The Calling (32 page)

Monday 29 November, 5 p.m.

One of the sinister benefits of a life in policework
was the context it gave one's own troubles. Many
times, Hazel had reflected on a lost child, a life
being ruined by drugs, those who died by their own
hands. The suicides both haunted and reassured
her: they were object lessons in how bad it
hadn't
been in her own life, even when she and Andrew
were splitting up, even when one of Marty's
depressions felt like thunder in the distance of
her own life. In the midst of the joy-occluding
pain she sometimes felt in her body, she could
still take inventory in comparison and know how
good her life was. So it was a revelation of
the darkest kind when she realized there was
nothing that could contrast with this moment
in her life now. That there wasn't someone
else's shoes she could be grateful for not being in.

There had been no news for the rest of Sunday.
She felt as if she were standing over a huge body of
water into which someone had vanished and she
was telling herself not to give up hope. Maybe a
person can hold their breath for this long. Maybe
they can tread water for this long.

Monday morning, nothing. They'd expanded
the road-to-road sweep into the smaller towns lining
the 121 to the west, and all of the towns and
villages within fifty kilometres of Highway 41 all
the way to Fort Leonard. No one who listened
to the radio, watched the television or read the
Westmuir Record
could not be aware that the largest
manhunt in the county's history was unfolding over
every inch of it. Sunderland had, for the second
time in as many weeks, spent the entire weekend
resetting his front section. It was now dedicated to
Emily Micallef's abduction and Clara Lyon's
murder. His introduction to Adjutor Sevigny had
inspired in the editor a certain new caution: the
paper reported the latest tragedies to hit Port
Dundas with something approaching sobriety. The
bodily insult done, in various forms, to another five
of the town's elderly population did not result in
any woolly speculation on how safe it may or may
not be to enjoy one's retirement in Port Dundas.
However, sitting with nothing in front of her at the
kitchen table but the paper, Hazel could not bring
herself to feel grateful for the
Record
's newfound
discipline. She was looking at a picture of her
mother standing in front of Micallef's in 1952,
her chin high, eyes bright, with that self-possessed
smile of hers. Most children think of themselves as
immortal, but as a child, Hazel had always looked
into this confident face and believed that her
mother was the immortal one. She lowered
her head into her hands and wept.

At his supper break, Wingate showed up at the
house with food. He stood in her doorway, willing
her to say or do anything to him she felt she had to,
but after a moment of staring into her red-rimmed
eyes, he simply put down his bags, stepped into the
foyer and held her. She turned and led him down
the hall and into the kitchen, where she put the
kettle on for coffee. 'I know you haven't eaten,' he
said.

'Not hungry.'

'You could need your strength at any moment,'
he said.

She leaned against the counter. 'You mean to
help me bear up when the bad news comes?'

'I mean to lead.'

She laughed, a dry, clicking sound in her throat.
'Sure, James. From my empty living room in
Pember Lake.'

'You have no idea how many of us have personally
made our opposition to Mason's decision
known to both him as well as anyone they can get
through to at the OPS head office in Toronto. You
have everyone on your side.'

'Have you spoken to Mason to oppose his decision?'

He hefted his bags onto the kitchen table and
without looking up, he said, 'I'm not Ray Greene.'

'I know that,' she said. 'Ray would have brought
me whiskey.' She watched as he expressionlessly
removed a sixteen-ouncer from one of the bags and
put it on the table. 'Ah,' she said.

He sat down awkwardly at the small table and
arranged the rest of his purchases. Cheese, deli
meat, bread, a large bar of dark chocolate. She saw
the chocolate and felt hungry for the first time in
two days. She poured the hot water into a mug and
put it and a jar of coffee grains in front of him, but
didn't give him a spoon. He said nothing; it seemed
a lot to ask for a spoon at this moment. At the
station house, there had been a lot of whispering
about Hazel having been under a doctor's supervision
for some time. If she hadn't been, he hoped
she was now, or would be soon. He knew what
intractable grief could do to a person. He looked at
her carefully as she reached into her cupboards for
a couple of plates. He saw she was sockless in slacks
and a freshly ironed blue dress shirt. It was as if
she'd dressed the role to the 60 per cent mark and
stopped. He half expected to see an empty holster
on her hip.

