by Giles Blunt
Hayley shook her head. “Please. No.”
His eyes assessing her, the short chain of her potential moves, his face hawkish, weathered. A professor, perhaps. A judge. The eyes closed and the face paled, a hand clutching at the bandage. His limp worse as he moved to an armchair and sat down again, this time silently.
Hayley gave it a few seconds. Then, “Is this your house?”
The words hung in the air, a neon sign with no connection to the human relationship in this room: victim and murderer. They might have been here for social reasons, two strangers at a party. Hayley kept her eyes on the ceiling. He might be looking at her, he might be asleep.
“So many books. I’m wondering if they’re all yours, but a lot of them look old. I’m thinking maybe they belonged to your family, your parents, I don’t know.”
There was no response from across the room. A faint rustle as he changed his position, perhaps turned his head to look at her, or out the window. She was still afraid to look. A direct gaze might be too much, the shout that triggers the avalanche.
“Books have always been important to me. I may be the last person to avoid the social media sink. It’s a problem for me sometimes. Students want you to be on Facebook, Twitter, but e-mail’s enough. It’s too much, in fact. Half my students seem to have no concept of a private world, and that seems sad to me, but maybe I’m just an introvert.”
Hayley held her breath. If he was as intelligent as he looked, he would realize what she was trying to do. Poor little girl trying to make herself into a person, something harder to kill than a creature you know nothing about. But persons, people, full human beings, were exactly what this man had made it his business to kill.
She forced herself to turn her head and look at him. He was seated in an armchair across the room, at an angle to her. His hands gripped the arms of the chair and he sat erect, something Egyptian about the posture. His eyes were open-she saw him blink-but he wasn’t looking at her. The expression on the sharp features-if it was in fact expression and not its absence-was one of incalculable weariness.
“I don’t know anything about you-and maybe it’ll sound like dime-store psychology or obvious self-interest-but it seems clear that something terrible has happened to you. Maybe recently? Maybe a long time ago, I don’t know, but something terrible.” She thought of a creature on the edge of extinction, the last T. rex on earth, gasping out its final breaths in a jungle sheathed in ice.
No response.
“My parents had a lot of books too-still do. My father, anyway. He’s a scientist, but he never seemed to want me to be one, really. He always encouraged me to do artsy things. I used to write the most terrible poems and he would pin them up-even the depressing ones when I got into a Sylvia Plath phase, which is pretty funny when you think of it.
“Poetry is so powerful you’d think you could tell from someone’s face if they read it or not. Respond to it. But I look at you and I have no clue. Do you read poetry? Have you ever?”
He turned his face toward the window, sharp features outlined against that brightness.
Hayley lifted her ankles and swung herself up into a seated position. The room tilted and lurched and the urge to vomit was strong.
Her moving got his attention, but he didn’t get up.
“I read poetry,” Hayley continued. “I have a father. I was a little girl at one time, then a teenager. Now I’m a teacher. In other words, you could say, I’m nothing special. But that’s the thing about being human, right? You’re not required to be special. You’re only required to be human.”
She talked on. The thought took hold that she would not die as long as she was talking. It was a common myth: the dancer who must keep dancing, the storyteller who must keep spinning tales, to keep fate at bay.
“I read poetry,” she said again. “I tried to write it. I try to teach it, or at least the appreciation of it. I want to be a professor. I’d like to get married someday. At this moment, of course, all I want is to stay alive. Will you tell me your name?”
He sighed, and shifted his weight a little in his chair, but did not look at her.
“May I know who has imprisoned me, and why? No? I want to write a book. I’d like to write about Leonard Cohen. I would talk about Catullus and Villon, the Book of Psalms, poetry as song. But scholarly circles aren’t so big on him. He’s too easy and too popular. Atwood would be better. She’s kind of one of them, one of us, an academic even, though she’s not at a university. Of course, if I write about either of them, every English department in the United States will shut their doors on me forever after. Canadian literature is not a hot topic in New York or Chicago. But what can I do, I love poetry, and it’s the only thing I know anything about.
