The Taken

35

There was a faint glow coming from the east, a pinkish light that seemed to drive the rain away and limn the early morning darkness with a phosphorescent edge. Quinn was descending toward the lake surface, creating an undulating target of waves beneath them. From within fifteen metres, they could see the form of a man in the canoe, wound in white cloth like a mummy, only his face exposed to the elements. The rainwater had filled the boat to his chin. The bloody sides of his head and the bloom of pink where the stump of his wrist was bound up in cloth confirmed for them that they had found their man. Eldwin’s eyes were closed and he had not reacted to the sound of the helicopter or their voices calling to him. Calberson suited up and pulled on a mask, but went in without a tank: it would be a simple-enough operation. He hit the water like an arrow and surfaced right away, making strong strokes for the canoe. At the same time, Tate was harnessing the rescue basket and lowering it down with the aid of an on-board winch.

Calberson reached the side of the canoe and put an arm in, feeling along Eldwin’s torso with two fingers. He pressed his fingers in hard under the man’s chin, then signalled the helicopter to slide the basket over. It drifted over the surface of Pickamore Lake toward him. The four other officers were crowded on one side looking over, no longer feeling any fear at all. Quinn had to bank back slightly to his right to keep the craft level. “Is he alive?” shouted Hazel, but Calberson couldn’t hear her over the massive drone of the rotors. He dragged the basket toward him, gripping the hook and pulling it down. He detached it from the rope and affixed it to the metal loop at the front of the canoe and then swam to the stern and with his hands on either side of it, he lofted himself up and in. Ripples moved crossways through the concentric waves made by the blades. Eldwin had not reacted to the sudden weight of another body on top of him, and Hazel looked away. A dead guilty man was considerably better than a dead innocent one, but no call had arrived and she dreaded now knowing the outcome.

They watched Calberson sliding his way along the inside of the canoe, keeping his balance and straddling the wrapped man. The water in the boat sluiced over the sides as he made his progress. Hovering over Eldwin’s midsection, the officer leaned forward and felt for a pulse again, but they still could not tell what he’d learned. “He’s not going to be able to get him onto the stretcher from there,” said Tate. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Stay in the bird,” called Quinn in the headphones. “You don’t have the gear.”

“No, I’m going down,” said Tate, and without another word, he yanked the headset off and jumped from the helicopter.

“He worries too much,” said Wingate.

“Worries?” said Hazel.

“You weren’t in that boat with them on Gannon. He was practically in tears.”

“It’s a stressful business,” she said, watching Tate swimming over to the canoe. They could just barely hear him calling his partner’s name.

“My guess is, there’s more to it than that.”

She turned slowly to him. He shrugged faintly. “Well, I suppose you’d know.”

Tate was at the boat and Calberson was yelling at him, gesturing with his hands. Then he shook his head and unhooked the basket from the front of the canoe and Tate pushed it against the side of the canoe and held it steady. His partner unhooked his leg from around Eldwin and lay down in the water beside him. Then they saw Eldwin sit up, as if in a horror-movie coffin, and Calberson was behind him, levering him over the side of the canoe. Tate threw his arm out and grabbed the front of the white cloth and held the man steady as Calberson got the rest of Eldwin’s body up on the stern of the canoe. Hazel watched, riven. This was one of the ways you threw a body out of a boat. But there were others.

Tate was reaching across the stretcher, Calberson a counterweight in the canoe, and between the two of them, they gentled Eldwin within his cocoon onto the basket. Quinn lowered the rope for the men to rehook the harness again, and, with a thumbs-up, he began to winch the apparatus off the lake surface.

“Let me bring him in,” said Wingate, his arm on Hazel’s shoulder. She stepped aside as, inch by inch, the white form ascended on the end of the rope. She smelled burning oil as the onboard motor strained to bring the weight up.

Quinn’s voice buzzed in their ears. “Let’s get you folks not involved in receiving the package on the other side of the cabin, please. Even things out and let’s get this guy inside.”

