A Door in the River Page 13

  The mug was still full an hour later, but it was cold, and Dunn had not entered his building. Her mind was travelling, gazing out over the quiet entrance to Kehoe Glenn. They had a little bit of AC in this place, but not enough to allow her to forget how hot this August was turning out to be. You could often count on a cold front in the county in August, something that finally smoothed the edge of July. July was always hot, but now August was hot, too.

  It’s your old hag body, she said to herself, that no longer readily ventilates itself. The summer hasn’t changed.

  But a lot of things had, actually. Driving down to the Indian reserve this week, her attention had finally been drawn to something she knew didn’t belong in the landscape, and this last time – passing it earlier – she’d really looked at it going by in her window. The town of Dublin, which you saw if you came directly into the reserve from the north, was one of the county’s prettiest little hamlets, and she hadn’t paid attention to the sign because the first time she’d passed it, she’d thought it was a billboard.

  But it wasn’t. It was news. Some comfy housing corporation was about to dump a ready-made suburb here, right outside of Dublin, if not right on its edge. The sign, she had now confirmed, made the town itself sound like a selling point, it was “unspoiled country rustic.” Dublin was also going to be lucky enough to share itself with not just Tournament Acres, as this monstrosity proposed calling itself, but the golf course that would also be built here. Which, as luck would have it, would have its own hotel. On the grounds of the hotel would be the world’s biggest outdoor wave pool.

  Why not an atom smasher for the old folks? It was disgusting to think of, here, off the main highway – protected, you’d have thought – from these marauding people who wanted to live in Disneylands for their money to play in. It was forty minutes from Port Dundas, and Port Dundas had a waterfall. It made her throat tighten to think of it. The cutline at the bottom of the sign had read, “It’s always your turn in Tournament Acres.”

  So they were going to gobble up Dublin. The summers were getting hotter and the small towns of Westmuir County were now officially bait for cityfolk.

  She was staring at Jordie Dunn as the word bait drifted through her mind. He was walking up the front steps of the Lorris Arms. She stood so suddenly she almost spilled the cold coffee. He was inside now. She waited two minutes and then she crossed the road stiffly, unconsciously keeping her arms from swinging as she did, as if displacing that much air could warn him of her intent.

  She got into the little, locked foyer, just as a woman was coming out of the stairway. Hazel waited for her to open the door and she simply slipped inside and went down the hall to 1F, Dunn’s apartment, and knocked. There were sounds from within: a chair scraping back, followed by silence. Second thoughts. Who did he think was at the door? She called through, identifying herself, and when more silence came, she announced she knew he was inside. Then the door opened and he was standing there, looking sheepish.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, Jordie. Can I come in?”

  “I was just about to –” he said, but she put her fingertips on his door and pushed it open.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She stepped him backwards and he retreated into the musty apartment. Little particles of dust were catching light in the few shafts of illumination that pierced the gloom. She walked in slowly, watching Dunn’s eyes and breaking her gaze long enough to look to her left and right. She stood a few feet in front of the still-open door, aware that her fingertips were tingling.

  “How’re you doing, Jordie?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “You just getting in from church?”

  “From?”

  “Never mind. Why don’t you pour us a couple glasses of water, Jordie, and you can tell me the price of soybeans.”

  He looked behind her to the hallway, still exposed in the open door, and she closed it. His kitchen was as dark as the rest of the apartment, although the sink and the countertop were spotless, as if he never ate there. It seemed a distinct possibility: she couldn’t imagine Jordie Dunn so much as boiling an egg.

  He opened a cupboard and took out a waterglass. There were three inside, and a couple of plates. The spigot coughed to life and spat out little gobs of water. He passed the glass to her and she left it on the tabletop untouched. He remained by the sink. “Not thirsty?”

  “No,” he said.

  He watched her sit at his kitchen table and she marked the effort it was taking him to remain still. “Jordie, why did you want to know if Henry Wiest had been murdered?”

  “It was eleven o’clock at night.”

  “And at the edge of a wooded area. Would that be strange?”

  “Depends.”

  “You’re not afraid of insect bites, are you, Mr. Dunn?”

  He seemed to slip through the air to the kitchen table, where he silently pulled out a chair and sat in it. “Take me in,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. I intend to.”

  “Now. Take me in now.”

  “What’s in those fields, Jordie? What’s in that grove of trees?”

  He pushed his seat back and asked her if she was done with her glass. She handed it to him and he poured the water she hadn’t touched into the sink. There was a hurried shape to all his actions, like there was a countdown running only he could hear. “Let’s go,” he said. He grabbed his jacket off a hook on the wall and held the door open for her. He went out the back door of the building and she led him around to the front, where she’d parked her car. “Sit in the passenger seat,” she said, opening the door for him and standing aside. He put his hand on the top of the door and a warm ribbon of liquid lashed against her blouse and her neck right before she heard the shot. The weight of his body knocked the door forward and pushed her to the ground. She went low, squaring herself behind the door, and listened to Dunn slide down on the other side. She could only see his legs below the door; he was braced against its inside, hacking blood onto the asphalt. His knees shook violently.

