by Giles Blunt
He went back to the head of the bed and knelt again and placed his hand against the wall and waited. The bare bulb threw hard shadows, his head monstrous against the corner where the wall met the ceiling.
I don’t want to die.
He ran his hand up and down the wall, feeling for vibrations. The wall felt like painted drywall, nothing more. He rapped a knuckle against it in various places and sat back on his heels.
The voice came again, but this time it was weeping. The woman, whoever she was, sobbed and shivered and it was hard to tell where the sound was coming from. He felt up and down the wall.
“Fuck you,” he said, and grabbed the bedside lamp and laid it on the floor again. He lay down on his back and pulled himself under the bed. When he reached for the lamp to bring it after him, he banged his head on the box spring and cursed again.
The undirected light from the lamp made it difficult to see. He put one hand out to shade it and with the other felt along the edge of the box spring.
Please…
Her voice louder now, directly above him.
Dear God, don’t let this happen.
An audio clip from a movie. He could hear the sound effects now-the howling wind, the flapping canvas-tinny and miniaturized.
He found a gap in the seam and pulled the fabric away, closing his eyes against the dust. His fingers travelled along first one slat then another, until they dislodged a small object that landed on his chest and slithered to the floor. He got out from under the bed, set the lamp on the table and looked at the thing in his hand.
A cellphone.
It hurts, the woman said, and Babstock hurled it against the wall.
Not even light out and there was someone at the door. Delorme finished drying off and put on her bathrobe. Then she went to the living room and made a small part in the curtains to peer out.
Cardinal pounded the door with the flat of his hand and leaned on the bell.
Delorme went to the door and opened it without taking the chain off.
“What the hell are you doing, John? It’s six-thirty in the morning.”
“Why haven’t you been coming in to work, Lise?”
“I’m sick.”
“You’re not sick, and in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got several murders to clear.”
“I’m sick. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She started to close the door, but Cardinal stopped it with his foot.
“I’m freezing, John. Get your foot out of my door.”
“Why aren’t you returning my calls?”
“You have work questions, I’ll answer them-when I’m at work. But I’m not at work now and I have nothing for you. You wanted to cool things off, I’m cooling them off.”
“Not like this. I just-Jesus, this is new territory, Lise. Can’t you have a little patience?”
“We work together, John. End of story. That’s the way you wanted it, that’s the way it is.”
“If you’re so sick, why were you at Leonard Priest’s last night?”
Delorme looked at him. “You followed me?”
“I was worried about you. This isn’t like you, not showing up, being evasive, being cold to me-”
“You followed me. I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t follow you, Lise. Yes, I was looking for you, but I was not tailing you. We need you at work and I need your help with Flint and-What were you doing at Priest’s, anyway?”
“Why-do you think I’m fucking him or something?”
Cardinal let out a gasp. “Uh, no, Lise. That had not occurred to me.”
“What else could she be doing-right? She’s such a half-assed investigator, it couldn’t be anything work related. She must be fucking the guy.”
“Lise, truly. Let’s get past this and get back to work. You can’t call in sick when we’ve got all this work to do. You know it’s wrong. It isn’t like you.”
“Get your foot out of the way.”
“Lise, come on.”
“Move it!”
He removed his foot and she shut the door and locked it. She stood there, breathing hard. When she heard him drive away, she went to the bedroom and pulled her suitcase out of the closet.
After his fight with Delorme, Cardinal promptly had a fight, via telephone, with Chouinard. This was in order to avoid a fight with Loach. “D.S., he’s got five guys from OPP to check out every French Canadian in the district-he doesn’t need me for that. You don’t need me for that. And you know I think it should not be our priority. I’ve been tracking down the history between the three husbands, and there’s a lead I need to follow up. It’s in Gravenhurst.”
“What the hell’s in Gravenhurst?”
“More connections, I hope.”
Chouinard gave him a list of reasons why he had to come in for the morning meeting, the most compelling of which was: we’re already down one man with Delorme being out sick-had he heard anything, by the way? Cardinal insisted he had not. The D.S. stopped just short of ordering him to come in.
