Black Fly Season (6 page)

‘Let’s just say old Wombat has some ‘splaining to do.’

‘Which might answer the question of why he’s missing. Maybe you already made your point with him and he isn’t coming back again.’

‘Where did you see him last?’ Delorme said. ‘You still haven’t answered that.’

‘Believe it or not, I don’t keep track of his comings and goings. Last time I remember seeing him we had a few people round, we watched a

video, Wombat passed out on the couch. Not unusual for him. I expected to find him here next morning but I didn’t. Now he doesn’t answer his cell phone and he doesn’t seem to be home and I have no idea where he is. He doesn’t write, he doesn’t phone, and we’re all just worried sick.’

‘You want to find him,’ Delorme said. ‘You’re pissed off at him.’

‘What are you, my therapist?You want to explore my feelings, honey, make an appointment. Don’t just come banging on my door.’

‘Where would Wombat be most likely to go?’

‘You’re letting the bugs in,’ Lasalle said, and closed the door.

Cardinal and Delorme hopped back to the car, each in a penumbra of flies.

Delorme started the engine. ‘That was a weird testosterone display you had with Haystack.’

‘Guys like that are like dogs. They need to know where they stand.’

‘If you say so. Anyway, me, I get the feeling the Vikings are seriously annoyed with Wombat.’

‘Which could mean they did away with him.’ Cardinal rubbed at a bite on his neck.

‘Don’t scratch. You’ll only make it worse.’

When they were back on the highway Delorme said, ‘You know, that Lasalle is seriously goodlooking for a biker.’

‘Well, we’re very goodlooking for cops.’

They were quiet for the rest of the drive back. There was only the sound of wind and tires

and the odd squawk from the radio. Cardinal was thinking about the young woman with no memory. Those green eyes looked so innocent, her whole manner was so benign, it was hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill her. Then again, who knew what her previous personality may have been? For all Cardinal knew, she could be Bitch Incarnate. The only thing he was sure of: with no home and no memory, she must be the loneliest woman on Earth, and he wanted to find the person who had done that to her.

Catherine Cardinal had packed her cameras several times over the past few days, only to unpack them, check the lenses and batteries, and pack them again. But she had left her personal packing to the last moment. When the rented minivan with its load of student shutter bugs honked outside the house early that morning, she was still folding Tshirts and zipping up toiletries and searching in the closet and under the bed for extra shoes.

Cardinal answered the door. The woman on the porch was tall, maybe forty, not exactly pretty, but she looked smart, and Cardinal always found that attractive.

‘I just thought I’d see if Catherine needed any help,’ she said.

‘I think she’s got everything under control. It’ll just be a minute.’

‘My name’s Christine Nadeau,’ the woman said, putting out her hand to shake. ‘This is the third course I’ve taken with your wife. Do you have any idea what a great teacher she is?’

‘I have heard that before. But thanks for telling me.’

‘Everybody’s very excited about this trip.’

‘Good. So is Catherine.’

Christine Nadeau went back to wait in the car, and Cardinal found Catherine zipping up her carry-on in the bedroom. Her face was flushed, and she looked short of breath. Should I say something?

‘I’m so disorganized,’ Catherine said. She was shoving loose change and bills into her jeans pocket as Cardinal hauled the suitcase out to the front room. ‘You’d think I’d learn by now.’

‘You’re not disorganized. You were just focused on making sure your camera gear was in shape.’

‘I’m not going to check it again,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s a supreme act of will, but I’m not going to check it again.’

She put on a khaki fisherman’s vest. Even on Catherine it was perfectly hideous, but it had thousands of pockets for film, flash, batteries, pens, labels, and filters - the myriad doodads of the serious photographer.

‘Did you pack your medication?’ Cardinal said. He had to. It wasn’t in him to let her leave town and not say this.

Catherine turned her back on him and put on a light coat over the vest. A slim black coat. It had a hood with a red lining that gave off echoes of fairy tales.

‘Did you hear me, sweetheart?’

‘Yes, John. I heard you. Yes, I packed my medication. Thank you for reminding me that I can’t be trusted to so much as cross the road without supervision.’

