Black Fly Season
Giles Blunt

For Janna

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

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Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Anybody who has spent any length of time in Algonquin Bay will tell you there are plenty of good reasons to live somewhere else. There is the distance from civilization, by which Canadians mean Toronto, 250 miles south. There is the gradual decay of the once-charming downtown, victim to the twin scourges of suburban malls and an unlucky series of fires. And of course there are the winters, which are ferocious, snowy, and long. It’s not unusual for winter to extend its bone-numbing grip into April, and the last snowfall often occurs in May.

Then there are the black flies. Every year, following an all-too-brief patch of spring weather, black flies burst from the beds of Northern Ontario’s numberless rivers and streams to feast on the blood of birds, livestock, and the citizens of Algonquin Bay. They’re well equipped for it, too. The black fly may be less than a quarter-inch long, but up close it resembles an attack helicopter, fitted with a sucker at one end and a nasty little hook on the other. Even one of these creatures can be a misery. Caught in a swarm, a person can very rapidly go mad.

The World Tavern may not have looked too crazy on this particular Friday, but Blaine Styles, the bartender, knew there would be problems. Black fly season just doesn’t bring out the best in people – those that drink, anyway. Blaine wasn’t a hundred per cent sure which quarter the trouble would come from but he had his candidates.

For one, there was the trio of dorks at the bar – a guy named Regis and his two friends in baseball caps, Bob and Tony. They were drinking quietly, but they had flirted a little too long with Darla, the waitress, and there was a restlessness about them that didn’t bode too well for later. For another, there was the table at the back by the map of Africa. They’d been drinking Molsons pretty steadily for a couple of hours, now. Quiet, but steady. And then there was the girl, this redhead Blaine had never seen before who kept moving from table to table in a way that he found – professionally speaking – disturbing.

A Labatt Blue bottle flew across the room and hit the map of Canada just above Newfoundland. Blaine shot from behind the bar and waltzed the drunk who’d thrown it out the door before he could even protest. It bothered Blaine that he hadn’t even seen this one coming. The jerk had been sitting with a couple of guys in leather jackets under France, and hadn’t even raised a blip on the bartender’s radar. The World Tavern, oldest and least respectable gin joint in Algonquin Bay, could get pretty hairy on a Friday night, especially in black fly season, and Blaine preferred to set the limits early.

He went back behind the bar and poured a couple of pitchers for the table over by the map of Africa – getting a little louder, he noticed. Then there was an order for six continentals and a couple of frozen margaritas that kept him hopping. After that there was a slack period, and he rested his foot on a beer case, easing his back while he washed a few glasses.

There weren’t too many regulars tonight; he was glad about that. Television shows would have you believe that the regulars in a bar are eccentrics with hearts of gold, but Blaine found they were mostly just hopeless dipwads with serious issues around self-esteem. The stained, shellacked maps on the walls of the World Tavern were the closest these people would ever get to leaving Algonquin Bay.

Jerry Commanda was sitting at the end of the bar nursing his usual Diet Coke with a squeeze of lemon and reading Maclean’s. A bit of a mystery, Jerry. On the whole, Blaine liked him, despite his being a regular – respected him, anyway – even if he was an awful tipper.

Jerry used to be a serious drinker – not a complete alky, but a serious drinker. This was back when he was in high school, maybe into his early twenties. But then something had sobered him up and he never touched alcohol again. Didn’t set foot in a bar for five, six years after that. Then, a few years ago, he’d started coming to the World Tavern on a Friday night and he’d always park his skinny butt at the end of the bar. You could see everything that was going on from there.

Blaine had once asked Jerry how he’d kicked the bottle, if he’d gone the twelve-step route.

‘Couldn’t stand twelve-step,’ Jerry had said. ‘Couldn’t stand the meetings. Everyone saying they’re powerless, asking God to get them out of this pickle.’ Jerry used words like that now and again, even though he was only about forty. Old-fashioned words like pickle or fellow or cantankerous. ‘But it turned out to be pretty easy to quit alcohol, once I figured out what I had to do was quit thinking, not drinking.’

‘No one can quit thinking,’ Blaine had said. ‘Thinking’s like breathing. Or sweating. It’s just something you do.’

