by Giles Blunt
Sam’s mother spoke up. “How are you going to protect Sam from this animal?”
Cardinal tried to repeat Chouinard’s reasoning as if he believed it himself. “Maybe you have some relatives you could stay with,” he added. “It might be good if Sam could be out of town for a while.”
“In other words you aren’t going to do anything.”
Cardinal said he could arrange to have patrol cars pass by their house as often as possible.
“That doesn’t exactly sound like ironclad security. In fact it sounds pathetic.” She turned to her daughter. “We could stay with Susanna in Dokis, I suppose.”
“Oh, great.” Sam said. “I lose my job and my school year.”
“No you won’t,” her mother said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
Cardinal tried to remain upbeat as he drove them home. He even gave Sam his cellphone number—something he never did with witnesses—but when he dropped them off, the look on her mother’s face filled him with shame.
—
The security video finally arrived from Pearson International just as Cardinal was leaving for the day.
“Hey, Delorme,” he said, holding it up. She was shutting down her computer in the cubicle next to his. “You want to watch a video tonight?”
They drove in their separate cars to Delorme’s bungalow. The small brick house looked pretty in the snow. She had put up Christmas decorations since the last time Cardinal had visited.
Cardinal sat on the couch in front of the TV with a bowl of tortilla chips beside him, flipping channels while Delorme defrosted some chili. He caught part of a documentary on the discovery of a British frigate that had been sunk in Lake Erie in the War of 1812. A salvage team out of Toronto was testing a new sonar device that used computer technology to translate sound waves into remarkably clear images. Cardinal made a note of the salvage outfit’s name.
Delorme brought in their dinner trays and picked up the remote. The video began to play, showing a wide-angle view of parking level five that took in about a dozen vehicles. The time stamp reeled off the seconds in the lower right of the screen.
“Three weeks ago,” Delorme said. “A little more.”
“Car’s third from the left.” Cardinal pointed with his fork. “Good chili.”
“French Canadians have always made the best chili.”
A figure entered from the foreground, his back to the camera, wearing a hood. A bulky knapsack hung from his back.
“Could be our ATM kid,” Delorme said. She put her plate on the coffee table and went to sit on the rug, closer to the screen, hugging her knees to her chest like a teenager.
The figure approached the car that was deepest in shadow; his face remained completely obscured. A slim jim appeared in his hand, and with a couple of swift movements he had the lock up and the door open. There was no sound on the video, but the car alarm must have been loud in that concrete space. He got in, popped the hood and got out again. He raised the hood and shut it a moment later.
“So much for the car alarm,” Cardinal said.
“He’s fast. Must have had some good training.”
“We’re not going to be able to recognize him from this tape,” Cardinal said. “Not unless the Toronto geek squad can enhance it somehow.”
“Well, it’s got to be the same kid, even if we can’t prove it. Oh my, who have we got here?”
Another figure had entered the scene.
Cardinal pointed, outlining the man’s head and shoulders. “He looks a lot older. Way older. Just the way he moves.”
The two got in and closed the doors. The rear lights went on and then the car backed up, turned and drove out of frame.
“Back it up,” Cardinal said. “I think we got a bit of light on the older guy’s face when he turned to open the door.”
Delorme reached for the remote and froze the image for a second, and then ran it backwards. She clicked the image forward a few frames. The older figure was wearing a baseball cap that shadowed his face. He moved jerk by jerk toward the car. He opened the passenger-side door, and when he turned slightly, Delorme froze the image.
She got up on all fours to peer at the screen. Cardinal sat forward on the edge of his seat. “Definitely older.”
“They should be able to enhance that one. Maybe even use facial recognition on it.” Delorme ran the recording forward and back a few more times, but none of the frames was any better. She switched off the set and came back to the couch. “So. We’re looking for two guys. One’s a kid, the other’s in his forties or fifties?”
