Giles Blunt - The Delicate Storm

‘I guess that’d be Saturday. Two days ago. Yeah, that’s right. Because I asked him to move it Friday morning. Had it parked in the spot for number four. Not that there was anybody in number four. Anyways, it definitely wasn’t there Saturday morning. Which made me think something was up. Car’s gone, and I haven’t seen any smoke coming from the stovepipe. Knocked on the door this morning, got no answer and figured I’d give him another few hours before I started to worry I’d been stiffed.’

‘Did he make any phone calls?’ Cardinal asked. ‘Would you know if he had?’

‘Long-distance I’d know about – he didn’t make any of those. I don’t keep track of local.’

‘Thanks, Mr Wallace. We’ll take it from here.’

‘Fine with me.’ Wallace opened the door for them. ‘If there’s any cash in there, I figure I’m due a hundred and forty.’

The inside of a Loon Lodge cabin hadn’t changed since the last time Cardinal had seen one. Double bed tucked in an alcove, a floral couch, and a kitchenette in the corner: mini-fridge, hot plate, aluminum sink. A memory assailed Cardinal – a shrieking woman hurling a frying pan at him when he had come to arrest her husband.

There was a table covered with yellow oilcloth beside one window. A copy of the New York Times lay on it. Dated five days previously, Cardinal noted, and probably acquired on the airplane.

The bed (slightly tattered chenille cover complete with the same Loon Lodge emblem that was on the key ring) was neatly made. Beside it lay a small wheeled suitcase containing enough clothes for a weekend and a paperback novel by Tom Clancy.

‘Here’s his wallet,’ Delorme said. She retrieved it from under the kitchen table, nearly toppling a lamp (loon emblem on the shade) in the process.

‘Well, here’s a question,’ Cardinal said. ‘The car’s gone. Why would you go out in your car and not take your wallet with you? You go out in the car, you take your licence, right?’

‘Maybe whoever killed him showed up at his door.’

‘Possible. And he loses his wallet in the struggle – although there isn’t much sign of a struggle in here.’

Delorme opened the wallet. ‘In any case, I think we can rule out robbery as a motive. There’s eighty-seven dollars here, all American. Maybe he just went out to buy a pack of cigarettes. Didn’t need his wallet.’

‘He’s got cigarettes.’ Cardinal pointed to a half-empty pack of Marlboros on the nightstand.

‘“Howard Matlock,”’ Delorme read from one of the wallet cards in a formal voice, ‘“is a certified professional accountant in the state of New York.”’

‘Ice fishermen – I swear they’re all accountants.’

‘He is also a member of the New York Public Library, Blockbuster Video and carries a New York driver’s licence.’

She showed Cardinal. The dead man stared out at him from the licence photo. He was wearing the same aviator glasses they had found in the woods.

They both glanced around the room.

‘Except for the wallet on the floor, everything looks undisturbed,’ Cardinal said. ‘And his room key was still in his pocket, but not his car key. Which makes me think the killer or killers made off with his car.’

‘If you’re going to steal a car, why pick a Ford Escort? And if you’re covering up a car theft, chopping the body up in the woods seems a little extreme.’

‘Maybe there was something incriminating in the car.’

They went through the contents of the suitcase: three store-label shirts, three pairs of Hanes underwear, three pairs of socks, two with holes in them.

‘I thought accountants made decent money,’ Delorme said. ‘But this guy looks like he wasn’t doing so well.’

On the bathroom shelf they found a roll of Tums, and travel packets of Imodium and Ex-Lax. ‘Obviously a Boy Scout,’ Delorme said. ‘Prepared for anything.’

‘Anything except hunting or fishing, you notice. No rod, no reel, no tackle. Nothing. I know he said he was just scoping the place out, but still.’

‘Maybe he kept it in the car. When we find the car …’

They stood facing each other in the middle of the cabin. Waiting for an idea to descend, Cardinal thought. A theory.

‘This is a strange one,’ Delorme said. ‘As far as we know, Howard Matlock, visiting CPA, came up here to check out the ice fishing. While here, he goes out for a drive – without his wallet – and gets himself killed. Maybe someone tried to rob him and killed him out of frustration because he wasn’t carrying his wallet.’

‘Thank you, Detective Delorme. That explains everything. Obviously, we can close this case right now.’

‘All right. So it has a few holes.’

‘I think we both find the ice-fishing business a little thin. And …’

‘And what? You look worried.’

‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this. My guru on the Toronto force used to say it takes three things to solve any case where the perpetrator isn’t readily apparent: talent, persistence and luck. Any one of those is missing, you don’t make your case. Call me egotistical, but I’m not worried about the first two.’

‘Come on, Cardinal. We’ve barely started.’

‘I know. The problem is, if we don’t believe Matlock came up here to check out the ice fishing, then we don’t have the first clue what he was doing here – or who he came to see – let alone who wanted to kill him.’

The call went out to be on the alert for Matlock’s red Ford Escort, a rental from the Avis counter at Toronto’s Pearson Airport. The search in the woods went on until dark. All the body parts that could be found were gathered together and shipped to the Forensic Centre in Toronto. The aerial photographs were developed and tacked up on the bulletin board in the ident room. The Mylar balloons glittered amid the mist and trees, but there was no pattern visible in their distribution.

Back at his desk, Cardinal spent a good two hours writing up the reports for the day and wishing he had a decent idea about how to proceed. He was tired and hungry and looking forward to being with Catherine, but he didn’t want to go home feeling that the case was at a dead end. He needed some time alone, away from the reports and the noise of his colleagues shouting to one another, to think about Howard Matlock and why this American had ended up dead in Algonquin Bay.

Down by the lake, the fog was still thick, wedged like grey batting among the cabins and the trees. The Loon Lodge vacancy sign glowed dull red. The parking lot was empty.

Cardinal opened the cabin that had been Howard Matlock’s and ducked under the yellow police tape. Inside, he flipped a switch, but the light didn’t come on; the proprietor would have turned off the power until he had another paying tenant. No heat either. Cardinal switched on his flashlight and shone it over the bed, the chair, the nightstand. Ident had been so busy with the scene in the woods that they would not be finished here until the next day at least. Howard Matlock’s personal effects were still here, right down to the half-smoked pack of Marlboros beside the loon lamp.

In the dark and the silence Cardinal tried once more to visualize what had happened here. He imagined the American sitting in the white wicker chair, watching the tiny television, when there was a knock at the door. But who would come to him, and kill him, and drive him away in his own car? Did someone follow him here from New York?

Cardinal sat on the edge of the bed. Trying to figure out this case was like trying to catch smoke. Half the time – at least in a place the size of Algonquin Bay – it was the killer himself who called cops to the scene of the crime. Now here was a genuine mystery and Cardinal didn’t have a single lead. An American citizen had come up to his town and – if he hadn’t been followed – had managed in a very short time to upset somebody enough to get himself murdered. And whoever it was didn’t just kill him, they fed him to the bears. Why?