Jerry then launched into some weird psychological bushwah. Said it might be true you couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming, but you could change what you did with them. The secret was being able to side-step them. Blaine remembered the words exactly because Jerry was a four-time Ontario kickboxing champion, and when he’d said side-step he’d made a nifty little manoeuvre that looked kind of, well, disciplined.

So Jerry Commanda learned to side-step his thoughts, and the result was him parking himself at the end of the bar every Friday night for an hour or so, with his Diet Coke and his squeeze of lemon. Blaine figured it was partly to deter some of the young guys from the reserve from drinking too much. Pretty hard for them to cut loose with Jerry sitting at the bar, reading a magazine and sipping his Coke. Some of them, minute they saw him, just did a 180 and walked out.

Blaine swept his wary, bartender’s gaze over his domain. The Africa table was definitely getting boisterous. Boisterous was okay but it was just one level down from obnoxious. Blaine cocked his head to one side, listening for warning notes – the gruff challenge, the outraged cry that was inevitably followed by the scraping of a chair. Except for the bottle tosser, it looked to be a peaceful night. The bottle tosser, and the girl.

Blaine squinted into the far corner beyond the jukebox. A flash of red. She had masses of red curls that bounced this way and that every time she turned her head, catching the light. She was all in blue denim – good jeans, short nipped jacket – cute, but they looked like they’d been slept in. Why was she going table to table? This was the third table she’d sat at in the last hour and a half. Two women and two men, postal workers partying later than usual, and it was clear the two women didn’t like this kid in blue denim invading their table. The guys didn’t seem to mind one bit.

‘Three Blue, one Creemore, one Vodka tonic.’

Blaine scooped four bottles out of the ice and set them on Darla’s tray.

‘What’s up with the redhead, Darla? What’s she drinking?’

‘Nothing, far as I can tell. Last table ordered a glass to share their pitcher with her, but she didn’t finish it.’

Blaine poured a shot of vodka and put it on her tray. Darla filled it with tonic from the soda gun.

‘Is she high? Why’s she hopping tables like that?’

‘I don’t know, Blaine. Maybe she’s going into business for herself.’ Darla hoisted her tray and headed out into the zoo, as she called it.

‘Barkeep!’

Blaine attended to the trio at the bar. The guy named Regis was an old high school acquaintance, came in maybe twice a year. His friends in the baseball caps were new. Anyone calls you barkeep, you know they’re going to end up being a burden one way or another.

‘Hey, Blaine,’ Regis said. ‘When are you gonna tell us what happened to your face, guy?’

‘Yeah,’ one of the baseball caps said. ‘You look Chinese, man.’

‘Went canoeing Sunday. Black flies were out of control.’

‘Fly musta been the size of a dog, man. You look like a Sumo wrestler.’

People had been telling him he looked Chinese all week. Black flies were always a problem this time of year, but Blaine had never seen them like this. Millions of them swarming in huge black clouds. He’d taken the usual measures, wore the repellent, wore a hat, kept his pants tucked into his socks, but the flies were so thick you couldn’t even breathe without inhaling them. Little mothers had fallen totally in love with him, and bit all around his face. By Monday morning his eyes were swollen shut, couldn’t see a thing.

He rang up the three Molsons. When he turned around again, the redhead was there.

‘Hello,’ she said, climbing on to a stool.

‘What can I get you?’

‘Just some water would be nice. I don’t seem to take to beer.’

Blaine poured her a glass of ice water and set it down on a napkin.

‘You sure are a big man, aren’t you.’

‘Big enough.’

Blaine moved down the bar a little and stacked some glasses.

‘You seem nice.’

Blaine laughed. The redhead looked to be in her mid-twenties, still with a lot of freckles. She had the thickest, curliest hair he had ever seen. Didn’t take care of herself any too well, though. Like Blaine, she had a lot of black fly bites, and there were bits of leaves stuck in her hair.

‘What’s your name?’ she said.

‘Blaine.’

‘Blaine? That’s a nice name.’

‘If you say so. What’s yours?’

‘I don’t actually know. Isn’t that amazing?’

Blaine felt an odd turning sensation in his stomach. The girl didn’t look high; her manner was calm and pleasant. She slid off the stool, now, and went over to Regis and his baseball-cap buddies.

‘You guys look nice.’

‘Well, hey there,’ Regis said. ‘You don’t look too bad yourself. Can we buy you a drink?’

‘No, that’s okay. I’m not thirsty.’

‘Barkeep! A Molson’s for the young lady, here.’

