A Door in the River

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  This was how it would go down: Jenner, who was naturally more settled a person than Eileen Bail, would go down to the casino and walk calmly up to the pickup window at about five o’clock in the afternoon. There she would give the name Fiona Emery and see if it resulted in getting the ID. If it did, she would signal to Hazel, who would be in an unmarked van up on Church Bay Road, behind the Five Nations Casino, with Spere and Greene, and the operation would go live, with Wingate entering Thurlow’s cab as Lupertans again, complete with Lupertans’s ID. If it was possible, they were going to release the door in the riverbed from a distance with Fiona Emery’s magstripe paired to a remote that could communicate on the same frequency as the lock and send three officers in. They were to secure the casino and leave one man there while the other two went deeper in to reconnoitre with Wingate, who would be “arrested” with the rest of the gamblers and the staff. Wingate had the number of employees at five, but he knew logically it had to be more. The forward group could neutralize the man who opened the door for him, as well as the hostess, and perhaps Ronnie, depending on his location. The guard named Gene would have to be taken down and whatever other guards might be present with the other girls. Wingate seemed sure there were only two. Another detail would take the Eagle simultaneously. There was also at least one other person in the Five Nations casino allowing the IDs to be distributed.

  By four, there were unmarked cars in position at both ends of the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth lines, as well as on RR26 at the entrance of the reserve, and Sideroad 1, above the Fifth Line. They were cutting off all avenues of escape. Wingate’s tracker had been replaced by a device that would get a signal boost from a location a kilometre away from the grove. Willan signed off on it. It was going to be the largest police operation of its kind in Westmuir County, ever. There were a lot of moving parts, and much room for error.

  By 4:30 p.m., everyone was in place. Wingate confirmed that Thurlow was driving and got into the man’s cab in front of the Eagle. Cassie Jenner, in a pair of baggy pants and a golf cap, walked into the casino at 4:35. She got into a lineup that was three people long and waited her turn. There was no sense at all that anything more illicit than people wasting their money was going on here. The woman at the membership intake desk was all smiles and efficiency, and the woman behind the little Plexiglas porthole, the one who was fulfilling the memberships, seemed just as warmly businesslike. The two ID employees were in identical casino uniforms. Cassie reached the front of the line and gave them the name, as she was instructed. With no acknowledgment or fanfare of any kind, the woman handed the ID over. “Good luck,” she said.

  Cassie walked out and murmured “Got it” into her lapel mic. She was to walk now to the location of the unmarked van parked on the shoulder on a residential road behind the casino, where Spere would swipe the magstripe through a data reader. At the same moment, “Pete Lupertans” was being driven into the fields. She walked past the valet’s podium and crossed the driveway that led into the first of the parking lots at the front of the Five Nations Casino. There was a woman in a uniform standing on the other side of the driveway, talking into a radio. She stepped forward and blocked Jenner’s path.

  “Madam, my name is Commander Ileanna LeJeune,” she said. “I’m afraid you’re under arrest.”

  Thurlow drove in silence, keeping his focus on the road in front of him, as Wingate went over in his mind the features of his own plan. Willan had supplied Greene with another fifty-four hundred dollars, which Wingate had in an inside pocket of his jacket.

  He didn’t care about the money. There were two innocent women in that place, kidnap and torture victims, trapped underground, and his only goal was to get them out alive. The three men (they were all men) Greene was planning on sending in after him were to take any and all parties they found in the casino, including the bettors themselves, and cart them off, but by the time the raid was two minutes in progress, he was pretty sure hell would have broken out in the other parts of the site. This meant getting out of that room, where he’d have the first chance to neutralize at least Gene. He had no weapon on him at all, though, just his wits and his training. It had been a long time since Wingate had taken a man down with his bare hands, but as he’d learned before, righteous anger tends to focus a person. He had no doubt he could put Gene down in a matter of seconds. He viewed his own actions in advance, in the training room of his imagination, and he saw himself coming out to ask for something – some rope, some whiskey, something credible – and before Gene could react to the request, Wingate would deliver a single fingertip stab to the throat, followed by a knee in the balls. Simple, direct, effective. Then he’d have the weapon before Gene could either react or notify any of the other casino employees. Especially Ronnie. He wanted to stay clear of Ronnie. Then Cherry would show him the door to where the other girl was being kept. There would be two more heavily armed officers with him by this point.

