The Delicate Storm

by Giles Blunt

  “Dr. Choquette, when did you purchase your tickets to Puerto Rico?”

  “Months ago. I don’t see what my tickets have to do with anything.”

  “May I see them, please?”

  The doctor rose, even redder in the face, and Delorme could see him working to restrain his temper as he left the room. He returned a moment later with the tickets and handed them over without a word. Two return tickets to Puerto Rico, purchased in November, returning in one week.

  “Thank you.” Delorme handed the tickets back. “Where are you planning to stay?”

  “A lovely resort called Palmas del Mar, on the south coast. Do you know it?”

  “No.” Having no interest in Caribbean vacations, Delorme was not entirely sure where Puerto Rico was, other than somewhere past Florida.

  “Gorgeous place. Perfect location—a little short on beachfront, but they make up for it with one of the finest golf courses you’ve ever seen.”

  “And can you tell me where you were Monday night, Doctor? Round about midnight?”

  “Playing bridge with friends. We have a regular Monday night game that—Goddammit, surely you can’t suspect me of having anything to do with this? A young doctor goes missing, what’s that got to do with me, for God’s sake?”

  Delorme took her time to respond, watching a vein that throbbed in Dr. Choquette’s temple. “You have financial dealings with Dr. Cates. All right, you didn’t sell her your practice, but there’s a large office full of equipment. My understanding is you had a disagreement over what was included in the transfer of your practice. And you were angry about it.”

  “Oh, really.” Dr. Choquette crossed his arms and looked Delorme up and down. “I’d love to know who you’ve been talking to.”

  “Dr. Cates is refusing to pay you what you think the stuff is worth, is that it?”

  “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. I should have used a lawyer—I normally do for all my business dealings—but for some reason I didn’t in this case. Maybe because Winter’s so—well, she’s very appealing, let’s say. We are having a dispute over depreciation. Do you know how much an examining table costs new? I thought we had found a figure comfortably in the middle between what I could get for the stuff if I put it up for sale, and what Winter would have to pay if she had to buy it new. Apparently I was wrong. I mean, ask her, if you think I’m lying.”

  “Dr. Cates isn’t here to ask, unfortunately. How much money was involved?”

  “Not a fortune. A couple of thousand. It’s the principle of the thing. Look, she’s probably got eighty to a hundred grand in education costs to pay off, and every penny counts. No doubt she really believes we agreed to the lower figure, but it’s just wishful thinking on her part. Anyway, it’s not a big deal. Now, if you don’t have any more questions …”

  “No more questions. But I’ll need the names of your bridge partners.”

  Next stop: Glenn Freemont, unpleasant patient.

  Freemont answered the door in his bathrobe, which looked as if it had seen several previous owners, at least one of whom had died in it. He was a runt of a man in his mid-thirties, with the oiliest hair Delorme had ever seen.

  “Mr. Freemont, I’m investigating the disappearance of Dr. Winter Cates,” she said after she had introduced herself. “May I come in and ask a few questions?” The door to Freemont’s basement apartment had no awning, and Delorme had no umbrella. Icy drops of rain were inching down her neck.

  “Why?” Freemont was leaning with his hand against the door jamb, as if to block any sudden moves.

  “You’re a patient of Dr. Cates. I need to ask you some questions.”

  “She’s got a million patients. Why are you coming to me?”

  “Mr. Freemont, would you rather have a thorough scrutiny of your workmen’s comp? Maybe I should just give them a call.”

  “Go ahead. I’m cut off anyway, those jerks. I got a bad back. I never used to have a bad back. And the reason I got one now is because I lug cans of paint up and down two flights of stairs all day. Try it sometime. See how you like it.”

  “You had a screaming fit at Dr. Cates’s office. Was that because she wouldn’t back up your claim?”

  “It wasn’t a screaming fit. We had a discussion, that’s all.”

  “According to witnesses, you slammed the desk with your fist and kicked over a plant.”

  “She called me a liar. I don’t take that kind of shit. Not from anyone.”

  “Can you tell me where you were Monday night? Monday night around midnight?”

