The Night Bell (11 page)

“Almost exactly straight. The spine of the blade is pointing right at the tip of her nose. If we knew her height and we could get the angle of the knife –”

“Get out of the way,” someone said. It was the SOCO from the hall and the gurney-bearers. They had a fresh gurney. The SOCO positioned herself at Sandy’s feet. “You get her shoulders,” she said to the attendants. Wingate came over to stand with Fraser.

The attendants leaned over to grip the dead woman’s shoulders. “Just don’t think about it,” one of them said to the other. “OK, go.”

They began to lift Sandra Fremont. It looked like her upper body weighed five hundred pounds, the way they were tugging. They struggled a moment longer, then there was a loud creak under her face and they pulled her up. The knife was closer to fourteen inches in length, and the end of it stuck out of the middle of her face. Her nose was a steel fin.

Wingate strode out of the room. Fraser began laughing. “James? What was that about the angle of the knife?”

On the way back to his car, Wingate puked twice.

Jack Deacon’s report on the rest of the bone fragments came through just after 4:00 p.m. After Greene was done with it, Wingate made a photocopy and took it out to Pember Lake.

“You look awful, James,” Hazel said when she opened the door.

“I had a bad egg,” he said. “The bones from the field are at least forty years old.” He gave her the report, which she started to read on her way back to the kitchen. He followed her. “How’s your mom?”

“Asleep.” In the kitchen, he drank a glass of water and she read and reread the report, flipping back and forth to tests and photographs. “God,” she muttered. The Fremont bone was from the pelvis of a fifteen-year-old boy. The victim had died between 1950 and 1960, according to Deacon. Marks on – and indentations in – the bone were consistent with blows from an axe. He attributed the darkness in the grooves to scorching. The other bone, the frontal arch of a skull, had also been hacked and burned; Deacon put the age of the victim at twelve. He reckoned the vertebra didn’t belong to either victim. So there were three bodies at least.

Hazel tossed the file onto the kitchen table. “Someone murdered these children more than forty years ago and got
away with it.” They both found themselves staring at the folder, as if it were glowing, and they were each correct about what the other was thinking. “Those poor boys,” Hazel said.

“Poor boys,” said Wingate.

She poured some coffee out of a fresh pot into two cups, made Wingate’s the way he took it, and brought them back to the table. “You should go home after this.”

“Our master gave me leave to stay on unofficial duty.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Did he give you leave to keep wearing your stripes?”

“You’ve got a lot on your plate, Hazel. I’m just trying to keep an eye out. You’ve done it many times for me.”

“This isn’t the time to pay me back. If Ray or Willan sees you dressed for duty, they’ll –”

“Skip saw me.”

“Oh, right. You went straight back to the station house. And?” She looked at him funny.

“What?” he said.

“You’re being evasive. Why?”

“Who’s invasive?” came a voice from behind them, and they both swivelled in their chairs. It was Emily, in a housecoat, her hair aswirl.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

“What time is it?” She looked at the clock before Hazel could, then looked out the window at the long shadows on the lawn. “Is it six o’clock at night?” she asked, incredulous.

“Yes. You weren’t feeling well.”

“Hello James.”

They both eyed her warily. “Hello Mrs. Mayor.”

She was looking at their coffees with a confused expression. Her energy was subdued, not at all as it had been that morning after her attack.

“How are you feeling?” Hazel asked.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Emily replied. “A little hungry. Groggy.” She was looking around the kitchen now. Hazel had thrown out the cigarettes. “I think I want a sandwich,” she said. Hazel rose immediately to make it.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“And what’s happening tonight?” she asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“We’re discussing a case,” said Wingate. “I wonder if the criminals in your day were anything like the people we deal with now.”

“Criminals are always angry,” said Emily. “Whenever Evan noticed something missing in the store, he’d say, ‘Better he took a shirt than punched someone in the mouth.’ ” She settled in one of the two free chairs, not noticing how Hazel was watching her. “That man knew the price of salt, but he’d let a person walk all over him if he thought it would make a better world. Is there more of that?” she asked, nodding at the coffee. “It feels like six a.m., but it’s not, is it?”

