed. 'No, I'll tell her.'

  She crossed the lawn to the girl's mother, who, when she saw Hazel coming, turned sideways and cast her gaze up the street.

  'I don't suppose you have another one of those,' she said.

  Terry Batten took a deep drag and passed Hazel the pack without speaking. 'I know this wasn't an easy decision for you.'

  Terry laughed bitterly. 'You mean dangling my daughter in front of a killer?'

  'She's been magnificent, you know. Perfect.'

  'Yeah, well, maybe we'll put that on her gravestone. She was magnificent.'

  The cigarette tasted strange in the cold. 'In about an hour, if it's okay with you, we're going to bring everyone into the house and go over what we're doing here one more time. There are going to be three constables with you in the house, including one in Rose's room. I'm leaving James Wingate with you too, so if there's anything you need, he can get it for you.'

  'Your bagman has a talent for the sweet talk.'

  Hazel put her hand on Terry's arm and gently turned her to face her. 'I don't want you to change your mind, Terry, but I want you to know that one word from you and we can move both you and Rose to somewhere safe and we can try to take him without Rose here.'

  'You think he's that stupid? Don't forget, I met him. He'll probably smell you guys from a hundred kilometres out.'

  'That's not going to happen.'

  'It doesn't matter if I change my mind anyway. Rose has made hers up. She wants to see him again.'

  'He's not going to put a foot inside your house. I promise you.'

  Terry threw her cigarette out into the snow, where it briefly sizzled and went out. She set her eyes on Hazel's. They were burning with rage. 'You shoot him dead, Inspector, you hear? I don't care about your due process. I won't ever be able to sleep again if I know he's alive and thinking about what we did to him.'

  'Where he's going, Terry, it doesn't matter what he thinks about.'

  'He tried to kill my child, you know.'

  'He saved your child.'

  'Yeah,' she said, 'but now he's coming back to put her out of her "misery".' She pushed past Hazel and put her hand on the doorknob. 'You have children, don't you, Detective Inspector?'

  'I do.'

  'Knowing what he can do, would you want him in jail or in the ground?'

  'I hear you.'

  Terry paused at the door and stared at Hazel. 'I want you to see her. You've been skulking around out here all day, but I think you need to see her. So you understand fully what you've asked us to do.'

  She held the door open for Hazel and followed her into the house.

  * * *

  During the day, they'd wanted Rose to take a nap to make it easier for her to stay up as late as the operation required. 'The excitement will keep me up,' she'd told Wingate. When Hazel walked into the kitchen, the girl was sitting at the table eating a plate of oatmeal cookies and drinking camomile tea. She looked as fresh as a daisy.

  'Hazel!' she cried out in delight, and leaped up to hug her.

  'Hello, Rose. It's wonderful to see you again.'

  'Cookie?'

  'Thank you,' said Hazel, and took one. She sat across the small table from her. 'I wanted to tell you how very brave we all think you are.'

  'Brave means you're scared but not showing it. I'm not scared.' Terry had taken the seat between them and was rubbing her nose with a tissue. 'Terry is being brave,' she said. 'But I don't need to.' She patted her mother's hand. 'Do you want to see a drawing I made?'

  'Yes, Sweetie,' said Terry, and the girl bounded from the table to the hall. One of the Renfrew officers had to get out of her way. Hazel realized they would have to get someone to make up the girl, to take the colour out of her cheeks. Rose came back with a sheet of paper rolled up into a tube. It took the two women holding down both edges of the drawing to keep it open. It showed Rose walking a stairway that went high up into a night sky, a stairway that vanished among the stars. She was holding Simon in her arms. Terry let go of her half and the paper snapped shut like a blind rolling up into a ceiling. She rushed from the room.

  'I want to do this,' said Rose, taking the paper from Hazel.

  'I know you do. But I want you to understand, Rose, that when we take Simon from here, it won't be to Heaven. He's going to jail.'

  'I can write to him though, can't I?'

  Hazel blinked twice at the girl. 'That's up to your mother,' sh
e said.

  'You know what Terry's going to say about that.'

  She took Rose gently by the upper arm. 'I bet Terry would love to be called "Mummy". I bet she'd really like that a lot.'

