Crime Machine

36

CARDINAL WAS NOT MUCH GIVEN to parties or celebrations. But police work rarely went better than it had gone this day, so when Donna came round that night with a bottle of champagne in one hand and her notebook in the other, he was uncharacteristically effusive.

They clinked glasses and he sat in the recliner and she sat on the end of the couch, pen poised above her notebook. She wanted to use a recording device but didn’t protest when he said no. “Learning shorthand,” she said, “is my one undeniable achievement in life.”

Cardinal related the day’s events, beginning with his search through the ancient Scriver file. “It’s amazing,” he said. “When you get right down to it, a good file is a cop’s best friend. Routine interview, forty years ago, but the guy who did that interview made a careful note of a name. Completely peripheral—the son’s girlfriend’s brother, for God’s sake, you can’t get much more peripheral than that—and there it is, waiting for me forty years later.”

“But it was you who thought there might be a connection,” Donna said. “Let’s not be too modest here.”

Cardinal shrugged. “The name Winston rang a bell, that’s all.” He sat up and pulled the champagne from the ice bucket and filled her glass. “Champagne in the middle of the week. I can’t believe I’m this decadent.”

It was making him light-headed, not his usual response to alcohol. Or perhaps it had more to do with this extremely attractive woman and her serious grey eyes. He told her about the new sonar, about the diver sinking into the black water, and about everything else, right up to the matching photographs. Then he sat back and said, “I never talk about my cases. I feel like a blabbermouth.”

“But you’re hardly saying anything at all.” She tipped her head back in a silent laugh, exposing that pale throat, the perfect sculpture of neck and collarbone.

The phone rang and Cardinal talked to Jerry Commanda for a few minutes, about their plan for the next day. “I got your list of the fur business lifers,” Jerry said. “You want some help interviewing them? Could generate a lead on where the guy’s holed up. Of course, if he has any sense, he’ll be long gone by now.”

“I don’t think so,” Cardinal said. “I think he has unfinished business here. He killed Mendelsohn, and he may have come after an American reporter who’s been covering the fur business and the Bastovs for a couple of years.”

He was looking at Donna as he spoke. She came over and knelt beside his chair and started undoing the buttons of his shirt.

Jerry asked if the reporter was getting extra protection.

“I’m working on that.” The heat of her fingers on his skin, undoing his belt. He grabbed her hand and held it while he finished with Jerry. “Listen, tomorrow I’m going to have the FBI’s complete file. It should arrive before ten. I’ll be taking a quick look at that and then I’m heading out to Lloyd Kreeger’s place. He’s the oldest guy on our list.”

Jerry agreed to assign some of the others to OPP detectives and they would confer again in the afternoon.

“What list?” Donna said when he hung up. She was still kneeling in front of him, hands on his thighs. “Who’s Lloyd Kreeger?”

“Lloyd Kreeger is the oldest living man in the fur industry, at least around here. Also the richest. We’ve got a list of old-timers in the business who might recognize the airport security photo of our suspect. Until we get a direct lead on this guy’s whereabouts, it’s back to plod, plod, plod.”

“You have a photo of your suspect and you weren’t going to show me?”

“Didn’t even think of it, I got so excited about Scriver. We even have a name now. I can show you, but you can’t have a copy and you can’t tell anybody.”

“No, that’s all right. Show me when you feel comfortable with it. Right now I’d rather just undo this belt.”

Later, when she was putting on her clothes, Cardinal asked her to stay. “Look, the guy may have come after you before. He could try again.”

“He chopped up a couple of people, he killed a cop and that ATM kid—do you honestly believe he’s still in the area?”

“The OPP doesn’t. But I think he might be.”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, but you also thought he was Russian mafiya.”

“Touché.” She zipped up her jeans and pulled on her sweater.

“Really, Donna—you might not be safe out there.”

