Blackfly Season

4

THE ALGONQUIN BAY POLICE DEPARTMENT is not the kind of grunge pit one sees on television shows about New York cops. Since the new headquarters opened a dozen years ago, the CID has maintained the bland decor of a small mortgage outfit. The windows on the east side provide good light—in the morning, at least—as well as an excellent view of the parking lot.

Cardinal was in the boardroom packing up the last of the files from a case that had consumed all his energy for the last six months. It had involved a third-generation, felony-prone family who, by way of registering a noise complaint, had sacked a neighbouring family’s afternoon barbecue. One of the patriarchs had ended up face down in his Worcestershire sauce, dead of a heart attack. Months of Cardinal’s work had resulted in nothing more than a finding of accidental death.

Every now and then, Cardinal’s thoughts were interrupted by a feminine tack, tack, tack of hammer and nail. Frances, long-time receptionist and factotum to Police Chief Kendall, was hanging a set of newly framed photographs on the pine panelling. So far, she had hung a photo of Chief Kendall being sworn in, and another of Ian McLeod, fully clothed and soaking wet, after having rescued a mother of three from drowning in Trout Lake.

“What do you think of this one?” Frances said.

A black-and-white eight-by-ten of a much younger Jerry Commanda, back when he was still on the city force, dressed in baseball cap and sunglasses. He was standing in front of a stone gate with a wrought-iron eagle perched on top—iron talons flexed, black wings spread as if about to take off.

“Is that Eagle Park?” Cardinal said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I remember that. It was a charity ball game against the fire department.”

“Can you believe how skinny Jerry was?”

“He’s still skinny. Yet another reason, if one were needed, to find him irritating.”

“Go on. Everyone loves Jerry.” Frances had a saintlike immunity to irony.

“Another reason,” Cardinal said.

“Oh, you …”

Cardinal settled back into the quiet. The boardroom was plush, compared to the squad room. It even had carpeting, royal blue, with a deep pile that went some way toward damping the noise of Frances’s hammer and the general hubbub of the booking area. It was not, however, deep enough the dampen the noise of one Jasper Colin Crouch.

Jasper Colin Crouch was a permanently unemployed and unemployable construction worker, built like a grizzly but with a temper much worse. Crouch was, as the cliché has it, well known to the police, owing to his penchant for battering his wife when sober and his numerous offspring when drunk. Detective Lise Delorme had hauled him in a few days previously on a charge of criminal assault after his twelve-year-old boy had been hospitalized with a broken arm. The boy was now a temporary ward of the Children’s Aid Society.

A tremendous bellow—a sort of high-volume moose-honk—made Cardinal look up. He knew exactly who it was. The bellow was followed by an equally tremendous crash.

“My goodness,” Frances said, and covered her heart.

Cardinal jumped up and ran to the booking area.

The floor was flooded, Crouch having somehow toppled the water cooler. Now he was squared off with Delorme, who was five-foot-four but looked a lot smaller facing the cathedral of fat and muscle that was Jasper Colin Crouch. Delorme was down on one knee in the water, a cut above her left eye.

Bob Collingwood had hold of Crouch from behind, but Crouch simply made a kind of operatic shrug and Collingwood went flying. Before Cardinal could intervene, Crouch leaned into a full-force kick at Delorme. Delorme dodged to one side, caught his heel in her left hand and half-rose.

“Mr. Crouch, you’re going to stop right now or I’m going to drop you.”

“Suck my dick.” He jerked his leg but Delorme held on.

“That’s it,” she said. She propped his foot on her shoulder and stood up. Crouch’s skull connected with the tile floor and he was out, as if someone had pressed the Off button on a remote. There was a pattering of applause.

“That really needs a stitch or two,” Cardinal said when Delorme came back from the washroom. Her left eyebrow was bisected by a gash about a quarter of an inch long.

“I’ll live.” She sat down at the cubicle next to his. “How’s our Jane Doe doing?”

Cardinal had called Delorme after he’d got the ballistics report.

“Jane Doe is still a Jane Doe,” he said. “Neurosurgeon thinks her memory will come back, but there’s no saying when.”

“Bullet in the head—me, I take it we won’t be putting any ads in the paper asking Do You Know This Woman?”

“No. We don’t want whoever shot her to know she’s been found, let alone found alive. I don’t suppose you dug anything up on the gun?”

“Used in recent crimes?” Delorme shook her head. “Doesn’t match anything.” She added in an offhand, nothing-important, probably-shouldn’t-mention-it tone: “On the other hand, I did check out reports of stolen firearms. Surprise, surprise, turns out we had one three weeks ago.”

“You’re kidding. A .32 pistol?”

Delorme held up a scrap of paper on which she had written a name and address.

“Missing. One pistol. Thirty-two calibre. Manufacturer: Colt. Model: Police Positive.”

Rod Milcher lived in a nicely maintained split-level in the Pinedale section of town, at one time a desirable address, but now, owing to the proliferation of drab concrete apartment buildings, an area mostly populated by the newly married. Pinedale is where you find what real estate people like to call starter homes.

Unlike Jasper Crouch, Milcher was not well known to the police. In fact, not known at all. And his house, with its neatly clipped lawn and its pretty cedar hedge, did not look the home of a felon—more like that of a dentist. The only unusual thing about the whole place was what was parked in its driveway: a plump, much-chromed motorcycle.

“Six-fifty Harley,” Cardinal said before they were even out of the car. “Serious bike.”