“Except now I know how it feels to be terrified.”
The man remained in his chair like an empty garment. Maybe begging was the best gambit, maybe get down on my knees and promise whatever sex or money or worship he wants. She could never have guessed, before this moment, the magnitude of her desire to live. It shrieked and shrieked in the room and yet the man did not hear it, seemed unaware of it-in no particular rush to harm, yet free of any desire to spare her little life. She was nothing more than any mosquito she’d ever swatted, any spider she’d ever drowned, tiny legs frantic as it circled the drain.
A sob escaped her. The last thing she wanted.
When his voice came, it was as dry as wind, wind through dry grass. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “Poetry. No. I don’t read poetry…”
Hayley choked back her sobs, caught her breath, held it.
“… but I knew someone. A long time ago. Someone who did.”
Things happened relatively fast once Delorme got back to Algonquin Bay. Loach was on the phone when she walked into the station, but he hung up right away and pointed at her. “You! I want to talk to you right now.”
“Good idea,” Delorme said. “Why don’t we go in here.” She reached in and switched on the lights in the meeting room. “I’ll be right back.”
She went and tapped on Chouinard’s door and he followed her across the squad room, baying the whole way. Delorme said nothing. She held the meeting room door open for him and closed it behind him, and then there were two of them baying at her. She held up a DVD, and they both quieted down as she inserted it into the player and switched on the TV monitor.
“What the hell are you up to?” Loach wanted to know. “I’m trying to run a major investigation and you go totally AWOL.”
Delorme spoke to Chouinard. “I’m sorry, D.S. I know I called in sick, but I was actually working on the investigation. In Toronto.”
“And who told you to go down to Toronto?”
“Cardinal,” Loach said. “I know what’s going on. I have eyes.”
“It’s ears you need right now,” Delorme said. “You have to listen closely.”
The image came up on the screen. The crowded pub, and one inebriated detective climbing up on a stool.
“That’s Chuck Rakov,” Loach said. “What the hell are you doing with a video of Chuck Rakov?”
“Who the hell is he?” Chouinard said.
“One of the worst cops I ever worked with. Took a while, but I finally managed to get that bastard gone.”
Delorme had paused the video. “May I go on?”
Chouinard nodded. She hit Play, and Rakov went into his Loach impersonation.
“Hilarious,” Loach said, “but I don’t have time for this shit.” He got up and reached for the monitor.
“Let it play,” Chouinard said.
“Are you serious? Chuck Rakov is and was a total drunk.”
“That’s not the good part,” Delorme said. “The good part’s coming up.”
On screen, Rakov went into his French-Canadian accent. Even drunk, he had mastered the mimic’s art of instant transformation. The Toronto cop’s body was possessed by the spirit-and accent-of a thorough Quebecois.
“Oh, Jesus,” Chouinard said. “Tell me th
is isn’t happening. Tell me this is not the guy we’ve been throwing out a dragnet for.”
“Wait a second,” Loach said. “We don’t know it’s him who called. Rakov’s a total asshole.”
“An asshole who hates you,” Delorme said. “An asshole you got fired. An asshole the Toronto police have now charged with obstruction of justice and interfering with an investigation. I gave them your recording-they’ve already done the voice print.”
“Bullshit,” Loach said. He appealed to Chouinard. “She’s just trying to undermine me. It’s ridiculous. I’m citing her for insubordination, for conduct unbecoming, for misusing police funds, for-”
“Go home,” Chouinard said. “You’re not citing anybody.”
“No. This is wrong.” Loach shook his head. “This is so, so wrong.”
Chouinard looked over at Delorme. “Toronto Forensics confirms the voice?”
“It’s definitely Rakov.”
“You’re off the case, Loach. Go home.”
Loach stood up. “You’re both wrong. I did the right thing. I made the right decision. Given what we had to work with at the time, I made the right decision.”
