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Authors: Giles Blunt

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BOOK: The Delicate Storm
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“I’m impressed that you got him to talk at all, considering. But you know Leon Petrucci moved down to Toronto.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Which leaves it barely in the realm of the possible. Tell you what—why don’t you let me handle the Petrucci angle? I’ll get someone from our Toronto detachment on it. They work organized crime all the time.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Musgrave let out a curse.

“What’s the matter? You all right?”

“Goddam truck driver just cut me off. I’m telling you, there’s never any cops around when you need one.”

9

T
HE
C
ROWN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
was on MacIntosh Street in an aggressively ugly building of poured concrete that also housed local offices for the Ministry of Community and Social Services. It was right across the street from the
Algonquin Lode
, a location that came in handy when Reginald Rose, QC, wanted to make his opinions known to the public, which he often did.

Everything about Reginald Rose was long. He was tall and thin, with a slight stoop that gave him the look of a scholar. He had long fingers that handled documents and evidence and even the knot of his tie with grace. He was given to red neckties and starched white shirts and red suspenders that—when he wasn’t wearing his habitual blue blazer—gave him the look of a crisp new Canadian flag.

He was just now addressing himself to a group gathered around a long oak table—an odd-looking group, Cardinal thought. Aside from the elongated Rose himself, there was Robert Henry Hewitt, a.k.a. Wudky, who kept drooping over the table like a dormouse. There was Bob Brackett, his pro bono attorney—deceptively plump and harmless-looking, but a lethal criminal lawyer. And there was Cardinal himself, who was sure he must look as uncomfortable as he felt, because although he was usually perfectly clear about what side he was on, just now he had his doubts.

“I must tell you right from the start,” Rose said, “that I am not of a mind to make a deal in this case. Why should I? According to all the evidence—and there’s a mountain of evidence—Robert Henry Hewitt is guilty of armed robbery. And not just a little guilty, but absolutely, positively, deadbang guilty. We have his admission of guilt—”

“Of course you do. Obtained without benefit of counsel.”

“Mr. Brackett, let me finish. We have your client’s admission of guilt. We have the cash from his knapsack. We have the plaid scarf he wore over his face. We have the holdup note written in his appalling but distinctive penmanship—written on the back of his previous arrest warrant, which coincidentally provides his name and address. Why should we make any deal?”

Bob Brackett leaned forward against the conference table. He was dressed in impeccable pinstripes; he always was—perhaps because it lent an edge to his portly figure that otherwise had no edges at all. Pinstripes were nothing unusual in the legal trade, of course, but the gold hoop gleaming in Bob Brackett’s left earlobe most definitely was—especially on a half bald, tubby man in his mid-fifties. He had never married, and in a place the size of Algonquin Bay that alone was enough to feed rumours. Toss in one gold earring and the whispers rose a good deal higher in volume. Not that it mattered; as far as his clients were concerned, Bob Brackett could show up in a tutu as long as he was in their corner.

“Come now, Mr. Rose,” he said. His voice was soft, reasonable, friendly. “Don’t you take any pride in your work? Are you really so desperate for victories that you have to corner a mentally impaired young man and put him away for fifteen years?”

“Have him plead guilty—I’ll ask for ten.”

Brackett turned to Cardinal. Cardinal was ready to give his views on the Matlock case and how Wudky had tried to help them out. Unfortunately, Brackett had something else in mind. “Detective Cardinal, I believe you have a nickname for my client down at police headquarters.”

Cardinal coughed, partly from surprise, partly as a stall. “I don’t think we need to go into that, do we? I thought we were just going to—”

“Do you or do you not have a nickname for my client down at headquarters?” Brackett’s voice never wavered from its note of pleasant inquiry.

“Detective Cardinal is not in the witness box,” Rose said. “You don’t get to cross-examine him.”

“I’m not cross-examining him. He’ll know when I’m cross-examining him. I’m asking a simple question.”

“We have nicknames for a lot of our customers,” Cardinal said. “They’re not intended for public consumption.”

“I’m not interested in your other customers, as you call them. What is my client’s nickname, please?”

“Wudky.”

“Wudky. An unusual cognomen. Could you spell that for us, please?”

“W, D, C.”

“W, D, C. An unusual spelling, too. What do the letters stand for?”

“I’d really rather not say with Robert in the room.”

