Blackfly Season

by Giles Blunt

  In the ER, a young man behind the counter handed him a clipboard with a form on it.

  “We’re not going to be able to answer any of these questions,” Jerry said. “Young lady’s got no ID and no memory.”

  The young man didn’t blink, as if amnesia cases walked in every night. “Just fill it out for Jane Doe, and approximate the rest of the stuff. The triage nurse will be with you shortly.”

  The girl sat humming tunelessly while they waited. Jerry filled out the form, writing “unknown” over and over again. The room started to get busier. John Cardinal came in with a middle-aged man who looked like an assault victim. He nodded to Jerry. It was not unusual to bump into another cop in emerg; on a Friday night, you pretty much expected it. The triage nurse came over and talked to them for about three minutes, just long enough to order up a chem screen and put the girl on priority. Eventually, Dr. Michael Fortis came out of an examining room and conferred with the nurse. Jerry went over; he’d worked with Fortis a lot.

  “Pretty slow for a Friday,” Jerry said. “You sending them all to St. Francis?”

  “You should have seen us an hour ago. We had two separate MVAs, cars got in arguments with moose up on Highway 11. The one in the four-by-four wasn’t bad, but the guy in the Miata will be lucky if he ever walks again. Always happens this time of year. Blackflies drive the moose out of the woods, and bam!”

  “I got something a little more unusual for you.”

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. Fortis came out of an examining room, shutting the door behind him.

  “This young woman is completely disoriented in time and space. She’s also showing flattened affect and a dramatic level of amnesia. She could be a schizophrenic or bipolar off her meds. Do we know anything at all about her?”

  “Nothing,” Jerry said. “She may be local, but I doubt it. She says she woke up in the woods.”

  “Yes, I saw the bites.”

  An attendant handed the doctor a clipboard. He flipped a page once, twice. “Her chem screen. Negative for intoxicants. First thing I want to do is call the psychiatric hospital and see if any of their patients are AWOL. If everyone’s accounted for, I’ll call for a psych consult, but that won’t happen till morning. In the meantime, we’ll take a skull X-ray. Frankly, I don’t know what else to do.”

  He opened the examining room door and brought the girl out.

  “Who are you?” she said to Jerry.

  “Do you remember who I am?” Dr. Fortis said.

  “Not really.”

  “I’m Dr. Fortis. The kind of trouble you’re having with your memory just now is usually a symptom of trauma. I’m going to take you down the hall and take a picture.”

  Jerry went back to the waiting area. It was filling up now with the usual cursing drunks, and infants wailing from colic or fly bites. He called the city station to see if there was a missing persons report on the redhead. The duty sergeant joked around with him; Jerry was with the Ontario Provincial Police now, but he’d worked for the city before that, and the sergeant was an old friend. No missing redheads on file.

  Jerry thought about what would need to be done for her. It would be a city problem, not his, but if the hospital didn’t admit the girl, they’d have to find her a place to stay, maybe the Crisis Centre. And if it turned out she was the victim of an assault, it would mean going back to the bar and finding out if anybody knew her, trying to backtrack to when she came in and where she was before that. He wondered how she came to be in the woods. She wasn’t dressed for camping.

  He found John Cardinal signing forms, talking to the young man behind the counter. The guy was listening, nodding attentively. Cardinal had always had the knack of making people feel that what they did was important, that how they handled the details mattered. It was a knack that could mean the difference between making a case and blowing it. Jerry waited for him to finish.

  “I think I got a case for you,” he said. “I know you don’t have enough to do.”

  “I told you never to call me here, Jerry.”

  “I know. But without you, I’m only half a cop. My life is a stony, barren place.”

  “Haven’t seen you around lately. I suppose you’ve been snorkelling down in Florida or somewhere.”

  “I wish. Been stuck in Reed’s Falls working surveillance. Came across something in town tonight, though. Bit of an anomaly.” Jerry told him about the redhead.

  “No drugs? Sounds like she took a knock on the head.”

  “Yeah. No ID, no keys, no nothing.”

