OTHER HAZEL MICALLEF MYSTERIES
BY INGER ASH WOLFE
The Calling
The Taken
Copyright © 2012 by Inger Ash Wolfe
Cloth edition published 2012
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Wolfe, Inger Ash
A door in the river / Inger Ash Wolfe.
eISBN: 978-0-7710-8894-0
I. Title.
PS8645.O442D66 2012 C813′.6 C2012-900952-0
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited
One Toronto Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 2V6
www.mcclelland.com
v3.1
In honour of my grandmother,
Freda Strasberg, born Wolfinger
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: Saturday, August 6, 11:21 p.m.
Part 1: Monday, August 8—Friday, August 12
Chapter 1: Monday, August 8, 10 a.m.
Chapter 2: Late afternoon
Chapter 3: Tuesday, August 9, early afternoon
Chapter 4: Evening
Chapter 5: Wednesday, August 10, late morning
Chapter 6
Chapter 7: Wednesday, August 10, evening
Chapter 8: The same night
Chapter 9
Chapter 10: Thursday, August 11, morning
Chapter 11: Afternoon
Chapter 12: Friday, August 12, morning
Chapter 13: Afternoon
Chapter 14: Evening
Part 2: Saturday, August 13, and Sunday, August 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16: Saturday, August 13, morning
Chapter 17
Chapter 18: Mid-afternoon
Chapter 19: Early evening
Chapter 20
Chapter 21: Sunday
Chapter 22
Chapter 23: Midnight
Part 3: Monday, August 15
Chapter 24: Past midnight
Chapter 25
Chapter 26: Monday, August 15, morning
Chapter 27: Early afternoon
Chapter 28: Afternoon
Chapter 29
Chapter 30: Late afternoon
Chapter 31
Chapter 32: Late afternoon
Chapter 33
Chapter 34: Approaching dusk
Chapter 35
Part 4: Tuesday, August 16—Wednesday, August 17
Chapter 36: Tuesday, August 16, midnight
Chapter 37: Tuesday, August 16, late morning
Chapter 38: Wednesday, August 17, afternoon
Epilogue: Late August
Prologue
Saturday, August 6, 11:21 p.m.
She needed to get to the road. She knew it led away from here. Eventually, it connected to the highway that went all the way to Toronto, a city she’d once visited. But if anyone was looking for her … the road was two hundred metres away, and the parking lot in between was all lit up. She could stay in the woods, she supposed, and get farther south before exposing herself. That would probably work. But then from Toronto? She wasn’t thinking that far into the future. And if she wanted one, she’d have to stay more than a few steps ahead.
By now, he would be missing her. By now, he’d know she was gone.
He was going to follow her. She knew he would. She could lose him in the city, change her looks. But if she did that, she’d never know if she was safe. He’d always be in the back of her mind. No matter where she went, she’d be expecting him to step out of a doorway and say hello.
Then there was the problem of the man lying at her feet. He was on the ground between the pickup and the Camry, flat on his back and breathing funny. She wasn’t sure what was wrong. She wasn’t sure it mattered now. He was out of view, anyway. She watched his lower jaw working silently in time to the movement of his hand, a pulsing motion, like he was operating a tiny bellows that worked his mouth.
She crept toward him cautiously and then leaned down and rifled the pockets in his jacket. His eyes were wild, following her, trying to communicate with her. She pushed him over onto his side and saw the bulge of his wallet in his back pocket. She wedged it out and opened it. “I …,” he said, and she saw the effort it took him to utter even this single syllable. She opened the wallet. There was a bit of money and some ID. His driver’s licence gave the name Doug-Ray Finch, but he’d told her his name was Henry. Maybe that was a lie, too. She used her foot to settle him on his back again, and he puked violently and breathed it in and his chest rose up. He let out a deep whoop and fell back against the gravel. She put the wallet away undisturbed in his jacket pocket and took a step away into the darkness. But he knew she was still there. His hand was open, straining. His eyes were like starlight in his head.
This Henry complicated matters. This was way too many loose ends, too much unfinished business. No one was going to take care of it for her. It was up to her now.
She backed up off the asphalt and when she hit the grass, she turned and kneeled down behind the derelict pick-up. She peeled her rotten shoes off her feet and ran, crouched, back into the cover of the woods. Back into the heart of Westmuir County.
1 Monday, August 8—Friday, August 12
] 1 [
Monday, August 8, 10 a.m.
Emily Micallef was refusing to smile. Her daughter, Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, had got her to agree to the photo session and to get gussied up in a fine dark-blue summer dress, and even to stand in the garden, but she wouldn’t smile. The photographer, Jonas Greenlund, had resorted to sticking a quarter to his forehead, but all that won from Emily was a scornfully raised eyebrow and the rejoinder that she wasn’t a fourteen-year-old in her first bra. She was a woman of eighty-seven who was entitled to look any way she pleased. And she wanted to look respectable. Serious.
“But you look stern, Mother.”
“It’s steely intelligence.”
“But this picture is for me. If Martha or Emilia want a picture of you that looks like you’ve been constipated since The Beatles, then they can pay for it.”
“Oh for the love of Mike,” said Emily, and she bared her teeth in mockery of a smile, sticking her face forward on her neck. Her face looked white and drawn, a wilting flower on a dried-out stalk. Greenlund took a shot.
“If you don’t give me a natural smile, Mrs. Micallef,” he said, “I’ll put you on my website.”
The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” said Emily, practically leaping toward the house. “I may be back.”