“All right, all right. Enough already.” A glint of anger in those grey eyes. “Sorry,” she said, and her face softened. “I’ve had bad experiences with people looking after me. I guess I overreact. Don’t get up. What are you doing?”

“I’m walking you to your car.” Cardinal pulled on his pants and a sweater. “And don’t overreact.”

In the morning, Cardinal had Mendelsohn’s copy of the FBI file spread out on the meeting room table next to the new copy that had just arrived. Using both hands, he was turning over pages one by one, old file to the left, new file to the right.

Also open on the desk, Mendelsohn’s tiny notebook. He had flipped through it again and found a note that he let linger in the back of his mind as he scanned the FBI files. Simultaneous crimes, the note said, from major to petty. Check. THINK! Mendelsohn’s notes were in the same emphatic voice as his speech, and Cardinal had a vivid image of the man in Morgan’s Chop House, explaining, italicizing, gesturing with his fork.

Mendelsohn was right about the simultaneous crimes, of course. They knew the ATM robberies were committed by Winston’s young associate. But other crimes? Maybe in New York, but right now in Algonquin Bay there was nothing. As far as they knew.

Cardinal paused, a hand on either file. Under both hands a handwritten note scrawled across an otherwise blank page: Begelman—photos to ViCap.

Under his left hand, a file of some fifteen hundred pages. Under his right hand, the same thing—plus a manila envelope. He lifted it out from under the stack and opened it and pulled out scans of original photos. The scans were excellent, the U.S. federal government being significantly better funded than a small Ontario police department. Even the captions at the bottom of each one were sharp.

Some were crime scene photos, courtesy of the NYPD. Nine-mil casings, headless torso, shattered computer screen. Cardinal flipped through these quickly. Then he came to a picture of a ramshackle old house partly hidden by trees, the caption Zabriskie Farm. Search following phone tip.

Cardinal read the note on the search. They were looking for a young man named Jack, who according to the anonymous caller lived at the Zabriskie farm and seemed to know a lot about the Elmira murders. The place was occupied by a bunch of young people, most of them students at the state university located a few miles up the Hudson. Jack had come to the farm after meeting one of the students in a local bar. He’d only stayed two days, and they were glad to see him go. Photos of his room showed a bare mattress, a bare floor, a dog-eared copy of The Art of War.

There were pictures of the residents, three on the porch steps, another couple in the kitchen. Cardinal could picture the police technique. They had no reason to arrest these people, but they wanted a record—faces to go with names—so they had taken the pictures in a casual way. It was something cops did for the sake of a complete file. There were two young women and two boys, early to mid-twenties all of them, and none looked like the vague description from the anonymous call: eighteen-year-old white male, five-ten, short hair. But Cardinal returned to the photo of the group on the porch and looked closer. He went very still and held on to it for a long time.

As far as Lise Delorme was concerned, Cardinal was behaving oddly. They had been scheduled to drive out to the Kreeger place, but instead of leaving together, he had told her to pick him up at the Highlands Lodge; he had to go out there and interview the manager again for some reason. It would have made more sense for them to just stop on the way, but he didn’t want to hear about it.

So here she was parked in the Highlands parking lot, watching the skiers riding the hoist to the top of the escarpment. They were dressed in all manner of the latest gear, some even wearing balaclavas. The temperature was dropping and showed no sign of doing anything else for the rest of the day. Storm clouds were cascading over the hills, heading for Parry Sound, according to the radio.

When Cardinal finally emerged, he pointed to his red Camry. Delorme got out and locked the unmarked. She went over to the Camry and opened the door. “Shouldn’t we use the company car?”

“Mine’s got better snow tires.”

She got in and he had the car moving before she had the belt done up. He took a right on Sutton, merged onto the highway and headed north. She was curious about his stop at the Highlands, and normally she wouldn’t have thought twice about asking him. But Cardinal didn’t speak or even look at her, and his mouth was set in a hard line. She was fed up lately with trying to pry answers out of him, so she made an inner vow to say exactly nothing unless spoken to.