'You want me to make you a sandwich, or are you
skipping right to the chocolate?' he asked.

'I'm going to be positive and say that sometime
soon there's going to be someone back in this house
telling me what to eat. So yes, I'll have the
chocolate now.'

He passed it to her and she unwrapped it. The
smell of the dark bar caused her mouth to fill with
saliva. She imagined she might look like a starving
dog. When she bit into the chocolate, the glands at
the back of her jaw clenched with such force that
she thought she was going to cry out in pain.

'To answer your question, yes, I did tell Mason
how I felt. He gave me a choice to wait and hear
the outcome of the investigation in Barrie or to
lead it here in Port Dundas.'

'Did you call him "sir"?'

'I didn't call him what I wanted to call him.' He
tore a chunk from the baguette with his bare hands
and then split it open. 'I did tell him that if Simon
Mallick had shown up at Humber Cottage three
days ago that Mason would be having his picture
taken beside you right now.'

'The thing you should be asking yourself right
now, James, is whether or not a bottle of Scotch
and a loaf of bread is enough to make you a codefendant
in the eyes of the magistrates of Renfrew
and Westmuir counties.'

'I'd sit at that table with you, Hazel.'

'Let's hope it doesn't come to that.'

She put a full carton of milk and the sugar bowl
on the table, and then finally noticed he didn't
have a spoon, and she placed one in front of him
wordlessly. 'Look,' he said, 'there's something I
have to say.'

'Go ahead.'

'I get why Ray quit. I understand why he did
what he did.'

'I see.'

'They told us when we were cadets that nothing
was personal when it came to the world outside the
station-house door. But that inside the doors, we're
family.'

'And I got that wrong?'

'You saw a killing in your own town as a personal
affront. You were willing to do anything to get this
guy. You crossed all kinds of lines.'

It hurt to hear him talk this way, more perhaps
than the way Greene had spoken to her. Wingate
bore her no ill-will. He was telling her the truth.
'Well, I've been punished then.'

'I'm not saying I wouldn't have done the same
thing, maybe. In your shoes. I know a little about
what it feels like to want to avenge something.'

'Tell me about that.'

'Another time,' he said. He tore off a piece of
bread and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment,
looking down at the table. 'I just want to say that
we should have all gone down together. You're the
skip. You lead, we follow. But we shouldn't have
been that far in back of you, Hazel. Ray Greene was
better than that. I'm better than that.'

She felt sodden, sinking into the floor. 'I wish I
was going to have the chance to make it up to you,
James, I really do.'

'You might. When the dust settles they're going
to take a long look at this place and try to decide
how they want it to run.'

'They're going to amalgamate us. Everything
that just happened here is catnip to Ian Mason.
Greene was right. God knows Mason'll probably
tap him to take over.' She looked over at Wingate
and the colour had drained out of his face. 'You're
kidding me.'

'I was going to circle around it a while longer.
Get a sense of how hard you were willing to fight
before I told you.'

'God.'

'They haven't asked him yet. They wanted to
test it out on us.'

'I don't think it's going to matter what you want,
James. That's not how they work.'

'I said I understood why Ray did what he did. But
I never said I agreed with it. Nobody wants to work
for Ray Greene. We want to work for you.'

She reached for the instant and turned to stir a
spoonful of it into her cup. 'You people shouldn't
be wasting your energy trying to save my bacon.'

She heard his chair slide back suddenly and she
turned and he was leaning over his fists on the
table. 'Do you see? Do you see what you said? We're
not trying to save just your goddamned bacon,
Hazel!' His arms were shaking.

'I'm sorry, James.'

'Family
inside
, the rest of the world
outside
.
That's how I was trained to see it. If we fight for
you, will you try to see it that way?'

'Yes,' she said, thoroughly ashamed. 'I'll try.'

