The Taken Read online

  The woman sitting in front of them – Pat Barlow – might have been a relation. She looked about as pale and shiny as a supermarket apple right now. She was on the other side of the slightly warped table that sat in the middle of the room, in her worn quilted coat, her black hair done up messily on top of her head. She had a smoker’s complexion: watery eyes, greying, pellucid skin. One hand curled loosely around a Styrofoam cup of coffee, her gaze lost in the dark liquid it held. Hazel sat down across the table from her, lowering herself slowly into the chair and hooking the cane over its arm. All eyes had settled on her when she walked into the station house and a couple of her people had come forward almost reverently to shake her hand. No one commented on her being half in uniform, for which she was grateful, but Barlow had cast her a strange look when she came into the room. Wingate brought another chair to the table and sat beside her. “Can you tell DI Micallef what you told me, Miss Barlow?” The woman nodded. “Take your time.”

  Hazel already knew what this woman had told Wingate, but when there was suspicion about a witness, a twice-told story usually shook loose its inconsistencies. Barlow brought the coffee to her mouth, sipped it, and grimaced. “I took a couple out this afternoon. They wanted to go for pike.”

  “You and -” Hazel checked Wingate’s notes, which were open on the table between them. “- Calvin Jellinek own Charter Anglers, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what were the names of your clients yesterday?”

  “Dean Bellocque and Jill Perry-something.”

  The second name was Paritas. The woman spelled her name “Gil.” The other name checked out in Wingate’s notes. “Okay, go on.”

  “We were about two kilometres out, on a shelf in like ten metres of water. I saw a school of something in the finder, probably bass, hugging the edge of the shelf, four or five metres down. We’d fished two beds and got nothing, so I told them this was their best chance to catch today.”

  “You knew these people?”

  “Never seen ’em before.”

  “So you fished the shelf.”

  “Yeah. And we caught a couple little ones. We threw them back.” She swirled her cup and looked into it like she was expecting to see a tiny school of something to go by in its surface. “I had an eight o’clock and I told them we had to go back, but they wanted ten more minutes. That’s when they hooked it.”

  “Hooked what?” said Hazel.

  Barlow sent a worried look across the table to Wingate, and he gave her a faint nod. “A body,” said Barlow, her voice almost inaudible.

  “Keep going.”

  “One of them – Gil – says, Jesus Christ, and I look at her rod, and it’s bent double, you know, like she’s hooked a monster. But there’s no action on the line – it’s a dead weight. I take the rod from her and let the line out because I figure she’s caught on a log, but it’s hooked hard. I whip the line a little to unsnag it, ’cuz it’s in there good, but then, when I try to reel in, I feel the log come off the bottom and I start drawing it in. And then I can see the log there under the water, the shape of it, and it’s coming up. I figure I can save my rig and not have to redo it for the four o’clock. Then Gil starts screaming. And we see it.”

  Hazel was writing in her own pad now. “You see what, exactly?”

  “A body. Tangled in some kind of net and completely naked. I’m surprised it didn’t snap the line. I dropped the whole rod and it went over the edge and the whole thing went back down. I about almost puked.”

  “How did you know it was a body if you dropped the rod right away?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Tell me what you saw,” Hazel said.

  Barlow looked to Wingate again, and received his silent reassurance to go on. “I seen a person’s rear, okay? She was bent double, like she was touching her toes, and her… ass was coming up out of the water.”

  “How did you know it was a woman?”

  “Geez,” said Barlow, shaking her head. “I know what a woman looks like.”

  “What happened to your customers?”

  “They got in their cars and left.”

  “You have contact information for them?”

  “We’ve got the numbers in our log at the shack.”

  “Okay,” said Hazel. “So you called us, but when the cops showed up, you were back on the lake.”

  “Season’s just opened,” said Barlow unhappily. “I got bills piled up from winter. Gannon doesn’t freeze anymore, you know, I lose all my ice-fishing gigs and I’m drydocked for five months. I can’t turn down customers when I get them.”

