“Give me something, Jordie!” she hissed. “What’s going on in that field?”

“He was trying to help her,” he rasped, and she heard the back of his skull slap against the inside of the door.

] 20 [

Two hours passed before she was cleared to leave the Lorris Arms. She watched Spere’s team work on the car and the body, and, in Dunn’s apartment, she answered Ray Greene’s questions. She told him who Dunn was, about his earlier visit to the station house, his status as a person of only a little interest before she saw him in that grove off of the Ninth Line. Greene was writing it all down. “Twenty-four hours I’ve been on the job, Hazel. Twenty-four hours, and I’m writing your name in a book.”

“Willan must be drinking bubbly. Am I directing traffic in Telegraph Heights until the end of time now?”

“Because you got shot at in the line of duty? He’s not that malicious.” Unawares, he was sitting in the same chair she’d been in three minutes before Dunn’s death. She remained standing. “I have three bodies now, Hazel. That’s all the commissioner knows. For now. But the rest of this happens under me. And if there’s a single deviation from the line of command, I’ll end your career. You might work this case brilliantly, Hazel, but if there’s a single rogue element in it beyond this point, you’re done. I’ll put you up for dismissal.”

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

“You actually think I’d be rejoicing right now if your career had just ended the way Jordie Dunn’s did? We used to be friends, Hazel. I’ve never once wanted something bad to happen to you. But I’m running a police department now and our friendship, whatever it is or was, has no bearing on anything. Because now you work for me; your well-being is my beat. I have to protect you. From the risks you face on the job. From Willan. And from yourself.”

She stared at him for a three-count. Then she said, “We have to get my mother and Cathy Wiest out of my house.”

“They’ve already been picked up. After that?”

“We go where Dunn went this morning.”

“Can you do this without getting yourself or anyone else killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe this’ll help you get started.” He held his fist out. There was something in his hand: a little ziplock bag. He dropped it into her palm. “It was in one of Dunn’s pockets.”

She held it up. There was a green, twenty-five-dollar casino chip in the bag. It had the image of a little bird on it, and the word SPARROW’S.

“Does it mean anything to you?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she replied. “Was there anything else?”

“Just his keys and his wallet. Fifteen dollars, a driver’s licence belonging to a man named Caleb Merton, and two credit cards.”

“Who’s Caleb Merton?”

“I have no idea. But the ID had Dunn’s picture on it. It looks legit, but it must be fake. Unless it’s his real name.”

Bail drove Hazel back to the station house. Her mother and Cathy Wiest were already there. Her mother looked displeased, but her expression melted when she saw Jordie Dunn’s blood all over Hazel’s pants. She was wearing a patrolman’s jacket over a borrowed shirt now – forensics had taken her blouse as evidence – but she was still in her own pants. The SOCO’s best guess put the shooter on the rooftop of the building across from the apartments. The shot came from four to six hundred metres away. No one had seen anyone mount the roof, nor had anyone been seen coming down from it. Someone with confidence and a rifle had gotten in and out without being detected. There were two shells on the gravel roof: one for each of the two shots. Hazel had the casings in an evidence bag, and after making sure her mother and Cathy were being looked after, she tossed the bag to Wingate.

“They’re thirty-ought-sixes,” he said, looking at them. “That’s deer calibre.”

“Why leave the shells behind?”

“Everyone shoots these,” he said. “They’re in a hundred different hunting rifles. They don’t mean anything if the shooter was in a hurry, which I imagine he was.” Wingate studied the casings. She lay the bag with the casino chip on top of them.

“Whoever did the shooting probably didn’t want this left behind.”

He turned the chip over and studied both sides. “Where’s it from?”

“It was in Dunn’s pocket.”

“Sparrow’s? Is there a casino anywhere in North America with this name?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a tiny one in those trees.”

Wingate turned the ziplock bag with the casings over in his hand.

“Dunn told me something,” she said. “He told me Henry was trying to help her.”

“The girl?”

“Kitty.”

“What do you think?”

“I think someone’s going to have to go for a walk in the woods,” she said. “But I don’t know how we’re going to get there without being noticed.”

“Someone’s going to have to go in one of those cabs.”

“You think so?”

“I think I know how, too.”

“How?”

“I’ll use the password.”

“Password?” She squinted painfully at him. “What password are you talking about?”

“Something I saw in Roland’s report from Tuesday. I’m going to need some money, though.”

“What’s the password, James?”

“You say Wiest wrote himself a cheque for ten thousand dollars?”

“I don’t have ten thousand bucks, James. Will you tell me what your plan is?”

He handed the ziplock bag back. “I’m going to tell Greene first,” he said.

After a pause, she asked him, “Will you at least tell me the password?”

“Ronnie,” he replied.

] 21 [

Sunday

By noon on Sunday Ray Greene had signed off on a room at the Partridge Inlet Lodge and Wingate drove there in a rental Greene had also approved. A smart little new 2005 Mini Cooper. The wind blew it around on the 41. The BBQ fund had thirty-four hundred dollars in it, which Greene had given to him in a deposit envelope in cash. He had to sign a receipt for it. Hazel had looked on, a bemused expression etched on her features.

They’d decided to supply him with a false ID, like the ones that had turned up on Wiest and Dunn. He’d be “Pete Lupertans.” Forbes had reminded them that Earl Tate, the counterman, had asked to see ID in order to sell cigarettes to him. No one had given it a second thought until after the names Doug-Ray Finch and Caleb Merton had arrived, attached to men who did not actually go by those names. After Brennan’s death in hospital, they’d found another fake ID with the name Kenneth S. Brehaut on it. Wiest’s and Dunn’s IDs had been Ontario driver’s licences, but Brennan’s had been a health card. None of the names checked out in any of the provincial databases. Someone had generated them out of distinct first- and last-name combinations, so that person had access to some databases the general public would not. The IDs were identifying customers of whatever was in that coppice in the fields.

Wingate waited in line and got his Pete Lupertans casino card and then spent some time wandering through the casino, waiting for dusk to come. They were off-loading buses of senior citizens when he got there, and when he left, ninety minutes later, having seen nothing at all of interest, there was a lineup of retirees waiting to be bussed back to their suburban independent-living facilities. Some crimes were so plain, no one even noticed them.

He got back to the lodge at six in the evening. There’d be time to get a room-service meal before Hazel came down in her Mazda and worked point from one of the railway service lanes. Forbes had made dozens of observations from inside his car during the week, many of which were pointless, including wind direction. But Wingate admired the constable for his gumption and his initiative. And because he’d been thorough, they knew that although there were two taxis working the shop, only one of them took the car-abandoning passengers north. The driver of that car was named Thurlow; the other was called Feldman. It had been easy to look them up from the licence plates of the cabs.