by Giles Blunt
“They are. Which is why you might need someone to vouch for you. Might even pay someone to vouch for you. Sometimes it can be useful to have First Nations status,” Jerry said. “For purposes of employment, for example.”
“Very funny, Jerry. What exactly are you talking about?”
“Up until fairly recently, the Viking Riders used to get their dope from Montreal. Then they made the mistake of disagreeing with the Hells Angels.”
“No more dope.”
“No more dope from Montreal. But being bikers, and dedicated entrepreneurs, they worked out a deal with some Native Americans just across the Michigan border. Started early last summer. They fly the stuff across Lake Huron, then up the French River to Lake Nipissing. If you do it right, you never leave Indian territory.”
“A good way to keep it out of everyone’s jurisdiction.”
“You have a dirty mind, Detective Delorme. That’s what I always liked about you.” Jerry held up the photo. “Nice touch for him to dress up like a Hollywood Indian. Should set us back a couple of hundred years.”
“So Beltran comes on like an Indian, complete with a status card and a chief in his pocket, and he takes over the Viking Riders’ import business.”
“That’s our theory.”
“And now you’re going to tell me where we can find Beltran, right?”
“Sorry. We don’t have surveillance on him yet. We’ve just been watching the Rosebud.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the other reason we’re looking for Beltran. We think he’s got Terri Tait and he’s going to kill her.”
Jerry grabbed the phone and punched the intercom button. “I’m going to get an all-points on him, Lise. Minute we hear anything, you will too.”
53
SOONER OR LATER, WHENEVER a case got unwieldy, Cardinal ended up in the boardroom with the files. He was in there now, sorting through the stacks of material the other detectives had assembled. He’d been going over the forensics and scene photos from Arsenault and Collingwood. And now he was weeding through Delorme’s supplementary reports. Every fragment of information they had was spread out on the table before him.
They had put out the all-points pretty fast, but so far there had been no sighting of Terri Tait. So here he was sequestered with the files, in the hope that they would provide him with a solid idea of where to look for her.
The eye strain was getting to him.
He slouched back in his chair and looked around the room, at the photos lining the walls. There was one of Chief Kendall being sworn in; his uniform would never fit him that well again. And there was one of Cardinal himself, bundled up like an Inuit at the snowy mine shaft on Windigo Island. Then there was the picture of Jerry Commanda in front of the gate at Eagle Park. Eagle Park was a charity camp on the south shore of Lake Nipissing that had once served handicapped kids and wards of Children’s Aid; Jerry had been out there directing a successful search for a missing twelve-year-old. The camp had closed long ago, after a complicated financial scandal—a kerfuffle, as Jerry would call it. On top of the gate, a wrought-iron eagle flexed its iron talons, black wings spread as if about to take off.
Cardinal turned his mind back to the files. His Toronto leads had dried up. Beltran’s last known address proved to be a dead end; he had pulled a midnight flit, leaving the landlord holding the bag for six months’ rent on a huge apartment in the Manulife Centre. Cardinal had even called Beltran’s former neighbours, none of whom had anything useful to add. Beltran had been an unexceptional neighbour—wished you good day in the elevator, kept to himself and didn’t cause trouble.
Cardinal opened another of Delorme’s files. One of the many pleasures of working with Delorme was that her reports were both coherent and detailed. But even with her copious notes from the hospital, and the anthropologist, and the Crisis Centre, there was nothing he could sink his teeth into. Nothing that told him where Raymond Beltran might be—or Terri Tait, for that matter.
Cardinal sifted through Delorme’s reports once more. Even when she came up empty, as she had at the Crisis Centre, she was conscientious about writing it up. She had even filed the drawing she had taken from Terri’s room.
Cardinal wasn’t sure about Terri Tait’s talent as a struggling actress, but she showed considerable aptitude for drawing. The feathers on the bird were all nicely highlighted, and the arch of the wings, just so, gave the image a certain—
Cardinal looked over at the far wall, at the picture of Jerry Commanda at Eagle Park. He snatched up the drawing and held it next to the photograph.
