“Okay,” said Childress, and she flipped her notebook open. “Shoot.” She wrote down the number and closed her pad. “Well… if we find anything…”
“Thanks,” said Hazel, and with that, another signal passed between the two cops, and they headed down the stairs. She and Andrew watched them drive off.
“I can’t tell if that guy was high-hatting me or just passing the time of day,” she said to Andrew.
“What do you care what he thinks?” he replied. “You’re in the right place and you know it.”
“Do I?”
“You’re just nervous because you’re off your turf, Hazel. But that doesn’t make them any less clueless.”
“I feel like I should try to get back in there. Look around without those beat cops’ eyes on me.”
“If there is a reason for you to snoop around again here, don’t you want to have the right paperwork? I get the feeling they could have given you trouble on a technicality if they wanted to, Hazel.”
“Fine. Then what do I do with this feeling?”
“Feed it sushi,” he said.
They sat at one of the tables in the back of the green-and-black restaurant on Bloor Street. The whole interior looked like the lacquered boxes they served the food in. Hazel had never been partial to Japanese food: she didn’t like its prettiness, its attention to the little detail. She preferred her food to take up the whole plate. Still, she had to admit it tasted good and they said it was good for you. She couldn’t think if she’d ever seen a fat Japanese person. It was just past one and the place was full of young people expertly wielding their little wooden sticks over plates full of bright squares of food.
The last time she’d shared a meal with Andrew, just the two of them, she’d been reduced more or less to begging. Here, too, he’d come to her aid, but at least it wasn’t as personal as before. She tried to think of the last time she’d ever done anything for him. That was something to store away.
“Five Japanese restaurants on a single stretch of road and the whole of Westmuir County can’t manage even one,” he said. He was holding a piece of salmon sashimi in the air on the end of a fork. In all his years of proclaiming himself a sushi aficionado, he’d never learned how to use chopsticks. It was this shameless confidence in himself that had long ago attracted her to him. He popped it into his mouth. “Fire was the worst thing that ever happened to fish,” he said.
She toyed with her avocado maki. “Maybe we call Martha and take her out for a coffee?”
“And let her call me Watson all afternoon? No thanks. Plus, I told Glynnis I’d be back in time to marinate some flank steak.” It was the first time her name had come up all day. Four hours and counting, Hazel thought. Progress, if she were foolish enough to think of it that way.
“I was expecting you to say you didn’t want to give her false hope. Seeing us together.”
His fork stilled, mid-air. “Is that how you see this, Hazel? A relationship-building exercise? I came because you asked me to help. Don’t make me think you had ulterior motives.”
“Moi?” she said, splaying a hand against her chest. “Never.”
He eyed her carefully, admitting the ghost of a smile. “I thought you did very well today.”
“Nothing happened.”
“I mean with your back. You drove almost two hours this morning and it’s going to be two hours back and you’re in tiptop shape. That’s an excellent sign.”
“You mean I’ll be moving out soon.”
“There’s that as well.”
“Maybe I’ll stub a toe and try to prolong my visit.”
He forked up a mound of white rice and dropped it into his mouth. “You are always welcome to stop by, Hazel.”
She felt the withdrawal symptoms still nibbling away at the edges: a faint sizzle behind the eyes, of worry, or dread. And then she realized it wasn’t the lack of Percs she was feeling: it was grief. And she permitted herself, at last, the thought in full that she’d only let flit on the periphery: that she wished the last three years had never happened. And not just because she missed him and still loved him, but because they were not done; they had not finished telling the great story of their lives. It was true that it had not always been great, but it was their story, and it was going to be the only story they had. Well, the only story she had. Of who she was with him, of who they’d been together and what they’d done. What she had of him and he of her made it impossible that anyone else could know them as they’d once been. Letting herself think this, a too-big space opened in her chest and she realized how much grief she had over losing this most important friendship of her life. And at the same time, she realized that he was happy and that there was nothing she could do, or should do, to change things between them.
“Hazel?”
“You have rice on your chin,” she said.
“Well, you don’t have to cry about it.”
“Wasabi,” she said. “It’s two o’clock. We should get ourselves home.”
Back in Port Dundas, she sat in her office with Wingate. The screen showed a black as solid as a moonless night with the little green arrow at the bottom. The scratching sound was repetitive, like it was on a loop. They let it run with the mic off. “They serve a thousand warrants a year on the anonymizing services registered in the Caymans,” Wingate said. “There’s like eight of them down there and another five or six in the Seychelles. All the addresses are post office boxes and when they pick up the mail down there, they systematically challenge the warrants. The detective I spoke to said they’re still trying to get records from 1998.”
“Why don’t they just walk in and bust these people?”
“They have no idea where they are.”
“What about the ISPs? Don’t the providers know who’s using their service and where they’re located?”
Wingate had raised his eyebrows at her, like she’d grown a third head. “I guess Mr. Mackie gave you a crash course?”
“Well?”
“I asked the detective,” he said, a little defensively. “About the ISP. These companies are their own ISPs. They’re totally untraceable.”
She slapped the desk. “Then get in touch with the company directly. Do they have an email address? Tell them what their service is being used for.”
“Okay,” he said.
She turned the laptop screen back toward them. “So what is this now? Why is there sound? What is it?”
“It sounds like someone scratching a tabletop.”
“And this triangle. Is it possible there’s a link open now? Why would they want us to connect?”
“Tell them what we know.”
“Forget it. I want to get one step ahead of these people if I’m being asked to make contact. I want to have something they don’t think I have.”
“You know who the captive is.”
“They sent us his hand, James. They know we know. They wanted us to know.”
He was lost in thought, tracing the top of her desk with a finger. “What about we let slip we’re onto them through Anonymice? See if they react. Maybe we can catch them changing directions.”
“They might just go to ground, James. Turn off the feed and hit the road. Where are we then?”
“But they want us to see them,” he said. “To hear them too. Whatever we’re being asked to do by proxy can’t be done if they break off contact.”
“If they’re smart enough to cover all their tracks, aren’t they going to know their friends in the Caymans won’t give them up?”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Man,” she said. “I’m starting to understand what Hutchins was talking about.”
“Who?”
“ Toronto cop. He made a comment about the difference between beat cops and dicks. I didn’t much like it, but I see now why he thinks that way. Because we’re both sitting here throwing bones. Street cops see it differently.”