  “Give me something, Jordie!” she hissed. “What’s going on in that field?”

  “He was trying to help her,” he rasped, and she heard the back of his skull slap against the inside of the door.

  ] 20 [

  Two hours passed before she was cleared to leave the Lorris Arms. She watched Spere’s team work on the car and the body, and, in Dunn’s apartment, she answered Ray Greene’s questions. She told him who Dunn was, about his earlier visit to the station house, his status as a person of only a little interest before she saw him in that grove off of the Ninth Line. Greene was writing it all down. “Twenty-four hours I’ve been on the job, Hazel. Twenty-four hours, and I’m writing your name in a book.”

  “Willan must be drinking bubbly. Am I directing traffic in Telegraph Heights until the end of time now?”

  “Because you got shot at in the line of duty? He’s not that malicious.” Unawares, he was sitting in the same chair she’d been in three minutes before Dunn’s death. She remained standing. “I have three bodies now, Hazel. That’s all the commissioner knows. For now. But the rest of this happens under me. And if there’s a single deviation from the line of command, I’ll end your career. You might work this case brilliantly, Hazel, but if there’s a single rogue element in it beyond this point, you’re done. I’ll put you up for dismissal.”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

  “You actually think I’d be rejoicing right now if your career had just ended the way Jordie Dunn’s did? We used to be friends, Hazel. I’ve never once wanted something bad to happen to you. But I’m running a police department now and our friendship, whatever it is or was, has no bearing on anything. Because now you work for me; your well-being is my beat. I have to protect you. From the risks you face on the job. From Willan. And from yourself.”

  She stared at him for a three-count. Then she said, “We have to get my mother and Cathy Wiest out of my house.”

 
“They’ve already been picked up. After that?”

  “We go where Dunn went this morning.”

  “Can you do this without getting yourself or anyone else killed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe this’ll help you get started.” He held his fist out. There was something in his hand: a little ziplock bag. He dropped it into her palm. “It was in one of Dunn’s pockets.”

  She held it up. There was a green, twenty-five-dollar casino chip in the bag. It had the image of a little bird on it, and the word SPARROW’S.

  “Does it mean anything to you?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she replied. “Was there anything else?”

  “Just his keys and his wallet. Fifteen dollars, a driver’s licence belonging to a man named Caleb Merton, and two credit cards.”

  “Who’s Caleb Merton?”

  “I have no idea. But the ID had Dunn’s picture on it. It looks legit, but it must be fake. Unless it’s his real name.”

  Bail drove Hazel back to the station house. Her mother and Cathy Wiest were already there. Her mother looked displeased, but her expression melted when she saw Jordie Dunn’s blood all over Hazel’s pants. She was wearing a patrolman’s jacket over a borrowed shirt now – forensics had taken her blouse as evidence – but she was still in her own pants. The SOCO’s best guess put the shooter on the rooftop of the building across from the apartments. The shot came from four to six hundred metres away. No one had seen anyone mount the roof, nor had anyone been seen coming down from it. Someone with confidence and a rifle had gotten in and out without being detected. There were two shells on the gravel roof: one for each of the two shots. Hazel had the casings in an evidence bag, and after making sure her mother and Cathy were being looked after, she tossed the bag to Wingate.

  “They’re thirty-ought-sixes,” he said, looking at them. “That’s deer calibre.”

  “Why leave the shells behind?”

  “Everyone shoots these,” he said. “They’re in a hundred different hunting rifles. They don’t mean anything if the shooter was in a hurry, which I imagine he was.” Wingate studied the casings. She lay the bag with the casino chip on top of them.

  “Whoever did the shooting probably didn’t want this left behind.”

  He turned the chip over and studied both sides. “Where’s it from?”

  “It was in Dunn’s pocket.”

  “Sparrow’s? Is there a casino anywhere in North America with this name?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a tiny one in those trees.”

  Wingate turned the ziplock bag with the casings over in his hand.

  “Dunn told me something,” she said. “He told me Henry was trying to help her.”

  “The girl?”

  “Kitty.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think someone’s going to have to go for a walk in the woods,” she said. “But I don’t know how we’re going to get there without being noticed.”

  “Someone’s going to have to go in one of those cabs.”

  “You think so?”

  “I think I know how, too.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll use the password.”

  “Password?” She squinted painfully at him. “What password are you talking about?”

  “Something I saw in Roland’s report from Tuesday. I’m going to need some money, though.”

  “What’s the password, James?”

  “You say Wiest wrote himself a cheque for ten thousand dollars?”

  “I don’t have ten thousand bucks, James. Will you tell me what your plan is?”

  He handed the ziplock bag back. “I’m going to tell Greene first,” he said.

  After a pause, she asked him, “Will you at least tell me the password?”

  “Ronnie,” he replied.

  ] 21 [

  Sunday

  By noon on Sunday Ray Greene had signed off on a room at the Partridge Inlet Lodge and Wingate drove there in a rental Greene had also approved. A smart little new 2005 Mini Cooper. The wind blew it around on the 41. The BBQ fund had thirty-four hundred dollars in it, which Greene had given to him in a deposit envelope in cash. He had to sign a receipt for it. Hazel had looked on, a bemused expression etched on her features.

