Blackfly Season

11

LATER, CARDINAL DROVE WITH Arsenault and his vials of “witnesses” along Highway 11. Arsenault was wearing wraparound sunglasses. With his moustache and longish hair, they made him look more like a Viking Rider than a cop.

“So why the hell are we using Angus Chin?” Arsenault wanted to know.

“Because if we take it to Toronto we’ll have to get in line like everybody else and it’ll slow things down. Besides which, Angus Chin has three post-graduate degrees—in biology, entomology and parasitology—and he knows what the hell he’s talking about.”

“Yeah. But there’s reasons why we’ve never used him before. I mean, you do know about the rumours, don’t you?”

Cardinal knew about the rumours. Some individuals are born to be the subject of gossip; others ask for it. Angus Chin was both. First, there was his background—his father a Scottish merchant seaman, his mother a pharmacist from Hong Kong. In a place like Algonquin Bay, such a background was exotic, if not actually suspect.

Then there were his looks. The Scottish part of Chin’s ancestry had rounded his eyes a little, and put some curl in his hair, but he insisted on wearing it in a mandarin ponytail that hung down to his coccyx. This despite the fact that the closest he’d ever got to China was the campus of UCLA.

The rumours began to fly the moment he returned to Algonquin Bay after his lengthy education in Toronto and Los Angeles: He was running from a homicidal homosexual love affair; he was working for mainland China in some malign capacity; he was a doctor who had been defrocked because of unorthodox procedures.

But these were not the rumours that made Paul Arsenault turn to Cardinal, remove his ridiculous sunglasses and squint at him.

“I’m not talking about the little rumours. I’m talking about The Rumour. Capital T, capital R.”

“Ah, yes. The big one,” Cardinal said.

“And you don’t care about this rumour?” Arsenault poked Cardinal in the arm. “You don’t think it has any bearing on the case?”

“All I know about The Rumour is that it is a rumour. It’s not a fact, and we probably shouldn’t be discussing it just before we meet the man.”

Arsenault shrugged dramatically. He put his sunglasses back on and looked straight ahead.

The big rumour revolved around Angus Chin’s interest in parasitology and the study of tapeworms. It was whispered around town that he kept a tapeworm as a pet. There were, of course, the inevitable questions: How? In God’s name, where? The answer was that Dr. Chin reportedly kept his tapeworm where tapeworms lived, in his intestine. He would change his diet or some other variable and study the worm’s response. Did it grow faster or slower? Fatter or thinner? And how did he measure this response? How did he get access? He would fast for two days. On the third day, he would place a lump of sugar on his tongue. The worm, sensing the presence of nourishment, would make its way up the digestive tract and eventually up the esophagus. When the moment was right, the doctor would reach in and pull the worm from his throat—no small feat, considering the creature was said to be over five feet long.

“Have you considered what a competent defence attorney might do with this information in the event of a trial?” Arsenault didn’t take off his sunglasses this time. He stared at Cardinal, and it was like being examined by a huge fly. He mimicked a defence attorney: “Dr. Chin, would you tell the court—do you have any hobbies? Do you keep any pets? A tapeworm. I see. And where do you house your pet worm? In your intestine. How quaint. And is it true you take it out for walks?”

Cardinal said, “Chin doesn’t do court. You can’t be at the beck and call of judges and prosecutors if you’re a full-time academic.”

He found a space in the parking lot and they made their way over to the science building. The last of the sun made the brick glow burnt orange. A fresh, watery breeze blew from the lake, and there was the sound of wind through the trees. The campus was intensely green just now.

A group of girls emerged from the student centre, chattering at high volume and with great urgency.

“Geez,” Arsenault observed, “they get younger every year. College students actually look like children to me.”

“They are children.” Cardinal’s own daughter was only a couple of years out of college.

They followed signs to the biology department and, after some trial and error, found Dr. Chin’s office. Cardinal rapped on the door.

“If you’re looking for Dr. Chin,” a young man with very thick glasses told them, “he’s in Bio Lab Three, downstairs.”

Dr. Chin was supervising student projects, bending over an array of Petri dishes as he gripped a male student’s arm, shaking him. “Don’t rush it. Sometimes the fastest way to get your answer is to move very slowly.”

“Dr. Chin?”

