Blackfly Season

by Giles Blunt

  First, do no damage. Of all medical endeavours, brain surgery is probably the one where physicians are most cognizant of Hippocrates’ proscription. Dr. Schaff began to probe through layer after layer of tissue with unbearable gentleness. Except for the beep of the monitors and the occasional clank of metal on metal, there was utter silence. Every so often, Dr. Schaff would call for a different instrument, now a “McGill,” now a “Foster,” now a “Bircher.”

  Seeing a length of stainless steel moving millimetre by millimetre deeper into the girl’s brain, Cardinal felt a distinct softness in his knees. Looking up didn’t help. The monitor showed the same thing in lateral close-up. He felt as if he were slowly tumbling down an elevator shaft. Sweat gathered under his surgical cap.

  Two hours went by. Three. The doctors made occasional remarks back and forth, commenting on pulse, blood pressure. There were calls for hemostats and spreaders and cautery. Dr. Schaff spoke now and again to Red as she inched further into the girl’s brain.

  “Are you all right, Red? You doing okay?”

  “I’m fine, Doctor. I’m just fine.”

  To calm his stomach, Cardinal concentrated on the background sounds, the beeping monitors, the whirring ventilation, the buzzing lights. On the monitor, the instrument was a bar of bright metal several inches inside the girl’s skull.

  “Coming up on the hippocampus …”

  Red began singing. “A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go …”

  “Yes, we’re on a hunt here, Red. And I think it’s just about over.”

  “Heigh-ho, the dairy-o …”

  “Okay, looks like we’re there,” Dr. Schaff said. “I’m going to try and grab it.”

  On the screen, the dark blot of the bullet was now within the angle of flat jaws. The instrument began pulling back. Cardinal had a daughter about the same age as Red, perhaps a little older. He had a strong paternal urge to reach out and protect the young woman in some way—absurd, really, since she wasn’t in the slightest pain.

  Red spoke up as if in mid-conversation. “The clouds were amazing.”

  “Really?” Dr. Schaff said. “Clouds, huh?”

  The bullet was steadily rising through the tunnel on the screen. Cardinal looked from the screen to Dr. Schaff. Her gloves were slick with blood.

  Then Red spoke in a different tone. “The flies,” she said, hushed, even awed. “My God, the flies.”

  Dr. Schaff leaned over her patient. “Are you talking to us, Red?”

  “Her eyes are closed,” someone else said. “It’s a memory. Or maybe a dream.”

  Cardinal tensed, waiting for the girl to say more, but her eyes opened again and she stared blandly into space.

  A moment later, Dr. Schaff extracted the bullet. A nurse held out a Baggie to receive it, then handed it to Cardinal. He went out to the prep room, took off his scrubs and slipped the Baggie into his breast pocket. A moment later, he felt a tiny spot of heat there, the bullet still warm from the girl’s brain.

  3

  CARDINAL SLEPT FOR THREE HOURS in the crisply starched sheets of the Best Western hotel. After a scalding shower that nearly removed a layer of skin, he went down to the coffee shop, where he ate a chewy omelette and read The Globe and Mail. Outside, the morning sunlight slanted over the banks and insurance buildings. The air was crisp, and Cardinal noticed with pleasure the absence of blackflies. He walked over to Ontario’s Centre of Forensic Sciences on Grosvenor Street, where he handed in the bullet and filled out several forms. They told him to come back in an hour.

  Cardinal returned to the hotel and checked out.

  He was back at Forensics in forty-five minutes. The young man who had been assigned to the case in Firearms was named Cornelius Venn. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt with a blue tie and had the clean-cut, slightly dorky good looks of a senior boy scout. Cardinal suspected a sizable collection of model airplanes.

  Venn took the Polaroids Cardinal had given him and tacked them up on a bulletin board. “Nice round hole. No burn, no soot, just slight tattooing.”

  “Which tells you what?” Cardinal said.

  “Oh, no. I’m not getting into that particular box. There’s no way I’m going to do a distance determination without having a suspect weapon in my hand.”