Two seconds later, he was in Chouinard’s office.
The detective sergeant lined up the drawing with the photograph on his desk. Cardinal watched his eyes swing back and forth from one to the other. Chouinard tapped on the desk with his pen as he considered. Finally, he said, “They’re the same. I’d say this means she was there. The question then becomes, what do we do about it?”
“Eagle Park had two camps on the lake. One on the south shore and one up by the French River. They both have those gates with the eagle on top.”
“We don’t have enough people to send to both. Which one do you think is more likely?”
“The south shore is closer to where Tilley and Guthrie were found. On the other hand, the north shore is closer to where they ripped off the Viking Riders. It could be either one.”
“And neither is in our jurisdiction.” Chouinard paused in thought, his pen beating a rat-tat-tat on the desk. “All right. You take the south shore. But you take Alan Clegg with you.”
“Delorme should be in on this.”
“She’s out visiting OPP, closer to the French River. That’s their territory, anyway. She can head out there with Jerry Commanda. I’ll pull together a swat team here. Whichever one of you calls in first with pay dirt, we’ll be ready.”
54
ONCE THEY GOT BEYOND THE TRAFFIC in and out of the malls, Cardinal put the pedal to the floor.
“You trying out for Formula One?”
Cardinal looked over at Clegg. He had a friendly smile on his face, not criticizing.
“The guy we’re looking for cuts people up for a living. I don’t want that to happen to Terri Tait.”
“Assuming he’s got her.”
“It’s safer than assuming he hasn’t.”
Clegg adjusted the passenger seat and sat back. He folded his hands on his lap and watched the scenery shoot by: the rock cuts, the Trianon Hotel, the Ottawa turnoff. After that it was hills and trees.
“So, how long you been a cop?”
Cardinal shrugged. “Let’s just say I could retire on full pension if I wanted to.”
Clegg laughed. “And you don’t want to? Guys like you always make me think of those people who win the lottery—I mean, big time. They have a job changing light bulbs in a high-rise or something and here they win twenty-five million and they’re not gonna quit work.”
“Your pension’s twenty-five million? Must’ve been some boost in the RCMP budget this year.”
“We get by.”
Cardinal made the turn onto Nosbonsing Road. It had been paved since the last time he’d been out here. They passed a handful of farms, then the road narrowed and they were bumping through the woods, the flashing wall of trees broken by the odd driveway and mailbox. Flies spattered on the windshield.
“So, how do you want to handle this?” Clegg said.
“We’ll play it by ear. First thing is to establish whether or not the place is in use. If yes, then establish whether there’s anyone there just at the moment. If it looks like our guy is here, then we radio back and they unleash Armageddon. If he’s away, we search the place for Terri Tait. How’s that sound?”
“I’m with you a thousand percent,” Clegg said. “Sounds like fun”
Delorme had been on her way out the OPP’s front door when Chouinard had called. Now she was in Jerry Commanda’s car, somewhere just outside Sturgeon Falls.
“Jerry, can’t this thin
g go any faster? There may be a life at stake, here.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re gonna come up empty,” Jerry said, pressing the accelerator. “After all that financial kerfuffle, camp got bought by some hotel outfit. Not sure what they’ve done with it, though. If anything.”
“If it’s sitting empty, it might make an ideal spot for drug dealers.”
Jerry shrugged. “If they like blackflies.”
Kerfuffle, Delorme was thinking. Only Jerry could use that word and not sound like a librarian.
“This is pretty close to the house where Wombat got ambushed,” she said. “Can’t be more than a couple of kilometres.”
Jerry made a sharp right, spraying gravel.
“Cardinal’s checking out the other camp with a guy from the RCMP,” Delorme said.
“Oh, yeah? Who would that be?”
“Corporal named Alan Clegg.”