‘Can’t do that,’ Blaine said. ‘She said she didn’t want one.’

‘Thanks a lot, Blaine. I love you too.’ Regis reached over the bar and grabbed one of the glasses drying on the rack. He poured beer into it and handed it to the redhead.

‘Thank you. You’re very nice.’ She took a sip and made a face.

Blaine brought her glass of water down the bar and set it in front of her.

‘Oh, thanks. That’s nice of you.’

Nice, nice, everything’s nice. Honey, have you got a lot to learn.

‘I’m Regis. This is Bob, and that’s Tony. What’s your name?’

‘I don’t know it at the moment.’

They laughed.

‘That’s fine,’ Regis said. ‘You don’t have to tell us.’

‘We’ll just call you Red,’ the one called Tony said.

‘We’ll just call you Anonymous,’ the one called Bob said.

‘Anonymous Sex,’ Regis said, and they all laughed. ‘Like Tyrannosaurus Rex.’

He fingered her denim jacket.

‘This is cute.’

‘Yes, I like it.’

The one called Tony put his arm round her shoulder and ran a hand through her hair. He pulled out a piece of leaf.

‘Man, you have got the most amazing hair I’ve ever seen. Leafy, but amazing.’

‘You guys are so friendly.’

‘You’re pretty friendly yourself,’ Regis said. ‘Got some nasty bites on you, but I can fix that.’ He leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

The girl smiled and rubbed her face.

Blaine moved closer.

‘Miss, don’t you think it’s time you went home?’

‘Hey, mind your own business, Blaine.’ Regis smacked the bar, upsetting a dish of peanuts. ‘She’s not drunk, she’s just having a good time.’

‘No, you’re having a good time. She doesn’t know what kind of time she’s having.’

The girl smiled, not looking at either of them.

‘Two Creemores, three Blue, one Export!’

Blaine moved down the bar to take care of Darla. When he came back, the redhead was on Regis’ lap.

‘Honey, I think we’re going to have to go for a ride,’ Regis said.

‘You guys are funny.’

Bob was feeling her hair now. ‘I think you should come for a ride with us,’ he said. ‘Get to know us better.’

Regis’ hand crept up her denim jacket. The girl smiled and started humming something. Regis’ hand went inside the jacket.

‘Leave her alone.’

Regis leaned back from the girl and peered down the bar at Jerry Commanda.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said leave her alone.’

‘Why don’t you mind your own business, Chingachgook?’

Jerry got down off his stool and came round the bar.

‘Do you know your name?’ he said to the girl.

‘Hey, Tonto,’ Regis said. ‘Back off.’

‘Shut up. Do you know your name?’

‘I don’t,’ the girl said. ‘Not at the moment.’

‘Do you know what day it is?’

‘Um, no.’

Regis shifted her down off his lap and stood up. ‘I think you and me have something to discuss outside.’

Jerry ignored him. ‘Do you know where you are?’ he said to the girl.

‘Somebody told me a while ago, but I forget.’

‘Did you hear me?’ Regis said. ‘I can understand why you might not want to go back to your squaw, but that doesn’t give you the right to—’

Jerry didn’t look at him. He just reached into his jacket and pulled out his shield and held it out an inch from the guy’s nose.

‘Oh, hey, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t realize.’

‘Do you have any ID?’ Jerry said to the girl. ‘A wallet? Credit card? Something with your name on it?’

‘No, I don’t have anything like that.’

Regis tapped Jerry on the shoulder, shifting into I’m-the-nicest-guy-in-the-world mode. ‘No hard feelings, okay? Do you think she’s all right? I’m kinda worried about her.’

‘Would you come with me, miss? I want to take you someplace safe.’

The girl shrugged. ‘Okay. Sure.’

Blaine watched Regis follow them to the exit, apologizing the whole way. It was the kind of sight that did a bartender’s heart good.

In the car, Jerry asked where she was from.

‘I don’t know. This is a nice car you have here.’

‘Where have you been staying?’

‘Staying?’

‘Yeah. I’m guessing you’re from out of town. Who are you staying with?’

‘I don’t know. That’s a nice building, is that a school?’

They passed Ecole Secondaire Algonquin and headed uphill. Jerry made a left on McGowan. ‘You have a lot of black fly bites on you. Were you out in the woods?’