The sooner I get to Gravenhurst, Cardinal had said, the sooner et cetera. But he hadn’t even got to the highway when his cellphone rang and Jerry Commanda came on the line.
“John, I am nonplussed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Have you tried Metamucil?”
“What is the story with this Lacroix case? We’ve got five guys on loan to you and they don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. Interviewing people because of their accents?”
“No, no, it’s much more fine-tuned than that, Jerry. It’s only males, for example. And they have to be fifty years old or so.”
“It’s not funny, John. Seriously, you have to do something about this guy, it’s imperative.”
When he hung up, Cardinal thought about calling some of his old colleagues on the Toronto force. One or two of them would be bound to know Loach. Maybe someone would have some ideas on how to work with him.
The previous night’s snow was melting in the morning sun. The highway was black and gleaming so that it looked brand new, as parts of it were, and Cardinal took it fast, all the way to Gravenhurst without stopping, arriving in under two hours.
Gravenhurst was the kind of town that quadrupled in size during the summer. In winter it made Algonquin Bay look like Manhattan. The snow was deeper here, the old-style parking meters buried up to their necks. Cardinal used the GPS to find the address he was looking for. He had been expecting a small office building, but it was a ranch-style house of cedar and pale brick in a sixties-era development that had somehow managed to avoid proximity to any of the numberless lakes in the region.
He was about to ring the doorbell when he noticed the hand-lettered sign that said Side Door for Good Monkey Enterprises, the final s squeezed in like the last passenger on a crowded bus.
The young man who answered his knock looked about thirty-five, with dark, almost black hair that fell dead straight past his shoulders. He wore a white T-shirt, much stained, that said I Just Like New York as a Friend.
“You must be Detective Cardinal.”
“That’s right.”
“Only other visitor we’re expecting is coming to pick up a Yoda doll, and you don’t fit the demographic, among other things. I’m Jackalope-Jack, when I’m offline.”
Cardinal followed him downstairs. Good Monkey Enterprises turned out to be a finished basement lined floor to ceiling with industrial shelving.
“This is my brother, Wally.”
“Hi, Wally.”
Wally, wearing a headset, was staring at a computer screen. He raised a pale hand by way of greeting. Cardinal had met a few identical twins in his time, but the matched proprietors of Good Monkey Enterprises took identical to whole new levels. When Wally yanked off his headset and stood up, he was exactly the same height as his brother, his dark hair was exactly the same length, and he even spoke with his brother’s voice. Luckily, they were not dressed identically’ Wally’s T-shirt just said Deadwood. He shook Ca
rdinal’s hand and sat back down.
Cardinal looked around. The shelves were densely populated with dolls of varying size and physiognomy, teddy bears, action figures, board games, Bankers Boxes labelled Post Cards and Photographs. There were old toys, racks of DVDs and CDs, video games, and electronic gizmos that Cardinal could not have named.
“We’re eBay masters,” Jack explained. “We buy and sell pretty much anything that’s easy to ship and isn’t too breakable. No china, for example.”
“I don’t see any robots,” Cardinal said.
“Oh, lots of robots,” Jack said, his voice breaking like a thirteen-year-old’s. He led Cardinal to the end of one shelving unit and pointed from one item to another. “All in boxes. We must have twenty Robbies alone.”
“Twenty-three,” Wally said from his desk.
“Some even have the original packaging. We have Gort, Robosapiens, couple of Daleks, a whole family of Tekno Dinkies-even a vintage Sparky. We don’t even bother with Transformers anymore.”
“It’s not the toys I’m interested in.”
“No, you said. How’d you get on to us, anyway?”
“You’re the prime contributor to the Wikipedia article on Canadian robotics. I was expecting a professor or a grad student-”
“Not a web nerd-I get it. That’s okay. Robotics is a hobby of mine-I got into it through the toys and movies and it just grew into, I don’t know, a kind of useless expertise. I’m like a trainspotter, or one of those people who memorize bus schedules for cities they haven’t even been to. Alfred Hitchcock did that, believe it or not.”