“You couldn’t pay me to ride one of those things,” Delorme said. “Friend of mine got killed on one at the age of twenty-six. Lost an argument with a cement truck.”

“Male friend?”

“Male friend. Thought he was tough but he wasn’t.”

Cardinal rapped on the side door. It was just after six o’clock; they had waited until Milcher was likely to be home. The door was answered by a thirtyish woman wearing a business suit. As if to balance the boardroom look with something more homey, she was also clutching a saucepan. “I’m not interested in religion,” she said through the screen door. “I get tired of telling you people.”

Delorme held up her badge. “Is Rod Milcher at home? We need to ask him a few questions.”

The woman turned her head to one side without moving the rest of her body and yelled, “Rod! The police are here! Better pack your toothbrush!” She opened the screen door. “Step lively. Don’t want to let the bugs in.”

The side door led through a small vestibule to the kitchen. Cardinal and Delorme stood beside a Formica table set for two while the woman attacked a small cairn of potatoes with a peeler.

“What seems to be the problem, Officers?”

A diminutive man in a checked shirt and khakis addressed them from the hall doorway. He didn’t come near to filling it.

“Mr. Milcher, you’re the registered owner of a .32 pistol, is that correct?” Cardinal said. “A Colt Police Positive?”

“Yes. Why, did you find it?”

“What can you tell us about the circumstances under which it was stolen?”

“I told you all that. I put everything in the report.”

“We’d like to hear it again,” Delorme said.

“My wife and I were in Toronto for the weekend. When we came back, the gun was missing. Along with some other items—the stereo and a camera.”

“And why did you have a licence to carry a gun in the first place?”

“I manage the back office for Zellers. Lots of times I have to make sizable deposits at night, after the armoured truck has already gone.”

“Do you still have that job?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why don’t you show us where the stereo was,” Cardinal said.

Milcher looked from Cardinal to Delorme and back again.

“It was in here.”

They followed him into a living room that was furnished almost entirely in white: white carpet, white curtains, white leatherette sofa and matching recliner. Milcher waved a hand at a glass-fronted set of shelves, a Yamaha stereo and speakers.

Delorme went up and peered at it.

“You replaced the stereo pretty fast.”

“This was an old one I had sitting in the basement.”

“Doesn’t look old.”

“Looks like a pretty expensive stereo to just be sitting in the basement,” Cardinal said.

Milcher shrugged. “I don’t see what all this has to do with my gun. Did you find it or didn’t you?”

“Where did you keep the gun?” Delorme said.

“In that box right there.” Milcher pointed to a small oak chest on the shelf. The hasp on the lock was broken.

“Who else knew you kept it there?”

“No one. Well, my wife. No one else. Look, you still haven’t told me if the gun has turned up or not. I did my duty in reporting it. I think I have a right to know.”

“Your gun hasn’t turned up,” Cardinal said. “But we think one of your bullets did.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did you keep the ammunition with your weapon?”

“Uh, yeah. The bullets were stolen, too. They were really old, though. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure they’d even work, to tell you the truth.”

“Do you know this young woman?” Cardinal said. He handed Milcher the photo of Red he had taken that morning. The bandage didn’t show, and you couldn’t tell it had been taken in a hospital. She looked as if she had been caught daydreaming.

“I’ve never seen her,” Milcher said. “Why?”

“Because it looks like one of your bullets has turned up in her skull,” Cardinal said.

“Oh, my God,” Milcher said. “That’s terrible.”

“How many Colt Police Positives do you suppose there are in Algonquin Bay, Mr. Milcher?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with this. Hell, I reported the thing stolen the minute I knew it was gone.”

“How do we know you didn’t report it stolen, knowing you were going to use it on someone?”

“Look, I’ve never seen this woman. I had nothing to do with this. I reported the gun stolen, I don’t have a clue who stole it, end of story.”

“Oh, what is all this bullshit, Rodney?”

All three of them turned to Mrs. Milcher, who was in the doorway now with an oven mitt on one hand.

“Stay out of this, Lorraine.”

Mrs. Milcher let out a theatrical sigh. “The truth is, Officers, my husband has never grown up. If you saw the two-wheeler in the driveway, you know that he fancies himself something out of Easy Rider. He’s never quite gotten over the fantasy of riding with the big boys.”

“I did used to ride with them,” Milcher said. “It was over ten years ago, and I didn’t get into any of their other activities. But I rode with them lots of times.”

“Uh-huh. And I used to sing with the Spice Girls.”

“Who are we talking about?” Delorme said. “Who are the so-called big boys?”

“The Viking Riders,” Mrs. Milcher said. “I mean, doesn’t everybody think they’re heroes?”

“I don’t think they’re heroes,” Milcher said. “A couple of them are old friends, that’s all.”

“Grow up, Rod. One of them was over here three weeks ago, just before that stinking gun went missing.” She turned to Delorme as if only another woman could understand what it was like dealing with an incompetent male. “Genius, here, decides to impress his Viking friend by pulling out his little gun.”

“Lay off, Lorraine.”

“You know what I’m thinking?” Delorme said to Milcher. “I’m thinking that your stereo never did get stolen. I think you just said that so it would look like you didn’t have a clue who took your gun. Because if it was just the gun that was taken, that would indicate the thief knew exactly what he was looking for, and knew exactly where it was. In other words, the thief would have to be someone you knew.”

“Hey, look. You don’t know what those guys’ll do to me if they think I ratted on them.”

“Someone shot this young woman in the head, Mr. Milcher. We’re going to need a name.”