Blackfly Season

2

ALGONQUIN BAY, WITH A POPULATION of 58,000 and only two small hospitals, cannot lay claim to any neurosurgeons of its own, which was why, forty-five minutes later, Cardinal was barrelling down Highway 11 toward Toronto, four hours south.

After Dr. Fortis had scanned the EEG results, he had ordered the redhead put into a neck brace and shot her full of antibiotics and anti-seizure medication. Then he ordered an ambulance. “She appears stable,” he said, “but I’m seeing some seizure activity on her readout. They’ll want to operate on her right away.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s not a suicide attempt,” Cardinal said, “but I’ll get ident to do a gunshot-residue on her before we leave.”

“We?”

“I’m going to have to accompany her, be there when that bullet comes out of her head.”

“Of course. Chain of evidence and all that. Have to be quick, though. The sooner she’s in surgery, the better.”

Using electric clippers, Dr. Fortis shaved a small patch of hair away from the girl’s right temple. A placid smile played across her features, but otherwise she didn’t react at all.

“Perfectly round entrance wound,” Cardinal noted. “No burn, no smudge and no tattooing.”

“There’s no way that gun was fired within a foot of this girl,” Jerry said. “I hope you find whoever pulled the trigger. Let me know if I can be any help. I’m heading home to enjoy what’s left of my day off.” He waved at the girl. “You take care, Red.”

The girl’s smile was frozen in place. The anti-seizure medication was starting to take hold.

Cardinal put in a call to Detective Sergeant Daniel Chouinard at home.

“What is it, Cardinal, I’m watching Homicide, here.”

“I thought that was off the air.”

“Not in my house. I own the entire first three seasons on DVD. There’s something soothing about watching cops with problems a lot worse than mine.”

Cardinal told him about the girl.

“Well, you’ve got to go to Toronto and see that bullet come out. Is there anything else?”

“That’s it.”

“Good. Now, I’m going to go back and watch how those big-city cops handle things.”

Bob Collingwood from the ident section arrived a few minutes later. He was the youngest detective on the squad, and by far the quietest. He took some Polaroids of the girl’s wound and gave them to Cardinal. Then he tested the girl with a GSR “dabber,” a flat, sticky object not unlike a tongue depressor, pressing it over the back of both her hands and into the space between thumb and forefinger. The girl appeared not to notice; it was as if she had disappeared from the room. Collingwood slipped the dabber into a Baggie, handed it to Cardinal without a word and went on his way.

When Cardinal arrived home, he found his wife excited about her own trip to Toronto, although she wasn’t leaving for another week. Catherine was going to be leading a three-day field trip to the big city with members of the photography class she taught at Northern University.

“I can’t wait till next week,” she said. “Algonquin Bay’s a great place to live, but let’s face it, there’s not a lot of culture per square foot. I’m going to take a million photographs in Toronto, I’m going to have some wonderful meals and I’m going to spend every spare minute in the museums seeing art, art, art!”

She was checking cameras, cleaning them with blasts of canned air, and polishing lenses. Catherine never travelled with fewer than two cameras, but it looked like she had enough lenses for five. Her hair was all in a tangle, the way it tended to get when she was busy with a project. She would shower and then forget to dry it as she got involved in something else.

“I wish I could come down with you, right now,” she said. “But I’ve got a class tomorrow, and a darkroom workshop on Thursday.”

Cardinal tossed a few things into an overnight bag.

“Where will you stay?” Catherine said.

“The Best Western on Carlton. They always have a room.”

“I’ll call them right now and book it for you.”

Cardinal was digging around in the dresser for his electric razor. The only time he used it was when he travelled, and he never remembered where he’d put it from one trip to the next.

Catherine called Toronto directory information and got the hotel’s number, all the while chatting to Cardinal. The eleven o’clock news was winding down on the television, but Catherine was just revving up.

A familiar unease fluttered in Cardinal’s chest. This time, his wife had managed to stay out of hospital for two years. She’d been doing well. Took her medication faithfully, kept up with her yoga, made sure she got a good night’s sleep. But this was one of the worst aspects of her illness: Cardinal could never be sure if his wife was just happy and excited, or if she was entering a trajectory that would fling her into the intergalactic reaches of mania.

Should I say something? It was as if, when the psychiatrists had first diagnosed Catherine’s disorder twenty years ago, they had initiated Cardinal into the brotherhood of anguished spouses with that endlessly repeated mantra: Should I say something?

“This trip is going to be fantastic,” Catherine said. “I can feel it. We’re going to shoot the waterfront. Capture some of the old industrial buildings before they get all touristy and unrecognizable.”

Cardinal came over and stood behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. Catherine froze. Lens in one hand, lens tissue in the other.

“I’m all right, John.” There was an edge in her voice.

“I know, hon.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

She didn’t turn to look at him. Not a good sign.

Bugs spattered on the windshield like rain. The occasional truck clattered along, blocking Cardinal’s progress, but mostly the highway was empty. He’d left the ambulance behind somewhere around Huntsville.

