The Delicate Storm

27

ALL THAT NIGHT AND INTO THE MORNING the rain continued to fall in great heavy drops that hit every surface with an audible smack. Perhaps “fall” is not the right word. The rain hurled itself in a fury at every car, every house and every road. It stung where it struck the skin, and one could see the ice crystals inside each drop, watch them graft themselves instantly to every icy windshield and sidewalk.

Salt spreaders were out in force until every street that wasn’t a sheet of black glass crunched like cinders underfoot. Snow tires crackled on the few cars that prowled the city streets in slow motion. Power lines sagged lower and lower under the weight of ice. Along the highways, hydro poles tilted at crazy angles as if a mass crucifixion had taken place.

By nine a.m. the power was out across the city. The police and fire departments had backup generators, but the one at police headquarters kept shutting down, and a couple of overworked mechanics came and went from the roof, muttering expletives in French.

By mid-morning the skies cleared and the sun was dazzling. A cold front had finally pushed out the warm front, and while this drove the rain away, it sent the temperatures plunging toward minus twenty degrees Celsius. Without power, without heat, the residents of Algonquin Bay were now in real danger. Schools were closed and turned into makeshift dormitories.

Two people died. A man who had barbecued his dinner indoors was killed by carbon monoxide. And another person in a fire on Christie Street that started when a kerosene heater was knocked over.

At the police station, all leave was cancelled. The entire force was mobilized to go door to door evacuating children and the elderly to the schools. McLeod’s howls of protest could be heard from Chouinard’s office on the third floor to the weight room in the basement. “I’m an investigator, for God’s sake, not a Boy Scout. What are we going to be doing next—getting cats out of trees?”

Cardinal woke up late. At first he thought there was a large dog sleeping on his chest, but then he realized it was the weight of his father’s death. He called Chouinard and told him his father had died. Chouinard was sympathetic and told him to take as long as he needed; it was a time for family now. As if that were something that might have escaped Cardinal’s notice.

So Cardinal resolved to stay home. He called the funeral home and made preliminary arrangements, then called his brother out in British Columbia. Catherine called Kelly.

The Walcotts had somehow managed to sleep through the events of the past night, even the coming and going of the ambulance. Once Catherine told them, they promptly took out their books and began reading. The others were kind, Mrs. Potipher in particular, and even the little girls were appropriately sombre. But after an hour of this, Cardinal began to feel he was just a death’s-head in the room and he might be more use elsewhere. His thoughts turned to Paul Laroche and the mountain of files that was due to arrive by helicopter that morning.

Delorme gave Cardinal a big hug when he arrived at the squad room. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Promise me you’ll let me know if I can help in any way.”

Her sympathy made Cardinal choke up a little, but he managed a nod.

Chouinard was surprised to see Cardinal, but having him there, he was determined to put him and Delorme to work. He tried to assign them to the house-to-house detail, but Cardinal would have none of it. He brought Chouinard down to the conference room they had commandeered for the files. The OPP had helicoptered in five crates of files from the CAT Squad’s investigation of the FLQ kidnappings. Now the boxes were arrayed like opened drawers in the conference room.

“Okay, so you’ve got a mountain of stuff to go through. Do it as fast as you can and then we’re going to need you on the streets with everybody else.”

R.J. Kendall stuck his head in. “I want everybody downstairs now. Why are you still up here?”

Chouinard stepped in. “Er, Chief—something you may not be aware of. Cardinal’s father died last night.”

R.J. looked at Chouinard as if he had just landed in a spaceship. Then he looked back at Cardinal. “Is that true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My sympathies,” said R.J., conveying none. “But if you’re not going home, I want you downstairs. We’ve got a full-scale emergency here.” Then he seemed to relent a little. “Sorry about your old man,” he said, and placed a hand on Cardinal’s shoulder. “You take as much time off as you need. Losing your father, that’s a real blow.”

“Thanks, Chief. For now I’d just as soon work on this.”

“Fine. You work on what you want. But right now I want everyone in muster,” Kendall said, and left the doorway.

“Ontario Hydro’s here to tell us what’s what,” Chouinard said. “It’s not so bad. At least there’s donuts.”

“Why is it always donuts?” Delorme said on their way downstairs. “Do I look like I eat donuts? Promise me you’ll shoot me if I do.”

Cardinal helped himself to a black coffee and parked himself nearest the exit.

