The Delicate Storm

4

THE NORTHERN SHORE OF LAKE NIPISSING is one of the prettiest places in Ontario, but Lakeshore Drive, which runs along the top of the inlet that gives Algonquin Bay its name, could have been designed for the sole purpose of keeping this fact from the public. It has been a magnet for eyesores for as long as anybody can remember. On the lake side there are fast-food joints, gas stations and quaintly named but charm-free motels; across from these, car dealerships and shopping malls.

Loon Lodge was at the western edge of this ugliness. It was not actually a lodge but a dozen miniature white cabins with green shutters and country-style curtains, having been built in the fifties before the log-cabin look became the fashion. Many people in Algonquin Bay imagine such businesses are closed in winter, but in fact they have two sources of winter income. One is from ice fishermen, the dentists and insurance salesmen who take a few days off to come up north with their buddies and drink themselves into oblivion. The other is from people who want a dirt-cheap place to live, and nothing is cheaper, offseason, than a cabin on Lakeshore Drive.

Cardinal had been to Loon Lodge a few times. Every so often one of the winter residents would knock his wife’s teeth out. Or the wife would tire of her husband’s drinking and insert a steak knife neatly into his ribs. Occasionally there were drug dealers. Then in summer it was all sunburnt Americans, families on a tight budget, taking advantage of the reliably frail Canadian dollar.

Cardinal and Delorme were in the first of Loon Lodge’s white clapboard cabins, the one marked Office. It was four times bigger than the rental units, and the proprietor lived in it with his wife and kids. He was an egg-shaped man named Wallace. His face was puffy, with a wounded expression, as if he suffered from toothache. An equally egg-shaped and disconsolate four-year-old boy was watching cartoons in the next room. Smells of supper hung in the air, and Cardinal suddenly realized he was hungry.

Wallace pulled out a guest register, found the name and turned the book around on the counter.

“Howard Matlock,” Delorme read aloud, “312 East Ninety-first Street, New York City.”

“I wish I’d never set eyes on the guy, now,” Wallace said. “Was a really slow week last week, so I was glad as hell to see him, even though he only wanted to stay a few days.”

“Ford Escort,” Delorme read, and copied down the licence number.

“Yeah,” Wallace said. “Bright red one. Not that I’ve seen it for a couple of days.”

“What day did he arrive?” Cardinal asked.

“Thursday, I think. Yeah, Thursday. I’d just turned away a couple of Indians who wanted to rent a place. Sorry, but I don’t care how many vacancies I’ve got, I won’t rent to those people. I just got tired of cleaning up the blood and the puke. I have a reputation to maintain.”

“You better hope none of them lays a discrimination complaint on you,” Delorme said.

“People don’t understand about Indians. Put two or three of them together with a bottle of Four Aces and you got a unit that’s unrentable.”

“And what have you got now?”

“You say you took this key ring off a dead body?” He pointed to the melted mass in the Baggie that Cardinal had put on the counter.

“More or less.”

“Then I guess I got a bill that’s not paid and a tenant that’s not alive.” Wallace shook his head and cursed under his breath. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a reputation like Loon Lodge? It doesn’t happen overnight.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Cardinal said. “Did Mr. Matlock say why he was in Algonquin Bay?”

“I’m telling you, something like this comes along and all that effort—all those extra little touches that make a motel a special place, the kind of place people want to come back to—all of it comes to nothing. I might as well take down my shingle and declare bankruptcy.”

Cardinal wondered how anyone as gloomy as Mr. Wallace would have had the optimism to open a motel in the first place, but he stuck to his original question. “Did Mr. Matlock say why he was in Algonquin Bay?”

“Ice fishing’s what he told me.”

“Little early in the year for ice fishing. Even without the warm spell.”

“That’s exactly what I said. I told him no one’s going out on that lake for at least another two weeks, even without the warm snap. He said he was well aware of that fact. Said he was only up here scoping the place out for a bunch of buddies who were planning to come up with him late February.”

“From New York?” Delorme said. “New York seems like a long way to come just to check out the ice fishing.”

Wallace shrugged. “Americans.”

He plucked a key from the rack behind the counter and they followed him outside past several cabins.

“Never seemed like much of a sport to me,” Cardinal said to Delorme. “The fish are stunned with cold. They’re starving. Where’s the skill? Sitting over a hole in a dingy little shack.”

