by Giles Blunt
“And she was your tenant.”
“This would be entirely anonymous, of course. But as I say, I don’t want to interfere if you think it won’t help.”
Delorme glanced at Cardinal and back to Laroche. “My feeling is, it’s too early. This isn’t a case where we suspect a group of people. If it was a gang thing, or a drug thing, I would say go for it. You get one of them to turn on the others, it’s the fastest way to make your case. But we’re looking at a one-off crime here. So I don’t think it would do much good—unless you’re offering the reward to the killer for turning himself in.”
Laroche smiled. “Not what I had in mind, Detective. It must serve you well in your line of work, that sense of humour.”
Delorme shrugged. “You asked my opinion,” she said. “That’s it.”
“Well, let me know if you change your mind,” Laroche said. “It’s an open offer.”
“Do you think it was odd, him offering a reward?” Cardinal said when they were outside.
“Not really. That’s the kind of guy he is. He’s a real force in the francophone community—very active in the church and charities and so on. What I like about him, he never takes credit for anything.”
“You just think he’s sexy,” Cardinal said.
“You have no idea what I think,” Delorme said. But she didn’t deny it, Cardinal noticed.
When he got back to the station, Cardinal went straight to the evidence room, where he signed out the box of Matlock–Shackley’s personal effects that had been removed from the cabin at Loon Lodge. He took it back to his desk, where he proceeded to remove items in no particular order. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for; it was just that, now that the dead man’s identity had changed, the things he had left behind might look different, perhaps lead in new directions.
Cardinal pulled out a shaving kit, a compact silver case that unfolded into a mirror. A small metal handle screwed into separate razor or toothbrush heads. It had a pleasing precision about it, like the parts of a gun. He wasn’t sure if the kit was expensive or not; he’d never seen one like it. The manufacturer’s logo was engraved into the case, above the words, Made in France. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean Shackley bought it there.
The question of price made him take a closer look at the clothes. He pulled out a Brooks Brothers blazer, shiny at the elbows, frayed at the cuffs. The two shirts also had good labels and were exceedingly worn, as if Shackley hadn’t bought anything new in twenty years. Cardinal pulled out a sock with a hole in the heel. Apparently the CIA’s retirement plan was stingy.
He wished once again that they would find the damn car. There could be something crucial there. In fact, Shackley might have been murdered in the car. Why else would the killer take so much trouble to hide it or destroy it? Red Escort? Avis sticker? Why hadn’t it turned up yet?
He pulled the dead man’s plane ticket from the box: New York return to Toronto, American Airlines, five hundred dollars. Shackley had booked the flight a month ago, lots of advance notice; why did he pay so much for a coach fare?
Cardinal looked at the codes. Ah yes, no restrictions. Shackley wanted to be able to change his return date. Which suggested he hadn’t been sure how long he was going to be here. Whatever he was working on, the outcome hadn’t been certain.
And why had he been calling Montreal? Was there a connection there that had led him to Algonquin Bay?
Cardinal rubbed his forehead. He had the feeling there was some important deduction to be made here, which someone with a faster mind would be able to make right away, but it was beyond him. “I don’t know,” he muttered.
“Talking to yourself again?” Delorme said. She sat down next to him.
“Yeah. And it’s not helping.”
“What about the phone bills? You said he made some calls to Montreal?”
“They’re all unlisted. The only number I got through to was something called the Beau Soleil Daycare Centre.”
“A sixty-year-old New Yorker, he’s calling a Montreal daycare centre?”
“I know. Musgrave’s got their Montreal guys tracing the others.”
He was telling Delorme about the negative he had found in Shackley’s apartment when Paul Arsenault came in. Cardinal called across the squad room, “Hey, Arsenault. Did you develop that negative?”
“What’s the matter? You don’t check your inbox?” Arsenault grabbed a manila envelope out of Cardinal’s inter-office mailbox and tossed it onto his desk. “And before you ask: no, there were no fingerprints on the negative.”