The Hydro man was Paul Stancek, a former high-school classmate. Cardinal’s single memory of Stancek was that he could do a perfect imitation of their history teacher, Mr. Elkin, right down to the Aussie accent. That had been when Stancek—and Cardinal himself, he supposed—had been a reed-thin youth without the slightest trace of peach fuzz on his cheeks. Now he was a six-footer with a walrus moustache that would have looked good on a Wild West sheriff.

“I know you’re busy,” Stancek said. “So I’ll get right to it. The Ontario hydro system is built to withstand anything up to a hundred-year event. Right now, in Algonquin Bay, this ice storm is that event.

“Algonquin Bay gets its power from two separate sources. In order for the entire city to go dark, both those sources have to be disrupted. You’ve all seen the towers that come in from the east. They come in from the hills along Highway 17 over near Corbeil. Those are bringing power from the Ottawa River and the Mattawa River.

“The other source is up toward Sudbury. Those are the towers that come in along the bypass from the other direction. The likelihood of both those systems going down simultaneously more than once in a hundred years is just about nil.

“So, welcome to the year one hundred. Normally, when there’s a severe ice storm, we can simply up the amperage along the wires. That heats them up enough to melt the ice. This time, however, it isn’t working. Those lines are bearing three times the weight they’re built to withstand, and some of them are going to snap. Here’s what to do if you are in the vicinity when one comes down.”

McLeod shouted loud enough to make everyone jump. “Why don’t you just shut the damn things down till it’s over? The power’s going off every ten minutes anyway.”

Stancek didn’t even blink. “We don’t shut down the main transfer lines for three reasons. One, because if they’re not carrying any load, we can’t tell where the breach is, so how can we fix it? Two, because switching the power back on would be far more dangerous than just letting it flow. You could kill people you didn’t even know were in danger. And three: that’s just the way we do it.”

“Good one,” McLeod said. “You should be a cop.”

Stancek went on. “Each of the towers carries six lines. Each line carries forty-four thousand volts. That’s forty-four thousand volts. Yes, it will kill you. It will kill you ten times over.”

One of the first accidents Cardinal had covered when he had moved back to Algonquin Bay: a teenage boy, on a dare, had climbed onto a transformer at the relay station. By the time emergency crews got to the scene, the boy was a cinder. As they pried him from the metal, his charred head had fallen off and rolled to Cardinal’s feet.

“Forty-four thousand volts,” Stancek said again. “But even if one of those lines comes down within twenty yards of where you’re standing, it doesn’t necessarily have to do you in. Not if you know what you’re doing. So, pay attention.

“If a wire comes down on your car, you don’t move. Just stay in the car, unless there’s an even more compelling reason—it’s on fire, say—to get out. If you must get out, do not step out. Jump out. What will kill you is the difference in voltage between the car and the ground. If you want to become a conductor, move to Toronto and study at the Royal Conservatory. Don’t do it by stepping out of a live car.

“A more likely scenario? A wire comes down somewhere nearby.” Stancek stepped to a flip chart and uncorked a marker pen. Red circles and arrows appeared as he spoke. “Now, there’s two things you have to understand. The first is ground radiance. Like any source of power, the voltage from a live wire diminishes over distance. And when the earth is the conductor, it diminishes quickly. In other words, if a wire comes down five feet away from a person, that person will probably be killed. Someone else fifty feet away may be totally unharmed.

“So, obviously, you walk away, right? Wrong. Did you get that? That is a negative. You do not walk away. You stay exactly where you are. And remember this, because what I’m about to tell you has saved many a lineman from an early grave: if a line comes down anywhere near you, keep your feet together. Do not take a step in any direction. Once again, it’s the difference in voltage between point A and point B that will kill you. When you’re that close to a power line shooting forty-four thousand volts into the ground, there can be a lethal variation in as small a distance as two feet. That’s the dark side of ground radiance. So keep your feet together.

“If no one is coming to the rescue, the only way to get away from a live wire is to have only one foot on the ground at a time. That way you’re not conducting any energy through your body. But we’re in an ice storm here. The chances of you being able to run without falling and landing on all fours and turning into one barbecued cop are very, very slim. So my best advice is: stay where you are, keep your feet together and don’t move.

“And one last thing you must know before I take questions. Those power lines have a limit. If one comes down near you and you’ve got blue lightning all around you, know that that is going to happen only three times. The fuses are set so that when they short for the third time, they don’t reset again. They stay dead.”