  All of their energies were now dedicated to busting the brothel in the fields. The murder that had touched off the whole case was back-burnered now, the first salvo in a crime the dimensions of which they could never have imagined until they’d seen it for themselves. He was more or less in a state of rooted terror. He could think, but he was actively in fear of his life now. It was amazing to him that this Kitty, on nothing but her will and her wits, had gotten out of here. And then done what she’d done. This was a dangerous person, a desperate person. It had not been admitted openly, but her transit from prime suspect to victim during the past week made their attitude toward her own mission sympathetic, if not exactly collegial. If Henry Wiest and Terry Brennan had encountered Kitty the way it seemed they must have, then whoever was next on the girl’s list was low priority at this point. If she found what she was looking for, she’d vanish and be of no further concern to them. Or, Wingate had to admit, at least of no further concern to him. If David had survived the beating that had killed him, Wingate imagined not one of his colleagues would have spent much time investigating the mysterious revenges David might then have enacted. Not that he was that kind of person. Wingate was that kind of person. Or at least he’d become it.

  Thurlow arrived at the grove at 4:45, and the black Mercedes stood guard as Wingate got out the back of the cab. It was a pleasant August late afternoon.

  “He’s there,” said Spere, tracking a small, hollow blue triangle on a screen in the remote van. Hazel watched the symbol move forward at walking speed now and then stop at where the metal door was with its card reader. She imagined the door in its concrete footing and saw a pale grey square with a heavy plate in it, something like the hole Alice went through to get to Wonderland. That, too, had been a tale of innocence full of strange perversions, but they were harmless ones. She remembered reading those books to Emilia and Martha when they’d been girls, and like all children who had heard those stories, the thrill and magic of hidden worlds had animated their imaginations thereafter. Hazel doubted, were she ever to have grandchildren, that she would read those books now. Especially after learning, some years after the girls had grown up, what kind of man Lewis Carroll had been.

  “Where are Willan’s guys?” she asked Greene. Willan had insisted on supplying Toronto SWAT-trained men for the raid. They’d arrived in Mayfair the night before.

  “They’re in place.”

  “I have to give them the signal,” said Spere. “I have to run the card Jenner’s bringing first. If I can’t trip the door remotely, then I have Dortmeyer ready to run it out.”

  “Who’s Dortmeyer?”

  “One of mine.”

  “I’m going in myself if you can’t trip it from here.”

  Greene put his hand on her wrist. “I have strict orders to keep you under my wing,” he said.

  “Is that the word Willan used? Or did he say thumb?”

  Greene smiled at her. “Just sit tight. There’s a plan.”

  She checked her watch. On foot, it was supposed to take Jenner ten minutes to get to the van. She had one m
ore minute.

  The triangle was moving again. Spere said, “He’s in. He’s at a depth of five feet. Eight. Ten.” It stopped. This was the second door. A moment later, the symbol that represented him moved forward a millimetre on Spere’s screen.

  “She should be here,” Hazel said, and she stepped past the two men to the front seat of the van, where a black and white screen showed four small squares of real estate on all four sides of the van. She looked at the upper right-hand corner, which showed the view to the rear, where Cassie Jenner should already have been visible. “I don’t see her at all,” she said.

  “Take it easy,” said Greene. “James is moving around freely inside the casino now. Give her another couple of minutes.”