“You’re leaving out the beer.”

“Oh, don’t leave out the beer,” Wallace said. “You wouldn’t believe the cases these guys haul out there. I keep a toboggan in each unit, supposedly for the kiddies, but do you see any hills around here? They use ’em to haul their two-fours out on the lake.”

“You say Mr. Matlock arrived on Thursday. When did you notice the car wasn’t here?”

“I guess that’d be Saturday. Two days ago. Yeah, that’s right. Because I asked him to move it Friday morning. Had it parked in the spot for number four. Not that there was anybody in number four. Anyways, it definitely wasn’t there Saturday morning. Which made me think something was up. Car’s gone, and I haven’t seen any smoke coming from the stovepipe. Knocked on the door this morning, got no answer and figured I’d give him another few hours before I started to worry I’d been stiffed.”

“Did he make any phone calls?” Cardinal asked. “Would you know if he had?”

“Long-distance I’d know about—he didn’t make any of those. I don’t keep track of local.”

“Thanks, Mr. Wallace. We’ll take it from here.”

“Fine with me.” Wallace opened the door for them. “If there’s any cash in there, I figure I’m due a hundred and forty.”

The inside of a Loon Lodge cabin hadn’t changed since the last time Cardinal had seen one. Double bed tucked in an alcove, a floral couch, and a kitchenette in the corner: mini-fridge, hot plate, aluminum sink. A memory assailed Cardinal—a shrieking woman hurling a frying pan at him when he had come to arrest her husband.

There was a table covered with yellow oilcloth beside one window. A copy of the New York Times lay on it. Dated five days previously, Cardinal noted, and probably acquired on the airplane.

The bed (slightly tattered chenille cover complete with the same Loon Lodge emblem that was on the key ring) was neatly made. Beside it lay a small wheeled suitcase containing enough clothes for a weekend and a paperback novel by Tom Clancy.

“Here’s his wallet,” Delorme said. She retrieved it from under the kitchen table, nearly toppling a lamp (loon emblem on the shade) in the process.

“Well, here’s a question,” Cardinal said. “The car’s gone. Why would you go out in your car and not take your wallet with you? You go out in the car, you take your licence, right?”

“Maybe whoever killed him showed up at his door.”

“Possible. And he loses his wallet in the struggle—although there isn’t much sign of a struggle in here.”

Delorme opened the wallet. “In any case, I think we can rule out robbery as a motive. There’s eighty-seven dollars here, all American. Maybe he just went out to buy a pack of cigarettes. Didn’t need his wallet.”

“He’s got cigarettes.” Cardinal pointed to a half-empty pack of Marlboros on the nightstand.

“‘Howard Matlock,’” Delorme read from one of the wallet cards in a formal voice, “‘is a certified professional accountant in the state of New York.’”

“Ice fishermen—I swear they’re all accountants.”

“He is also a member of the New York Public Library, Blockbuster Video and carries a New York driver’s licence.”

She showed Cardinal. The dead man stared out at him from the licence photo. He was wearing the same aviator glasses they had found in the woods.

They both glanced around the room.

“Except for the wallet on the floor, everything looks undisturbed,” Cardinal said. “And his room key was still in his pocket, but not his car key. Which makes me think the killer or killers made off with his car.”

“If you’re going to steal a car, why pick a Ford Escort? And if you’re covering up a car theft, chopping the body up in the woods seems a little extreme.”

“Maybe there was something incriminating in the car.”

They went through the contents of the suitcase: three store-label shirts, three pairs of Hanes underwear, three pairs of socks, two with holes in them.

“I thought accountants made decent money,” Delorme said. “But this guy looks like he wasn’t doing so well.”

On the bathroom shelf they found a roll of Tums, and travel packets of Imodium and Ex-Lax. “Obviously a Boy Scout,” Delorme said. “Prepared for anything.”

“Anything except hunting or fishing, you notice. No rod, no reel, no tackle. Nothing. I know he said he was just scoping the place out, but still.”

“Maybe he kept it in the car. When we find the car …”

They stood facing each other in the middle of the cabin. Waiting for an idea to descend, Cardinal thought. A theory.

