Blackfly Season

53

SOONER OR LATER, WHENEVER a case got unwieldy, Cardinal ended up in the boardroom with the files. He was in there now, sorting through the stacks of material the other detectives had assembled. He’d been going over the forensics and scene photos from Arsenault and Collingwood. And now he was weeding through Delorme’s supplementary reports. Every fragment of information they had was spread out on the table before him.

They had put out the all-points pretty fast, but so far there had been no sighting of Terri Tait. So here he was sequestered with the files, in the hope that they would provide him with a solid idea of where to look for her.

The eye strain was getting to him.

He slouched back in his chair and looked around the room, at the photos lining the walls. There was one of Chief Kendall being sworn in; his uniform would never fit him that well again. And there was one of Cardinal himself, bundled up like an Inuit at the snowy mine shaft on Windigo Island. Then there was the picture of Jerry Commanda in front of the gate at Eagle Park. Eagle Park was a charity camp on the south shore of Lake Nipissing that had once served handicapped kids and wards of Children’s Aid; Jerry had been out there directing a successful search for a missing twelve-year-old. The camp had closed long ago, after a complicated financial scandal—a kerfuffle, as Jerry would call it. On top of the gate, a wrought-iron eagle flexed its iron talons, black wings spread as if about to take off.

Cardinal turned his mind back to the files. His Toronto leads had dried up. Beltran’s last known address proved to be a dead end; he had pulled a midnight flit, leaving the landlord holding the bag for six months’ rent on a huge apartment in the Manulife Centre. Cardinal had even called Beltran’s former neighbours, none of whom had anything useful to add. Beltran had been an unexceptional neighbour—wished you good day in the elevator, kept to himself and didn’t cause trouble.

Cardinal opened another of Delorme’s files. One of the many pleasures of working with Delorme was that her reports were both coherent and detailed. But even with her copious notes from the hospital, and the anthropologist, and the Crisis Centre, there was nothing he could sink his teeth into. Nothing that told him where Raymond Beltran might be—or Terri Tait, for that matter.

Cardinal sifted through Delorme’s reports once more. Even when she came up empty, as she had at the Crisis Centre, she was conscientious about writing it up. She had even filed the drawing she had taken from Terri’s room.

Cardinal wasn’t sure about Terri Tait’s talent as a struggling actress, but she showed considerable aptitude for drawing. The feathers on the bird were all nicely highlighted, and the arch of the wings, just so, gave the image a certain—

Cardinal looked over at the far wall, at the picture of Jerry Commanda at Eagle Park. He snatched up the drawing and held it next to the photograph.

Two seconds later, he was in Chouinard’s office.

The detective sergeant lined up the drawing with the photograph on his desk. Cardinal watched his eyes swing back and forth from one to the other. Chouinard tapped on the desk with his pen as he considered. Finally, he said, “They’re the same. I’d say this means she was there. The question then becomes, what do we do about it?”

“Eagle Park had two camps on the lake. One on the south shore and one up by the French River. They both have those gates with the eagle on top.”

“We don’t have enough people to send to both. Which one do you think is more likely?”

“The south shore is closer to where Tilley and Guthrie were found. On the other hand, the north shore is closer to where they ripped off the Viking Riders. It could be either one.”

“And neither is in our jurisdiction.” Chouinard paused in thought, his pen beating a rat-tat-tat on the desk. “All right. You take the south shore. But you take Alan Clegg with you.”

“Delorme should be in on this.”

“She’s out visiting OPP, closer to the French River. That’s their territory, anyway. She can head out there with Jerry Commanda. I’ll pull together a swat team here. Whichever one of you calls in first with pay dirt, we’ll be ready.”