Until the Night (26 page)

“I don’t know anyone named Darlene. Oooh, yeah. Oh my God. Come and join us, Lise.”

Delorme went back to the kitchen and put on her boots.

Although Chouinard was always in charge of the morning meetings, Loach had lately become the dominant presence. He sat beside Chouinard looking as if he had just won several million dollars and was condescending to listen to the petty concerns of those whose net worth was stuck at
terrestrial levels. Stereo speakers had been placed on the table on either side of him.

Arsenault and Collingwood talked first. Laura Lacroix, like Marjorie Flint, had been injected in the neck. They were waiting for the toxicology report from Toronto.

As to the number scrawled on the window, all Arsenault could say was that the five was similar to the five carved into the wood in the Flint case. “Both are perfectly closed at the top. But sorry, folks, we can’t be sure when the window marks were made. Going by the other dust patterns in the tower, they could have been made any time in the past three or four months or so.”

“Tell us about the clothes,” Chouinard said.

“The down vest is new. But it’s a popular brand available across the country. More than a hundred different outlets.”

“Could she have bought that herself?” Chouinard asked.

“Possible,” Arsensault said, “but it isn’t what she wore to meet her lover. That was a medium-weight trench coat that was dumped in a Sally Ann donation box. Sharp-eyed volunteer found a credit card receipt in the pocket and recognized the name. Unfortunately, the coat hasn’t generated any more leads. No hairs, nothing we can follow up.”

“The vest looked like the right size to me,” Cardinal said.

“And the point of this observation?” Loach wanted to know.

“If the killer bought it for her, it means he got very close. Possibly he was even inside her place. I think we should pursue the clothes, even if there are a hundred outlets. It’s an older man buying a woman’s item, probably somewhere not too far from here. We could get lucky.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Loach said, “why doesn’t everybody just listen up for a second and we might make some real progress.” He got up and went to the lectern that was sometimes used for seminars. He slotted a flash drive into a laptop. “This was left on my voice mail last night.”

There was some throat clearing. Sound of a microphone being jostled, rubbing against fabric. Music playing in the background—lots of strings, something classical. Then the voice, an older man with a strong French-Canadian accent.

Officer Loach, I saw you on da TV de udder night and now ‘ere you are again and I just gotta call and congratulate you. So you fine your second victim at last—you must be ver’ proud. I wondered ’ow long it would take you. I was worry I might ’ave ‘id her too good. Of course, it wasn’t you who discover da body. Dat would have require some intelligence. Forty-five years ol’ and nudding but a small-town cop, you’re not exactly da sharpes’ knife in da drawer. You got lucky with dat forestry guy
.

But not lucky enough, my frien’. Because me, I am not finish. I don’t know about you, but I’m ’aving a lot of fun. And I can give you twenty-five different reason you’ll never catch me, even if you live to be ninety-five. So I’m going to ’ave more fun—a lot more fun, maybe sooner dan you tink
.

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Everyone had shifted position, sitting forward now.

“Obviously a major development,” Loach said. “Let’s listen to it one more time.”

He fiddled with his trackpad and started the playback again. When they had listened all the way through, he shut his laptop.

“Like I say—major.”

“It certainly is,” Cardinal said, “assuming it’s real.”

“Are you saying it isn’t?”

“I’m just saying we have to be sure.”

“He comes up with the numbers 25 and 45 by accident? Where’s he get those, if it’s not real?”

“Well, one of them refers to your age, right?”

“I’m forty-six, not forty-five, or ninety-five, thank you. And how’s he get the 25? I don’t think that’s coincidence, and we haven’t mentioned either of those numbers to the media.”

“You’re forgetting your Montrose case in Toronto. You were in the news a lot with that. I’m willing to bet more than one of those stories mentioned your age.”

“Well, that’s true,” Loach conceded. “I was forgetting about that.”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Chouinard snapped. “Do we think it’s real or not?”

“We can’t know for sure,” Cardinal said.

“Exactly,” Loach said. “Which is why I’ve already sent it to the RCMP profilers. In the meantime, we’re gonna throw everything we have at this. The caller’s French Canadian, obviously, with a strong accent—and we’re gonna go right back to the next of kin and places of employment and get the names of any contacts with FC accents.”

“People can fake accents,” Delorme pointed out, “and that one’s pretty extreme.”

“Which doesn’t mean it’s fake,” Loach said. “Maybe you don’t hear it the way we do.”

“French Canadians have a genetic defect? We not only talk funny, we’re born deaf too?”

“I’m not even going to answer that,” Loach said. “This is a hot lead and we’re going to hit it with everything we’ve got.”

Cardinal appealed directly to Chouinard. “D.S., we’re better off focusing on something more solid. The sedatives, for example—they had to come from somewhere. We’ve got to run down drugstore thefts, veterinarians, hospital inventories. And the clothes, too. Older guy buying outdoor gear for a woman—someone might remember.”

“Excuse me,” Loach said. “We have a man’s
voice
. We can run that voice right by the people closest to the victims. Someone’s gonna recognize it.”

“It’s too much of a leap,” Cardinal said. “Except for the two numbers, which
could
be coincidence, he doesn’t say anything that isn’t common knowledge. Also—let me finish—also, it doesn’t jibe with previous behaviour. We
know
the killer followed or observed these two women very closely, without being observed himself. The crimes themselves were well planned and well executed.”

“Not true. We have a recognizable vehicle. People have
seen
him. We’re pretty sure he has a fake hand, for Chrissake.”

“Point is, this is a quiet, concentrated, methodical person. Now all of a sudden he picks up the phone and calls us? Why?”

“To taunt us, obviously. Same as with the numbers themselves.”

“Do they really qualify as taunts?” Cardinal said. “They’re not in-your-face like the phone call.”

