brown eyes, the look she had given him in the airport. A look that said he was not the man she had thought he was. And Donna Vaughan. The remembered heat, her intensity, kept reaching into his mind in a way that stirred him physically.
And Catherine. Would there ever come a time when he would close his eyes and not see Catherine’s face? Their life together flashed before him every night. And every night, as if he were an obsessive accountant gnawing at a statement that refused to balance, he found his own contribution to that life wanting. “I did my best,” he said aloud, and his words echoed off the window, the fridge, the kitchen table cluttered with the creased and dog-eared Scriver file.
He had dug Scriver out again for one reason: the name Winston. He was sure-well, almost sure-that he had come across the name in the stack of folders with their faded type, their broken rubber bands. Winston. Not exactly a rare name, but not common either. There were no Winstons listed in the Algonquin Bay telephone directory; he had checked.
Walt Scriver, his wife Jenny, their son Martin. No Winston there, and none among the many neighbours who had been interviewed, people who lived in the same block as the Scrivers in town. Out on Trout Lake they had had no neighbours. Their cottage had been located on the island at the end of Island Road. It might well have been visible from the Schumacher place, had the Schumacher place existed back then. Cardinal looked again at the black-and-white photos of the exterior. A small, unassuming cottage, in need of paint and a new porch. Large woodpile neatly stacked under the overhang, a canoe hull-side-up on a couple of sawhorses, bathing suits strung on a line. A rickety dock hanging in the water off the rocky beach. Duly noted, indeed emphasized, in the file, the Scrivers’ aluminum outboard-not there.
Cardinal’s cellphone started to vibrate and turn on the kitchen table.
“I knew you’d still be up.” Donna Vaughan.
“You want to come round a little later? Say in an hour?”
“Can’t. I have to rewrite a piece for New York magazine. I get it in tonight or it doesn’t run and I don’t get paid.”
“Russian mob?”
“Just the fur business. I filed it months ago and they’re just getting around to running it. I’m adding a sidebar about the Bastovs-and don’t worry, it won’t mention anything off the record.”
A sudden longing for her took Cardinal by surprise, but he said nothing. Uncertainty over a woman was unfamiliar terrain, untrodden since before he met Catherine. He wasn’t sure if it was longing for Donna Vaughan or just a longing to not be alone in his humid apartment with his ancient file and his dead-end ideas. Or just longing, another word for being alive.
“I have to get off the phone,” she told him, “or I’m going to get too distracted by you.”
“Good,” Cardinal said.
“I hate self-discipline. What little I have.”
“Maybe we can make up for it soon,” Cardinal said.
Interior photos showed a scene of abandoned tranquility. Dishes in the sink, three coffee mugs still on the dining room table, The Algonquin Lode open on the table. Fishing and hunting trophies on one wall, a locked gun rack, rods and tackle. A tiny rabbit-ears television in one corner, lumpy-looking furniture arranged around it. Large wood stove.
The hunting gear interested Cardinal. There was a note in the file that Mr. Scriver had been an occasional trapper, nothing too serious. Lots of guys go trapping just as a way to spend time outdoors.
The newspaper on the table was open to the movie listings. Algonquin Bay’s theatres had long ago been relegated to the shopping malls, but back then the city had had four, three on Main Street and a drive-in on Trout Lake Road. Someone had circled the ten p.m. showing of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at the drive-in. To make the show, the Scrivers would have had to take the boat out around 9:45, head over to the marina where they kept a parking spot, and drive to the theatre. They never got to the car.
There was no guarantee that they had in fact set out for the movies. No one in the few cottages on Island Road recalled hearing or seeing them on the water. The property was thoroughly searched. A stack of file photos showed layers of excavation. There were close-ups of bones that proved to be those of a moose long buried- something that happens to moose remains when hunters lug home more than they can chew. These dated from long before the Scrivers bought the cottage.
Their house in town had shown no signs of recent occupancy. It was the Scrivers’ summer routine to move to the cottage at the end of June and stay there until the school year started in September. And so, lacking any signs to the contrary, the Scriver case became Algonquin Bay’s most famous presumed drowning.
The lake had been searched by divers, and dragged, but no trace of the Scrivers or even their boat turned up. Mr. Scriver was a long-time employee of Lands and Forests, and the department had pulled out all the stops in the search, but even their sonar remained stubbornly silent.
Cardinal flipped through report after report. Interviews with relatives: yes, the Scrivers all got along well. Friends, neighbours, employers-all the interviews pointed to the Scrivers as a happy family. Martin, the son, fishing and hunting with his dad all the time, mother a good teacher, father a reliable employee devoted to the outdoors. Martin had caused some anxiety-thrown off the school hockey team for putting a referee in hospital, a juvenile charge of break and enter. And then there it was: supplementary report filed by one Detective Rene Proulx, interview with the son’s girlfriend, Cecilia Winston.
Martin Scriver had found summer employment in a deer census project north of Temiskaming. Cecilia Winston lived in the area. She was interviewed at a memorial service for the Scrivers that had taken place nearly a year after their disappearance. Inexcusable that she hadn’t been interviewed earlier. No, she had never seen any violence or anger in Martin. If anything, he was extremely protective of her in a mostly male environment. No, of course she hadn’t heard from him after the disappearance. Subject agitated and tearful. Related devastated by Martin S’s presumed demise. How it came just a week after the death of her brother (Kurt, 18. Leukemia).
Cardinal pulled the folder from his briefcase and opened it to the airport image of Curtis Carl Winston, age fifty-eight. That made him eighteen at the time of the Scrivers’ disappearance.
–
Cardinal spent the entire following morning on the Internet and the telephone. The Registrar General’s office confirmed that one Curtis Carl Winston of Temiskaming, Ontario, had indeed died on July 5, 1970, at the age of eighteen. The facsimile showed cause of death as leukemia. The certificate had been issued three months after the boy had died.
Cardinal called Jerry Commanda at OPP. “Jerry, there’s a private contractor called DeepTec in Toronto that does a lot of salvage in the Great Lakes. They have a new gizmo called a side-scanning sonar we’re going to need, and it’ll be way out of our budget. Can you guys swing it?”
“Why? Did Chouinard put you on the Scriver case or something?”
“As a matter of fact, he did.”
“Wow. I was actually joking.”
“There’s a connection to the Bastov murders. And if the Scrivers’ boat is on the bottom of Trout Lake, this sonar might be able to find it.”
“John, the lake is frozen.”
“Scriver was a long-time Lands and Forests guy. I’m thinking they’d be willing to help out.”
“Well, you don’t need a private contractor,” Jerry said. “Orillia HQ bought one of those units in the summer. If it’s not in use, I should be able to get it up here today.”
Things didn’t go as smoothly with the Armed Forces. Cardinal had to call many different numbers before he finally got through to an actual human being in the archives who could answer his questions, which were very few. Did they have any record of a soldier by the name of Curtis Carl Winston? Yes, they did. When had he enlisted? September 15, 1970. Mobile Command, Petawawa, until 1972, by which time he had attained the rank of corporal. He trained briefly with the U.S. Army Rangers as part of a JTF known as the Northern Rangers-specialists in survival, sabotage and CHC-combat in harsh conditions-since disbanded. Discharged in 1974.
“Thank you,” Cardinal said to the female civilian who had dug all this up for him. She sounded young, and Cardinal had an image of a girl with a laptop, an iPod and a Starbucks mug on her desk. She also sounded smart. He told her he had another question.
“I’m listening, sir.”