  “You’ve got quite a constitution. You find a body in the lake, you’re almost sick to your stomach, but ninety minutes later, you’re back on the water.”

  “I didn’t go anywhere near that place, trust me,” said Barlow, splaying her hands as if to fend something off. “I just left that thing where it was. I don’t want anything to do with it. The whole thing is way too eerie.”

  “Eerie,” said Wingate, “why is it eerie?”

  Barlow tilted her head at them. “Don’t you read the paper?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Hazel.

  She told Wingate to go get Monday’s and Thursday’s Records. He brought them in, and they opened them to the two story instalments, spreading the papers out over the table in an empty interview room. Hazel hadn’t read past the first paragraph of the first chapter. Now the two of them leaned over the papers, Hazel supported on her cane, and hurriedly read through both. “The Mystery of Bass Lake,” by Colin Eldwin, began:

  The biggest muskie ever landed on Bass Lake was a forty-pounder with a face like an old lady’s. Dale Jorgenson and his son Gus headed out early on that Sunday morning with a mind to breaking the record, but when they tossed their lines into those murky waters, with the two flies they’d tied themselves that morning beside their campfire, they had no idea what strange catch waited for them at the bottom of that lake.

  Dale stood at the stern, smoking a thick hand-rolled, and smiling at his son. What a big kid that one’s turning into, he thought. Dale owned the town’s best landscaping company, but he was going to retire one day, and then it would all belong to Gus. If Gus would take it. Dale had to be careful when talking to his kid about the future. The siren call of the big city could be audible even out here.

  Dale threw open the lid of the cooler. “Time for a beer, I’d say.”

  “A bit early for a brew, isn’t it?” Gus said, laughing.

  Dale cracked two big cold ones and tossed one of them to his son. “The fish’ll know if you’re not drinking, kid.”

  The two men tipped their cans back into their throats and drank thirstily. Gus finished his in one long gulp. If Dale ever wanted proof that he really was Gus’s dad, he’d need no more than the sudsy smile on that kid’s face to have it.

  “Well, if it’s the writer’s body down there, there might be just cause,” said Wingate. “So this is him?” he said, indicating the picture of the man in the parking lot. “He looks like a piece of work.”

  “Who the hell fishes muskie with a fly? Who is this idiot?” said Hazel. They read on. At the end of the first section, which had been printed in Monday’s paper, Gus’d had a heavy bite, but when he tried to reel the fish in, his line snapped. The chapter ended with father and son staring at each other in wonderment, and Dale saying: “The fish of our lives is down there, Gus, waiting for us to catch it!”

  In the second instalment, the two determined fishermen had rerigged with heavier line and this time, when Gus felt his rod bend against the force of something big, he and his father reeled it in together. The story ended with a shocker.

  The big fish – and goddamn if it wasn’t going to be at least a fifty-pounder – had given up the fight. Dale held the net at the ready and said to Gus, “Easy, there, easy, he’ll wake up when he realizes what’s happening.”

  It was murky in the water, and father and son looked over into it, anticipating the lunker
of all time. But then they saw it, and what they saw stopped them cold.

  “Oh god -” said Gus.

  The hook was in a torso. A human body. Dale was speechless.

  The terrifying vision hung in the water like it was floating in mid-air. Gus saw the body had no head.

  “Great,” said Wingate. “I guess we better call the Marine Unit?”

  She looked at her watch. It was already seven-thirty. “It’s going to be too dark to look tonight. Get someone up here for first thing and send Barlow home. Tell her we’ll see her in the morning. And hope to hell this thing doesn’t wash up somewhere before we find it.”

  4

  Saturday, May 21

  Charter Anglers operated out of a shack on the shore of Gannon Lake. A couple of white wooden hulls with peeling paint lay on their sides in front of the shop, and below it, at the bottom of a short slope, was the Charter Angler dock with its sign on a post at the end of it. They had a single pontoon boat tied up, big enough for five adults. It was rigged for a trip, with three rods leaning against the back railing. “I thought they were expecting us,” said Hazel.

