“We just ate, Sir,” said Wingate.
“So neither of you wants to eat my lunch?”
“No, Sir.”
“Strange.” He drew the sandwich back and bit the remainder in half. He seemed to be nodding thoughtfully to himself as he masticated the giant chunk of food. “See,” he said, with his mouth still partly full, “I went to Room 32 to check how the two of you were doing, and there were all your files – well, our files – but you were gone.”
“We did go out for an hour or so,” said Hazel. “Should we have notified you?”
“No, no,” Ilunga said, with an expansive gesture. “You’re free to come and go as you please.”
“Well, that’s good to know.”
“Of course, it’s also good to know if you’re coming or going.” He examined the edge of the remaining quarter of his sandwich. “Because some people get confused.”
Hazel shifted on her feet. “May we sit, Superintendent?”
“Oh,” he said, pleasantly. “I’d rather if you didn’t. I don’t want any of your slime to come off on the fabric.” He finished his sandwich in the stunned silence and then clapped the crumbs off his hands. He laid them flat on the desk and looked at them both with his head slightly lowered. “I thought we treated you rather well, James.”
“You did, Sir.”
“And is that what inspired you to hook up with the Hayseed Squad and come back down to cast aspersions on us? I’m curious.”
Wingate drew the side of his forefinger down the corner of his mouth. “Sir?”
“We have our own internals to keep us in check. We don’t need any small-town cops keeping an eye on us.”
“As you’re not my commanding officer anymore, Sir, I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking frankly,” said Wingate. Ilunga remained silent and still, as threatening a stillness as either of them had ever witnessed. “I’m an OPS now, and Toronto is in our jurisdiction. Your division is in our jurisdiction. If a crime we’re investigating brings us to your doorstep, you’re obligated to assist us. We appreciate that assistance, and we thank you for it. And if there is nothing else, we’ll get back to what we were doing.”
Ilunga laughed. “Oh, I don’t believe you will, son. If you’re investigating the conduct of my officers or calling into question our results, then you can get yourself a subpoena and then we’ll talk. Maybe.”
“We’re not investigating your officers or your division. We’re investigating an abduction. The facts have brought us here.”
“Dana Goodman brought you here. You’re a pair of country suits doing triage for a disgraced officer and a certifiable lunatic. You’re just the Angels to his Charlie, yes? I hope he’s sent you your divining rods, because you’ll need them to find your way out of the pile of shit you’ve got yourselves into. Now, my advice is that you scouts pack up your knapsacks and your canteens, say your dib dib dibs, and proceed to get scarce.”
Hazel had felt an electric shiver when Wingate spoke. She wanted him to finish this arrogant prick off, but instead, Wingate appeared thoughtful. “Why was he disgraced, Sir?” he asked. “Detective Goodman.”
“Oh, he didn’t tell you, did he?”
“We haven’t spoken all that much.”
“First he appointed himself judge, jury, and almost executioner when he was a beat cop. We don’t mind turning a blind eye to some dealer who ends up with the stuffing beat out of him in some alley – hell, some junkie could have done that. But you can trace a bullet.”
“He killed dealers?” Hazel asked.
“No, but there are a few of them out there with some of Goodman’s metal still in them. We took him out of there, but of course one of his favourite crack feebs has to top herself on his new watch and he goes off the reservation. After it was ruled a suicide – and let me tell you, the evidence was conclusive, in case he’s got you both trying on your merit badges – he took it on himself to keep investigating the case. And a month after it was put to bed, he committed a home invasion on one of the victim’s associates and threatened to kill him unless we reopened the case. It took blind bombs and tear gas to get him out of that house.”
“Colin Eldwin’s house.”
“Well, he told you that much at least.”
“That’s who he’s abducted.”
Ilunga’s upper lip quivered a little. “Well, I guess he got his man then. Good for him. You want something on q.t.? Colin Eldwin is a piece of garbage – we looked into him long and hard at Goodman’s insistence. That man would have fucked a snake if he could have got it to hold still, but he had an alibi the night of Cameron’s death and it was watertight, if you’ll excuse the choice of words. If Goodman’s managed to snatch him a second time, you two should just stay out of his way and let the law of the jungle run its course.”
Now Hazel finally had something to say. “He doesn’t just have Eldwin. He has Cameron’s mother as well.”
“He’s abducted the victim’s mother?”
“Not physically. But emotionally, yes. He’s co-opted her. She’s the other suspect in the abduction.”
“You see? You see what a clusterfuck Goodman is? He worked under me for fifteen years and he was a great cop.” Ilunga pushed his forefinger against his head. “But if this goes rogue, because you think too much and you don’t have any discipline, then you start thinking the walls are passing on their secrets to you and only you. Goodman lost it, and you will too if you follow him into his rabbit hole.”
She took in what he was saying. “Superintendent… we owe you an apology. We didn’t know any of this.”
“You should have asked.”
“We didn’t know to ask. We didn’t know any of this until we got here.”
Ilunga laid his electric gaze on both of them, one at a time. “So what are you going to do?”
“We’re going to find some way to let him know we’ve gotten ourselves off his hook. And hopefully we’ll find Eldwin before Goodman kills him.”
“Don’t sweat it if you can’t,” said Ilunga. “One less piece of shit on the planet won’t make a difference. And frankly, if Goodman gets satisfaction, maybe I’ll never see him in my rearview mirror again.”
She turned to Wingate. “Well?”
“Well, what?” he said angrily.
“Let’s go.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She didn’t answer him and he left the office without another word. Hazel extended her hand to Superintendent Ilunga. “We were just trying to do our jobs, Sir,” she said.
“Do them elsewhere,” he said, smiling again. “And call ahead if you need anything next time.”
She laughed good-naturedly and closed the door behind her.
She had to speedwalk down the hall to catch Wingate. “Slow up,” she whispered hoarsely to him.
“For what? You got other asses to kiss?”
“James.” Her tone made him stop. “You don’t fight little Napoleons like Ilunga. You go along. They’re deaf to any subtlety if you flatter them a little.”
“Is that what you were doing?”
“He doesn’t know how far we’ve gotten. He thinks we’re trying to read tea leaves. Let him sit and stew in there – in the meantime Toles is working for us and if he gives us half a reason to reopen the case, Ilunga can shout all he wants, but we’ll have carte blanche.”
“And if the lab comes back a bust? That thing’s been in a bag for three years.”
“Then we’re done down here.”
“And Colin Eldwin is a dead man.”
She waited for two constables to pass behind them. “The results don’t matter, James. If Goodman wants to know what we find out from CFS, he’s going to have to show himself. And we’ll be back on our own turf when he does.”
“It doesn’t sound like a plan, yet.”
“Have some faith, James. We’ve gotten this far.” She looked at her watch. “In the meantime, I’ve got to track down Toles and make sure he’s as green as he looks. We’re not going to get this all done in one day.” She looked back toward Ilunga’s door and then quickly stole forward to Room 32. She went in and out quickly. “I hope you weren’t planning on sleeping in your own bed tonight.”