  She seemed to think about that for a moment, and then she said, 'He's sad.'

  'Who?'

  'Simon. His heart is broken.'

  Hazel leaned forward and took both of the girl's hands in hers. 'Rose, I want you to listen to me. This man is very dangerous. No matter what he did for you, he's still a man who's done very bad things, and what we're doing here today is to make things right. For all the people he's harmed.'

  'He didn't harm me.'

  'I know. What he did for you was wondrous, Rose. But he's still a murderer.' Rose was smiling at her, stroking the back of Hazel's hands with her thumbs. 'You're a marvellous little girl, you know that? You're smarter than most of the adults I know. But don't make the mistake of thinking that Simon is a good man. Tell me you know what he's done is wrong.'

  'Of course I know that, silly.'

  'Good.'

  'But he's not a bad man, Hazel. He's just sad.'

  'Okay,' said Hazel, and she released the girl's hands. 'Go give your mother a hug, would you?'

  The girl tilted her head at her, as if Hazel were from a different species, then skipped out of the room. Hazel watched her go, and for a moment, the thought appeared in her mind that the Belladonna and his intended victim had access to a dimension she could not begin to imagine. But it was a place where death was somehow equivalent to life, and the transition between the two was a holy space. Perhaps, having peered into that space herself, it seemed not so strange to Rose. Perhaps it was even welcoming. She wondered for a moment if they could trust the girl.

  She left the house by the back door and stood in the denuded garden under the bare trees and got her cellphone out. Its little screen reflected the sky. Spere was already on his way to the site when he answered. 'Howard? We need someone who can make this girl look like she's on death's door.'

  'There's probably a funeral home in the town,' he replied. 'They know how to do that kind of thing.'

  'How fitting,' she said. 'Listen, what's the chance you can get Jack to call in a prescription for some mild sedatives to the local pharmacy here?'

  'You out of whiskey?'

  'For Mrs Batten.'

  'Ah,' he said.

  She stood scuffing the dirt with her foot and looking at the cellphone in her hand for a moment, as if she might be able to discern Spere's facial expression in it. She put it back against her ear. 'Howard?'

  'Yeah.'

  'How chummy are you with Gord Sunderland?'

  'What?'

  'Or Ian Mason for that matter.'

  'If this is your way of asking me out on a date, Hazel, it's not going to work.'

  'I just want to know how some of my other loyal associates are going to air their grievances.'

  'Look, Hazel, you're a pain in the ass, but for the most part, you're good people. Everyone knows that.' He paused for a second. 'Almost everyone.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'I'm sorry about Ray. I am. But what he did doesn't make any of the rest of us assholes. At least not for the same reasons. Okay?'

  'Okay,' she said.

  'Good. Now you want me to call Jack?'

  'Yeah.'

  'I can get you whiskey, too.'

  'Fuck off, Howard,' she said, but he'd made her smile. She erased it from her face immediately, worried that someone might see her.

  'I'll catch you there,' he said, his voice lifting at the end, as if he wasn't sure if he actually would. She hung up, feeling anew the stab of disbelief that Ray had betrayed her. It came at her like that raw sensation that visits you at unexpected times after someone dies. When, for a moment, you've stopped thinking about it and then suddenly it comes at you, fresh and terrible, and you realize it's still true. Someone you loved is gone for good.

  She put the phone away and leaned backward to stretch out the tightness in her lower back. This almost never worked, but on a night when she was determined not to indulge in any of her regular painkillers, it was all she had.

  At ten-thirty, she called muster in the house and the ten men and women who made up her team gathered in Terry Batten's living room and stood around its perimeter. Hazel invited Terry to listen in, but she would have none of it and stayed in the kitchen. Hazel went over the final details. Wingate would give the sign to the shooters to move into their positions on the two rooftops near the Batten house as soon as muster was over. The officers assigned to the interior were not to leave the house; the five rovers were to be in their cars doing their circuits as of eleven o'clock.

  Wingate was point man inside the house. Hazel would take up a post one street over, listening on an open channel for progress reports. She wanted radio silence as of eleven o'clock; they were to go fully dark unless something unexpected came up.

  'Like what?' said Terry from the kitchen.

