The Taken

6

She’d told Wingate she’d meet him upstairs: there was no computer in the basement, but when he got to the house, she was still downstairs putting on a housecoat and getting ready to negotiate the stairs. Glynnis offered him something to drink, but he declined and waited in the front hallway, uncomfortable and nervous. There was something roasting in the oven – a rich, meaty fragrance filled the main floor of the house. “Sit at least,” said Glynnis. “Or has she told you to refuse all hospitality?”

“No, no, not at all,” he said hastily, and sat in the chair in the living room closest to the hall. It felt like he was taking Hazel out on a date.

Glynnis vanished into the kitchen and then reappeared with what looked like a glass of beer. “You like apple juice?”

“Uh, yeah, I like it.”

“Fresh-pressed,” she said. “No preservatives.”

He thanked her and sipped it in her presence and then nodded to show how much he liked it. He could hear Hazel coming up the stairs, and Glynnis opened the door for her.

“Orpheus arrives from the underworld,” she said, and Hazel waved her off.

“What was so urgent?” she asked Wingate.

He stood and put his drink aside. “Can you take me to the computer you said was connected to the internet?”

She took him down the hallway, ignoring both Glynnis and the smell of supper. As they went into what he presumed was Glynnis’s office, the front door opened and they heard Andrew greeting his wife.

“Is your mother still living here?”

“She’s having her pre-dinner nap,” said Hazel. “Now show me what you were talking about.”

Wingate waited for the computer to boot up and connect. They were still using dialup in this house, and it took a few minutes. He typed in the url and waited for the image to load. On a slower connection, the pan wasn’t as smooth as it had been at the detachment, and the irregular movement across the room made the short clip seem even more menacing. She sat down in front of the screen and he showed her where to look at the end of the sequence, and when she saw the flicker of the two body parts, she started. He pointed out the eye to her and she was silent, taking in its significance, as he and Jenner had. He was surprised to see that the pan ended a half-inch or so past where it had terminated an hour earlier. “There’s more now,” he said.

“It’s longer?”

“It shows more,” he said. “At the station house we could only see the very edge of the knee and arm. And that eye. Now there’s a bit of bicep and more pantleg.” The leg was still juddering nervously and the floating traumatized eye stared out ceaselessly. An extra second or so had been made visible at the end owing to the extension of the pan. Hazel was shaking her head slowly.

“Well, that’s creepy as all hell. Is it happening right now? Is it live?”

“I can’t tell.”

“And an hour ago, there was less?”

“Just a bit.”

She studied the sequence a couple more times. “So someone sinks a mannequin expecting it to be pulled up in order for us to decode a set of numbers and tune in on time to see this?” She swivelled in the chair. “Where are we with our fishing couple?”

“We have two numbers and one seems to be disconnected. It rings a couple of times and then there’s a busy signal. The other just rings. I don’t know if one’s a cell or what, or if these people live together even.”

“How many times have you called?”

“A few. But it’s the long weekend and until I saw this, I wasn’t sure how urgent -” “Did you run the names?”

“CPIC has nothing. I can do a reverse trace on the numbers and get some addresses.”

“Good. And in the meantime, get Howard Spere’s eggheads on this site and see if they can figure out who’s uploading it.”

“I also tried Eldwin’s number, but his wife said he was out of town for the long weekend.”

“I bet he is. Who is this guy, anyway?”

“Apparently, he’s a writer.”

“Well, either he has some strange fans, or he’s working out writer’s block in a very active fashion. Find out more about him, would you? And keep trying to reach him.”

“I will.”

She looked at the screen again. “Judging by the rate at which the camera is exposing our friend here, we might have the whole face by morning. It’d be nice to know who it is.” She touched the screen with her finger. “What do you think the shadow behind the chair is?”

“I can’t tell,” said Wingate. “It tapers a bit as it approaches the ceiling. It could be a person. But it’s pretty still for a live person.”

“It’s not hard to stay still for as long as we’re seeing this.” She turned off the browser and pushed the chair back. “So,” she said, “someone sinks a mannequin in Gannon Lake so we can watch their mystery show. Is this an elaborate prank, or not?”

“I’m leaning toward not a prank.”

“When you talk to Spere about this upload, give him those black pictures you showed me, too. I’m getting a bad feeling about all of this.”