Cardinal forced himself to stop fretting about Catherine and focus on the young redhead. The Baggie and the photographs were on the passenger seat beside him. He had no doubt that he was dealing with an attempted murder, but Cardinal had been a cop for more than twenty years—ten in Toronto, more than that in Algonquin Bay—and he had long ago learned never to jump to conclusions.

At the Catholic boys’ school he had attended, the priests had always dourly insisted that an errant youth view his actions through the eyes of his Maker, or if he lacked that much imagination, then through the eyes of his mother. In Cardinal’s mind, these inquisitors had been replaced with a defence attorney, who was always nosing around for reasonable doubt like a rat after the cheese.

“And you say you did not perform a test for gunshot residue, is that correct, Detective?”

“That’s correct.”

“Without such a test to prove otherwise, it’s possible the victim fired the bullet into her own head, is it not?”

“She’s left-handed, for one thing. And there was no residue on her scalp. It’s highly unlikely she could have fired the bullet herself.”

“Just answer the question, Detective. I asked you if it was possible.”

Cardinal put in a call to 52 Division in Toronto and requested a twenty-four-hour police guard on the girl.

Dr. Melanie Schaff was cool and efficient and a good two inches taller than Cardinal. She had the kind of wary brusqueness one often finds in women who have struggled to make their way in a predominantly male world; Cardinal’s colleague Lise Delorme had it.

“Your Jane Doe has sustained a partial lobotomy and the bullet has lodged near the hippocampus,” Dr. Schaff said. “Sometimes it can be safer to leave a bullet in than take it out, but this one is close to one of the cerebral arteries. With the seizure activity we’re seeing on her EEG there’s no way we can leave it in. One or two good seizures and Jane Doe could end up Jane Dead.”

“What are the risks?”

“Minor, compared to leaving it in. I’ve explained that to her and she seems quite prepared for the surgery.”

“Is she in a state to make that decision?”

“Oh, yes. It’s her memory and affect that’s impaired, not her reasoning ability.”

“What are the chances of a total recovery?”

“There’s only a partial severing of the frontal lobe, and it’s only on one side, so there’s a good chance she’ll exhibit the full range of emotions eventually. No guarantees, however. There’s no direct damage to areas of the brain that control memory, so I expect she’s just in a traumatic fog, which should pass. I’ll be recommending therapy with a neuropsychologist for that. Now, what exactly do you need from me, Detective, other than the bullet?”

“Is there any chance she’ll remember anything while you’re operating?”

“We’ll be nudging along the hippocampus. It’s certainly possible she’ll get random flashes. Whether they’ll be dreams or memories, I can’t say. But you’ve seen the state she’s in. There won’t be any context for them.”

“If you could just keep in mind that it might be useful for us, and it could save her life. We don’t know who’s trying to kill her.”

“That it?”

“I need to actually see you take the bullet out.”

“All right. Let’s get you gloved and gowned. We’ll be working with something called a Stealth Station. It’s a 3-D cat scan hooked up to the microscope I’ll be using. Should give you a ringside seat.”

Like most cops, Cardinal had witnessed his share of gore—the torn wreckage of accidents and the blood-spattered kitchens, bedrooms, basements and living rooms where men commit violence on each other or, more often, on women. A policeman’s heart gets calloused, like a carpenter’s thumb. What Cardinal had never got used to, however, was the operating room. For some reason he could not fathom—he hoped it was not cowardice—the gleam of surgical blades made his stomach turn in a way that burns, dismemberments and impalings did not.

Two physicians assisted Dr. Schaff, and two nurses. “Red,” as Cardinal had begun to think of her, was drowsy from sedatives and anti-seizure medication, but conscious. A bigger patch had been shaved around the entrance wound, and she had been given injections of local anaesthetic from a huge hypodermic. General anaesthetic was not required, the brain being insensitive to pain.

Masked and gowned, Cardinal stood to one side near Red’s feet, where he could see an overhead monitor and observe the surgeon at the same time.

“Okay, Red,” Dr. Schaff said. “How you feeling?”

“My goodness, you all have such beautiful eyes.”

Cardinal glanced around the O.R. What the girl said was true: Between the masks and the surgical caps, the eyes were emphasized; everyone appeared gentle and wise.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Dr. Schaff said. She strapped on a pair of goggles that made her look like a benign alien. “Are you ready for us? It won’t hurt, I promise.”

“I’m ready.”

Cardinal had thought he was ready too, until Dr. Schaff took a scalpel and cut a flap in Red’s scalp. For a moment it formed a fine scarlet geometry, but then the red lines thickened and flowed, and Cardinal wished he were somewhere else.

Dr. Schaff asked for the bone saw. Cardinal spent a lot of his off-hours doing woodwork, and it amazed him that the instrument in her gloved hand might have been a tool in his basement. It gave off a high-pitched whine, like a dentist’s drill, but once it touched bone the sound was not all that different from ripping plywood. Red didn’t even blink as Dr. Schaff extracted the piece of skull and set it aside. It would be preserved and put back in place in a day or two, when any brain swelling had gone down.

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.