by Giles Blunt
“You slept around.”
“Worse. With his best friend.”
“Jesus. You were a bitch.”
She nodded—once, a simple affirmative. “I actually didn’t realize how much it would hurt him till after I’d done it. Ray was devastated.”
Cardinal turned on his side and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why are you telling me this? Are you trying to warn me off?”
“Maybe.” She gave a wan smile. “I just—you’re so different from me, that’s all. Loyal to the same woman for thirty years. I’m envious—not just of her, your wife, but of you. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be that stable.”
“Boring, most of the time.”
“I don’t think so. Not in your case. But I don’t seem able to sit still. Every time life hands me something that looks like it might be steady, comfortable—something that might last longer than a few months—I manage to destroy it.”
“But you didn’t do that entirely on your own. His so-called friend helped.”
She shook her head. “It actually doesn’t take two, John. Believe me, I’ve done it many times.”
“There you go, warning me again.”
“Or maybe I’m just trying to talk myself into being a better person. Maybe you’re worth changing for.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“And pretty soon you won’t want to know me.”
“Now we’re getting melodramatic.”
She put her arms around him and held him close. A hot tear slid onto his chest and cooled there.
“People can change,” Cardinal said. “I’ve seen it happen. People turn their whole lives around.”
She sighed, and reached up to touch his face. “What a lovely story.”
31
BY THE TIME CARDINAL GOT OUT of the shower in the morning, Donna was gone.
After the morning meeting, he checked his phone messages and returned a few calls. Even though he had something of a mental block about responding to e-mail, he spent the time while he was waiting for Mendelsohn answering as many as he could. Of course, Mendelsohn couldn’t call to explain why he was so late; his cellphone was on the bottom of Trout Lake.
At ten o’clock, he called the Highlands. No answer in Mendelsohn’s room. The FBI man struck Cardinal as a little eccentric, a bit of a klutz, but also completely reliable. Not the sort who says nine a.m. when he means ten-thirty or eleven. Cardinal grabbed his coat and drove to the Highlands and parked next to Mendelsohn’s Alero. A maintenance man was pushing a snow blower, blasting geysers of white into the blue of the sky.
Young Mr. Dee was not happy to see Cardinal again. Across the front desk, he radiated clouds of Scope-scented dismay.
“I need to visit one of your guests,” Cardinal said.
“Certainly, Detective. What name?”
“Mendelsohn.”
The manager checked his computer and got the room number and dialed it. He kept the phone clamped between his ear and shoulder and continued typing away at something the whole time. He put down the phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mendelsohn must have stepped out.” He pointed toward the house phones. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“I need to see his room.”
“Oh, I don’t think we can …” He scanned Cardinal’s face and whatever he saw there changed his mind. “I’ll look after it.”
In the elevator, he said, “Please tell me this investigation will be over soon.”
“It won’t.”
He led Cardinal down the second-floor corridor to room 218 and rapped smartly on the door. “Weird thing is, our bookings for the next two months are actually up, year over year.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a double murder was great publicity.”
“Me either.” He rapped again.
“Open it.”
“Please—we’re not going to have that discussion again, are we?”
“No,” Cardinal said. “We’re not.”
The manager took out his pass card and opened the door. He took up the same position as last time, back against the door, holding it open. “Sounds like he’s in the shower.”
The mirrors, the windows, even the TV screen, were fogged with steam.
“Mendelsohn?” Cardinal stepped farther into the room and stopped.
Mendelsohn was on the floor between the toilet and the sink, in a half-curled position. Blood had formed a pool above his head in the shape of a thought cloud in a comic book. Cardinal placed a hand on his shoulder. Dead some time.
He knelt down to get a better look. There was a dark hole above Mendelsohn’s right eyebrow and an exit wound at the back of the skull that had taken a good chunk of bone and brain with it before it hit the wall above the toilet. Another entry wound below the Highlands logo on his bathrobe seemed to have produced no exit wound that Cardinal could see. That one would explain the hole through the bathroom door. It was about waist-high if you were standing, but if you were sitting on the toilet, as Mendelsohn clearly had been, it was about level with your right lung. That was like him, to get himself murdered while he’s about to take a dump.
Cardinal called it in. It was only when he got off his cell that he remembered Mr. Dee, paler than before, but still at his post by the doorway.
“We’re going to need your security tapes again.”
“That’s going to be a problem.”
“Why?”
“In response to the last incident, we’re having an expert do a thorough review of our security system. The cameras have been down the past three days.”
“Fabulous.”
“This is going to be another loud, messy business, isn’t it?”
“You might be in for a few cancellations.”
—
While he was waiting, Cardinal turned off the shower and stood in the bathroom trying to picture how it had all transpired. Mendelsohn must have turned on the water to let it get hot before showering. Then he’d sat down on the toilet.
The bullet that had caught him in the chest, after passing through the door, was telling Cardinal something. He spoke, barely above a whisper. “You’re in the hallway and listening at the door and you hear the shower running. Somehow you get past the lock and step inside. The shower is running, the door is closed. Why do you shoot straight through the door? Why did you aim straight for the seated position?”