Brackett smiled. It was a smile of great benevolence and gave not one inch of ground. “Nevertheless, Detective, we await your answer.”

“It stands for World’s Dumbest Criminal. Sorry, Robert.”

“That’s okay.” Hewitt was slumped over the conference table, his chin resting on both folded hands. Speech made his head bob up and down.

“World’s Dumbest Criminal. And you call him that why, exactly?” Brackett’s round face was devoid of guile,
just asking for information, please
.

“I thought we were going to discuss this just the three of us.”

“Oh, no, that was never on the table,” Brackett said. “Please tell us why you call my client the World’s Dumbest Criminal.”

“Because he’s just not competent. He makes dumb mistakes.”

“Well, yes. Mr. Rose has the holdup note as Exhibit A.”

Rose tapped his legal pad with the eraser end of his pencil. “Your client has been found in previous trials to be mentally competent to contribute to his legal defence and to understand the nature of his crimes. Do you expect that to suddenly change?”

Brackett’s smile was cherubic. “You’re so ferocious in the pursuit of the retarded, Mr. Rose. Perhaps you’d prefer to ship my client to the United States. They execute them down there.”

“Not for robbery, last I heard.”

“May I continue?”

“I wish you would.”

“Detective Cardinal, despite my client’s intellectual limitations, I believe he has recently been extremely helpful to the police. Is that correct?”

At last, Cardinal thought. “He was a little off on the details. He told us of a conversation he’d had with a known felon named Thierry Ferand. And Ferand told him that a man from down south somewhere had killed Paul Bressard and got rid of the body in the woods.”

The Crown tossed his pencil onto his pad so hard it bounced onto the floor. “Paul Bressard is alive and kicking. I saw him this morning. You can’t miss him in that raccoon coat, for God’s sake.”

“Like I say, Robert was wrong on the details.”

“The details? It’s a completely false statement.”

Mr. Brackett twiddled pudgy fingers in the air. “Stop. Could we stop, please, and just move on to how much of Mr. Hewitt’s information turned out to be correct?”

“Well, once we figured out that he had some names mixed up, it turned out he was right. That is to say, Paul Bressard wasn’t murdered and buried in the woods, but Bressard does admit to disposing of a body in the woods. And the body is indeed from down south—an American named Howard Matlock. So you see, Robert just kind of had things reversed.”

“Thank you, Detective. That’s extraordinarily helpful.” Brackett removed his glasses and polished them with the back of his tie, another gesture that emphasized his pure harmlessness. “Would it also be fair to say you wouldn’t have known about this murder without my client’s help?”

“Not exactly. It’s true he told us about it before we knew about it for ourselves, but we did hear of it from the person who found the body—part of it, anyway. But Robert also gave us the name of Paul Bressard, which made him a suspect sooner than he might have been otherwise. So all in all, yes, I would say he was very helpful and co-operative.”

“Thank you, Detective.” Brackett turned to the crown. “So, Mr. Rose, it would appear the Crown attorney’s office has a choice: it can throw the book at a mentally challenged young man, or it can offer a deal to an extraordinarily helpful citizen.”

Rose turned to Cardinal. “Do you have a suspect in the Matlock case?”

“Several individuals have our attention, but I couldn’t say any arrests are imminent.”

Rose raised his arms in a gesture of helplessness to Brackett. “You see? How helpful is that?”

“Let’s not play games, Mr. Rose. I didn’t come here to waste your time or the detective’s. Does this Crown attorney’s office want to encourage co-operation from defendants or not?”

“He pleads guilty to bank robbery, he does ten years.”

“Ten years for a toy gun and an IQ of seventy-eight? I’d rather take my chances at trial.” Brackett tossed his papers into his briefcase and snapped it shut. “He pleads to carrying a concealed weapon—even that’s a gift, since we’re talking about a toy. Two years less a day.”

Rose shook his head. “Let’s stay in the real world, shall we? Bank robbery, he does six years.”

Brackett turned to his client and shook his shoulder gently. “Robert?”

Hewitt sat up, blinking. “Oh, hi. I was just resting.”

“The Crown is offering six years. With good behaviour you’d be out in four.”

“Okay. That sounds good. Wow, I was having the most incredible dream, eh?”

As he was leaving, Cardinal had to endure a mini-lecture from Rose about the responsibility the police shared with the Crown to make sure criminals are adequately punished. “The police department,” he said, “is not a place for bleeding hearts. If you want to empathize, I suggest you become a social worker.”

