Black Fly Season (42 page)

Calhoun pulled the trigger. There was a loud click.

‘Righteous, man. The magic’s working,’ Leon said. ‘We’re really protected!’

‘Fuck you,’ Calhoun said and fired again.

A black dot appeared above Leon’s left eye. He grabbed at the cabin door, trying to hold himself up.

‘Dipshit,’ Calhoun said.

Beltran didn’t even turn to look at Leon; he kept his eyes fixed on Calhoun. ‘You killed my friend.’ he said. ‘I swear by all the gods, you are going to wish you had died with him.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

There was a crackle of radio static. Amid the moonlight and clouds of exhaust, Cardinal could make out a headset.

‘Steve,’ a voice said. ‘Cops.’

There was a moment of stillness. Lasalle cocked his head. Ever so faint, the sound of approaching sirens.

‘Hit the road,’ he said. ‘Everyone. Right now.’

Beltran dove into the shadows beside the cabin. Calhoun fired a shot after him, and Cardinal used that moment to melt into the darkness behind the cabin. The sirens were getting closer. Cardinal heard a curse, and then Calhoun’s massive frame was silhouetted amid the clouds of exhaust. A ragged thunder of horsepower, and a split-second later the bikes became a galaxy of headlights travelling full-tilt across the field.

Cardinal retrieved his gun from the ground beside Clegg. The corporal wasn’t breathing. Cardinal ran into the cabin and nearly threw up at the smell.

He plucked a knife from an array of them on the table and freed first Terri, then Kevin. They were

both crying, unable to speak, but he couldn’t see any wounds that required immediate attention.

‘Can you walk?’ Cardinal said, helping them up. ‘Go and sit in front of the large cabin in the light. There’s more cops coming. Sit where they can see you and keep your hands visible. Do everything they say and, for God’s sake, don’t run or do anything to get them going. They’re going to be armed and jittery. I’ll be back.’

He steered them past the two bodies toward the main building. Then he turned back to the blackness of the woods.

The moon was just a sliver, but it cast a lot of light in the clearings.

Moving as quietly as he could, Cardinal climbed the hill behind the cabins and came to the edge of a rock cut among a stand of enormous trees. Behind him, he could hear car doors slamming, voices yelling. Szelagy. Delorme.

I should wait for them, he thought. But the chance of Beltran slipping away, finding a boat, or leading them on an endless chase through the woods was too great. He couldn’t be far.

The moon was thin, but it cast a cool, metallic light on the rock cut. Cardinal kept to the shadows as he skirted the clearing. He found a trail on the other side and followed it into intermittent darkness. The soil was loamy underfoot; he could move almost silently.

A little further on, another trail branched to the right. If he kept straight that would lead to

the water’s edge. He doglegged to the right, and the trail grew rapidly narrower. A slight rise in the terrain and then, across a clearing, a rock face reared up before him. The moon had gone behind a cloud. In the deeper dark it was hard to make out handholds in the granite wall.

Later Cardinal couldn’t be sure what had alerted him. A slight rustle overhead? A glint of moonlight on metal? Whatever the reason, he stepped to one side, so that when Beltran dropped from the darkness above, his knife missed Cardinal’s neck and only ended up grazing his shoulder and upper arm. Cardinal was thrown off balance and stumbled forward as Beltran crashed to the ground behind him.

Cardinal had his gun half-raised when Beltran came at him again, knife flashing. The two of them were locked together, Beltran gripping Cardinal’s gun hand, Cardinal catching Beltran’s wrist just as the knife arced toward his chest. They staggered back against the rock face.

Beltran leaned into Cardinal with all his weight, and the two of them tumbled over a boulder. A sharp edge of granite bit into Cardinal’s shoulder blade. The knife dropped to the ground, point first, and quivered there. Beltran twisted hard on Cardinal’s arm and the gun hit the dirt with a thud.

When they came up again, Beltran had the knife and Cardinal’s hands were empty. Beltran was babbling something incoherent, veering in and out of English. He kept crying out something like

‘Ellegua! Ellegua, protect me,’ and then a torrent of some language Cardinal had never heard. He was focused on the knife, which Beltran now swung at him in wide arcs, forcing Cardinal to hop back.

Beltran swung again, and this time Cardinal kicked hard and connected. The knife flew back against the rock face, sparking on granite. Beltran fell backwards, then scrabbled after it on all fours. Cardinal hauled him back by the shoulder.

Why was it that everything he had learned at the police college about hand-to-hand combat always seemed irrelevant when it came to an actual fight? In the heat and commotion, so-called crippling grips fail to even grip, let alone cripple. Nothing in the courses prepared you for the speed with which a cornered human being can move. Beltran’s fists seemed to be everywhere at once and, when Cardinal stepped out of reach, Beltran kicked him so hard in the gut that he went down like a spavined horse.

