Crime Machine (27 page)

“Please. Quite a view you have here.”

Cardinal poured two whiskies and brought them into the living room and handed her one. She took a sip and looked at the glass. “What is it?”

“Rye. You prefer something else?”

“No, it’s good. I’ve never had it before—must be a Canadian thing. What are those lights over there?” She pointed at a spray of silvery pinpoints across the bay.

“Area of town called Ferris. Who do you think was following you?”

“God, I don’t know. I hope it’s just a random perv and not some bloody Russian.”

“There’s no sign of anyone at all.”

“Hey, he was maybe twenty yards behind me—I didn’t imagine the guy.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

She drank down the rest of the whisky. “Now I’m second-guessing myself. Do you suppose it’s possible he
wasn’t
following me?”

“That’s the most likely scenario.”

“Could I really be that dumb?”

“You wouldn’t have to be dumb—you’re writing about guys who kill people like you. Can I get you another?”

She handed him her empty glass. “I could get used to this stuff.”

Cardinal went into the kitchen and poured two more.

“In fact,” she called after him, “I could get to like your whole country. Everyone’s so polite here, it’s like they’re all on Valium—except you. The way you drew that gun. I thought I was a goner.”

Cardinal brought the drinks out and handed her one and sat on the couch. Donna was sitting in his favourite chair, a recliner that she had tipped back to its halfway position. She had small feet, and socks that were perfectly white.

“What else did you find out from the
Lode?
I assume you didn’t spend all your time looking me up.”

“Local stuff on the fur biz—the Web was useless. A couple of things may interest you. Did you know the fur auction used to be run by a different group than the guys currently in charge?”

“I did. The first group couldn’t make a go of it.”

Donna reached for her bag on the floor beside the chair, a manoeuvre that caused her to reveal a good deal of cleavage. She struck Cardinal as a cold person in some ways—dry, analytical, obsessed with work—but he also had the sense of enormous emotion held in check, though as to which emotions he had no clue.

Donna sat back up and flipped open her notebook. “A man named Rivard—Donald Rivard—is quoted in this article from a couple of years ago saying, ‘It’s not just the low prices. Certain people, the big buyers, have a way of holding on to their cash. We have to warehouse the fur and they take their sweet time paying us. Meanwhile we have to pay all the trappers, not to mention our staff. You can’t make a living on promises.’”

Cardinal nodded. “We know about Rivard.”

“Well, if you don’t buy the Russian mob—it’s a possibility, right?” Donna sat forward and the recliner reformed itself into an upright armchair. “And now you have another murder on your hands—more people to interview, more leads to chase down. Give me a little help here. A name or two.”

“Sorry. Investigation in progress.”

“We went over all that. I won’t publish a thing until you have a conviction. I swear.” She got out of the chair and came to the couch and straddled him so that her knees were on either side of him. Before Cardinal could say anything, she looped her hands around his neck. Warm hands, small. “Are you going to tell me?”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“I’m probably going to kiss you.”

“And if I do?”

“I’m definitely going to kiss you.”

She smelled fresh and clean and weighed hardly anything at all.

“The Bastovs were seen at the Chinook roadhouse the night before they were murdered.” He could tell her that. Jimmy Kappaz wouldn’t be the only one to remember a pair of rich foreigners—dead foreigners—in such a setting.

Donna leaned forward and kissed him. The sudden heat of her lips on his. She sat back, keeping her hands around his neck. “Who with?”

“God, they should have used you at Guantanamo. A man in his late fifties. And that’s all I’m telling you.”

“Late fifties. That could be the guy who followed me.”

“It could be anybody. Obviously, we want to interview anyone else who was at the bar who might have seen them.”

“Thank you,” she said. “See, that didn’t hurt, did it?”

“Wasn’t too painful.”

A quick smile, and then a look of concern crossed her face. “You seem a little uncomfortable.”

“No kidding.”

She leaned forward again, arms around him, her face hot against his. Cardinal held her, too—uncertainly. Her voice in his ear. “Am I the first one since …”

Cardinal nodded.

“What about when you were married? You never strayed?”

“Never.”

Beneath his hands, her rib cage, taken by a deep sigh, expanded and then contracted again. Her breath hot against his neck. “We don’t have to do anything,” she said.

