Blackfly Season

by Giles Blunt

  “I understand you want to talk about the drug trade,” Clegg said. “I’ll tell you everything I can, short of jeopardizing sources.”

  Delorme looked over at Cardinal, who nodded. It was her lead, she could call the shots.

  “You’re probably aware of the two murders we’ve had recently,” she said.

  “Wombat Guthrie, sure. I haven’t heard a name yet on your other guy.”

  “Morris Tilley.”

  “Morris Tilley?” Clegg shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

  Delorme showed him a photograph they had borrowed from Mrs. Tilley.

  “The face is familiar,” Clegg said. “I’m sure I’ve seen him around. But where and in what context … you’ve got me.”

  “The two killings are linked,” Delorme said. “The gun used on Morris Tilley was recently in the possession of Wombat Guthrie. It was also used in an assault—”

  Cardinal laid a hand on her arm. “We can’t go into that.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Delorme said. She didn’t manage to hide the note of irritation in her voice, perhaps she didn’t try.

  A half-smile formed on Clegg’s face. “I understand.”

  “What do you know about Wombat Guthrie?”

  “Ugly as sin, mean as hell. Lifetime member of the Viking Riders. Drug runner from way back. Not the most popular guy with the Riders’ new president is what I hear.”

  “Tell us more.”

  “Wombat was left guarding a substantial amount of dope. Exactly how much I wouldn’t know, but substantial. Other Riders show up, dope’s gone, Wombat’s gone.”

  “Do you think they killed him?”

  “It’s certainly possible. They’re excitable boys.”

  “Tilley was living in a house full of other junkies up in Greenwood,” Delorme said. “Why don’t we give you their names, and you tell us if any of them are connected to Wombat Guthrie in any way.”

  Toof’s sad-sack housemates had all resolutely denied ever having met Wombat Guthrie, though a few allowed that, yes, they had heard the name—in what context they couldn’t recall just at that moment.

  Cardinal and Delorme ran through the six names they had. Clegg was happy to take them down in his notebook with a two-inch stub of pencil. He had heard most of the names before, but did not connect them to Wombat. Then there was Sami Deans.

  “Sami Deans we’re very much aware of,” Clegg said. “We’re wondering lately if he hasn’t branched out into dealing as well as puncturing his arm.”

  “I don’t think so,” Delorme said. “We keep hauling him in for break and enter. What about his friend Paco Fernandez?”

  Clegg laughed. “Paco Fernandez? Honestly, I think he studied the Cheech and Chong movies when he was a kid and decided he wanted to be just like them. I’m not even sure he bothers with the harder stuff. He wouldn’t be able to find his own vein with a map. But you know, we’re not interested in guys like Deans and Fernandez. They’re strictly a local problem.”

  “Leon Rutkowski would be more your type of target,” Cardinal said.

  “Absolutely,” Clegg said. “I arrested him way back when. Caught him with six grams of H in his Trans Am. He’s been in and out of Algonquin Bay for some time now, but he’s been keeping a pretty low profile.” Clegg snapped his fingers. “That’s where I’ve seen your Morris Tilley character! I saw him with Leon one time, coming out of Duane’s Billiards. I didn’t get the impression they were close, though.”

  “We wouldn’t know,” Delorme said. “We just heard they hung out together.”

  “It’s possible. I think when Leon first came to town he thought he was going to set up shop here, maybe get himself a little ice cream truck and sell smack from it, become the local Good Shit man. But two things happened: First, he ran into me. Surprise, surprise. The thought of doing another bit in Millhaven kind of let the air out of his tires.

  “The second thing that happened was the Viking Riders. The Riders take their drug business very seriously. You can’t just waltz onto their turf and expect them to send out a welcome wagon. Even though they almost never set foot in your fair city, I guarantee they control most of the dope flowing in or out of it—the hard stuff, anyway. If Leon’s dealing anything, it’s very small amounts.”

  “Is he a junkie?” Delorme said.

  “Nope. Former speed freak.”

  “He has a couple of serious assaults on his record.”