Cardinal landed hard on his knee, and the pain shot up his leg. But it wasn’t granite he had landed on, it was gunmetal. He snatched up the Beretta just as Beltran wheeled on him once more with the knife.

He was yelling, shouting out to Ellegua to pound his enemies into dust. He came at Cardinal, knife shining. Cardinal aimed for body mass and fired. The bullet hit with an odd sound - a clang - and Beltran fell to his knees, gasping for breath.

He touched a large medallion that hung around his neck.

‘You see,’ he said. ‘You cannot kill me. I am protected.’

He came forward a step, still on his knees. He raised the knife, and Cardinal fired again, this time emptying the magazine.

Beltran fell forward, and the knife slithered from his grasp. His blood spread from beneath him, flowing outward on to the rocks into a black pool, in which the white moon shimmered like a blade.

Lise Delorme was sitting in her car, in the parking lot of the Ontario Hospital. She had tried waiting outside, but up here near the forest, the flies were still too bad. They were getting better, though. Another week or so and you might actually be able to enjoy a walk in the woods.

She stared at the massive red-brick building with its many dark windows, some of them barred. Something about mental hospitals made them haunting in a way that, say, prisons or other grim institutions were not. Even now, in the broad white light of summer, the place made you want to turn your back and think of other things.

In an arrangement almost certainly peculiar to Algonquin Bay, the local coroner shares office space with the psychiatric hospital. Delorme had come up here to speak with Dr Rayburn and get his signed reports. That had taken only a few minutes, and when she had come out she had noticed Cardinal’s Camry in the lot and decided to wait for him. The coroner’s reports were just a formality, just another batch of pages for a

very thick file. They contained the routine but necessary observation that the three deceased Raymond Beltran, Leon Rutkowski, and Alan Clegg - had met their ends by violence and the services of a forensic pathologist were required.

Put that list together with Toof Tilley, Wombat Guthrie, and God knew how many others in Miami and Toronto, and the body count started to look seriously depressing.

A young woman came out the side door, followed by Cardinal.

Delorme got out of the car and met them at the edge of the lot.

‘Lise.’ Cardinal’s voice was softer than usual. Delorme had never seen anyone look so exhausted.

‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘Not too bad. Kind of throbs sometimes.’

‘No bowling for you.’

‘No left-handed bowling, anyway. I don’t think you’ve met my daughter. Kelly, this is Lise Delorme.’

‘The famous Sergeant Delorme,’ Kelly said and shook hands. She had a beautiful smile that resembled her mother’s. But she had her father’s eyes. Sad eyes, even when she was smiling. ‘Dad’s told me a lot about you.’

‘Uh-oh,’ Delorme said.

‘No, no. It’s all good. He really admires you.’

‘That isn’t what he tells me,’ Delorme said, but she felt the heat in her face. Admires? She’s got to be joking. She glanced at him, but if Cardinal

was embarrassed, she couldn’t see it beyond the exhaustion.

‘I’ll wait in the car,’ Kelly said to her father, and then she was gone, leaving an impression of youth, alarming honesty and, beyond that, something else. There was a spark of glamour in the way she held her head, in the way she wore those New York clothes. Kelly Cardinal was something special.

‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ Delorme said. ‘I just thought you’d want to know. We matched a gun we found at the camp with the bullets that killed Tilley.’

‘Excellent. That’s good to hear.’

‘Rutkowski’s prints on it. Not Beltran’s.’

‘Huh,’ Cardinal said. ‘Soul mates.’

His response was so muted, Delorme wanted to shake him. Or hug him. Something. His pain was so clearly not physical.

‘They’ve also confirmed the head was Wombat Guthrie,’ Delorme said, wishing she could shut up about it.

‘How are Terri and her brother?’

‘Both pretty traumatized. It’s too soon to tell if there’ll be any permanent psychiatric problems. I think it may have cured Tait’s drug problem, though. That’s a start. By the way, you were right about the locket. It’s Terri’s.’

‘Great.’

‘You’ll also be glad to know Steve Lasalle and Harlan Calhoun were denied bail.’

‘Good. Well …’ ‘How’s Catherine, John?’

‘Oh. You know. Hard to say.’ Cardinal looked off toward the trees, the sunlight bringing out the crows feet at the corners of his eyes. ‘Seems she didn’t want visitors.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Delorme said. ‘That’s rough.’ ‘Tell Chouinard I’ll be in tomorrow’ ‘Take longer, John. There’s no need to come back so soon.’

‘Yes, there is. Tell him I’ll be in tomorrow.’ Delorme watched him head across the lot. Kelly was waiting for him by the car.

The young woman suddenly bent forward and covered her face with her hands. Cardinal put his arms around her and held her close. They stood together like that for a long time. They were still standing like that as Delorme drove away, Cardinal’s left hand stroking his daughter’s hair.