Blackfly Season

by Giles Blunt

  Rod Milcher lived in a nicely maintained split-level in the Pinedale section of town, at one time a desirable address, but now, owing to the proliferation of drab concrete apartment buildings, an area mostly populated by the newly married. Pinedale is where you find what real estate people like to call starter homes.

  Unlike Jasper Crouch, Milcher was not well known to the police. In fact, not known at all. And his house, with its neatly clipped lawn and its pretty cedar hedge, did not look the home of a felon—more like that of a dentist. The only unusual thing about the whole place was what was parked in its driveway: a plump, much-chromed motorcycle.

  “Six-fifty Harley,” Cardinal said before they were even out of the car. “Serious bike.”

  “You couldn’t pay me to ride one of those things,” Delorme said. “Friend of mine got killed on one at the age of twenty-six. Lost an argument with a cement truck.”

  “Male friend?”

  “Male friend. Thought he was tough but he wasn’t.”

  Cardinal rapped on the side door. It was just after six o’clock; they had waited until Milcher was likely to be home. The door was answered by a thirtyish woman wearing a business suit. As if to balance the boardroom look with something more homey, she was also clutching a saucepan. “I’m not interested in religion,” she said through the screen door. “I get tired of telling you people.”

  Delorme held up her badge. “Is Rod Milcher at home? We need to ask him a few questions.”

  The woman turned her head to one side without moving the rest of her body and yelled, “Rod! The police are here! Better pack your toothbrush!” She opened the screen door. “Step lively. Don’t want to let the bugs in.”

  The side door led through a small vestibule to the kitchen. Cardinal and Delorme stood beside a Formica table set for two while the woman attacked a small cairn of potatoes with a peeler.

  “What seems to be the problem, Officers?”

  A diminutive man in a checked shirt and khakis addressed them from the hall doorway. He didn’t come near to filling it.

  “Mr. Milcher, you’re the registered owner of a.32 pistol, is that correct?” Cardinal said. “A Colt Police Positive?”

  “Yes. Why, did you find it?”

  “What can you tell us about the circumstances under which it was stolen?”

  “I told you all that. I put everything in the report.”

  “We’d like to hear it again,” Delorme said.

  “My wife and I were in Toronto for the weekend. When we came back, the gun was missing. Along with some other items—the stereo and a camera.”

  “And why did you have a licence to carry a gun in the first place?”

  “I manage the back office for Zellers. Lots of times I have to make sizable deposits at night, after the armoured truck has already gone.”

  “Do you still have that job?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why don’t you show us where the stereo was,” Cardinal said.

  Milcher looked from Cardinal to Delorme and back again.

  “It was in here.”

  They followed him into a living room that was furnished almost entirely in white: white carpet, white curtains, white leatherette sofa and matching recliner. Milcher waved a hand at a glass-fronted set of shelves, a Yamaha stereo and speakers.

  Delorme went up and peered at it.

  “You replaced the stereo pretty fast.”

  “This was an old one I had sitting in the basement.”

  “Doesn’t look old.”

  “Looks like a pretty expensive stereo to just be sitting in the basement,” Cardinal said.

  Milcher shrugged. “I don’t see what all this has to do with my gun. Did you find it or didn’t you?”

  “Where did you keep the gun?” Delorme said.

  “In that box right there.” Milcher pointed to a small oak chest on the shelf. The hasp on the lock was broken.

  “Who else knew you kept it there?”

  “No one. Well, my wife. No one else. Look, you still haven’t told me if the gun has turned up or not. I did my duty in reporting it. I think I have a right to know.”

  “Your gun hasn’t turned up,” Cardinal said. “But we think one of your bullets did.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did you keep the ammunition with your weapon?”

  “Uh, yeah. The bullets were stolen, too. They were really old, though. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure they’d even work, to tell you the truth.”

  “Do you know this young woman?” Cardinal said. He handed Milcher the photo of Red he had taken that morning. The bandage didn’t show, and you couldn’t tell it had been taken in a hospital. She looked as if she had been caught daydreaming.