Cardinal undid the clasp of the envelope and slid out two eight-by-twelve prints of the same photograph, handing one to Delorme. Black and white. A group shot of four young people: one woman, three men. Two of the men had long sideburns and moustaches; the third had a full beard. Cardinal held it up to the light. They looked happy, confident, grinning broadly for the camera, posed in front of two curtainless windows. Outside the windows, a view of trees and a church spire glinting in the sunlight.
“Pretty long hair,” Delorme noted. She was peering nearsightedly at her copy. “And look at the shirts on the guys, those collars.”
“Could be from the seventies,” Cardinal said.
“They look like a bunch of lumberjacks, except for the girl.”
“Hey, everybody.” Ken Szelagy stuck his head in the door, yelling over the top of the cubicles. He was holding a cellphone to one ear. “Time to saddle up. Sounds like we’ve got the car.”
The red Ford Escort was at the bottom of a disused quarry just off Highway 17. It had been found by a hiking enthusiast named Vince Carey. He had a completely shaved head, and a small tattoo of an eagle at the top of his neck.
“I was disgusted,” he told Cardinal. “I mean, you can’t just dump a car in the middle of the forest, even if it is a former quarry.”
“What made you come hiking through here in the middle of winter?”
“Well, it’s so beautiful with the ice over everything. And this area used to be kinda cool, you know? Last time I was through here—must’ve been about three years ago—runoff had formed a natural reservoir, almost a tiny lake, up to about there.” He pointed to a moss green line in the side of the granite cliffs.
“Did you see anyone else in the area today?”
“Not a soul. Nice and quiet.” Carey ran a hand over his scalp. “When I saw the water was gone, I thought I’d climb along the side of the cliff. Didn’t expect to see a damn car at the bottom. Pissed me off. So when I climbed back up to the highway later, I called Natural Resources to tell ’em about it, but they told me if it was a vehicle, I should call you guys. Which is what I did.”
“Okay, thanks for your help, Mr. Carey,” Cardinal said. “We’ll call you if we need anything more.”
“My pleasure.” He looked down the cliff to where Szelagy, Arsenault and Collingwood were crawling around the overturned car, then back to Cardinal. “Sure are a lot of you for one abandoned car, aren’t there?”
“We like to be thorough.”
Cardinal made his way down the rocks with extreme care, wary of the icy glaze, thinking, this could be a gold mine. Finally the luck might be turning his way.
The car lay on its back, nose-first in about three feet of water. Most of the roof had been crushed level with the rest of the body, and one wheel was missing entirely.
“Looks promising,” Arsenault said. “We can see an exit mark where a bullet went through the passenger-side door.”
“What about the interior?” Cardinal said. “Has the water destroyed everything?”
“Way it stands now, the water’s barely into the cabin. We don’t want to get too close, though, in case we shift the weight and tip it over. Water may have washed away some hair and fibre, but if there’s any blood by that exit mark, it should still be dry. The hard part’s going to be getting the car out. Tow truck’s not going to work.”
Cardinal looked from the wreck up to the top of the cliff, a distance of at leas
t seventy-five feet that consisted almost entirely of jagged granite. “Don Deckard,” he said. “He’s the only guy.”
They heard the crane before they saw it. First there was a rumble in the earth, and then the grinding of gears, and finally the sound of a massive combustion engine straining to conquer a hill. Then the machine itself appeared, a colossal vehicle consisting almost entirely of huge wheels. On its back it carried the steel columns of the crane, now folded up like a boy’s construction toy. It stopped at the crest of the hill and Don Deckard jumped down from the cab.
He looked like a dinosaur from the 1960s who had somehow been propelled against his will into the next century. He wore black jeans with studs up the outside seams and a beaded buckskin jacket with an elaborate fringe. His greying hair was tied back in a ponytail, and his eyes were bright red as if he’d just smoked a joint.
“Hey, man.” He gave Cardinal a high-five; they’d worked together a few times over the years. “Long time no see. What have you got for me?”
Cardinal led him down toward the car.