Wingate held tight to the inside of the door and leaned out, pushing against the rope to keep the stretcher clear of the skids. He wondered at his newfound ability to hang out of a hovering aircraft. David would have been proud of him. As Eldwin got closer to the helicopter, Wingate’s heart fell – the man’s face was white. He was surely dead. He held the rope at arm’s length, getting ready to lean down and grab the basket once it cleared the skids, but then there was a flash against one of the skids and the sound of a metal ping and Wingate felt a searing pain in his cheek. He fell back into the cabin, his hand pressed against his face, and he heard the metallic sound again, louder this time, and Quinn’s voice was in their ears, panicked: “Someone’s shooting at us -”

The sentence was barely out of the pilot’s mouth when the windshield exploded and the whole craft sheered sideways, giving them a view of the lake beneath them through the door. Eldwin’s form in the basket swung wildly in the air between the helicopter and the water. Wingate felt himself sliding toward the open space as it fell away from them – Quinn was rapidly climbing to get out of gunfire range – and the sheer drop grew to fifty metres. He flung his arms around in a slow panic and felt a hand clasp him on the forearm and hold him tight. He looked behind him and it was Hazel, her teeth gritted, her other hand in Childress’s, who was braced behind one of the bolted benches. He looked down and saw the rain falling in a cone past Eldwin’s inert form and vanishing below them into the churning dark. “Hold on,” cried Quinn as he tried to come level, and Eldwin swung up loosely at the end of the rope like the little toy Wingate remembered from childhood, the one where you tried to catch a little wooden ball in a cup. The man looked like he was floating, and the moment was frozen in Wingate’s vision, it was something beautiful and strange… and then gravity took over again and all two hundred pounds of man and basket jerked down hard on the rope. The sudden yank fried the winch motor and it let out the spool with a high-pitched squeal. They watched helplessly as Eldwin plunged back toward the lake: five seconds of falling through space and then he hit the surface with a white explosion.

Over the straining rotors, they couldn’t hear if the gunfire had stopped, but by now they were almost seventy metres high above the lake. “Jesus Christ,” muttered Quinn. “I didn’t know we were expecting visitors.”

Hazel had scrambled to her feet and was radioing Port Dundas. “I need backup on the north shore road of Pickamore Lake, shots fired, we have three men in the water and a damaged aircraft -”

“I have to go back down,” said Quinn in the earphones.

“Copy,” said Hazel’s radio, “cars dispatched. Injuries?”

Hazel looked at Wingate’s bleeding cheek. “One… so far. Stand by.”

Quinn was descending rapidly, trying to outpace any bead the shooter might have on them. “We’re going to have to do this seagull-style, folks, hold on.”

Childress caught Hazel’s eye. “The gunshots came from the shoreline,” she shouted. “You want me up front?”

“No,” called Hazel, heading for the cockpit. “This is between him and me now.” She came up beside Quinn and kneeled in the cold space behind the destroyed windshield, and brought her gun up in front of her face. “I want you to face the shoreline,” she said to Quinn.

“You want to be a target?”

“No,” she said, “I want to end this.”

Quinn fell away on the diagonal, pointing the nose of the huge steel machine toward the forest while trying to get as close to the water as possible. Hazel kept her eyes on the shoreline and stole glances to the surface below to keep track of the rescue. Tate and Calberson were still swimming toward Eldwin with powerful strokes; from the helicopter, she could see now that the basket had righted itself in the water and Eldwin was still strapped in. Behind her, Childress had braced herself behind the bench and was leaning over, gripping Wingate’s ankles. She was holding him tightly as he slid forward on his belly toward the open door.

