The Delicate Storm

by Giles Blunt

  “Hey, come on, John. What’s going on, here?”

  “Calvin Squier, you are under arrest for interfering with an investigation, for obstructing justice, for public mischief, and for anything else I can think of before I get to the crown’s office.”

  “Oh, no,” Squier said. “This is awful.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to resist arrest? It would go a long way toward improving my mood.”

  “Come on, John. Let me up.”

  Cardinal kept his knee planted on Squier’s back while he read him his rights, enunciating every word clearly. “Do you understand these rights?”

  “John, you’re going to get me in serious trouble. You don’t want to do that, do you?”

  “You seem to be under the impression that we’re friends, Squier. I don’t know what gives you that idea. I can’t remember when I met anybody I liked less—and I meet a lot of unpleasant people.”

  Squier had trouble getting to his feet with his hands cuffed. Cardinal steadied him and then led him across the parking lot to the car.

  “This is pure pettiness,” Squier said from the back seat. “You’re just getting even for my taking your gun away the night we met.”

  “Just keep talking, Squier. It always puts me in such a good mood, the sound of your voice.”

  “I think if you look at this objectively, you’ll find you’re behaving unfairly.”

  “Christ, Squier. How’d you ever think you could get away with it?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

  “Pretending that our murder victim was one Howard Matlock when clearly you knew he was someone else.”

  “I never said he was Howard Matlock, as such. You found a wallet in his hotel room and you made that assumption.”

  “Which you confirmed by your mythical trip to New York. By pretending to assist in this investigation when you are in fact actively blocking it. All that crap about the CADS base and WARR. It was all a crock, wasn’t it.”

  “John, I realize that candour is the soul of good teamwork. But I work for Security Intelligence. Obviously, I’m not at liberty to explain all my actions to you.”

  “I don’t care. Explain them to the judge.”

  18

  THAT WAS WEDNESDAY. On Thursday, Cardinal was sitting at the breakfast table finishing his second cup of coffee when the local news came on the radio. The lead item was the murder of Winter Cates.

  “Isn’t that your father’s new doctor?” Catherine said.

  Cardinal leaned across the table and turned the radio up. The newscaster didn’t have a lot of information. Dr. Cates, thirty-two, had been raped and strangled sometime Monday night in a wooded area north of the city. Police had no suspects.

  “My God,” Cardinal said. “I can’t believe it. We just saw her on Monday.”

  “It’s horrible,” Catherine said.

  “I only met her the once, but I liked her right away. And she seemed like a first-class doctor.”

  Cardinal picked up the phone and dialed Delorme’s home number. When the answering machine picked up, he put the phone down again.

  On the drive into town, Cardinal thought about the young doctor who had handled his father so well and gotten him treatment so fast. She had seemed so smart, so intent on helping.

  It was still early when Cardinal got to the squad room, but Delorme was already there.

  “I just heard about Winter Cates on the radio,” Cardinal said. “I still can’t get over it. She was raped too?”

  “There were signs of sexual assault, but no—the pathologist is pretty sure she wasn’t raped. Somebody sure killed her, though,” Delorme said. “And I don’t have a clue who it is.”

  “I thought you were focusing on Corporal Simmons. How’d Musgrave take that, by the way?”

  “Musgrave was fine. Told me where to find him, in fact. Also told me Simmons was not the guy, which turned out to be correct.”

  “He has an alibi? What is it?”

  Delorme winced. “I’d rather not say—I made a promise—but believe me, it wasn’t in the corporal’s interest to tell me about it.”

  Delorme brought Cardinal up to date. She laid particular emphasis on Dr. Cates’s office. “The assistant is certain that paper on the examining table was used after they closed Monday night. Of course, we’re waiting for DNA results, but the blood we found is AB-negative, which is rare.” She finished by voicing Cardinal’s own thought. “You know, two bodies in the woods in the space of three days—you have to think they’re probably connected.”