“Go home.”
After he’d put his business card through the letter slot of Alison Durie’s door, Cardinal sat in his car and tried to decide what would be his next step. It seemed unlikely that the all-units would result in a street cop or a highway patrol pulling over exactly the right van. It would be the OPP, if anybody. If Durie was planning to complete his revenge on that Arctic island, he had to be headed for an airfield.
He opened his briefcase on the seat beside him and took out a photograph of Hayley Babstock. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight, a sweet age for a woman. Still enough of the student-age naivete to be cute, but there was a confidence in those blue eyes as well. She would be a person with a good idea of her own capabilities. He took out his pen and wrote on the back of the photograph, This is Hayley Babstock. She is a teacher-and also the daughter of someone your brother has reason to hate. He got out of the car and went back up the steps to Alison Durie’s house and pushed the photograph through the slot.
His phone rang as he was getting back into the car.
“Drexler here. Are you a hunter, by any chance?”
“No.”
“I’m standing by the side of a road just north of King City, watching two guys rig a sling hoist under a dead moose. It wasn’t shot, though. It was hit by a white van.”
“What’s going on? Is the girl okay?”
“She’s not here. Neither is Karson Durie.”
“Send me a picture of the van on my phone. Is there a logo on the side?”
“I’m sending it now. Jesus, you should see the antlers on this thing-they’re winching him out of the windshield. Must weigh fifteen hundred pounds. I gotta say, I am often struck by the role of sheer luck in the lives of criminals-not to mention the lives of their victims.
“Mr. Perpetrator-heading for an airfield five kilometres from here, where it turns out he has reserved a Twin Otter under an assumed name-has the bad luck to hit a moose. But lo, the wheel turns again, and he has the good luck to have a good Samaritan show up. This is bad luck for Mr. Samaritan, who has stopped his truck to help. “’Preciate it-please accept my. 45-calibre thank-you card.’ The man is dead. He’s got two kids under the age of twelve and a wife gonna be wondering why he doesn’t answer his cell.”
“We’re sure it was Durie.”
“Well, there’s no prints from the gloved one, but this Babstock kid is one smart cookie. She left her fingerprints inside-they’re all over the back. Perfect prints, like she pressed ’em and rolled ’em just for us.”
“Do we know what he’s driving now?”
“Our Samaritan’s vehicle was a black Dodge Laramie.”
“Should be easy enough to spot,” Cardinal said.
“Should be. And was. OPP found it by the highway about forty miles up the 400, and now we have no clue what he’s driving. And no clue where he’s heading. At this point the man is an open case in at least three jurisdictions, and we have no idea where he is.”
“Hold on, Art. I think we just got a break.”
Alison Durie was crossing the street toward him.
Delorme couldn’t wait to get out of the office again after her meeting with Loach and Chouinard. She could still hear them shouting at each other as she headed out the door. She drove up to the hospital and visited with Miranda Heap, who had regained consciousness. Her lips were swollen and she was groggy from the drugs, but her mind seemed perfectly clear. Perfectly clear, and perfectly made up. Did you listen to the phone messages? And you know who it is. Good. Did you get the receipts too? The photograph? Good. Son of a bitch thinks he’s going to be a judge…
Delorme paid another visit to her house and found, as Miranda had expected, that Garth Romney had left another message. Darlene has been such a bad girl, my darling…
“Yes,” Delorme said, “you have.”
Then she went back to the station and made copies of everything.
She sat across from Chouinard in his office as he leafed, grim-faced, through the receipts, shaking his head at what he was hearing through his headphones. Finally he took them off and muttered, “Garth, Garth, Garth… Misuse of funds, dereliction of duty…”
“Don’t forget assault.”
“Assault. Jesus. Tell me something, Sergeant Delorme. Tell me how it is that such seemingly intelligent people manage to get themselves into so much trouble.”
“I’d like to take this to Crown Attorney Hartman right away.”
