The Delicate Storm

by Giles Blunt

  The shifting firelight lit their faces in shades of brown and amber. Catherine looked beautiful in her layers of sweaters and a long plaid scarf. As she tended to their unexpected guests, her face had a look of utter absorption, and Cardinal knew she was happy. All evening their talk was punctuated by the throaty hiss of the stove whenever Cardinal opened it to add wood. There was the drumming of freezing rain against the windows, and every so often there would be a terrific crash as a branch came down outside, and they would all jump and exclaim as if at a sporting event.

  Cardinal and Catherine had to sleep with the bedroom door open to get as much warmth as possible from the living room. Even so, Cardinal was wearing long johns. Catherine fell asleep curled against him, but he lay awake for a long time, thinking about his father, and about Paul Laroche. He was now certain that Laroche was Yves Grenelle, and whether or not he had killed the minister Raoul Duquette, he had certainly killed Madeleine Ferrier to keep his past a secret. And Miles Shackley. And Winter Cates. He remembered the photograph in Laroche’s office of him and the premier in hunting gear; that might connect him to Bressard. Proving any of this in a court of law, however, would be another matter.

  Sometime later he was awakened by a sound, but he didn’t know what it was he had heard. Another branch? A transformer blowing? He lay still, waiting. Someone cried out from the other room, a strange high-pitched sound—half shout, half moan. Cardinal got out of bed and threw on his dressing gown. He grabbed the flashlight from the dresser and went out to the living room.

  The fire in the wood stove had burned down to coals, casting a dull red glow on the sleeping faces of Sally and her little girls sharing a gigantic sleeping bag on one side of the room, and on Mr. and Mrs. Walcott on the other. Mrs. Potipher was in Kelly’s room with the kerosene heater. It was his father who cried out—a choked call to Cardinal, who stepped swiftly around the sleeping forms and past the curtain.

  His father had half fallen out of the chair, and hung draped over one side. He was drenched in sweat when Cardinal righted him, his face slick and white.

  “Where are your pills?” Cardinal said, swinging the flashlight around. “Dad, where are your pills?”

  His father moaned, his head lolling against the back of the chair. There was a rattling sound in his lungs.

  Cardinal found the pills on a small side table. He tipped out one of the capsules into his palm. Pulling his father forward in the chair, he cradled his head in the crook of his elbow and put the capsule into his mouth. He called out for Catherine.

  “It’s my leg,” his father said. “My leg hurts.” Translating from Stan Cardinal’s stoic tongue, Cardinal knew that meant he was entering previously unknown territories of pain.

  “Catherine!”

  Catherine appeared at the edge of the curtain, untangling her hair with one hand, holding her robe together with the other.

  “Call an ambulance,” Cardinal said.

  Catherine picked up the phone and dialed. Then she handed the phone to Cardinal. “They might respond quicker to a cop.” She knelt beside the chair. “How you doing, Stan? How can we help?”

  He grabbed at his thigh and groaned, his face utterly white.

  “John’s getting the ambulance now. They’ll be here soon.”

  “My leg’s killing me,” Stan said. “Not literally, I hope.”

  Cardinal spoke his address into the phone.

  “Sir, we’ll get someone there as fast as we can. But the roads are impossible tonight.”

  Cardinal hung up and dialed the emergency room at City Hospital. The nurse on the other end asked him to describe the symptoms carefully. “All right,” she said. “With a history of heart failure, most likely he’s thrown a clot in his leg. It’s painful but treatable with blood-thinning drugs.”

  “John! I think he’s having a heart attack!”

  Cardinal dropped the phone. His father sat erect, clutching as if at an arrow in his chest, then collapsed backwards, unconscious.

  “Help me get him onto the floor.”

  Cardinal lifted his father under the armpits; Catherine took hold of his feet. “He’s ice-cold,” she said. “Both his legs are ice-cold.”

  They laid him on the floor and Cardinal started chest compressions. Every six compressions, he leaned forward and gave his father mouth-to-mouth.

  “Take the phone, Catherine. Ask them what we do next.”

  He continued pressing his father’s chest while Catherine asked for instructions. “They say to keep doing just what you’re doing,” she said. “Keep it up till the ambulance gets here.”

  “He’s not breathing, for God’s sake. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for the ambulance. Maybe we should drive. Ask her how long it’s going to take.”

  “With luck, ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Catherine, go outside and start the car.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Sally was standing by the curtain now.

  “Help Catherine scrape the car off.”

  Catherine and Sally went out. A few moments later Cardinal heard the raw sound of scrapers attacking hard ice.

  His father groaned and opened his eyes.

  Cardinal stopped the compressions and pressed one ear to his father’s chest. There was a steady thud, but the lungs sounded full of fluid.

  “Dad,” he said softly. He placed a hand on his father’s cheek. “Dad, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which one of your pills is the diuretic? We need to get some of this fluid out of your lungs.”

  “Orange ones.” His voice was a whisper; his eyes seemed to look somewhere beyond the ceiling of the room.

