Blackfly Season

3

CARDINAL SLEPT FOR THREE HOURS in the crisply starched sheets of the Best Western hotel. After a scalding shower that nearly removed a layer of skin, he went down to the coffee shop, where he ate a chewy omelette and read The Globe and Mail. Outside, the morning sunlight slanted over the banks and insurance buildings. The air was crisp, and Cardinal noticed with pleasure the absence of blackflies. He walked over to Ontario’s Centre of Forensic Sciences on Grosvenor Street, where he handed in the bullet and filled out several forms. They told him to come back in an hour.

Cardinal returned to the hotel and checked out.

He was back at Forensics in forty-five minutes. The young man who had been assigned to the case in Firearms was named Cornelius Venn. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt with a blue tie and had the clean-cut, slightly dorky good looks of a senior boy scout. Cardinal suspected a sizable collection of model airplanes.

Venn took the Polaroids Cardinal had given him and tacked them up on a bulletin board. “Nice round hole. No burn, no soot, just slight tattooing.”

“Which tells you what?” Cardinal said.

“Oh, no. I’m not getting into that particular box. There’s no way I’m going to do a distance determination without having a suspect weapon in my hand.”

“Just give me ballpark figures. We may not need them in court.”

“There is no ballpark. Not without a suspect weapon. How can I give you a ballpark when I don’t know the barrel length? Even if I know the type of weapon, I don’t know if it’s been altered in some way that would affect the patterns.”

“So you’re not going to give me an estimate?”

“Just told you. I can’t.”

“Well, we’ve pretty much ruled out suicide. The victim’s left-handed. And to my less-than-expert eyes, the entry wound looks like the gun was somewhere between twelve and twenty inches away.”

“I have no opinion on that point, as I’ve indicated,” Venn said. “But with a suicide you’d expect a contact wound or something close to it. Unless your Jane Doe’s got arms four feet long, there’s no way this wound is self-inflicted.”

“A defence attorney might say it’s accidental.”

“Accidental? Within a distance of two feet? You hold a loaded gun to someone’s head and pull the trigger? Well, I suppose some might say there’s reasonable doubt there.”

Cardinal pointed to the spectroscope obscuring a poster for a Van Damme movie that featured an exotic machine gun. “How about the GSR results? Did you get anywhere with those?”

“Didn’t run them. Don’t look at me like that, Detective. There’s no point in running a GSR on someone who’s just been shot at close range. She’s going to turn out positive for powder and soot whether she fired the gun or not.”

That was true. Cardinal was annoyed with himself for forgetting.

Venn pinned a piece of paper up on the corkboard; it showed a series of grey streaks of varying intensity.

“Characteristics,” he said. “You’ve got a plain, unjacketed, lead, .32-calibre bullet. Looks to me like a .32 long. Normally, with a shot to the skull you’d expect it to flatten out completely, making it hard to read. In this case, you have a shot to the temple—much thinner bone—and the bullet is pretty much intact. I don’t suppose you have any casings?”

“You’ve got everything we’ve got.”

“Then none of this is going to help you much, but here goes.” He pointed to the printout as he spoke; his fingernail was gnawed to the quick. “You’ve got six right-hand grooves with a land-groove ratio of one-to-one-plus. Grooves are zero point five-six; lands are zero point six-oh.”

“Pistol?”

Venn nodded. “Pistol. And you’re lucky in one way.”

“Oh?”

“The rifling in the weapon has a left-hand twist. Right away that narrows it down. You’re probably looking for a Colt.”

Venn rolled his swivel chair over to his computer and started typing figures into the database. “From what you tell me of the injury—minimal motion inside the skull, minimal damage to tissue—I think you’re dealing with rounds that are either very old or got wet at some point. Or it could be a defective weapon. If the firing pin is far enough off kilter it could result in a misfire like this. Of course we won’t know that until you bring us a casing. Or, God forbid, an actual weapon.”

“That’s it? We may be looking for a Colt .32?”

Venn looked up at him. “In your impatience, Detective, you’re not letting me finish.”

