Blackfly Season

26

THERE WAS ALREADY A SMALL CROWD of cops at the scene by the time Cardinal arrived. A pale, reedy man separated himself from the knot of people and began filling out a form that kept curling from his clipboard in the breeze. Once again, Cardinal was in luck; this time the coroner was Dr. Miles Kennan. He tore off the flimsy top sheet of the form and handed it to Cardinal.

“We’ve got an obvious victim of foul play here, Detective.” Kennan had a gentle, breathy voice. “I do hope you’ll give my regards to the forensic centre.”

“‘Cause of death,’” Cardinal read from the form, “‘gunshot and/or blunt trauma’?”

“You’ll see what I mean when you take a look,” Kennan breathed. “Either would have killed him eventually, but you’ll need a pathologist to tell you which one actually did him in.” The doctor swatted at his neck. “God, I hate blackflies.”

“Time of death?”

“You’ll have to ask the centre that one. I’d guess he’s been dead between twelve and twenty-four hours. But even that’s a very rough guess.”

“All right. Thanks, Doctor.”

Cardinal stepped under the crime scene tape. Arsenault and Collingwood were down on hands and knees, evidence bags ready. Delorme was on her cellphone, apparently on hold.

“Forensic?” Cardinal asked.

She nodded.

“Who called us?”

“Local artist. He doesn’t know anything.”

Delorme spoke into the phone. “All right, Len. Thanks.” She hung up. “I asked Weisman if someone from ballistics could stay late.”

“It’s already late.”

“Yeah, that’s what Weisman said.” Delorme shrugged. “I charmed him to death.”

“No, you didn’t. Len doesn’t charm. Do we know who we’ve got here?”

“Unfortunately, no. There’s no wallet, no ID, no nothing. He appears to be mid to late twenties, five-five, about a hundred and fifty pounds. Other than that, there’s not much to go by.”

“There was nothing at all in his pockets?”

“A ten-dollar bill, some change and a pack of matches from Duane’s Billiard Emporium.”

Cardinal stood back and looked over the scene as a whole. The brush was thick where the dirt road came to an end. Even Cardinal, no forensic expert, could see recently broken twigs and branches. And there was a lot of blood near the victim’s head. Droplets had sprayed upward against the white trunks of the birches. Definitely killed here, not just dumped.

“I can’t figure out how this went down,” Delorme said. “It’s unlikely the killer was just sitting here in a car waiting for a victim to pass by. The two of them—or maybe there were more, I guess we don’t know—but the two of them come out here for something. Then for some reason they get into an argument and the one guy kills the other.”

“A bullet in the back of the head doesn’t read like a spur-of-the-moment thing to me,” Cardinal said.

“That’s true. It’s more like an execution.”

“Tire,” Collingwood said, restricting himself as usual to a single syllable. He sat back on his haunches so they could see the white patch he was working on. Then he lifted the plaster and turned it over, revealing perfectly formed tread marks.

“Nice work,” Cardinal said. “Let’s hope it belongs to the killer’s car and not to some construction foreman.”

Arsenault was a few yards away, just getting to his feet, exclaiming dramatically at his creaking knees. He was holding up a tiny plastic vial, waggling it at Cardinal the way one waggles a stick at a dog.

“Okay, Sherlock,” Cardinal said. “What have you got?”

“Take a look, man. I don’t have words to tell you how good I am.”

Cardinal peered at the vial. It contained a tiny, papery white pocket, like a shred of popcorn hull.

“Is that a maggot casing?” Cardinal said. “Why is this a big deal?”

“Distance from the flesh,” Arsenault said. “Maggots will eventually fall off a dead body. Cheese skippers even spring off a corpse and land maybe a couple of feet away. But this little guy is eight feet away, right inside a footprint.”

“I hope you’re not telling me one of us stepped in maggots and carried them back here.”

“Nope. Footprint’s got deep treads, probably from a hiking boot. None of us is wearing hiking boots, and none of us has been up to the body and back this way. The tape’ll verify that.” He waved toward a video camera perched on a tripod, its red light throbbing.

Cardinal took in the scene again. “You’re right. And going by the tire marks, this would have been where the back of the car was. The trunk. Whoever killed him must’ve come back this way, around the back of the car and then into the driver’s seat. But why would he have a maggot casing on his shoe?”

“My question exactly,” Arsenault said. “Which is why I’m taking this little fellow to Dr. Chin in his own private limo.”

“The other day you didn’t even want to hear about Chin.”

“Obviously I’m learning under your guidance and inspiration. The guy impressed me, okay?”

Cardinal took one more look at the scene as a whole, then stepped closer to the body. He must have let out a gasp or a curse or something, because Delorme said, “Yeah. Pretty bad, isn’t it.”

The trauma to the face and head was brutal. Half the cranial vault was collapsed.

“I wonder which they did first,” Cardinal said. “Shoot him or bash his head in?”

“Does it make that much difference?” Delorme’s background was in white-collar crime; Cardinal reminded himself he had to make allowances.

“If you knock him out and then shoot him,” he said, “that’s one type of person. If you shoot him first, then bash his head in, what does that make you?”

“Either extremely vicious …” Delorme looked at him, brown eyes questioning, “or maybe the owner of a defective gun?”

“I’m betting on both.”