  “I’ve never seen her,” Milcher said. “Why?”

  “Because it looks like one of your bullets has turned up in her skull,” Cardinal said.

  “Oh, my God,” Milcher said. “That’s terrible.”

  “How many Colt Police Positives do you suppose there are in Algonquin Bay, Mr. Milcher?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this. Hell, I reported the thing stolen the minute I knew it was gone.”

  “How do we know you didn’t report it stolen, knowing you were going to use it on someone?”

  “Look, I’ve never seen this woman. I had nothing to do with this. I reported the gun stolen, I don’t have a clue who stole it, end of story.”

  “Oh, what is all this bullshit, Rodney?”

  All three of them turned to Mrs. Milcher, who was in the doorway now with an oven mitt on one hand.

  “Stay out of this, Lorraine.”

  Mrs. Milcher let out a theatrical sigh. “The truth is, Officers, my husband has never grown up. If you saw the two-wheeler in the driveway, you know that he fancies himself something out of Easy Rider. He’s never quite gotten over the fantasy of riding with the big boys.”

  “I did used to ride with them,” Milcher said. “It was over ten years ago, and I didn’t get into any of their other activities. But I rode with them lots of times.”

  “Uh-huh. And I used to sing with the Spice Girls.”

  “Who are we talking about?” Delorme said. “Who are the so-called big boys?”

  “The Viking Riders,” Mrs. Milcher said. “I mean, doesn’t everybody think they’re heroes?”

  “I don’t think they’re heroes,” Milcher said. “A couple of them are old friends, that’s all.”

  “Grow up, Rod. One of them was over here three weeks ago, just before that stinking gun went missing.” She turned to Delorme as if only another woman could understand what it was like dealing with an incompetent male. “Genius, here, decides to impress his Viking friend by pulling out his little gun.”

  “Lay off, Lorraine.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?” Delorme said to Milcher. “I’m thinking that your stereo never did get stolen. I think you just said that so it would look like you didn’t have a clue who took your gun. Because if it was just the gun that was taken, that would indicate the thief knew exactly what he was looking for, and knew exactly where it was. In other words, the thief would have to be someone you knew.”

  “Hey, look. You don’t know what those guys’ll do to me if they think I ratted on them.”

  “Someone shot this young woman in the head, Mr. Milcher. We’re going to need a name.”

  5

  ALGONQUIN BAY, ALTHOUGH MODESTLY populated, was not so long ago the second-biggest city in Canada (measured by area). In the late sixties, three former municipalities of no size whatsoever had come together in a Small Bang of amalgamation to create a city that measured some 130 square miles. Only Calgary had been bigger.

  Since then, many other cities and townships have succumbed to amalgamation fever, and Algonquin Bay can no longer claim to be bigger than Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal. Even so, it’s possible to motor for half an hour in certain directions from the centre of town and still find yourself within city limits
.

  Walter “Wombat” Guthrie lived in the basement flat of a former farmhouse just within the city’s southern border; in other words, several miles from downtown.

  “A biker named Wombat,” Delorme said in the car. “They probably imagine it’s some ferocious predator. Razor-sharp teeth. But I’ve seen wombats at the Toronto Zoo. They’re these cute, fuzzy little things. You want to pick them up and take them home.”

  “Walter Guthrie is not little and he’s not cute. He’s got a sheet as long as your arm including assault, armed robbery and grievous bodily harm. He’s been a member of the Viking Riders practically since kindergarten, and if they had such a thing as a prenatal chapter, he’d have been a founding member of that, too.”

  “How come I haven’t run into him?”

  “Because you were working white-collar crime when the Riders had their headquarters in town, and Walter ‘Wombat’ Guthrie can’t even spell white collar.” Cardinal made a right onto Kennington Road. “The only reason we haven’t run up against Wombat and his brethren lately is because they moved the clubhouse beyond city limits. Good news for us; headache for the OPP.”