Jerry turned onto an even smaller road. Branches whipped at the roof of the car.
“I’ve dealt with him a couple of times.”
Delorme scanned Jerry’s profile, finding nothing legible there. Jerry tended to do that a lot, say something with implications and just leave it hanging, as if you should know what he was thinking.
“And?”
Jerry shrugged again. “He seemed to know an awful lot of nothing about what was going down in your neck of the woods. I don’t know why they posted him in Algonquin Bay.”
“Because of the Viking Riders being so close, is what Musgrave told me.”
Jerry gave a little crooked smile. There was the sound of gravel kicking up against the car. “I sometimes wonder about Musgrave,” Jerry said.
“Oh?”
“Musgrave moves in mysterious ways.”
“Jerry!”
“What?”
“What are you getting at?”
Jerry looked over at her, impassive. “Clegg never seemed to know as much as he should, that’s all. Made me uncomfortable, talking to him. Couldn’t fathom why Musgrave thought he was the right stuff.”
They rounded a bend, and then the construction site came into view. Some of the cabins were still standing, but the rest of the clearing was the province of bulldozers and graders. A chain-link fence surrounded the site. Delorme counted twenty workers.
Off to the right, a wrought-iron eagle spread its wings over an old wooden gate.
“That’s the picture Terri drew,” Delorme said. “She drew exactly that eagle, right down to the feathers.”
“Well, we can ask the foreman a couple of questions,” Jerry said, “but somehow I don’t think this was the Eagle Park she was at. Why would the guy be showing up in Reed’s Falls if he was staying way the hell out here?”
“This camp is much closer to the reserve than the other one.”
They drove over deep ruts toward an office trailer that sat in the shadow of a huge sign that said, in French, Future Site of Northern Lights Spa Resort.
The foreman was a chunky rhomboid of a man with a Wild West moustache that didn’t suit him at all. No, he told them, there hadn’t been any strangers around the place. No, there had been no suspicious activity of any kind. They had been working the site for two months now and the only people to set foot on the property other than construction people were exactly two cops, and he was looking at them right now.
“This means Cardinal and Clegg are heading to the right place,” Delorme said. “I’m going to call Chouinard.”
“Doesn’t mean there’s anybody out there right now,” Jerry said. “They could’ve left by now.”
Delorme’s cellphone rang in her pocket. When she answered it, Malcolm Musgrave was on the line. He didn’t bother with preliminaries.
“Listen. Are you and Cardinal still working that murder thing with Alan Clegg?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Don’t work with him. He’s no good.”
“Jesus, Musgrave. You’re telling us this now? Why didn’t you tell us the first time we spoke to you?”
“We’ve had our eye on Clegg for a while, but we didn’t have anything hard core until now. You hear about our little fire in the property room?”
“Yeah. From Clegg.”
“There was two hundred and fifty grand in seized cash from a bust of his. Now we’ve had this fire and the Fire Department is telling me there’s no way that cash could have just turned to smoke. There would have been pounds of ashes left, and there’s nothing. So we’ve just executed a search warrant on his place and we’ve found enough cash and drugs to start a personal cartel. This guy is playing for the other side, Lise. Obviously, this is not for publication till we haul him in, but I wanted to let you know right away.”
“Me, I appreciate it,” Delorme said. “But Cardinal’s in a car with Clegg right now.”
“Not a good place to be. I’m sorry I couldn’t say anything earlier.”
“I’ll call him right away,” Delorme said. She hung up and dialled Cardinal’s cellphone number.
55
TERRI HAD WOKEN FOR A WHILE—long enough to take in the full horror of their situation—but the drug Leon had given her had taken hold again and she was mercifully unconscious. Meanwhile, the nail had become the absolute focus of Kevin’s universe. It was as if he lived inside the rope, as if he himself were twisted among its fibres, numbering every strand. His wrists were raw and bleeding, but the knot was definitely looser.
