Giles Blunt: Crime Machine

On or about July 15, 1970, the Scriver family had apparently left their Trout Lake cottage in their small outboard and had never been heard from again. Cottage door unlocked. The remains of dinner still on the table. No signs of violence.

The missing: Walt Scriver, forty-five, a researcher with the Lands and Forests Department (as the Ministry of Natural Resources was then known). His wife, Jenny Scriver, forty-three, homemaker and part-time teacher. Their eighteen-year-old son Martin, who had been home for the weekend from his summer job on a deer census. All apparent victims of a drowning accident.

Cardinal wrote in big letters on his legal pad, Cleared-Alien Abduction.

The buzzer rang and Cardinal went to the intercom to open the door for Lise Delorme. One of the unforeseen benefits of moving to this apartment was that he was now just a five-minute walk away from Delorme, his favourite person at work. When he had first moved in, Delorme had come round to help unroll carpets and hang curtains. Pure kindness, Cardinal figured; she would have done the same for anyone.

Now here she was at his door, tomboyish in flannel shirt and blue jeans, and clutching a DVD in one hand, a gigantic can of popcorn in the other. A less cop-like person would be hard to envision.

“Monsters,” she said, holding up the DVD. The cover had a picture of giant insects. “Or do you think it’ll be too much like work?”

Cardinal put the DVD into the machine and spent a few minutes fiddling with the remote, which never worked the same way twice.

“Man, it’s so humid in here,” Delorme said. “They still didn’t fix your ventilation?”

“Don’t get me started. Buying this place may have been one of the dumbest moves I ever made.”

Delorme was looking at the pile of folders. “Hey, congratulations. I see you solved Scriver.”

“Yeah. Turned out to be simple.”

Cardinal on his recliner, Delorme on the couch. He kept a quilt folded up on the back, because Delorme always got cold-those huge plate glass windows facing the lake. She was still in her thirties, passionate in temperament and appealing in form, and it had occurred to Cardinal more than once to reach across the small table that separated them and touch her, but he hadn’t. They had fallen into this friendship and pretty quickly it had begun to feel as if it had always been like this and always would be.

She was telling him about a hunter, the subject of two annoying grid searches, who had just been found near the Nipissing reserve, slightly frostbitten but otherwise okay. Hunters got lost two or three times a year and posed a considerable drain on department resources, not to mention on the patience of those who had to look for them. “What’s wrong with these people?” she said. “They haven’t heard of GPS?”

“Lot of macho types pride themselves on not needing it. How’s Shane?” Cardinal muted the TV as they waited for the FBI warning and the previews to finish.

Delorme hoisted the quilt around her shoulders, careful not to tip her bowl of popcorn. “We had dinner Wednesday night. It was okay.”

“You don’t sound excited.”

Delorme shrugged and transported a handful of popcorn from bowl to mouth. “I’m not.”

“I imagine you end up talking shop a lot of the time.”

Delorme made a face. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think Shane’s all that good a lawyer. Doesn’t seem to get his clients off very often.”

“That’s because of the uncanny skill of the local police.”

“I don’t think so, unfortunately.”

“Well, he must have something, or you wouldn’t keep going out with him.” It amazed Cardinal that he could talk to Delorme about her love life. It would have been unthinkable a year ago, but now it seemed natural.

“Shane is someone to have dinner with,” Delorme said. “Go to a movie with. Not much more than that.”

“That’s too bad.”

“You should talk. You don’t go out with anyone. You don’t even seem to consider it.”

Cardinal hit the remote and the MGM lion roared.

The first few minutes of the movie were amusing, even to Cardinal, though he didn’t normally like science fiction. The chubby friend of the main character had just been yanked offscreen by an extremely slimy tentacle when the phone rang.

–

They drove out to Trout Lake. Out past the frozen beach, past Natural Resources and the marina. Out past Madonna Road, where Cardinal and Catherine and their daughter used to live. A few more kilometres and they made a right onto Island Road, passing the Chinook roadhouse on the left. Delorme took it slow on all the hills and curves, neither of them saying anything, almost as if they were holding their breath.

Island Road, so called because when you reach the end of it, there’s just one last house and then the water of Trout Lake-ice, now-and, about half a kilometre out, a pretty island that sits at the end of this peninsula like the dot over an i.

White birches flashed by in an endless palisade. Moonlight on cedar and blue spruce. Not what you’d normally call disturbing, but when Delorme stopped at the driveway to the last house in front of the yellow strip of crime scene tape, Cardinal got a bad feeling. And not just the regular bad feeling you got at the scene of a murder. Delorme looked pale and grim, and Cardinal knew he looked the same.

They got out of the car and nodded at the young cop standing just inside the yellow tape. He introduced himself as PC Rankin and pointed with his flashlight at the left side of the driveway. “Those are my tracks,” he said. “PC Gifford’s by the house. I walked back up here and figured best to walk where no one else had. Whole mess of tracks further down.”

“Where’s your squad car?”

He pointed with a fat mitten down the curving drive.

They had driven right over tire tracks that might prove crucial later on, but Cardinal couldn’t blame them. They hadn’t known what kind of situation they were coming into.

He ducked under the tape and continued down the driveway, following the beam of his own flashlight, Delorme right behind. They walked single file to minimize any more damage, both of them looking at the tire tracks. The tread marks cast deep shadows in the snow.

The driveway was long, really its own separate road. And it had enough dips and turns that they couldn’t see the house until they reached the last crest and could look down the final slope toward the lake. It was set there in a wash of moonlight that lit the trees, the frozen lake.

Cardinal had never seen the house from this side, although he had often admired it from the lake when he was out in the boat. The owners would have a spectacular view, being at the tip of the peninsula that divided Four Mile Bay from the main body of Trout Lake. It was a long and low bungalow, constructed of brick and stone and lengths of cedar. He didn’t know who lived there. All he knew was they had a bright red canoe that was tethered to the dock all summer. Cardinal stopped and Delorme stopped too and looked at him, her breath turning to steam.

“What’s the first thing you think of when you look at this?” Cardinal waved his arm to include the woods, the lake, the island.

“Isolation.”

“Me too,” he said, and continued down toward the house. The snow squeaked with each step.

A young policewoman standing in front of the house raised her flashlight to look them over. Cardinal had noticed her around the station before.

“PC Gifford,” she said. “I know who you guys are.”

Cardinal pointed to the kludge of footprints on the stoop. “I hope none of those are yours.”

“No, but those are.” She pointed to footprints beneath the plate glass window. “I was trying to see if there were any survivors. I thought I should go in-the back door lock has been jimmied and there’s a broken window-but Staff Sarge said no, keep it secure and wait for you guys, so that’s what I did.”