  “Just give me ballpark figures. We may not need them in court.”

  “There is no ballpark. Not without a suspect weapon. How can I give you a ballpark when I don’t know the barrel length? Even if I know the type of weapon, I don’t know if it’s been altered in some way that would affect the patterns.”

  “So you’re not going to give me an estimate?”

  “Just told you. I can’t.”

  “Well, we’ve pretty much ruled out suicide. The victim’s left-handed. And to my less-than-expert eyes, the entry wound looks like the gun was somewhere between twelve and twenty inches away.”

  “I have no opinion on that point, as I’ve indicated,” Venn said. “But with a suicide you’d expect a contact wound or something close to it. Unless your Jane Doe’s got arms four feet long, there’s no way this wound is self-inflicted.”

  “A defence attorney might say it’s accidental.”

  “Accidental? Within a distance of two feet? You hold a loaded gun to someone’s head and pull the trigger? Well, I suppose some might say there’s reasonable doubt there.”

  Cardinal pointed to the spectroscope obscuring a poster for a Van Damme movie that featured an exotic machine gun. “How about the GSR results? Did you get anywhere with those?”

  “Didn’t run them. Don’t look at me like that, Detective. There’s no point in running a GSR on someone who’s just been shot at close range. She’s going to turn out positive for powder and soot whether she fired the gun or not.”

  That was true. Cardinal was annoyed with himself for forgetting.

  Venn pinned a piece of paper up on the corkboard; it showed a series of grey streaks of varying intensity.

  “Characteristics,” he said. “You’ve got a plain, unjacketed, lead,.32-calibre bullet. Looks to me like a.32 long. Normally, with a shot to the skull you’d expect it to flatten out completely, making it hard to read. In this case, you have a shot to the temple—much thinner bone—and the bullet is pretty much intact. I don’t suppose you have any casings?”

  “You’ve got everything we’ve got.”

  “Then none of this is going to help you much, but here goes.” He pointed to the printout as he spoke; his fingernail was gnawed to the quick. “You’ve got six right-hand grooves with a land-groove ratio of one-to-one-plus. Grooves are zero point five-six; lands are zero point six-oh.”

  “Pistol?”

  Venn nodded. “Pistol. And you’re lucky in one way.”

  “Oh?”

  “The rifling in the weapon has a left-hand twist. Right away that narrows it down. You’re probably looking for a Colt.”

  Venn rolled his swivel chair over to his computer and started typing figures into the database. “From what you tell me of the injury—minimal motion inside the skull, minimal damage to tissue—I think you’re dealing with rounds that are either very old or got wet at some point. Or it could be a defective weapon. If the firing pin is far enough off kilter it could result in a misfire like this. Of course we won’t know that until you bring us a casing. Or, God forbid, an actual weapon.”

  “That’s it? We may be looking for a Colt.32?”

  Venn looked up at him. “In your impatience, Detective, you’re not letting me finish.”

  Cardinal scanned Venn’s face to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

  “This left-hand twist, coupled with this land-groove ratio, narrows it down to two possibilities. You could be looking for a J.C. Higgins model 80. Or a Colt Police Positive.”

  “And I bet there’s more than a few of ’em, right?”

  “In Ontario? Think in hundreds.”

  Ten minutes later Cardinal was back amid the chlorine-and-bandage smells of Toronto General Hospital. J
ane Doe had been moved to a semi-private room on the third floor. The police guard on the door had so many gadgets hanging from his hips he looked bottom-heavy, like a tenpin. Cardinal showed his badge and was waved inside. The young redhead was propped up in bed in a hospital gown, reading Chatelaine. She smiled when he came in; there was a small bandage on her temple.

  “Are you my doctor?”

  “No, I’m a detective. John Cardinal. We met last night.”

  “Detective? You’re with the police? I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

  “That’s okay. I bet you’ll get your memory back in no time.”

  “I hope so. Right now, I don’t even know who I am.”

  “Dr. Schaff tells me she’s pretty sure it will all come back.”