“Me too,” he said.

“Catch me up in the morning.”

A voice was waking her up. She thought maybe she was dreaming that she was trying to wake up and she attempted to open her eyes and see the room. She heard the voice again. It was saying don’t be late, don’t be late. She forced her eyes open and saw her ex-husband sitting on the edge of the bed. “Too late for what?” she said, but he seemed not to hear her. “Andrew?”

He was holding out a glass of water. “You awake?”

“What am I too late for?”

“What are you talking about?”

She took the glass of water and drank it down. She tried to sit up, and he reached out feebly, not sure how to help her. He wasn’t the one who did the heavy lifting down here. She shook her head at him when he tried to pull her up by the wrist and she shimmed back painfully against the mattress to a half-seated position. “Who deputized you?”

“I deputized myself.”

“What time is it?”

He looked at his wrist. “Almost nine.”

“It was a rather exhausting day. Does Glynnis know you’re down here?”

The friendly look on his face faded a little. “You’ve been pissing and moaning that I don’t come down here enough. So here I am. I don’t need anyone’s permission.”

“You don’t?”

“I can go if you’d like.”

“I like your bedside manner better,” she said. “At least I used to.” His position on the edge of the mattress unconsciously mimicked one of the common poses from their marriage. A fight would often lead to the two of them separating, her to the bedroom, him to wherever he went to lick his wounds. Afterwards, he’d show up in the bedroom to pretend going about his business, and she’d ignore him from the bed, reading work papers or a book, and eventually he’d come and sit on her side, stare at her until she laid the reading down. Then they’d talk and work it out or not. Sometimes it took a morning and an evening of bedside conversation to unknot whatever it was that had come between them. “I remember this,” she said.

He was leaned over facing her, his chin in his hand. His fingers barred his mouth. “You remember what?”

“You sitting there.”

He lowered his hand into his lap. “Do you want anything?”

“A bath.”

“You should eat.”

She swivelled her legs out from under the sheets. “Afraid I’m going to wither away?”

“No,” he said nonchalantly. He stood and started for the stairs, his hands in his pockets, another familiar stance. This one meant irritation. “If you change your mind, you know where the food is.”

“Well, hold on.”

“What?”

“That’s it? First time in the dungeon in four days and you offer me the menu but nothing else?”

“What were you expecting?”

“How about how are you? Or something about you maybe? Are you doing well.”

“I’m doing fine, Hazel. How are you?”

She shook her head at him. “Never mind. Off you go to your throw-pillows and your tarot reading. Have fun.”

“Never short of charm, are you, dear?”

He was through the door and up the stairs before she could reply. She heard his staccato footsteps tapping in the space above her. This time she could see through the joists and the pennynails in the floor panels and the linoleum directly to his face and she saw the dread expression there, the black, dead-eyed look of anger on his face, that hurt anger she’d been so good at drawing out of him for so many years.

She desperately needed that bath. She hadn’t had a day this active since before the surgery and she was sure she smelled like bear. Glynnis had been helping her in and out of the tub, but if she could muddle through an afternoon half back in her official capacity, she could get herself into a bath. It took five minutes to cross the room again, to the washroom. She shed her clothes and kneeled on the floor to run the bathwater. She rose with difficulty and stood in front of the mirror as the tub filled. She’d lost weight. All that extra weight her mother had been fighting her to lose last fall was gone now. Her skin looked dense and sallow, like she’d been cured in bleach. She sagged in all the places she’d once feared she would sag, and where gravity had not done its cruel work, a kind of fleshly drift had taken place. Her navel was somehow not centred. It might have been her skewed posture, but she suspected something more sinister. Her twisted heart communicating its ways to the outside.

She had to hold on to the sink while the hot water rose up the sides of the tub. Five minutes gripping its cold edge. Then the bath was ready and she manoeuvred herself over the rim and into the hot water. It was always an instant relief to be in this heat and she shuddered as she lowered herself into it. She had to sit with crossed legs as it was too hard to sit flat with her legs out in front of her. The warmth spread in her limbs and climbed her trunk.

