The Calling (9 page)

He swept her letter to her daughter from the
tabletop and quickly searched the house for his
letters to her. He had instructed all of his hosts to
keep his correspondence in one place, where he
could retrieve it at the end, and here, in this house,
as in all the others, he found the letters just where
he had told Mrs Iagnemma to keep them: in a small
box in a clothing drawer in her room, weighted with
a long, rough black stone on its top. With the
bundle of paper, he got back into the car and
continued driving east.

Monday, 15 November, 7:30 a.m.

Hazel Micallef stared into her All-Bran. It stared
back. Resigned, she picked up her spoon and began
eating. Food for horses, she thought. Her mother sat
across from her in her petit-point-adorned housedress,
her short grey hair sticking up from sleep. It
was seven-thirty in the morning under grey
November clouds. Hazel wanted to go back to
bed.

'Do you think you're losing weight?' said her
mother.

'I'm losing sleep.'

'I think you are.' She went back to her paper. The
Toronto Star
. After a moment, she said, 'So this
other man – you're certain he was killed by the same
guy?'

'I'm not certain of anything, Mother. All we
know is that we have two bodies within three
hundred kilometres of each other. And up here,
that's a pattern.'

Her mother held up the front section of the
Star
.
'Down there, it's a weekend.'

'Ray thinks he's travelling. The killer. West to
east.'

'You need a third body to prove that.'

'I know.'

'We had one murder the whole time I was mayor.
A man killed his wife.'

'Gerald Clipshaw.'

'You remember.' Her mother was smiling as if
Hazel had recalled her birthday. 'He stabbed her in
the heart and then showed up at the station with the
knife. Crying. The whole thing took an hour to
solve.'

'Ah, things were so much simpler in the olden
days.' She took another spoonful of the soggy cereal.
Already she was imagining what she would order at
Ladyman's. She dreaded showing up to work this
morning. Word of the Ulmer murder had made it to
Port Dundas, and she was certain she'd be hearing
from Gord Sunderland today. She'd had a phone call
the night before from a TV station in Mayfair –
if the news had already made it halfway to Toronto,
she had to wonder if it wouldn't make it the rest of
the way soon, and that was something to be delayed
as long as possible. She'd already had the instinct
that the outcome in this case depended upon the
police protecting the killer's privacy and therefore
upholding his sense of invincibility. She was certain
that he would vanish at the first sign of danger. His
touchstones were patience and preparation. Just the
same, another body would mean bedlam. She feared
its inevitability. 'I better go,' she said. 'Try not to
answer the phone today.'

'You want me to lock the doors and stay in bed
with the covers up to my chin?'

'No. Just don't talk to anyone you don't know.'

'I'm playing rummy with Clara and Margaret this
morning. We'll cower together under the table if you
like.'

Hazel sat on the deacon's bench in the front hall
and leaned over to put on her boots. She felt the
familiar twinge in her lower back, the pain radiating
in a sharp electrical shock around the front of her
hip. Her mother could probably still pole-vault, if
she wanted to, and here I am, thought Hazel, falling
apart at sixty-one.

Her mother came down the hallway with something
wrapped in wax paper. 'What's this,' said
Hazel, taking it from her.

'Something to cheer you up, love.' Hazel held the
little package up. There was a piece of toast inside.
She could smell butter.

'You're a nice old lady,' she said. She kissed her
mother on the forehead – that smell of rosewater –
and went out to the car.

Monday was the news conference. The editorial staff
of the
Westmuir Record
would have been hard at
work all weekend resetting today's edition of the
paper, and she had no doubt that Sunderland was
not going to be pleased he'd been shut out of a
personal audience with her. Hazel had to smile
inwardly at her mild deception.
Misdirection
is how
she liked to put it. But who was Gord Sunderland to
think he was entitled to anything? She was interested
in knowing what the paper was going to say
about Delia Chandler. She pulled over by the Stop
'N' Go and bought a copy of it. The front page and
the two inside local news pages had been reset to
deal with Delia's murder. Spelling bees and
Christmas wreaths were going to have to wait for a
quiet newsday now, she thought. A picture of Delia,
taken sometime in the last three or four years, was
on the front page under the headline PORT
DUNDAS LOCAL MURDERED IN HER OWN
HOME. The front page advertised full coverage of
the murder within, plus an editorial. There were no
specifics about Delia's death, which meant the
station house was still sealed tight, but the witness
who had seen a 'strange car' on Taylor Street was
now claiming it was a black, late-model Ford sedan.
Interesting what a microphone can do for a faulty
memory, Hazel thought. On the inside pages there
was a picture of Delia from the 1960s. She'd been
quite beautiful then, her lips painted darkly. Old
photographs could make you feel bad for anyone:
those innocent faces with no knowledge of the
future. There was Delia, not knowing that forty-odd
years from that moment, she'd be lying dead on her
sofa, her head almost completely sawn off. Best not
to know, Hazel said to herself, and she shuddered,
realizing that the mystery of her own future contained
first her mother's death, and then her own.