  Dr. Fortis came back from radiology, a worried expression on his face.

  “Something unexpected,” he said to Jerry. “Come and take a look.”

  “John should probably be in on it. She’ll be a city case. You know Detective Cardinal?”

  “Of course. Come this way.”

  Cardinal followed them down the hall to an office where darkened X-rays were clamped to light boards. Dr. Fortis snapped on the light, and the gracile cranium and neck bones of the young woman glowed before them, front and side views.

  “I think we’ve found why our red-headed friend is in such a placid mood. In fact, we’re going to be sending her down to Toronto for surgery,” Dr. Fortis said. “You see here?” He pointed to a bright spot in the middle of the lateral view.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Cardinal said.

  “I can tell you I’m feeling pretty incompetent right about now. Totally missed it on physical examination. I can only plead the thickness and colour of her hair.”

  “Looks like a.32,” Jerry said.

  “Entered through the right parietal region and partially severed the frontal lobes,” Dr. Fortis said. “Hence the flattened affect.”

  “Will that be permanent?” Jerry said.

  “I’m no expert, but people do make amazing recoveries from these sorts of things. This is really one for the medical journals, though: self-inflicted lobotomy.”

  “Maybe not self-inflicted,” Cardinal said. “Women who want to commit suicide almost never shoot themselves. They take an overdose, they use the car exhaust. We’ll get ident to do a gunshot-residue on her hand.”

  “Might not have to,” Jerry said.

  The girl was in a wheelchair at the door, still smiling, an orderly behind her.

  “We’ve got the EEG results,” the orderly said.

  Dr. Fortis examined the printout.

  Jerry turned to him. “You said the entry wound is on the right?”

  “That’s correct. The right temple.”

  “Hey, Red.” Jerry took a pen from his pocket. “Catch.”

  He tossed the pen over her head. A pale hand shot up and snagged it out of the air. Her left hand.

  “Well,” Cardinal said, “so much for suicide.”

  2

  ALGONQUIN BAY, WITH A POPULATION of 58,000 and only two small hospitals, cannot lay claim to any neurosurgeons of its own, which was why, forty-five minutes later, Cardinal was barrelling down Highway 11 toward Toronto, four hours south.

  After Dr. Fortis had scanned the EEG results, he had ordered the redhead put into a neck brace and shot her full of antibiotics and anti-seizure medication. Then he ordered an ambulance. “She appears stable,” he said, “but I’m seeing some seizure activity on her readout. They’ll want to operate on her right away.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not a suicide attempt,” Cardinal said, “but I’ll get ident to do a gunshot-residue on her before we leave.”

  “We?”

  “I’m going to have to accompany her, be there when that bullet comes out of her head.”

  “Of course. Chain of evidence and all that. Have to be quick, though. The sooner she’s in surgery, the better.”

  Using electric clippers, Dr. Fortis shaved a small patch of hair away from the girl’s right temple. A placid smile played across her features, but otherwise she didn’t react at all.

  “Perfectly round entrance wound,” Cardinal noted. “No burn, no smudge and no ta
ttooing.”

  “There’s no way that gun was fired within a foot of this girl,” Jerry said. “I hope you find whoever pulled the trigger. Let me know if I can be any help. I’m heading home to enjoy what’s left of my day off.” He waved at the girl. “You take care, Red.”

  The girl’s smile was frozen in place. The anti-seizure medication was starting to take hold.

  Cardinal put in a call to Detective Sergeant Daniel Chouinard at home.

  “What is it, Cardinal, I’m watching Homicide, here.”

  “I thought that was off the air.”

  “Not in my house. I own the entire first three seasons on DVD. There’s something soothing about watching cops with problems a lot worse than mine.”

  Cardinal told him about the girl.

  “Well, you’ve got to go to Toronto and see that bullet come out. Is there anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Good. Now, I’m going to go back and watch how those big-city cops handle things.”