  They’d decided to supply him with a false ID, like the ones that had turned up on Wiest and Dunn. He’d be “Pete Lupertans.” Forbes had reminded them that Earl Tate, the counterman, had asked to see ID in order to sell cigarettes to him. No one had given it a second thought until after the names Doug-Ray Finch and Caleb Merton had arrived, attached to men who did not actually go by those names. After Brennan’s death in hospital, they’d found another fake ID with the name Kenneth S. Brehaut on it. Wiest’s and Dunn’s IDs had been Ontario driver’s licences, but Brennan’s had been a health card. None of the names checked out in any of the provincial databases. Someone had generated them out of distinct first- and last-name combinations, so that person had access to some databases the general public would not. The IDs were identifying customers of whatever was in that coppice in the fields.

  Wingate waited in line and got his Pete Lupertans casino card and then spent some time wandering through the casino, waiting for dusk to come. They were off-loading buses of senior citizens when he got there, and when he left, ninety minutes later, having seen nothing at all of interest, there was a lineup of retirees waiting to be bussed back to their suburban independent-living facilities. Some crimes were so plain, no one even noticed them.

  He got back to the lodge at six in the evening. There’d be time to get a room-service meal before Hazel came down in her Mazda and worked point from one of the railway service lanes. Forbes had made dozens of observations from inside his car during the week, many of which were pointless, including wind direction. But Wingate admired the constable for his gumption and his initiative. And because he’d been thorough, they knew that although there were two taxis working the shop, only one of them took the car-abandoning passengers north. The driver of that car was named Thurlow; the other was called Feldman. It had been easy to look them up from the licence plates of the cabs.

  He ate a salad, a piece of blueberry pie, and drank a coffee for dinner, waiting in his room. What was wrong with dedicating oneself in this way? For the greater good? How could someone in his position ever take a vacation when evil was so industrious?

  Darkness would give him more cover than a pair of glasses and a ballcap would. The most important part of a disguise was that it didn’t look like cover. Just something subtle. People look like each other all the time. A skillfully applied black moustache and a good quality hat were all he needed. Even to himself, he only looked like someone he’d once met. He had his cellphone on him, but it was on vibrate.

  He walked into the Eagle at nine o’clock, confirming first that Feldman’s cab was waiting at its post. He kept his distance from the counter, browsing the magazine rack. He’d gotten a decent look at the cabbie behind the wheel as he walked in. The man’s head was lowered to a newspaper. This was Thurlow. He looked to be a white man in his fifties, with a circle of bare scalp surrounded by a fringe of hair. One arm hung out of his window with a cigarette dangling from the fingers. Inside the shop, Wingate thumbed through a car-buyer’s guide. He waited five minutes, and then his phone rang on schedule and he picked it up and said hello.

  “In place?” came Hazel’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll be on with you the whole time. We’re tracking you as you go, so if anything goes wrong, ask for a cigarette in a clear voice and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  He was out of the store. He walked directly to the cab, pretending to talk to someone on the other end, and got into the back seat. “I told you, Ronnie, I’m coming right now.” He performed this line with real, contained anger. “You just wait there for me!” He passed his casino ID to the driver without comment. The driver held it in his lap and looked at it. “Fine. Just wait for m
e. I didn’t come all this way to have you do it without me.” He held his hand over the phone and spoke to the driver. “Let’s go, Clemons.”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you Clemons?” He talked into the phone. “No, I’m not talking to you, you fucking idiot.”

  The driver had turned around to look at Wingate. “Sir?”

  “Hold on a second,” he said into the dead phone. “This guy looks as confused as you are. Are you Clemons?”

  “No,” said the driver. “Who are you?”

  He snatched the ID back. “I showed you who I am. Where the hell is Clemons?”

  “Honestly, sir, I don’t know.”

  “Well, whoever you are, let’s get going.”

  “Where?”

  Wingate glared at him. He said into the phone. “I’ll be there in less than ten minutes. Don’t start without me.” He said to the driver: “You know where I’m going.”

  “I don’t.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Thurlow.”

  “Well, Thurlow,” he said, digging into his pocket, “this is where.” He tossed him the Sparrow’s chip. Thurlow studied it. His discomfort was evident.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t, uh –”

  “Where is Feldman, then? I know Feldman will take me there.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know where Feldman is.”

  “But you know ’im.” He stared at Thurlow in the mirror. “Fine,” he said. He pretended to dial again. He put the phone against his ear. “Put Ronnie on again,” he said. Thurlow was watching in the rear-view mirror. “Who’s Thurlow?” he asked and then listened to Hazel breathing on the other end of the line. “Well, you fucking talk to him or you’re going to have to hire another ferryman. Uh-huh. Fine. You want me to come in my own car?” He noticed Thurlow had his hand on the gearshift. “Hold on. You can tell him.” He held the phone out to Thurlow. “You want to talk to Ronnie?”