She was at the door. It was heavy-duty, something put there for a reason. She doubted they could have heard the screen door slamming or the sound of her breaking the lock. When, at the station house, they’d tried to listen past the sounds of the room on the webcam, they’d heard nothing telltale: no voices from elsewhere, no sounds from outside, and this was why. She presumed this door was locked as well and thought through her options. The only thing that made sense was to kick it in and rush the room with the gun out.
She steeled herself, pushing away the haze of anxiety, and retreated two steps to put her on level with the centre of the door’s edge. She reared back, turning sideways, and as she lunged forward to kick, someone within opened the door and Hazel crashed forward, driving whoever was behind backwards and plunging into the open space. She twisted toward the wall and hit the door jamb with her face before she collapsed to the floor on her side. Joanne Cameron was screaming, Don’t! Don’t! from somewhere behind her and Hazel leapt to standing, the gun still miraculously in her hand, and lunged toward the sound of the woman’s voice, only to find Cameron cowering against the wall in a crouch, her arms folded over the top of her head. Hazel swept the gun toward her and turned, keeping the weapon in front, rotating the muzzle in a semi-circle through the room behind her, stepping to Cameron’s side to keep her in her peripheral vision. This was it, ground zero. She’d been watching this dark, evil space for ten days, wondering where on earth it could be, and now she was in it, as if she’d stepped through her computer. It felt eerie and wrong, like she was Nick Wise trapped in his box. Her back was to the bloody message, in dried, fifteen-inch letters, and the table Cameron had sat at was still in the middle of the room. The tripod with the camera was in its place, and Hazel noted the red light on the camera was blinking. It had been turned back on. A wire from the side of the camera ran down to the floor and to a hard drive in the corner.
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.’”