“And I think we told you we don’t need your permission to investigate a crime in Ontario.”
“This isn’t Ontario, this is Toronto.”
“Superintendent, are you hiding something?”
His mouth was half open, like he was going to reply, but then he sat and dragged Cameron’s folder toward him. “Where are the pictures that go with this file?”
“I have no idea.”
“We interviewed this Swallowflight faggot, we examined the boat – it’s all in the file, Detective Inspector – we found the dead girl’s earring in the boat and we made a ruling of suicide. We found the girl’s fingerprints on the bloody oars, as well as Swallowflight’s – which you would expect, it being his boat – however he was in New Orleans the entire month taking a course in…” He flipped angrily through the file. “In self-hypnosis. Which skill it would seem you have an advanced understanding of.”
“She was drowned in the boat, not in the lake.”
He stared at her.
“The marks on her forehead. They came off the bottom of the fibreglass insert Swallowflight used to seal the hull.”
“She hit her head on the way out of the boat,” said Ilunga.
“How does she hit her head on the bottom of the boat? Do you jump out of a boat backwards? Try to see what you’re saying. And the marks are not abrasions.” She took the victim’s photo out of her pocket and slid it across the desk. He looked at it, then at her, and then back down at the picture. “This is an impression. Someone held her head down. One inch of water in the hull was all it would have taken.”
“Then put someone else in the boat, Micallef. Give me a second person on that boat and we can talk.”
“I think I can.”
“How?”
“If your forensics people fingerprinted the oars, then I presume they noted the presence of black fibres? They were all over the oars.”
“The presence of only one type of fibre is proof that Cameron was alone in the boat. The fibres are trace transfers. She rowed the boat out, the oars brushed up against her sweater. Then she stopped the boat, bumped her head on the bottom of it fumbling about while flying on alcohol and sedatives, and then she jumped out. And drowned.” He shoved the picture back toward her. “You think I’ll do anything to close a file, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“You should look at yourself. We investigated this death. You arrived here with a foregone conclusion.”
“I’m not sure you’re talking about me now.”
“What I do here, what I’m doing, is standing my ground against the devil, who appears before us in the form of an intuition. Every time someone walks in here with a feeling, I want to reach for my gun. You know how much a hunch costs?”
“I know you’re going to tell me.”
“A SOCO team and a vehicle big enough to get that boat and its oars back to a clean room, the hours to rephotograph the goddamned thing, the spectroscope, the refingerprinting of latents now three years old… I’ll start at thirty thousand, but I’m being optimistic.”
“So it’s the cost that bothers you? Or the revelation that you accepted a suicide rap because it’s good for business? Are you going to ignore new evidence to keep your record?”
“I’m going to call OPS Central and tell them how you run an investigation. They might want to reopen your cases.”
“Swallowflight told me he used to let people take the boat out. To borrow it if they wanted. He’s that kind of sharing person, you know.”
Ilunga was as still as a statue, his eyes glowing white. “So what,” he said.
“So your dusters looked for the victim’s fingerprints and noted significant repeats, meaning the owner of the boat. The rest were incidentals. They were leaning toward suicide anyway and there was no chance that there were a dozen people in the boat with Cameron that night. It was a sound conclusion, suicide.”
“I see… and now you want me to fingerprint all of Ward’s Island? Get alibis for twenty people between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m. on the evening of August 4, 2002?”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Oh. You tell me what I have to do then.”
She got up from her chair. “Nothing.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Nothing?”
“You’ll know what to do next.”
“Oh, really.”
“I’d like you to get someone to drive me back to Port Dundas. Maybe Childress, since she’s probably the only person left here who doesn’t want to push me out a window.”
“I doubt that. She still works for me.”
She approached the desk and leaned on it, getting in his face. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to show you something that will allow you to draw your own conclusions. Because you’re tired of listening to reason. Now: Childress?”
“Take the bus.”
“I’m going to need her,” Hazel said. “Jurisdictional issues, you know.” She looked at her watch. “Have her meet me at the Day’s Inn on Adelaide in half an hour.”
“How do people work with you, Micallef?” he said, his pupils tiny black dots. “You’re ungovernable.”
“The stone is never disturbed by the river,” she said, smiling sweetly.
30
Childress had driven Hazel back to Port Dundas in a frosty silence. Even when checking her blind spot on the right, Childress made an effort not to look at her. They put her up in Dianne MacDonald’s B &B and asked Dianne to let them know if it looked like the officer was planning to leave. Martha was meanwhile fuming in Glynnis and Andrew’s house, yet another storm on the horizon. But she was here, and that was all that mattered to Hazel now.
She woke up early and went into the station house. She called Jack Deacon and told him to pack Eldwin’s hand in a lot of ice and courier it down, same-day, to Twenty-one addressed to Superintendent Peter Ilunga. She instructed him to label it “EVIDENCE” and “PERISHABLE.” They had their own set of fingerprints from the hand, but she thought Ilunga deserved the chance to draw his own conclusions. It was too bad she couldn’t be there when he opened the box.
It was a quiet midweek at the detachment. She’d instructed Wingate to pick up Claire Eldwin and bring her in. It was time she knew the whole story, and Hazel wanted her in the station house to hear it. She’d been of two minds whether to tell Eldwin the full extent of the kind of trouble her husband was in, but she’d never been totally sure of the seriousness of the danger. Now she was, and Claire Eldwin had a right to know. Wingate was spending the morning writing up a full report of what they’d done in Toronto, something she deemed essential considering how far under Ilunga’s skin they were now. They might need to tell their side at some point, and having the official report was necessary. She knew Wingate’s report would be measured, accurate, and sober. When he told her Mrs. Eldwin had elected to come in under her own steam, it looked like it was going to be at least a couple of hours before she arrived and Hazel took the opportunity to have some downtime. She decided to go home for lunch and wait until Wingate called to say Eldwin was at the detachment.