The Taken

32

“It’s the first thing we should have thought of when we figured out her name,” Hazel said, signalling her turn onto Highway 121. “We slipped.”

“We had other things on our plate.”

They’d found nothing under Cameron’s name in Gilmore, but the third real estate office they’d called told them a Joanne Cameron was paying the rent on a house let to a Nick Wise. Hazel had practically levitated out of her seat. “Too tidy for their own good,” she said.

“Unless they want us to find them,” said Wingate.

The clicking of the turn signal did time with the windshield wipers. They’d taken an unmarked vehicle, but in the increasing downpour she doubted anyone would have made them anyway. She turned east and took the car up to 140 kilometres per hour, holding the wheel tight.

“And meanwhile, another day has gone by and god knows what kind of shape Eldwin is in,” she said.

They reached Highway 191 in fifteen minutes and turned north. It sounded like demons pounding the roof of the car. The address was 28 Whitcombe Street in Gilmore. They passed Goodman’s falling-down rented shack on the way into town, slowing down to get a look. It was dark, as expected. She knew instinctively that he’d never return to that place. Three years waiting for a sign. That was how strong his conviction had been, how strong his obsession. Not even grief has that kind of staying power, Hazel thought. He’d divided his time between Toronto and Gilmore waiting for Eldwin to show his hand. It hadn’t mattered to Goodman if the hand held something or not: he’d only wanted a reason to act.

And he’d gotten to Hazel. She was the perfect mark: a small-town cop with a willingness to go off the grid if the job demanded it. And she had daughters… it was as if she’d been made to order for them: just smart enough, just blind enough. She didn’t want to admit it, that perhaps she was in this car, arrowing through the pouring rain on a hunch, for Martha’s sake. Would justice for Brenda Cameron pay a tithe to the angels on her daughter’s behalf? She had to tell herself she was motivated only by the desire to see justice done for its own sake, but then she heard Ray Greene saying you can’t be a maverick and a leader at the same time. She wondered how often she’d have to push that voice away from now on.

She considered what it meant to have only her and Wingate’s faith now driving the case. She’d made enemies of all her backup: Ilunga with a severed hand and Danny Toles hung up like a dummy. She knew Willan was only a phone call away and was collecting news about dinosaurs from any and all comers. Any of her recent moves could spell a dishonourable discharge for her: this was the ever-present thought, the awareness that the end-of-days was near.

She blamed the weather for making her thoughts extraoppressive. She had to focus on the task at hand and not think of the kinds of forces arrayed against her. The end of her career was supposed to be a source of pride for her and those she had worked with, those she had served. But she feared she was about to go out like her mother, hounded by innuendo and haunted by pride. But ex-mayor Micallef was immune to regrets. She was one hundred percent backbone. Hazel’s back was made of lesser stuff.

They drove slowly down Whitcombe in the centre of town. It was just off the main drag, a quiet side street. They pulled over a few houses away and as soon as they stopped, the noise of the rain intensified. It bounced hard against the unmarked’s window and hammered down through the newly green trees. The drops seemed to leap out of the asphalt, blown sideways by the wind. But however bad the weather was, the dusk-like light offered them the best cover they could have asked for.

There was an MX-5 Miata in the driveway at number 28. “That counts as sporty,” Hazel said.

“The car and the house aren’t a guarantee of anything, you know,” said Wingate. “If they had the presence of mind to rent two houses up here, they could have rented a third. She knew we were going to find her name out eventually.”

“Well, if I’m wrong about this, I’ve got nothing.”

He wiped the fogged windshield. The humidity in the car was making them sweat. He stared up at the house across the street from them. It was a rickety-looking bungalow with a couple of sagging balconies. The house was dark and looked uninhabited. “So, what are we waiting for then?”

She was concentrating on the house, trying to fix it as a space in her mind. She presumed there was a door in the back as well. Probably the better one to get access to the basement. “Did you notice a van at the Bellocque house?” she asked. “Pat Barlow said he was driving a white van.”

“I didn’t see any vehicle at all.”

“And it’s not here.”

“Does that mean he’s not here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I think we should wait awhile. See if he shows. I want to be sure they’re both here when we make our move.”

Ninety minutes passed. She had cars out trolling for sign of the van, but the infrequent reports she was getting suggested no one could make out the breed of a dog beyond twenty metres. Time and the weather were working against them.

Wingate shifted in his seat, uncomfortable and bored. “Well, I guess if I ever wanted to go back to Twenty-one, that bridge is pretty much burnt.”

