Blackfly Season

6

CATHERINE CARDINAL HAD PACKED HER cameras several times over the past few days, only to unpack them, check the lenses and batteries, and pack them again. But when the rented minivan with its load of student shutterbugs honked outside the house early that morning, she was still folding T-shirts and zipping up toiletries and searching in the closet and under the bed for extra shoes.

Cardinal answered the door. The woman on the porch was tall, maybe forty, not exactly pretty, but she looked smart, and Cardinal always found that attractive.

“I just thought I’d see if Catherine needed any help,” she said.

“I think she’s got everything under control. It’ll just be a minute.”

“My name’s Christine Nadeau,” the woman said, offering her hand to shake. “This is the third course I’ve taken with your wife. Do you have any idea what a great teacher she is?”

“I have heard that before. But thanks for telling me.”

“Everybody’s very excited about this trip.”

“Good. So is Catherine.”

Christine Nadeau went back to wait in the van, and Cardinal found Catherine zipping up her carry-on in the bedroom. Her face was flushed, and she looked short of breath. Should I say something?

“I’m so disorganized,” Catherine said. She was shoving loose change and bills into her jeans pocket as Cardinal hauled the suitcase to the front room. “You’d think I’d learn by now.”

“You’re not disorganized. You were just focused on making sure your camera gear was in shape.”

“I’m not going to check it again,” Catherine said. “It’s a supreme act of will, but I’m not going to check it again.”

She put on a khaki fisherman’s vest. Even on Catherine it was perfectly hideous, but it had thousands of pockets for film, flash, batteries, pens, labels and filters—the myriad doodads of the serious photographer.

“Did you pack your medication?” Cardinal said. He had to. It wasn’t in him to let her leave town and not ask this.

Catherine turned her back on him and put on a light coat over the vest. A slim black coat. It had a hood with a red lining that gave off echoes of fairy tales.

“Did you hear me, sweetheart?”

“Yes, John, I heard you. Yes, I packed my medication. Thank you so much for reminding me that I can’t be trusted to so much as cross the road without supervision.”

“All right. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Here I am excited about a big project and you just have to rain on my parade, don’t you.”

“Don’t overreact, honey. I’m glad you’re taking the trip. You should know by now—after twenty-five years, or however long it’s been—I’m a worrywart. Always have been, always will be. Have a good time, and I’ll see you when you get back.”

Catherine hauled her suitcase outside without another word. Cardinal watched her get into the van, an ache in his chest. I shouldn’t have said anything.

He was in the kitchen clearing away the breakfast things when Catherine rushed back in. She stopped in the kitchen doorway and took a deep breath.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a bitch. It’s just sometimes, once in a while—once in a great while—I actually imagine I’m normal. I actually fantasize that I can do all the things normal people do without a second thought, and why should anyone worry about it. It’s hard for me to remember I have this problem. It’s painful to be reminded of it.”

“I’m sorry if I brought you down,” Cardinal said. “Old habits …”

Catherine came closer, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

“You worry too much.”

A little later, Cardinal and Delorme drove up to St. Francis Hospital. It wasn’t actually called St. Francis any more, but Cardinal still thought of it that way. Algonquin Bay’s City Hospital consisted of two brick boxes that used to be two separate hospitals until the provincial government decided they would be better off united in holy parsimony. The smaller one, the former St. Francis, sits halfway up a hill, overlooking École Secondaire Algonquin and the grubby cinders of the CNR tracks. It is this building that houses the hospital’s psychiatric ward. On any given day, the half-dozen or so patients who wander its halls consist of attempted suicides, drug overdoses or emotionally symphonic teenagers—patients not deemed crazy enough or long-term enough for residence at the local Ontario Psychiatric Hospital, where Catherine went to recover from the worst of her depressions.

Cardinal and Delorme were here to check in on Jane Doe, but Cardinal was having trouble focusing just now, the sight of a hospital having thrown his mind back upon Catherine.

Perhaps there was no cause for concern. Perhaps Catherine’s excitement about her trip was just that: excitement. She hadn’t flown off on any flights of fancy; she’d made no grand announcements of omnipotence, unveiled no cosmic plans for changing the nature of reality as we know it. Perhaps it really was just girlish excitement about going to the big city on a photographic project. In a normal woman, it would have been no cause for concern. But in Catherine …

Cardinal and Delorme took the elevator to the third floor, the psychiatric wing. They had arranged to meet a neuropsychologist who had been brought in to try to help their mysterious redhead recover her memory. City Hospital did not have a neuropsychologist on staff. There was only one in the entire city, and he was there on loan, teaching a course at Northern University’s school of nursing. Dr. Garth Paley.