“That’s good,” Cardinal said. “Two guys travelling together—one of them a teenager—are going to be more noticeable than just one. First thing tomorrow we’ve got to get on the stick to Pearson. If they can match these guys up with other security shots, we may be able to get names from passport control, maybe even connect with a likely flight.”
“Do you know how many million people go through Pearson in a year?”
“That’s in a year. Look how we can narrow it down. The Bastovs are American—we can assume their killer followed them here. Assume these two guys arrived within an hour before stealing the car. They can check security tapes in the U.S. arrivals area for that hour. We may even be able to get it down to a particular gate, or close to it. But all of this makes me wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“The victims are American. It looks like the killer or killers are American. So how did they know the Schumacher place was for sale? The sign was up, but it hasn’t been listed for some time.”
“If they knew the Bastovs were looking for a house in the area, maybe they just did a thorough search of the real estate agencies.”
“Doesn’t seem likely.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
They let the thought lie. They finished the chili and talked for a while longer about the best ways to deal with the Toronto airport. Then Delorme said, “So. How was your date the other night?”
“Date?” Cardinal said. “You mean with that reporter? That wasn’t a date.”
“Uh-huh. You seemed pretty evasive. Why be evasive if it wasn’t a date? How’d it go? Did you go out to dinner?”
“Yeah, we went to DeGroot’s.”
“DeGroot’s,” Delorme said, “is definitely a date.”
“It was not a date. And don’t look at me like that. Donna doesn’t know anybody in town—I figured why not take her out to dinner.”
“She didn’t look like a charity case to me.”
“It was an information exchange. She gave me some good stuff.”
“Did you boink her?”
“Lise. For Pete’s sake …”
“I can ask, can’t I? We’re buddies, aren’t we? If I was a guy, you’d tell me.”
“You’re not a guy, and—contrary to what you may think—men do not constantly tell each other about their sex lives. No, I didn’t boink her—what are you, twelve? And before you ask—no, I didn’t try. Jesus.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“Yes you did. How’s Shane, Lise? Did you boink Shane this week?”
Delorme laughed. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“That’s it.” Cardinal stood up and got his coat. “Thanks for the chili. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You asked me, John.”
“Jesus, Lise.”
26
THE SKY OVER BLACK LAKE WAS astonishingly blue, almost indigo at the highest point of the dome, paler at its fringes. The man called Papa stood in Lloyd’s living room, staring out the window, hands clasped behind his back—a pose that seemed habitual with him. His cohorts—his so-called family—were outside somewhere, and Papa had magnanimously allowed Lloyd to emerge from his bedroom, although he was still tethered at the ankle like a goat.
“Astounding,” Papa said, “the things that can fall out of a clear blue sky.”
“You’re referring to unexpected events?” Lloyd said. He felt
it prudent to engage in conversation with this psychopath, on the theory that it’s harder to kill a man you’ve gotten to know. No one who had gotten to know Henry, for example, could have imagined ending such a benign life.
Papa spoke in a tone of recitation, without turning around. “Book of Joshua. The Israelites rout the Amorite army and are chasing them all over the map when a rain of stones falls from a clear blue sky and decimates the enemy.”
“Oh. Bible stories.”
“Cambridge, Maryland, 1828. Twelve days of rain force a man named Muse to stop digging a ditch around his property. When he ventures back outside, he finds the ditch teeming with fish—six, seven inches long, some of them. Perch. Bass. No river within miles of the place. No explanation how they got there.”
“A delivery truck,” Lloyd said. “A Natural Resources truck on the way to stock a lake maybe. Gets stuck in the storm and has to jettison cargo.”
“Wake up, Lloyd—this is the nineteenth century. Early nineteenth century. November 13, 1833. Rahway, New Jersey. A rain of fire. Locals describe blobs of burning jelly falling from the sky. Moment they burn out, they turn to white powder.”