  “Yeah, Leon can be nasty when he gets worked up. Hasn’t done anything like that for a long time, though. Not as far as I know. I’ve been keeping an eye out for him, but he’s been keeping such a low profile I’m beginning to wonder if maybe old Leon is going straight. On the other hand, that would require getting a job.”

  “We also heard Morris Tilley—also known as Toof—hung around with a First Nations guy. Indian name like Black Cloud.”

  “Black Fly?” Clegg laughed. “There’s a few of them around these days.”

  “Black Cloud. Something like that.”

  “Oh, I know who you’re talking about. There was a guy named Red Bear in and out of town last year. Kind of a mystical type. Claimed to read people’s cards and all that kind of thing. A shaman—isn’t that what they’re called? I saw him a couple of months ago in Reed’s Falls with a bunch of guys—but not Leon. Anyway, I was just passing through—Reed’s Falls is OPP territory. He’s from the Red Lake reserve. Does this help at all?”

  “Sure,” Cardinal said. “We don’t know anything about him at this point.”

  “Sorry I can’t be of more use. I’m not really here to keep an eye on these little guys.”

  “But you’ve got sources in the Riders, correct?” Cardinal said.

  “I have sources who sometimes tell me things about the Riders. I think we should put it that way.”

  “Well, what can you tell us about them?” Cardinal said. “We’ve got a dead Viking Rider and a dead civilian connected. We also have reason to believe someone else may soon become a victim.”

  “Really? Who’s next on the hit parade?” Clegg said.

  Cardinal silently cursed himself. “I just meant the killer or killers are obviously on a roll, here, and will probably kill someone else.”

  Clegg thought a moment.

  “Anything you can give us,” Delorme said. “The Riders aren’t talking, the junkies don’t know anything and we’re really up against it.”

  “All right. This is going to raise hell a little, but I don’t think it’ll blow my sources. How about if I tell you the last place Wombat was seen alive?”

  36

  THEY PUT A WATCH ON the Viking Riders’ house by the French River: two fishermen in a small boat much plagued by blackflies. And two repairmen on a telephone pole who got bitten even worse. They watched for four hours and saw nobody enter the house or leave it. There were no motorcycles or cars parked outside.

  Still, they took precautions. Four cars, not including ident, and all of them with shotguns and body armour. They sweated like pigs. Upon breaking down the front door, they did a quick survey room-to-room and established that the house was empty. When they finished, they were standing in the kitchen, which looked as if it had been gone over by professional cleaners. Appliances, sinks and countertops gleamed.

  “These guys can come over and do my housework any day,” Delorme said. “As long as I’m not home.”

  The house was clearly not a residence, not even a part-time one. There were three bedrooms, minimally and cheaply furnished with cots that looked like something from army surplus. Closets and cupboards were empty, reeking of Windex and Fantastik. The parquet floors bore chips and scuff marks, legacies of serious boots. In the fridge were containers of jam, yogourt and curry paste, and these proved after much probing to contain nothing more than jam, yogourt and curry paste.

  Cardinal went down to the basement. He could smell the lake and the river, a sense of their blue- and white-water power, and hovering beneath and above all this, smells of co
ncrete and drainpipe. The floor was enviably level compared to the lunar terrain of his own basement. He looked under the stairs, as well as behind and inside the dusty washer and dryer. A country of mould and dust and spiders’ webs.

  An Ikea dresser yielded one dark blue T-shirt with NYPD in large letters on the back.

  “At least they have a sense of humour,” Delorme said.

  “You have to ask yourself,” Cardinal said. “Why would a group of red-blooded Canadians like the Viking Riders have a nicely situated cottage like this and not be using it?”

  “Maybe they don’t like blackflies,” Delorme said. “Me, I never understood all the fuss about cottages, anyway. You go out to the cottage, it’s noisier than Main Street.”

  “I know,” Cardinal said. His own house was mostly a quiet refuge, but it was often plagued by snowmobiles, motorboats, Sea-Doos and every other variation of the internal combustion engine known to man.

  “It’s so clean here, it’s almost like they were expecting a raid.”