They passed the first subdivisions, and then Trout Lake on the right.

“It’s getting so dark,” Delorme said, and then remembered she had meant to stay silent.

Cardinal didn’t respond. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or worried. He was utterly transparent about small things; whenever he was irritated or impatient, she knew instantly. But it was precisely when he was feeling the most that he became most unreadable. All those times his wife had been admitted to hospital, you never would have known from his day-today behaviour. A little quieter maybe, nothing more than that.

The only exception was when his wife had died. Even a stoic like Cardinal couldn’t keep that to himself, and it had been heartbreaking to watch. He continued working right through his grief, of course, which was his way of dealing with it. Delorme thought she would have done the same thing. No, she corrected herself, I would have tried to do the same thing.

They drove out past Island Road, out past Clayton Crossroads, until they were well beyond the built-up areas. The forest closed in around the highway, the rock cuts glistened, ridged with snow. A uniform greyness descended, grew darker and seemed to grip the road. Storm.

“This is looking serious,” Delorme said. “I thought it was supposed to hit Parry Sound, not us.” Weather didn’t usually make her nervous, but the onset was sudden, the change in light dramatic.

Cardinal’s expression, or his lack of one, did not change and he did not speak. He kept right at the speed limit, slowing slightly and without comment when it began to snow. The first flakes were large, swaying leaflike as they fell. But as the colder temperature took hold, the flakes got smaller, the wind blowing them into fine slanting lines.

Delorme had never been to Black Lake, had never even heard of it before that morning. She had googled it and found it to be little more than a black dot surrounded by white, a full stop on an empty page. Except the page was actually forest.

She didn’t know how Cardinal even saw the sign, which was small and obscured by clinging snow, but he turned off the highway onto a road that was deeply rutted under the snow.

“Four-by-four territory,” she said, and put a hand on the dash.

“Lots of people come out here,” Cardinal said. “Popular area with hunters.”

“Not in this weather.”

The car dipped and jounced and Cardinal had to slow to a crawl. The snow was falling so thick and fine, it was almost like looking into fog.

Cardinal’s phone rang and he unzipped his coat to reach inside. He checked the readout, but they hit a bump and he had to grab the wheel. “It’s Chouinard. You take it.”

“Where are you?” Chouinard said. “Where’s Cardinal? Why aren’t you on radio?”

“We’re in John’s car, heading out to Black Lake.”

“That’s unfortunate—you’re going to miss the big show. Suspect’s been sighted on 124, big fur farm down there. OPP SWAT team should be hitting it in about fifteen minutes.”

“Damn,” Delorme said. “We’d never make it. Hold on a sec.” She told Cardinal what was going on, asked him what he wanted to do.

“We’re out here now, we may as well interview Kreeger. If he knows Winston from way back, it could be useful in court.”

Delorme related this to Chouinard.

“Stick with it,” the D.S. told her. “Oh, and keep an eye out—we got a report on a couple of lost hunters. Tony and Gary Burwell. Last the family heard, they thought they were near Black Lake, but they’re not sure. I thought everybody had GPS these days, but apparently not. No way we can mount a search party in this weather. How’s the driving?”

“It’s shit.”

“I figured.”

Delorme closed the phone and dropped it into Cardinal’s outside pocket. “D.S. says to keep an eye out for a couple of lost hunters.”

“Actually, I’m thinking we should head back. Clearly the weatherman was stoned when he called this one.”

“If you can find somewhere to turn around.”

He steered them slightly toward the right then hard left and came to a stop.

“Did you hear that?” Delorme said.

He paused with his hand on the shift. Delorme rolled down her window a couple of inches. Snow swirled in. The cry came again, a man’s voice. Distant enough to be faint, close enough for them to hear the distortion of panic.

“That way,” Cardinal said, indicating west, the forest.

“I hope you have snowshoes in the trunk.”

“I don’t.”