The Calling (24 page)

'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. Hazel
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.'

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.

'Vegans,' said Sevigny. 'Weird people, it sounds.
But for some reason, he kill 'is own brother. And
then, after, he begin to search for people who want
to die. People had to look hard for him,' Sevigny
continued, 'he has a website, but only people who
are really desperate are looking deep to find him.
He's linked to other sites, places people would go
for alternate t'erapies. His links were buried, but
they say things like "end your suffering", and "complete
release from pain", impossible stuffs like this.
If you click, you go to a site called Anastasis and
you can write to him on a form. This site, it only
has the form, he tells you nothing. So you write.'

Father Glendinning, who'd been giving of himself
in the most stingy manner imaginable, began
to pay attention. Hazel marked it.

'Once you filled out the form, you press send and
it automatically link you to another site, this one is
called Gethsemane. There's nothing there but a big
picture of a rock. I find this rock on the man's
chest. But if he choose you—'

'For what?' said Hazel.

'If he choose you, he give you the rest of the
address for the Gethsemane page. And then
the stone moves.'

Yoon already had the page up. They were standing
behind her, looking at a black rock. 'We see it,
Adjutor. What's the rest of the address?'

He spelled it out for them and Yoon put it in.
The stone moved away and there were words
behind it. They all leaned in. '
Mashach
is Hebrew,'
said Glendinning quietly. 'It means to anoint with
oil. It's the root for the word
messiah
.'

The cold went through Hazel. The space behind
the rock said:

The stone releases its oil
He is anointed
In Gethsemane, you are the fruit of the tree
In Gethsemane, your seed will wither
Here, you are ground
His messenger comes
You are joined to Him
His messenger comes to you
You are the stone
His messenger is lashed to you
The stone releases its oil
You are anointed
You are the root and trunk and branch and flower

Yoon clicked throughout the message. Nothing
happened. They reread it. It was the first silence
any of them had experienced in more than a week.
'Anastasis,' said Hazel Micallef to Father
Glendinning. 'You looked at me.'

The priest's lips were wet and trembling. 'It's
Greek for resurrection,' he said.

'Are you still there, Adjutor?'

'I'm here.'

'What do those emails say?'

'They're contracts, I think,' he said. 'There are
times and places in them. He's made arrangements
with these people.'

'Jill, can you give him an email address he can
forward to? Adjutor, write this down.'

Jill Yoon read out her email address. 'I'm forwarding
all of this as I talk to you,' said Sevigny. They
saw the emails begin to pop up on Yoon's screen
instantly; the names of the dead in a clean blue font.
'I am afraid that we have already missed another one.'

'Who?'

'Her name is Tamara Laurence. She is in Pictou,
Nova Scotia. They arrange for yesterday, the
twenty-first. But there is one more to go.
Newfoundland. A man named Carl Smotes.
Tomorrow, the Belladonna says, he is arriving
tomorrow at two in the afternoon. I know it,
Trinity Bay, I visit it with my ex-wife some years
ago. It's beautiful there.' His voice was tailing off.

'Sevigny?'

'I'm here.'

'Send us everything. Send us everything you
have.'

'Yes.'

'You okay, Sevigny?'

'I feel sick.
Un vrai malheur de tristesse
.'

'What?' said Greene.

'Heartsick,' whispered Wingate and Greene
looked at him.

Hazel leaned in toward Yoon's computer. 'You
did good work, Detective.'

'Yes. But they are all dead. All of them.'

'You're done there. Do the Mounties know
what's going on?'

'I was never here,' he said.

Yoon disconnected. The line on the fridge where
Adjutor Sevigny's voice had been jumping went
flat. They found themselves staring at it. 'I bet the
Port Hardy RCMP are going to be real grateful to
be tossed a bone by the Port Dundas OPS,' said
Greene.

'They'll get their crime scene,' said Hazel. She
turned her attention to Glendinning. 'What do
you make of all this?'

'He's promised to open their graves,' he said, his
face a mask.

Hazel was scanning the emails as Yoon opened
them one by one. She looked behind herself to
Greene, who nodded in response to her silent
question.

'He was good at keeping his word,' he said.

'We need to get someone out to that house in
Pictou to confirm the body. He's been and gone,
but we can still catch him in Trinity Bay,' said
Hazel. 'We have –' she looked at her watch. It was
just after eight o'clock. 'We have less than sixteen
hours to intercept the Belladonna, and if we miss
him in Newfoundland, he's gone for good. I want
every RCMP officer within three hundred kilometres
of Trinity Bay to hit the road doing a
hundred and eighty. James, you're personally in
charge of making sure Carl Smotes gets into
protective custody. After that, I want you to
rendezvous with Sevigny and put together
whatever information you can on this Western
Church of the Messiah. Ray, you and I are going
back to the station house to coordinate with the
Mounties in Nova Scotia. And you—' she turned
to Glendinning. He started.

'Yes?'

'You sit with Miss Yoon, and don't go anywhere
until you hear that dead mouth say something that
makes sense to you.'

'Ohh
no
... I don't want any part of this now! I
came when summoned, but I've done my bit. And
anyway, that French officer, he told you where to
find your man.'

She sat down beside him and put her hand on
his. She'd never liked this priest, had always felt
that Port Dundas deserved someone with more
forebearance, more warmth. But he was their lot
and they were his. 'I saw how you looked at me,
Father. This scares you.'

'You're damned right it scares me.'

'We may know where to look for this man, but
we still don't know what he wants. If these people
have a message for us, you might be the only one
who can tell us what it is.'

He subsided a little. 'I don't want to know,
Hazel,' he said quietly, ashamed of his fear. 'I've
been sitting here for nearly ninety minutes reading
catechism to a machine. But I don't want to know
the results of my actions. I don't want to hear what
he wants.'

