The Delicate Storm

24

THE REST OF THE DAY was given over to the dreariness that is contemporary travel. First there was the rainy drive out to Dorval airport. Then there was a long wait made worse by Air Canada’s refusal to impart any information beyond “icy conditions in Ontario.” They both pulled out their cellphones. Cardinal called Musgrave.

“Here’s something for you to file under certifiable facts,” Musgrave said. “Leon Petrucci did not order your man to be killed, and Leon Petrucci didn’t order Paul Bressard to feed him to the bears, and Leon Petrucci didn’t write that note.”

“Why not?”

“Because Leon Petrucci is dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yes. Leon Petrucci is thoroughly, completely, totally dead. He had another operation down at Toronto General two months ago, and he fell into a coma and never woke up. He died a week ago last Tuesday—long before your victim showed up in Algonquin Bay.”

“How come it wasn’t in the papers?”

“It will be. He wasn’t registered under his real name.”

“You’re sure about all this?”

“Cardinal, I work for the RCMP. Organized crime is what we do. Whoever killed Miles Shackley, believe me, it wasn’t Leon Petrucci. And while we’re on the subject of inter-agency co-operation, I’d like to thank you for letting me know Squier quit,” Musgrave said. “Nothing like keeping me up to the minute.”

“Sorry. Really, there hasn’t been a chance. You know, Squier actually turned out to be helpful in the end.”

“By accident, no doubt. I have to tell you, though, my man at CSIS tells me the pressure came from very high up. Yesterday morning they get a visit—not a call, a personal visit—from Jim Coulter. Do you know who Jim Coulter is?”

“Name’s familiar.”

“Deputy chief of CSIS operations in Ottawa, and a real bastard—former Mountie, too, so I know whereof I speak. Anyway, Jim Coulter has a confab with CSIS Toronto and two hours later Calvin Squier is out the door. You do the math. Squier may have quit, but I think he was frozen out.”

“Well, we’ve figured out why CSIS trailed Shackley. They don’t want it coming to light that Raoul Duquette was murdered by a CIA informer—an informer run by an agent working on our CAT Squad.”

“Ouch. Yeah, that wouldn’t exactly enhance their image.”

“Listen, do you guys have someone who can age a photograph?”

“Yeah, sure. Tony Catrell will do it for you.”

“You got a number for him?”

There was a pause.

“You still there?” Cardinal said.

“Still here. Just rethinking this age progression business. You know what? Don’t use Tony. Tony’s a nuts-and-bolts guy. Knows everything there is to know about the software, but, I don’t know, he’s a bit of a cold fish. No, I think you wanna take this to Miriam Stead at Toronto Police.”

“I figured it’d be faster using one of your guys.”

“Miriam Stead is like the guru of age progression. Been doing this stuff for thirty years. There’s nobody better. Nobody faster, either. The difference is, Tony’ll give you a likeness, but Miriam—Miriam’s an artist. I don’t know how she does it, but you give Miriam Stead a photograph, she’ll give you back a human being. She’s also a workaholic who likes to spend her weekends in the office. By the way, do you have any idea what the weather’s doing up here?”

“What, is it snowing?”

Musgrave just chuckled and hung up.

Their plane took off at four o’clock. Cardinal slept most of the way to Toronto.

“Boy, you sure conked out,” Delorme said when he woke up, rubbing his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Little out of it. Had trouble sleeping last night.”

“Yeah, that room was overheated.”

“Frankly, it was because you were in the room. It was distracting.”

“Come on, Cardinal. That’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t give me that, like it’s some big shock. You think because I’m married, I’m not attracted to women? Do I look like a choirboy to you?”

“No.”

“So what’s the big mystery?”

“Nothing. I’m just surprised, okay? That’s legal, right, for me to be surprised?”

“Jesus. Forget I said anything, all right?”

“Fine. It’s forgotten.”

They landed in Toronto only to find that their connecting flight to Algonquin Bay had been cancelled. Once more, the laconic explanation: icy conditions.

“Oh, man,” Delorme said. “I don’t want to spend another night in a big city.”

“I’ll call Jerry Commanda—maybe we can catch a ride on an OPP chopper. Anyway, there’s one good thing about this.”

“Really?” Delorme said. “I wish you’d tell me what it is.”