“Think what you want. I’m running Lacroix, and the people on my team are going to get names—and recordings—of any French-Canadian males known to the victims. Work, relatives, professionals, I don’t care. And we’re gonna get voice prints.” He put the cap back on his flash drive and stood up. “Arsenault, see what you can do to this recording to bring up that music in the background. Those violins or whatever—I’d like to know exactly what that is.”

“Beethoven.”

Everyone turned to look at Collingwood. He blushed and spoke into his chest. “Quartet in C minor, opus 18.”

Loach pointed at him. “He always talk this much?”

“Bob was raised by a family of raccoons,” Arsenault said. “We’re happy when he talks at all.”

Cardinal went to his cubicle, sat down, and stayed there exactly fifteen seconds before he got up again and went to Chouinard’s office.

“Don’t even bother,” Chouinard said.

“D.S., we’re going off on tangents. We can’t have the case split up like this. Put me in charge of the whole thing.”

“No. You look after Flint, Loach is looking after Lacroix.”

“It’s the same killer. It should be one case, one lead.”

“Normally I would say you’re right, but this department is a little too complacent for my taste. I think a little competition could do us a world of good.”

“I just don’t want anyone else to get killed.”

“No one wants anyone else to get killed. Close the door on your way out.”

From the Blue Notebook

Wyndham emerged from the lab and lugged his computer battery to a sled that was already heaped with equipment. Gordon had evolved a kind of mobile observation post that he painstakingly assembled and disassembled every other day in his obsessive pursuit of perfection. He was a compact, pocket-sized man, but his shadow as he crossed the ice must have been thirty metres long. The shadow of his heavily laden sled was not much shorter.

For some time now we had been bearing south along the western shore of Axel Heiberg Island, our ice island having been nudged by other floes into the Sverdrup Channel. It was a beautiful day and nearly everyone was working outdoors to make the most of it. We had abandoned our heavier parkas for down jackets or fleeces, although the slush necessitated knee waders. I checked my
AARI
buoys, which gave continuous readouts of drift direction and speed, details of water currents, temperature and so on. My fans and scoops and sensors were at the end of a narrow drive shaft beneath ice that was over seventy metres thick.

Wyndham had passed our radio mast and had nearly reached his first observation post, trudging in the peculiar head-jutting way of anyone who is man-hauling anything heavy. The sun was low, and half obscured by a lenticular cloud that swept upward like a solid brushstroke from the horizon. The light was the colour of a blood orange.

We were spread out across our table of frozen sea like markers
on a board game. Most of the buoys were fixed into the ice directly north of the lab, and normally that’s where I would have been at that time of day. But I was getting an anomalous readout from a buoy half a kilometre to the west, so that’s where I went. I was cranking my sensors toward the surface while watching Wyndham.

Rebecca was farther from the central building, between me and the landing strip. She genuflected and aimed her camera into the cloud, into the sun. Probably shooting infrared. Her passion for documenting the invisible.

Hunter was riding his tractor, doggedly ploughing the landing strip down to something approaching solid ice. The Twin Otter was scheduled to pick up Deville and drop off some supplies in three days. The temperature was expected to drop before then. Even so, landing a Twin Otter on that surface was going to be dangerous, and I was thankful once again that I had quit the flying business for the relatively tranquil requirements of research.

Vanderbyl was making adjustments and checking readings from his hydrophones and other sensors. Ray Deville had been hanging around him all morning. He had been informed of his impending evacuation and for the past few days had been making frantic efforts to convince Kurt of his competence to carry on, but he was not in sight at the moment.

There was the crack of a gunshot and I looked over toward the lab building. Someone practising on the target range. I was still working at raising the sensors with a hand crank, the motorized one having seized up yet again. A few more metres to go. Wyndham had his laptop out and was wiring it up to an array that measured changes in albedo—the reflectivity of the Arctic surface.

That, then, was our dispersal: Vanderbyl to the east of the landing strip, Rebecca and I to the west, Wyndham (and Hunter, still on his tractor) in a line straight north from the lab and the radio mast. Dahlberg, Washburn and Bélanger were inside. All of this I remember as vividly as if each of us were a pin stuck on a map.

More shots from the firing range. They sounded a little strange, but in that unpredictable acoustic environment I wasn’t concerned. Arm aching, I finally managed to crank my sensors out of the drill
hole. The problem was immediately obvious: an Arctic jellyfish had got itself wrapped around the fan. I pried the mess off with one of my trowels and it hit the slush with a smack.

The dogs had started barking and I looked around to see if there was a bear. I knew that Wyndham was armed that day, and also that Hunter—ex-military Hunter—was always armed. Rebecca was working reasonably close by and I could see the flare gun strapped to her waist. In most cases a warning flare is enough to make a bear think twice.

The dogs’ barking transmuted itself into the yips and whines of canine paranoia. I pulled out my binoculars and focused first on Wyndham, who seemed intent on his observations. Hunter was ploughing at the near end of the runway.

Beyond the strip, Vanderbyl was hoisting a small pack onto his back. He usually headed inside about this time to spend an hour or two in the lab before lunch.

I took my radio out of an inner pocket. What’s going on with the dogs? I said. Have we got a bear somewhere?

It was Wyndham who came back: All quiet over here.

A rumble of thunder cut him off. You get used to the sound of cracks shooting through contracting ice. Sometimes they make a deep squeal that ends with a gasp, a kind of breathy pop. I’ve heard fracturing ice wail as if a gate of Hell had suddenly blown open, and other times it sounds like nothing more than the slam of a washing machine lid. I had never heard one that sounded like thunder. The dogs began howling in earnest.

I turned toward Rebecca. I think I was hoping she would be perceiving some storm system visible only to her infrared. But she was not looking through her camera. She was standing in an attitude of anxious expectation.