Blackfly Season

by Giles Blunt

  “As I was saying,” she went on, “before I was so rudely interrupted: An unfinished building is a testament of hope. It’s optimism set in concrete and steel. Two thousand years from now, some man, some woman—some android, maybe—will look at this beam (no doubt by then collapsed in a heap of dust) and wonder about the man who slotted it into place. What will they think? This beam, this hunk of plain old steel, will form a bridge across time. Will they wonder if a woman—perhaps a woman slightly crazy (a little off her meds, according to her oh-so-prosaic husband)—balanced on it with a couple of cameras on her shoulder and thought of them, two thousand years in the future? We’re riding a time machine. Hold on tight and it’ll zap us into the year 5000.”

  “Honey, come over here to me.”

  “Why? It’s thrilling out here. You have no idea of the creative rush I’m feeling.”

  “Catherine, listen. Your medication is out of whack and you’re high. It’s the same as if someone stuck a needle in your arm. It’s making you do dangerous things.”

  “Risky things. Risk isn’t always bad, John. Where would we be if no one ever risked anything? The fireman rushing into the burning building, the surgeon going after the tumour, Van Gogh painting with his brush of fire?”

  “Come to me, honey. You’re frightening me.”

  “John Cardinal admits to fear. Who would have thought? Well, I’m not afraid.” Catherine spun again on the beam, and threw her hands wide like Liza Minnelli belting out a song. She shouted so that the words echoed off steel and concrete and, for all Cardinal knew, down the surrounding city blocks. “Let it hereby be known by those here present and all those who fall within my assizes and demesnes that I, Catherine Eleanor Cardinal, do hereby banish and expel from my kingdom—make that queen-dom—all species of fear, trepidation, timidity, anxiety and hesitation, of whatsoever kind or designation, henceforth and forever. Let no man—nay, nor woman—import, carry or otherwise transport any speck of fear to the merest angstrom unit, on pain of a bloody good spanking.”

  “Catherine.”

  She spun around again, almost fell. Cardinal cried out, but Catherine righted herself and scowled at him.

  “Listen to me, John. I’m not a child. I’m not your ward, I’m your wife. I am a sentient human being. I am a creature of volition. I do what I want, when I want. I don’t need a keeper and I don’t need a fucking leash. So if you can’t enjoy my company the way it is, why don’t you get the fuck out of here and head right straight back to Algonquin fucking Bay.”

  Cardinal sat on the edge of the concrete flooring, though it sent a trembling into his thighs to do so.

  “Come and sit beside me, sweetheart. I’m here because I love you. No other reason.”

  “Love doesn’t mean own. You want to snap your fingers and have me at your heel.”

  This was the worst of it. Cardinal could almost take the life-threatening behaviour. He could almost take the sudden disappearances, the wild claims, the theatrical gestures. But what crushed his spirit was how, when she was like this, Catherine could turn on him and throw his love back in his face.

  “Will you come and sit by me?” he said. “It’s a request, not a command, not a demand.” He held up his empty hands. “No leash.”

  “You’re just afraid I’ll fall off.”

  “No, honey. I’m terrified. Come and sit down.”

  Catherine looked around, taking in the sky, the moon, the pit below. She wobbled a little.

  “Jesus,” she said. “It’s true, what they say about looking down.”

  “Look at me,” Cardinal said. “Just keep your eyes on me and come this way.”

  Catherine raised a camera to eye level. “Oh, you look so handsome sitting there. Yes, a little tighter shot, I think. And a tripod would help. Man on a Ledge. Although I have to say that man is looking pretty tired of me just about now.”

  She clicked the shutter. Then she slung the camera back on her shoulder and walked toward him, but didn’t sit down. She went straight to the wooden steps and climbed down. Cardinal followed her, down the steps, down the second set, and back across the wooden platform. Thinking, Who’s the puppy dog here? Who’s the one on the leash?