  Hazel kept her eyes trained on the view out of the back. They were parked down Church Bay Road behind the casino, pulled off to the side. The outside of the van had been painted with the name Wilson and Son Surveying. There were even two men standing in the woods beyond with a compass and theodolite. They’d been Willan’s idea.

  Wingate was now moving in a straight line again. Howard Spere was working on the screen in front of him, clicking squares on a grid that overlaid the satellite image of the fields between the Ninth and Tenth Lines. It looked like a rudimentary computer game now, with glowing red squares marking where the triangle had been. According to the grid, Wingate had travelled now to a depth of five metres, and he was about a hundred metres southeast of the entrance in the grove. Now the pathway curved and he descended another eight feet. The signal was still strong.

  It was 4:50. Jenner was three minutes late now. “I’m calling her,” Hazel said. She got her cell out and dialled her constable. Jenner answered her phone after two rings, but it wasn’t Jenner’s voice.

  “Who is this?” it said.

  “Who is this? Where’s Cassandra Jenner?”

  “Who’s Cassandra Jenner?”

  Hazel tried to hide the alarm in her voice. Greene and Spere were staring at her. “I must have the wrong number.” She hung up. “Fuck.”

  “What is it?”

  “She’s compromised,” Hazel said. “We have to get Wingate out of there.”

  Before they could stop her, she’d thrown the road-side door of the van open.

  “Do you believe me now?” said Cassie Jenner.

  It took Hazel a moment to register who Jenner was talking to. She saw Commander LeJeune returning the cellphone to the constable. LeJeune came forward and looked into the van.

  “Well,” she said. “Isn’t this a surprise.”

  Ronnie met Wingate at the inner door. “Mr. Arsenault,” he said. “Welcome back.”

  The casino was almost empty. A couple of diehards, including the woman he’d seen last time at the blackjack table, were hard at work gambling. He guessed the operation also catered to people who couldn’t stop, and for whom the will or desire to lose everything was strong.

  “You brought the money?” Plaskett asked. Wingate handed it over. “Cherry’s ready for you.”

  He led Wingate through the door in the roulette room that opened onto the continuation of the riverbed, which connected the casino to the rooms beyond, and Wingate followed him. He thought of the matchbook-sized device planted under the sole of his right shoe and willed it to send its beacon back to Howard Spere’s computer loud and clear. His muscles were twitching in his forearms and his calves. For a moment, he wondered if he shouldn’t try to take the man out here and now, between the two populated parts of the site, but if he went alone through the door that Gene was watching, he might not get another chance at Plaskett. He had to wait.

  “After this, you can come back and try someone else,” he said. “We’re expecting some new stock as early as next week.”

  The sound of Plaskett’s voice intoning these details so casually filled Wingate with rage. But as René Arsenault, he forced himself to say, “I can hardly wait. If Cherry is anything to judge by, you can expect to see a lot more of me.”

  “I like to hear that,” Ronnie said. “We like to keep our customers happy.”

  They had reached the door in the earthen wall and Ronnie ran his card through. The door swung open and almost right away, there was a second sound, a louder one, and Plaskett flew backwards, a spume of dark red blood tracing his descent. He hit Wingate flat on, driving him backwards. Wingate twisted, scrambling to the side, trying to make himself as small as possible against the curved wall behind him. He heard footsteps coming forward.

  “Detective Wingate?” came a woman’s voice.

  In a dark patch in front and to the side of the door, he was trying to control his breathing.

  “I know you’re there. It’s okay, come out.”

  He waited a moment and then emerged. The woman standing in the doorway held a Ruger in her hands. He recognized it as a single-shot model of the kind that likely killed Jordie Dunn. “I’m unarmed,” he said.

  “I know,” the woman replied. “I’m Constable Lydia Bellecourt.”

  “Thank God,” he said, coming forward, breathing a sigh of relief. “Did you guys come in from the Eighth Line?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, I’m just glad you came when you did. Do you have a radio?”

  “What do you want a radio for, Detective Constable?”