  Bob Collingwood from the ident section arrived a few minutes later. He was the youngest detective on the squad, and by far the quietest. He took some Polaroids of the girl’s wound and gave them to Cardinal. Then he tested the girl with a GSR “dabber,” a flat, sticky object not unlike a tongue depressor, pressing it over the back of both her hands and into the space between thumb and forefinger. The girl appeared not to notice; it was as if she had disappeared from the room. Collingwood slipped the dabber into a Baggie, handed it to Cardinal without a word and went on his way.

  When Cardinal arrived home, he found his wife excited about her own trip to Toronto, although she wasn’t leaving for another week. Catherine was going to be leading a three-day field trip to the big city with members of the photography class she taught at Northern University.

  “I can’t wait till next week,” she said. “Algonquin Bay’s a great place to live, but let’s face it, there’s not a lot of culture per square foot. I’m going to take a million photographs in Toronto, I’m going to have some wonderful meals and I’m going to spend every spare minute in the museums seeing art, art, art!”

  She was checking cameras, cleaning them with blasts of canned air, and polishing lenses. Catherine never travelled with fewer than two cameras, but it looked like she had enough lenses for five. Her hair was all in a tangle, the way it tended to get when she was busy with a project. She would shower and then forget to dry it as she got involved in something else.

  “I wish I could come down with you, right now,” she said. “But I’ve got a class tomorrow, and a darkroom workshop on Thursday.”

  Cardinal tossed a few things into an overnight bag.

  “Where will you stay?” Catherine said.

  “The Best Western on Carlton. They always have a room.”

  “I’ll call them right now and book it for you.”

  Cardinal was digging around in the dresser for his electric razor. The only time he used it was when he travelled, and he never remembered where he’d put it from one trip to the next.

  Catherine called Toronto directory information and got the hotel’s number, all the while chatting to Cardinal. The eleven o’clock news was winding down on the television, but Catherine was just revving up.

  A familiar unease fluttered in Cardinal’s chest. This time, his wife had managed to stay out of hospital for two years. She’d been doing well. Took her medication faithfully, kept up with her yoga, made sure she got a good night’s sleep. But this was one of the worst aspects of her illness: Cardinal could never be sure if his wife was just happy and excited, or if she was entering a trajectory that would fling her into the intergalactic reaches of mania.

  Should I say something? It was as if, when the psychiatrists had first diagnosed Catherine’s disorder twenty years ago, they had initiated Cardinal into the brotherhood of anguished spouses with that endlessly repeated mantra: Should I say something?

  “This trip is going to be fantastic,” Catherine said. “I can feel it. We’re going to shoot the waterfront. Capture some of the old industrial buildings before they get all touristy and unrecognizable.”

  Cardinal came over and stood behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. Catherine froze. Lens in one hand, lens tissue in the other.

  “I’m all right, John.” There was an edge in her voice.

  “I know, hon.”

  “You don’t have to worry.”

  She didn’t turn to look at him. Not a good sign.

  Bugs spattered on the windshield like rain. The occasional truck clattered along, blocking Cardinal’s progress, but mostly the highway was empty. He’d left the ambulance behind somewhere around Huntsville.

  Cardinal forced himself to stop fretting about Catherine and focus on the young redhead. The Baggie and the photographs were on the passenger seat beside him. He had no doubt that he was dealing with an attempted murder, but Cardinal had been a cop for more than twenty years—ten in Toronto, more than that in Algonquin Bay—and he had long ago learned never to jump to conclusions.

  At the Catholic boys’ school he had attended, the priests had always dourly insisted that an errant youth view his actions through the eyes of his Maker, or if he lacked that much imagination, then through the eyes of his mother. In Cardinal’s mind, these inquisitors had been replaced with a defence attorney, who was always nosing around for reasonable doubt like a rat after the cheese.

  “And you say you did not perform a test for gunshot residue, is that correct, Detective?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Without such a test to prove otherwise, it’s possible the victim fired the bullet into her own head, is it not?”

  “She’s left-handed, for one thing. And there was no residue on her scalp. It’s highly unlikely she could have fired the bullet herself.”

  “Just answer the question, Detective. I asked you if it was possible.”

