Colin Eldwin was gone. As was Goodman.
Hazel turned to face Joanne Cameron, who had lowered her arms and was sitting, drained and docile, at the base of the wall. A fresh cut on her mouth where the door had hit her competed with a mass of welts, bruises, and gashes. Hazel looked at her sadly and brought the walkie to her mouth. “James?”
“Christ, why did you go silent?”
“I’m here. It’s only Cameron. He’s beaten the shit out of her.”
Wingate appeared in a matter of moments with the first-aid kit, and they sat Joanne Cameron in the chair and attended to her. She hadn’t said a word. Goodman had beaten her with his fists, and her mouth and cheeks were swollen. Her whole face was the colour of raw steak and a clear fluid leaked from her right temple.
Hazel looked toward the camera. “Can he see us?”
“He doesn’t have to see us,” said Cameron through her broken mouth. “He knows what we’re doing. He knows what we’re going to do.”
“He sounds like Santa Claus.” She went over to the set-up and tore the wire out of the back of the camera. “Well, that’s one less window into our souls, then.”
Wingate was daubing her eye. Cameron winced. “Why did he do this to you?” he asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Anything you can do to put the heat on him now can’t hurt.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “Is this the part where you tell me I can still save myself?”
Hazel kneeled in front of her. “That was your hand in the video,” she said. “The one holding the knife.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to believe you severed Colin Eldwin’s hand with that knife? That you sliced the ears off the sides of his head?”
“It doesn’t matter to me what you believe. I’m done believing. I just wanted the truth about Brenda.” She looked away from Hazel. “I don’t care about anything else now.”
“It matters to me. It matters to me if you let Goodman twist you into something you’re not. Or if you did it because you wanted to.”
Cameron speared her with a pitiless look. “You want me to say Dana cut him because you think in my place you’d never have done it yourself. But I’m here to tell you, you would. You’d have done anything.”
“Then you’ll be charged accordingly,” said Hazel, rising. “But I look at you now, and I think you didn’t do it. I just think you want to be punished.”
Cameron took the gauze from Wingate’s hand and held it to her cheek. It was stained yellow and red. One of her eyes was swollen and the lid was white and iridescent purple. Hazel’s heart went out to her: no matter what this woman had done, she’d begun in a place of righteous grief. And now she was going to be charged with assault causing bodily harm and false imprisonment, among other things. And the man who masterminded it all had dumped her and taken their leverage with him. “I don’t have to seek punishment,” Cameron finally said. “My child was murdered and I’ve failed to avenge her. What else can be done to me?”
Hazel stepped away, turning her back. Cameron was living every mother’s nightmare, and there was nothing anyone could say or do to bring her out of it. It was permanent. The only thing she could do now was try to bring Eldwin in alive.
“Where’s Dana Goodman?”
“I don’t know,” Cameron said.
“If I told you I believed your daughter was murdered, would you help us?”
“Would you be lying?”
“Nothing I say will convince you I’m not, so I won’t try. But if I do believe it, and you don’t help us get Eldwin back alive, you’ll have missed your last chance to see justice done in Brenda’s name.” She waited a moment for Cameron to decide what she was going to do, and then she asked, “How long ago did Eldwin leave?”
“Two hours,” she said.
Hazel radioed dispatch. “Our 908’s gone 908,” she said.
“Come again?” said Wilton.
“We’ve got Joanne Cameron, but Goodman has abducted the abductee. We need an APB for this white van, anywhere within a two-hundred-kilometre radius of Gilmore.” She held the walkie down. “What’s his licence plate?”
Cameron’s eyes shuttled between hers and Wingate’s.
“She wasn’t alone in the boat,” Wingate said. “Brenda wasn’t alone. We have proof now.”
Cameron’s mouth was moving, but no sound came out for a moment. “It started with AAZW,” she said. “I don’t know the rest of it.”
“That’s enough to start with,” said Hazel. “You get that, Spence?”
“Word’s already going out.”
“Have someone clean out a cell. We’ve got a reservation for at least one. And send a SOCO team to 28 Whitcombe in Gilmore. They’re going to need to block off the rest of today and tomorrow, I think.”
Wingate helped Cameron out of her seat. “Do you have any idea where Dana took Eldwin?”
Cameron shook her head. “Not one. He beat me up in front of Colin. I saw the look in his eyes: he figured he was next. My guess is, he is.”
“Why is that your guess?”
“Because Dean said he was going to give you people a crime you can solve.”
“A trail I can follow…” Hazel murmured. “Did he say anything else?”
“He said Thank God for the ram.’”
33
Joanne Cameron was silent in the back seat as they returned to Port Dundas. Hazel put a call in to the station house to find out if there had been any news from Toronto, but neither Ilunga nor any of his deputies had called. Wingate’s warning was still resonating in her mind, although she found it hard to believe that Ilunga would destroy evidence in a case that had its roots in his catchment. If Goodman was right about the rot in the division, then maybe, but Hazel suspected he was only right about this one case, a case that could have gone either way, depending on how deeply the investigators were willing to look into a death that looked like a suicide from every angle.
She had Wilton connect her with The River Nook, and Dianne put Constable Childress on the line. She was frosty with Hazel. “He’s had the better part of the day to check the prints,” Hazel said.
“I told you it would be tomorrow. They’ve got to thaw the goddamn thing out first, don’t they?”
“They have microwaves in the morgue. Look, it’s time your boss started taking this seriously. None of this is happening in an imaginary realm: we have to work. Now tell me how long until I hear back.”
“I don’t know,” said Childress. “I’ll try to push them for tomorrow morning. Everything’s still at CFS.”
“Well, you get yourself down to the station house where I can bug you to check in with your people every thirty minutes. If you can tear yourself away from Dianne’s gingerbread cake.”
Childress didn’t answer, just hung up.
“I want to know,” said Cameron from the back seat, “I want to know what you found on the island.”
Hazel turned in the passenger seat. “I don’t share information with potential murder suspects. Especially not about the cases they’re suspects in.”
The station house in Port Dundas was abuzz when they returned. Hazel handed Joanne Cameron off to Costamides, who led her down the back toward the cells. “Give her something to eat and clean her off. If you think anything’s broken, get a doc in here. Make sure the cell is empty except for a table and chair. I don’t want her to try to hurt herself.” Costamides nodded smartly and took Cameron under the arm. She didn’t resist.
Wilton reported there’d been no sightings of Goodman’s van. “We need aerial surveillance,” she said. “Can we get anyone up there to look in the trees or along the dirt roads? There’s too much cover to see through, and the weather -”