  She got into the car without further protest, but only those who have lived with mental illness can know the anguish of what followed: the accusations and recriminations, the insults hurled and retracted, the endless negotiations—argument and counter-argument—and, above all, the tears. Catherine’s cheeks were slick and shining with them—tears of frustration, tears of rage, tears of sorrow and regret and humiliation.

  Cardinal, already tired from a full day’s work and facing a long drive home, was utterly exhausted by it. Catherine, high on adrenalin and a powerful cocktail of brain chemicals known and unknown, seemed almost to thrive, despite the tears. As a policeman, of course, Cardinal had had to deal with all sorts of characters in varying degrees of mental stability and emotional chaos. In such circumstances, the most reliable weapons in the cop’s arsenal were a firm voice and a backup paramedic wielding a needle full of diazepam. But he could not bring himself to use these on the woman he had loved since he was a young man. She had to be able to face him when she came back to earth. And so, the endless negotiations.

  Cardinal drove them round and round the central city blocks, presenting himself as the voice of pure reason. He knew from long experience with Catherine that there came a time in her highs, a sort of evening hour shortly before sleep—if she were still able to sleep—when she could be reached. Physical fatigue quieted the stormier edges of her mind, and she could sometimes even hear what he was trying to say.

  In the end, after their fifteenth circle around a quiet and bleak Queen’s Park, she agreed to go with him to the hospital. He drove back down to College Street and took her to the emergency entrance of the Clarke Institute.

  The wait was long, but not nearly as long as at a regular hospital: Half of the cases the Clarke gets are transfers from other institutions, or people brought in by police or social workers, and admissions tend to go smoothly. And Cardinal was lucky in another way: As the triage nurse was leading them to an examining room, he heard a familiar voice sing out: “Catherine?”

  Dr. Carl Jonas was coming across the emergency ward toward them, clipboard in hand, grey locks flowing. “Why, Catherine. They told me you might be coming in tonight. What brings you back here?”

  Catherine turned toward his pink, kind face and burst into a fresh cascade of tears.

  43

  KEVIN TAIT, PERHAPS MORE than most men his age, had wide experience with emotional ups and downs—being a junkie, even an intermittent one, will do that to you. First, there is the omnipresent guilt that is the addict’s lot, whether his drug be heroin, alcohol, chocolate or sex. Then there’s the constant fear of getting caught—caught using, caught buying, caught selling, thieving, lying, betraying. The fear of arrest was such a constant that there seemed no remedy for it other than the next needle. And when dealing, there was the fear of rivals who might take violent exception to his horning in on their territory. Kevin had almost wet his pants one night in Toronto, when a sometime Hells Angel had threatened to kill him. But that was nothing—that was low-grade anxiety—compared to the black drug of terror that now coursed through his veins.

  He regained consciousness curled up on a rough wooden floor. There was very little light, but he knew immediately which cabin it was by the smell; it caused him to vomit the moment he woke up. His skull throbbed, and he knew his scalp was split because his face was sticky with blood.

  His hands were tied behind his back, his feet tied together. He tried to get to his knees and fell forward in agony. That would be the wound in his side from the pitchfork. That was probably what had bashed him on the head, too. He curled up again on the floor and waited for the pain to subside.

  The pain did recede after a while, but what did not attenuate in any degree was the unbelievable smell of this place. Thick and soupy, the air pressed a fi
lthy finger into the back of his throat and held it there, wiggled it every time he moved, as if the air itself were composed of vomit.

  When, eventually, he did manage to get to his feet, the cabin swung and tilted under him so that he toppled and fell hard. The wound in his side hurt like hell. It took many tries before he stood more or less upright, leaning against a table. The only light in the room seeped through the cracks between the planks of the floor and walls.

  A large iron cauldron, big enough to hold twenty or thirty gallons, sat on the table. Plump flies buzzed around it. Sticks perhaps a yard long bristled out of the top, leaning at all angles. One hop toward the cauldron verified that that was where the horrific stench was coming from. There was no way Kevin was going to look inside.

