“He went to canvass the neighbours on either side. See if they saw anything.”
“Nearest house must be two hundred yards away. If they were even here. Not too many people live out here in winter. I don’t think it even gets ploughed this far, unless you want to pay a private contractor. Did you tell him to canvass the neighbours?”
“That was his idea.”
“Self-motivated,” Cardinal said.
“Probably just wanted to get away, like the coroner. Can’t say I blame him for that.”
“Not for that. No.”
Cardinal was beginning to feel a peculiar ache in his bones. Not from cold-the house was warming up now- but from whatever it was that emanated from the two headless beings seated at the table.
Cardinal and Delorme stayed silent for a couple of minutes. Cardinal was waiting for that big picture to develop, but at this moment it was all detail and no picture. He went to the front vestibule. He opened the door and examined the outside lock. There were scratches around the keyhole that could mean it had been picked, but he couldn’t be sure if the scratches were new.
When he came back to the living room, Delorme said, “Not much blood. Considering.”
“Considering. Pretty gory next to the chairs they’re sitting on, but nothing like what it’d be if the heads had been removed before they were dead.”
“We’ve got those.” Delorme pointed to two circular smears of blood, one near the entrance from the kitchen, one on the other side of the table. “But no drips moving away from the table, or away from the blotches. So the killer puts them into something-plastic bag or whatever-before he leaves. What did you mean before? When you looked at the house and said ‘isolation’?”
Cardinal shrugged, making the paper rustle. “That we’re probably not looking at a sudden explosion of violence.”
“We’re looking at-what-the end result of a plan?.”
“The end result of a plan. Exactly.”
Delorme went into the kitchen and there was the sound of cupboard doors opening and closing. She came back with a small green box. “No garbage bags. Just these.”
Compost bags. The dimensions were printed on the top.
“Might hold one head,” Cardinal said.
“It might. But these aren’t really leak-proof. You ever see the inside of your compost container?”
“I try not to.”
“I think he brought his own box, bag, whatever.”
“That’s why I’ve always found you to be extremely intelligent, Sergeant Delorme. You have exactly the same thoughts I do.”
Arsenault called Cardinal’s cell and asked him to come up to the road. “We’re in a hydro access about a hundred yards before the driveway.”
There were already a couple of reporters trying to get by PC Rankin, who had moved his perimeter to the far side of the access road. They yelled at Cardinal for a comment as he went by. He told them he couldn’t say anything just yet.
Snow glittered under the lights the ident team had set up. More tire tracks.
“Our runner,” Arsenault said. “We follow his trail through the woods on the west side of the drive. He comes out to the road and then it gets hard to see, but we’ve got blood-not a lot, but enough to see he hits the road, comes this way, and bingo-car.”
Cardinal and Delorme stood looking at the tire tracks.
“Much smaller car,” Cardinal said, “and there’s hardly any tread. Are we looking at a third vehicle?”
“Very good,” Arsenault said. “Could be a glamorous career waiting for you in Ident. Notice also we have four tires, four different treads, which probably means an old vehicle in pretty bad repair.”
“Tail light,” Collingwood said. He was holding up a fragment of red plastic.
“Show him the casings,” Arsenault said.
Collingwood held up a Baggie. “Found ’em at the top of the drive.”
“So we’ve got a chase that starts at the broken window and ends here?” Delorme said. She put her hands on her hips. “Got a lot to work with, anyway. Hair, fibre, ballistics, footprints, tire tracks…”
“We may have something even better,” Arsenault said.
“Oh?”
“Might have a survivor.”
4
Thenext day was Saturday, but Detective Sergeant Chouinard had cancelled everybody’s weekend and they had a morning meeting just like any other day. They began with a quick rundown of smaller cases. Szelagy was working with the fire marshal on a suspicious blaze in an old warehouse. McLeod was working on a fraud artist. Delorme had a couple of ATM robberies.
Chouinard sat at the head of the table, making the odd note and looking unhappy. “We have the fur auction in town, people, and after that the winter carnival. We need to be quick on this one, and we need to be good. Cardinal is lead investigator.”
“Cardinal’s not available,” McLeod said. “He’s too busy with Scriver.”
“Very funny. Listen, it’s not the carnival I’m worried about so much as the fur auction. It’s still a big deal in this town, and they’re expecting protesters. We’re going to have to be a presence. I’ve already talked to Staff Sergeant Flower, and there’ll be uniforms, but the chief promised the Fur Harvesters we’d have people stopping by too.”
“Harvesters,” McLeod said. “You gotta love it. What’s wrong with trappers?”
“Most of the furs come from farms these days. Listen, we’re talking millions of dollars in a tight economy, so let’s do some serving and protecting. Cardinal, where are we with Schumacher? Have we contacted any actual Schumachers yet? They’re not the victims, right?”
“No, but they seem to be away-we stopped by their town residence last night. We don’t have an ID on the victims yet. At this point, we don’t even have a best guess. We’ve got stuff from the scene that has to be run down. Partial list: blood, fingerprints, footprints, tire prints, spent rounds, hairs and fibres.”
The D.S. shifted in his seat and frowned. “Explain something to me.”
Cardinal looked at him.
“I thought we were going to have a holdback on this case. Why did I hear Detective Dunbar on CKAT this morning telling the world that the guy had a knife in his back?”
Cardinal looked at Dunbar. “Why the hell would you tell them that? What were you doing talking to the media in the first place? When did this happen?”
Dunbar winced. “I was coming back from canvassing the neighbours. He caught me off guard.”
“That’s great. And now if another corpse turns up with a knife in its back and minus a head, we’re not going to know if we’ve got a serial killer or a copycat. To say nothing about ruling out false confessions.”
“Like I say, he really caught me off guard.”
“There’s going to be a lot of press, and I want to control what goes to them. Nobody else speaks to them.”
“Cardinal’s right,” Chouinard said. “What else have we got?”
“Ident,” Cardinal said. “Maybe Arsenault can tell us the plan there.”
Arsenault took a sip from an enormous Tim Hortons mug. “We’re waiting in line for a pathologist. They’ve had three murders in Toronto since Friday and they’re short-staffed.”
“Two beheadings,” Chouinard said, “and we’re waiting in line?”
“Give ’em a call-they don’t care what I think. Preliminaries: female in mid-thirties, male in mid- to late sixties.”
Chouinard shook his head. “Damn it. We should have a holdback. We’re already all over the radio, the Lode is