She leaned back and closed her eyes. Immediately, the room Wingate had shown her online appeared in her head. The stink of the lake-rotten mannequin and the vision of that dank room were immediately allied in her mind. These two presences, the black photos, and the story in the newspaper triangulated to something that demanded attention. Who were this couple, Bellocque and Paritas? Or should they be focussing on Barlow and Jellinek? And this Eldwin – it was as if his story had metastasized, and now he was “out of town.” On the lam, or out of commission? She rotated the facts as she knew them in her mind and looked through their facets, but there was nothing in them but a bending of the light. It made her think she was standing on the outside looking in. Waiting was the worst part when it came to an investigation, but sometimes you had no choice. She was still weaving and reweaving the facts when she heard the door to the upstairs open. Andrew called her name.

“What is it now?” she said, and she cupped a handful of water to her face.

“I come bearing orders.”

“Whose?”

He came and stood outside the door. “Your mother’s. I believe she said take my mulish daughter her dinner and tell her to eat it or I’m pouring every drop of whiskey in this house down the sink.”

“She said that?”

“Doesn’t sound like her?”

“Whatever.” She heard something clinking. He’d laid a tray on the floor. “I’ll leave it here. Glynnis can come down and help you out in a few minutes.”

“I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Okay then.”

She waited for the door to upstairs to close, but then she heard his clothes brush against the door. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” he said almost inaudibly. “I just wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean the charm thing. Well, I meant it, but it wasn’t nice.”

“Some apology.” She ran the hot washcloth over her arms. “I’ll accept it, though. I collect your apologies.”

“How many you got?”

“I don’t think I’ll be completing the set any time soon.”

“I’ll send Glynn down in ten minutes.”

“Hey, you know?” He didn’t say anything, as if dreading participating in this conversation any further, with its strange intimacy. “You there?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me ask you something.” He waited. “Do you think the world would end if you came in here?”

“Absolutely. In a flash of light.”

“Well, you have to agree, it’s not much of a world.” He laughed. Then there was another long, agonized pause. “Oh for god’s sake, Andrew, bring me my supper before it gets cold, would you?”

She heard him retreating into the room, but then he returned and the door opened and he was holding a chair in one hand and the tray in the other. He put the chair down behind the tub and laid the tray down on the floor, pushing it with the tip of his slipper toward her.

“Andrew.”

“I’m fine here.”

“I can’t reach it.” She heard him sigh – the sound was directed toward the floor, and she turned as best she could and saw him sitting there with his head in his hands. “Just come here,” she said. “You’ve already crossed the Rubicon. You might as well help me eat.”

He got up and moved the chair over and sat down again, this time facing her at the side of the tub. He looked sad and amused all at once. He picked the plate off the tray and held it balanced against the rim of the tub as she plucked one of the ribs out of its sauce. The meat fell apart in her mouth. He said nothing as she ate, his eyes unfocussed on her, but she knew he saw her, although she had no idea what the sight of her meant to him now. Her once-beloved body. She finished the rib, put it on the plate, and rinsed her fingertips in the water.

“You’re going to smell like barbecue sauce when you get out of there.”

“Better than how I smelled before. You could get an onion and a handful of carrots and toss them into the water. Make enough soup for the weekend.”

“What a vile image.”

“Isn’t it.”

He held out another rib. There was rice and creamed spinach on the plate, but all she wanted was the meat. Maybe protein would cure her, she thought. He picked up a rib as well and started absently chewing on it. Finally they were sharing a meal. She had to smile.

“You’re an impossible woman,” he said. “You must know that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to end up chained to a bed with the nurses avoiding you.”

“A fitting end to the mess I’m making of my life.”

“Now, now,” he said. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you.”

“But I’m good at it.”

He put a bone down on the plate and leaned forward to dip his fingers into the bathwater. “Listen. You’ve raised two beautiful girls, you’re a good daughter, and you’re a beloved member of an important public institution. People count on you. They admire you and they care for you. No one but you thinks you’ve made a mess of your life.”

“You do.”

“You gave me thirty wonderful years.”

“We were married for thirty-six, Andrew.”

“I know.”

“God,” she muttered, and she shook her head. He laughed. “Stop eating my supper.”

He passed her the last rib and she pushed herself forward in the bath and leaned down to expose her back to him. “You might as well make yourself useful.”

“No,” he said, and he stood, pushing the chair back toward the door. “I’ve done my duty.”

“Just wash my back, Andrew. Then you can go.”