Hazel poured her a cup and made her a sandwich out of a Kraft Single on whole-grain bread with mayonnaise and a crispy rib of romaine lettuce. This had been her
own favourite lunch when she was a kid. Every family had its standby. She’d learned early on that a certain look in Andrew’s eye could be wiped away with careful application of homemade meatloaf. She’d learned the recipe – beef, pork, veal, prunes, and bacon – from Andrew’s mother.

“You two chat,” Emily said, accepting the sandwich. Hazel had cut it in two diagonally.

“Time to get some rest, James,” Hazel said.

Wingate got up and tipped his cap. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Mrs. Micallef.”

“I am not feeling better, James. I am sucking wind and that is about it.”

When he’d gone, Hazel asked, “Do you even remember this morning, Mom?”

“Yes,” said Emily, taking a chunk out of her sandwich. “I was going on like a fool.”

“You thought it was 1957.”

“I smoked a cigarette. I can still taste it.”

Hazel shook her head in wonder. “Did you at least enjoy it?”

“Not at all.” She looked up at her daughter and smiled wanly, although there was a wisp of wickedness in it. “I don’t much think about that time anymore, but there was a lot going on in our lives. Before everything happened.” She picked up the other half of the sandwich. “Here we go,” she said. “Down the long slide to happiness, endlessly.”

She ate with gusto.

Instead of going home, Detective Sergeant James Wingate drove back to Tournament Acres. He had not slept in thirty-six hours.

There was still a team at the Fremonts’, and many of the homes on the western side of the development were fully lit. When Wingate found him, Givens was watching the SOCOs go in and out of the Fremont house on his close-circuit feed from Fuzzy Zoeller. Cameras ringed the development at intervals of five hundred metres. The various feeds displayed across the fifty-inch flat screen in his office. A couple of the feeds were busy with people flowing back and forth under lights.

He sat in a huge, padded chair, his injured leg up on a rolling drinks cart. A half-empty glass decanter was at his
elbow. “This is bad,” he said. Wingate thought he meant his knee, but the man shook his remote at the screen. “Look at all that.”

“Where were you last night, Mr. Givens? Say, after eleven o’clock?”

“I was monkeyfucking drunk. In my suite.”

“Were you with anyone?”

He sneered. “Sure. I was with my harem.”

“I’m sorry to have to ask. You knew the Fremonts, surely.”

“Lovely people. They had me over for canapés after they moved in.”

Wingate’s head went
canned apes
. “Do you think anyone would have had a reason to harm them?”

“Oh, gosh no.” Givens reached for a shot glass from the cart, filled it from the decanter, and drank it down. “They kept to themselves.”

“Were they on any of the homeowners’ committees? Did they have problems with their property, for instance?”

“How many years do you think separates them? I bet you can’t guess.”

“Fourteen.”

“How did you know?”

“They’re dead. I know how old they were.” Givens reflected on this. “Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts between eleven last night and six a.m.?”

Givens clicked the monitor off with his remote and came around the front of the desk. He walked hoppingly, using
the desk for support. “Would you like to know how it works?” His body blocked the light from the window behind. The glow from the kliegs around the Fremont house made a halo of gauzy light around his body. “First, you buy some shitty land somewhere between a city and where people really wish they could live when they retire. You can sell them bungalows with a shopping centre or brick-veneer semis with a mosque or fully detached, luxury living with a golf course. In some US states you can even give them a casino. The key is to sell forty-nine per cent. Fifty-one per cent unsold and you’re still the majority shareholder, and you can walk away. You’ve made a killing on forty-nine per cent of the cheap houses you built. Notice how only half the houses advertised have been built.”

“I noticed that. Is it all legal?”

“Yeah, it’s legal. You have to insure the hell out of it. But when the lawsuits come, if they do, you’ve not only got that all-important one per cent on your side. People always settle. They just want money anyway. You’d be amazed what they settle for.”

“Why are you telling me this? Is someone pissed off?”

“How much you want to bet I’m the next body?” He grunted a laugh.