At the station house, she slipped in through the
back door where she could avoid the small gathering
of local press she expected had already begun to
assemble out on the front steps. She gestured
to Melanie to follow her into her office. She shut
the door once her assistant entered and stood in the
middle of the room with her. 'I have a cellphone
now,' she said.

'I know,' said Cartwright. 'That's really excellent.'

'You and Ray Greene will have the number. No
one else, though. No reporters, no mothers, no one.
Is that clear?'

There was a brief silence. 'Is there anything else?'
asked Cartwright.

Hazel brought the phone out of her vest pocket.
'I'd like you to show me how to place a call on this
thing.' Cartwright smiled faintly. 'I'd wipe that look
off your face, missy.'

'You have to turn it on.'

'Take me through it.' Melanie Cartwright took
the phone from her and pushed the power button.

Everyone at the station house had the newspaper.
Hazel walked into the pen and one of the duty
officers, PC Ashton, held up his copy and said,
'Apparently, we're still at square one.'

Hazel took the paper away from him and held it
at her side. 'All of you may be as shocked as the rest
of the readers of the
Westmuir Record
that a murder
has happened in our sleepy little town. But unlike
those people, we don't get our news from the
Westmuir Record
, no matter how tempting it may be.
Now, how many of you in this room spoke to
reporters at this newspaper?' No one raised their
hand, but all looked around; they took her question
to indicate that someone had broken rank. But
instead, Hazel smiled at them. 'Right. None of you
did. And none of you will. And that's why I want to
see every copy of the
Westmuir Record
in this room
in the recycling bin immediately. It has nothing to
say to us, and I don't want you getting your facts
mixed up with other people's speculation.'

'Um, Inspector,' said Ashton, whose paper she'd
taken. 'I was actually looking for a used fridge.
Mine's on the fritz.'

She handed Ashton his paper back. 'Adrian can
buy a new fridge, but the rest of you ...' The room
seemed to rise as one. 'Greene, Wingate: I'd like to
see you in the conference room when I'm done with
the hordes. Howard Spere will be here any minute.'
Both detectives nodded at her. 'I'll be back in ten.'

She recognized Paul Garland from the weekly
Dublin
Ledger
, Patricia Warren from the
Beaton Advertiser
(monthly), and two younger reporters from parts
unknown. She suspected they might be from the
cable access station in Mayfair. But there was no
Gord Sunderland. 'We're going to wait a minute,'
she said, and Garland put his hand up.

'Any chance we can go inside? It's the middle of
November out here.'

'It's the middle of November inside too.'

'But it's warmer inside.'

'This won't take long,' she said, 'and my people
are pretty busy with this investigation, as you can
imagine.'

'Do you have any leads on the Chandler murder?'
asked one of the two kids.

'Who are you? I've never seen you before.'

'Alex Finch and Janet Turner' – Janet waved
sheepishly – 'CKBF Mayfair. I hear that there was a
strange black car spotted on Taylor the day of the
killing.'

'First off,' said Detective Inspector Micallef, 'I'm
here to make a statement, not to answer questions.
Secondly, if you're getting your facts from the paper
of record, you should know that nothing you've read
in today's issue of the
Westmuir Record
is based on
statements made by the Port Dundas PD.'

'So there's no car?'