“Oh, it’s ashes,” she said. “I doubt there’s even a tunnel now.”

He laughed. “Do you really trust Ilunga to run those prints against the oars? What if he loses something on the way to the lab?”

“No,” she said. “This is his chance to pin everything on Goodman. If he gets a match to the oars off Eldwin’s hand, he saves face and buries his nemesis all at once. He’s a hero. How’s that inconsistent with his sleazy personality?”

“It isn’t. I just hope he doesn’t play you.”

“I’m done being played.”

They watched the street a while longer. “That was some good detectiving, by the way. I never said.”

“Good for a has-been, huh?”

“You old folk have something to teach us after all.” He gave her a warm smile.

“I like you, James. I’m glad you’ve chosen the slow lane.” “This is the slow lane, huh?”

She looked at the clock display on the dash. “Jesus,” she said. “My stomach is turning acid.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t wait anymore,” said Wingate. “If they’ve been one step ahead of us this long, maybe they’ve already dealt with this eventuality. What if they’re both gone?”

“If we bust in there and Dana Goodman isn’t there, we’ll never see him again. Give it another half-hour.”

“But what if they’re moving him, Hazel? They’re putting distance between us if that’s the case.”

She thought about it and his point was solid. “We should have patrols further af -”

“Wait,” he said. “Look at that.”

A light had gone on in a window at lawn-level. A basement light. Even in the dark of the rain, it looked like a beacon. “Okay,” she said, “okay.”

“Okay what?”

“One of us goes, the other stays and keeps an eye out for the van. We stay in contact on the walkies, low volume.”

“I’ll go,” he said.

She put a hand on his wrist. “No. She knows me. If she’s alone there, I might be able to talk her into giving up Goodman.”

“What if she’s not?”

“You’ll hear shots, no doubt. Come flying.”

He was shaking his head, nervous. “I don’t know, Hazel. I don’t like you alone in there.”

“I don’t think he’s here, James. I think she’s alone. He’s come up empty…”

“Is that necessarily a good sign?”

“I don’t know.” She checked her gun. It had a full clip in it. “I’m going to go. Keep an eye out.”

He didn’t protest, but she could tell he wasn’t happy. “Shoot first,” he said.

“Stay on channel six.”

She stepped out into the downpour and hunched her shoulders up. The wind drove the rain sideways and upwards into her face. She looked up and down the street for any sign of Goodman’s van, but the street was empty. Only she and Wingate had lacked the sense to stay indoors today. She crouch-ran across the street to the even-numbered side and sheltered under a silver maple. She could see a side-window now from her vantage, also lit, but there was no movement she could make out from within, not even shadows.

She crept along the east side, throwing looks back up the street and toward the unmarked. Wingate’s voice came in low from her belt. “Anything?”

“Another light, but I don’t see anyone inside. The street is clear. I’m going.”

Twenty-four, twenty-six… she was at the property line. There was a repetitive sound coming from the back of twenty-eight, like something being hammered, and her pulse rose. She could see the back corner of the house now, and she moved slowly along the wall of the neighbouring house to reveal the back of twenty-eight. There was a garden back there. No van, though. The hammering sound was louder. It was an irregular clacking noise. Wingate asked what it was and she told him it sounded like a shutter being swung back and forth in the wind.

She still wasn’t sure if the missing van was a good sign or not. She had to presume that Cameron and Goodman were in constant touch if they weren’t together: she’d have little time to roust Cameron before she made contact with her partner, and even less time if they were, in fact, together in there.

She knew the risk she was walking into a trap was high. She’d chosen not to share this with Wingate: she had to get into that house and see what was there for her own sake. She’d been led by the nose for this whole case, but this one time she felt fairly certain she’d caught the two of them out in a loose end. But not totally certain: Goodman had proven clairvoyant in these matters. The possibility that she’d go into that house and not come out alive had already occurred to her. He’d had one chance to kill her and she doubted he’d pass up a second. She crossed to the back of the neighbouring house and got a perspective on the rear of twenty-eight. As she’d thought, there was an entrance in back of the house, and a loose screen door was making the whacking noise. From this vantage, she also inspected the side of twenty-eight, but there didn’t seem to be any live surveillance: no cameras, no electronic equipment at all. She began to feel a tiny wave of hope. “Okay,” she murmured into the radio. “I’m going over.”

“I’m calling for backup.”

“Don’t,” she radioed back. “If Goodman’s on his way here from somewhere, I don’t want him encountering cruisers on his street. He’s likely to see it as a not-very-good sign. We’ll lose him.”