‘Is that what these are?’ Her left hand rose absently and rubbed at the red blotches along her hairline. ‘They’re itchy. I have them all over my ankles, too. They kind of hurt.’

‘Were you out in the woods?’

‘Yes. This morning. I woke up there.’

‘You slept outside? Is that why you have leaves in your hair?’

‘Leaves?’ Again, the pale, freckled hand rose to her curls. No wedding ring, Jerry noticed.

‘Red, do me a favour, will you? Could you just check your pockets and see if you have any ID on you?’

She patted her pockets, felt inside. From her jeans, she pulled out some coins and a pair of nail clippers. She offered Jerry a Lifesaver, which he declined.

‘That’s all I have,’ she said.

‘No keys?’

‘No keys.’

Someone must have removed them, Jerry was pretty sure. People don’t tend to go out with no keys. He parked in a spot near the emergency entrance of City Hospital. The lights of Algonquin and Main curved away from the hill below them.

‘You know, I don’t think I need a hospital. They’re only insect bites.’

‘Let’s just see if we can find out where you left your memory, okay?’

‘Okay. You look nice. Are you an Indian?’

‘Yes. You?’

‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so.’

Her response was so solemn Jerry laughed. He’d never seen anyone who looked less Indian.

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 her 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. 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. Black flies 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 into the city station to see if there was a missing person 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 back-track 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 redheaded 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.

When 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 up 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 tattooing.’

‘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 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 was 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 up 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 another.

Catherine called Toronto directory information and got the hotel 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 at the near end of 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 odd 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 an internal defence attorney, who was always nosing around for that 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 of the Toronto police and requested a 24-hour 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 gets 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.’

‘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 or 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 gotten 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, or impalings did not.

Two doctors 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 OR. What the girl said was true: between the mouth coverings 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 was amazing to him that the instrument in her gloved hand might have been something in his basement. It gave off a high-pitched whine, like a dentist’s drill, but once it touched the bone the sound was not all that different from ripping plywood. Red didn’t even blink as Dr Schaff extracted the piece of bone 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.

First do no damage. Of all medical endeavours, brain surgery is probably the one where physicians are most cognizant of Hippocrates’ proscription. Dr Schaff began to probe her way through layer after layer of tissue with unbearable gentleness. Except for the beep of the monitors and the occasional clank of metal on metal, utter silence. Every so often, Dr Schaff would call for a different instrument, now a ‘McGill’, now a ‘Foster’, now a ‘Bircher’.

Seeing a length of stainless steel moving millimetre by millimetre deeper into the girl’s brain, Cardinal felt a distinct softness in his knees. Looking up didn’t help. The monitor showed the same thing in lateral close-up. He felt as if he were slowly tumbling down an elevator shaft. Sweat gathered under his surgical cap.

Two hours went by. Three. The doctors made occasional remarks back and forth, commenting on pulse, blood pressure. There were calls for haemostats and spreaders and cautery. Dr Schaff spoke now and again to Red as she inched further into her brain.

‘Are you all right, Red? You doing okay?’

‘I’m fine, Doctor. I’m just fine.’

To calm his stomach, Cardinal concentrated on the background sounds, the beeping monitors, the whirr of ventilation, the buzz of lights. On the monitor, the instrument was a bar of bright metal several inches inside the girl’s skull.

‘Coming up on the hippocampus…’

Red began singing. ‘A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go…’

‘Yes, we’re on a hunt here, Red. And I think it’s just about over.’

‘Hi-ho, the merry-o…’

‘Okay, looks like we’re there,’ Dr Schaff said. ‘I’m going to try and grab it.’

On the screen the dark blot of the bullet was now in the angle of flat jaws. The instrument began pulling back. Cardinal had a daughter about the same age as Red, perhaps a little older. He had a strong paternal urge to reach out and protect the young woman in some way – absurd, really, since she wasn’t in the slightest pain.

Red spoke up as if in mid-conversation. ‘The clouds were amazing.’

‘Really?’ Dr Schaff said. ‘Clouds, huh?’

The bullet was steadily rising through the tunnel on the screen. Cardinal looked from the screen to Dr Schaff. Her gloves were slick with blood.

Then Red spoke in a different tone. ‘The flies,’ she said, hushed, even awed. ‘My God, the flies.’

Dr Schaff leaned over her patient. ‘Are you talking to us, Red?’

‘Her eyes are closed,’ someone else said. ‘It’s a memory. Or maybe a dream.’