If I ever need a shrink, Cardinal thought as Dr. Paley introduced himself, I want one who looks just like this guy. Paley was dressed in a tweed jacket and jeans, which gave him the look of a man who could be comfortable in the library or in the bar. Although he was not older than mid-fifties, he had grandfatherly white hair and a silvery beard. His brows were dark, shadowing his eyes in a way that gave them a perceptive, almost prehensile, look. A man who could understand and empathize before you even said anything. Some people are just perfectly suited to their jobs; Cardinal often wished he were one.

“I appreciate your letting me know you were coming up to see my Jane Doe,” Dr. Paley told them. “Please sit.”

The office they were in might have been anywhere. It had the usual computer, the usual metal bookshelves bolted to the wall. It was an uncomfortable place and didn’t suit Dr. Paley at all.

“A couple of things you should know before you talk to her,” he said. “First off, you mentioned on the phone, Detective, that you were hoping her amnesia was temporary. The short answer is, it isn’t amnesia.” Dr. Paley grinned at them, his cheeks suddenly rosy. Santa Claus as a youngish man.

“I don’t understand,” Cardinal said. “She doesn’t remember who she is or where she’s from …”

Dr. Paley raised a manicured finger. “That isn’t amnesia. It’s post-traumatic confusion. We don’t know what the mechanism is, but basically when the brain receives a jolt it’s as if all the pathways get scrambled and information doesn’t flow the way it normally does. She hasn’t really forgotten who she is, she just can’t retrieve it.”

“She will be able to, though, right?” Delorme said. “She will remember eventually?”

“Oh, yes. Dr. Schaff assures me that the actual brain damage is minimal. We can expect normal affect to return probably in a week, maybe three at the most. And by then she should have pretty much a continuous autobiography, too.”

“And what about the crime itself? Getting shot?”

“That she will never remember.”

“Can’t blame her,” Delorme muttered. “For sure, it must have been pretty horrific.”

“That’s not why,” Dr. Paley said. “She’s not repressing the memory—the information just isn’t there. People make the mistake of thinking memory is like a videotape. It isn’t. It’s not a recording of what happened. Two sets of encoding have to occur before an event is stored in long-term memory. First, information has to be processed by the brain in a way that makes it comprehensible. Then, it varies, but in about twenty minutes, half an hour, the information gets encoded into long-term memory—different location in the brain, different recovery system. If some trauma shocks the brain before this happens, it will be as if the event itself and everything within about a half-hour on either side of it never happened.”

Cardinal sagged. “So we’re not going to get any info out of her?”

“Afraid not.”

“Can’t you use hypnosis?”

“God forbid. Hypnosis has been thoroughly and completely discredited. You remember all those child abuse witch hunts? Satanic ritual abuse? Daycare centres that were the scene of orgies? There’s never been any corroborative evidence for any of it. Furthermore, the interview records show that those bits that weren’t infantile fantasy on the part of the children were memories put there inadvertently by overzealous police, prosecutors and social workers. Same with sodium amytal. You’ll get what a patient thinks you want to hear, you won’t get the truth. Don’t worry. You’ll get lots out of this young woman eventually. Just not a direct memory of who shot her and where. Think of it like a computer. You know what happens if you’re typing something up in your word processor and there’s a power failure before you save it?”

“Yes,” Delorme said. “Unfortunately.”

“It’s a pretty exact analogy. And I want to caution you before you talk to her. Please note my words, now. People in a confused state are extremely suggestible. If you go in there and suggest maybe her brother shot her, she’ll start ‘remembering’ that her brother shot her. So, please—for the good of this young woman as well as for the good of your case—do not make any suggestions to her as to how she might have come to be shot, or even how she might have come to be in Algonquin Bay. If you hint that maybe she was going to school here, something like that, she’ll start remembering that she was going to school here. That’s why I videotape all my interactions with her; I want people to know that her memories are hers, not mine.”

“False memories are the last thing we want,” Cardinal said. “But we need to find out who might be after her.”

“I hope you do. Just don’t ask her.”

“Even without suggesting an answer?”

“You’ll only slow her progress. She’ll try and try to remember, and it’ll upset her, and that’s only going to set her back.”