  He wondered how long he had been unconscious. He was not hungry, but that didn’t mean anything—the stench would take care of that. Besides, loss of appetite was one of the first signs of heroin withdrawal. Goosebumps were another. He had those, too; he could feel them stippling his arms and the skin over his rib cage. Soon he would be in the full throes of cold turkey.

  He turned to face a long table, hoping there would be tools of some kind, something he could use to untie his hands. Filthy newspapers were spread all over it, stained brown with what he figured by the smell had once been blood. He was hoping to God it was not human. He turned his back to the table, leaned forward and clamped his jaws tight against the waves of nausea that roared through him. Then, using his tied hands, he tugged the newspapers away from the table. Please, God, let there be a knife, scissors, a nail file, anything I can use to get the hell out of here. But when he turned around again, there was nothing.

  44

  THE PINK SHELLS CONGREGATED in a tiny heap off to one side. Others, periwinkle blue, were scattered across the console between the gearshift and the cup holders. In the middle of this, three white shells, evenly spaced, formed a miniature Orion’s Belt.

  Alan Clegg had been psyching himself up for this meeting with Red Bear, telling himself as he drove to the Shanley lookout that there was no need to panic, he would keep his nerves under control. He had even asked Red Bear to read the shells for him, but now he couldn’t sit still. Just having Red Bear in his Chevy Blazer was rubbing his nerves raw.

  “We’re gonna have to call it quits,” he said. “The locals have got two murders on their books and they’re not about to let them just sit there.”

  Red Bear made some notes on a piece of graph paper—arrows pointing this way and that, crossed hammers, a lightning bolt, all in a column. He gathered the shells and shook them again. Apparently he hadn’t heard.

  “Look,” Clegg said, “the dope is one thing. I got nothing against ripping off bikers. And I don’t mind making a dollar off moving some junk that sooner or later is going to find its way into addicts’ arms, anyway. Jerks deserve whatever they get. But you got two murders on your back, man, and they’re not going anywhere good. Christ, if I’d have known you were gonna start murdering people right and left—”

  “Shut up, please.”

  “What did you say to me?”

  “I said shut up, please. You are not helping.”

  Red Bear was bent over the shells, his long hair all but obscuring them. The pink ones were all together again, the blue scattered, the white seeming to form an eye and nose in a pink-and-blue face. Clegg wanted to shake him.

  “Red Bear, listen: Wombat Guthrie was chopped into bits and pieces. That’s not something the local force can ignore. They’re going to throw everything they’ve got at it. Same with Toof. They’re not going to stop until they put somebody behind bars. What the hell did you kill them for?”

  “Who says I killed them?”

  Red Bear made another few notations on his graph paper. Then he looked over at Clegg, his gaze mildly curious. “Has somebody come forward and said I killed them?”

  “No. But we both know who—”

  Red Bear grabbed Clegg’s wrist and squeezed.

  “We know no such thing. Have you forgotten the readings I’ve done for you? There is nothing that has transpired here that was not foretold in the shells. Did I not tell you we were going to do well? Did I not say that the Viking Riders’ fortunes were going to fall?”

  “Falling fortunes is one thing. Wombat Guthrie had his fucking toes and fingers hacked off.”

  Red Bear squeezed harder.

  “Is your courage failing? Are you backing out on me? I sincerely hope for your sake you’re not planning to change your allegiance. Perhaps you are already working for the Viking Riders. Playing both sides at once.”

  Clegg felt a strong urge to punch him, but he didn’t want to end up like Guthrie. He yanked his wrist away.

  “You know I’m not working for the Riders. I helped you pull off the biggest rip-off in their history. And don’t change the subject. You killed Toof, for Chrissake. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Really.” Red Bear sat back. “This is very interesting, coming from you. In case you’ve forgotten, you were the one who told me Toof was a problem. ‘You have to deal with him,’ you said. ‘Toof is telling stories around the neighbourhood.’ Well, let me tell you something, my friend. Toof is dealt with. End of story.”