  “Yeah, I had the same thought,” Cardinal said. “Or they could just be being careful. One of their brothers was murdered, after all.”

  He lifted up the corner of a copy of the Algonquin Lode. The front page had a weeks-old story about a man who had won an annual contest by guessing what day the ice on Lake Nipissing would break up.

  “On the other hand,” Cardinal said. “Maybe they just don’t use this place because it’s too hot. I mean, if they’re running dope through this house, none of them is going to want to live in it. Whoever stayed here would take the heat if the place got busted.”

  Arsenault’s voice echoed through the empty house, calling them.

  They found him on hands and knees, inspecting a closet. He had removed a baseboard.

  “I’m coming up with quite a bit of white powder back here. Enough to analyze anyway. Stuff drifts everywhere no matter how much they try to clean up. My guess is they stored a lot of it in here. At lots of different times.”

  “So we know for sure they ran dope through here,” Delorme said. “I’m shocked. Shocked”

  “They left the shipment here with only Wombat in charge. That says what?”

  “It was a regular thing. They did it a lot.”

  “Right. They felt totally confident. Then someone comes along and not only rips them off, but kills Wombat and cuts him apart. So who’s likely to do that?”

  “A rival gang, maybe?”

  “What rival gang, though? There aren’t any biker gangs closer than Toronto, and if they’d been in town we’d have known about it. Hey, Szelagy!” Cardinal called out toward the front room. “What did we hear back from ViCLAS on Wombat?”

  Szelagy’s massy form filled the doorway. “Negative. No links to nothing.”

  “Not even to any unsolveds?”

  “Solved, unsolved, they came up empty.”

  “Did you have them run it without the hieroglyphics?”

  “Yeah, sure I did.” Szelagy looked wounded. “I asked them to run it both ways. I put the report in your inbox this morning.”

  “I can’t believe they didn’t come up with anything,” Delorme said. “An MO that unusual.”

  “Let’s think about the gun,” Cardinal said. “We know Wombat stole it over a month ago.”

  “But he couldn’t have attacked Toof after he was killed.”

  “Right. So probably whoever killed Wombat also took the liberty of removing his gun. He or she then used it to attack Terri Tait and then Toof. All of them were connected to the drug trade in one way or another—Terri through her brother. But other than the bullets, we don’t have anything solid linking her with Toof and Wombat.”

  Delorme’s brow was creased in thought.

  “What?” Cardinal said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Assuming the Riders are telling the truth—that they were ripped off by someone else and they didn’t kill Wombat—it would have to be a pretty heavy brand of criminal, don’t you think? Not a person someone like Terri Tait or even Toof would be likely to run into in the normal course of events. This guy has killed two people in a very short period of time. And tried to kill three. That’s extremely violent, even by drug-dealing standards—almost as if he’s looking for opportunities to kill.”

  “I know. Which would mean he’s probably still on the hunt.”

  37

  HIS STUDIES OF DEATH and insects have led Angus Chin to set up a farm of sorts among the piny hills of Northern University. Cardinal and Arsenault found him there, shepherding a flock of students. They were gathered like mourners amid a grove of birches over the sad little carcass of a dead rat. It was housed in a cage, as if it might escape, but the cage was only there to keep larger predators—foxes, dogs and crows—from chowing down on the object of study while allowing flies and beetles to dine as they pleased.

  When he saw Cardinal and Arsenault approach, Dr. Chin told his students to examine the rest of the sites and make notes on their own; they would discuss their findings next time. He steered Dr. Filbert toward the detectives by the elbow, as if he were blind.

  “Have you ever seen our little farm, Detectives?”

  “Um, no,” Cardinal said. “I’d be very interested another day, but right now we’re kind of pressed for time.”

  “Not to worry. We’ll do a walk and talk. That’s what they call it in the movies. About once a year somebody asks me to be an adviser to a movie or a TV show. It’s a lot less interesting than you might think.”

  He waved a hand in the direction of the caged carcass. “See, we have eight of these sites, each with a rat cadaver. The rats are already dead when we get them.”