‘All right. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Here I am excited about a big project and you just have to rain on the parade, don’t you.’

‘Don’t overreact, honey. I’m glad you’re taking the trip. You should know by now - after twentyfive years or however long it’s been - I’m a worry wart. Always have been, always will be. Have a good time, and I’ll see you when you get back.’

Catherine hauled her suitcase outside without another word. Cardinal watched her get into the car, an ache in his chest. I shouldn’t have said anything.

He was in the kitchen clearing away the breakfast things when Catherine rushed back in. She stopped in the kitchen doorway, and took a deep breath.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a bitch. It’s just sometimes, once in a while - once in a great while - I actually imagine I’m normal. I actually fantasize that I can do all the things normal people do without a second thought, and why should anyone worry about it. It’s hard for me to remember I have this problem. It’s painful to be reminded of it.’

‘I’m sorry if I brought you down,’ Cardinal said. ‘Old habits …’

Catherine came closer, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. ‘You worry too much.’

A little later, Cardinal and Delorme drove up to St Francis hospital. It wasn’t actually called St Francis any more, but Cardinal still thought of it that way. Algonquin Bay’s City Hospital consisted of two brick boxes that used to be two separate hospitals until the provincial government decided they would be better off united in holy parsimony. The smaller one, the former St Francis, sits halfway up a hill, overlooking Ecole Secondaire Algonquin and the grubby cinders of the CNR railway tracks. It is this building that houses the hospital’s psychiatric ward. On any given day, the half-dozen or so patients that wander its halls consist of attempted suicides, drug overdoses, or emotionally symphonic teenagers - patients not deemed crazy enough or longterm enough for residence at the local Ontario Psychiatric Hospital, where Catherine went to recover from the worst of her depressions.

Cardinal and Delorme were here to check in on Jane Doe, but Cardinal was having trouble focusing, just now, the sight of a hospital having thrown his mind back upon Catherine.

Perhaps there was no cause for concern. Perhaps Catherine’s excitement about her trip was just that: excitement. She hadn’t flown off on any flights of fancy; she’d made no grand announcements

of omnipotence, unveiled no cosmic plans for changing the nature of reality as we know it. Perhaps it really was just girlish excitement about going to the big city on a photographic project. In a normal woman, it would have been no cause for concern. But in Catherine …

Cardinal and Delorme took the elevator to the third floor, the psychiatric wing. They had arranged to meet a neuro-psychologist who had been brought in to try and help their mysterious redhead recover her memory. City Hospital did not have a neuro-psychologist on staff. There was only one in the entire city, and he was there on loan, teaching a course at Northern University’s school of nursing: Dr Garth Paley.

If I ever need a shrink, Cardinal thought as Dr Paley introduced himself, I want one who looks just like this guy. Paley was dressed in a tweed jacket and jeans, which gave him the look of a man who could be comfortable in the library or in the bar. Although he was not more than mid fifties, he had grand fatherly white hair and a silvery beard. His brows were dark, shadowing his eyes in a way that gave them a perceptive, almost prehensile, look. A man who could understand and empathize before you even said anything. Some people are just perfectly suited to their jobs; Cardinal often wished he were one.

‘I appreciate your letting me know you were coming up to see my Jane Doe,’ Dr Paley told them. ‘Please sit.’

The office they were in might have been anywhere. It had the usual computer, the usual metal bookshelves bolted to the wall. It was an uncomfortable place and didn’t suit Dr Paley at all.

‘A couple of things you should know before you talk to her,’ he said. ‘First off, you mentioned on the phone, Detective, that you were hoping her amnesia was temporary. The short answer is, it isn’t amnesia.’ Dr Paley grinned at them, his cheeks suddenly rosy. Santa Claus as a youngish man.

‘I don’t understand,’ Cardinal said. ‘She doesn’t remember who she is or where she’s from …’

Dr Paley raised a manicured finger. ‘That isn’t amnesia. It’s post-traumatic confusion. We don’t know what the mechanism is, but basically when the brain receives a jolt it’s as if all the pathways get scrambled and information doesn’t flow the way it normally does. But she hasn’t really forgotten who she is, she just can’t retrieve it.’