  “No, it’s not the end of the story. I’m a Mountie, remember? I cover narcotics and I have a supervisor and I have two Algonquin Bay police officers asking questions about Morris Tilley and Wombat Guthrie. I can’t keep pretending I don’t know anything. They’re tight with my sarge, and if I hold back on them they’re going to find out and that’s gonna blow this whole thing sky-high.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  Red Bear’s voice was barely audible. This would call for careful wording.

  “They’ve been questioning Toof’s associates,” Clegg said. “They got your name from them. Also Leon’s. They know we arrested Leon a few years ago. They asked me mostly about him. I told them exactly what’s on his sheet, nothing more.”

  “And what did you tell them about me?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t have to because they don’t have anything on you. I just said I’d heard your name around. Heard you were from somewhere up north and hadn’t been seen for a while.”

  “I may indeed head up north,” Red Bear said. “When I’m ready.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. The two Algonquin Bay cops I was talking to—Cardinal and Delorme—they were very hot on this gun that killed Toof. They know Guthrie stole it—that links him and Toof to the same killer. But they said the gun was also recently used in an assault.”

  “What did they tell you about it?”

  “Nothing. Delorme—she’s female. Good-looking, too, if you want to know the truth. Delorme started to tell me about it, but Cardinal stopped her. That means they’re keeping this strictly under wraps for some reason.”

  “Such as?”

  “They said ‘assault.’ They didn’t say ‘murder.’ That says to me the victim is still alive—a witness, in other words. But they’re keeping the identity secret. I know there was nothing in the papers linking the gun to another attack. They’re trying to protect him, obviously.”

  “Her,” Red Bear said.

  “What?”

  “Her. It was a woman who saw something she shouldn’t. But don’t worry, we are taking care of it.”

  “Don’t for God’s sake go killing anybody else. The heat’s already way too high on this thing. You got the cops on one side, you got the Viking Riders on the other. The Riders are not going to take this lying down.”

  “Alan, listen to me.” Red Bear took hold of Clegg’s bicep and this time gave it a reassuring squeeze. “You worry too much. I will not do anything that would put you in danger. We are on the same side, remember?”

  45

  “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED to you?” Delorme wanted to know. “You look like hell.”

  “I’m fine,” Cardinal said. In fact, he hadn’t slept. B
y the time he had driven all the way back to Algonquin Bay it wasn’t worth going to bed, so he had taken a shower, made some breakfast and driven straight back to work.

  “Really, John. You look like you’ve got the flu or something.”

  “Thanks, Lise. You’re making my day.”

  Cardinal’s phone rang, and he snatched it up.

  “Cardinal. CID.”

  “It’s Terri Tait calling.”

  “Can you speak up? I can hardly hear you.”

  “It’s Terri Tait. I just … I’ve remembered some things. Last night. I had a nightmare and I got some more memory back. Are you going to be there in the next little while? Can I come and talk to you?”

  “No, don’t come here. It’s not safe for you to go out. We’ll come and see you at the Crisis Centre.”

  “I was really hoping to escape this place for a while.”

  “I know, but it’s just not safe. So hang in there and we’ll see you soon.”

  Cardinal hung up.

  “Terri Tait,” he said. “She’s remembering more. And look at this.” He showed Delorme the locket he had signed out of the evidence room. “Terri’s father was a wing commander up at the air base. I want to show her this, because I’m betting this is her locket and these are her parents.”

  Delorme took the locket and sprung the catch. “You mean she was shot in the same place where Wombat was murdered? Why would the guy go back to the same spot?”

  “It’s not unheard of. Maybe it’s part of the ritual. Maybe she showed up where she shouldn’t have. Tell me what happened with the cave markings.”

  Delorme filled him in on her talk with the OPP and her visit with Dr. Wasserstein in Algonquin Park. She told him about Palo Mayombe, its belief in human sacrifice, the macabre ways its followers sought to control the spirits.

  “Dr. Wasserstein says it’s mostly practised in Cuba. Maybe a little in Miami.”

  “Presumably it’ll travel wherever immigrants take it. You know what I don’t get?”

  “What?”