“What if whoever killed Jordie Dunn is trying to keep our attention while they deal with their missing person on their own?” Hazel asked him in the car. “Clean up their own mess and keep an eye on us at the same time?”

“You must have been seen going into the Lorris Arms. They waited until you came out.”

“It would have been hard to shoot Jordie in his apartment.”

“But not hard to take a shot at him when he got back, or at you when you went in.”

“Maybe not.” They angled out onto the highway that led back to Port Dundas. “So they wanted us both, is what you’re saying.”

“Or him. And they just wanted to send you a message. Stay away.”

“I wish them luck with that,” she said.

They drove in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts. Then Wingate said, “Do you think it’s possible they know who I am?”

“How?” she asked. “You haven’t been down to the reserve on official business once since you came to Westmuir. Nobody knows you down there. But if you think you’ve been compromised …”

“No,” he said.

“We can work another angle if you want. We just raid the place. Go in hot.”

“Those girls in there die if you do that.”

“Maybe not. And you don’t.”

“This can’t wait,” he said. “You have to send me back in tonight. Before they decide it’s time to cover their tracks.”

“Let me think about it,” she said.

Wingate buzzed through on the radio just as they were pulling in. Howard Spere was waiting for them in the Port Dundas station house. He put his hand on Hazel’s shoulder as she came into what was still, apparently, her office. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” he said.

“Thank you, Howard. What have you got?”

“A leap forward. We stuck sparrow.info into a browser and got nowhere, so then Austin Franks – do you know Austin?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“You’d like Austin. He’s a nice young guy. There’s word that Willan might be moving him to the new HQ.”

“Keep going, Howard.”

“Anyway, Austin’s got a good head. He tried a bunch of things: ‘sparrow’ in French, in German, in Polish … nothing. Then he asked some local birding association what kind of sparrow was on the chip.”

“It’s a house sparrow.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I know what a house sparrow looks like. Don’t you know what a house sparrow is? James?”

“I know what a house sparrow is.”

“Fine,” said Spere. “It was a house sparrow. So Austin looks at the Latin name. Passer domesticus. He puts that into a browser, and …”

He was done talking, and Hazel spun quickly to her desk. Wingate and Spere stood behind her, watching. She typed in passerdomesticus.info. The screen went blank, and then the image that had been on the casino chip faded up on the screen. Superimposed on it was a simple two-item toggle:

Ο Male

Ο Female

She looked behind herself and Spere made a gesture with his hand that said carry on. She clicked the second choice. The next screen said:

Please create an email account

in the name of

Fiona Emery

at hushmail.com.

Click here when you are done.

She slid her chair away. “Do it,” she said to Spere, and he leaned forward and hurriedly began typing in another window, one that had already been set up to take the name. In a matter of a minute, she was in the brand-new mailbox for Fiona Emery. There were two emails: one from Hushmail, welcoming her, another from Donnotreply@passerdomesticus.info.

Pick up your membership card from member services after 3pm today. Deactivate your hushmail account now.

“Jesus,” Hazel said. “That’s it. Now the question is, how do you get an invite?”

“If someone goes down there this afternoon …,” said Wingate.

“There should be an ID waiting to be picked up by a woman giving her name as Fiona Emery.”

She sent Wingate to fetch Ray Greene. He came into her office and closed the door. Hazel explained what they’d found to him. He came around the other side of the desk and looked at the browser windows that were open.

“Wow. That’s a hell of an operation,” he said. “We better send Bail or Jenner down to get that ID.”

“Well, I can’t go in there again,” Hazel said.

“But you can send René Arsenault back into Sparrow’s,” Greene said.

Wingate nodded. “I can get in.” Hazel looked at him. “There are two girls in there.”

“But you need money.”

“Fifty-four hundred.”

“I’ll clear it with Willan. When we get the false IDs at the Five Nations, we’ll authenticate that it’s the same production as the others, and then we’ll shut it down.”

“The whole casino?”

“Until we have everyone who’s on the inside there, yes. When it’s locked down, we’ll bust the operation on Ninth Line. With you inside, we can communicate the timing of the bust.”

“I had no reception down there.”

“Can the signal be boosted, Howard?”

“I think so,” said Spere.

“And what about Commander LeJeune?” Hazel asked.

“What about her?” Greene said.

She smiled at him. She couldn’t help it.

] 28 [

Afternoon

This was how it would go down: Jenner, who was naturally more settled a person than Eileen Bail, would go down to the casino and walk calmly up to the pickup window at about five o’clock in the afternoon. There she would give the name Fiona Emery and see if it resulted in getting the ID. If it did, she would signal to Hazel, who would be in an unmarked van up on Church Bay Road, behind the Five Nations Casino, with Spere and Greene, and the operation would go live, with Wingate entering Thurlow’s cab as Lupertans again, complete with Lupertans’s ID. If it was possible, they were going to release the door in the riverbed from a distance with Fiona Emery’s magstripe paired to a remote that could communicate on the same frequency as the lock and send three officers in. They were to secure the casino and leave one man there while the other two went deeper in to reconnoitre with Wingate, who would be “arrested” with the rest of the gamblers and the staff. Wingate had the number of employees at five, but he knew logically it had to be more. The forward group could neutralize the man who opened the door for him, as well as the hostess, and perhaps Ronnie, depending on his location. The guard named Gene would have to be taken down and whatever other guards might be present with the other girls. Wingate seemed sure there were only two. Another detail would take the Eagle simultaneously. There was also at least one other person in the Five Nations casino allowing the IDs to be distributed.

By four, there were unmarked cars in position at both ends of the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth lines, as well as on RR26 at the entrance of the reserve, and Sideroad 1, above the Fifth Line. They were cutting off all avenues of escape. Wingate’s tracker had been replaced by a device that would get a signal boost from a location a kilometre away from the grove. Willan signed off on it. It was going to be the largest police operation of its kind in Westmuir County, ever. There were a lot of moving parts, and much room for error.

By 4:30 p.m., everyone was in place. Wingate confirmed that Thurlow was driving and got into the man’s cab in front of the Eagle. Cassie Jenner, in a pair of baggy pants and a golf cap, walked into the casino at 4:35. She got into a lineup that was three people long and waited her turn. There was no sense at all that anything more illicit than people wasting their money was going on here. The woman at the membership intake desk was all smiles and efficiency, and the woman behind the little Plexiglas porthole, the one who was fulfilling the memberships, seemed just as warmly businesslike. The two ID employees were in identical casino uniforms. Cassie reached the front of the line and gave them the name, as she was instructed. With no acknowledgment or fanfare of any kind, the woman handed the ID over. “Good luck,” she said.