Don’t be an idiot, Wyndham said. I mean, really, Kit. How far do you want to push him?
I realize every expedition has its designated pariah, Gordon. Call me obtuse, but I would have put odds on young Deville of the thousand-yard stare. You might at least explain why this time the mantle has fallen on my shoulders.
He turned to me, eyes shadowed by the overhead lamp. Your aftershave might have something to do with it.
Aftershave. I don’t wear any aftershave.
Your face, man, your face. You reek of pussy.
I raised a hand to my cheek, still warm from bed.
That’s right, Wyndham said. That wonder of nature we all know and love and adore. Fabulous. Miraculous. Bully for you. But Rebecca is the guy’s wife, man. She’s the guy’s wife. He’s trying to play the Stoic, the picture of calm reason. He’s lead scientist, for God’s sake. But he’s utterly torn up over the idea of her sleeping with someone else. And if you can’t see it-or won’t see it, pardon me-then you’re just an out-and-out bastard.
6
Bob Collingwood was removing snow from the dead woman with a fine brush. Gradually the brittle blond hair was revealed, the fine blue veins beneath the temples, the thin lips almost as pale as the snow. Frozen eyelids oblivious to the scene man’s brush. Silent Collingwood showed no more reaction than the woman.
Cardinal looked at Delorme, her movie-star sunglasses looking back at him, fur trim of her hood a fiery halo.
“Marjorie Flint,” he said. “How does a senator’s wife end up in this godforsaken place?”
“You maybe get the feeling it wasn’t her idea?”
“Last anybody knew, she was heading home to make dinner. So how does she get from Ottawa to Algonquin Bay?” Cardinal pointed to two small peaks of snow on either side of the head and shoulders. “Bob, can we get a look at these?”
Collingwood removed the snow one thin layer at a time. A bolt and then a steel ring became visible. A chain.
Cardinal pointed to the chain. “Let’s follow that.”
Collingwood’s brush flicked at the snow, the chain appearing link by link. He could move faster now, since he was not touching the body itself. The chain was about three feet long and ended in a steel cuff, a padded cuff that encircled the woman’s wrist.
“Jesus,” Delorme said. “Why?”
The hand itself was clenched, and tightly wrapped in thin rags.
“Let’s see her other hand,” Cardinal said.
Collingwood changed position and worked with his brush. Again the blue sleeve, the cuff, the wrapped hand.
“What’s that?” Cardinal pointed to a slight rise in the snow beside the hand.
He and Delorme watched the brush, the gleam of metal as it appeared.
“Is that a Thermos?”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Collingwood said. “You believe that? She’s holding a Thermos.”
The three of them went still: Collingwood crouched, brush poised above the dead woman’s hand’ Delorme, arms crossed in front of her, chin down’ Cardinal with hands in pockets, shoulders hunched.
“I’m wondering about that jacket,” Cardinal said.
“You want me to get at the label?”
“What bothers me is it’s not the coat she was wearing.”
“The MP report listed a black cashmere coat,” Delorme said, “not a blue down jacket.”
“I don’t want to mess up your routine, Bob, so I’ll just ask if we can get a quick look at her wallet, if there’s one there, and then her boots. Then we’ll leave you to get on with it.”
Collingwood photographed the Thermos and took several exposures of the area where it seemed likely a wallet might be. He broke off some crust and started brushing, eventually reaching inside the jacket.
He extracted a wallet and handed it up.
Cardinal flipped through it, riffled the bills. “Lots of ID. And there’s at least three hundred bucks in here. Well, scene like this, robbery’s not the first thing crosses my mind.”
They waited while Collingwood cleared the snow from her feet.
“Good hiking boots,” Delorme said as the sole began to appear. “New, too.”
“The report said high-heel boots,” Cardinal said, “and I’m betting her hands weren’t wrapped in those rags when she left home, either.”
They found Paul Arsenault, the other half of the ident team, culling the snow some distance outside the scene perimeter. He was on his knees under a birch tree, working with hand implements.
“Why are you way out here?” Cardinal asked him. “I think Collingwood can probably use you about now.”
“You’re just in time,” Arsenault said. He got to his feet, holding a shard of black plastic by the edges.
“What have you got?”
“Piece of snowmobile cowling is my guess.” Arsenault flipped the plastic over. It had a slight curve to it and showed a network of surface scratches. Part of a word had snapped off, leaving only the letters rb.
“Rb,” Delorme said. “What do you suppose that used to say?”
“I don’t know,” Arsenault said. “You tell me-you’re the snowmobile maven.”
“Me? No-this is like the fourth time I’ve been out. And mine just says Ski-Doo.”
“Are you sure this is connected to the crime?”
Arsenault pointed to the trunk of the birch tree, where a gouge had peeled away the bark. “That looks pretty recent to me. The victim vanished ten days ago. Plus I checked weather patterns for the area? In the past two weeks, they’ve had freezing rain twice-once twelve days ago, once three days ago. This was between those two layers of glaze.”
“You checked the weather patterns?” Cardinal said. “You can do that on your phone?”
“I checked ’em before we got in the truck.”
Cardinal and Delorme looked at each other.
“I am good at this, you know.”
“We’ve noticed,” Delorme said. “Now all you have to do is run it through the snowmobile database.”
“Ah, yes,” Arsenault said, “the famous snowmobile database.”
Cardinal and Delorme stayed for several hours, but thorough processing of the scene was going to take days. D.S. Chouinard was demanding a command performance, and Cardinal eventually found him waiting in interview room three, a comfortless chamber the size of a jail cell.
“Why are we meeting in here?” Cardinal said.
“My office has sprung another goddam leak, and the chief has the meeting room booked.”
Cardinal sat on a plastic chair that was usually occupied by criminals.
“Let me get this straight,” Chouinard said. “We’ve got a woman chained up outdoors in minus thirty degrees, and she’s got a Thermos in her hand?”
“Smelled like coffee,” Cardinal said, “but obviously we’re going to need the lab report. Same with the traces of food we found beside her.”
“Someone chained her up outside like a dog?”
“Seems whoever did it either failed to return for some unexpected reason or just decided he wanted to make sure she died of cold, not starvation.”
“Other than the body itself, we picking up anything useful out there?”
“Arsenault’s keen on a piece of snowmobile cowling he found under the snow.”
There was a rap at the door and Delorme came in. “Why are we meeting in here?”
“Don’t ask,” Chouinard said.