Bob Brackett twiddled his fat fingers at Cardinal in the parking lot. Raindrops glistened on his scalp. Two uniformed cops were putting Robert Henry Hewitt into the back seat of a squad car. “Did Rose give you a lecture?”

“Sort of.”

“It hurts the poor fellow to give up such an easy case. Some people’s self-esteem depends on how many years they put people away for. It’s sad, in a way.”

The squad car pulled to a stop beside them and the rookie at the wheel said, “Customer wants to talk to you.”

“What’s up, Robert?”

“I just wanted to like thank you, eh? Thank you, thank you, thank you, Officer Cardinal. Mr. Brackett says you saved me like ten years off my life, and I won’t never forget it. Like never, never, never, eh? I don’t forget my buddies. No way.”

“Robert, the best way you can thank me is to stay out of trouble.”

“Oh, I will, eh? I’m gonna be so good they’ll have to send me back before I get there. Really, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The last Cardinal saw of Robert Henry Hewitt, he was turned around in the back seat of the squad car, still mouthing multiple thank yous as the car turned right on MacIntosh and headed north for the trip back to the Algonquin Bay jail.

10

L
ISE
D
ELORME WAS ANNOYED
to be shunted aside on the Matlock case. What Cardinal had said was quite true: she had worked with Musgrave before and they got along fine, even though he was a chauvinist nightmare. But no, D.S. Chouinard had wanted Cardinal on Matlock, and Cardinal it would be—which meant that while Cardinal was deep in the juiciest case to come along in a year, Delorme was left to handle whatever run-of-the-mill stuff might happen to be phoned in.

She had been eating at her desk when the call came in from St. Francis Hospital about a missing person. Delorme had taken down a few particulars and promised to be there in twenty minutes.

Missing persons. The trouble with missing persons is, they’re usually not missing at all. Not the adults. In most cases they’re simply fed up—with their mate, their job, their life—and they’ve decided to take a powder. A spontaneous sabbatical. But there were elements in this particular “misper” that warranted immediate investigation, even though the subject—a single female in her thirties—had not yet been gone for even twenty-four hours.

“I’m here to see Dr. Nita Perry,” Delorme said to the duty nurse. “Could you page her for me?”

Delorme went to wait in the sunroom. On the television in the corner, Geoffrey Mantis, premier of Ontario, was explaining why teachers would have to work longer hours.

“Oh yeah,” Delorme said to the screen. “As if you’re going to work longer hours.” All Mantis seemed to do was vote himself pay raises and go on vacations. Delorme had never thought of golf as a year-round sport before. But she had learned to keep her political opinions to herself around the station. Definitely Tory turf, except for Cardinal. As far as she could tell, they were the only two cops on the force who didn’t consider Mantis a hometown hero.

A young woman in surgical scrubs came into the sun-room. She was small—a good two inches shorter than Delorme—and her red hair was held back from her face with two severe-looking clips. “I only have a few moments,” Dr. Perry said. “I’m just on my way into surgery.”

“You’re a surgeon?” Delorme asked.

“Anaesthetist. They can’t start till I get there.”

“You called in a missing person report on Dr. Winter Cates?”

“That’s right. I have the picture you asked for. I managed to scrounge it up from our security people.”

The photograph showed a pretty woman in her early thirties, with curly black hair and a crooked smile that gave her a faintly sardonic expression.

“It doesn’t do her justice, believe me.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Dr. Cates?”

“Last night, about eleven-thirty. I called her to tell her
Road Warrior
was on the late show. She’s a real Mel Gibson fan—well, we both are. But she had rented a movie to watch. She certainly sounded fine, then. Not a care in the world.”

“Eleven-thirty seems late to be calling someone. Even a good friend.”

“Oh, no. Winter’s a real night owl, like me. I don’t think I’d call her after one
A.M.
, but any time up to then. We often speak late at night. We were joking about ‘going to the farm’—that’s our code for watching TV and scarfing down a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies. Winter was just opening the bag when I called.”

“When did you first become concerned about her?”

