The Delicate Storm

by Giles Blunt

  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 coo
k 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.”

  25

  THE RAIN BEGAN TO FALL ONCE MORE in the early hours of the morning. It fell in large drops that tumbled through a layer of cold air hovering just above the ground. Each drop, upon impact with the previous layer of ice, was transformed instantly to more ice. The rain froze on the rooftops, it froze on the cars. It froze on the street lamps and highways. It froze on the trunks of trees and on the tiniest branches. It froze on the hydro wires, on the mailboxes and on the traffic lights. It froze on the roof of the cathedral, glazing its spire and cross. It froze on the wooden apex of the modernist synagogue and it froze on the stone arch in Ferris Park that says Gateway to the North.

  Cardinal had seen many ice storms but never one like this. On Monday he drove into town with absurd slowness. The city around him had been transformed into a gigantic chandelier.

  He got to work—late, of course—and found that the storm had sealed the Algonquin Bay police station not just in a carapace of ice but into a kind of muffled peace. Several people failed to show up for duty, as did the entire construction crew, and a pleasant quiet hung over the place.

  Somewhere someone was whistling—probably Chouinard—and Nancy Newcombe, in charge of the evidence room, was admonishing someone to fill in the date (legibly, thank you very much) beside his or her signature. At the desk next to Cardinal, Delorme was murmuring into the phone. It was amazing to Cardinal how quietly Delorme could conduct business. It always sounded as if she were imparting secrets to a lover, but she was invariably just doing the footwork like everyone else.

  Power had been restored to Airport Hill and Cunningham Road—Cardinal had made sure, first thing. But he had resisted the impulse to drive up there and check on his father. Catherine would call Stan from home; he wouldn’t resent hearing from her. Coming home had brought Cardinal a curious kind of tranquil-ity—transient, he knew—but he savoured it as he sat in the early morning silence.

  That silence was blown into tiny pieces by a voice suddenly booming out from the front counter. “Disgusting! Who ordered up this ridiculous weather? I go away for two weeks and the entire city falls apart.” This delivered at ten on the volume knob, in the window-rattling voice of Detective Ian McLeod, Cardinal’s sometime partner, elder colleague and paranoid pain in the ass.

  McLeod was in his late fifties, a solid, foul-mouthed, barrel-shaped knot of muscle topped with a short frizz of greying red hair. Lately, and for reasons known only to himself, McLeod had taken to calling his colleagues Doctor. Cardinal found it faintly irritating, but most things about McLeod were irritating.

  “Dr. Cardinal is doing rounds, I see. Or are you performing surgery today—extracting confessions from some hopelessly comatose criminal?”

  “I wish. How was Florida?”

  “Florida was wonderful. Lots of sunshine. The sun down there actually gives off some heat! Great food! But the place is crawling with Cubans and geezers. I’m telling you, coming back here, it feels fabulous to look around and see people walking unassisted—trying to, anyway. Half the Sunshine State is over eighty and the other half doesn’t speak English.”

  Delorme covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “For God’s sake, McLeod, I’m trying to work here.”

  “Then you got the French Canadians.” McLeod jerked his chin in Delorme’s direction. “Getting so there’s no point going away. Goddam frogs. It’s like being at work.”

  McLeod settled his big frame on the chair next to Cardinal’s and demanded to know everything about their cases. Delorme was off the phone now, and they told him the story, finishing up with their trip to Montreal.

  “Goddam,” McLeod said several times in a tone of wonder. And when they were finished: “I can’t get over the bears. I mean, I’ve heard of getting rid of evidence, but this is going too far.” Eventually he wandered over to his own desk, where he proceeded to bellow into the phone.

  Cardinal’s phone rang. It was Musgrave on the other end.

  “I have finally managed to pry some information out of the FBI,” he said. “I don’t know what those guys do for a living, but sharing information isn’t one of them.”

  “They give you anything on Shackley?”