'Here's the statement.' She took a single sheet of
paper out of a folder and held it out in front of her.
The wind caught the corner and folded the paper
over on itself. '''On Saturday 13 November, the body
of Delia Chandler, age eighty-one, was discovered in
her home. At this time, the Port Dundas police, in
co-operation with personnel from Mayfair, and
under the direction of Central Region of the OPS,
have embarked on a full-scale investigation. In the
interest of the investigation, we are unable to
enlarge on the particulars of the case; however, we
will update the public with pertinent details when
they become available and thank you all in advance
for your understanding." Our community liaison
officer, PC Eileen Bail, will be out shortly with
copies of this statement should you like to have one.'
She looked around the small gathering. Their eyes
seemed to have glazed over. Patricia Warren looked
down at her notes.

'Um, Inspector?'

'Yes?'

'Can you confirm that Delia Chandler was murdered?'

'Can I confirm that?'

'Yes, can you confirm that?'

'Don't you read the
Westmuir Record
?'

'I do, but you said—'

'Yes,' said Hazel Micallef. 'She was murdered.' She
turned, ignoring the three other hands in the air and
went through the door. PC Bail was waiting with a
thin sheaf of photocopies in her hand. 'They're all
ready for you, Eileen. Positively rabid with
anticipation.'

'Thanks, Chief.'

'Anytime.'

'Um, Skip?' Hazel stopped and faced her. 'They're
just doing their jobs, you know.'

'They're cannibals in slacks, Eileen. Ask my
mother about it sometime.' PC Bail looked down at
the floor. 'Anything else?'

'Not right now.'

Hazel turned a sheet over the top of the easel. Ray
Greene, James Wingate and Howard Spere were
sitting with their coffees at the table in front of her.
'We're going to go over what we know and then
figure out what our best move is. Ray, you start.'

Greene opened his notebook and flipped back a
couple of pages. 'We have two bodies. One here in
Port Dundas, the other in Chamberlain, three
hundred and fifteen kilometres away. The first, Delia
Chandler, was murdered sometime after four o'clock
on Friday 12 November. White female aged eightyone.
She was heavily sedated, murdered, and then
partially drained of blood. After she was dead, the
killer cut her throat. According to Dr Deacon's
report, her mouth was interfered with post mortem.
She also had a broken finger.'

'DC Wingate has a theory about that,' said Hazel,
who had been writing the details down hurriedly on
the easel, 'which, for the time being, he is going to
keep to himself.' Wingate smiled in a pained
fashion. 'Forensics, Howard?'

'We found fingerprints on the door that belong to
the victim, as well as to Bob Chandler. We have
to presume that the killer wore gloves, because there
are no fingerprints inside the house that don't match
the victim or her son. There was a scuff in the carpet
inside the door with a partial impression of a
shoeprint in it, and it suggests the killer is a size
eleven, but it's inconclusive. No forced entry, as has
been previously established. No struggle is
evident—'

'Although let's keep in mind that the place was
spotless,' said Hazel. 'Either Delia cleaned it top to
bottom before her visitor arrived, or the killer himself
cleaned up. Jack Deacon says he would have had
to be in the house a minimum of three hours after
her death. If there was a struggle, there would have
been plenty of time to erase all evidence of it.'

'Okay,' said Detective Spere, 'so maybe there was
a struggle, but I think Jack would have been able to
back it up with defensive wounds on the victim's
body, so for now, we're going to go with no struggle,
and I think we'll find the Ulmer murder backs that
up.'

'No, it doesn't,' said Greene.

'Can we finish with Mrs Chandler before we
move on?' said Hazel, and Greene gestured to her to
carry on.

'Okay,' said Hazel, taking out Jack Deacon's
report. 'The time frame of the murder, according to
Jack, is that a heavily sedating agent is introduced to
the victim at around four o'clock in the afternoon,
and takes effect shortly afterward. Between four and
five, the killer breaks the victim's finger and then
introduces a trace amount of amatoxin, this being
the agent that causes death. Then he puts a widebore
needle into the victim's femoral artery and
sucks
most of the blood out of her body, either by
using a large syringe or pump of some kind.'

'They have pumps for that?' said Greene.

Hazel ignored him. 'Deacon puts death at five in
the afternoon, according to the potassium levels
in the victim's vitreous humour. He had three hours
after that to cut her head nearly off, clean – if he
cleaned – and to do what he did to her mouth.'