“Toronto’s ident headquarters is at Jane and Wilson. That’s actually not too far from here. We can take a cab.”

“Fabulous,” Delorme said. “Just fabulous.”

They were met at the front desk of ident headquarters by Miriam Stead. Whatever Cardinal had been expecting, Miriam Stead was not it. She had white hair, short and spiky, and silver hoop earrings. She wore a grey turtleneck over black jeans and a pair of scarlet Keds. There wasn’t a trace of fat on her, and if it weren’t for the grey hair, she could’ve been mid-forties. A marathoner, Cardinal thought, got to be.

She brought them back to her workstation, which was a cubicle furnished mostly with machines Cardinal didn’t recognize and two Mac computers with gigantic screens, one of which showed the image of a desiccated skull.

“He’s cute,” Delorme said.

“Sorry,” Ms. Stead said, and clicked the image into oblivion. “Reconstruction project, obviously. That’s mostly what I do—reconstruction and missing kids. But I understand you have something a little different for me.”

Cardinal handed her the group photograph and told her what they needed. While he was talking, Ms. Stead slipped the picture into a flatbed scanner, and it appeared bit by bit on the Mac screen behind her. Still listening, she swivelled around and went to work with her mouse—now cropping, now enlarging—until the head and shoulders of Yves Grenelle all but filled the screen.

“If you don’t know his real name, then I don’t imagine you’ll be giving me any photos of Ma and Pa and Gramps, right?”

“Sorry.”

“That’s mostly what we use, of course. With a missing kid, if you want to know what they look like seven years later, you age them toward Mom and Dad. Without that kind of input, we don’t know whether your man is likely to be skinny or fat, hairy or bald.”

“Maybe this isn’t such a great idea, then,” Delorme said.

“Oh, no, I can help you. What we’re talking about is the human being’s battle with gravity. Basically, everything sinks—flesh heads earthward, cartilage lengthens, the nose starts to sag. It’s a terrible flaw in the design. But what we do in a situation like this, where there’s no genetic input, is we’ll give you several possibilities—using the variables I just mentioned and also updating hairstyles and so on. What can you tell me about your fella’s lifestyle? Is he a drinker? A smoker? Weightlifter? Health nut? All of that affects how people age.”

“Well, now you’re making me feel dumb,” Cardinal said. “I didn’t even ask anyone about those things. Coming here was pretty spur-of-the-moment.”

“That’s all right. I may be a civilian, but I do realize you people aren’t trying to make my job more difficult, even if that is invariably what you do.”

“What are the chances of any of your variations being close to reality?” Delorme asked.

“If he’s got fat and bald, then the version that’s fat and bald will look a lot like him. Not just a little—a lot. Obviously, you can’t use it for courtroom ID without fingerprints or DNA or something, but the truth is, the proportions of your face don’t change. That’s why—say you haven’t seen someone for thirty, forty years—the moment you get up close and they start to speak, you’re looking in their eyes, you know it’s them.”

“To give us all these variations,” Cardinal said, “that’s going to take a few days, I suppose.”

“You should have them by tomorrow.”

“Really? Musgrave said you were good.”

“Sergeant Musgrave of the Mounties! I love that man! I swear, he must’ve been born wearing a tunic and a Smokey hat.”

“She’s right about people aging differently,” Delorme said when they had gone back to the front desk. “I hope I look that good when I’m her age.”

“Keep eating that poutine,” Cardinal said.

“Did you see that plaque in her cubicle?”

“I did. Miriam Stead finished among the first twenty seniors in the New York marathon last year.”

After what seemed like a thousand phone calls back and forth to Jerry Commanda at OPP (“Jesus, stay in Toronto, Cardinal. This town is frozen solid, I kid you not.”), Cardinal managed to arrange a helicopter ride courtesy of the Ontario Provincial Police.

It was one thing to hear about icy conditions and quite another to see them first-hand. The pilot told them that things were supposed to be “pretty hairy” up in Algonquin Bay, but people were always saying that about the weather up there. “We got a two- or three-hour break in the rain for now, so we’ll be fine. Runway’s useless for planes, though,” he told them. Rotor noise made conversation difficult after that, and it was too dark to see much from the air.

As they were passing over Bracebridge, Delorme jabbed a gloved finger toward the ground. She shouted to Cardinal: “No cars!”