He worked at what remained of the knot, fixing it under the nail and then leaning forward, tugging it looser with his weight. The muscles in his arms were in torment, and he hadn’t been fed since the moment he’d been thrown into this cell. Lack of food and the lingering effects of withdrawal made his muscles tremble. If he did get a chance to fight Leon or Red Bear, he would be no match for them.
The knot came a little looser. It was getting harder to pull at the rope without it slipping off the nail. Across the darkened cabin, Terri groaned and looked up. “Oh,” she said softly. “God help us.”
Kevin leaned forward and felt the rope slip out of a loop. It was the second loop he had undone. He was fairly sure there was only one more left to undo.
He adjusted his position and hooked the rope under the nail once more. It was right up against his wrist now. If he couldn’t undo the last loop, he might be able to saw his way through it.
“I can’t move at all,” Terri said. “It’s too tight.”
“I think I’m getting the rope off,” Kevin said. “Just a little longer.”
Terri nodded. Her eyes filled and tears ran down her cheeks.
“I’m trying,” Kevin said. There was nothing else to say. “I’m trying.”
The nail caught this time. He could feel it had a good purchase on the last loop. He strained forward, and the rope seared his wounded wrists as it moved against his flesh.
Voices from outside, then a key in the lock. Red Bear came in, followed by Leon.
“Let us go,” Terri said. “Just let us go. We’ll get as far away from here as possible and never bother you again.”
“Why, little princess? You scared?” Red Bear stood smiling at them, hands on hips.
“Please,” Terri said. “We don’t care about your dope operations, or anything else you’ve done. Just let us go.”
“You should see the moon tonight. A beautiful crescent. And it’s growing. That’s the crucial thing. It’s growing. That means we have perfect conditions for a sacrifice.”
Leon set down a bundle on the work table. Kevin heard the clank of steel.
Red Bear opened a large briefcase and pulled out a gleaming blade, which he showed first to Kevin, then to Terri. Terri started to scream, and Red Bear tossed a roll of duct tape to Leon.
“Shut her up.”
Leon tore off a long strip and wrapped it around Terri’s face.
“We’ll take it off as soon as we begin the sacrifice. Then it will be important to hear the screams.”
Red Bear lifted up another knife. “These small blades are goo
d for removing fingers and toes. I will show you how it’s done, using the girl. When I finish, you can sacrifice the other one.”
“I’m ready to learn, man. I’m psyched,” Leon said, rubbing his hands together. His eyes were glittering, and Kevin could see he was cruising the stratosphere. There would be no reaching him.
Red Bear was holding up more tools.
“These medium-sized blades you can use for cutting off whatever else strikes your fancy. All of it goes into the nganga. We will create a spirit that is made up of both male and female blood. It will be supremely powerful.”
“Fantastic,” Leon said. “What’s it gonna do for us?”
“Anything we want.”
Cardinal backed the car up and parked a little way outside the camp.
“Better switch off your cellphone, if you’re carrying one,” he said. “Don’t want to make any unnecessary noise at this point.”
“It’s off,” Clegg said. “But it doesn’t look like there’s anything going on here.”
Even without getting out of the car, Cardinal could see fresh tire tracks in front of them. “I wouldn’t be so quick to say that. There’s obviously been people coming and going.” He pointed across the dark field. “And there’s a light on outside that large cabin there.”
“For security only, I’m sure. The cabins are all dark.”
“Whose security? Eagle Camps is bankrupt, remember? Why are you in such a rush to bail?”
“Sorry,” Clegg said. “Been a long day. And then I got a long drive ahead of me later.”
Cardinal got out of the car and led the way around the edge of the camp, keeping behind the cabins. When they had gone about fifty yards, they could see around the end of the biggest cabin. There were two vehicles parked there, one of them a black Trans Am.
Cardinal said, “I’m calling for backup.”
He pulled out his cellphone; the readout told him Delorme had tried to call.
Clegg pulled out his service revolver and aimed it at Cardinal’s head.