  “It does seem likely. But what’s our link? Let me tell you where I’m at with Matlock, and maybe we can come up with something. His name is not Matlock, for starters. And he wasn’t any chartered accountant, either.”

  Cardinal was interrupted by the phone.

  “Cardinal, CID.”

  “Ed Beacom, Beacom Security. Looks like we’re going to be working together again.”

  “Wonderful. What are you talking about, Ed?” Ed Beacom was a former cop who would never have made it up the ranks. It wasn’t incompetence; Beacom just had a grudge against the world and it made him annoying to work with.

  “The Mantis fundraiser?”

  Cardinal covered the mouthpiece. “Did Chouinard tell you about this fundraiser we have to work security on?”

  “The Conservative thing,” Delorme said. “Yeah, he told me. Just what I want to be doing in the middle of a murder case.”

  “Listen, Ed,” Cardinal said into the phone, “we’ve got everything hitting the fan just now. Can I call you back?”

  “Oh, sure. I know how important you guys are. Wouldn’t want to hold up the wheels of justice.”

  “Are you going to give me your number?”

  Beacom gave it to him and hung up.

  “Where were we?”

  “You were telling me that Matlock’s not Matlock.”

  Cardinal told Delorme about Squier’s deception, about Shackley’s real background and about his own trip to New York. Delorme’s attention was intense; her brown eyes fixed on him the whole time.

  “Quebec? 1970?” Delorme said when he was done. “That was like a thousand years ago. You really think that’s going to lead anywhere?”

  “The minute I have any other leads, I’ll follow them.”

  “And this Squier character,” Delorme said. “Why did he lie about who Shackley was? Why does CSIS want to keep Shackley’s identity a big secret? Why actively mislead you?”

  “Clearly, CSIS wants this case to stay buried.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “An excellent question. I suggest we put it to Calvin Squier.”

  As they passed the front desk, Mary Flower yelled to Cardinal, “Come here, Detective. I need to talk to you.”

  Cardinal waved her off. “Be right back.”

  He and Delorme headed back toward the cells.

  “I think we should start by zeroing in on how CSIS knew to look for Miles Shackley at the airport,” Cardinal said. “On why Miles Shackley was Code Red. It could be something totally simple that’ll rule out a connection to Algonquin Bay, or it could lead somewhere that brings us to Dr. Cates.”

  They passed the pink cell where a drunk was drying out, the cell that had recently suffered a flood and stank of mildew, the cells that had held Paul Bressard and Thierry Ferand until they made bail, and then they were in front of the last cell on the right, where Calvin Squier of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was housed. It was empty.

  “Must be in an interview room with an attorney,” Cardinal said. “Let’s go back out front.”

  They went back to the desk.

  “What’s up with Squier?” Cardinal asked Mary Flower. “He’s not in his cell.”

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Flower said. “Calvin Squier is gone. Calvin Squier has vamoosed. Calvin Squier is free as a bird. The Crown attorney sprung him last night about two seconds after you left.”

  �
�Tell me you didn’t cave in to the Crown on this,” Cardinal said to Chouinard. “Tell me you didn’t hide under your desk the minute CSIS whimpered.”

  “Don’t give me that, Cardinal. They had the chief in on this, the Crown, you name it. This wasn’t up to me, not that I objected too strongly. Playing by the rules doesn’t make anybody a wimp. And breaking them doesn’t make you a hero.” They were in the Detective Sergeant’s office. He had hung up a large Montreal Canadiens calendar behind his desk.

  “Talk to Calvin Squier about breaking the rules,” Cardinal said. “Calvin Squier completely derailed a murder investigation by implying he had interviewed the next of kin and investigated background when he hadn’t done any such thing. Calvin Squier invented a completely fictitious story involving the CADS base and American terrorists. And Calvin Squier also failed to share a crucial piece of information with both us and the RCMP, namely, the victim’s true identity. If that doesn’t qualify as obstruction of justice, I don’t know what does.”

  “CSIS is an intelligence operation. You know that. It does not operate under the same rules as everybody else.”