Wingate had left his notebook in his pocket. Being more or less off-duty, he wasn’t supposed to be taking notes, but it would look good, he thought. “You sound like you’re looking forward to it.”

“Anything to get out of this racket. Living in half-finished paradises a year at a time? Think you can meet a woman like that?”

“No?”

“No.”

“And get this,” he said, ready to spill. “The homeowners own their dwellings and the land they’re on, but the corporation owns all the common property and runs its services. A lot of places they’re the gas resellers, even.”

“Gas resellers?”

“They buy natural gas in bulk and become the vendors to their own developments at higher-than-market prices. It’s written into the contract. Something about the cost of new infrastructure. They make a killing.”

“Do you think someone associated with this development killed the Fremonts?”

“Look at this,” Givens said. He hobbled back behind his desk. He unlocked a drawer out of sight and returned with a huge hanging file folder. “I think you may find this interesting reading.”

“What is this?”

“All the deals. You know the second course got sold to a consortium? They’re the ones that are building the low-rise. No one wants to fucking play golf here except the homies. You know, the people who own the homes. No green fees, no events. It’s a par sixty-three for chrissake. The land is worth more with people in boxes than balls in holes.”

“What about with bones scattered all over it?”

“
Much
less,” said Givens, raising his glass as if to give a toast. “Much less.”

The following morning, the field team was back out in the stalks, sweeping. They were on rotating eight-hour shifts. Willan had signed off on it without hesitation. It took the rest of that day, and most of the next, to complete the sweep. By the end of the weekend, they had collected nine more bone fragments, bringing the total to twelve.

There had not been a word about or from Melvin Renald. Macdonald had come up empty. There were no surveillance cameras keeping track of what was happening in the northern parts of the swampy field, where Sergeant Costamides had last seen Renald; for all intents and purposes, he’d vanished without a trace. His wife, Janet, was apoplectic. She was already accusing someone of “dusting” her husband.

“How much do
you
know about the guy?” Hazel asked Ray Greene near the end of her Sunday shift. “He’s your boy now.”

“I’ve known him exactly as long as you have. Solid guy, typical stats, a sonofabitch, hard, one-quarter stupid. Effective. There are lots of people in policing like Melvin Renald. Go from one shop to another and never for the same reason. Some people are just restless.”

“Meanwhile, he vanishes while on duty and a couple of hours later someone juliennes the Fremonts. To show that they’re serious?”

“How sure are you that the voice on Renald’s radio wasn’t his?”

“A hundred per cent.”

Ray Greene tapped the end of his pen against his blotter. The way you do when you’re coming to a decision: fast. “Well, we’ve got more trouble coming than one of our own vanishing in a field: the minister of public safety is coming to see Chip Willan first thing tomorrow morning.”

Hazel knit her face into a sneer. “Why?”

“I understand it might have something to do with the Fremonts.”

“Ha!” she said. “Please tell me Chip Willan is a suspect.”

“I don’t think the Mounties get called in to investigate small-town murders.”

“Are you telling me we’re off the case?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Monday morning, Ray Greene delivered the news that the minister of public safety was putting the RCMP on the Fremont case. “It’s not my decision!” he called over the heckling. News had already gone out, and off-duty personnel filled the pen. He thought he noticed a union rep or two as well. “When the minister of public safety
comes to town, he gets what he wants.” His eyes shuttled back and forth between Hazel Micallef – steaming mad – and all the bodies in the pen. “Now everyone get back to work.”

He crooked his finger at Hazel and she followed him into his makeshift office. “We’re to hand over copies of our files for both the dead children and for the Fremont murder.”

“They’re taking over
both
cases? I thought they were interested in the Fremonts.”

“Apparently they’re also interested in the poor orphans.”

“And Renald?” She was boiling over quickly.

“They’re leaving us with our own investigation.”

“This is bullshit. Cockeyed … fucking bullshit. How are we supposed to hunt for the people who have taken Renald if the rest of the case is off limits to us?”

“You’ll find a way. Isn’t that how you like to work? I just want to be sure that you understand though – you can’t set foot down there.”