The Night Bell (21 page)

“What business is it of
yours
, missy, when I go to bed?” She turned on Ray, her face rigid in anger. “This is a lady’s personal bedroom, asshole. You want to see my tits too? Huh?”

“Oh,” said Ray. “I’m so sorry. No. Um, Detective Inspector Mic –”

“Get out!”
the woman screamed. “How did you
get
in here, anyway?”

“Your door was open,” said Ray, paralyzed.

“And you just
walked
in! Into a private home. You know
what? You give me a heart attack, and you’ll both be breaking rocks somewhere!”

“We’re very sorry,” Ray stammered, backing out of the bedroom. He took Hazel by her arm to pull her out as well, but she stood her ground.

“Look
,” she said. Her tone of voice silenced both her CO and the thin woman in the nightshirt. She pointed at the east-facing window in the bedroom. There was a second OPS cruiser parked behind her own now. Hazel strode back into the hall.

“Where are you going now?” shouted Honey Eisen. “Off to terrorize babies and kittens?”

Ray followed her into the hall. “Hazel?”

“I thought we were leaving. We’ve given our apologies – and again, Mrs. Eisen, our deepest apologies for disturbing you while we were in the process of ensuring you hadn’t been murdered by the same person who killed the Fremonts and now Brendan Givens – and we should go.”

Ray stammered his objections while Honey Eisen pursued them down the stained runner. “I thought I was about to be raped!”

“Again, very sorry!” said Hazel from the bottom of the stairs. Ray took the remaining steps two at a time and got to the front door before Hazel was through it. But then she came to a sudden stop in the doorway. Ray almost ran into her back.

“Oh, fucking hell,” she said. He looked over her shoulder. On the other side of the road there was a man leaning against her cruiser. It was Chip Willan.

“I’m going to guess this isn’t a coincidence,” Willan said. He offered Ray his hand. The way Willan offered a hand, you weren’t going to refuse it. He thrust it at you like a dagger. “You two playing around with radio frequencies?”

“We were actually down here on Superintendent Scott’s recognizance,” Ray lied. Hazel felt briefly proud of him.

“Is
that
how we meet here at Tournament Acres?” he said to Ray with a smile. “I thought you’d stood down.” Willan bent away to look down the street. “Who’s in trouble?”

Hazel watched the two men carefully. She’d rarely seen them together, and to judge by the tension, they were either at loggerheads or they were trying not to say something in front of her.

“How did you end up here?” Hazel asked.

Willan pretended to notice her for the first time. “Well, I’m liaising with the local commander. Making sure they have everything they need.”

“They’re the RCMP, sir. And the local commander is a superintendent. They already have everything, so I’m not sure why they need your assistance, sir.”

He squared himself to her. “They asked for it. Who cleared
you
?”

“She’s here on my recognizance,” said Ray.

“And you are on Scott’s?”

“Actually, your grandmother cleared us,” said Hazel. Both men looked at her blankly. “Page, right? Grammy Page?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ray asked.

“He’s an investor in Tournament Acres,” she said. “He’s got money in this place under the name of his dead granny.”

Willan smiled beatifically.

“What are you talking about?” Ray’s voice was choked with alarm.

“Isn’t that right, Chip? It’s no skin off your knuckles if the RCMP keep the lid on what’s happening here. What a stroke of fortune!” Ray put his hand on her arm but Hazel shook him off. “They have Renald, and there are two freshly dead bodies on this property and one in Toronto. Is that OK with you, Chip?”

It seemed to her that he wasn’t even working on a reply; he was already serene with some foregone conclusion. When a predator looks upon helpless prey, it can take its time. Play with it a while before dealing the death blow.

Ray pulled her away. “Come on, Hazel.”

Hazel remained silent until they were well up the 41, heading back to Port Dundas, and then she said: “Choose.”

“Sorry?”

“Prove to me that your interests lie with the department and not with collecting whatever prize Chip Willan has offered you.”

He looked shocked. “Is that what you think of me? That I came out of retirement to collect a prize?”

“What has he promised you when the new detachment opens? CO of the amalgamated OPS Central? A salary bump?”

“It hasn’t been discussed yet. It’s more than a year away.”

“Groundbreaking is Tuesday afternoon, though. It’s been decided already, all of it. And you’ve been told what you’ll get if you go along.”

“Was that true?” he asked. “What you just accused Willan of?”