“This morning. We had a procedure scheduled for eight o’clock, and she didn’t show. That would make you worry about anyone, but particularly someone as conscientious as Winter. She’s just someone you can count on—the way you can’t count on most people.” A shadow crossed Dr. Perry’s vividly blue eyes, as if she were recalling the myriad people who couldn’t be counted on. “And Winter and I have become good friends, you know. Close friends. It’s just totally out of character for her not to let me know what’s up. I phoned a couple of times, but she hasn’t called back. She hasn’t even picked up the messages, as far as I can tell. Also out of character.”

“Have you made any other efforts to find her?”

“After the surgery I called her office, but her assistant hadn’t heard from her. And I called her parents. They live in Sudbury, and Winter often goes to see them on weekends, but they hadn’t heard from her either. I didn’t know who else to contact. She’s only been in town about six months. She doesn’t know a lot of people here. I was going to call her office again, but I didn’t want to be a pest.”

“Actually, her assistant called us just after you.”

“Oh, no.” Dr. Perry covered her mouth with her hand.

“Let’s not get too worked up just yet. So far there’s no reason to suspect foul play.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what really scares me,” Dr. Perry said. “I drove over to her place at lunchtime, and her car’s still there. So if she isn’t at home, where did she go? And how did she get there? And why didn’t she let anyone know?”

“Do you have any reason to suspect anyone would harm her? Did she have any enemies that you know of?”

“I can’t believe anyone would want to hurt Winter. She didn’t have an enemy in the world. She’s just the nicest person you could hope to meet. Smart, funny, dependable—terrific doctor. Ask anybody who works with her. There’s just no one you’d rather have in the O.R. with you.”

“We’ll certainly talk to her other colleagues,” Delorme said. “But what about boyfriends? Is she seeing anyone that you know of?”

Dr. Perry looked down at the floor. Her surgical cap began to slip, and she pulled it back absently. “Winter does have an old boyfriend who is, um, problematic. From Sudbury. Craig something. I met him once. I don’t think she ever told me his last name. I was over at her place one night—we were on our way out to dinner and a movie—and this Craig character shows up at her door. ‘I can’t see you now,’ Winter tells him. ‘I’m going out.’ ‘That’s okay,’ he says, ‘I’ll drive you!’ She had a hard time getting rid of him.”

“Did he seem dangerous to you?”

“Oh, no. I just thought his showing up like that was a little weird. Winter said it was typical. Apparently she told him long ago that it was all over, but he insists on acting like nothing has happened. He always expected her to come back to Sudbury after she finished med school, but she really didn’t want to go back there.”

“Because of him?” Delorme asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to make the guy out to be a villain. I think she just didn’t want to stay in her hometown. I’m sure you can understand that.”

Actually, Delorme had never wanted to live anywhere other than her hometown. Even when she went away to university in Ottawa—and later at the police academy in Aylmer—she had missed Algonquin Bay. There was something about living in the place that formed you—the sense of comfort and continuity—that no other town, no matter how charming or cosmopolitan, could replace. But she also knew that other people didn’t feel that way.

“Is there anyone else Dr. Cates is having problems with? Did she mention anything?”

“Well, she was having some sort of dispute with Dr. Choquette, but nothing serious.”

“What kind of dispute? Over what?”

“Winter took over Ray Choquette’s practice when he retired, and there was some kind of misunderstanding over the arrangements.”

“He sold his practice to her?”

“No. You can’t sell a medical practice—not in Ontario. It was probably over equipment or something like that. Anyway, she was upset about it.” Dr. Perry looked at her watch and stood up. “I’ve really got to go. Listen, Winter is a good person. I mean, really special. She makes people happy. I couldn’t stand it if anything’s happened to her.”

“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours,” Delorme said in her best bedside manner. “Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.”

Dr. Cates’s apartment was in Twickenham Mews, an expensive group of low-rises at the end of a short street behind the Algonquin Mall. Delorme still remembered the row of whitewashed bungalows that had been razed a dozen years ago to make way for it. With its red brick and cedar trim, Twickenham Mews was one of the most attractive places in the neighbourhood. It looked homey—for an apartment building—and made you want to step inside, particularly now as the fog turned to rain again.

Delorme rang the super’s bell, a Mrs. Yvonne Lefebvre. She appeared—a spindly woman in her forties with red-rimmed eyes, clutching a handkerchief to her face. “Allergies,” she said. “Winter, summer, spring and fall. I don’t know if it’s mould or what. I just know they never stop.” She concluded with a sneeze.