Dr. Paley picked up a mug with a picture of a fat tabby on it. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve just made some tea. Will you have some? Or coffee? It’s pretty awful stuff, I’m afraid.”

Cardinal and Delorme demurred.

“You know what it’s like,” Dr. Paley continued, “when you’re trying to remember a name or a movie title that’s just on the tip of your tongue? You try and you try and you can’t do it. Then half an hour later, when you’re not trying, it comes to you.”

“So what are you going to do for her?” Delorme said. “Just keep her in bed for three weeks?”

“No, we’ll let her have the run of the ward when she wants. I go at things sort of sideways. I’ll be giving our young friend cues of various sorts. Various stimuli—music, images, smells—that might provoke a response. Well, tell you what, why don’t you go in and introduce yourselves? She won’t remember you from the other day, Detective, but maybe you can establish some kind of rapport. Why don’t you meet me in the staff lounge when you’re done? It’s just down the hall on the right, past her room. I’ll have something to show you.”

Cardinal and Delorme went down the hall. The door to the girl’s room was manned by a uniformed cop named Quigley. Cardinal was going to pass by with a nod, but Quigley was clearly relieved to have some company.

“No one’s come to visit,” he said. “Except Dr. Paley. I think she’s getting a bit better, though.”

“Has she been out of her room yet?”

“Nope. But they leave the door open most of the time. I see her getting up and staring out the window. What do I do if she decides she wants to wander around, visit other patients?”

“Keep track of anyone she visits. And especially keep an eye out for visitors. No one gets in to see her without talking to me or Delorme first. You make them wait right here. Anyone hanging around in a suspicious manner, you check ’em out and let us know right away.”

“Will do,” Quigley said. “Seems like a nice kid.”

She looked small and frail lying against the pillow. Her hair was a red blaze against the white of the bed, her skin, except for the freckles, almost matching the sheets. The bandage on her temple was a miniature pale flag. She stared at Cardinal with no sign of recognition, which was unnerving even though he had been expecting it.

“We met a few days ago,” he said. “I’m Detective Cardinal. But here’s someone you haven’t met—my partner, Lise Delorme.”

The girl smiled shyly as Delorme shook her hand.

There was a pause, during which Cardinal became aware that he was in an awkward position. If he couldn’t ask her questions relating to her injury, he didn’t know what he was doing there.

“How’s your head, after your operation?” Delorme asked. “You must have one nasty headache.”

“My head?” The girl touched her hair absently, fingers fluttering round the bandage. “It’s actually not too bad.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Maybe when you’re doing better, I can take you to a good stylist. See what she can do with that shaved patch.”

“That would be nice. What’s your name again?”

“Lise.”

“Lise.”

The young woman looked out the window. Down the hill, a train loaded with oil tankers rolled lazily past the school.

“You know what I can’t understand? I can’t understand why I remember some things and not others. Why do I know what a stylist does, when I can’t remember my own name? Why do I remember how to speak, how to tie my shoe, but not where I’m from? How come I can’t remember any of the people I meet?”

“You’ll have to ask Dr. Paley that one,” Cardinal said. He noted the irritation in her voice. The rise in her emotional temperature, slight though it was, seemed a harbinger of recovery.

“I’m afraid to ask anybody anything,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve already asked it nine times and people will hate me.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Delorme said. “Dr. Paley only wants to help you. So do we.”

“What I really want to do is get out of here. It’s boring lying in bed all day.”

“It’s not safe for you to go out yet. You might be seen by the person who tried to kill you.”

“Someone shot me. I keep forgetting.”

Cardinal and Delorme looked at one another.

“I don’t feel like I’m the kind of person people would want to shoot. Isn’t it possible that it was just an accident?”

Cardinal shook his head. “You were shot from very close range. If it was an accident, why didn’t anyone go for help?”

The pale fingers fluttered over the bandage. “I just can’t …” Her voice trailed off and the green eyes filled.

“Look at it this way,” Cardinal said. “You’re feeling bored, bewildered by your memory problems and nervous about asking questions. A few days ago you weren’t feeling anything. I’d say things are looking up.”

“You’re safe here,” Delorme said. “There’s a huge cop guarding your door, and we’re going to do everything we can to catch the person that did this to you.”

“Thank you.”

“We’d better go,” Cardinal said. “Dr. Paley wants to talk to us again.”

“He seems very optimistic,” Delorme said to the young woman, “so try not to worry too much.”

“How can I?” the girl said, and smiled wanly. “I can’t remember what I’m supposed to worry about.”