Cardinal tensed, waiting for the girl to say more, but her eyes opened again and she stared blandly into space.

A moment later Dr Schaff extracted the bullet. A nurse held out a baggie to receive it, then handed it to Cardinal. He went out to the prep room and took off his scrubs. He slipped the baggie into his breast pocket. A moment later, he felt a tiny spot of heat there, the bullet still warm from the girl’s brain.

3

Cardinal slept for three hours in the crisply starched sheets of the Best Western hotel. After a scalding shower that neatly removed a layer of skin, he went down to the coffee shop where he ate a chewy omelette and read the Globe and Mail. Outside, the morning sunlight slanted over the banks and insurance buildings. The air was crisp, and Cardinal noticed with pleasure the absence of black flies. He walked over to the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences on Grosvenor Street, where he handed in the bullet and filled out several forms. They told him to come back in an hour.

Cardinal returned to the hotel and checked out.

He was back at Forensics in forty-five minutes. The young man who had been assigned to the case in Firearms was named Cornelius Venn. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt with a blue tie and had the clean-cut, slightly dorky good looks of a senior boy scout. Cardinal suspected a sizeable collection of model airplanes.

Venn took the Polaroids Cardinal had given him and tacked them up on a bulletin board. ‘Nice round hole. No burn, no soot, just slight tattooing.’

‘Which tells you what?’ Cardinal said.

‘Oh, no. I’m not getting into that particular box. There’s no way I’m going to do a distance determination without having a suspect weapon in my hand.’

‘Just give me ballpark figures. We may not need them in court.’

‘There is no ballpark. Not without a suspect weapon. How can I give you a ballpark when I don’t know the barrel length? Even if I know the type of weapon, I don’t know if it’s been altered in some way that would affect the patterns.’

‘So you’re not going to give me an estimate?’

‘Just told you. I can’t.’

‘Well, we’ve pretty much ruled out suicide. The victim’s left-handed. And to my less-than-expert eyes, the entry wound looks like the gun was somewhere between twelve and twenty inches away.’

‘I have no opinion on that point, as I’ve indicated,’ Venn said. ‘But with a suicide you’d expect a contact wound or something close to it. Unless your Jane Doe’s got arms four feet long, there’s no way this wound is self-inflicted.’

‘A defence attorney might say it’s accidental.’

‘Accidental? Within a distance of two feet? You hold a loaded gun to someone’s head and pull the trigger? Well, I suppose some might say there’s a reasonable doubt there.’

Cardinal pointed to the spectroscope obscuring a poster for a Van Damme movie that featured an exotic machine gun. ‘How about GSR results? Did you get anywhere with those?’

‘Didn’t run them. Don’t look at me like that, Detective. There’s no point in running a GSR on someone who’s just been shot at close range. She’s going to turn out positive for powder and soot whether she fired the gun or not.’

That was true. Cardinal was annoyed with himself for forgetting.

Venn pinned a piece of paper up on the corkboard; it showed a series of grey streaks of varying intensity.

‘Characteristics,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a plain, unjacketed, lead .32 calibre bullet. Looks to me like a .32 long. Normally with a shot to the skull you’d expect it to flatten out completely making it hard to read. In this case, you have a shot to the temple – much thinner bone – and the bullet is pretty much intact. I don’t suppose you have any casings?’

‘You’ve got everything we’ve got.’

‘Then none of this is going to help you much, but here goes.’ He pointed to the printout as he spoke; his fingernail was gnawed to the quick. ‘You’ve got six right-hand grooves with a land to groove ratio of one-to-one-plus. Grooves are zero point five-six; lands are zero point six-oh.’

‘Pistol?’

Venn nodded. ‘Pistol. And you’re lucky in one way.’

‘Oh?’

‘The rifling in the weapon has a left-hand twist. Right away that narrows it down. You’re probably looking for a Colt.’

Venn rolled his swivel chair over to his computer. He started typing figures into the database. ‘From what you tell me of the injury – minimal motion inside the skull, minimal damage to tissue – I think you’re dealing with rounds that are either very old or got wet at some point. Or it could be a defective weapon. If the firing pin is far enough off kilter it could result in a misfire like this. Of course we won’t know that until you bring us a casing. Or, God forbid, an actual weapon.’

‘That’s it? We may be looking for a Colt .32?’