  “I’m not even that worried about it.”

  Cardinal didn’t tell her that Dr. Schaff had been less certain about appropriate affect.

  The girl turned to adjust her pillows. Cardinal caught a flash of pale breast and looked away.

  “Red, I need your help with something.”

  “Of course.”

  “I need your permission to go through your clothes and see if there’s any identification.”

  “Oh, sure. Be my guest.”

  No doubt the hospital had already done this, but Cardinal opened the closet anyway. A denim jacket hung from a wire hanger, with a pair of jeans beside it. On the shelf, a T-shirt, bra and underpants. Cardinal made notes of the brand names: Gap, Levi’s, Lucky. Then he went through the jeans pockets. No keys, no ID, no receipts or ticket stubs, just a few coins and a pair of nail clippers. He felt in the side pockets of the denim jacket and pulled out a half-roll of LifeSavers. Nothing useful.

  When he turned around, Red was looking blankly out the window as if he wasn’t there. Between the buildings, small white clouds hung in rhomboids of blue sky. Beyond these, the concrete shaft of Toronto’s landmark CN Tower.

  “One more thing,” Cardinal said. “Would you mind if I took your picture?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Cardinal closed the blinds to shut out the identifiable view. Then he sat the young woman in front of them, and had her turn her head to one side so the shaved patch didn’t show. He took a close-up with his Polaroid.

  She had no reaction when he showed her the result.

  “They’ll be sending you back to Algonquin Bay tomorrow,” Cardinal said. “Are you ready for that?”

  “I don’t know where that is,” she said. “I don’t even know if I’m from there.”

  “We have to assume you are, until we hear anything different.”

  A pale, freckled hand reached up absently, feeling the edges of the bandage. Cardinal was sure she was going to ask where she would stay in Algonquin Bay—a question he had been dreading—but she didn’t say anything. Just that same placid smile. Fine, let Dr. Schaff tell her.

  “Listen, um, Red—sorry, I have to call you Red until we know your name …”

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”

  “Pretty soon there’s going to be a missing persons report out on you. Young women like you don’t go missing without someone noticing. Then we’ll know who you are and where you’re from. In the meantime, we’re going to have a police guard on you at all times.”

  “Okay.”

  She doesn’t protest, she doesn’t ask why, Cardinal thought. She doesn’t seem afraid or even curious. He felt duty bound to answer the questions she hadn’t asked.

  “Someone put a bullet in your head,” he said. “And because of the nature of the wound, and the type of weapon used, we think it was a deliberate attempt on your life. So, you’re going to have to keep a low profile until we find whoever did it. In case they decide to make another try at it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not going to take long before you’re tired of being cooped up, but it won’t be safe for you to go out.”

  “Oh.” The pale brows met in a display of—Cardinal wasn’t sure if it was worry or just confusion. She said after a moment, “Whoever I am, I think I must be quite a lazy person, because right now I don’t feel like doing anything but sitting in bed.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Cardinal said. “You take it easy and let the doctors look after you.”

  “I will.” She gave him a smile and it was as if a lamp had been turned on. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  4

  THE ALGONQUIN BAY POLICE DEPARTMENT is not the kind of grunge pit one sees on television shows about New York cops. Since the new headquarters opened a dozen years ago, the CID has maintained the bland decor of a small mortgage outfit. The windows on the east side provide good light—in the morning, at least—as well as an excellent view of the parking lot.

  Cardinal was in the boardroom packing up the last of the files from a case that had consumed all his energy for the last six months. It had involved a third-generation, felony-prone family who, by way of registering a noise complaint, had sacked a neighbouring family’s afternoon barbecue. One of the patriarchs had ended up face down in his Worcestershire sauce, dead of a heart attack. Months of Cardinal’s work had resulted in nothing more than a finding of accidental death.