“This is a strange one,” Delorme said. “As far as we know, Howard Matlock, visiting CPA, came up here to check out the ice fishing. While here, he goes out for a drive—without his wallet—and gets himself killed. Maybe someone tried to rob him and killed him out of frustration because he wasn’t carrying his wallet.”

“Thank you, Detective Delorme. That explains everything. Obviously, we can close this case right now.”

“All right. So it has a few holes.”

“I think we both find the ice-fishing business a little thin. And …”

“And what? You look worried.”

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this. My guru on the Toronto force used to say it takes three things to solve any case where the perpetrator isn’t readily apparent: talent, persistence and luck. Any one of those is missing, you don’t make your case. Call me egotistical, but I’m not worried about the first two.”

“Come on, Cardinal. We’ve barely started.”

“I know. The problem is, if we don’t believe Matlock came up here to check out the ice fishing, then we don’t have the first clue what he was doing here—or who he came to see—let alone who wanted to kill him.”

The call went out to be on the alert for Matlock’s red Ford Escort, a rental from the Avis counter at Toronto’s Pearson Airport. The search in the woods went on until dark. All the body parts that could be found were gathered together and shipped to the Forensic Centre in Toronto. The aerial photographs were developed and tacked up on the bulletin board in the ident room. The Mylar balloons glittered amid the mist and trees, but there was no pattern visible in their distribution.

Back at his desk, Cardinal spent a good two hours writing up the reports for the day and wishing he had a decent idea about how to proceed. He was tired and hungry and looking forward to being with Catherine, but he didn’t want to go home feeling that the case was at a dead end. He needed some time alone, away from the reports and the noise of his colleagues shouting to one another, to think about Howard Matlock and why this American had ended up dead in Algonquin Bay.

Down by the lake, the fog was still thick, wedged like grey batting among the cabins and the trees. The Loon Lodge vacancy sign glowed dull red. The parking lot was empty.

Cardinal opened the cabin that had been Howard Matlock’s and ducked under the yellow police tape. Inside, he flipped a switch, but the light didn’t come on; the proprietor would have turned off the power until he had another paying tenant. No heat either. Cardinal switched on his flashlight and shone it over the bed, the chair, the nightstand. Ident had been so busy with the scene in the woods that they would not be finished here until the next day at least. Howard Matlock’s personal effects were still here, right down to the half-smoked pack of Marlboros beside the loon lamp.

In the dark and the silence Cardinal tried once more to visualize what had happened here. He imagined the American sitting in the white wicker chair, watching the tiny television, when there was a knock at the door. But who would come to him, and kill him, and drive him away in his own car? Did someone follow him here from New York?

Cardinal sat on the edge of the bed. Trying to figure out this case was like trying to catch smoke. Half the time—at least in a place the size of Algonquin Bay—it was the killer himself who called cops to the scene of the crime. Now here was a genuine mystery and Cardinal didn’t have a single lead. An American citizen had come up to his town and—if he hadn’t been followed—had managed in a very short time to upset somebody enough to get himself murdered. And whoever it was didn’t just kill him, they fed him to the bears. Why?

Cardinal could feel the fine end of a theory in his mind but couldn’t quite grasp it. He stared at the closet door. It had been open earlier; now it was closed, dotted with powder where ident had gone over it for prints.

Cardinal stood up and slid back the door. Before it was half open, a hand shot out from the darkness and fixed itself around his neck. A fist plunged into his gut and doubled him over.

Cardinal staggered back, gasping. An expert kick swept his legs out from under him, and then he was face down on the floor, one arm pulled up behind his back. The cold barrel of a gun was pressed into the back of his head. His own holstered Beretta was digging painfully into his ribs.

“You wouldn’t happen to be armed, would you?” The voice was young, male, unfamiliar—WASP, at a guess.

“No.”

“Uh-huh. And what’s this?” Cardinal’s jacket was yanked up and his Beretta removed.

“You’re making a mistake,” Cardinal managed to say before his head was forced down again.

A hand went for his inner pocket and removed his wallet. “You’re a cop?”

“In my spare time. When I’m not getting beaten up in tourist cabins.”

The man’s weight shifted on Cardinal’s back. “I can’t believe you walked into this,” he said. “On your own? In the middle of the night? I could have been anybody.”

“Yes. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.”

“All right. Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to get off you. I’m going to hang on to your gun, but I’m going to get off you. So let’s be civilized, okay? Don’t try anything or I’ll have to put you down again.”