“There were munitions factories in New Jersey,” Lloyd said. He was a U.S. history buff and happened to know. “They come into prominence later, during the Civil War.”
“No, Lloyd.” Papa turned and spoke as if to a recalcitrant student. “As it happens, there was a meteor shower that same day. It’s inconceivable to me, and I hope to you, that the two events are unrelated.”
Lloyd was not sure how to respond. Ready agreement might be taken as an insult. Disagreement, however gently expressed, risked violence. He made a noncommittal sound.
Papa turned from the window and came closer.
“What I’m pointing out, Lloyd, is that I happen to be a similar sort of phenomenon.”
He took a stub of pencil from his left-hand pocket and a small sharpener from his right. He sharpened the pencil and put the sharpener back in his pocket and took out a small black notebook. He undid the elastic and opened it and made a note and put the pencil and the notebook back into his pocket. He sat on the end of the sofa closest to Lloyd and leaned on the armrest. “You don’t remember me, do you.”
“Remember you?”
Papa leaned closer, dark blue eyes assessing him. “I’ve been waiting for you to put two and two together, Lloyd, but it looks like you never will. Not without a nudge.”
“I’m sorry,” Lloyd said. “You have the advantage. I don’t—We’ve met before? You and I? We met somewhere?”
“Indeed, yes.”
“I’m sorry. You look vaguely familiar …”
“Here’s a little clue for you, Lloyd.” Papa reached across the gap between the sofa and the armchair and pressed Lloyd’s shoulder as if he were ringing a doorbell. “Seattle.”
“Seattle. That’s supposed to jog my memory?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’ve been to a lot of fur auctions in Seattle. How am I supposed to remember one time?”
“Well, you’re right—it was a fur auction. Twelve years ago.”
“Twelve years ago. Was it at one of those big dinners?”
“Getting warm. After dinner. Hotel bar. You were with some honcho from Lord & Taylor.”
Lloyd snapped his fingers. “Ron Weissman. He was retiring that year. We met in the hotel bar. You came up and asked me something. I remember. You were with a beautiful young woman.”
Papa smiled. “Thataboy, Lloyd. That’d be Christine. Broke my heart.”
“You came up and asked me a question.”
“I asked you a question. Very good. Do you remember the question?”
Lloyd shook his head. “No. No, I can’t say that I do.”
Papa smiled—a flash of a grin totally unconnected to the neutral expression of the rest of his face, quickly gone. “Of course not. Why would you? I asked if you could spare a minute. You were very polite at first. You said sure. And so I started to fill you in on an idea I’d been working on for months. Years, actually. A concept that involved organizing trappers and buyers—and manufacturers like yourself—into a top-down outfit.”
“And I said I wasn’t interested.”
“You didn’t put it so eloquently at the time. How many words was that? Five? Six? You didn’t come near to wasting that many words. What you said was, ‘Not interested.’” Papa held up two fingers before Lloyd’s face. “Two words. As if I was some religious wacko forcing a flyer on you. ‘Not interested.’”
“And that offended you.”
Papa looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. When he looked back at Lloyd, he said, “When you step on a spider—an ant, a cockroach—don’t you think that offends him? When you spit in the face of someone who wants nothing more than to work co-operatively with you, do you not think that might offend him?”
For his entire adult life, Lloyd Kreeger had prided himself on being a down-to-earth, to-the-point sort of man. Honest, reliable, decisive. He valued courtesy, and even coming from a thief and possibly a murderer and certainly some kind of psycho, the accusation that he had been highhanded upset him.
“Perhaps you are not very experienced in business matters,” Lloyd said. “The greatest courtesy you can extend a businessman is to respect his time. Whatever the merits of your scheme might be—and to tell you the truth, I didn’t consider it long enough to even weigh them—I knew it wasn’t for me. I’d worked with trappers, I’d owned farms, but by that time I was strictly manufacturing and retail.”
“Naturally. Lloyd Kreeger is far too good to get his hands dirty.”