“No, no. This is far too hot for the local. We take it to Sudbury, to the regional crown.”
“But that’ll take so long.”
“No, it won’t. Believe me, they’ll want this cleaned up fast-before Romney is actually installed as a judge. This is out of our hands, as far as jurisdiction goes-they’ll want the OPP, or actually, probably Toronto police to handle the investigation.”
“But the work’s all done.”
“I know. You’ve done it all for them. And now we know why Priest was never prosecuted.”
She told him about her interview with Fritz Reicher.
“He’s ready to testify?”
“Definitely. I’d like to arrest Priest as soon as possible. Why not tonight?”
“Hold on now. It won’t be tonight. Order of business is we get the regional crown on board first. He’s going to want to see-and hear-everything we have. He’ll want to line up an outside investigator, and then he’ll lower the boom.”
Delorme got up to leave. As she was opening the office door, Chouinard pounded his fist on the desk. “Damn.”
“What, D.S.?”
“This is good, eh? This is good. This is what we get into this business for, isn’t it.”
“I’d say so.”
He pounded the desk again. “Fantastic. Totally fucking fantastic-and you know I never swear.”
“Absolutely, D.S. I’ve always admired that about you.”
“After I sent you away so rudely,” Alison Durie said, “I went to look at some things my brother left behind. But I need to tell you a bit about him before I show you.”
Cardinal was sitting at her kitchen table, where a pot of tea was steeping. He studied her face. Wide brow, aristocratic neck, the regal manner undone by unbearable sadness.
“I flew to Yellowknife when Karson was released and brought him back here with me. He stayed for about six months.”
“How did he spend his time? Did he have a job?”
She shook her head. “My father left us some money. Karson’s share collected interest over the years. It generates enough income that he doesn’t have to take a job-provided he’s careful. He’s not a man who requires a lot of material things.”
As she spoke of her brother, she forgot about the tea and cups and spoons between them.
“He spent most of his days at the library-the university library. It broke my heart the fir
st day he came home from an afternoon there. The joy on his face. Karson is not an effusive man, but he positively jabbered at me about advances in his field. He went back every day, got himself access to their online journals, and I saw-for a moment, anyway-something like happiness in his eyes. I know he also went because he didn’t want to be a burden to me-which was silly, because he was very helpful looking after our mother. But I’m sure he wanted to be out of my hair. And the happiness was soon gone. Prison-or perhaps not prison so much as injustice-took that capacity from him.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t get his own place, rent an apartment.”
“My brother is a man who is capable of walking across Ellesmere Island dragging a two-hundred-pound sled. Alone. He has lived entire winters with Russians, Laplanders and Inuit in places that are barely on the map and have numbers for names. He has been stranded for weeks in Good Friday Bay, saved an Inuit hunter on the pack ice of the Beaufort Sea. But eighteen years in prison? Eighteen years, Detective. Just going out on the street was disorienting. He was like a man afraid of heights stepping out onto a ledge forty floors up. He had to walk next to walls, step into doorways.
“The distances, the scale of things, were too much. Can you imagine? This is a man who has walked on icebergs the size of Manhattan. But after twenty years in prison he had to be accompanied everywhere. He needed time to find his feet, and he was intelligent enough to know it.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“Not at all. Karson is three years older than me. I grew up absolutely adoring him. Even as a teenager, he absorbed knowledge the way the rest of us absorb pop songs. He used to speak of relativity, nuclear fission, differential calculus the way our contemporaries might speak of Led Zeppelin or the latest sitcom. That’s probably why I went into the arts-music-to avoid competing with him.”
Cardinal let her talk a little more. Then he said, “You mentioned some things you wanted to show me.”
“Yes. When you first appeared, I didn’t really listen to you. I couldn’t really hear you. I didn’t want to hear you. But I saw you waiting out there and I looked at the girl’s picture, and… Karson left some things. Nothing much-he’s always travelled light and actually doesn’t own very much-but he left a small box of things in the garage.”
