By the Time You Read This

14

ALGONQUIN BAY HAS A lot of churches, and some of them are quite attractive, but St. Hilda’s Catholic Church is not one of them. A ghastly red brick structure on Sumner Street, St. Hilda’s has not been improved by the addition of a corrugated tin roof that is painted, unconvincingly, to look like weathered copper. Still, it is one of the benefits of the city’s ever-shrinking congregations that the church lots provide acres of free parking.

Cardinal parked in St. Hilda’s shadow and walked along Sedgewick Street. This area was known as a “mixed” neighbourhood, meaning among its shabby bungalows and bony-looking duplexes you could find elementary school teachers, young cops or the likes of Connor Plaskett.

Connor Plaskett had conceived an interest in glue sniffing while still in short pants. Later on he developed an affection for marijuana and alcohol in all its forms, although bottles of cheap port became a favourite, perhaps because of the sugar content. At one point, following a nasty altercation with a city bus, he had seen the light and joined AA.

He got sober, he started a business in Web design, he got married. His business grew to the point where he could support his new young wife and child quite comfortably. Then the Web bubble burst, he rapidly went broke and alcohol provided a ready anaesthetic.

Plaskett was coming out of a two-week bender when he took it into his head to rob a local convenience store. And he did it with the help of a gun. He had the presence of mind to take the videotape out of the security system, not realizing that the tape he took away with him was a dummy set up for precisely this purpose, so that the prospective thief would not take the tape that mattered.

So it was that Connor Plaskett appeared on the six o’clock news demanding that the teenager behind the counter hand over all the day’s receipts.

It was one of the easiest cases that Cardinal had ever had to clear.

Plaskett was then unlucky in his prosecutor and his judge, not to mention his wife. He was sent up for five years, and while he was away, his wife discovered that she had in fact been lesbian all her life and left him (taking the child with her) for a woman who climbed hydro poles for a living.

Plaskett took it badly, contriving while in prison to become re-addicted to old substances and even to add some new ones. He emerged after serving his full five-year sentence in worse shape than he had begun it.

Shortly after, Plaskett had accosted Cardinal one night outside the Chinook Tavern. Cardinal had just finished arresting someone else entirely—someone he could not now even recall—when Plaskett came reeling out of the tavern and recognized Cardinal.

“Fucker,” he had said, spraying spit and beer fumes into the cool night air. “Motherfucker. You totally destroyed my life.”

“No, Connor,” Cardinal had said. “I think you deserve the credit for that.”

“I had a family before you came along. I’m gonna fix you good.”

Plaskett had staggered over and taken a pathetic swing at Cardinal before collapsing right there in the middle of the parking lot. Cardinal had taken his car keys off him, pushed him into the back seat of his clapped-out pickup and shut the door, dropping the keys off with the Chinook bartender.

Number 164 was a tiny brown and white bungalow that leaned noticeably into the wind, as if it too were sniffing intoxicants. Number 164B turned out to be the door to the concrete block addition that had been cemented onto the house in a misguided attempt at improvement.

Cardinal pressed the bell but heard nothing from inside. He rapped on the door, onto which a picture of a Christmas wreath had been stencilled some years before.

A harsh voice, possibly female, answered, “Just a minute!” This was followed by a crash, as of a tea tray falling from a great height, and a series of unimaginative curses.

Slattern, although well within his vocabulary, was not a word that occurred frequently to Cardinal. But it certainly did when the door opened.

The woman looked as if she had been rolled to this address across a field of mud and broken glass some months before and had not yet had a chance to clean herself up. Her eyes were red, her knuckles scabbed, her hair an unnerving tangle and possible wildlife habitat.

“Whaddaya want?” A lot of that broken glass had got into her voice.

“I’m looking for Connor Plaskett.”

“Good,” she said. “So am I.”

She opened the door, and Cardinal stepped into what had apparently been intended to be a kitchen but looked like a rag-and-bone shop.

“Excuse the mess,” she said. “Got no cupboards.”

In the murky light that slipped through the tiny window Cardinal could make out a sink against one wall, a hot plate sitting atop a half-size fridge, and some apple crates that formed makeshift cupboards which moisture and overuse had reduced to wreckage.

Cardinal followed the woman into the next room, which was even murkier. She sat on an unmade sofa bed so low that her chin was barely above her knees. Cardinal leaned against the door frame. The place stank of old cigarette smoke and wet carpet.

“Where’s Connor?” he asked.

“Damned if I know. Cigarette?”

“No, thanks. What’s your relationship to him?”

“Fuck-buddy.” Seeing his look, she gave a snort and said, “What didja think? Financial adviser?”

“And you don’t know where he is right now?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“Well, if you don’t know, I suspect his parole officer doesn’t know either, and that would put Connor in breach.”

“Really,” the woman said. After many tries she had finally got her lighter to work and was sucking avidly on a DuMaurier. She released a stream of smoke in Cardinal’s direction. “Bummer. Whaddaya want him for?”

“It’s in connection to a recent death.”

“Connor couldn’t kill anybody. He can barely tie his boots.”

The hellish surroundings were eloquent testimony to that. While it might have made a reasonable lair for someone capable of stalking a woman and murdering her, it didn’t look the home of someone who could get it together to buy a card, type it out and mail it from Mattawa or Sturgeon Falls.

But Plaskett’s words rang anew in Cardinal’s ears: I’m gonna fix you.

“Where does Connor hang out these days?” Cardinal said. “I’m going to need addresses.”

“Christ, Connor doesn’t go nowhere—that’s what’s so weird. He sits in front of that TV watching football all day and all night. I can’t get him to do a damn thing. I’m going to have a beer. You probably don’t want one.”

“No, thank you.”

She went to the fridge and pulled out a can of Molson Canadian. She popped the top and drank most of it in one go. When she went to sit back down on the bed, she misjudged and knocked over an end table, sending the phone clattering to the floor. She squinted at it for a few moments as if trying to recall its name.

“That reminds me,” she said finally. “Had a funny phone conversation last night.”

“Who with?”

“Christ, I don’t know. I didn’t know the guy. Said he was a friend of Russell McQuaig, who’s like a drinking buddy of Connor’s, and Russell tole him to call. Him and Connor take off to Toronto every now and again. Hit the big lights, you know. Personally, I couldn’t give a shit about Toronto. Too dirty. Anyways, this guy tried to tell me that Connor wasn’t coming back.”

“What do you mean, not coming back? He took off to Toronto and some stranger called you to say he wasn’t coming back?”

“Yeah. I think so. Something like that.” She rubbed at her filthy hair. “Actually, now that I think of it, he even tried to tell me Connor was dead. Yeah.”

“You seem to be taking it pretty well.”

“Well, yeah, ‘cause like I didn’t know this guy from Adam. Why should I believe him? And second of all, if Connor was dead, the police and that would have had to call me, right? The hospital or whatever. They would’ve had to call me and like notify the next of kin.”

“‘Fuck-buddy’ isn’t generally recognized as next of kin,” Cardinal said. “They would have called a blood relative first, or even his former wife, before they would call you. A hospital might not even know of your existence.”

“Well, I don’t know.” She brushed a web of hair away from her face as if it were fog. “You think Connor’s dead?”

“I don’t know,” Cardinal said. “It should be easy enough to find out.”

“Shit, I hope he’s not dead,” the woman said. She tipped her head back and poured the last of her beer down her throat. She crushed the can and tried to stifle a belch. “I really couldn’t face moving again.”