When Delorme had explained who she was and why she was there, it took Mrs. Lefebvre a good two minutes, stopping twice to sneeze and blow her nose, to make the journey to the end of her hallway, where she dug out a set of keys, and back to the door where Delorme waited—an excursion that left her leaning against the wall, exhausted.

“How do you manage such a large building on your own?” Delorme asked.

“Oh, I don’t, dear. My brother does all the repairs and maintenance. I just collect the rent. Listen, do you mind if I don’t come upstairs with you? I’m not exactly feeling a hundred percent.”

“Sorry, I need you to come with me. If Dr. Cates returns and there’s something missing, I don’t want her to think the police took it.”

Walking down the hall, getting into the elevator and reaching the doctor’s apartment took about five times longer than it should have. For much of it Mrs. Lefebvre supported herself against the wall.

“What kind of car does Dr. Cates drive?”

“A PT Cruiser. Normally I wouldn’t know that off the top of my head. Only reason I do is that it’s just such a cute little thing, I asked her one day when I saw her hauling groceries out of it. It’s still in her space out back.”

Mrs. Lefebvre, red-faced and puffing, leaned against the door frame as she opened the apartment. She sat on a wooden chair just inside the door. “I’m going to plunk myself down right here. Just let me know when you’re done.”

The lights were on, Delorme noted the moment she stepped inside. The curtains weren’t drawn, either. A vast plate glass window looked out over Lake Nipissing, a sombre grey presence under the slanting rain.

The apartment had an overall look of comfortable mess. The furniture was new, the kind of country style that Delorme had seen mostly in catalogues. A colourful afghan lay in a tangled heap at one end of the couch. Stacks of movie videos tottered on the coffee table. Magazines—
The New Yorker, Maclean’s, Scientific American
—fell out of an overstuffed basket. The bookshelves were jammed, mostly with paperback thrillers shoved in at all angles. Half-empty coffee cups and wineglasses were scattered about, and extraneous objects were everywhere—an iron on the coffee table, a squash racquet in the dining area, a bra hanging over the back of a chair.

Not exactly a neat freak, Delorme thought. The essential point was, there was nothing broken, nothing overturned, no sign of a struggle.

She moved slowly around the living room, hands in pockets to avoid touching anything. She paused over the coffee table. Mel Gibson stared up at her from the cover of a video:
Conspiracy Theory
. There were two remotes, one for the television and one for the VCR, on the couch. The TV screen was dark, but the power light was on.

There was a plate of cookies on the table, two cookies to be exact, next to an almost full mug of tea.

In the kitchen, the sink was a rickety mountain of pots and pans. Delorme lifted the lid from a small brown teapot. The pot was half full. There was a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies, nearby, the first section of four cookies missing. Delorme herself had a similar ritual: video, glass of milk, plate of cookies—the perfect tranquillizer. Apparently, the doctor was in mid-snack when something or someone called her away. A patient? Relative? Boyfriend?

“Did you see any strangers in the building over the past few days?”

“Nope. Just the usual. Not that I keep tabs. Truth is, I’m the least nosy person I know—not to mention the fact that my unit’s in the middle of the building. Doesn’t look out on the front or the parking lot.”

“Who were Dr. Cates’s regular visitors?”

Mrs. Lefebvre sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. “Couldn’t tell you. She’s only been here a few months. Pays her rent on time, doesn’t complain. That’s all I care about. Don’t get me wrong—I care about my tenants. But generally I only get to know the ones on my floor. You know, bump into them getting their mail and so on.”

“Did you ever see her with anyone at all?”

“Her parents came to visit one time. And I saw her a couple of times with a woman with red hair.”

“Short woman? Bright blue eyes?”

“Could be.”

That would be Dr. Perry.

“Did you ever see her with any man?”

“I did, now that you mention it. Not a big guy. Real short hair and very polite. Held the door open for me. I remember because I figured, Honey, you should marry this guy. She’s so pretty I wondered why she didn’t have a fella. Of course, doctors are so busy …”

Delorme went into the bedroom. There was a phone on the nightstand, and an answering machine flashing a bright red numeral four. Delorme pressed the play button with the tip of a ballpoint pen. The wheezy electronic voice of a computer chip announced the first message, 10:15 that morning. It was followed by the voice of Dr. Perry, asking Winter where she was and if she’d somehow forgotten about her O.R. schedule.

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