Then there was a flash of white in the distance, from within tree-cover, and a half-second later, the empty seat behind Hazel’s head spat a tuft of cloth and foam and Quinn bent the craft away from Goodman’s sightline. “Hold her!” she shouted to him, and stood in the open space, firing as he ignored her and turned the side of the helicopter to the line of fire. Hazel gripped the edge of the broken window frame and twisted herself partway out into the lashing rain and kept firing at the flares from the treeline. The vast emptiness around them swallowed up the reports and it sounded to Hazel as if someone were setting off harmless fireworks all around them. Quinn was trying to make himself smaller as he leaned out his window to gauge the distance to the surface. More bullets tore at the body of the helicopter and Hazel returned fire for as long as she could and then yelled “Clip! Clip!” and Childress quickly freed her firearm from her holster, keeping hold of Wingate with one hand, and kicked it toward the cockpit.

Quinn was tilting dangerously now, the blades sending shockwaves over the surface in semi-circular surges; Hazel hoped all the soft, human forms below them were out of the way, but she knew, and dreaded, that Quinn had only a minimal amount of control over the bird. She took cover behind the passenger-side door and looked behind herself to see Tate pulling himself up along Wingate’s arms and heaving himself into the cabin, drenched and breathless. He turned and braced his thigh against the open doorway and the two of them brought up Calberson and then the three men reached down out of the lurching craft and grabbed a hold of the slack rope, and pulled it and Eldwin in hand over hand. “ALL IN!” shouted Childress and Quinn pulled the helicopter up again, the whole body rising as if shaking itself free of a monstrous grip. The ding of bullets rang against the metal behind her and then she felt the passenger door shatter, and suddenly there was nothing holding her up. She sensed the space below her opening, and as she was falling into it, Quinn reached out and grabbed her by her belt and she spun around wildly and gripped the now-naked steel bar that separated the windshield from the door and fired wildly on the white reports bursting in the distance against the rain. She heard a voice shouting FUCK YOU FUCK YOU and didn’t realize it was her own until she saw the white star of Goodman’s muzzle flare suddenly rise against the wall of trunks and within it was a small bloom of red mist. She’d hit him. She’d hit him and he was down.

“Let’s get out of here!” she called, and Quinn pulled away from the site in a wide turn, rising and twisting, until they were once again clear. Hazel looked around anxiously, but everyone was accounted for, and Wingate was standing in the middle of the helicopter, looking at Hazel with shining eyes.

“Turn around,” he shouted, rotating his index finger in the air, and Hazel did and he ran his hand up the back of her jacket and under her shirt, feeling for the wound he was sure he’d find. But there was nothing. “He shot the glass in the door out – you were standing right there,” he said, but Hazel shook her head at him.

“It was my turn,” she said. “Not his. I hit him. Call dispatch, I want any way in or out of this side of the lake blocked and I want teams working on a grid in those woods until they find him or his body.”

He called it in, and then Hazel leaned down to Eldwin’s motionless form, and pulled the drenched layers of cloth away from his throat. She felt along below his chin for a pulse. “I want to know how hard we should be trying to save this man’s life,” she shouted to Childress. “Call your people now!” The constable backed away and turned to face the rear of the cabin. “I don’t feel a pulse,” Hazel said.

“He was alive in the water,” yelled Calberson. He leapt to the back of the cabin and dragged his emergency kit out from under one of the benches. “Move aside.” Someone finally closed the door and the howl of the wind moved to the front of the helicopter, where the windshield had been shot out. Calberson cut the soaked cloth off Eldwin. “There’s a survival blanket in the kit -”

Childress shook the reflective blanket out and passed it to Calberson. Eldwin was naked beneath his windings; it was a pathetic sight, and Calberson put the thin survival blanket on top of him. He held one edge of it up. “You,” he yelled to Childress, “get in.”

“What?”

“You’re the smallest one here, so you’ll put the least strain on his chest. But we got to warm him up or he’ll die for sure.” She hesitated and he reached out and grabbed her wrist. “I’m not asking.” Childress lay down on top of Eldwin, face to face with the unconscious man.

Hazel leaned down to her. “Did you get through?”

“I’m on hold.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said, “give me that phone.”

She took off her helmet and put the phone to her ear. Calberson picked up the helmet and spoke into the mic. “Mr. Quinn? – where’s the nearest hospital?”

“The only ER that can handle this is in Mayfair,” Quinn said.