  'We're going to be prepared for anything,' said Hazel.

  'Like if he's early?'

  'No,' said Hazel. 'He's never early.'

  Terry's gaze lingered on her a moment. 'Well, I guess you have the plan.'

  Wingate stepped forward. 'Mrs Batten, this is the largest police presence I've ever seen at a stakeout, and I worked for eight years out of a station house in downtown Toronto. Every one of us has your safety and Rose's safety at the front of our minds.'

  'Are your guns loaded?'

  He looked at Hazel, whose mouth twitched. 'Yes, they are.'

  She looked around the room at the police officers, and Hazel braced herself for another angry outburst from Terry Batten. But instead she headed back toward the kitchen. At the swinging door that led into it, she turned to the gathered force in her living room. 'I've got a pot of stew on and a couple loaves of garlic bread. I want you people to eat and then do your job and get out of my house.'

  On her way out, Hazel took Wingate aside. 'Look. Get the rovers moving now.'

  'It's only ten-forty.'

  'Just in case,' she said.

  At 10:55 p.m., standing out in the street again, Hazel could see curls of steam coming from the rooftops as the officers kept warm with flasks of soup or coffee, but as soon as the clock struck eleven, they were in lockdown. Hazel's cruiser was at its post one street over. She'd said her goodbyes after muster and sat with the child one more time, to go over what Simon expected her to do and what the Port Dundas PD needed her to do. Terry had stood in the doorway to the girl's bedroom and added her comments to Hazel's instructions when she thought there was any chance that Rose might forget who was really in charge under this roof.

  'You don't say anything, Rose,' said Hazel. 'You just do as he's asked you to do: you're to stand here looking out. Your voice might give away that you're not as sick as you've told him.'

  'And you don't put any part of your body outside of this house!' said Terry Batten.

  'I won't,' said the girl. It had seemed to Hazel that Rose was getting nervous as the time approached. She wondered if she shouldn't dose her with a little of what was keeping her mother level.

  'I want to stay here with her until the last possible moment,' Terry said.

  'You can be in this room until midnight, Terry. But after that, we have to clear the area. We don't want him seeing shadows in Rose's room. He's got to be certain that everything is as he's asked. Or he could be gone before we even see him.'

  'I'll lie in the bed with her. We'll be as still as the grave.'

  'I can't, Terry. The instant it's over, the two of you will be together, I promise.'

  Rose reached out and took her mother's hand. 'Mummy?' she said, and both of the women looked at her with their eyes wide.

  'Sweetie?'

  'I'm going to be fine. I'm not scared at all.'

  Terry scooped her daughter up in her arms and pressed the girl's face against her shoulder. She wept, holding Rose tightly against her. This is it, thought Hazel. She's
going to ask us to get out of her house. But instead, Terry said, 'You're such a big girl now, aren't you?'

  'Do what the police officers say, okay, Mummy? Tomorrow morning, this'll all be over and people will thank us.'

  'We thank you now,' said Hazel. 'But she's right. There's no turning back.'

  Hazel was in the car one block over, and the look on Terry's face when she'd at last let go of the little girl and agreed to leave the room was still branded on her mind. They'd closed the door on Rose's somewhat uneasy smile, and one of the Renfrew cops led her lightly by the arm away from the room. There were three officers in the house, two set up on rooftops with clear views of the street, the front of the house, and Rose's window. Hazel had linkup on a single frequency, but it was radio silence after eleven, and no one was to break silence unless it was an emergency, or Simon Mallick was captured, incapacitated, or dead.

  At ten after eleven, Spere startled her by appearing at the passenger door. He opened it and stepped in. 'Forgot I was here?' he said.

  'I thought you'd gone back to Mayfair.'

  'Wouldn't miss this for anything. Plus, it sounds like you need all the friends you can get these days.'

  'We're friends?'

  'You've made my life interesting again,' he said. 'I'm totally renaming all my goldfish "Hazel".' He settled back in the passenger seat and rubbed the tops of his legs. He eyed the ham sandwich wrapped in wax paper that she'd brought from home after making it secretly in the kitchen. After staring at it five seconds too long, he looked up to see her watching him. 'What?'

  'Friends share?' she asked.