It was true. The highway unfurled like a pale grey ribbon among the hills, completely empty. A ghost highway.

Even so, the helicopter ride went so smoothly that it was hard to understand why the regular flight had been cancelled—until they landed. The pilot stepped down first, and fell flat on his face; the tarmac was a sheet of solid ice. Except for two security guards and a lonely-looking maintenance man, the airport itself was deserted.

“This is weird,” Delorme said. “It’s like a dream I used to have all the time.”

The pilot’s wife was waiting for him in the parking lot, motor running. Cardinal and Delorme turned down the offer of a ride—foolishly, as it turned out. The car Delorme had left at the airport was now an ice sculpture. It took them half an hour to open the doors, using a pair of hammers they managed to borrow from the maintenance man.

It was frustrating work. Cardinal fell to his knees more than once, and his desire to be home and warm became more intense by the minute. Delorme, somehow immune to gravity, managed to work efficiently without falling once, though she did let fly with several curses, the first French Cardinal had ever learned—in the playground, not in class.

The highway into town was treacherous, even though it had been heavily salted. Abandoned cars were strewn at crazy angles on the shoulders and in the culverts. There were no pedestrians anywhere. There was exactly one other car on the road, a red minivan just ahead of them that several times threatened to go off the road.

It was nine-thirty by the time Delorme turned onto Madonna Road. Less than a hundred yards after the turnoff she had to stop for a gigantic branch that had snapped from a frozen poplar. Cardinal knew the tree well. In summer, after a heavy rain, it was the branch that hung lowest, and by August it would sometimes brush the roof of the car as he drove by. It was no wonder the thing had broken; it was encased in a good half-inch of ice. As Cardinal dragged it to the side of the road, it sounded like the snapping of a thousand small bones.

“Listen,” he said, back in the car. “About what I said—about last night.”

Delorme frowned at the road ahead, her face pale in a stripe of passing moonlight. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry I said it. I’d just woken up from a serious nap and I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was unprofessional, and I don’t want it to get in the way.”

“It won’t. Not on my side, anyway.” Delorme slowed very gradually to a stop. “I don’t think I’ll try your driveway with this ice.”

“So, we’re okay on that?”

“We’re fine,” Delorme said.

Cardinal waited for her to say something more, but she just stared straight ahead, waiting for him to get out.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said.

“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

Catherine had put salt down on the driveway, but even so, it was hard to walk up the slope without falling. He had to cling to the handrail of the back stairs.

“Catherine?” he called as he stepped into the kitchen.

Catherine came in and gave him a hug. “I’m afraid you’ve come home to a bit of a crowd scene. Tess and Abby are here. The power is out over in Ferris, so I invited Sally to stay here.”

“They’re sleeping over?”

“They have no heat at their place. Thank God we have the wood stove. Half the city has no heat.”

“Hi, John.” Sally Westlake, a square-built blond in a reindeer sweatshirt, waved to him from the living room. “Sorry to land on you like this.”

“No, no. You’re welcome, Sally. Stay as long as you want. How long’s your power been out?”

“Since last night. Every time they get it going, it fails again in half an hour or so.”

“Is it just in Ferris? The lights were still on up on Airport Road.”

There was a terrific explosion outside.

“What the hell was that?!”

“A branch,” Catherine said. “They fall from the trees and just shatter and it makes that incredible sound. It makes going to sleep a real challenge.”

“Makes me jump out of my skin every time,” Sally said.

Cardinal drew Catherine aside. “Have you talked to Dad?”

“A couple of hours ago. He seemed fine. Wouldn’t come down here, of course.”

“I better go check on him. I’m not going to be able to sleep otherwise. Speaking of which, we’re not exactly the Sheraton here. I guess Sally and the girls can stay in Kelly’s room, and if I can persuade Dad to stay with us, he can have the pullout couch.”

“He hates the pullout couch. If he comes, we’ll just have to think of something else.”

Cardinal was at the top of Airport Hill again when the power went out. Without a sound the highway turned to utter blackness, as if someone had thrown a tarp over the car. He pulled to the side of the road and waited for his vision to adjust before pulling out again.