  Cardinal found the pills among several bottles on the little table. He shook two into his hand and started to raise his father’s head.

  “No,” his father whispered. “No more pills.”

  “Your lungs are filled with fluid. They’ll help you breathe.”

  “No more pills.”

  “Dad, it’s just so you can breathe.”

  “No more pills.” The eyes still scanned the ceiling, the breath came in short, static-filled gulps.

  Catherine came back in, soaking wet. A cloud of frigid air blew in with her and occupied the room. “The ice is impossible,” she said. “We can’t even get the car door open.”

  There was a sound of a distant siren.

  “It’s okay. That’ll be the ambulance. Dad won’t take his pills.”

  Catherine came over and knelt on the other side of his father. “What’s this I hear? You’re not taking your pills now?”

  Stan Cardinal’s slack, wet lips twitched into the slightest of smiles. “You going to give me hell?”

  Catherine shook her head. Her eyes filled, but she blinked back the tears. She found the old man’s hand and took it in both of hers. Cardinal gripped his father’s forearm.

  “Only thing you ever did right,” his father said. The words came out slowly, like notes so separate that all sense of melody is lost.

  “What’s that?” Cardinal said. He did not want to cry in front of his father.

  “Cathy.”

  “I know.” Cardinal squeezed his father’s arm. “Dad, listen. I know it’s been a long time since you went to church, but—”

  “No priest.”

  “Are you sure? We can call Corpus Christi, if you want.”

  “No priest.”

  Cardinal heard the wail of the siren pass by, behind the house. They had missed the turnoff. He didn’t think there was much a paramedic could do at this point. Or a doctor, for that matter.

  “John.”

  “What, Dad?”

  “John.”

  “Go ahead, Dad. I’m here.”

  “I thought we did all right, don’t you?”

  Cardinal swallowed. His Adam’s apple felt three times its normal size. “We did fine.”

  Cardinal wasn’t sure what his father said next. The siren was coming back toward Madonna Road.

  “I’m sor
ry for anything I did. You know …”

  “Dad, you don’t have to apologize for anything.”

  “Anything, you know …”

  “I know. I’m sorry too.”

  “Well, what are you sorry for?” The question seemed to hang in the air between them like a mobile.

  “For not making sure you got what you wanted—you know—so you could go through all this at home, instead of …”

  “No, no.” His father coughed then. His hands shot out as if to catch a heavy object toppling over him, then fell back against the floor.

  “Dad?” Cardinal rubbed his arm vigorously, as if stimulating circulation there might revive the entire dying body. “Dad?”

  His father was struggling to say something. Cardinal and Catherine leaned forward to hear, but the words disintegrated into meagre, breathy vowels, ahs and ohs without meaning. Then the last of his breath left the body, and almost instantly his eyes greyed over. Catherine leaned forward and wept. Cardinal sat back on his heels, stunned.

  Lights flashed in the windows and there was the sound of car doors and heavy boots on the ice. Then the paramedics were inside, checking for vital signs and confirming that Stan Cardinal was dead.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner,” one of them said. “Roads are a real problem tonight. There’s lines down all along Trout Lake.”

  “I know,” Cardinal said.

  “I gotta get on the phone. Coroner’ll have to come out and confirm death.”

  “Okay.”

  The medic had already flipped open his cellphone. “Yes, we’re at the Madonna Road cardiac. We got full arrest here, no vitals. Can you have the coroner out here right away? Thanks.”

  Cardinal was aware of Catherine moving in the firelight. Someone must have thrown another log into the wood stove; he couldn’t remember doing it himself. Somehow she had got the kids moved into Kelly’s room without waking Mrs. Potipher. She boiled water and made tea for Sally and the ambulance men. They drifted in and out of Cardinal’s vision, faceless silhouettes in a netherworld where all distances were vast, all voices echoes. Cardinal took a sip of tea and burned his tongue.

  There was a blast of cold air and much bustle as Dr. Barnhouse swept in, clutching his black bag. He knelt beside Stan Cardinal, listening for a long time with his stethoscope. Finally, he said, “There’s no heartbeat. And no respiration.” He consulted his watch. “Time of death: 2:57.”

  Barnhouse packed away his stethoscope and closed his black bag with a staccato snap. Then he was standing before Cardinal with his hand out. Cardinal reached out and felt the doctor’s dry white palm squeeze his hand.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Detective Cardinal.”

  There was a pleading in the doctor’s eyes, as if to say, Help me! I’m no good at this! As he saw him to the door, Cardinal almost wanted to offer comfort, tell him it was all right.

  The ambulance men moved toward the body.

  Cardinal said, “Can you give us a few minutes?”

  Catherine was beside his father, looking limp and exhausted. Cardinal knelt once more across from her. He was amazed at the vastness of his pain. “What was he trying to say?” he said. “Just before he went. He was trying to say something, but I couldn’t make it out.”

  “He was responding to what you said.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You said you were sorry. You were sorry that he didn’t get to die at home.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘I am home.’”

  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.”