“I had no idea.”
“It’s the kind of thing control freaks get off on,” Wally called from across the basement.
“Don’t mind my brother. It’s been hard for him, growing up in my shadow.”
“You had some material you were going to look up for me.”
“On David Flint and Frank Gauthier. Yeah, I did the Wiki articles on them too. I dug out some stuff over here you might find interesting. Patent applications dating from the early eighties. God, I’m such a nerd.”
“You are! ” Wally called out.
Cardinal looked at the applications. There were drawings and schematics for micro-movement systems and micro-power systems for “applications in remote-controlled vehicles.” Two of them had both Flint’s and Gauthier’s signatures. Several of them had a third signature.
Cardinal looked up. “They worked with Ron Babstock?”
“Cool, huh? Who knew? I dug up some stuff on LARS for you. I printed it out.”
“Who’s Lars?”
“L-A-R-S. Laval Arctic Research Station. They built it way the heck up on some tiny Arctic island. They test a lot of stuff for space exploration, to make sure it works in harsh conditions. Look at this.” He pulled a clear plastic folder off a shelf and handed it to Cardinal. “Dates from 1992 or so. Pristine condition. I could sell it for a decent price, but I’ll probably keep it.”
Inside the folder was a glossy brochure, only a few pages long, describing the research outpost. “A summer-only facility dedicated to the exploration of remote and extreme environments on Earth as analogues for human exploration of the moon and Mars. Development teams will find the environment ideal for testing equipment intended for outer-space applications.” Pictures showed a moon-like vista, smiling men in colourful parkas, arrays of electronic gear bristling with antennas.
“See there?” A bony finger, nail much chewed, pointed to a picture of four young men kneeling or standing beside a machine that looked like a mechanical praying mantis. “Brochure’s 1993, so the picture’s gotta be at least the year before. What you’re looking at is an early version of what eventually became the famous Marti.”
“Marvellous Marti!” Wally called across the room. “We love Marti!”
“We sell the models, when we can get hold of them.”
Cardinal read the caption aloud. “ ‘David Flint, Ron Babstock, Frank Gauthier and Keith Rettig with the prototype REV I exploratory vehicle.’ Ron Babstock worked with all three of these guys?”
“Cool, huh? Dude got NASA excited and the rest is history. Little bastard’s rolling across the Martian countryside as we speak.”
“You’d think there’d be all sorts of stuff on the Internet about those early days, but I couldn’t find it-not about these guys, anyway.”
“Sometimes the Internet can be a little unpredictable-sorta like a woman. That’s probably why we love it.”
“You’re darn tootin’!” Wally called out.
“He’s using the expression ironically,” Jack said. “At least I hope he is.”
Giles Blunt
Until the Night
From the Blue Notebook
I left Rebecca standing by the open water that separated us from Heiberg Island and headed back toward Dahlberg and Deville. The sky was fretted with high cirrus and the low-hanging sun bathed everything in red and gold. At any other time it would have been beautiful, but there was that growing smudge of darkness rolling toward us, and there was the scene before me.
It is commonplace these days for a man to be well versed in psychology. I am not such a person. At that time, that year, I had had little experience of outright madness. My earlier incarnation as a bush pilot had been stress-free in that department. In academia, in field research, I had encountered overwrought students, hysterical faculty members, countless florid eccentrics, but I had no experience of violent psychosis, if that’s what I was facing.
From half a kilometre off, I could see that Jens was down and Ray was standing over him. I won’t even attempt to convey my emotional state. I tried to empty my mind, to be readiness made flesh. The sun threw my shadow in a long dark tangent, as if it were being torn from me toward the magnetic pole.
Someone with training in psychological matters might have opinions about what would have been the proper way to handle the situation. The situation was there, I was who I was. I began talking to Ray as I approached-a hundred metres away, maybe a hundred and fifty-I knew he could hear me. But I chose to pretend I had not heard the shot, that I had not noticed Dahlberg lying motionless at his feet.