  “Monday night? Yeah, I can tell you where I was Monday night. I was in Toronto.”

  “Why were you down there?”

  Freemont hooked an index finger into his right cheek and pulled it back. A glimmer of pink, criss-crossed with black stitches. “Gum surgery. Early Tuesday morning. I drove down the day before, stayed at a hotel. Wait there.”

  Freemont closed the door. Delorme pulled up the hood on her anorak. Rain pattered on nylon. A film of ice was forming over the puddles at her feet.

  Two minutes later, Freemont came back with a fistful of papers. He handed them to Delorme one by one. “Receipt from the Colony Hotel. Receipt from the filling station on Spadina. Receipt from my periodontist. He wears black scrubs and he charges me a fucking fortune.”

  “Do you always keep such careful records?” Delorme said, making a note of the periodontist’s name and number.

  “Only when I plan to get reimbursed from OHIP.”

  “That’ll be difficult. The province doesn’t cover dental work.”

  Freemont snatched the receipts back. “Shows how much you know.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Freemont. I appreciate your co-operation.”

  “Oh, no. Thank you, Officer. And you have a wonderful day.”

  Before Delorme reached her car, she heard Freemont scream from behind the closed door, “Bitch!”

  Both the hotel and the periodontist backed up everything Glenn Freemont said. Delorme made the calls first thing when she got back to the station. She wrote up some notes on her interviews and handed off the names of Dr. Choquette’s bridge partners to Szelagy for follow-up.

  She ate lunch at her desk, contemplating the stack of flyers, Dr. Cates’s pretty face staring up at her. The construction crew was hammering and drilling upstairs, making it hard to think. She looked out the window at the parking lot. The rain had stopped, and now the day had turned bright and sunny. Even the most mundane objects—trees, telephone poles and mailboxes with their patina of ice—shimmered like figments in an ecstatic vision. As Delorme scanned the scene outside, the deep blue of the sky seemed to flash against the rooftops.

  Her phone rang.

  “Delorme. CID.”

  It was a man named Ted Pascoe, a camera salesman at Milton’s Photo, younger brother of one Frank Pascoe, whom Delorme had put away for credit card fraud. Ted Pascoe was so frantic she could hardly make out what he was saying—something about a dead body in the woods.

  “Slow down, Mr. Pascoe, slow down. Where are you?”

  “Um, pay phone near the NorthWind Tavern. You know the tavern out past Algonquin Mall?”

  Delorme knew it well. At one time she had had a boyfriend who liked his English beer. They used to go to the NorthWind practically every Friday night for fish and chips. Unfortunately, that was about as exciting as that particular romance ever got.

  “I was taking pictures up the hill out toward Four Mile Bay. Took the four-by-four, just looking for a good shot, you know. And I came across this body. A woman. Looks like she froze to death.”

  “Was there anyone else with you?”

  “No. I like to be alone when I photograph. You can’t have someone tapping their foot waiting for you. You start rushing things, you forget to bracket, you don’t try all the angles. It’s really not very—”

  “What’s the road like? Can we get a van in there?”

  “No, no. This is strictly RV country.”

  “Okay, M
r. Pascoe. Stay where you are. Don’t tell anyone else what you found. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Delorme knocked on Daniel Chouinard’s door and entered without waiting for an okay. He listened intently as she summarized the phone call. “So, it could be your missing doctor,” he said.

  “I’d say there’s a good chance.”

  “You’ll need help for this. Too bad McLeod’s out of town. Take Szelagy. You’ll need ident too.” He dialed an extension. “Arsenault, put down the sports section. You and Collingwood have got some actual work to do. And bring your Land Rover. Sounds like the ident van isn’t going to do it.” He hung up and said, “What are you waiting for? Hit the road.”

  “I haven’t called the coroner yet.”

  “I’ll do it. You get moving,” Chouinard said, adding wistfully, “Another body in the woods. I wish I was going with you.”

  “Sorry,” Delorme said. “You’re strictly a big-picture guy now.”

  “I know.” Chouinard sighed and tossed the stub of a pencil at his wastebasket. “And ain’t that a shame.”