“Fine.”

“You’re going to get up and put your hands against the wall. I’ll stand over by the door.”

The man got off him, and Cardinal took a deep breath before he stood up and dusted himself off. Jesus, the indignity.

Behind the snub-nosed .38 that was pointed at him stood the youngest gunman Cardinal had ever seen—blond hair cropped close to the skull, pale fuzz on the cheeks and chin. He wore a houndstooth sports jacket, as if trying to impersonate an older man. He opened the door slightly and peered out at the parking lot.

“You really did come alone.” When he spoke, the kid’s mouth gleamed with too many teeth. “All right, turn around and put your hands against the wall. You know the position—feet spread, on your toes.”

The .38 glinted in the light from the window. Cardinal did as he was told and stared at the wall. “What are you,” he said. “about eighteen?”

“You’re way off. And we’ve got more important things to talk about.” The kid patted him down, looking for an ankle holster. Cardinal didn’t carry one. “For starters, how do we get out of this?”

“What do you mean, ‘we’? You’re the one who just assaulted a police officer. And I have a feeling that—unless you’re RCMP—you’re not licenced to carry that .38, junior.”

“And you’re the cop who just let his gun be taken away. I don’t think we want word of that getting around town, do we?”

“That would be embarrassing. Give it back and I’ll shoot myself right now.”

“What do you know about Howard Matlock?”

“Did Malcolm Musgrave send you? He always had a roundabout way of making a point, even for a Mountie.”

“I asked you a question,” the kid said. “What do you know about Howard Matlock?”

“He’s an American. He’s a chartered accountant. He’s dead. Why are you so interested?”

“I have the guns, so I think it’s more appropriate if I ask the questions. Why did you come back here? Your scene work must be done.”

“Look, obviously you’re RCMP. Why don’t you tell me who you are and what you’re up to?”

“I asked why you came back to the cabin.”

“Obviously for the same reason you’re here—to find out more about Howard Matlock. When a tourist comes to visit my town and gets fed to the bears, it doesn’t look good. Except that he probably wasn’t a tourist, which bothers me too. I came back because I wanted to get a better sense of the guy. I came back because a lot of things aren’t clear to me. I came back because at the moment there’s no way to go forward. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my job.” Cardinal waited for a moment, listening. There wasn’t a sound from the doorway. He turned to look.

The doorway was empty. His Beretta was lying on the kitchen table, minus the clip. He got to the doorway too late to see anything. He cursed under his breath. The missing clip would be difficult to explain.

He closed the closet door and took one last look around the cabin before locking it up. The kid was good, he had to admit. Catches him by surprise, lifts his gun and melts away like a wisp of fog. On the way up to the parking lot Cardinal thought about putting out an all-points on blond WASPS. But when he got to his car, he found his Beretta clip sitting on the roof above the driver-side door.

When he got home, Catherine was sitting in the lotus position, absolutely motionless. A candle flickered in the breeze from Cardinal’s entry. Smoke spiralled up from a stick of incense on top of the television.

“You’re home late,” she said.

“Smells like Shangri-La in here.” Cardinal always made a comment about her incense and she always ignored it. “How’s my swami?”

“More like a Buddha than a swami. I’m never going to get rid of this hospital fat.”

“You’re not fat.”

“All that bread and potatoes they fed me in the O.P.H. I can’t fit into any of my clothes.”

It was true that Catherine had put on a few pounds in the Ontario Psychiatric Hospital—she always did—but on the whole Cardinal thought his wife looked great. A little heavier in the hips, a slight increase in belly maybe, but for a woman with a twenty-six-year-old kid she looked damn good.

As she untangled her legs, Catherine let out a long sigh. Cardinal was always glad to see her doing yoga, even late at night; she rarely got sick when she was taking care of herself.

“Your dad called. He has an appointment with the cardiologist tomorrow morning. I’ll drive him over.”

“That’s excellent. His new doctor really knows how to get things done.”

“You look a little upset,” Catherine said. “Are you all right?”

“Bad day at work, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

“You want to tell me about it?”