True to his word, Stancek kept things brief. When the question period started, Cardinal and Delorme went back upstairs. Cardinal had a message waiting for him from Toronto Forensic. He dialed from the conference room and switched on the speakerphone.

Len Weisman put it in his usual sympathetic way. “You got nothing, my friend. On the car? Nothing. No hair, no fibre, nothing. Water washed it away.”

“It doesn’t even seem possible,” Delorme said. “You’d think just by the law of averages—”

“Forget the law of averages. Law of averages says no one should ever win the lottery. Law of averages says no one should get struck by lightning. There’s a little thing called luck involved in this business, and your killer is getting all of it.”

Cardinal and Delorme sorted the files into preliminary piles—sifting those most likely to bear fruit concerning Grenelle.

“I’m not optimistic about this,” Delorme said, “the way things are going.”

They found a trove of informant reports, but Grenelle had not been informing for the police, he had been informing for the CIA—or at least Miles Shackley’s personal interpretation of the CIA—and there wasn’t a single report from him. Dozens of reports cited him as “also present,” simply one among those enumerated, acknowledged to be at a particular place at a particular time.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Delorme said. “None of these reports treats Grenelle/Laroche as an informant, or even as dangerous—he’s just another guy at the meetings.”

“Listen,” Cardinal said, “if you’re trying to make the point that I don’t know what I’m looking for, don’t bother. We may not know what we’re looking for, but we’ll know it when we see it. Is that all right with you, or would you rather go door to door helping little old ladies save their budgies from the ice storm?”

Delorme’s brown eyes veered away from his gaze, and Cardinal regretted his show of temper.

She turned to him again, her voice soft. “Maybe you should just go home, John. Your father died. It’s not something you can ignore.”

“I’m not ignoring it. I have a house full of refugees at home right now, and I’d rather be here with you.” He felt himself colour slightly and bent his head once more to the files.

Easily eighty percent of the paper before them was irrelevant, and most of the remainder contained the same information duplicated over and over again under different headings.

Their interest perked up when Cardinal found a file labelled 5367 Reed Street, the address where Duquette had been held and murdered. He pulled out a history of ownership from the Montreal city registry. There was even a floor plan and a small stack of photos from the police raid.

“This is interesting,” Delorme said. She held a faded carbon of a rental agreement with a copy of the lease attached. “Hundred a month. My, how times change. And look at the signature.”

Cardinal took the carbon from her. In the space provided for current address the applicant had given a street number in the town of St-Antoine. Occupation: Cab driver, Lasalle Taxi Company. It was signed Daniel Lemoyne.

“Lemoyne,” Cardinal said. “That’s right. They used a cab to kidnap Duquette, but I think it was a different company.”

There was a flurry of excitement when Cardinal found the files labelled Coquette—source number 16790/B, as she had been known. It was clear she had been invaluable to the CAT Squad; her reports were extremely detailed. In Simone Rouault’s almost novelistic reports, Grenelle began to emerge as a real character. She described his clothes (much more style than the other felquistes), his manner (passionate, egotistical, wild). At one meeting he proposed a car bomb at City Hall, at another a series of nail bombs at rush hour. Then there was the scuba attack on the waterfront. In June 1970, just four months before the actual kidnappings, Grenelle had proposed kidnapping an American executive of the Pepsi-Cola company. Then in July, an Israeli ambassador.

By the time Cardinal looked at his watch, two hours had gone by. Delorme tossed her last file into their “done” box.

“There’s nothing,” Cardinal said.

Delorme stretched, yawning. “All that paper, and not a single useful item. It’s practically supernatural.”

“So there’s nothing in the files. Fine. But Shackley came up here to blackmail Paul Laroche. He sets up a meeting and Laroche is scared enough to kill him.”

“Can we connect Laroche to Bressard?”

“Laroche is a hunter—he’d know about Bressard. And everyone remembers Bressard’s trial. It was the first time the papers admitted the Mafia might exist in Algonquin Bay. All Laroche had to do was pretend to be Petrucci—not hard, since he communicated by note.”

“What worries me more,” Delorme said, “is that Shackley had to have something more convincing than that group photograph to threaten Laroche with. It had to be something good.”

“I agree. It had to be something that absolutely nailed Laroche to the wall. He had to have it with him to show Laroche. And I wish we had it in our hands right now.”