“I know.”

“I feel good just being here with you. Protected, I guess.”

“That’s me: to serve and protect …”

She sat back. “That serve part sounds interesting.”

—

Cardinal took her to the bedroom and there Donna regained all her former confidence. She was small and fine-boned, but with lean muscles palpable beneath the flawless skin—a lithe, intuitive lover. Cardinal felt coarse and ungainly, acutely aware of his age, despite her enthusiasm, which was both athletic and huskily vocal. Afterward he lay beside her in the swirl of sheets, glazed with sweat and thinking about Catherine. He tried to compose his face to disguise this fact, but Donna seemed to know anyway. She gave a small smile and touched his shoulder, but didn’t ask him about it.

They talked for a while in low voices. Cardinal asked about her background and was somewhat surprised that she talked about it openly—a horrible father, a nonentity mother, two failed marriages. There was no self-pity in it; she related the bits of information as if they were facts she’d come across on microfilm.

In the morning she roused him with the heat of her mouth and then he was inside her again almost before he was fully awake, so that it felt like an extremely vivid dream. Then a rushed breakfast and awkward goodbyes. When Donna was gone, Cardinal stood for a long time looking out the window, coffee mug in hand, watching the darkness recede from the white and grey expanse of Lake Nipissing.

T
HE SUN WAS STILL LOW IN THE SKY
, the first rays hitting the gravestones, slowly turning the light from grey to pale blue. Cardinal pulled to a stop in the parking lot, switched off the Camry and got out. He shut the door but didn’t lock it. There were no other cars, and no footprints marred the snow that covered the graves and the paths that wound among them.

He stood for a moment in the pale wash of sunlight. The cawing of a distant crow and, closer by, the obsessive squawk of a squirrel claiming territory. Smells of snow and wet bark. The black branches, the paper-white hills—Catherine had taken many pictures of just this sort of scene. But Cardinal had never shared her attraction to graveyards. He left the parking lot, gloveless hands in his pockets, and took the path over the nearest hill.

The tips of his ears burned with cold. He walked through a copse of blue spruce and beyond it to an oak that spread its branches over the path, so low he could reach up and touch them. Catherine had told him a couple of times that she wanted to be buried under a tree, wanted to feel she was spreading her branches in some kind of blessing on those who were still alive. Not that they had talked about death a lot, no more than most couples.

Cardinal squatted down beside the edge of the path and brushed the snow away with his bare hand. Underneath Catherine’s name, the brass plaque identified her as a photographer and teacher, the beloved wife of John Cardinal and loving mother of Kelly. Then there was the date of her birth, some fifty years previous, and the date of her death—the plaque said nothing about murder—some fifteen months ago.

Catherine would not have approved of the plaque. She was never one to make a fuss about herself, and not the least bit sentimental. Cardinal hadn’t been sentimental either, until his wife had been taken from him. He had had
photographer
and
teacher
engraved because Catherine, when she was well, had been utterly devoted to being both. Beloved and loving, well, those were understatements, the least you could say. The thesaurus was next to useless when it came to describing such things; Cardinal had checked.

The snow melted on his hand and he let the water drip from his fingers onto the brass plaque, where it immediately began to freeze. He didn’t believe in God. He didn’t believe in an afterlife either; at least, he told himself he didn’t. So it wouldn’t be right to say he was talking to the woman who had shared her time in the world with him. But he stayed very still and thought about Catherine’s life, and his life, and many things Catherine had said or done. And her face.

—

Special Agent Mendelsohn was nothing if not a hard worker. He asked Cardinal if he could go over missing person reports in case one of these missing persons might turn out to be in fact another murder victim who would lead them to the same perpetrator. Cardinal brought a stack of files to the meeting room, there being no desk available, and there Mendelsohn took off his sports jacket and rolled up his sleeves and fell into intense concentration.

Cardinal checked back a little later and Mendelsohn was in exactly the same posture, files on his left, untouched coffee on his right. It was not hot in the meeting room, but Mendelsohn was sweating. Cardinal’s own concentration was interrupted again and again with thoughts of Donna Vaughan. Still, he sat at his desk, drawing diagrams of what he knew, what he thought he knew, what he wanted to know.