  Cardinal put in a call to 52 Division in Toronto and requested a twenty-four-hour police guard on the girl.

  Dr. Melanie Schaff was cool and efficient and a good two inches taller than Cardinal. She had the kind of wary brusqueness one often finds in women who have struggled to make their way in a predominantly male world; Cardinal’s colleague Lise Delorme had it.

  “Your Jane Doe has sustained a partial lobotomy and the bullet has lodged near the hippocampus,” Dr. Schaff said. “Sometimes it can be safer to leave a bullet in than take it out, but this one is close to one of the cerebral arteries. With the seizure activity we’re seeing on her EEG there’s no way we can leave it in. One or two good seizures and Jane Doe could end up Jane Dead.”

  “What are the risks?”

  “Minor, compared to leaving it in. I’ve explained that to her and she seems quite prepared for the surgery.”

  “Is she in a state to make that decision?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s her memory and affect that’s impaired, not her reasoning ability.”

  “What are the chances of a total recovery?”

  “There’s only a partial severing of the frontal lobe, and it’s only on one side, so there’s a good chance she’ll exhibit the full range of emotions eventually. No guarantees, however. There’s no direct damage to areas of the brain that control memory, so I expect she’s just in a traumatic fog, which should pass. I’ll be recommending therapy with a neuropsychologist for that. Now, what exactly do you need from me, Detective, other than the bullet?”

  “Is there any chance she’ll remember anything while you’re operating?”

  “We’ll be nudging along the hippocampus. It’s certainly possible she’ll get random flashes. Whether they’ll be dreams or memories, I can’t say. But you’ve seen the state she’s in. There won’t be any context for them.”

  “If you could just keep in mind that it might be useful for us, and it could save her life. We don’t know who’s trying to kill her.”

  “That it?”

  “I need to actually see you take the bullet out.”

&nb
sp; “All right. Let’s get you gloved and gowned. We’ll be working with something called a Stealth Station. It’s a 3-D cat scan hooked up to the microscope I’ll be using. Should give you a ringside seat.”

  Like most cops, Cardinal had witnessed his share of gore—the torn wreckage of accidents and the blood-spattered kitchens, bedrooms, basements and living rooms where men commit violence on each other or, more often, on women. A policeman’s heart gets calloused, like a carpenter’s thumb. What Cardinal had never got used to, however, was the operating room. For some reason he could not fathom—he hoped it was not cowardice—the gleam of surgical blades made his stomach turn in a way that burns, dismemberments and impalings did not.

  Two physicians assisted Dr. Schaff, and two nurses. “Red,” as Cardinal had begun to think of her, was drowsy from sedatives and anti-seizure medication, but conscious. A bigger patch had been shaved around the entrance wound, and she had been given injections of local anaesthetic from a huge hypodermic. General anaesthetic was not required, the brain being insensitive to pain.

  Masked and gowned, Cardinal stood to one side near Red’s feet, where he could see an overhead monitor and observe the surgeon at the same time.

  “Okay, Red,” Dr. Schaff said. “How you feeling?”

  “My goodness, you all have such beautiful eyes.”

  Cardinal glanced around the O.R. What the girl said was true: Between the masks and the surgical caps, the eyes were emphasized; everyone appeared gentle and wise.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Dr. Schaff said. She strapped on a pair of goggles that made her look like a benign alien. “Are you ready for us? It won’t hurt, I promise.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Cardinal had thought he was ready too, until Dr. Schaff took a scalpel and cut a flap in Red’s scalp. For a moment it formed a fine scarlet geometry, but then the red lines thickened and flowed, and Cardinal wished he were somewhere else.

  Dr. Schaff asked for the bone saw. Cardinal spent a lot of his off-hours doing woodwork, and it amazed him that the instrument in her gloved hand might have been a tool in his basement. It gave off a high-pitched whine, like a dentist’s drill, but once it touched bone the sound was not all that different from ripping plywood. Red didn’t even blink as Dr. Schaff extracted the piece of skull and set it aside. It would be preserved and put back in place in a day or two, when any brain swelling had gone down.