“But you know what happened to it,” Delorme said. “Whatever it was, Laroche by now has burned it to ashes.”

“I know.”

“We went over that cabin with a fine-tooth comb. There was nothing in there, John.”

“I know. And I didn’t see anything at Shackley’s apartment, either. Probably because he brought it with him up here. To use. It was his main weapon.”

“He probably hid it in the car.”

“Exactly. The car.”

“Which the ident guys have been all over. Forensic’s been all over it too. There’s nothing there. Nothing left.”

“I know.”

“You know what’s happening, don’t you?”

Cardinal shook his head. “I can’t accept it. We need fingerprints, we need eyewitnesses, we need DNA. There are no witnesses. Not to Cates, not to Shackley. We’ve got no hair, no prints, no DNA. Not in the car. Not in Shackley’s cabin. The only thing we have is the blood from Dr. Cates’s office that matches the blood in the car.”

“When we get the DNA back, maybe we can match it to Paul Laroche.”

“The only way we can do that is if he volunteers a sample—and he won’t—or if we get a warrant. Also not likely.” Cardinal slammed his hand on the table. “I can’t believe it. The guy kills four people and he’s going to get away with it.”

“It’s like you told me. Talent, persistence and luck. We just haven’t had any luck. Not this time.”

“I know.” Cardinal closed the last file. “And doesn’t that just make you sick?”

The lights flickered and went out. A silence stuffed itself like cotton into the room. The conference room got plenty of light from its large windows, but the hall was instantly filled with people hurrying this way and that. McLeod stuck his head in the doorway, flashlight in hand. “I hate this place,” he said. “Have I told you that today? I hate this place.”

Justice William Westly was a tall, bony man with a beaky face. His walk—a peculiar combination of a pronounced stoop and a bouncing step—was a source of amusement to most of the legal profession, and his voice, ponderous and plummy, much mimicked.

Westly looked up from the information Cardinal had filled out and signed. “Do you have any idea who Paul Laroche happens to be?” he said.

“He’s the chief suspect in a homicide investigation.”

“Paul Laroche is not only a pillar of the community. Paul Laroche owns half the buildings in this town. Paul Laroche runs the local campaign for the premier of this province, in case that has escaped your notice. And also, in case it has escaped your notice, Paul Laroche happens to be the premier’s golfing buddy and bosom pal.”

“I know that, Your Worship,” Cardinal said. “But look at what we’ve got.”

Westly settled his bony chin into a bony hand and made a show of listening with great patience. The harder Cardinal tried to make the connections sound compelling, the hollower they rang.

“That’s the entire sum total of your case? The evidence to the last tom-tittle?”

“Well, we’re hoping more will turn up.”

“Detective, I wouldn’t give you a warrant to pick up a homeless person with that. Frankly, it boggles the mind you even bothered to come down here.”

“That’s just me,” Cardinal said. “Always the optimist.”

“Convince me with some DNA, a fingerprint or two, some ballistic evidence.”

“Give me a warrant for Laroche to submit a blood sample and you’ll have your DNA.”

“You don’t have enough for such a warrant. You have a police artist’s rendering of what a long-ago member of the FLQ might look like. I’m sorry, Detective. Bring me the slightest credible evidence that ties Paul Laroche to the murder of Winter Cates or the murder of Miles Shackley and I will hand you your warrant. So far, you have nothing.”

“What about Madeleine Ferrier?” Cardinal tried to connect the dots from 1970 to the murder of Laroche’s neighbour.

Westly didn’t let him finish. “Believe it or not, Detective, I do understand the case you’re trying to make. I’m just telling you you haven’t made it. Not to my satisfaction and certainly not to the satisfaction of any court in Ontario.”

“But we know he did this, Your Worship. Okay, he’s a powerful man, but we know he did this.”

“That’s the way the cookie crumbles, I’m afraid. From what you’ve described to me, there’s a reasonable chance that Yves Grenelle killed Raoul Duquette. What you cannot prove—correction—what you cannot come within a country mile of proving is that Paul Laroche is Yves Grenelle.”

“Let’s take it to another judge,” Delorme said when Cardinal told her. “Gagnon would give us a warrant, I bet.”

“I’d love to, believe me. But if we go judge-shopping and it comes out at trial, we’d be thrown right out of court.”

“Well, suppose we just happen to come across a glass Laroche drinks out of. A cigar he’s smoked.”

