Black Fly Season. Giles Blunt

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.’

       4

      The Algonquin Bay police department is not the kind of grunge pit one sees on television shows about New York cops. Since the new headquarters opened a dozen years ago, the CID has maintained the bland décor of a small mortgage outfit. The windows on the east side provide good light – in the morning, at least – as well as an excellent view of the parking lot.

      Cardinal was in the boardroom packing up the last of the files from a case that had consumed all his energy for the last six months. It had involved a third-generation, felony-prone family who, by way of registering a complaint about the noise, had sacked a neighbouring family’s afternoon barbecue. One of the patriarchs had ended up face down in his Worcestershire sauce, dead of a heart attack. Months of Cardinal’s work had resulted in nothing more than a finding of accidental death.

      Every now and then, Cardinal’s thoughts were interrupted by a feminine tack, tack, tack of hammer and nail. Frances, longtime receptionist and factotum to Police Chief Kendall, was hanging a set of newly framed photographs on the pine panelling. So far, she had placed a photo of Chief Kendall being sworn in, and another of Ian McLeod, fully clothed and soaking wet, having just rescued a mother of three from drowning in Trout Lake.

      ‘What do you think of this one?’ Frances said.

      A black-and-white, eight-by-eleven of a much younger Jerry Commanda, back when he was still on the city force, dressed in baseball cap and sunglasses. He was standing in front of a stone gate with a wrought-iron eagle perched on top iron talons flexed, black wings spread as if about to take off.

      ‘Is that Eagle Park?’ Cardinal said.

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      ‘I remember that. It was a charity ballgame against the Fire Department.’

      ‘Can you believe how skinny Jerry was?’

      ‘He’s still skinny. Yet another reason, if one were needed, to find him irritating.’

      ‘Go on. Everyone loves Jerry.’ Frances had a saint-like immunity to irony.

      ‘Another reason,’ Cardinal said.

      ‘Oh, you…’

      Cardinal settled back into the quiet. The boardroom was plush, compared to the squad room. It even had carpeting, royal blue, with a deep pile that went some way toward damping the noise of Frances’ hammer and the general hubbub of the booking area. It was not, however, deep enough to dampen the noise of one Jasper Colin Crouch.

      Jasper Colin Crouch was a permanently unemployed and unemployable construction worker, built like a Grizzly but with a temper much worse. Crouch was, as the cliché has it, well known to the police, owing to his penchant for battering his wife when sober and his numerous offspring when drunk. Detective Lise Delorme had hauled him in a few days previously on a charge of criminal assault after his twelve-year-old boy had been hospitalized with a broken arm. The boy was now a temporary ward of the Children’s Aid.

      A tremendous bellow – a sort of high-volume moose-honk – made Cardinal look up. He knew exactly who it was. The bellow was followed by an equally tremendous crash.

      ‘My goodness,’ Frances said, and covered her heart.

      Cardinal jumped up and ran to the booking area.

      The floor was flooded, Crouch having somehow toppled the water cooler. Now he was squared off with Delorme, who was five-foot-four but looked a lot smaller facing the cathedral of fat and muscle that was Jasper Colin Crouch. Delorme was down on one knee in the water, a cut above her eye.

      Bob Collingwood had hold of Crouch from behind but Crouch just made a kind of operatic shrug and Collingwood went flying. Before Cardinal could intervene, Crouch leaned into a full-force kick at Delorme. Delorme dodged to one side, caught his heel in her left hand, and half-rose.

      ‘Mr Crouch, you’re going to stop right now or I’m going to drop you.’

      ‘Suck my dick.’ He jerked his leg, but Delorme held on.

      ‘That’s it,’ she said. She propped his foot on her shoulder and stood up. Crouch’s skull connected with the tile floor, and he was out as if someone had pressed the off button on a remote. There was a pattering of applause.

      ‘That really needs a stitch or two,’ Cardinal said when Delorme came back from the washroom. Her left eyebrow was bisected by a gash about a quarter of an inch long.

      ‘I’ll live.’ She sat down at the cubicle next to his. ‘How’s our Jane Doe doing?’

      Cardinal had called Delorme after he’d got the ballistics report.

      ‘Jane Doe is still a Jane Doe,’ he said. ‘Neurosurgeon thinks her memory will come back, but there’s no saying when.’

      ‘Bullet in the head – me, I take it we won’t be putting any ads in the paper asking Do You Know This Woman?’

      ‘No. We don’t even want whoever shot her to know she’s been found, let alone found alive. I don’t suppose you dug anything up on the gun?’

      ‘Used in recent crimes?’ Delorme shook her head. ‘Doesn’t match anything.’ She added in an offhand, nothing important, probably shouldn’t mention it tone: ‘On the other hand, I did check out reports of stolen firearms. Surprise, surprise, turns out we had one three weeks ago.’

      ‘You’re kidding. A .32 pistol?’

      Delorme held up a scrap of paper on which she had written a name and address.

      ‘Missing. One pistol. Thirty-two calibre. Manufacturer: Colt. Model: Police Positive.’

      Rod Milcher lived in a nicely maintained split-level in the Pinedale section of town, at one time a desirable address, but now, owing to the proliferation of drab concrete apartment buildings, an area mostly populated by the newly married. Pinedale is