She was in early on Friday morning and called a meeting with Wingate, Sergeant Geraldine Costamides, and Kraut Fraser. These were her most senior people now and she was going to need them. After confirming that nothing had changed on the website, she ushered them all into the office and closed the door behind them.
“Where are we with the prints from Eldwin’s house?” she began.
“I had to send the mouse down to Spere,” said Fraser. “It’s going to take more than powder to get a print off that thing.”
“Why?” She noticed Wingate was looking down at the ground.
“Well, your cubscout there was standing in a room full of things Eldwin’s touched, including a keyboard -”
“- how’m I supposed to smuggle a keyboard out of Eldwin’s house?”
“Anyway,” Fraser continued, “there are about two hundred imprints of the guy’s index finger all on the same spot – click click click! – a giant smudge where his thumb spends half its life, and a latent of half a pinky. Then there’s a partial print of the palm, from the base of the thumb. So Spere’s going to have to collect and collate digitally. He told me he’d have an answer by the end of the day.”
“Fine,” said Hazel, and she shot Wingate a look. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s focus on our next move.”
“Which is?”
“Geraldine, I have a job for you if you’re up for it.” Costamides turned her attention to her. Hazel didn’t get much chance to work with this sergeant, as Costamides preferred to work nights, but she liked her. “How’d you like to eat crow on behalf of your commanding officer?”
“I’m listening.”
“I browbeat Gordon Sunderland’s young deputy into cancelling yesterday’s instalment of ‘The Mystery of Bass Lake.’ I’d like you to go back over there and employ your charm in shaking loose the chapter that didn’t appear. And any others they’ve received since we visited their offices on Wednesday.”
“I think I can do that.”
Hazel knew she could. It was Gerry on whom the job of wrangling difficult favours often fell. She had a certain way of holding herself – solid and sad all at once – that made it hard for people to say no to her. The irony was that, unlike most people, Costamides did not have the face she deserved. She was one of the most joyful, vital people on the force. Hazel thanked her, and Costamides left right away for the newspaper’s offices.
“I’ll check up on Spere,” said Fraser, and he left too.
When the door was closed, Wingate said, “Sorry about the mouse. I didn’t know it would be that hard to get fingerprints off -”
“I told you not to worry about it,” she said, and she sat behind her desk.
“I’m sure Gerry will get you what you need from the Record.”
“Yeah. She will.” She pulled the cellphone off the table and pocketed it. “In the good old days, I would have had Ray handle it. He could be subtle.” She shook her head sadly. “You know he sent me a bottle for my birthday.”
“That was nice of him.”
“I guess that means I should call.”
“Maybe you should,” said Wingate. “Maybe if…”
“Don’t finish that thought.”
He didn’t. “You know,” he said quietly, “back in Toronto, people didn’t get as close as you guys do up here. We didn’t live on top of each other.”
“It’s probably better that way.”
“I’m not so sure,” he said. “I like the sense that everything matters here. I like people taking things personally.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to take things personally in Port Dundas, James. Be careful what you wish for.” She was looking at the computer screen. The dripping SAVE HER was revealing itself anew. An awful lot of planning had gone into what they’d seen over the last seven days, almost as if the people who had uploaded this material knew their audience better than it knew itself. Hazel entertained, for just a moment, an inside element, someone within these walls who was communicating, either on purpose or unwittingly, with the perpetrators. But what made better sense was that the people who were driving this macabre charade had a strong grasp of investigative process. They knew it would not take long after the mannequin was found for the police to make their way to the website. And at that point, they’d have the attention of the OPS for as long as they wanted it. It made her feel like there was a ghost sitting on her shoulder. That made her think of what was sitting on her other shoulder. “I don’t think I told you I met with Commander Willan. You know, Mason’s replacement?”
“You didn’t mention it. What’s he like?”
“Stalin with a surfboard.” She sighed. “He sees me as the rope bridge all you young folks are going to walk over to get to the promised land of efficient policing. He basically called me a dinosaur.”
“All the dinosaurs I’ve known were the best police, Hazel.”
“The dinosaurs may be good police, James, but they can never solve their own extinctions.”
Wingate found himself riven by the image of his superior officer looking crestfallen behind her desk. She seemed more defeated now than all the times he’d visited her at home, when she’d been in nearly unbearable pain, looking tiny on her couch in a terrycloth robe. “Skip? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Because you seem -”
“I know,” she said. “Apart from having a man trapped in my computer, live animals and body parts appearing on my desk, a CO who thinks I’ve outlived my usefulness, and expensive gifts coming from missing friends, I also happen to have a pill problem. And it appears I’m to quit in the midst of all this nonsense. So, I’m slightly less than okay.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Just do your job and don’t think about me. We need to get in front of this.”
“I should have thought through what I was doing at Eldwin’s.”
“You did. You’re not a dinosaur, remember that. Now go back to your desk and have a good think. At the rate things are going for that man in the chair, we all need to get on our game.”