She ran low to the cover of the corner of twenty-eight and flattened herself against the back of the house. Now she wouldn’t be able to see the front or the street and Wingate would have to be her eyes. She knew he wouldn’t let her down. She dialled the radio volume to one and pushed herself toward the door. The screen door might act as sound cover, she realized, glad to catch even a small break, although the closer she got to the door, the more it also felt like such a loud noise could blow her cover if anyone inside got sick of listening to it. Or if it suddenly stopped.

The wind was holding the door open and then crashing it shut. She waited until it was open and tried the handle on the inner door. It was locked. She got her truncheon out of her belt and held the thick side at the ready. The screen door slammed twice and then blew open again and she got in and put the base of the club where the knob was attached to the door and delivered a single blow to the top of it with the side of her gun. She twisted out of the way to let the door slam shut and then inserted herself again and pounded the knob. The screen door smashed her in the back, and she took one more swing with the flat of the gun and the cheap knob broke off, revealing the inner workings of the lock.

She stepped back again to catch her breath and stand at attention in case anyone was able to tell the two noises apart. The explosive clapping of the screen door was like thunder in her ears, competing with the sound of her blood roaring in her head. It felt like the rain was falling through her: she was drenched. She could hear Wingate’s questioning voice trying to raise her, but she ignored him and held the screen door open with one leg as she worked an index finger into the hollow space behind the missing knob. She was able to move a metal bar within the workings of the lock and open the door. It swung in and she stepped into the dark at the top of a set of stairs. She quietly closed the door behind her and pushed the catch back into place with her finger. Dialling the walkie down to zero, she stood in the dark, waiting for her eyes to adjust. There was a faint line of light at the bottom of the stairs in front of her.

Hazel unbuttoned her jacket and took it off, leaving it on the landing as she began to descend. She leaned over and used the tail of her shirt to wipe her face, but the rainwater in her hair was sluicing down her face, carrying some residue of hairspray into her eyes. She blinked away the stinging and stood silently on the stairs, trying to hear past the door below. Someone was moving around in there, slowly shuffling. She heard a voice – Cameron’s, she thought – but couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was getting hard to breathe normally now, she was too worked up; it felt like her heart was going to burst out of her chest. Foolishly, she’d failed to check the gun when she had some light: it occurred to her now that hammering the truncheon with it might have damaged it. If the Glock didn’t work, she’d have no protection at all, and no matter how fast Wingate could run, her nagging anxiety about her life ending in this basement might come true after all. She had a flash of herself lying on the concrete and Goodman advancing on her with his whetted knife and she considered remounting the stairs and checking the mechanism. But she’d come this far, and now she could hear faint sobbing, and she decided she could do nothing but trust the gun.

She was at the door. It was heavy-duty, something put there for a reason. She doubted they could have heard the screen door slamming or the sound of her breaking the lock. When, at the station house, they’d tried to listen past the sounds of the room on the webcam, they’d heard nothing telltale: no voices from elsewhere, no sounds from outside, and this was why. She presumed this door was locked as well and thought through her options. The only thing that made sense was to kick it in and rush the room with the gun out.

She steeled herself, pushing away the haze of anxiety, and retreated two steps to put her on level with the centre of the door’s edge. She reared back, turning sideways, and as she lunged forward to kick, someone within opened the door and Hazel crashed forward, driving whoever was behind backwards and plunging into the open space. She twisted toward the wall and hit the door jamb with her face before she collapsed to the floor on her side. Joanne Cameron was screaming, Don’t! Don’t! from somewhere behind her and Hazel leapt to standing, the gun still miraculously in her hand, and lunged toward the sound of the woman’s voice, only to find Cameron cowering against the wall in a crouch, her arms folded over the top of her head. Hazel swept the gun toward her and turned, keeping the weapon in front, rotating the muzzle in a semi-circle through the room behind her, stepping to Cameron’s side to keep her in her peripheral vision. This was it, ground zero. She’d been watching this dark, evil space for ten days, wondering where on earth it could be, and now she was in it, as if she’d stepped through her computer. It felt eerie and wrong, like she was Nick Wise trapped in his box. Her back was to the bloody message, in dried, fifteen-inch letters, and the table Cameron had sat at was still in the middle of the room. The tripod with the camera was in its place, and Hazel noted the red light on the camera was blinking. It had been turned back on. A wire from the side of the camera ran down to the floor and to a hard drive in the corner.

Colin Eldwin was gone. As was Goodman.