One of the things he wanted to know was the location of the Bastovs’ rental car. Hertz had not reported it missing—it was merely on their files as overdue. Cardinal had a copy of their records in front of him. Mercury Grand Marquis. Current model. Plate number duly noted.

“Lise.”

Delorme rolled her chair back and raised her eyebrows

“There were only two sets of tire tracks in the driveway of the Trout Lake house, right?”

“Right.”

“And they match the ATM kid’s car, not a Mercury Grand Marquis. Now, since it’s not in the lot of their hotel and it wasn’t at the scene of the murder, it seems likely that the Bastovs drove somewhere else—somewhere they met someone who then drove them out to Island Road.”

“Makes sense.”

“And since our killer is from out of town, it stands to reason the Bastovs might have met him at a hotel—a hotel other than the Highlands. We should check them all for the Bastovs’ Grand Marquis.”

“I’ll get Sergeant Flower to put the street guys on it. If they all stop by the hotels in their sector, we’ll get a quick answer.”

A little later, Cardinal went into the meeting room to check on Mendelsohn.

“Oh, hey,” Mendelsohn said. “This fur auction stuff is
interesting
. I could read all day about this. And this
protester
—this Pocklington—what a piece of work
he
is. I hope someone’s keeping an eye on him.”

“I gave you missing persons stuff to read.”

“Yeah, yeah, I went
through
all that.”

They were interrupted by Delorme. “They’ve located the Bastov car. The Belvedere Motel.”

—

The Belvedere was a grand name for a motel that was little more than a block of red brick offering views of a Petrocan gas station and a discount electronics store. Delorme and the ident team swarmed over the Grand Marquis the moment they arrived. Cardinal and Mendelsohn went in to talk to the manager, a tubby man in his sixties who was aromatic of pipe
tobacco. “We get people helping themselves to our parking spaces all the time,” he told them. “This time of year we have a lot of vacancies, so we don’t call in the tow trucks like we might in summer.”

Cardinal asked to see the register, and the manager swivelled a battered and smudged PC monitor so Cardinal could see.

“Only three guests?”

“Yeah. Rushed off our feet.”

Two had checked in too late for the fur auction. “This third one,” Cardinal said, “the one who checked in a week ago last Wednesday. What can you tell me about him?”

“Not a thing. He signed in and I haven’t seen him since. Hasn’t given me any reason to worry.”

“He have any visitors?”

“I wouldn’t know. They don’t come through the office.”

“Was there anything unusual about him?”

The manager thought about it for a minute, chewing a plump knuckle. “One thing, maybe. He had an accent. He gave his name as Ted Nelson, but he didn’t sound like a Nelson. I didn’t question it—I mean, lots of people change their names when they immigrate. But to me he sounded more like a Sergei or an Igor.”

Cardinal turned to Mendelsohn. “You have any questions?”

Mendelsohn shook his head. “Your show, Detective.”

Cardinal made a note of the Chevy Aveo the man had registered, and the licence plate number. “His car’s not in your lot at the moment. You mind if we sit in here and wait for him to come back?”

“Why, has he done something?”

“We certainly plan to ask him.”

—

Cardinal asked Delorme and the ident team to leave the Mercury and come back later. He moved his own car farther up the street and came back to the motel office. He and Mendelsohn set a couple of chairs to face the windows, and rearranged some plastic plants so they could keep an eye on the parking area.

Cardinal was a little worried about manning a stakeout with Mendelsohn.
Mendelsohn was a talker—not just a talker, an italicizer and a gesticulator—and Cardinal didn’t like a lot of chit-chat on a stakeout. He preferred to think about the case, to try to develop ideas for new avenues of investigation. But the FBI man sat in his chair, watching a parking lot utterly devoid of activity, and didn’t say a word. He had his notepad out and occasionally flipped a page, made a note. Mostly he sat there, slouched at an angle, twirling his ballpoint in silence.

They sat that way for a good hour and a half. The manager, unasked, brought them coffee and muffins. It was the only time Mendelsohn spoke. He thanked the manager and bit into one of the muffins and called after him, “Hey, these are
good
. You’re very kind to share them.” Cardinal made a mental note to practise better manners himself.