“Go.” He had Eldwin’s left wrist and was feeling the pulse. “He’s twenty beats a minute. He’s lucky it got cold or he’d be a corpse by now. As it is…”

“Hello?” said Hazel into the phone. “Who is this?” The man on the other end gave his name as Fredricks. She pressed the phone into her shoulder. “Childress? Fredricks is your guy?”

She nodded. She was looking ill – Hazel imagined Eldwin was somewhat ripe. Her radio buzzed and she passed it to Wingate.

She put the phone back to her ear. “Fredricks? I’m Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, from the Port Dundas detachment of the OPS. I’m sorry, I’m in a helicopter – we’re waiting on some forensic results.” She listened for a moment. Wingate was saying 984, but we’re going direct to Mayfair, call ahead 951 and Hazel put a finger in her other ear. “We know that already, but I sent the superintendent some… evidence yesterday afternoon. That’s right. Okay,” she said, squinting to hear better, “say that again.”

She looked over at Wingate, but he couldn’t tell what her look meant.

“You’re sure? Okay, I understand. Now, we faxed a second set of prints up there… that’s right. From the Port Dundas OPS, sender’s name was Fraser…” She listened. “I need you to doublecheck that. You’re certain? Thank you, Fredricks. Put all that stuff back where you found it now, and not a word to anyone. I appreciate this.”

She turned back to face Wingate. “He didn’t do it,” she said. “He didn’t kill Brenda Cameron.”

Wingate looked down at the still form in the basket. Calberson had relieved Childress of her warming duties and was putting a tube in the back of Eldwin’s hand, running fluids into him. “Poor bastard,” he muttered.

“Let’s get this man to hospital.”

Quinn ascended, cutting wide back over the shore, heading southwest to Mayfair. Below them, the sunrise was spreading its pale, orange light. The rain had finally stopped. “Figures,” said Childress. “Now that we’re at the easy part it lets up.” Hazel was watching her, and gradually, feeling the woman’s eyes on her, Childress brought her gaze around. “What?”

“You want to go home?”

“And face the ridicule of my colleagues? No thanks, I’m putting in for a transfer.”

“You helped to save a man’s life. That’s not nothing.”

Childress had retreated into herself, lost in thought. Finally, she said, “I’ve been on some wild goose chases… but this one…”

Hazel leaned across the cabin and patted Childress’s knee. “I hope you have that medal you were going to pin on yourself.” Childress smiled into her lap. “Quinn?” The captain acknowledged her. “We’re going to be passing close by Kehoe River in a couple minutes, right?”

“Should do.”

“How much of a crimp does it put in your flight time to put down for a minute? I’ve got cars down there and I can double back to Mulhouse Springs and get Eldwin’s wife, bring her down to the hospital.”

Quinn looked back over his shoulder. “I’m under the impression every minute counts.”

Calberson said, “Probably a good idea to have next-of-kin present.”

Quinn nodded and looked back out his missing windshield. Kehoe River was ten kilometres in front of him. Hazel radioed the community policing office that they needed a car. “Tell them to bring it to the parking lot of the Giant Tiger,” said Quinn, and she relayed the information. They passed over the town and Quinn put down in the empty parking lot.

“I’ll take Childress,” Hazel said to Wingate. “Then I can drive her back to Toronto after stopping at Mayfair. You see Eldwin gets the attention he needs.”

He looked back and forth between them, then offered Constable Childress his hand. “Thanks for your help.”

“Yeah,” she said, a little stunned. “Okay.”

Hazel thanked Quinn, Tate, and Calberson and then the two women stepped down onto the parking lot surface. They moved back and Quinn took the rest of his passengers up again. He’d got down and off-loaded them in less than two minutes. They watched him angle down Main Street as one of the cars from the Kehoe River office pulled up. “You mind walking back?” Hazel asked the driver, as she slid into the passenger seat. “We have to get down to Mulhouse Springs in a hurry.” The officer touched his cap and she watched him get smaller in the rearview mirror.