Giles Blunt: Crime Machine

“I had no reason to.”

“You mean you were told not to.”

“I don’t care what’s in the bunkhouse.”

“Not what-who. His name was Henry. He was an Indian-a First Nations person, though he always referred to himself as Indian. He’d be about forty-four, forty-five. Younger than your self-styled Papa by quite a bit. He was probably about your age when he discovered he was alcoholic. Just couldn’t let it go. He had some pain raging inside of him that only alcohol would stop. Imagine that. Only alcohol could stop it. But it also made it worse.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m supposed to care about this drunkard why?”

“Imagine having a constant pain. A burn, say-your skin feels like it’s on fire. Or maybe not so dramatic. You just feel that your heart is breaking. All the time, every day, for no reason-and the only time this pain stopped was when you were drunk. That was Henry’s life. It rendered him uncongenial and unemployable. It got him thrown off the reserve. It got him thrown in jail countless times. And all the time, that burn, that heartache. He got himself sober for a time. By some Herculean effort of will, he managed to do that. He even got himself married and got a job. The job didn’t last. The kind of work he could get never does. So he started drinking again. His wife left him.”

“A loser. What you’re describing’s a loser.”

“What I’m describing is a human being. Henry quit drinking. And no, it didn’t happen overnight. It took him many tries and many setbacks, many failures, but the man stopped drinking. Sober, Henry was good with his hands, a skilled carpenter. He did some work on the house. How I met him. He knew lots of things: electricity, plumbing, hunting, fishing. And he was a big reader. Liked books. Liked a good story. Liked a good joke. Nice sense of humour. Kinda dry.

“He came to work for me. Just doing whatever needed doing. I don’t pay him much-didn’t pay him much-but his rent was free and he liked the quiet. Liked the woods. I think maybe he even liked me. Seemed to, anyway. I asked him once what he did about all that pain, where it went, and he told me it never went anywhere. It was still there. Every day. He just didn’t do anything about it anymore. He just let it be, and sometimes he forgot about it. He had a hard life. Incomprehensibly hard to someone like me, a lucky person. But he found a way to smile now and again. A way to laugh. And he took pleasure in small things-making breakfast, hanging a door. In keeping an old man company. I can’t say he was a happy man, Henry, but he was a good man, and he thought that little bunkhouse was the finest place he’d ever lived. And now he’s lying dead in it with a bullet hole in his forehead because your so-called Papa preferred him that way. There was no reason for it, and that was the end of Henry’s life.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. So do you.”

“The highway’s that way, Mr. Kreeger. Would you turn around, please?”

He turned and took exactly one step and stopped again and looked at her. “Is this really who you want to be?”

“What I am is not something I have any say over.”

“But what you do-what you do is under your control.”

“If you’ve got such a rosy view of life, why are you having such trouble believing anything I tell you? Just keep your head down and keep those snowshoes moving one step ahead of the other and we’ll get you to the highway safe and sound. I know, how about maybe we sing a little bit? You wouldn’t happen to know any snowshoeing-through-the-woods-type songs, would you? We sing those the rest of the way, we’ll keep warm and cheerful, and I can’t think of a better way to get us through, you know… whatever.”

Keeping low, Cardinal made it to the edge of the ravine and jumped. He slid down, hidden rocks chomping at femur and tibia. The line of trees above would give him some cover, unless whoever was shooting at him slid down into the ravine too. You got yourself into it this time, he told himself. You got Delorme into it too.

The ravine bottomed out at a small creek that was only half frozen. Swift black water, silver where it splashed over the rocks. Cardinal hunkered behind some thick brush and tried his phone again. Stone dead. Practically crawling, he made his way back toward the cabin, praying that Delorme was still alive.

This time the shot actually creased his arm, tore through his parka sleeve. It didn’t hit bone or even muscle, but ripped a hot line in the skin just above his elbow. He lay flat and peered through the bush toward the top of the ravine. The sniper was a ghost, a wraith out of Native folklore wafting soundlessly through the forest.

If it was the man who had bluffed his way into the cabin, either Delorme was already dead or she had forced him out into the woods. Another shot tore through the branches just above his head. Cardinal plunged back the way he had come, away from the cabin. If he could get to the Kreeger house, he might be in a stronger position to deal with this maniac, then come back for Delorme. It was not an idea that would withstand analysis, and he didn’t submit it to any. He just kept moving through brush and rocks and water.

A little farther on, the wide white platter of a lake opened up and across it Cardinal could see the house, a dim outline behind diagonals of falling snow. A crack of thunder split the air and lightning sparked wide over the trees. If whoever’s behind that rifle comes down this way, I don’t want to be out in the open, Cardinal thought. I really don’t.

Keeping well inside the tree line, he moved clockwise around the lake. That would take him behind the house and provide some cover. By the time he made it to the trees behind the house, the lightning had come west too, as if it had personal business with him. Several bolts lashed at the trees and the thunder sent shock waves through his diaphragm. It set off a car alarm in one of the snow-covered vehicles out front.

The snow had now changed almost completely to rain. Cardinal’s parka was not waterproof. Within minutes, icy water glazed his shoulders.

He moved farther around until he could see the side door of the house. To his left, a bunkhouse. If you were holding a hostage, he asked himself, where would you be most likely to keep him?

He got to the bunkhouse and scanned the trees in either direction. No sign of the rifleman. The car alarm still throbbing. He stepped up to the back window and peered inside. He was looking into a bunk room. Unoccupied and not much of anything in it. Beyond this, a table. It was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t make out a body lying on the floor. He could see enough to know that it wasn’t Lloyd Kreeger and that whoever it once was had been dead some time. There wouldn’t be anybody else in the bunkhouse, not with that.

He stepped back into the trees. Rolls of thunder, moving off now, rain soaking through to his back, his chest. His arm stinging. The car alarm shut off and the rain was louder hitting the bunkhouse, the trees. He scanned the woods once more and ran to the side door of the house.

He tried the handle. Unlocked. He pushed the door open.

Dim interior. Table right in front, living room beyond, a bedroom or two off a mezzanine to the right. It was the kind of test scenario they might set up for you at the academy in Aylmer. Be ready to shoot, and if you do, shoot to kill-but know that it could be a victim or a bystander coming through any one of those doors.

Cardinal moved into the kitchen area, acutely aware of the stairs in the corner behind him, the basement they would lead to. The bathroom was empty. He got to the first bedroom door and opened it and checked inside. No one. He stood listening, the shiver in his knees only partly from cold.