Gloved, Cardinal stepped out and pulled the bathroom door shut. There was barely an eighth of an inch clearance, and even that was obscured by the deep pile of the carpet.
He opened the door again, avoiding the sight of Mendelsohn. “No. You knew he was sitting down. The door must have been open.”
He turned to look at the folding closet doors that faced the bathroom. Mirrored from floor to ceiling. The door on the left was closed flat and reflected Cardinal’s image and Mendelsohn’s lower legs curled on the floor. The other door was ajar. Cardinal could see the shoulder of Mendelsohn’s trench coat in the space between the two doors. The angled mirror on the right reflected the bed and part of a nightstand.
“You were under the bed,” Cardinal said. He went to stand beside it. The closet door now reflected the toilet and Mendelsohn’s bare feet.
“He leaves the door open to let some of the steam out. Then he decides to use the toilet. He sits down, but no—he’s not comfortable with the door open—so he pushes it closed.
“You come out from under the bed. You stand outside the bathroom door and fire once. Did you use a silencer? You fire once and hear him fall. While he’s still on the floor, you open the door—he wouldn’t have locked it—and you put one in his skull.”
Cardinal went back to the bed. Mendelsohn slept in the other one and used this one as a desk. Papers were stacked in eight neat piles. Cardinal stood over them, scanning the headings. He tried to judge if any one pile was messier than the others, but the arrangements gave no clue.
Ident arrived with their cases of equipment. Cardinal asked them to pay particular attention t
o the space under the bed. “I’m taking this,” he said, holding up a tiny notebook by the corners. He had just removed it from Mendelsohn’s coat pocket.
Arsenault dusted it, but it wasn’t of a texture that would hold prints. He stuck a tented number card in the coat pocket and photographed it and then he stuck an evidence tag onto the notebook with the same number, the time and his signature. He handed it to Cardinal. “You’re responsible for getting it to the evidence room.”
—
The hotel lobby was already full of reporters. There was Nick Stoltz from The Algonquin Lode, Brian Murtaugh from the local cable station, even Grace Legault from the CBC. Donna was beside her, looking at Cardinal with expectation but nothing more.
They clamoured around him. Do you have a positive ID? Do you have any suspects? Is it the same killer?
“We have a deceased middle-aged male, not local, obviously the victim of foul play. I can’t give you anything more right now.”
Donna didn’t throw any questions at him. He had been dreading she would say something like, “Is it true he was with the FBI?”—something that would drive the others into a frenzy, and also raise suspicions that she might have a special contact inside the investigation.
In the parking lot, the snow glare made his eyes water. He got into his car and started it. His cellphone rang and he had to slot the shift back in park to answer.
“Mendelsohn had an interesting contact.” It was Donna’s voice. She was standing beneath the hotel marquee looking out toward the parking lot but not at him.
“How’d you know it was Mendelsohn?” Cardinal said.
“I didn’t. Thank you for confirming.”
“Where’d you get the name?” Cardinal said, angry at himself now.
“Come on—I do have more than one source, you know.”
“Do you use the same technique with all of them?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”
“All right. Okay, I’m sorry. Who’s this contact?”
“A guy who works in New York Homicide. He and Mendelsohn worked together on something a couple of years ago. His name’s Stuart Nathan—he’s probably a lieutenant by now. Does this mean I’m not going to see you later?”
“Well, it means I’m looking at long hours.”
“Call me when you can,” she said, and clicked off.
Cardinal drove by the entrance on his way out of the lot. They didn’t wave to each other.
—
Back at his desk, Cardinal called the New York field office and spoke to the special agent in charge, Wesley Walker. Chouinard had already informed him of Mendelsohn’s death, and Cardinal assured him they would do everything possible to catch his killer. He asked for a complete copy of the file Mendelsohn had brought with him.
“You don’t have it? Mendelsohn made a complete copy just before he left—we don’t let the originals out of the office.”
“We have his copy. But here’s my thinking: Mendelsohn couldn’t have had any enemies from up here. Whoever killed your man likely knew he was going to connect our murders up here with his other cases.”
“How would this person know? You’re saying he was recognized by someone from a previous case?”
“We’ve had a lot of press on this one, a lot of coverage. I just did a quick check, and there are pictures of Mendelsohn with me on two local news sites. Whoever killed him didn’t take the whole file, because that would give the motive away—he probably took some specific thing. And if we figure out what that was, it may lead us right to him.”
“You make big leaps. You and Agent Mendelsohn must’ve got along well.”
“I liked him.”
“You’ll have the file as soon as possible.”
Cardinal hung up and started leafing through Mendelsohn’s notebook, a catch-all item in which Buy new socks appeared next to Run Divyris US database, and Check Canuck military weapons was under Fix bathroom sink. On the last page he had written, Interview fur biz old-timers.
32
LLOYD KREEGER FIGURED he had about twenty minutes, thirty at the most. The one called Papa was out hunting with the girl. The one called Jack had gone out about an hour ago; Lloyd had heard the Rover start and drive away.