Hazel turned to face Joanne Cameron, who had lowered her arms and was sitting, drained and docile, at the base of the wall. A fresh cut on her mouth where the door had hit her competed with a mass of welts, bruises, and gashes. Hazel looked at her sadly and brought the walkie to her mouth. “James?”

“Christ, why did you go silent?”

“I’m here. It’s only Cameron. He’s beaten the shit out of her.”

Wingate appeared in a matter of moments with the first-aid kit, and they sat Joanne Cameron in the chair and attended to her. She hadn’t said a word. Goodman had beaten her with his fists, and her mouth and cheeks were swollen. Her whole face was the colour of raw steak and a clear fluid leaked from her right temple.

Hazel looked toward the camera. “Can he see us?”

“He doesn’t have to see us,” said Cameron through her broken mouth. “He knows what we’re doing. He knows what we’re going to do.”

“He sounds like Santa Claus.” She went over to the set-up and tore the wire out of the back of the camera. “Well, that’s one less window into our souls, then.”

Wingate was daubing her eye. Cameron winced. “Why did he do this to you?” he asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Anything you can do to put the heat on him now can’t hurt.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Is this the part where you tell me I can still save myself?”

Hazel kneeled in front of her. “That was your hand in the video,” she said. “The one holding the knife.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to believe you severed Colin Eldwin’s hand with that knife? That you sliced the ears off the sides of his head?”

“It doesn’t matter to me what you believe. I’m done believing. I just wanted the truth about Brenda.” She looked away from Hazel. “I don’t care about anything else now.”

“It matters to me. It matters to me if you let Goodman twist you into something you’re not. Or if you did it because you wanted to.”

Cameron speared her with a pitiless look. “You want me to say Dana cut him because you think in my place you’d never have done it yourself. But I’m here to tell you, you would. You’d have done anything.”

“Then you’ll be charged accordingly,” said Hazel, rising. “But I look at you now, and I think you didn’t do it. I just think you want to be punished.”

Cameron took the gauze from Wingate’s hand and held it to her cheek. It was stained yellow and red. One of her eyes was swollen and the lid was white and iridescent purple. Hazel’s heart went out to her: no matter what this woman had done, she’d begun in a place of righteous grief. And now she was going to be charged with assault causing bodily harm and false imprisonment, among other things. And the man who masterminded it all had dumped her and taken their leverage with him. “I don’t have to seek punishment,” Cameron finally said. “My child was murdered and I’ve failed to avenge her. What else can be done to me?”

Hazel stepped away, turning her back. Cameron was living every mother’s nightmare, and there was nothing anyone could say or do to bring her out of it. It was permanent. The only thing she could do now was try to bring Eldwin in alive.

“Where’s Dana Goodman?”

“I don’t know,” Cameron said.

“If I told you I believed your daughter was murdered, would you help us?”

“Would you be lying?”

“Nothing I say will convince you I’m not, so I won’t try. But if I do believe it, and you don’t help us get Eldwin back alive, you’ll have missed your last chance to see justice done in Brenda’s name.” She waited a moment for Cameron to decide what she was going to do, and then she asked, “How long ago did Eldwin leave?”

“Two hours,” she said.

Hazel radioed dispatch. “Our 908’s gone 908,” she said.

“Come again?” said Wilton.

“We’ve got Joanne Cameron, but Goodman has abducted the abductee. We need an APB for this white van, anywhere within a two-hundred-kilometre radius of Gilmore.” She held the walkie down. “What’s his licence plate?”

Cameron’s eyes shuttled between hers and Wingate’s.

“She wasn’t alone in the boat,” Wingate said. “Brenda wasn’t alone. We have proof now.”

Cameron’s mouth was moving, but no sound came out for a moment. “It started with AAZW,” she said. “I don’t know the rest of it.”

“That’s enough to start with,” said Hazel. “You get that, Spence?”

“Word’s already going out.”

“Have someone clean out a cell. We’ve got a reservation for at least one. And send a SOCO team to 28 Whitcombe in Gilmore. They’re going to need to block off the rest of today and tomorrow, I think.”

Wingate helped Cameron out of her seat. “Do you have any idea where Dana took Eldwin?”

Cameron shook her head. “Not one. He beat me up in front of Colin. I saw the look in his eyes: he figured he was next. My guess is, he is.”

“Why is that your guess?”

“Because Dean said he was going to give you people a crime you can solve.”

“A trail I can follow…” Hazel murmured. “Did he say anything else?”

“He said Thank God for the ram.’”