The Camry crept along the crest of Airport Hill, headlights carving cones of visibility into the darkness, and then onto Cunningham. The dirt road was even worse going. The surface had not been salted, and it was like trying to drive on a hockey rink. Cardinal stayed in low gear. The blackness outside the car was so complete, he was not at all sure he’d be able to see his father’s place, but as he crawled around the last curve on Cunningham, the moon emerged from behind a cloud, and the white trim of his father’s house took shape against the trees. The verdigris squirrel was a black silhouette against a moonlit cloud, icicles hanging from its nose and tail.

The house was dark.

Cardinal stepped round to the back porch. There was a phosphorescent glow from inside. His father heard the noise and came to the back door, wearing his coat.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, Dad. I came to see how you’re making out up here.”

“I’m just fine, thank you.” His father stared at him from the shadows of the kitchen. Behind him, a Coleman lamp hissed on the table.

“But you’ve got no power.”

“Believe it or not, John, I knew that before you got here.”

“Dad, you’ve got no heat. Why don’t you come down to our place for the night?”

“Because I’m fine right here. It’s not that cold out, I’ve got my Coleman lamp going strong and I’ve got a good book. I’ve got a transistor radio and a Coleman stove too—case I have to heat water.”

“You can’t use a Coleman stove, Dad. The carbon monoxide will kill you.”

His father blinked at him. “I know that. I’ll use it on the porch.”

“Dad, come to our place. The power could be out for hours.”

“I’m fine right here. Now, unless there was something else you needed—?”

“Dad—”

“Goodnight, John. Oh—how was Montreal?”

“It was fine. Look, just because you spend a night with us doesn’t mean you’re totally dependent, you know. It’s an ice storm, for God’s sake. Don’t you think you’re being a little unreasonable?”

“Never liked Montreal—probably because I don’t speak French. Never saw the need. Well, thanks for dropping by, John. I suppose I’ll see you for lunch on Tuesday.”

“Dad, for God’s sake, what are you going to do—sleep under forty pounds of blankets?”

“That’s exactly what I plan to do. Not forty pounds, but I’ve got my down coat and a down sleeping bag, and I’ll sleep in front of the fireplace.”

“On what?”

“On my damn mattress, that’s what. It’s all set up and there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You dragged the mattress by yourself? Your heart’s not up to that kind of strain anymore.”

“Nice of you to remind me. But if I’d have asked you to help with the mattress, you’d have given me a lecture about staying with you. Can’t you see I’m fine up here? Is that so hard to believe? You know, I looked after myself for thirty-four years before you were born, and I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself now. The power will be on in a couple of hours, and there’ll be no need to have this discussion. Not that there’s any need now. Good night.”

“I’ll put some more firewood up on the porch,” Cardinal said, but his father was already closing the door.

As Cardinal turned off Airport Hill onto Algonquin, the city, which normally glittered like a box of rhine-stones, lay below him in a pool of darkness. The smell of woodsmoke was strong. When the moon appeared, he could see streams of smoke bending like saplings toward the east, as if the whole town were sailing west. Even the traffic lights were out. Cardinal counted six separate hydro crews on his way back to Madonna Road.

When he got home again, he stood for a while by the side of the house, listening—he wasn’t sure for what. If Bouchard came after him, it wouldn’t likely happen on a night like this. But he listened all the same. The only sounds were the click and chatter of icy branches.

“He wouldn’t come?” Catherine asked as soon as Cardinal was in the door.

“Nope. He’d rather freeze his ass off up there than spend the night in his son’s home. He’s got no heat except the fireplace. And he was planning to cook on the Coleman—a very efficient way to kill yourself. Anyway, I put some firewood by the back door. He should be all right for the night.”

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow, John. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll heat up some chili for you.”

“Sally asleep?”

“Uh-huh. I hope you don’t mind that I invited them here.”

“Of course not. You always do the right thing.”

Catherine placed the bowl of chili in front of him, and he told her about Montreal. He told her about interviewing the players in the crisis of thirty years ago, about his feeling that he had been walking through a time warp, about how he had missed her.

“Oh, I nearly forgot to mention,” he added. “I slept with another woman in Montreal.”

“You did?”

“Well, in the same room, anyway. Delorme got flooded out of hers, and the hotel didn’t have any others. There was an extra bed in mine.”

“Lise is very good-looking.”

“Yes, she is.”

“It must have been quite a temptation.”

“It wasn’t like sharing with McLeod. That’s for sure.”