His most important asset right now was not his property, not his interests in the fur business, not his mining stocks. His most important asset was a broken wood chisel that a workman had left behind. Lloyd had tossed it in a wastebasket that had subsequently filled up with paper. His captors had overlooked it when they checked his room.
The chisel’s blade was not sharp enough to cut butter. Where the handle used to be, there was a stub of steel armature. Lloyd was trying to pry apart the manacle that held the tether to his ankle, but it was hard to get any leverage because he couldn’t immobilize the chain. He upended the wastebasket and held the chain across it with his left foot. The links shifted too much for him to get any purchase.
He adjusted the chain so that the link was half off the wastebasket. He thought he had widened the gap a little. He looked around for something else to use as a tool. In the top drawer of the dresser he found a twelve-inch ruler. It was maybe three-eighths of an inch at the thickest part, tapering to the metal straight edge that ran under the measurement units.
He pressed the straight edge into the tiny opening in the link. He placed his foot over it and pressed down, raising himself a little on one leg. That wedged the ruler into the link. He tried to force the chisel in beside the ruler. It was not difficult to work the tip of the blade into place, but it was hard to do much more with the broken handle.
He reached down and lifted the chain, gripping it on either side of the link. He moved as carefully as he could, but the chisel toppled and fell. It took several tries to get it wedged into place again. His back was hurting from bending over from the bed. He raised his right foot, holding the chisel steady with his fingertips. The chain had just enough play for him to get his foot on top of the chisel handle. He put his weight down, and then, with a sudden movement that risked the whole operation, he put all his weight on it, rising an inch from the bed.
He felt the chisel give beneath him. When he took his foot away, the blade was lodged firmly between the ruler and the link. He lifted the whole delicate array back onto the upended wastebasket. He pressed down with his left foot to hold it in place. He pushed the chisel handle to the right and felt the link give a little. He adjusted the chain under his foot and pressed again.
The ruler toppled and the chisel came away in his hand. The gap was wider. He positioned the next link over the gap and stepped on it, pulling up on both sides of the chain. The link gave and he fell backwards on the bed.
He moved quickly to the living room and looked out the front window. Papa and the girl would almost certainly come back the way they had gone. The tracks of their snowshoes led into the woods on the far side of the lake.
He went to the mud room by the side door, ignoring the phone and computer in his office. The invaders had disabled both—he didn’t know how. His car keys and snowmobile keys were missing from the hook. It would be difficult for anyone to make it through these woods without snowshoes, let alone a seventy-five-year-old man. He put on his parka and stepped outside.
The footpath between the house and the bunkhouse was snowed over, but not nearly as deep as the drifts out front. He made it across the clearing and found the key Henry always kept hidden under the stoop. He opened the door and the smell choked him.
He closed the door again, on the edge of vomiting. He took a few lungfuls of clean cold air and held the last one. He went in and saw right away there were no keys on the table or on the wall.
Still holding his breath, he got down beside Henry, ignoring the black hole in his forehead, the dark congealed mass beneath him, and felt in his pocket. He pulled out a penknife and a few coins and put them in his own pocket.
Henry was lying on his left side. Lloyd managed to search his jacket pocket before his
lungs gave out. He breathed in through his mouth, but even so, the gases of decomposition made his stomach convulse and he vomited on the floor. He kept on retching well after there was nothing left in his stomach to expel.
He managed to roll Henry over so he could get at his other pockets. Chewing gum, a plumber’s business card—absolutely nothing he could apply to his present situation.
He got to his feet and retched again. The phone on the kitchen counter looked intact, but when he lifted the receiver, there was no dial tone. Snowshoes would have afforded him a few options, but Henry’s snowshoes were gone from their usual hook by the door.
Lloyd looked out the window, across the clearing and into the dark woods. Nothing moved. No sound beyond the hum of Henry’s fridge.
He opened the door and closed it behind him and set off at a run. One of Papa’s gang had ploughed a path along the former logging track that led to the highway. He hoped Jack had gone to town and not just a curve or two up the road. His troublesome joints would not get him through snowy woods.
Lloyd had been blessed with good health most of his life, but he had never gone in for serious exercise. His lungs threatened to quit on him altogether after a couple of hundred yards and he slowed to a fast walk. Pain had already invaded his ankles and calves and gave no sign of retreat. He kept moving.
If he got to the highway, he could flag somebody down. Old man on the side of the road, someone would realize he was in trouble. Someone would stop.
He heard the Range Rover before he saw it. The suspension squeaked every time it went over a bump.
Lloyd plunged into the snow on his right and allowed himself to fall. He toppled forward, got up and did it again, throwing himself into the snow, twisting hip and knee in the process. Cold seared his wrists, ankles, neck. He sat up and scooped snow over his legs. He lay back down and heaped snow over his midsection to hide the vivid red and blue of his parka.
The Rover rounded the curve, its rattles and squeaks louder. Lloyd lay still. The gearshift was yanked and ground into reverse. The engine revved a couple of times. The truck came into the snow until the plough blade smacked into Lloyd’s feet.