“Feeding my naked ex-wife in the bathtub while my new wife and my ex-mother-in-law are upstairs watching Wheel of Fortune is about as much poor judgment as I’m prepared to exercise in one night. I’ll send Emily down.”

“It’s fine,” she said, and she dropped the stripped bone into the water. It floated on the surface. Seeing it there, she thought of what they’d pulled out of the lake. “Just sit down for another minute. Make sure I can get out.” She heard him pull the chair back behind the bathtub. “So did you hear about my day?”

“I heard you went in to work. That’s good news.”

“It’s the only good news from the day. We had a report of a body in Gannon Lake, you know.”

“You’re kidding me. Who was it?”

“Have you been reading the story in the Record?”

“I skimmed it.”

She pushed the bone along the surface. The dark sauce bloomed off it and stained the water pink. “They find a headless body in the story.”

“You found a headless body in the lake?”

“Not quite. A headless mannequin. She was missing her hands and feet, too.”

“That’s a bit of a strange coincidence,” he said. She heard the washcloth dip into the water behind her.

“There’s more.”

“Are you supposed to be telling me this?”

“There was a web address on the mannequin, if you can believe that. We went to the site and there’s some kind of feed, you know, like a video feed from somewhere. A room. Looks empty, but then you see a sliver of a person. Sitting in a chair. He seems to be staring at the camera.”

“That’s creepy.”

“As fuck,” she said. “What does it sound like to you?”

“Uhh,” he said, “a riddle wrapped in an enigma?”

“You’re a puzzle fan, Andrew. Does it make you think of anything?”

“It makes me think you should get some computer expert in and figure out where the upload is coming from.”

“Thanks, Sherlock.”

“Is there anyone in town missing a mannequin?” The cloth paused at her lower back. He’d seen the stitches below the waterline. “Goddamnit.”

“You thought I was faking?”

“No… but. I’m not going to touch it.”

“The skin doesn’t hurt, Andrew. It hurts inside.”

“Jesus,” he said quietly. “They really opened you up.” She felt the cloth move in a slow circle above her stitches. She pictured pulses of energy coming through the cloth from his hand and passing deep into her spine. Cleansing and healing her. She closed her eyes. His hand moved slowly along her lower back.

“Ah,” said Glynnis from behind them. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”

Andrew dropped the cloth into the water and reached for the towel on the rack to dry his hands. Hazel turned to look at Glynnis leaning against the doorframe.

“She got herself into the bath,” he said. “We ended up talking.”

“I can see that. You want me to take over?” “I’m fine,” he said.

“I’m not a wayward pet,” said Hazel. “I can handle myself.” She tried to lever herself out of the water and failed.

Andrew was unhurriedly arranging the dinner things back on the tray. He held it out to Glynnis. “I’ll be back up in ten minutes.”

Glynnis took the tray. Hazel couldn’t tell if she was furious or uninterested in the scene she’d come upon. “Are we all going to have a fight now?” she asked.

“Is that what you want?” said Glynnis.

“I’m just asking.”

“Why would I be upset to see that my husband has the capacity to care for another human being? Even one who broke his heart?”

Andrew had stood. “Just go on back up, love.”

“There’s tea,” said Glynnis, and she turned with the tray and left.

Hazel had managed herself to a bent-over standing position. She was staring at the place where the spectre of Andrew’s wife had appeared. “Jesus,” she said. “She’s either amazing or terrifying.”

Andrew draped a large blue towel over her shoulders and put his hand under her elbow. She accepted his aid, putting her weight on him as she stepped out of the tub. The hot water had loosened things considerably, almost as well as the painkillers did. “She can be both,” he said, leading her out of the bathroom. They slowly crossed the room and she sat on the bed. “Where are your night things?”

She pointed at the dresser that doubled as a sidetable. She watched him go through her things, his touch light, and she could feel his hand on her again. “Did I break your heart, Andrew?” He laid her warmest things on the bed. “I thought it was my heart that was broken. Maybe she’s confusing us.” He didn’t say anything and she reached out and grabbed his wrist.

“Did I?”

He looked down to where her fingers had encircled him. She saw him mark her naked wedding-ring finger. Had he never noticed the ring was gone? Why would she still be wearing it? “Yes,” he said. “Of course you did.” He loosed himself from her hand and ran his palm absently against his chest.