  Every now and then, Cardinal’s thoughts were interrupted by a feminine tack, tack, tack of hammer and nail. Frances, long-time receptionist and factotum to Police Chief Kendall, was hanging a set of newly framed photographs on the pine panelling. So far, she had hung a photo of Chief Kendall being sworn in, and another of Ian McLeod, fully clothed and soaking wet, after having rescued a mother of three from drowning in Trout Lake.

  “What do you think of this one?” Frances said.

  A black-and-white eight-by-ten of a much younger Jerry Commanda, back when he was still on the city force, dressed in baseball cap and sunglasses. He was standing in front of a stone gate with a wrought-iron eagle perched on top—iron talons flexed, black wings spread as if about to take off.

  “Is that Eagle Park?” Cardinal said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I remember that. It was a charity ball game against the fire department.”

  “Can you believe how skinny Jerry was?”

  “He’s still skinny. Yet another reason, if one were needed, to find him irritating.”

  “Go on. Everyone loves Jerry.” Frances had a saintlike immunity to irony.

  “Another reason,” Cardinal said.

  “Oh, you …”

  Cardinal settled back into the quiet. The boardroom was plush, compared to the squad room. It even had carpeting, royal blue, with a deep pile that went some way toward damping the noise of Frances’s hammer and the general hubbub of the booking area. It was not, however, deep enough the dampen the noise of one Jasper Colin Crouch.

  Jasper Colin Crouch was a permanently unemployed and unemployable construction worker, built like a grizzly but with a temper much worse. Crouch was, as the cliché has it, well known to the police, owing to his penchant for battering his wife when sober and his numerous offspring when drunk. Detective Lise Delorme had hauled him in a few days previously on a charge of criminal assault after his twelve-year-old boy had been hospitalized with a broken arm. The boy was now a temporary ward of the Children’s Aid Society.

  A tremendous bellow—a sort of high-volume moose-honk—made Cardinal look up. He knew exactly who it was. The bellow was followed by an equally tremendous crash.

  “My goodness,” Frances said, and covered her heart.

  Cardinal jumped up and ran to the booking area.

  The floor was flooded, Crouch having somehow toppled the water cooler. Now he was squared off with Delorme, who was five-foot-four but looked a lot smaller facing the cathedral of fat and muscle that was Jasper Colin Crouch. Delorme was down on one knee in the water, a cut above her left eye.

  Bob Collingwood had hold of Crouch from behind, but Crouch simply made a kind of operatic shrug and Collingwood went flying. Before Cardinal could intervene, Crouch leaned into a ful
l-force kick at Delorme. Delorme dodged to one side, caught his heel in her left hand and half-rose.

  “Mr. Crouch, you’re going to stop right now or I’m going to drop you.”

  “Suck my dick.” He jerked his leg but Delorme held on.

  “That’s it,” she said. She propped his foot on her shoulder and stood up. Crouch’s skull connected with the tile floor and he was out, as if someone had pressed the Off button on a remote. There was a pattering of applause.

  “That really needs a stitch or two,” Cardinal said when Delorme came back from the washroom. Her left eyebrow was bisected by a gash about a quarter of an inch long.

  “I’ll live.” She sat down at the cubicle next to his. “How’s our Jane Doe doing?”

  Cardinal had called Delorme after he’d got the ballistics report.

  “Jane Doe is still a Jane Doe,” he said. “Neurosurgeon thinks her memory will come back, but there’s no saying when.”

  “Bullet in the head—me, I take it we won’t be putting any ads in the paper asking Do You Know This Woman?”

  “No. We don’t want whoever shot her to know she’s been found, let alone found alive. I don’t suppose you dug anything up on the gun?”

  “Used in recent crimes?” Delorme shook her head. “Doesn’t match anything.” She added in an offhand, nothing-important, probably-shouldn’t-mention-it tone: “On the other hand, I did check out reports of stolen firearms. Surprise, surprise, turns out we had one three weeks ago.”

  “You’re kidding. A.32 pistol?”

  Delorme held up a scrap of paper on which she had written a name and address.

  “Missing. One pistol. Thirty-two calibre. Manufacturer: Colt. Model: Police Positive.”