Cardinal scanned Venn’s face to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

“This left-hand twist, coupled with this land-groove ratio, narrows it down to two possibilities. You could be looking for a J.C. Higgins model 80. Or a Colt Police Positive.”

“And I bet there’s more than a few of ’em, right?”

“In Ontario? Think in hundreds.”

Ten minutes later Cardinal was back amid the chlorine-and-bandage smells of Toronto General Hospital. Jane Doe had been moved to a semi-private room on the third floor. The police guard on the door had so many gadgets hanging from his hips he looked bottom-heavy, like a tenpin. Cardinal showed his badge and was waved inside. The young redhead was propped up in bed in a hospital gown, reading Chatelaine. She smiled when he came in; there was a small bandage on her temple.

“Are you my doctor?”

“No, I’m a detective. John Cardinal. We met last night.”

“Detective? You’re with the police? I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

“That’s okay. I bet you’ll get your memory back in no time.”

“I hope so. Right now, I don’t even know who I am.”

“Dr. Schaff tells me she’s pretty sure it will all come back.”

“I’m not even that worried about it.”

Cardinal didn’t tell her that Dr. Schaff had been less certain about appropriate affect.

The girl turned to adjust her pillows. Cardinal caught a flash of pale breast and looked away.

“Red, I need your help with something.”

“Of course.”

“I need your permission to go through your clothes and see if there’s any identification.”

“Oh, sure. Be my guest.”

No doubt the hospital had already done this, but Cardinal opened the closet anyway. A denim jacket hung from a wire hanger, with a pair of jeans beside it. On the shelf, a T-shirt, bra and underpants. Cardinal made notes of the brand names: Gap, Levi’s, Lucky. Then he went through the jeans pockets. No keys, no ID, no receipts or ticket stubs, just a few coins and a pair of nail clippers. He felt in the side pockets of the denim jacket and pulled out a half-roll of LifeSavers. Nothing useful.

When he turned around, Red was looking blankly out the window as if he wasn’t there. Between the buildings, small white clouds hung in rhomboids of blue sky. Beyond these, the concrete shaft of Toronto’s landmark CN Tower.

“One more thing,” Cardinal said. “Would you mind if I took your picture?”

“No, of course not.”

Cardinal closed the blinds to shut out the identifiable view. Then he sat the young woman in front of them, and had her turn her head to one side so the shaved patch didn’t show. He took a close-up with his Polaroid.

She had no reaction when he showed her the result.

“They’ll be sending you back to Algonquin Bay tomorrow,” Cardinal said. “Are you ready for that?”

“I don’t know where that is,” she said. “I don’t even know if I’m from there.”

“We have to assume you are, until we hear anything different.”

A pale, freckled hand reached up absently, feeling the edges of the bandage. Cardinal was sure she was going to ask where she would stay in Algonquin Bay—a question he had been dreading—but she didn’t say anything. Just that same placid smile. Fine, let Dr. Schaff tell her.

“Listen, um, Red—sorry, I have to call you Red until we know your name …”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind.”

“Pretty soon there’s going to be a missing persons report out on you. Young women like you don’t go missing without someone noticing. Then we’ll know who you are and where you’re from. In the meantime, we’re going to have a police guard on you at all times.”

“Okay.”

She doesn’t protest, she doesn’t ask why, Cardinal thought. She doesn’t seem afraid or even curious. He felt duty bound to answer the questions she hadn’t asked.

“Someone put a bullet in your head,” he said. “And because of the nature of the wound, and the type of weapon used, we think it was a deliberate attempt on your life. So, you’re going to have to keep a low profile until we find whoever did it. In case they decide to make another try at it.”

“Okay.”

“Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not going to take long before you’re tired of being cooped up, but it won’t be safe for you to go out.”

“Oh.” The pale brows met in a display of—Cardinal wasn’t sure if it was worry or just confusion. She said after a moment, “Whoever I am, I think I must be quite a lazy person, because right now I don’t feel like doing anything but sitting in bed.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Cardinal said. “You take it easy and let the doctors look after you.”

“I will.” She gave him a smile and it was as if a lamp had been turned on. “Thank you, Doctor.”