“He’s got a vested interest in that place. I bet Tournament Acres was just a dry run for whatever the Ascot Group might have in mind for other fields in our county. Who knows what kinds of future contracts Willan might be looking at?”

“You disagree with him,” he said. “That’s all this is. You have to let go of your conspiracy theories if you’re going to think straight.”

“I still want you to choose.”

“Between what and what?”

“Being a cop or administrating for Chip Willan, whether you think you’ll be rewarded for it or not.”

His expression clouded. “I don’t have to pass your tests anymore, Hazel. You have to pass mine.”

As a peace offering, Ray Greene gave Hazel permission to find three of the living wards of Dublin Home. They had to be in Westmuir County, though, north of Dublin. He forbade her to investigate Willan, promising he would look into it himself. She didn’t believe him, but now at least the investigation into Dublin Home was resurrected.

She returned to Mayfair first thing Friday morning. Putchkey held the front door open for her. He was agitated but doing his best to hide it. “Can I ask you something? Is there some kind of maniac on the loose?”

“What do you know about maniacs, Mr. Putchkey?”

“I hear a buncha people were killed over by Dublin.”

“Who told you that?”

“I know people. Do you think we’re safe here? Members of the public use this office, this is a public place. Do you think we should close up until he’s found?”

“Will you buzz me in so I can go see the person I have an appointment with?”

“Oh, he’s late. Said he wouldn’t be in until lunchtime.”

“Cutter?”

“Yeah. He left you an envelope.” He went through the
Employee’s Only
door and into the back. “So we’re fine here then? Killer’s probably moved on, right?”

“Can I have my envelope?”

He gave it to her. Cutter had left some names for her. Three, just as she’d wanted: Rex Clemson, Rene Eppert, and Hibiki Yoshida.

Mr. Rex Clemson lived a brief drive from the archives, in a trailer park. It was the lunch hour when she got there, and her stomach growled. She checked the address again and walked down the site to knock on number 5. The man who opened the door looked hard at Hazel through cloudy eyes. “I’m from the Port Dundas PD, sir. Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef. I’m wondering if I can talk to you about the Dublin Home for Boys.”

The man in front of her was in his sixties, but he looked older. She showed him her badge, but his eyes were locked on her face. “What about it?”

“You were there in the late fifties for about eighteen months. Is that right?”

“Why are you interested?”

“May I come in?”

He shook his head. “Ask your questions from there.”

“Did you know Eloy Miracle?”

“No.”

“How about Valentijn Deasún? Or Charles Shearing?”

His face changed. Now he looked at her with suspicion. “How did you find me?”

“I’m a police detective, Mr. Clemson. I can do that.”

“But how did you know to look for me? Why did my name come up?”

“May I come in?”

“No.” She saw he wanted to close the door on her, but his eyes glowed with fearful curiosity. “Who sent you?” he asked.

“I wasn’t sent by anyone. I was looking for survivors of a certain period at Dublin Home.”

“And someone told you to come and see me?”

“Mr. Clemson, I can’t tell you –”

“Leon Cutter,” the man said. “Son of a bitch. Come in.” He held the door open and she entered, not without trepidation. The cramped trailer stank of marijuana. Clemson stood aside and she stepped forward to find herself standing beside the bed.

“Why is Leon’s name the secret code?”

“Leon is a righteous man. He told you to come see me?”

“Yes.” He offered her a seat beside his muted television. He was watching
Animal Rescue
and out of the corner of her eye she could see a woman pulling a koi from a pool with her bare hands. A plate with a half-eaten sausage and slices of apple sat on the table in front of the couch. He went back around to his seat, moving with difficulty. She recognized his pain – he walked with a tilted head, an arm out at an odd angle to brace himself for every step because every step hurt. He walked like he was drunk. She guessed it was his L5 vertebra. “Who is Cutter to you?” she asked him.

“He was one of my dorm mates at Dublin Home. So was Valentijn.”

She blinked a few times, quickly rearranging things in her head. “Leon Cutter was at Dublin Home?”

“That wasn’t his name. But yes.”

“And Eloy Miracle?”

“Yes,” said Clemson, looking away. “Charlie Shearing, too. He was a Blackfoot Indian. He wasn’t even from Ontario. But they took him anyway.”

“Took him?”