The doctor stood up and flipped his ponytail over his shoulder. “Who are you?”

“I’m Detective Cardinal, Algonquin Bay Police. This is Detective Arsenault from our ident section.”

“Really. How pleasant.”

“Can we talk someplace else?”

Chin beckoned to an older student a few desks away, a man with rubbery features that gave him an unhealthy, boneless look.

“This is Dr. Filbert,” Chin said. “It won’t hurt him to meet our local detectives. Dr. Filbert is a former student of mine and now my unfortunate post-doc. I keep him around solely for purposes of torture.”

“You make me wash test tubes that haven’t even been used yet.”

“Post-docs don’t wash test tubes,” Chin said. “Dr. Filbert is prone to exaggeration. Nevertheless, I’ll allow him to join us if he promises to behave.”

“What about the students?”

“They can survive without us for a few moments, I think.”

Chin led them to an adjoining lab and hung his white coat on the back of a chair. He was slender, even skinny; at five-six or -seven, he couldn’t weigh much over one-twenty. Cardinal wondered about the tapeworm.

Chin sat at a desk equipped with a large magnifier. “All right. Show me what you have.”

Arsenault handed the professor a vial.

Chin switched on the magnifier and held the vial under it.

“Very interesting. You have a nice collection of maggots here. Nice work,” he said without looking up. “Good label.”

“My partner calls me Avis,” Arsenault said. “I try harder.”

“Okay, you’ve got a body found outside. Probably in the woods. Somewhere pretty cool, right? Maybe hidden among rocks? Near water, too, I think.”

Arsenault looked at Cardinal and back to Dr. Chin. “You can really tell all that?”

“Simple. You’ve got Calliphora celliphoridae vomitoria. It’s common in wooded areas.”

“Gotta love that name,” Filbert said. “Did you know Linnaeus named it?”

“Not everyone is a fly geek, Dr. Filbert.” Chin was still staring at the vial under his magnifier. “You also have Phormia regina. That’s a blowfly that you’re going to find absolutely everywhere. But you’ve also got Calliphora vicina. That tells us what, Dr. Filbert?”

“Vicina is another blowfly. It only goes places that are shady and cool.”

“That’s why Dr. Filbert gets the big grants,” Dr. Chin said. “Justice Department, no less. They wouldn’t give me dick, pardon my French.”

“Justice loves DNA,” Filbert said cryptically.

“I’m not seeing any other species here. Is that all you have?”

Arsenault handed him three more vials. Chin examined them one after another under the magnifier. “Okay, now you have Cynomyopsis cadavarina. Shiny bluebottle. You only get this fly in advanced stages of decay. You’ve also got rove beetles and staph beetles, short for Staphylinidae. They feed on maggots.”

“Normally, you’d expect a lot more species than that at an outdoor site,” Filbert said. “Especially in the late stages.”

“The body was behind a waterfall,” Cardinal said.

“Hah!” Chin waggled a finger. “The flies couldn’t find it. Couldn’t smell it. Makes perfect sense.” He rolled his chair back from the magnifier.

“Can you give us anything on time of death?” Arsenault asked.

“What am I—Mr. Wizard? Obviously I have to put these under a microscope to be absolutely sure what they are. And even then, for court purposes, you’re going to need them to hatch. That way you nail down the species beyond a doubt. But you’ve got third-instar Cynomyopsis and you’ve got rove beetles; you’re looking at about fourteen days since time of death.”

“Can you narrow it down any more than that?”

“Come back next week, gentlemen. I’ll be able to tell you a whole lot more.”

The double doors of the lab were swinging closed behind them when Arsenault suddenly stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I gotta ask.”

Before Cardinal could prevent him, Arsenault yanked open one of the doors. “Hey, Doc. I gotta ask you something. Rumour I heard.”

“Arsenault,” Cardinal said. “For God’s sake.”

“What rumour would that be, Detective?”

Arsenault appeared to think a minute. “Is it true that blackflies always come out before Victoria Day?”

“In this region? That’s not a rumour, Detective. That’s a fact.”

“Well, thanks for setting me straight. It was bothering me.”

“Very amusing,” Cardinal said once they were in the parking lot. “Really, you could sit in for Conan O’Brien sometime.”

“I gotta tell Delorme,” Arsenault said. “The look on your face.”