“Nope.” He rarely did. None of the detectives on the squad talked to their wives about what happened at work. “Misguided chivalry,” a friend had told Cardinal once, and maybe he was right, but he probably didn’t live with a manic-depressive. Cardinal was not about to add to his wife’s burdens. Besides, he was still too embarrassed about having given up his gun. He flopped down on the couch and breathed in the scent of sandalwood. Very high vibrations, Catherine had assured him.

The house was beautifully quiet. His refuge. The last embers of a fire in the wood stove cast a warm glow.

“This came for you,” Catherine said, handing him a square envelope. “Very messy handwriting.”

No return address, either, Cardinal noticed. He tore it open and pulled out a card decorated with a big red heart. Embossed on the front: It’s been twelve years, honey… And on the inside: … but I still love you like the day we met! Underneath this, someone had written, “See you soon.”

It was unsigned, of course, they always were, but Cardinal knew who it was from. Twelve years ago he had helped put a man in prison; that man would be out soon. But the crucial message was not on the card, it was on the envelope, inscribed between the lines of Cardinal’s home address: We know where you live.

Catherine was saying something to him, but Cardinal couldn’t quite focus. His mind was fixed on the events of more than a decade ago, the single biggest mistake of his career—of his life, really. It had cast a pall over every moment since, and now, even though he had tried to rectify it, it was presenting a threat to his home. His refuge, yes; but between his wife’s emotional fragility and the demands of his profession, not an impregnable one.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What were you saying?”

“I said Kelly called a while ago. Are you sure you’re all right? What was that card about?”

Cardinal stuffed the card in his pocket. “Nothing. Garbage. Funny how Kelly always manages to call when I’m out. She must have someone watching the house.”

“Don’t say that, John. She asked after you. I really don’t think Kelly’s capable of holding a grudge. Not against you, anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She’s found a new place. Sharing an apartment in the East Village. She says it’s very funky but livable.”

“God knows why she wants to live in New York in the first place. You couldn’t pay me enough money to live there. Toronto was bad enough.”

Cardinal went into the bathroom and ran the shower as hot as he could stand it, then turned it gradually colder. The sting of the water restored his spirits a little, but his mind still kept going back to the events of a dozen years ago. He had crossed a line, and when he tried to go back—back to the last point where he had been his real self, his full self—it turned out not to be a line at all, but a chasm.

Cardinal forced himself to think of the present, of the farce at Loon Lodge. He remembered that just before he had been attacked, a thought had been forming in his mind. Then, as he was rinsing off, the thought came back to him. It had been about Wudky.

He dried off, wrapped himself in a thick dressing gown and went out into the living room to use the phone.

“Delorme? It’s Cardinal.”

“Cardinal, do you know what time it is? Believe it or not, I do have a life.”

“No, you don’t. I’ve been thinking about Wudky. You know he told us Paul Bressard got himself murdered and buried in the woods?”

“Wudky is retarded. Everybody knows he’s retarded. I’m surprised you bothered to check his story out.”

“But look at what we’ve got. We’ve got an American chewed up in the woods, right? Near an old trapper’s shack, right? And Paul Bressard is a trapper.”

“Right. And Wudky said Paul Bressard got murdered, and Wudky was wrong.”

“And why? Because Wudky is the world’s dumbest criminal. And why else? Because Wudky had had a lot to drink the night he heard that story. But suppose Wudky got it backwards? Suppose Paul Bressard killed a tourist and did away with him in the woods? That would make more sense, wouldn’t it? Maybe he even killed him accidentally and tried to cover it up.”

“Me, I don’t think feeding a guy to the bears is accidental. Even just to cover up.”

“But it’s the sort of thing that would occur to a trapper. Someone who knows exactly where the bears are.”

“I guess. Yeah, you could be on to something.”

“Are you just saying that to get me off the phone?”

“No. But I thought you already talked to Bressard.”

“I did. And he seemed completely innocent. But then, I was just checking to see if he was alive.”

“Maybe we should talk to him again. Oh, sorry—maybe you and Malcolm Musgrave should talk to him. Matlock was American. That means working with the Horsemen.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Cardinal went back to the bathroom and dried his hair. He had an idea now. A direction. When he went into the bedroom, Catherine was under the covers, fast asleep. Beside her, an oversize library book called New York and New Yorkers lay open to a picture of the East Village.

Cardinal got into bed beside her and turned out the light. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing, the sound of peace, love and security. And then he thought again about the card.