  Ken Szelagy had a tendency to chatter. They got into the car, and it was like pulling the string on a Chatty Cathy: the wife, the kids, the hockey game. Delorme managed to steer him briefly onto the subject of Dr. Cates’s neighbours.

  “A lot of people are away just now—down in the Bahamas or wherever—so there weren’t actually that many people to talk to. Typical apartment building—I mean, nobody really knows anybody else. I think you could die in that building and no one would know. Anyway, the upshot is, no one saw or heard anything unusual Monday night or Tuesday morning. Everyone was either watching TV or in bed, and they didn’t hear a thing.”

  “It’s so strange,” Delorme said. “If someone abducted her, you’d think somebody would hear a commotion of some kind.”

  “She could have gone somewhere willingly. We just don’t know yet. She could have gone off with someone she knew, then there’s an accident or something else happens and that’s why no one’s heard from her.”

  Szelagy veered off the subject again and started talking about his family. Delorme found herself wishing for Cardinal, who tended to be as quiet as she was. Szelagy moved on to his in-laws, his mortgage, his car insurance premiums. He was a force of nature.

  “Szelagy!”

  “What?”

  “Cool it, for God’s sake.”

  “Just being sociable. More than I can say for you.”

  The truth was, for sheer amiability there was no one on the force who could touch Szelagy. He was just a natural-born nice guy, and Delorme felt bad for jumping on him. She drove the next few blocks in guilty silence.

  “Sorry,” she said at the next light. “I’m just thinking about Dr. Cates.”

  “That’s okay,” Szelagy said. Then he was off on the merits of the snowmobile he’d just bought for the kids. Really, the new Bombardiers were so fast, they were practically satanic.

  They continued out along Sumner and then across the bypass onto Highway 63. Ice glittered on every roof, every wire, every bough. The sky was pure cerulean. Sunlight was refracted off the trees and rooftops, in piercing white rays when you were close, but from a distance with the silvery glitter of tinsel.

  The highway itself was clear of ice, and they made it to the NorthWind in less than twenty minutes. Ted Pascoe was leaning against his Jeep Wrangler, smoking a cigarette. “I don’t even smoke anymore,” he said by way of greeting. “Quit two years ago, but this thing really rattled me. I never saw a dead person before—well, my dad, but that was different. I’m shaking.” He held out a quivering hand for verification.

  Delorme introduced Szelagy, then asked Pascoe what time he had found the body.

  “About forty-five minutes ago. I came straight here and called.” He gestured toward the pay phone.

  “And you were alone?”

  “Just me and the camera. Don’t get ice like this too often—I wanted to get out there before it melts. Was on a logging road about half a mile east of here.”

  Arsenault and Collingwood pulled up in a Land Rover. Delorme gave them the one-minute signal. “Mr. Pascoe, why don’t you drive us right back to the spot and we’ll have the scene men follow along behind.”

  A Lexus pulled off the highway and Delorme groaned inwardly. The role of coroner was filled by several doctors who worked in rotation. It was bad luck to draw Dr. Barnhouse twice in a row.

  “You’re going to have to ride along with Arsenault and Collingwood, Doctor. Don’t think that beautiful car of yours’ll make it where we’re going.”

  “Marvellous,” he said without humour. “Fantastic.” But he got out of the car, black bag in hand.

  Whatever logging was done in the Algonquin Bay region had been finished half a century ago, but the old access roads remained. They were forgotten for decades, until the craze for recreational vehicles made them once more passable. The recent warm weather had reduced the snowpack in the woods to little more than a few inches, and the ice on top was a thin crust. The resulting traction was better than on the streets in town.

  Here the trees were all pine. Their boughs were weighted down, but the trees themselves, selected over millennia for this environment, remained erect. Rays of light, bright as lasers, shot out from icy carapaces.

  “This is where I got out,” Pascoe said. “Didn’t want to risk driving around that.” He pointed to a felled tree blocking the road ahead.

  They got out of the car and waited for Arsenault and Collingwood. Delorme said, “Did you come back to the car the same way you went in?”