  “Psychology department,” Filbert said. “Psychology generates a lot of dead rats.”

  “We put them out at the same time in different conditions and then see who comes to visit at what time and for how long. We have a lot of fun, don’t we, Dr. Filbert?”

  “Some of us do. The rest of us have things we’d rather be doing.”

  “Dr. Filbert is feeling holier-than-thou these days because he got another grant for his macabre experiments with DNA. Justice Department, NSERC—they all love him. And why not? I created him.”

  Filbert pointed to a cage further uphill.

  “You see, this one has a southern exposure. That means it gets a lot of sunlight and the process of decay is speeded up.”

  “Speeded up,” Arsenault said. “Looks like it’s just about over.”

  “Dry decay stage,” Chin said. “All the liquids have seeped away. Picnic for the hide beetle, though.” He squatted beside the cadaver. “Yes, there they are, munching away. Yum yum.” He stood up again. “Let’s visit his cousin, shall we? Other side of the hill.”

  “Doc, we need to know your findings on the previous samples we brought you. And we have something new, too.”

  “Fine, fine. More the merrier.”

  Chin led them down the other side of the hill toward the campus. Through the trees, Cardinal could see a lacrosse game in progress. Shouts of students echoed among the hills. A blackfly landed on his wrist and he shook it off. It landed on his other wrist and bit him.

  “Now look at this. This little rodent was planted the same time as his cousin over the hill. Different side of the tracks, so to speak.”

  The rat was black, and the flesh looked almost liquid.

  “What do we call this stage, Dr. Filbert?”

  “Black putrefaction. It’s been known to set in during some of your lectures.”

  “Tsk, tsk. Such bile in one so young. Yes, it is black putrefaction. A completely different stage of decay and yet exactly the same post-mortem interval. Even more important: You could examine this rat all day and you will not see a single hide beetle.”

  “Not even a married one.”

  “Oh, Dr. Filbert, you are très piquant”

  Once again, Chin squatted beside the cage. “Yes, you see, here we have Calliphoridae and Sarcophagidae still in the pupal stage. Amazing
what a difference a few degrees can make. Winter, though. That’s a whole different story.”

  “Before the snow, after the snow,” Filbert said. “Above freezing, below freezing. You’re entering whole new realms of confusion.”

  Cardinal had had a few winter cadavers of his own, but he didn’t want to get into it with them. Please, can we just get to the lab? Please can we focus on the case?

  Chin led them past two more cages, two more dead rats, giving them commentary as if he were a museum curator—which, in a way, he was. Finally, they were in the lab and Chin pulled a binder from a shelf. He flipped through to the end and examined some computer printouts.

  “Here we are. You’re looking at a minimum postmortem interval of 312 hours and a maximum of 336.”

  “Fourteen days,” Cardinal said. “But you gave us that much last time.”

  “Well, now you can actually take it to the courtroom. We know beyond a doubt what the species are because we’ve allowed them to hatch. I’m sure Dr. Filbert would be happy to appear in court for you. He certainly has nothing else to do.”

  “Oh, no. Just my long, lonely hours at the thermal cycler,” Filbert said. “Why don’t you show them the data?”

  Chin tilted a computer toward them, and a grid lit up the screen. “Succession data. We keep developmental timetables for all the local arthropods in our database.”

  “What he means is, I do,” Filbert said. “He just takes credit for it.”

  “Dr. Filbert is not a scientist at all, Detectives. He is actually an escapee from a locked facility. I’d be grateful if you’d take him with you when you go.” Chin typed something on the keyboard, and the grid changed colour. Then a list appeared on the left-hand side and the grid filled up with numbers.

  “On the left, we enter the taxa found at the site. Calliphoridae, Cynomyopsis, Staphylinidae, et cetera. Each has a different time of oviposition or pupaposition and a different time of development. You feed the computer all the taxa you find at the site, enter their different stages of development and, really, you don’t even need a computer. You just look at what number of days accounts for all the different stages. The only PMI that could account for all of these being in the same place at the same time is …” Chin hit Enter and the screen flashed a number range.