Free The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe Page A

about three hundred

kilometers from here to Chamberlain. We could be there in two and a half hours.”
    Hazel had passed the bag with the cell phone in it to Wingate and started walking back to her car. “What about the mouth?” Wingate asked.
    “You know that old saying, ‘The dead don’t tell tales’?” said Greene. “Well, even if they did, this guy would be telling one with a considerable speech impediment.” He followed Hazel to her car and held open a backseat door for Wingate. “Spere’s already on his way,” he said.
    “They called Howard too?” she said in disbelief.
    “I called him.” She was staring at him. “He knows the Chandler scene better than ayone. I figured . . . ”
    “Imagine needing Howard twice in forty-eight hours,” Hazel said.
    Greene clicked his seatbelt as she pulled out of the lot. “There’s a guy who loves his job again.”
     
    Chamberlain, 315 kilometers to the east, was at the edge of Renfrew County, an old mill town converted into a village of quaint B&Bs and knitshops. Sleepy was a good word for it. The last police event of any significance there that Hazel could remember involved a delivery van with a snapped brake cable that had crashed through the wall of the Chamberlain Opera House in 1986. It had been delivering ice cream, and the Opera House stank of chocolate and strawberry for the whole season. Local playwrights revised their plays to include the odors, and the director of
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
had taken the liberty of bringing his actors onstage actually licking cones.
    A murder in Chamberlain?
    Michael Ulmer’s house was on a side street off the main drag,
a street of well-kept lawns and freshly painted dormers. Yellow tape encircled the house. Howard Spere was standing behind a pile of leaves, smoking a cigarette. It was seven o’clock in the evening. “Those’ll kill you,” said Greene.
    “At least I’ll get to choose my death.”
    Hazel introduced him to James Wingate. “How many dead bodies you seen, Jim?” asked Spere, shaking the young man’s hand.
    “I’ve seen a few. But never two in one day.”
    “And you’re from
Toronto.
”
    “Fancy that,” said Greene, taking his homberg off his head. “Let’s stop breaking balls and go see the victim.”
    “Ray’s a master at small talk,” said Spere, handing the three of them latex gloves. He nodded at one of his SOCO officers, and the man opened the door.
    The house was dark and close, the main floor cluttered with Salvation Army–style furniture: No two pieces matched. There was a cot against the dining room wall, the stale sheets pulled back, the pillow stained almost brown. A fug of old cigarette smoke laced the air. A folding TV tray stood in front of a La-Z-Boy chair, its surface colonized by pill bottles and moisturizing products. An extra-large box of two-ply tissues was balanced on the arm of the chair. “Do I want to know what the tissues and the lotions have to do with each other?” said Greene.
    Hazel shot him a look. “Dry skin and sniffles, Ray. Don’t think too much.”
    They went up the stairs. A knot of Ident guys were milling about in the hallway labeling ziplock bags, packing up various bits of equipment, generally trying to stay out of one of the bedrooms. They could see camera flashes going off and hear the high-pitched report of battery cells. “In here, detectives,” called one of the men. They followed his voice into the master bedroom. It was much

cleaner up here, the air more breathable. The blinds were drawn. There was a figure in the bed dimly lit by a bedside lamp casting a feeble yellow light.
    “What’s your name, Officer?”
    “Mathiessen.”
    “Do we need it so dark in here, Officer Mathiessen?” said Hazel. The man took it as an order and turned the overhead light on. Light flooded the room, and the body burst into view.
    “Fucking hell,” said Greene. He stepped back instinctively.
    Wingate was the only one of them who