  Something in her tone made him realize he’d been operating under a presumption borne out of the fear he’d felt when her gun had gone off. Now he saw she was still holding the gun, and holding it on him.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Who do you think told Ronnie to give you a new membership card? And told her commanding officer that the casino might be doubling as an outlet for fake IDs? She has no idea what for, of course, but she’s probably taken down the other half of your raid by now. No one is coming, Detective Wingate.”

  Hazel had wondered out loud if Dunn’s murder had been a warning to them, and it had. But in reading the warning the wrong way, they had played into Bellecourt’s hands. She’d been a step ahead of them the entire time.

  “Come on in back,” she said. “You can join the party.”

  ] 29 [

  She finished her run with the top of the house in view over the trees, and she rested. She didn’t have any way to tell the time accurately, but judging by the position of the sun, it was coming up to five o’clock. If, for whatever reason, Sugar had gone out, he’d be back by six. It would be a good idea to find a vantage on the driveway and keep an eye out for the delivery boy.

  She dipped back down below the house – the address was 175 Highland Crescent – crossed the road quickly, and ran back up to a position across from it. And like clockwork, about forty minutes later, a car pulled up the drive and parked at the top of the curve. A man with a large brown paper bag knocked on the door, and she watched Sugar open the door and pay the man in cash. She saw the delivery boy look down into his hand – no doubt Mr. Sugar was a poor tipper – and he got back into his little car and came out the other end of the driveway.

  How much did that house cost? Why do people who have everything want more? They get bored. Money shows them what’s available, and after a while, they start wanting what isn’t available. She’d known wealthy people back in Ukraine, it was impossible not to at least know someone who knew an oil magnate. Ukraine was lousy with oil magnates, and they were obsessed with tax dodges. There was another story in the newspaper every week.

  She waited for the lights to go on in the TV room at the side of the house she could see, and then she crept up through the trees and crossed to the other side of the house. There were doors and windows everywhere in this place. He’d spared no expense. But at the same time, he’d created about twenty ways into his home.

  She’d checked just three doors and two windows before she spotted a slip of curtain flapping lightly in the breeze on the wrong side of the wall. A window was open a couple of inches. She listened for any sounds beyond, then raised the pane as silently as she could. When she was able to fit
her body through, she immediately dropped to the floor and stayed still. This was a study of some kind. She’d never been in here. She could only presume that if Sugar ever got his way and kept her forever, eventually she would have been raped in this room, too. But this was the first and last time she was ever going to see it.

  Sugar loved carpeting and walked barefoot everywhere in the house – this was an unexpected boon to her now. Barefoot herself and raw from the run, she was grateful for the softness and cool of the carpets. And, of course, they muffled her steps.

  She opened the study door a crack and looked into the hallway. She could hear the drone of Duffy’s television, a repeating cycle of intonations with just enough variety that you knew a human was speaking. The house smelled of pizza and her stomach wrenched. She was starving, but her body was craving real food: fresh vegetables, fruits, brown rice, good coffee, chocolate. The smell of fast-food cheese sickened her. In the hallway, she oriented herself to the sound and determined that she could get around the back of the house to the cold storage, and through it, into the back hall and then the TV room.

  She moved down the hall toward the back of the house and realized she was going to have to pass Duffy’s guest bedroom. He was strangely fastidious about his own room, and she had never been brought into it. It was the guestroom where she was attacked most frequently, and where he kept most of his paraphernalia. She went past it silently and didn’t look into its open door.

  Ten days ago, she’d had no hope at all, and now she was almost a free woman. They’d tried to trick her, or test her loyalty, but she’d been too clever for them. She’d heard that Bochko liked to test the girls, to see if he’d truly broken them. He tempted them. Those who failed weren’t heard from again. Eventually, all of them were never heard from again.

  A man had been waiting for her in one of the bedrooms, someone new. Bobby was standing in the doorway behind her, telling the new man to have a nice time. Kitty was still fresh, he said. Talented.