“Without a warrant? It’s known as illegal search and seizure.”

“No, but suppose we follow him. Sooner or later he’s going to toss something away or leave something behind—in a restaurant, say—something that we can test for DNA. A public place where there’s no expectation of privacy? We wouldn’t need a warrant for that.”

“Chouinard’s not going to let us put surveillance on Laroche. Not with what we’ve got so far.”

“I’m going to ask him.”

Delorme went to Chouinard’s office. When she came back a few minutes later, her face was so transparent Cardinal didn’t have the heart to ask what their Detective Sergeant had said.

After lunch, they spent the afternoon running down Laroche’s history, trying to match it with Grenelle’s. Following newspaper accounts and Laroche’s social insurance number, they traced him all the way back to the Société d’aide à l’enfance in Trois-Rivières. He had lived in an institutional group home until the age of sixteen, at which point the society closed their file and lost track of the boy. No, they said in answer to Delorme’s request, they had no photographs.

Cardinal’s pulse began to quicken when he learned that the society had also had in their care, and at the same group home, a slightly older youth named Yves Grenelle. Again, no photographs, no records after age sixteen. After fleeing the aftermath of October 1970, Yves Grenelle could have simply invited the young Laroche over to Paris, killed him, and taken over his identity; it would be as if Yves Grenelle had never lived. On the other hand, a third person who knew them both could have used both names. Without early photographs, the trail was a dead end.

Beacom Security was located over an empty storefront on Main Street. Whatever money Ed Beacom had made from his post-police career, it hadn’t gone toward decor. Aside from showcases full of various kinds of locks and alarms, the place was essentially an empty loft that had not been improved by the addition of cheap linoleum and bright fluorescent lighting.

Beacom showed Cardinal and Delorme into his office—same linoleum, same supermarket lighting—overlooking Main Street.

“How about this weather, huh? Oughta drive the crime rate down, let’s hope.” Beacom was a beefy man, fiftyish and wide across the chest. His blue blazer had a strained look about the seams. He pulled two plastic chairs away from the wall. “Sorry about the accommodations—we can’t all make the big bucks.”

“Frankly,” Cardinal said, “I’m not entirely sure why we’re here. Covering the fundraiser seems a pretty straightforward proposition.”

“I agree. I don’t know why you’re here either, but Paul Laroche is running this show, and what Paul Laroche wants, Paul Laroche gets.”

Beacom reached into a drawer and pulled out a thin file. He opened it and leafed through the contents as he spoke. “I’ve been in contact with CSIS and, frankly, they don’t see this fundraiser as a likely target for any terrorist groups they’re interested in.”

Cardinal laughed.

“Is that funny?” Beacom said. “If it’s funny, let the rest of us in on the joke.” He pulled out a floor plan of the Highlands Ski Club and spread it on his desk, then proceeded to jab it with a thick finger. “I myself will be backstage. There’s a good spot back there from where I can pretty much cover the room. Mantis will have a couple of bodyguards with him. And word is there’ll be a former prime minister there too. They’ll have a couple of guys on him. I’ve already coordinated with their advance man.”

“And how many people will you have?” Delorme said.

“Four, including me. I’m going to have men here, here and here. At doorways, you notice, not at dinner tables. Not all of us get to hobnob with the rich and powerful.”

“You think we want to be doing this damn dinner?” Cardinal said. “You think we don’t have anything better to do?”

Delorme shot him a look that said “calm down.”

“I don’t really care what else you’ve got to do,” Beacom said.

There was a long pause, during which Cardinal considered leaving.

“I think these should be your tables,” Beacom said. He pointed to two corner tables on opposite sides at the front of the dining room. “They need me to tell them today where we’re going to put you, so if you have any objections, speak up.”

“Looks good to me,” Delorme said.

Cardinal shrugged. “As long as we’re facing the back.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Beacom said. He rolled up the floor plan. “I’ll tell their coordinator and I’ll let you know if there’s any change. Personally, I thought the two of you should have earpieces and wireless mics, but Laroche nixed that. Said it killed the whole advantage of having a couple of cops among the guests. He’s got a point.”

A few minutes later Beacom introduced them to the associates who would also be at the fundraiser. One was a retired firefighter Cardinal had worked with many times; the other two were young men barely out of high school.

Delorme pretty much summed up his feelings when they were in the car heading back to the station.

“This job,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I’d taken up something more satisfying—like, say, sanitation.”