He slowly sat back in his seat, his eyes sliding
away from her. Who was this young man, she
wondered? This ferocious young man? Would she
survive all of this to be permitted to return to that
world he lived in?

'I heard from Sevigny this morning.'

'You did, eh.'

'He called from some back room in the courthouse
in Sudbury.'

'What's going to happen to him?'

'Nothing good.' He made eye contact with her
again. 'Hazel, he searched Jane Buck's house before
he left Port Hardy.'

'What?'

'Told me she wanted to help our investigation. I
think it might have been a euphemism.'

'Christ, James! Why didn't you say that as soon
as you walked in?'

'I had more important things to say first.' She
came to the table, drew a chair out and sat. He
watched her process what he'd just said. He
wondered if his treatment of her here today would
come back to haunt him. 'He said he'd had an
intuition about Buck when they were out at the
cabin. She flinched when he took the Lord's name
in vain. So he took her home and "motivated her"
was how he put it.'

'I don't want to know.'

'He spared me the details. He had the right
instinct about her though: turns out she was the
church secretary. She'd been in it right from the
beginning; she had all kinds of paraphernalia.' He
reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a
couple of folded sheets. 'He talked some clerk at
the Sudbury courthouse into faxing this for him.
It's the back and front of a pamphlet advertising
the church. It's from 1988.'

She unfolded it and began to read. The pamphlet
invited those who were dissatisfied with their
own churches to consider one that understood the
conditions under which the True Christ would
return. 'Will the Christ,' she read aloud, 'who
suffered in the wilderness, come to deliver those
who wear furs and whose breath stinks of blood? In
whose veins unnatural abominations run?' She
looked up at Wingate.

'Keep going,' he said.

The pamphlet asked the reader to consider
whether the Son of God would descend to deliver
the venal from their false gods. The church proposed
a return to severe purity. Its touchstones were
extreme hygiene, a diet based in local and natural
foods, and an obsessive belief that it was only to a
wilderness imbued with this kind of propriety and
integrity that Christ would return. Modern
medicine of any description was forbidden. It was a
short argument, intended to attract only those who
were already halfway there. The leader of the group
was Simon Mallick.

'There's a picture of him at the bottom of the
second page,' Wingate said, and he folded back
the page she was reading. There was a picture of a
man at the bottom of the last section. He sported
a huge, black beard and was as stout as a Viking.

'
That's
Simon Mallick?' said Hazel, looking at
Wingate.

'Exactly.'

There was no doubt in her mind that the man
pictured in the pamphlet was the same man whose
body Detective Sevigny had discovered in the Port
Hardy cabin. The Simon drawn by Rose Batten
was a different man: a wiry, rat-eyed creature.
Pinched, angry, desperate. The one in the pamphlet
was a Buddha: soft, calm, with laughlines
around his eyes. The charisma of one who could
draw in the lost and needy.

'Jane Buck called the man in the cabin
Peter
,'
said Wingate. 'So if the dead man is actually Simon
Mallick ...'

'Then the man in Rose's drawing—?'

'—has taken his brother's name.'

'And he's stalking the countryside rebuilding his
brother's church.' She refolded the faxed sheets
and handed them back to her new CO. 'Well,
there's the reason there's been no activity in any of
Simon Mallick's accounts. We've plugged the
wrong name into the database.'

'Costamides is already on it.'

'Wow. When they let Sevigny out of jail they
should give him a promotion.' She sat thinking for
a moment. 'If you guys are prepared to fight for me,
we might as well start now.'

'I was hoping you'd say that.' He stood and
picked his cap off the table.

She poured the coffees into the sink. 'Bring the
chocolate,' she said.

No one attempted to stop her.

Hazel, in full uniform, went through the front
doors of the station house and into the pen.
Everyone stood as she passed and a few saluted. She
had never been saluted inside her building.
She went to the back of the room. 'Anyone who
feels they can't work under me can leave with no
fear of consequence,' she said. 'If you stay, you're in
direct violation of an order from the commander of
the Ontario Police Services. So make up your mind
right now.'