  “I thought all these guys were in their sixties by now—you know, grey ponytails flying in the breeze.”

  “Not all of them. Some of them. But that doesn’t mean they can’t still cause trouble. They’re the reason Algonquin Bay has a heroin problem these days. They basically dumped the stuff—sold it at a loss and as soon as people couldn’t live without it, they jacked up the price.”

  “It’s an effective business model,” Delorme said. “AOL works the same way.”

  “Effective is right. We now have thirty or forty full-time heroin addicts.”

  “Yeah, I’ve met a few. But it’s hard to get an idea of the big picture since the hiring freeze.”

  Over the past year, a city budget crunch had cost them first one and then another detective. The squad was down from a force of eight to an overworked six, and they’d had to leave the drug scene pretty much to the OPP.

  Cardinal drove past a mouldering Sunoco station and turned into the driveway just beyond. He parked beside a wooden house that had once been white. Plastic sheeting flapped at the windows, and an eavestrough hung from the roof like a disabled limb.

  Delorme let out a low whistle.

  “Yeah,” Cardinal said. “Where are the arsonists when you need them?”

  “No bike in the drive, I notice.”

  “Keep that up, Sergeant Delorme, and you’ll make lieutenant in no time.”

  They went to a side door, a doorbell labelled Guthrie. Cardinal ignored it and pounded on the door with his fist. They waited a couple of moments, swatting away blackflies, then went round to the front door.

  “Landlady,” was Cardinal’s one-word explanation. This time he used the bell.

  It was answered by a bony woman in a bathrobe, black hair streaked with grey and still wet from the shower. Other than that, she was all nose and cigarette.

  “We’re looking for your tenant,” Cardinal said. “Walter Guthrie.”

  “Join the line,” the woman said. “I ain’t seen him in two weeks and he owes me rent.”

  “You have any idea where he is?”

  She shrugged and cocked her alarming nose toward the highway. “Same place he always is. The clubhouse. Lots of times he don’t come home for a week, but two weeks is a little unusual.”

  “Do us a favour,” Cardinal said, handing her a business card. “Give us a call the minute you see him.”

  “Oh, sure,” the woman said. “And you can take me directly to the morgue after.”

  Cardinal started to say something, but the woman closed the door.

  “That was great,” Delorme said as they headed back to the car. “You have such a way with women.”

  With certain colourful exceptions, motorcycle gangs in northern Ontario have learned that it doesn’t pay to draw a lot of attention. That’s why several years ago the Viking Riders relocated their clubhouse from Trout Lake Road to a remote site off Highway 11 near Powassan. Nothing about the four-square, red-brick structure indicates its function as headquarters for travelling pandemonium. In fact, the casual passerby might judge by the faded sign on the third floor and the persistent odour of burlap that it is still home to the Bronco Bag Factory, which hasn’t been in business since 1987. The building never had a lot of windows, and most of those that remain have been bricked up to little more than slits, as if the current Dark Age tenants fully intend to fire arrows at any enemy foolish enough to lay siege to the former factory.

  While Cardinal banged on the steel door he held his shield up to an armoured security camera. So did Delorme.

  The door opened, and the man who answered it didn’t look anything like a biker: thirty-five, five-ten, maybe one-seventy. Short hair neatly parted and a pair of round-rimmed designer glasses gave him a collegiate air. This was Steve Lasalle, president of the local chapter of the Viking Riders; he was about twenty years younger than his colleagues, but Cardinal had done business with him before.

  “What can I do for you?” Lasalle said. “I’d invite you in but the place is a mess.”

  “We’re looking for Walter Guthrie,” Delorme said. “Is he inside?”

  “Sorry. Not here.”

  “He’s not at home, either. His landlady hasn’t seen him for two weeks.”

  “Surprise, surprise. Neither have I.”

  “When exactly was the last time you saw him?”

  The door banged all the way open, and Lasalle looked positively frail next to the Visigoth who now loomed beside him: Harlan Calhoun, fifty years old and 250 pounds of mayhem in motion, known to his friends and associates as “Haystack.” If he’d had a neck, it would have been a size 20, about the size of the snakeskin cowboy boots on his feet.