“The Dublin Home for Boys. Last stop on a tour of hell if no one ever thought you a grand addition to their household. May I?” He held up a joint. She told him to go ahead. He lit it. “Too ugly, too stupid, too strong. There were a lot of reasons a boy ended up at Dublin Home, and just as many for why he might never leave it. I wasn’t there long when Charlie disappeared. They told us he’d gone home. But no one would pick up a new family member in the middle of the night.”

“So what happened to him?”

Clemson lay the joint down on a metal jar lid and speared the sausage with the tip of a knife. He bit a chunk off. “I heard things. The older boys told stories. One of them told me Charlie had struck an orderly, and a nurse came and gave him an injection and they took him away. The boy told me Charlie came back with a sort of comical look in his eye, like he’d been somewhere fun.

“And he was a smart boy. Charlie knew how to draw and write his own comics. And he could do a handstand walk across the room. Sometimes he defended the smaller boys, but at other times he was just as bad as any of the monsters who were in there. He must’ve gone too far.”

“Who took him in the night, Mr. Clemson?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know he was gone until the next day.” His attention returned to the television and he winced at something. Hazel looked at the screen: a woman was holding a purple starfish with two of its legs missing.

“They grow back,” she said. “Do you mind?” Clemson gave her his attention again. “What about Deasún? Or Ronald Morristown?”

“I didn’t know a Morristown. I knew Valentijn. He and Lionel …”

“Lionel?”

“Leon. Valentijn and Lionel and me. A couple other boys. We stuck together. Valentijn was tall and strong, but he was an imbecile. If he got upset he would pound his own head with his fists and the orderlies would come running. They beat him to stop him. We took to protecting Valentijn because he was more helpless than even we were.

“Then one night, they came for him. I was in my bed with my eyes shut tight and I listened to footsteps come down the middle of the room between the beds. Normally, the dormitories at night were full of sounds – squeaking beds and coughs and sniffles. But that night, it was silent. I
lay still, every boy in the room lay still. And then there was a little movement, something shuffling. Footsteps came back through the room. I opened one eye just a bit in time to see Valentijn’s bare feet bobbing in the air as someone carried him past my bed.” He put his fingertip on an apple slice and pinched it off the edge of his plate. “You shouldn’t take my word for anything,” he said. “It was a long time ago. A lot of water under the bridge. I can’t even remember his face.”

“Did Leon … Lionel see this as well?”

“After you’d been at Dublin Home long enough, you didn’t have to see anything in order to know what was going on,” he said. “More or less everyone knew. And knowing meant you could be next. Our survival depended upon our silence. I don’t even know if it’s safe to talk now.”

“What is Leon up to?”

“He promised to find out who took our friends.”

Evan Micallef’s Christmas buying trip was his most important of the year. It was when he purchased most of his stock for the following year, and he was charged with the sacred duty of buying the gifts Santa was bringing his children. Alan still believed in Santa. But Hazel had known by the age of eight that there was something fishy about the whole thing. Her dad had fallen through to the hip fixing the roof; there was no way reindeer could land on it.

He timed his annual trip carefully, scanning the advertisements in the
Toronto Telegram
every day starting the second week in December, waiting for the right moment. The moment came when the smaller department stores and specialty shops finally crumbled under the pressure of Eaton’s and started advertising desperately deep discounts.
Prices were especially low in the stores of the Ward, where the prices were low to begin with. Everyone undercut. For Micallef’s, it was the best opportunity all year to stock up on things that never went out of style: underwear and scarves at sixty per cent off, nightshirts in every colour for half a song, trenchcoats, and ladies’ gloves. One Christmas he’d bought a huge lot of three-for-one, gold-plated cufflinks, which it took him seven years to sell out. For the family, he bought a year’s worth of soap, sugar, and batteries at the same time.

Hazel had been asking to come on his Toronto trips since she was eleven, but last year was the first time her father had agreed to let her join him. She’d been to the city before, but all she could remember of it were the crowds of people going in every direction at Yonge and Bloor, the rattling of the streetcars, and traffic everywhere. Cars as big as boats lined up at stoplights. At night it had seemed like a dream or a colour movie. When she went down with him that first time, she was still struck by the number of people and the impression the city gave her of ceaseless industry. She made sure to be useful to her father, ferrying things to the car and watching for meter maids. She liked being alone with him and asking him questions:
What would happen if there was a flood in Port Dundas? What would they do? How did you meet Mom?