Venn looked up at him. ‘In your impatience, Detective, you’re not letting me finish.’

Cardinal scanned Venn’s face to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

‘This left-hand twist, coupled with this landgroove ratio narrows it down to two possibilities. You could be looking for a J. C. Higgins model 80. Or a Colt “Police Positive”’.

‘And I bet there’s more than a few of ’em, right?’

‘In Ontario? Think in hundreds.’

Ten minutes later Cardinal was back amid the chlorine-and-bandage smells of Toronto General Hospital. Jane Doe had been moved to a semiprivate room on the third floor. The police guard on the door had so many gadgets hanging from his hips he looked bottom-heavy, like a ten-pin. Cardinal showed his badge and was waved inside. The young redhead was propped up in bed in her hospital gown reading Chatelaine. She smiled when he came in; there was a small bandage on her temple.

‘Are you my doctor?’

‘No, I’m a detective. John Cardinal. We met last night.’

‘Detective? You’re with the police? I’m sorry. I don’t remember.’

‘That’s okay. I bet you’ll get your memory back in no time.’

‘I hope so. Right now, I don’t even know who I am.’

‘Dr Schaff tells me she’s pretty sure it will all come back.’

‘I’m not even that worried about it.’

Cardinal didn’t tell her that Dr Schaff had been less certain about appropriate affect.

The girl turned to adjust her pillows. Cardinal caught a flash of pale breast and looked away.

‘Red, I need your help with something.’

‘Of course.’

‘I need your permission to go through your clothes and see if there’s any identification.’

‘Oh, sure. Be my guest.’

No doubt the hospital had already done this, but Cardinal opened the closet anyway. A denim jacket hung from a wire hanger, with a pair of jeans beside it. On the shelf, a T-shirt, bra, and underpants. Cardinal made notes of the brand names: Gap, Levi’s, Lucky. Then he went through the jeans pockets. No keys, no ID, no receipts or ticket stubs, just a few coins and a pair of nail clippers. He felt in the side pockets of the denim jacket and pulled out a half-roll of Lifesavers. Nothing useful.

When he turned around, Red was looking blankly out the window as if he wasn’t there. Between the buildings, small white clouds hung in rhomboids of blue sky. Beyond these, the concrete shaft of Toronto’s landmark CN Tower.

‘One more thing,’ Cardinal said. ‘Would you mind if I took your picture?’

‘No, of course not.’

Cardinal closed the blinds to shut out the identifiable view. Then he sat the young woman in front of them, and had her turn her head to one side so the shaved patch didn’t show. He took a close-up with his Polaroid.

She had no reaction when he showed her the result.

‘They’ll be sending you back to Algonquin Bay tomorrow,’ Cardinal said. ‘Are you ready for that?’

‘I don’t know where that is,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know if I’m from there.’

‘We have to assume you are, until we hear anything different.’

A pale, freckled hand reached up absently, feeling the edges of her bandage. Cardinal was sure she was going to ask where she would stay in Algonquin Bay – a question he had been dreading – but she didn’t say anything. Just that same placid smile. Fine, let Dr Schaff tell her.

‘Listen, um, Red – sorry, I have to call you Red until we know your name…’

‘It’s all right. I don’t mind.’

‘Pretty soon there’s going to be a missing-person report out on you. Young women like you don’t go missing without someone noticing. Then we’ll know who you are and where you’re from. In the meantime we’re going to have a police guard on you at all times.’

‘Okay.’

She doesn’t protest, she doesn’t ask why, Cardinal thought. She doesn’t seem afraid or even curious. He felt duty bound to answer the questions she hadn’t asked.

‘Someone put a bullet in your head,’ he said. ‘And because of the nature of the wound, and the type of weapon used, we think it was a deliberate attempt on your life. So, you’re going to have to keep a low profile until we find whoever did it. In case they decide to make another try at it.’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not going to take long before you’re tired of being cooped up, but it won’t be safe for you to go out.’

‘Oh.’ The pale brows met in a display of – Cardinal wasn’t sure if it was worry or just confusion. She said after a moment, ‘Whoever I am, I think I must be quite a lazy person because right now I don’t feel like doing anything but sitting in bed.’

‘Well, that’s fine,’ Cardinal said. ‘You take it easy and let the doctors look after you.’

‘I will.’ She gave him a smile and it was as if a lamp had been turned on. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

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