Dr. Paley was waiting for them in the staff lounge down the hall. There was a fridge, a microwave and a few plastic chairs around a table. The blue screen of a combination TV and VCR glowed high up on a shelf. Dr. Paley slipped a videotape into it and sat down beside them with a remote in his hand. He pointed it at the screen and the VCR began to whirr.

“I won’t play you the whole thing,” he said. “The way I went about this, I told her I was an avid shutterbug—true, by the way—and I wanted to show her some of my favourite photographs. They’re scenes from around Algonquin Bay—places any local person would recognize. I got my wife and kids to pose, so the pictures wouldn’t seem so obvious as memory cues.”

“How will we know which one she’s looking at?”

Dr. Paley clicked the remote and froze the image that appeared. They were looking at a wide-angle shot that included both him and Red, with the angle favouring the young woman. In the upper left-hand corner was a smaller image of the doctor’s daughter in a red snowsuit, standing in front of the Gateway to the North sign.

“I use a video set-up with picture-in-picture capability. You see what she’s seeing in the little box. You’ll notice she has no particular reaction to the Gateway to the North arch.”

He clicked the remote again. Onscreen, Red made a polite comment, inquiring about the child’s age.

The Gateway sign morphed into an image of the cathedral.

“Same again, you see?” Dr. Paley pointed to his patient. “She’s polite. Kind-hearted, too, asking about the kids and so on. But nothing in her reaction indicates that she recognizes the church.”

Onscreen, the girl smiled. The insert showed a triumphant six-year-old hoisting a fish he had just caught off the government dock, a local landmark. The white bulk of the Chippewa Princess, a cruise boat, loomed in the background.

“No change, right?”

“These are certainly the places you think of when you think of Algonquin Bay,” Cardinal said. “But her not recognizing them doesn’t mean she isn’t from here, right? It may just mean her memory isn’t budging for now.”

“Correct,” Dr. Paley said. “But watch what happens coming up.” He hit fast-forward and the image smeared and leaned. They waited a couple of minutes while he kept his eye on the numbers that clicked round on the bottom of the screen. The tape halted with a clunk. “Here we are. I’m showing her my photographic vista of Beaufort Hill.”

“Yes, there’s the old fire tower,” Delorme said. A tiny dirt road that led up to it curved away from a line of hydro pylons below, forming an elongated Y.

“She doesn’t say anything, you notice, but look at the crease between her brows. She lifts her hand and starts to speak …”

The insert suddenly went snowy and there was a loud hiss—almost a roar—of static. The girl’s eyes went as round as two zeroes, and her hand flew to her mouth.

“What is it?” Dr. Paley asked onscreen. “What’s wrong?”

The girl’s face went blank, the horror gone.

Dr. Paley asked her again what was wrong.

“Nothing,” the young woman said. “I mean, I don’t know. I felt scared all of a sudden.”

“Note the return of affect,” Dr. Paley said to Cardinal and Delorme. “A good sign.”

“What startled her?” Delorme said.

“There was a short in the jumper cable and it caused that awful spray of static that made her jump out of her skin. But before that, I think she was about to recognize Beaufort Hill, or at least say something about it. So it’s not clear whether her fright reaction is to Beaufort Hill or just to the sudden noise. As you can see, I didn’t get anything else out of her.”

Onscreen, Dr. Paley gently tried to get the girl to say what had scared her.

“I don’t know,” she said again. “I just felt this sudden … I don’t know.”

“Was it the noise that frightened you?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

“Was there something about the picture? The picture of the hill? Could you look at it again?”

“I don’t know …”

“I promise it won’t make that noise this time. I’ll hold the cable.”

“I guess …”

The insert of Beaufort Hill appeared again. The girl’s expression changed only slightly this time, to one of concentration. Then she shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t know what made me jump like that.”

Dr. Paley hit the pause button. “I wrapped it up a few minutes after that. It’s probably not much use to you, but I wanted you to see it, if only to give you an idea of how gently this sort of recovery has to proceed.”

“Is it possible that hill is where she got shot?” Delorme asked.

“Very unlikely. As I said, she won’t remember anything about that—at least not anything that occurred within half an hour before or after. If she was held somewhere first, or if she was fleeing for a time, that may come back, but not the memory of the shooting itself.”

“So it’s possible something happened there,” Cardinal said.

“Oh, yes. Possibly something leading up to the trauma. Possibly something when she regained consciousness. If so, we can expect it to come back to her at a later date. We just have to be patient.”