  “Turns out Mr. Shackley has a record after all. Seems our former CIA hard case was nabbed for a little extortion back in ’92. Tried to put the arm on a former operative of theirs, one Diego Aguilar, who used to do cocaine runs up the Gulf coast, and who was also—only coincidentally, of course—working for the CIA. Shackley was part of the team that ran him. When Shackley hit hard times, he went to Aguilar for help. When Aguilar failed to be generous and supportive, Shackley threatened to expose his drug background. Even had copies of surveillance videotapes as backup.”

  “And his victim just toughed it out? Went to the cops?”

  “Better. Shackley made a slight miscalculation with this Aguilar guy. He failed to notice that the guy never stopped working for the CIA, although now it’s as a communications network consultant to Latin American countries. So he just put in a complaint to Langley, and they had the local police pick Shackley up. Did six years for that little stunt.”

  Cardinal went over to Delorme’s desk and propped the FLQ snapshot on her keyboard.

  “Musgrave tells me Shackley did time for trying to extort money out of a tough guy used to do work for the CIA. That gives us motive. I think he was up to his old tricks again—using this photograph—and I think this time his target was Yves Grenelle.”

  “Yves Grenelle under another name, you mean.”

  “Under another name and thirty years later. Presumably a French Canadian name. In fact, maybe that’s who tried to stop Rouault and Hawthorne from talking to us. Maybe it wasn’t CSIS.”

  “They both said it was an older man,” Delorme said. “But Hawthorne wasn’t certain he was French Canadian.”

  “Rouault was. So who does that give us?”

  “Paul Bressard? But you’ve cleared him, right?”

  “Bressard’s not old enough. He would have been nine or ten in 1970. Of course, there’s always Dr. Choquette. He’s certainly the right age, and he was angry at Winter Cates.”

  “It’s not Dr. Choquette. He’s got several witnesses who were playing cards with him when Dr. Cates was kidnapped. Strong witnesses, too.”

  “Well, Miles Shackley comes up here to blackmail Yves Grenelle, whoever he is, who’s been living under a new identity for God knows how long. He arranges a meeting, shows him what he’s got, and there’s a fight. Shackley is killed, but Grenelle is injured too.”

  “If I was threatening someone with blackmail, I think I’d keep a gun on them.”

  “So would I. Maybe Grenelle makes a grab for it and gets shot, but he manages to kill Shackley. He dumps the body in the woods and sinks the car. He tries to go on with his life, but he’s got a bullet in him, or he’s at least got a bad enough hole in
him he can’t fix it himself.”

  “He has to find a doctor, we know that. It keeps bringing us back to the same question: why pick Winter Cates?”

  “That’s the tough one. She’s new in town, which narrows it down to neighbours and patients—both of which have come up clean. But this time, at least we know what the killer looked like thirty years ago. Plus we’ll have whatever Miriam Stead comes up with.”

  “I know how different I looked thirty years ago: I was wearing snowsuits and Mickey Mouse ears. What about you?”

  “I had hair down to my shoulders.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true. I had John Lennon hair.”

  McLeod came wandering around the divider looking uncharacteristically contemplative.

  “What’s up?” Cardinal said. “You look like you’ve found religion.”

  “The Cates thing—you said it was made to look like rape but no rape had occurred?”

  “She was naked and her clothes had been torn off, but there was no sign of penetration. That’s not conclusive, of course. Why? What’s on your mind?”

  “Old case of mine. Ten years ago, maybe. Situation where a woman was murdered, found outdoors, naked, clothes all ripped, but no sign of penetration.”

  “Couldn’t have been ten years ago—I’d’ve remembered.”

  “Twelve, then. It was before you moved here from Toronto. Man, we busted our asses on that case and we just never got lucky. Came up with nothing. Absolutely nothing. I worked it with Turgeon.” Dick Turgeon was an old-timer who had been partnered with McLeod for years. He’d died of a heart attack exactly two weeks after his retirement party—a fact that could still elicit reams of morbid philosophy from McLeod.

  “I don’t suppose you remember the name of the victim? Anything useful like that?”

  “It’ll come to me. She was mid-thirties, good-looking. Hadn’t been in town more than a couple of months.” McLeod snapped his fingers. “Ferrier. That was her name.”

  “Madeleine Ferrier?”

  “Madeleine Ferrier. How’d you know?”