  “Who the fuck are you assholes?” His tone lacked warmth.

  “It’s okay, Haystack,” Lasalle said. “I’m dealing with it.”

  “I’m Detective Cardinal, and this is Detective Delorme. Algonquin Bay Police.”

  “News flash,” Haystack said. “This ain’t your jurisdiction. Now get the fuck out of here before I rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.”

  “Who’s your fat friend?” Cardinal said to Lasalle.

  Calhoun stepped out of the doorway so that his chest was an inch from Cardinal’s face.

  “Go back inside, Haystack,” Lasalle said.

  “Cardinal,” Calhoun said. “That’s an Indian name.”

  “Not today,” Cardinal said. “But thanks for the compliment.”

  “How about I send you back to the teepee? On the end of my boot.”

  “Tell you what, Shitstack—why don’t you go back inside and trim that goat’s ass on your face? Oh, sorry—is that meant to be a beard?”

  Lasalle blocked the punch an inch from Cardinal’s cheekbone. His knuckles were white where he gripped Calhoun’s wrist. “I said go back inside.”

  Cardinal held up a pair of handcuffs and jiggled them at Calhoun. “Here, boy! Walkies?”

  Calhoun smiled, gold gleaming amid the unwholesome thickets of his beard.

  “Next time, Cardinal. Next time.”

  “Count on it.”

  Then Calhoun was gone, and Lasalle gave them a what-can-you-do shrug.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Delorme said. “When was the last time you saw Walter Guthrie?”

  “Is there any reason I should answer that question?”

  “I can think of several.” Delorme was giving him her best French-Canadian deep-freeze. “One, you’ve got nothing to lose by answering it. Two, there are the interests of diplomacy to consider—you can’t put a price on goodwill with your local police force. And three, there’s the problem with getting your building up to code.”

  “You see any code violations here?”

  “An inspector might. Just like Natural Resources might find you have a problem with your garbage out back. Just like the health de
partment might find you’ve got a problem with your septic tank. Just like the—”

  Lasalle looked at Cardinal. “She always this irritable?”

  “You haven’t seen her irritable.”

  “Look, lady,” Lasalle said. “I haven’t seen the guy. Nobody’s seen him. In fact, if you should happen to come across the Wombat in your travels, bring him here when you’re done with him.”

  “I thought you guys were blood brothers,” Cardinal said. “Don’t tell me he done you wrong.”

  “Let’s just say old Wombat has some ’splaining to do.”

  “Which might answer the question of why he’s missing. Maybe you already made your point with him and he isn’t coming back again.”

  “When did you see him last?” Delorme said. “You still haven’t answered that.”

  “Believe it or not I don’t keep track of his comings and goings. Last time I remember seeing him we had a few people round, we watched a video, Wombat passed out on the couch. Not unusual for him. I expected to find him here next morning but I didn’t. Now he doesn’t answer his cellphone and he doesn’t seem to be home and I have no idea where he is. He doesn’t write, he doesn’t phone and we’re all just worried sick.”

  “You want to find him,” Delorme said. “You’re pissed off at him.”

  “What are you, my therapist? You want to explore my feelings, honey, make an appointment. Don’t just come banging on my door.”

  “Where would Wombat be most likely to go?”

  “You’re letting the bugs in,” Lasalle said and closed the door.

  Cardinal and Delorme hopped back to the car, each in a penumbra of flies.

  Delorme started the engine. “That was a weird testosterone display you had with Haystack.”

  “Guys like that are like dogs. They need to know where they stand.”

  “If you say so. Anyway, me, I get the feeling the Vikings are seriously annoyed with Wombat.”

  “Which could mean they did away with him.” Cardinal rubbed at a bite on his neck.

  “Don’t scratch. You’ll only make it worse.”

  When they were back on the highway, Delorme said, “You know, that Lasalle is seriously good-looking for a biker.”