“Got nothing to do with being too good. I gave you the quickest answer possible. ‘Not interested.’ I apologize if that offended you, but it was the truth. Are you offended by the truth?”
“I live by it.”
“Then there’s nothing to be offended about.”
“It wasn’t what you said, Lloyd. It was how you said it. ‘Not interested, cockroach.’”
“I never said that.”
“The insect was implied in your tone. You were in a hurry to get away. A rush to get away from the pesky little bug. Swat him down.”
“Not true.” Lloyd shook his head. “Not true.”
“Did you know the Bastovs are dead?”
“Lev Bastov?”
“It was on the news last night. Both Lev and Irena Bastov were killed last week, right here in Algonquin Bay. Couldn’t identify them till now. Had their heads cut off. What do you think—Russian mob?”
“The Bastovs were murdered?”
Papa nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Lloyd felt something cold turning in his stomach. “You did it, didn’t you?.”
Papa smiled. “I could never do something like that. It’s not in me. Besides, I hardly knew them. But to get back to our conversation about Seattle, you can say whatever you want, Lloyd. You can tap dance around the issue. Obfuscate and rationalize. Tell us the moon is blue, tell us it never snows in Algonquin Bay, Ontario. It’s fine. I am indifferent. Just like you were indifferent. You have to love indifference, don’t you think? If I had to make a choice, I’d have to say indifference was the perfect state of mind. The natural state of mind. But everything you say just begs the question, Lloyd.”
“What question?”
“Who’s the insect now?”
—
In the days since Lemur’s death, Papa had begun teaching Nikki how to shoot a rifle. He didn’t say as much, but she knew it was to help get her mind off Lemur. And he enlisted Jack as an instructor, which she wouldn’t have thought possible after their altercation. First thing he did was to give Jack an absolute apology. Found Jack sulking in the living room that afternoon and called Nikki in because he wanted it to be public, so to speak. I was in the wrong, Jack—I was upset about Lemur and I just lost it. You were wrong too, but I should never have used violence against a family member. It violates my own principles, and I hope you’ll find it possible to
forgive me.
When Jack didn’t say anything, Papa went and got the shotgun and handed it to Jack and knelt with his back to him. Told him to go ahead and bash his skull, he had every right. But Jack wouldn’t do it, and after a while he seemed to relax a little. Eventually Papa cajoled him into coming outside with them, saying all sorts of good things about him. I’ll let Jack show you the longer-range techniques—he’s a much better sniper than I am. Or, Watch how Jack does it. He’s just got an instinct for this, and it never fails.
They had good weather, a little warmer than it had been, so Nikki’s fingers didn’t freeze handling the rifles. Then, just when she was getting used to target practice outdoors, Papa took her and Jack down to the basement, bringing along a couple of handguns. Still in his scoutmaster mode, still deferential to Jack.
“Decisive battles never arise in ideal circumstances. Right, Jack?” he said. “We don’t get to choose when or where we have to deal with matters of life and death. The fact is, if you’re ever called upon to use your sidearm, it’s likely going to be indoors. So you have to get used to shooting inside. What do you think, Jack?”
“Absolutely true,” Jack said. “You hit the nail there.” If he still harboured any anger against Papa, he was keeping it locked up. Papa got him to show Nikki the proper stance, the crouch, the drop and turn—all of this without firing a shot—while he stood looking on, offering advice and encouragement. They had her practise the moves over and over again.
At one point he said, “You know what’s stupid about most people owning firearms, Nikki?”
“They end up shooting themselves by accident? Or someone steals them?”
“True enough. But what’s the all-out stupidest thing? Jack, I think you know.”
“The all-out stupidest thing,” Jack said, in a tone Nikki recognized as the sound of rote memory, “is when an assailant just walks right up and takes the gun out of his victim’s hands. Because most people, when it comes down to the wire, are just not ready to shoot anyone.”