  “I’ll go see what’s happening,” said Wingate. They parked the car on the grass halfway between the dock and the shack. Wingate knocked on the door and went in. A moment later, he was leading a man toward the car.

  “This is Calvin Jellinek,” Wingate said, leaning in the driver’s side window. “He says Ms. Barlow called about an hour ago and is feeling too nauseous to come in.”

  “You’re going to fuck up my ten a.m., aren’t you?” Jellinek said. The muscles on his arms stood out like cables. He was a strong-looking, squat man with a face ravaged by acne scars.

  “Your partner was supposed to take us out.”

  “She was, eh? Why do I think that honour’s going to fall to me?”

  “Do you know where Ms. Barlow found the… um?”

  “I know this lake,” he said. “I can take you anywhere. But why don’t you folks come back at noon? It’s the Saturday of the long weekend. I have customers. Look -” He waved behind Wingate, and Wingate turned to see a woman and two little boys coming down toward them. The boys were wearing one-piece, full-body swimsuits that looked like diving costumes. Overtop of these suits they wore enormous, blocky red life-jackets. “They drove up from Mayfair. It wouldn’t be right -”

  “What we’re here for is a little more urgent than catching bass, I think.”

  The woman and her kids were standing slightly behind him. The boys were excited. One of them said, “Can I kill them?”

  “Be quiet, Tom. You can see Mr. Jellinek is busy.”

  Jellinek leaned forward with a pleading look on his face. It was a mean look. “Come on, Officer. Three hours. It means a hundred and fifty in my pocket, and whatever it is you’re looking for, it’ll be there at lunchtime.” He turned to his customers. “You folks just head on down to the dock. I’ll be two minutes.”

  “You’re going to have to cancel this expedition, Mr. Jellinek,” said Wingate. “I’m sorry. We’ve got a marine unit coming up from Mayfair – they’re going to be here in about an hour.”

  “You going to reimburse me for my lost income?”

  “I’m sure these folks’ll make it up to you. Those boys aren’t going to let their mother off the hook.” He immediately regretted his choice of words, thinking of what was lying out there in ten metres of water. “This is more important.”

  “Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. He turned angrily and went down to join his customers. Wingate watched the boys’ faces fall in unison. The littler one started to cry and the mother looked up toward him where he stood on the gravel, her face set in an expression of profound disappointment. He hoped Jellinek wasn’t telling them why the police needed to go fishing. The family walked back up the slope, the boys both with slumped shoulders. The elder murmured “Thanks for nothing,” as he passed.

  “I’ll be waiting in my shop,” said Jellinek. “I have another group at two. I hope to hell you’re not going to need more time than that.”

  Wingate found a couple of vending machines a few hundred metres down the shore, standing outside a kind of corner store that was closed. He brought back two bags of tortilla chips and two bottles of water, and they sat in the car waiting for the Marine Unit. “My mother’s going to kill you for this,” Hazel said, crunching the chips. It hurt to lean back against the seat, so she was bending forward a little, as if she was expecting Wingate to put a pillow behind her. He had the radio dialled to a local classical music station and inoffensive orchestral music played quietly.

  “She’s gotta catch me first,” he said.

  “Oh, she’ll catch you,” said Hazel.

  Wingate wagged a finger at the radio. “I played sax, you know. I played seriously. I was in my corps’ marching band.”

  “I admire that. I don’t have any talents at all.”

  “You don’t have musical talent, but that’s probably because you just don’t have room for it given your other talents.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, raising one eyebrow. “You don’t have to butter me up, James. You already have my job.”

  “You can have it back, Skip,” he muttered. “Just tell me when.”

  The Mayfair cops arrived at ten-fifteen. Jellinek was staring at his watch. One of the cops was wearing a wetsuit under his uniform and as he stripped down to it in the van, his partner, PC Tate, leaned over into Hazel’s window and got caught up. “Buddy’s going to take us out then?” he said.