'I can't let you go, Father. I'm sorry.' She stood
and looked over the computers at Jill Yoon, who
nodded at her. She was going to have to handle the
reluctant priest. The rest of them had phone calls
to make.

'
Lemma
,' said the face on Wingate's fridge.

'No,' said Glendinning, his eyes in his lap. 'Start
with
libera
.'

There was no one available at the Pictou detachment.
It was suppertime on a Sunday. Hazel had to
call down to New Glasgow, twenty kilometres
away, to find a person who'd answer a phone. The
dispatcher there had one guy on the road, a
Constable Nevin. 'Can you patch me through to
him?' she asked, and a moment later, she heard the
man's voice. 'I'm Detective Inspector Hazel
Micallef,' she said to him. 'I'm calling you from a
detachment in central Ontario.'

'Good evening, Detective Inspector.'

'Constable Nevin, we've had some information
that leads us to believe there may have been a murder
in Pictou last night.'

'All's quiet up here, Ma'am,' Nevin said. 'We
had a couple kids driving a stolen golf cart across
the Eagle's Nest driving range last night, but nothing
else. Not even a DUI to keep us entertained.'

'I think the murder might not be discovered yet.
The victim lived alone.'

'How do you know this, Detective Inspector?'

'We had a tip. Can you go up to Pictou? The
address is 61 Mackie Road.'

'It'll take me about fifteen minutes,' he said. 'I'm
out by Trenton way.'

'I don't know where that is, Constable Nevin,
but I'll take your word for it. I'll give you my direct
line. Call me when you get there.'

'Will do,' said the officer.

Two desks over, Greene was arguing with the
RCMP. He put his call on hold when she came
over. 'The detachment in St John's is willing to
send a car.'

'We need a regiment.'

'I don't know if they
have
a regiment.'

'Don't be stupid,' she said. 'Where's James?'

'You told him to get Carl Smotes.'

She stood up and looked around. Wingate wasn't
at his desk. Then she saw him standing beside the
desk sergeant talking to a cop she didn't recognize.
'Hello?' said Greene into the phone. 'Listen, we
need a minimum of two cars out there. One at the
victim's house and at least one – yes, I
know
there's
no victim yet. For Christ's sake—'

Hazel took the phone from him. 'Good evening,
this is Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef. May I
ask who I'm speaking to?' The voice on the other
end identified itself as Staff Sergeant Power. 'By
this time tomorrow morning, sir, you're going to
have a dead man in Trinity Bay and quite possibly,
by this time tomorrow night, the local paper is
going to run a story saying you fellows were warned
in advance. This is for real, Sergeant; you need to
drop everything.' James was waving her over to the
counter; she held a finger up. 'Yes, I understand you
have staffing issues, everyone has staffing issues. But
you can't take a lead any less seriously because of it.
Please,' she said, 'get some people down there. You
need someone on the house, someone roving, and
someone watching the exits off the highway. We're
faxing you a drawing of the suspect.' She listened for
a moment. 'I'm not telling you how to do your job.
I'm telling you that if you catch this guy, you're all
going to get medals. I promise you.' She passed the
phone back to Greene and strode out to the counter,
where the strange cop was patiently waiting with his
hands in his coat pockets.

'Sorry to interrupt you,' said Wingate. 'But I
thought this was important. This is Sergeant Gary
Wharnsby, from Sudbury.'

The man stuck out his hand and Hazel shook it.
'Is Detective Sevigny here?'

'He's on his way back from British Columbia,'
she said.

'Can I ask what the hell he's doing in B.C.?'

'What is this about, Sergeant?'

Wharnsby looked back and forth between them.
'He was due to make a court appearance yesterday
morning. He never showed up.'

'I don't know anything about this. He was
seconded to us in the middle of the week.' She
waited for the man to respond, but his face was
implacable. He seemed very angry indeed. 'I guess
someone got off a speeding ticket then.'

'He wasn't appearing as a police witness,
Detective Inspector. He was being arraigned.'

'What?'

'He beat a fellow officer unconscious two weeks
ago. He's been suspended from the force.'

'Jesus Christ,' Hazel murmured. She thought she
was going to smash something. 'That fucking
Mason ...'

'I beg your pardon?'

She pulled herself together. 'Sevigny should be
landing in Toronto tomorrow morning. My
assistant will have the flight number. I'm sorry,
Sergeant, we had no idea of this.'

'It's probably not something he elected to tell
you.'

'No,' she said. She noticed Melanie out of the
corner of her eye. 'This is who you want to speak
to,' she said. 'Melanie, this is Sergeant Wharnsby.
Give him whatever information he needs.'

'I have Officer Nevin for you on your direct line,'
she said.

'God, okay.' She turned to Wharnsby and shook
his hand again. 'We're in the midst of something
here.'

'I can see that.'

'Sorry for the confusion with Sevigny.'

The man turned to leave. 'Just a sec,' said
Wingate.

'What is it?'

'I'm curious,' he said. 'About this ... assault
Sevigny committed. Allegedly committed.'

'He committed it. I was there.'

'The officer, then, the one he beat?'

'What about him?'

'Did he deserve it?'

Hazel couldn't help it: she smiled. 'Let the man
get down to Toronto, James.'

* * *

The three of them stood over the speaker phone
on the desk in the conference room. Hazel
punched the transfer button and spoke down into
the microphone. 'Detective Inspector Hazel
Micallef speaking.'

'I'm here,' said Constable Harry Nevin. He was
turning into Tamara Laurence's driveway from the
sideroad that led down from the highway. 'Looks
quiet from the front.'