“Where does he live?” Szelagy said to Arsenault. “Woodstock?”
“You don’t know Deckard? This guy’s a legend. See that little item there?” Arsenault pointed to the crane. Even folded up, the thing looked the length of a small high-rise. “It’s worth about half a million dollars. Sank in Lake Superior ten years ago—I forget what they were doing with it. Anyway, the company that owned it wrote it off as a complete loss. Even the insurance company wrote it off. But Deckard went out there with about six guys and a barge and hauled that thing out of three hundred feet of ice-cold water.”
It took Deckard just under an hour to get his crane set up and in position. Then the beam swung out over the quarry and lowered a steel cable with a canvas sling on the end. Giant air bags intended for use in raising sunken vessels were wedged between the car and the rocks and then inflated to stop the car from shifting. The sling was slipped into position and a few moments later the car was pulled high into the air above the gorge.
In the cab of the crane, Deckard pulled his levers and spun his wheels until the car settled, still upside down, on the back of a flatbed truck.
Deckard stepped out of his cab, and all four cops applauded. He bowed deeply and jumped down from the crane. He gave Cardinal another high-five. “Piece of cake, man. Piece of cake.”
Arsenault and Collingwood were already on the back of the flatbed. Using a “jaws of life” machine they pried open a space between the crushed roof and the seats.
“Windows were all open when it went over,” Arsenault said. “Clearly, the guy thought he was going to sink it. Probably came here at night and sent it over the cliff, thinking the water was deeper.”
Arsenault and Collingwood found several items of limited interest: a blurry rental agreement in the name of Howard Matlock, a pair of aviator clip-on sunglasses, and an empty Coke can still lodged in the cup holder. These and the entire car would be fumed for prints when they had dried off.
“It’s actually the passenger we want to focus on,” Cardinal said. “We know a fair bit about the victim and nothing about who killed him.”
Collingwood was going over the back of the passenger seat with a pair of tweezers. He turned to Cardinal and emitted a single word: “Blood.”
“On the passenger side? You’re sure?”
Collingwood didn’t reply. He pulled a carpet-cutter from his tool kit and peeled away the seat cover, exposing the padding. There was no mistaking the brownish stain beneath.
“We don’t want to wait ten days for DNA results,” Cardinal said. “Is there any way in the meantime we can be sure this is from the passenger and not the driver?”
“We can type them right now,” Arsenault said. “It’s possible they’re the same type, but it’s worth a shot, no?”
Arsenault retrieved a hand-held device from the ident van. For the next fifteen minutes he and Collingwood laboured over the stains. Cardinal waited, staring across the lake at the leaden sky. Mountains of cloud were massing on the horizon, threatening even more rain, which would mean even more ice.
Arsenault came up behind him, footsteps crunching on the ice. “Driver’s O-negative,” he said.
“And the passenger?”
“We’ve got the passenger too. AB-negative.”
Cardinal whipped out his cellphone and called Delorme. “Didn’t you tell me the blood you found in Dr. Cates’s office was AB-negative?”
“That’s right. We got it off the paper from the examining table.”
“This could link the two cases,” Cardinal said. “The killer shoots Shackley, but he gets shot too. The bullet’s still in him, but he can’t go to a hospital because they have to report gunshot wounds. So he grabs Dr. Cates and forces her to treat him.”
“Then kills her to keep her quiet. It’s looking good. And I’ve got some other news for you.”
“Oh?”
“Musgrave stopped by. You’re not gonna believe who Shackley was calling.”
Chouinard listened to Cardinal’s proposal with no sign of excitement or even of interest. When Cardinal had finished laying it out, he responded in the tranquil tones that made him sound so much more intelligent than he was.
“Clearly, you have to go to Montreal, no question about that. I’m not so sure about Delorme, though.”
“Detective Delorme,” Cardinal said, “how would you rate my French?”
“What French? I’ve heard you, and it’s not French. It’s more like a kind of Frankenstein sort of—”
“What are you so worried about, Cardinal? Everybody in Montreal speaks English, you know.”
