and, below that, another set of steel steps zigzagged like steps in a dream. Cardinal was about to make a run for these stairs when the catwalk door opened and a muzzle flash spat white and blue flame, bright as a flashbulb. Delorme was hit. She staggered back, making no sound other than the clang of her Beretta hitting the catwalk. She got as far as the outside doorway and even managed to open it a little wider. Then she sank slowly to her knees, clinging to the door on the way down, her face utterly white.
Cardinal tore up the steps three at a time, expecting at any moment another muzzle flash and a nine-millimeter hole in his skull.
He kicked open the door.
Pressed flat against the wall, Cardinal held his Beretta chest high with barrel up, as in prayer. Then he spun, crouched, and sighted along the barrel. Nothing moved. There was a door on the far side of the room. Cardinal was in what appeared to be a disused kitchen, the London kid strapped to a table, blood dripping from his head. He reached out and felt the boy's neck; the pulse was slow, and he was breathing in ragged gasps.
A rush of footsteps on metal. Cardinal crossed the room to the other door. He stepped out just in time to see Fraser- little more than a black shape- running for the door they had come in. Cardinal aimed and fired. The bullet went wide, ricocheting off the pipes with an earsplitting whine.
Cardinal ran the length of the catwalk, hopping over the motionless Delorme, and out the door. He reached Fraser's van just as the engine caught. Cardinal threw open the passenger door just as the van started to roll downhill toward the lake. Fraser swung his pistol toward Cardinal's face.
The van hit a rock, sending Fraser's shot into the roof. Cardinal fell into the passenger seat and grappled with Fraser's gun arm as the van lumbered onto the ice.
Cardinal had Fraser's gun arm forced nearly to the floor of the van. Fraser squeezed the trigger, and the muzzle flash burned Cardinal's leg. Fraser continued to squeeze off wild shots, so that events seemed to unfold in lightning flashes.
Cardinal got his right hand round Fraser's throat, his left still clutching the killer's gun hand. Fraser's foot crushed the gas pedal. The sensation of being yanked backward as the wheels caught. Cardinal managed to kneel on Fraser's gun hand, pressing all his weight onto the wrist. His right fist smashed into the killer's cheekbone, pain shooting up his arm.
And then a horrible stillness. The van had lurched to a halt. Suddenly, it pitched forward, spilling the two men against the dash. One fact registered in Cardinal's brain like a news bulletin: The right front wheel had broken through the ice.
'The ice is cracking!' Cardinal yelled. 'We're going through the ice.'
Fraser's struggles, already frantic, became even wilder as the van canted forward, entering black water up to its wide flat windshield.
A brief rocking. Then the front end slid downward, and black water spilled through the vents, like daggers where it touched the skin.
Another cant forward. Darkness swallowed them.
Cardinal let go of Fraser and hauled himself over the back of the seat. The van was still slipping downward as he scrabbled for the handle.
Black water. Icy white froth.
Cardinal wrenched the door up and back and clambered out on the side of the van. The whole vehicle tipped almost gracefully over on its left. Fraser was screaming.
Cardinal balanced on the edge of the sinking vehicle. Shouts assailed him from the shore.
He jumped free, keeping arms outflung even as his legs plunged through the ice. Cold sucked the breath out of his lungs.
Then Fraser's face at the van's door. His mouth a black O, as the ice gave way under the last wheel, the water crashed in on him, and the rest of the van slipped into the black hole.
56
THE Algonquin Bay Police Department had never had so much publicity. The arrest of Dyson was still on the front page of the Lode, and now it was side by side with the death of the Windigo Killer and a photo of the jagged hole where the van had plunged through the ice.
Cardinal and Delorme and McLeod had all been treated in Emergency the night before. McLeod was in the worst shape. He was on the third floor of City Hospital with both feet up in the air, one ankle broken, the other badly sprained. The Kevlar body armor had saved both Delorme and Cardinal. 'Those kinds of temperatures,' the physician had told Cardinal, 'you'd normally be dead. That vest conserved body heat, and you're damn lucky it did.' Delorme got off with a nasty crease in her left arm. Blood loss left her feeling dizzy and weak, but a transfusion had been deemed unnecessary and she was sent home.
Cardinal had been given a couple of Valium and kept overnight for observation. He had wanted to call Catherine and tell her all the news, but the Valium had taken hold and he'd slept for sixteen hours straight, waking up with a raging thirst but otherwise fine. Now he was in the waiting room outside the ICU waiting for the okay to visit Keith London. Visitors in winter coats walked up and down the halls with forlorn-looking patients in pajamas and gowns.
Outside, the rooftops were bleached white in the blinding sunshine. But Cardinal could tell from the way the white smoke shot up from the chimneys that the temperature had dropped deep into the minus zone again.
The news came on, and Cardinal learned that Grace Legault had moved to a Toronto station, no doubt thanks to her sterling coverage of the Windigo case. The show led with the story (more shots of the pump house, the black hole in the ice). Then Cardinal was astonished to see some new reporter doing a stand-up in front of his house on Madonna Road. 'Detective John Cardinal isn't home today,' she began. 'He's in City Hospital recovering from his near-drowning in the van that took down Windigo murderer Eric Fraser…'
Brilliant. Every creep I ever put in the slammer's going to show up at my door, including Kiki B. Don't they teach them that in journalism school or wherever the hell they get these people?
There was a quick cut to Chief Kendall in front of City Hall, R. J. telling her all the detectives involved in the Windigo case were tops in his book.
You may change your mind when you read my letter, thought Cardinal, but he was saved from further reflection on this point when the door to the ICU opened and the doctor, a red-haired woman in a rush, swiftly summed things up for Cardinal: Yes, Keith London was still unconscious; no, he was no longer in critical condition. Yes, he had sustained a significant head trauma; no, it was not possible to say if there was permanent damage. Yes, speech might be permanently impaired; no, it was too early to be any more conclusive. And yes, Cardinal could go in for a few moments and speak to the girlfriend.
Light was dim in the ICU. The half-dozen beds with their motionless patients and attendant machines seemed trapped in permanent twilight. Keith London lay at the far end of the room, under the watchful eyes of Karen Steen.
'Detective Cardinal,' she said. 'It's good of you to visit.'
'Well, actually, I was hoping to ask Keith a few questions. Don't worry- the doctor warned me off.'
'Keith hasn't said a word yet, I'm afraid. But I'm sure he will. I want him up and chatting away before his parents get here. I finally managed to reach them in Turkey. They should be here day after tomorrow.'
'He looks a lot better than last time I saw him.' Keith London's head was bandaged, and an oxygen tube was taped to his nostrils, yet despite this, his color looked good, his breathing strong. One slim hand lay outside the covers, and Karen Steen held it while they spoke. 'The doctor seems to think he'll pull through okay,' Cardinal said.
'Yes, he will, thanks to you. He wouldn't be alive if you hadn't found him. I wish I could find the words to thank you, Detective Cardinal. But there aren't words enough in the language.'
'I just wish we could have found him sooner.'
The ardent blue eyes searched his face. Catherine's eyes had been like that when they were courting- passionate, earnest. They still were, when she spoke of things that mattered. When she was fully herself.
'You're a very good person, aren't you,' Miss Steen added. 'Yes, I think you are.'