  “Yup.” He pointed to footprints in the snow. “Those are my tracks. I didn’t notice any others, but then I wasn’t looking.”

  Delorme and Szelagy led the way. Pascoe stayed close behind, followed by Arsenault, Collingwood and Dr. Barnhouse. They had been walking for less than five minutes when Pascoe said from behind, “Up ahead. Just beyond that stump. I nearly tripped over her.”

  Working in Special Investigations for six years, Delorme had not had to face any dead bodies. Before that, as a constable, she had of course seen the usual victims of car accidents or drownings. The scenes, being death scenes, always had an air of hopelessness about them, even if the victim perished in a cheerfully decorated living room. Sometimes the circumstances were tawdry: men hanging naked, pornography scattered about their pale feet. Sometimes they were frightening: the scene of a raging fire, marks of its ferocity everywhere. Sometimes they were eerie: an abandoned mine shaft in the middle of a winter night. What Delorme had never seen, in all her years in police work, was a death scene so beautiful.

  She and Szelagy and the others stood at the edge of a scene from a fairy tale. All around them the woods shimmered as if the trees were made of jewellery. There was no sound but the click of branches, and from farther off the buzz of a snowmobile. Sunlight bounced off every surface, making the scene more appropriate for a tale of magic, rather than a tragedy, the kind of tale in which statues come to life.

  But the figure before them would not be coming to life. The dead woman lay on her left side in a position of repose, one knee and one arm drawn up as if for balance. There was no obvious sign of violence, no cuts or bruises. Photographed from a distance, she might have appeared to be asleep. But there is nothing more still than a dead body, and no mistaking it for anything else. This one was naked, covered with a glaze of ice. Even the long black hair that fell in tendrils across her face was encased in ice. It was as if she were under a spell—the victim of a jealous wizard, a wicked witch.

  “There’s nothing to be gained by standing around gaping,” Barnhouse observed.

  “It’s called assessing the scene,” Delorme said. “Maybe you, you prefer to barge in and trample over evidence, but we’re going to take some pictures first.”

  “You will not.” Barnhouse did not take contradiction well. Coming from a woman, it had a visible effect on his blood pressure, and made him sputter. “You will not,” he re
peated. “I am the coroner and I am in charge here.”

  “Unless foul play has been established.”

  “Which is what I intend to do, if you’ll only let me go about my work.”

  “The victim is naked in the middle of a frozen forest. Me, as far as I’m concerned, foul play is already established.” Szelagy gave her a take-it-easy look, and Delorme mentally started counting to ten.

  “I didn’t realize you’re a trained pathologist,” Barnhouse went on. “Perhaps you don’t need a coroner at all.”

  Delorme said, “Doctor, we need you to take a look at her. Just let us get some pictures first before the bunch of us destroy any evidence.”

  “We’ll set the videocam back here,” Arsenault said. “Leave it on wide angle.”

  Collingwood was already snapping away with a still camera and measuring tape at the tracks that led into the clearing. There appeared to be only one set. He turned to Pascoe. “Could you lift your foot for me, sir?”

  Pascoe obliged awkwardly, balancing himself against a tree. Collingwood snapped a couple of pictures of his hiking boots.

  Arsenault shot a roll of pictures of the body, and then Delorme, Szelagy and the coroner moved closer. Dr. Barnhouse clutched a microcassette recorder in his fist and muttered into it as he leaned over the body: well-nourished woman, early thirties, discolouration around the throat suggesting strangulation.

  “There’s her clothes,” Delorme said. They were strewn to one side, frozen into a violent still life. The veneer of ice precluded close examination, but there were buttons torn off, the stretched neck of a sweater.

  “Looks like she was killed here,” Szelagy said.

  “Possibly,” Barnhouse said. “But look at the lividity.” He pointed with a latex-gloved finger at the purpling of the lower leg and arm. “Blood travelled where gravity took it—backs of her shoulders and legs. She didn’t die in this position. She could have been killed here and moved by someone after death. Or she could have been killed somewhere else and brought here.”