Black Fly Season. Giles Blunt

      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.’