  “Not willingly from the sounds of it. But you take whatever time you need out there.”

  “Water’s going to be cold.”

  She looked out toward the van where the other cop was transforming himself into a diver. He looked like a larger version of one of the kids who’d come down with their mother. “You guys get much call?”

  “Not this time of year,” said Tate. “Mostly it’s going down to hook up a Sea-Doo or a smashed-up motorboat, but that’s in June or July. Over-exuberance, you know, summer arrives and every idiot’s out there gunning it. Once in a while, it’s sad, you know, there’s a real accident, and we get called out to recuperate. But rarely in May.” He lowered himself to see Wingate. “I got a handtruck in the van, but I’m going to need some help getting the winch on it.”

  “Sure,” said Wingate. He got out of the car and the two men walked to the white OPS van parked down by the dock. Jellinek was watching from the front door of his shack, and when he saw the big equipment come out, he came down and helped them get it onto the boat. Hazel watched them from the car. The one called Calberson hauled his tank and flippers out of the van, and then Jellinek tied off. Wingate dashed back to the car. “You going to be okay?”

  “I hate the water, James.”

  “You picked a good place to be born then.”

  “I can get seasick looking at the back of a dime.”

  He laughed. “What’s your best guess about what’s out there?”

  “Guess or hope?” she said.

  “Yeah.” He pushed off the side of the car. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “Too bad you guys aren’t paying customers,” Jellinek said from the wheel. “I’m drifting over keepers here.”

  Wingate looked over the side of the boat, but the water was black and he couldn’t see anything. “How do you know that?”

  Jellinek indicated what looked like a miniature computer monitor attached to the boat’s dash. “I can see them here.”

  Wingate looked at the screen. It was a console with a black and green display and it showed cartoony images of fish drifting past with numbers attached to them. Jellinek explained the size of the images correlated to the size of the fish, and the numbers told how far down they were. “Fish-finder’s the best cheat there is,” he said. “When you got three hours and you’ve made your clients a promise, you can’t dick around casting into the dark.”

  Tate was looking over their shoulders. “Obviously you’ve never
been on an OPS investigation. Can you get that thing to scan the bottom for us?”

  “It won’t be much use. It can’t pick out something lying against the lakebed.”

  “What if it’s floating slightly off the bottom?”

  “Maybe,” said Jellinek. “But it can tell a fish from a log and it’s not going to find you a log, you know. It’s not a log-finder.”

  “Do it anyway,” said Tate, tilting a black handheld device back and forth in his palm. “Start over there” – he pointed at a spot five hundred metres to the right from where they were – “and crisscross back and forth.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said.

  “No, he’s the boss,” said Tate, gesturing at Wingate. “Right, Boss?”

  “I’m acting boss,” he said. “The real boss is in the car.”

  “You’re the acting CO for an acting CO, right? You guys have commitment issues?” “Funding issues, Officer.”

  “Ah. Not your commitment issues then, eh?” He squinted into the thing he was holding. “Okay, here we go. Can you write this down, Detective?”

  “What is that?”

  “GPS. Write this down: latitude 44.9483, longitude 79.4380.”

  Wingate wrote down the coordinates, and Jellinek reversed the boat to the point Tate had told him to start. Calberson had sat the whole time at the back of the boat staring off at one of the islands. Wingate imagined he wasn’t a guy whose little tasks had a lot of happy endings. His thick goggles hung against his chest.

  The boat moved slowly across the surface of the water. They kept their eyes on the fish-finder. “Goddamn waste,” said Jellinek as what appeared to be a school of ten or more fish drifted across the screen. “Bass. Four-pounders.”

  “They’ll be bigger tomorrow,” said Tate.

  “They’ll be gone tomorrow.”

  They made three crossings and saw nothing the finder didn’t image as a something you’d roll in breadcrumbs and fry in butter. Behind the boat, some of the fish were hitting the surface, making rings in the water.