  “Not in Algonquin Bay, obviously.”

  “You arrested an agent of a federal institution without consulting me or the chief or the Crown. Reginald Rose is absolutely livid, and if I were you, I’d avoid the chief too. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get hit with some charges yourself. I’m telling you, Rose was furious. And he had every right to be.”

  “That doesn’t give Squier the right to mislead investigators. If he had his way, we’d still be trying to figure out who killed Howard Matlock, who is not dead, instead of Miles Shackley, who is.”

  “All right. Squier withheld evidence. That is not a crime for which you pull a civil servant off the street without a warrant. Why didn’t you go to the Crown first?”

  “Because it was late. Calvin Squier was withholding information relevant to my investigation.”

  “That makes him a witness, not a criminal. Cardinal, you and I have worked lots of cases together. Frankly, I’m surprised.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Oh, really?” Chouinard stood up, and for a moment Cardinal thought he was going to hit him; his predecessor would have. But Chouinard merely gripped the edge of the desk and took several deep breaths.

  “So who’d they bring down on you?” Cardinal said. “I’m assuming somebody pretty heavy.”

  “It’s not a matter of who, it’s a matter of who’s right.”

  “Who’d they bring down on you?”

  “You were out of line arresting a CSIS agent, and the Ottawa office saw fit to point that out to me.”

  “Ottawa. Well, that should tell you something. Squier works out of Toronto. Which makes you wonder what Ottawa is trying to hide.”

  “They’re preserving their jurisdiction over cases that involve terrorism. It’s not just their right, it’s their duty. You’re forgetting about the CADS base.”

  “I told you: CADS security has no record of any breaches. Squier made all of that up. And I don’t believe Shackley was connected with any American groups. If there’s any terrorism involved in this case, it happened in Quebec more than thirty years ago. Surely our duty to catch murderers trumps that one.” Cardinal opened the door. “If I rush, I might be able to arrest him again before he gets out of town.”

  “Don’t even think of it, Cardinal. I will come down on you from a very great height if you do! Do the words ‘false arrest’ mean anything to you?”

  Cardinal could hear the detective sergeant’s voice all the way to the ground floor.

  He actually had no intention of chasing Squier down again. He drove to the nearest Country Style and bought himself a coffee, then sat in his car, sipping it, while he tried to calm down. Last night’s rain had added another layer of ice to everything it touched. All the cars in the lot looked laminated, except where scrapers had been applied to scratch out some visibility.

  A barrel-chested man with no hair whatsoever got out of a four-by-four and headed for the Country Style entrance. Cardinal thought for a moment it was Kiki B., and all his reflexes went on high alert. But the man turned slightly as he opened the door, and Cardinal saw that it was not Kiki. He tried to forget his fear—and his anger at Chouinard—and to focus instead on the things that needed to be done.

  Delorme was writing up her report on Craig Simmons. The difficulty was how to word it so that the corporal was thoroughly cleared without mentioning the sexual angle.

  “Boo!”

  “Very funny, Szelagy. One day you’re going to do that and you’re going to get shot.”

  “You looked so intense, I couldn’t resist.” Szelagy hung his coat over the back of his chair and sat down heavily. Delorme liked Szelagy, but sometimes she wished his desk was in another room.

  “Just wanted to tell you,” he said. “I’m striking out big time on Dr. Cates’s neighbours. I swear everybody in that building is either on vacation or away on business. Pretty upscale place, I guess. Super tells me it’s owned by Paul Laroche.”

  Delorme swivelled around to face him. “Really? Paul Laroche?”

  “Yeah. Why ‘really’?”

  “Well, Laroche is a pretty big deal—in the francophone community, anyway. Did anybody talk to him yet?”

  “You think we should? It’s not like he lives there.”

  Delorme dialed Cardinal’s cellphone number. When he answered, she said, “Are you still feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Well, why don’t we go talk to Paul Laroche? He owns the building Winter Cates lived in.”

  “That doesn’t mean he knew her.”