‘She will be able to, though, right?’ Delorme said. ‘She will remember eventually?’

‘Oh yes. Dr Schaff assures me that the actual brain damage is minimal. We can expect normal affect to return, probably in a week, maybe three at the most. And by then she should have pretty much a continuous autobiography, too.’

‘And what about the crime itself? Getting shot?’

‘That she will never remember.’

‘Can’t blame her,’ Delorme muttered. ‘For sure, it must have been pretty horrific’

‘That’s not why,’ Dr Paley said. ‘She’s not repressing the memory - the information just isn’t there. People make the mistake of thinking memory is like a videotape. It isn’t. It’s not a recording of what happened. Two sets of encoding have to go on before an event is stored in longterm memory. First, it has to be processed by the brain in a way that makes it comprehensible.Then, it varies, but in about twenty minutes, half an hour, the information gets encoded into longterm memory - different location in the brain, different recovery system. If some trauma shocks the brain before this happens, it will be as if the event itself and everything within about a half hour on either side of it never happened.’

Cardinal sagged. ‘So we’re not going to get any info out of her?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘Can’t you use hypnosis?’

‘God forbid. Hypnosis has been thoroughly and completely discredited. You remember all those child abuse witch hunts? Satanic ritual abuse? Day-care centres that were the scene of orgies? There’s never been any corroborative evidence for any of it. Furthermore, the interview records show that those bits that weren’t infantile fantasy on the part of the children were memories put there inadvertently by overzealous police, prosecutors, and social workers. Same with sodium amytal. You’ll get what a patient thinks you want to hear, you won’t get the truth. Don’t worry. You’ll get

lots out of this young woman eventually. Just not a direct memory of who shot her and where. Think of it like a computer. You know what happens if you’re typing something up in your word processor and there’s a power failure before you save it?’ ‘Yes,’ Delorme said. ‘Unfortunately.’ ‘It’s a pretty exact analogy. And I want to caution you before you talk to her. Please note my words, now. People in a confused state are extremely suggestible. If you go in there and suggest maybe her brother shot her, she’ll start “remembering” that her brother shot her. So please - for the good of this young woman as well as for the good of your own case - do not make any suggestions to her as to how she might have come to be shot, or even how she might have come to be here. If you hint that maybe she was going to school here, something like that, she’ll start remembering that she was going to school here. That’s why I videotape all my interactions with her; I want people to know that her memories are hers, not mine.’

‘False memories are the last thing we want,’ Cardinal said. ‘But we need to find out who might be after her.’

‘I hope you do. Just don’t ask her.’ ‘Even without suggesting an answer?’ ‘You’ll only slow her progress. She’ll try and try to remember, and it’ll upset her and that’s only going to set her back.’

Dr Paley picked up a mug with a picture of a fat tabby on it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve just made

some tea. Will you have some? Or coffee? It’s pretty awful stuff, I’m afraid.’

Cardinal and Delorme demurred.

‘You know what it’s like,’ Dr Paley continued, ‘when you’re trying to remember a name or a movie title that’s just on the tip of your tongue? You try and you try and you can’t do it. Then half an hour later when you’re not trying, it comes to you.’

‘So what are you going to do for her?’ Delorme said. ‘Just keep her in bed for three weeks?’

‘No, we’ll let her have the run of the ward when she wants. I go at things sort of sideways. I’ll be giving our young friend cues of various sorts. Various stimuli - music, images, smells - that might provoke a response. Well, tell you what, why don’t you go in and introduce yourselves. She won’t remember you from the other day, Detective, but maybe you can establish some kind of rapport. Why don’t you meet me in the staff lounge when you’re done? It’s just down the hall on the right, past her room. I’ll have something to show you.’

Cardinal and Delorme went down the hall. The door to the girl’s room was manned by a uniformed cop named Quigley. Cardinal was going to pass by with a nod, but Quigley was clearly relieved to have some company.

‘No one’s come to visit,’ he said. ‘Except Dr Paley. I think she’s getting a bit better though.’

‘Has she been out of her room, yet?’

‘Nope. But they leave the door open most of the time. I see her getting up and staring out the window. What do I do if she decides she wants to wander around, visit other patients?’