“That’s not true,” Delorme said. “That’s not even close to true.”
“Well, maybe it’s changed since the last time I was there. Take a dictionary with you. I’m just not persuaded your two cases are the same killer.”
“D.S., think about it,” Cardinal said. “Cates is the second dead body in the woods in three days. Shouldn’t we assume it’s tied to the Shackley murder until there’s some reason to think otherwise?”
“We’ve got lots of reasons to think otherwise,” Chouinard said. “One body’s a man, the other’s a woman. One’s eaten by bears, one not. One’s a visitor, one lived here in town …”
“Wait a minute,” Delorme said. “What are the chances of two killers in a town this size having AB-negative blood?”
“Blood type is not a positive ID.”
“Suppose he shoots Shackley and gets wounded himself,” Cardinal said. “A small wound. There wasn’t much blood on the passenger side.”
“I get that. He needs a doctor. But why feed Shackley to the bears and not the doctor?”
“There’s a number of possibilities. Number one: I think we can agree it’s unlikely that Dr. Cates was murdered because of any mob involvement. If she was killed by the same person, that means Bressard wasn’t hired by Leon Petrucci to dispose of Shackley’s body, he was hired by someone else pretending to be Petrucci. Petrucci’s well known in this town. A lot of people know he can’t talk, that he writes notes. It all came out when Bressard was on trial for assault years ago—it was all over the Algonquin Lode. Maybe our killer figures he can’t fool Bressard twice. Maybe he doesn’t want to pay him twice.”
“In any case,” Delorme said, “he gets wounded Saturday night in the altercation with Shackley. Maybe he thinks he can tough it out. Maybe he thinks he can live with it. By Monday it’s hurting like hell, or maybe it’s still bleeding. Now he knows for sure he needs a doctor.”
“Why Dr. Cates?”
“We don’t know that yet,” Delorme said.
“But you’ve checked out her patients. You’ve checked out her colleagues.”
“Which is why I should go to Montreal with Cardinal. Two of us will be able to follow up on those phone numbers faster than one. And if we find out who Shackley was after, we’ll know who the killer is.”
“God, I hate decisions,” Chouinard said
. “Wait till you have to worry about budgets and you’ll know how it feels.”
“So I go too, right?”
“Don’t you dare spend one minute longer than necessary.”
19
RCMP HEADQUARTERS, C DIVISION, Montreal. The atmosphere calm and businesslike, everyone polite. Cardinal wondered if he had wandered into the wrong building by mistake. He and Delorme had just come from checking in at the Regent Hotel—a tiny concrete box utterly without character next to the expressway—and the comparatively plush interior of C Division was a welcome change.
“This place is more like an insurance company than a police station,” Delorme said.
They’d been given a small interview room for their first meeting with Sergeant Raymond Ducharme. Cardinal figured Ducharme had to be sixty-five if a day, what with all the lines in his ruddy face. He had the body of a swimmer and the head of a philosopher—wide brow, sharp features and thin, sarcastic mouth. His teeth looked too good to be real.
“So, you’re friends of Malcolm Musgrave,” Ducharme said. His French Canadian accent was bracing. “I’ve known him since he was that high.” He made a gesture slightly above knee level.
“Really?” Cardinal said. “I can’t imagine Malcolm Musgrave that high.”
“For sure,” Ducharme said. “I used to work with his dad, eh? Back in the good old days. His dad was one of the best. Please, have a seat. Can I get you something to drink? Coke? Coffee? You’re sure? All right. Now, I’ve had a chance to take a look at the photograph you sent me, but let me start by asking how much you remember about the October Crisis.”
“October 1970,” Cardinal said. “A couple of guys were kidnapped by the FLQ. Raoul Duquette, a provincial cabinet minister, was killed. That’s about it.”
“I was seven years old,” Delorme said. “I don’t remember anything.”
Sergeant Ducharme raised a pedagogical finger. “Time for a refresher, then.”
Cardinal took out his pen.