We must head that way, I told him, pointing. The current should take us to Meighen Island. They won’t send a plane for days. Ah, Jens-we’ll have to do something about that knee. Ray and I will put our heads together and come up with something.
As I talked on in this calm-in-the-face-of-disaster way, Ray did not so much as twitch. He stood, feet apart, arms a little away from his sides, head tilted downward. He looked like a man who had just shot a raccoon, or perhaps a cat by mistake.
I kept talking as I approached, one hand gripping the flare gun under my fleece. The flare gun is not a weapon. It is a plastic singleshot pistol not designed for accuracy. I needed to be close for it to be of any use at all. But I was not going to let Ray near Rebecca. I was not going to let him kill or injure me. I was not going to let him live.
There may be a submarine, I said. We might have luck with the radio. Or the sovereignty expedition could come through.
This was a falsehood. The sovereignty expedition, made up of dogs and soldiers and Inuit reservists, had come up Nansen Sound and was by that time halfway across the top of Ellesmere.
If there’s any sign of them, I went on, Rebecca will send up a flare.
I was within thirty or forty metres, close enough to see the gun in his hand, when Ray finally moved. It was perhaps not a direct threat, perhaps nothing much at all. He didn’t raise the gun at me. He merely looked at me. There was something mechanical in the movement-perhaps the stillness in the rest of his body, or the way he lifted his chin and then turned his face toward me in two separate motions, as if responding to typed-in commands.
Another man, of a more heroic cast, might have waited until he aimed his weapon. Might have ordered him to drop the gun. Might have made a run at him. Still talking, I pulled the flare gun from my pocket and fired.
The flare made
a tremendous hiss as it corkscrewed toward him. I feared it would miss him entirely, but it didn’t. It caught in his down jacket and the phosphorus burned as white and brilliant as a comet. His coat was on fire and he turned this way and that, flapping his arms. I saw the gun fall and ran for it.
Ray managed to shake the flare from his jacket. The phosphorus hissed and burned in the slush, sending up clouds of steam. I had his gun now, and while he was trying to tear his jacket off, I shot him in the back. He fell at once to his knees and I shot him again, so that he toppled face down. I thought then and think now that his heart had already stopped, but I stepped closer and shot him in the back of the head to make sure.
The sight of his blood pumping into the snow made my gorge rise. I turned away and bent over the still form of Jens Dahlberg. Ray had shot him through the heart, and he lay on his back in a red cloud of blood. There was no breath, no pulse.
I checked the Glock’s magazine. Two rounds left. Presumably Ray had used the others to shoot Paul Belanger and Murray Washburn before his spree was put on pause by our disintegrating island. I put the gun in the pocket of my fleece and turned around.
Rebecca had followed me. She was standing at the edge of a throbbing circle of brightness cast by the still-hissing flare, one hand covering her mouth.
17
Cardinal got into his car and shut the door and started it but didn’t move. He sat there with the heater going full blast, thinking about Ronnie Babstock. After a while he took out his phone and saw that Loach had called him twice. He ignored that and dialed Ian McLeod.
“You and Delorme are turning into real assholes,” McLeod said. “Loach is going to get you bounced off the squad-possibly before he’s appointed Governor General, possibly after. Seriously, what the hell are you doing? It’s lonely here without you. Nobody loves me.”
“I don’t love you either,” Cardinal said. “I can’t speak for Delorme.”
“She secretly loves me.”
Cardinal told him what he’d just found out.
“Wow. Ronnie Babstock. We gonna pick him up?”
“Not yet. We now know he worked with those three guys back in the late eighties, early nineties-and when I asked him about them, he made out like they had nothing to do with each other. The really weird thing, given how high-profile at least three of them are, is that there’s almost nothing written about them having worked together. If there’d been super bad blood between them, you’d expect to see lawsuits and stuff like that on the Net, but there’s nothing. Literally nothing. It’s like it never happened. In any case, Babstock doesn’t look anything like the description of the suspect. So I’m wondering about possible third parties. Maybe there was some kind of criminal activity up there at the same time. They could’ve crossed paths with the wrong people. We’re talking way north here, like Arctic north.”