  “We won’t know till we ask.”

  “You forget—I’m not working the Cates case, remember?”

  “No, but you’re working security for Laroche’s fundraiser. Can’t hurt to talk to the guy.”

  They met outside Laroche Real Estate, which was located in a beautifully restored Edwardian house on MacIntosh with porthole windows and an ornate L-shaped veranda.

  A glossy young woman directed them to the Mantis campaign headquarters a few doors down, in a converted storefront that had been vacant for years. The interior was furnished with old metal desks and what looked like a hundred phones. Many of these were manned by middle-aged housewives, but there was also a platoon of eager-looking young men in shirt sleeves. It was one of these, a kid no more than eighteen, who went to fetch Laroche. So young, Cardinal thought, and so conservative.

  “Detective Cardinal,” Laroche said when he came out. “How nice to see you again.” He handed a stack of paper to his pimply assistant and said, “These are fine.”

  Cardinal introduced Delorme.

  “The notorious Detective Delorme,” Laroche said with a smile. “I’ll have to watch what I say.”

  He led them back to an ugly little cubicle with cheap pine panelling and metal bookshelves full of videotapes. One wall was dominated by a huge poster of a smiling Premier Mantis standing in front of the Ontario flag. On the windowsill, a combined TV/VCR was playing a tape of Mantis joking with reporters outside Queen’s Park; the sound was off. A snapshot on a bookshelf showed Laroche and Mantis dressed in hunting gear, grinning amid brilliant fall foliage.

  The only seating consisted of task chairs rolled up against a table with three computers and telephones on it.

  “Have a seat,” Laroche said. “I don’t imagine you’re used to such luxury.”

  “I feel right at home,” Cardinal said.

  “You’ve met with Ed Beacom, I take it. Have you worked out the security arrangements?”

  “We’ll be meeting with Ed soon,” Cardinal said. “That isn’t actually what we came to talk about.”

  “Oh?”

  Cardinal looked at Delorme: It’s your case.

  “Mr. Laroche,” Delorme said, “did you know Winter Cates?”

  “The young woman who was murdered? I assume the reason you’re asking
is because she lived in one of my buildings.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “I met her once. I happened to be at the Twickenham the day she moved in. Lovely young woman. Good doctor, too, from what I hear. It’s a terrible loss.”

  “When you met her, was there anything about her that gave you cause for concern?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Perhaps there was something unusual on her rental application. Or maybe there was someone with her …”

  “Just a couple of moving men, I think.”

  “And you never saw her again?”

  “I own a lot of buildings. I don’t manage them day-to-day.”

  “I know,” Delorme said. “I used to be one of your tenants.”

  “Really?” Laroche said. “Which building?”

  “The Balmoral, over on MacPherson. Not for long, though.”

  “Well, I’m sorry we didn’t keep you.”

  “Too expensive. The city doesn’t pay me enough.”

  Laroche laughed. He said something in French that Cardinal didn’t catch, and Delorme said something back. Cardinal sensed that she found Laroche attractive, even though he must have had twenty-something years on her. Perhaps it was the dark good looks, greying at the edges. Or perhaps it was the self-assurance that wafted around him like expensive aftershave.

  “I’m glad you came by,” Laroche said. “I was going to call R.J. and run an idea by him. It’s the first time one of my tenants has been murdered, and I have to say I don’t like it one bit. I was wondering if a reward would be any use. Understand,” he said, touching Delorme’s sleeve, “I don’t want to blunder in where I’m not wanted. I know sometimes rewards can help, and if that’s the case with this matter, then I’d be prepared to put up twenty thousand or so.”

  Delorme looked at Cardinal. Cardinal just shrugged; it was her call.

  “It’s very generous of you,” Delorme said. “But it’s early days yet. What makes you think we wouldn’t catch the killer without a reward?”

  “I don’t doubt your competence, Detective. After Mayor Wells—not to mention the Windigo case—who could? It’s just that Dr. Cates was a young woman, full of promise.”