Jens, ever practical, said, It’ll kill our radio contact. We’ll be blacked out for days.
The display curved away from us at its sides, shifting from a curtain shape almost to a funnel. A long crimson tail danced toward us, hovering on one side, then whipping to the other, a tornado of light.
And it’s composed of nothing, Wyndham said. Just broken bits of atoms.
Words fled me. At that moment I understood the pilot who had broken into sobs. I yearned for a new language, an idioglossia to span the unbridgeable distances that separate one human mind from another. This was unlike me, and probably had more to do with Rebecca than the aurora.
I wanted to hold her close, feel her warmth and reality, the human scale of love and desire, the infinitesimal beauty in the brush of her eyelashes on my cheek, the heat of her breath on my neck. But at that moment, she too felt the need of contact. And there, silhouetted against the ruby light, encircled by its corona of stars, she reached to rest her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, then tilted her head against him, Kurt’s arm in answer reaching around her waist.
11
Cardinal was late. He stepped out of his car and took his parka off. Cold gnawed at his ribs, his belly, his nerves. He tossed the parka onto the back seat and opened a flat plastic package and took out a bunny suit. He walked over to the motel room and stepped into the suit just in front of the door.
Everything about the Broadview Motel was generic, even the pervasive smell of carpet, but the mirrors, the lamps, the TV screen were already speckled with fingerprints where the ident guys had dusted for latents. The desk was done, the phone, the television remote. Collingwood and Arsenault were now working silently at the bedside tables.
Loach was by the window, holding his phone out now and again at elbow level as if checking a compass reading.
“Reception sucks in this dump,” he said to no one. Then, into the phone, “I’m very glad to hear you say that. I agree. It’s crucial for law enforcement in this country.” He clicked off, put the phone in his pocket and contemplated the plate glass window.
“You’re late.” The room was studio bright with Ident’s lamps, and Loach had no trouble identifying Cardinal’s reflection in the window and speaking to it.
“I wouldn’t be here at all if Chouinard hadn’t called me.”
“Found it sooner than we expected. Narrowed it down to motels near Mark Trent’s house, and when that didn’t work, to places near Laura Lacroix. Manager says he stayed a little over a week. Paid cash. Description: Maybe sixty, slicked-back hair, in shape or at least not fat. No visible deformities, although manager did notice a limp.”
“A limp. Like from an accident? A birth defect? What kind of limp?”
“He’s a motel guy, not an osteopath. He says the guy has a limp. Left leg kinda stiff. Oh, and he wore gloves a lot.”
“You’d never know it.” Cardinal gestured at the storm of fingerprints.
“Yeah, well, who knows if any of them are his? You’d expect by this time the room woulda been cleaned up, except the grampa running the place saves money in the off-season by waiting till he’s got half a dozen dirty rooms. Here’s his sign-in.” He handed Cardinal a flimsy sheet of paper. “Plate number’s a phony. Manager confirms dirty white Econoline with some kind of painted-out logo, but the plate number doesn’t check out. We already ran it down.”
“Roger Arlington,” Cardinal read. “ ‘Arlington’ could be fake too.”
“Getting nothing from the records so far. Garbage cans are mostly McDonald’s and Subway wrappers. And I nearly tossed out the Tim Hortons receipt too, until I noticed the date and location. Highway 17, Pembroke, twelve days ago.”
“The day Marjorie Flint vanished.”
“Good solid policing combined with good leadership-you can’t beat it.” Loach took his phone out and put it to his ear and turned once more to the window. “Hi, honey. Hey, just heard from a contact at the academy-they may fly me down there to give a talk on the Montrose case.”
Roger Arlington. Cardinal made a note of the name and went over to Arsenault, who was photographing a print on the Gideon Bible. “How’d the Identi-Kit go?”
“Well, the one lady gave us good stuff on the van, but the other witness was a no-show.”
“This was the hooker, right?”
“Turns out hookers are not reliable people. But we got the manager here, who’s likely to do better, and a chambermaid also. Says she saw the guy a couple of times and he gave her twenty bucks to stay out of his hair.”
“That’s interesting.” Cardinal glanced in Loach’s direction. “Nobody told me that.”
“Unfortunately, not so good on prints. Bob, you want to tell him?”
It was charming the way Arsenault always included his silent colleague. It was like trying to bring a Corgi into the conversation. Collingwood gave no sign of hearing, so Arsenault led Cardinal over to the front window. The glass was frosted at the corners and speckled with red fingerprint powder.
“We’ve got tons of partials, but I got a feeling they’re not going to lead anywhere. Why? First, because they’re all different and that makes me suspect they’re old and not his. Second, because there are lots of smudges that don’t show a single loop or whirl. See? Look here. And here.” He pointed out a couple of blank smudges. “Even here.” He pointed to two marks, about three inches long, that were slightly curved toward each other like parentheses. “Karate prints, like when you shade your eyes to see out a window?”
“Or in,” Cardinal said. “How many thieves have we caught that way?”
“Exactly. But again, no skin lines at all. We’re striking out here. I think this guy is wearing gloves everywhere.”
“Yes, the manager said he wore gloves a lot.”
“That’s interesting.” Arsenault glanced in Loach’s direction and back again. “Nobody told me that. But check this out.”
Cardinal followed him over to the desk. Cigarette burns and watermarks. Tattered Yellow Pages open to Chinese restaurants. Beside this, another crescent-shaped mark.
“The guy’s not all that careful about being seen,” Cardinal said, “and yet he’s wearing gloves indoors. Is there any chance our boy has a prosthetic hand?”
“You read my mind,” Arsenault said.
“This is good work, Paul.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to double your salary.”
“Too bad you’re not in a position to do that.”
“But you know I would if I could.”
“Will you throw in a Porsche as well?”
“Consider it done.”
Cardinal went back outside. He took off the bunny suit and got in the car and started it. He switched off the heater’ the sunlight was so strong it had warmed up the interior. He took out his cell and called Delorme on speed- dial. Then he remembered she was out sick and he hung up. He thought about maybe stopping by later to see how she was doing and then wondered if that might be a bad idea. He was pretty sure he’d handled things poorly.
The ARC hotel in downtown Ottawa. The kind of place where the staff all wear black and a visiting cop would never dream of staying. The room was small, the furniture minimalist to the point of severe. Delorme sat on the edge of the bed and gave it a testing bounce. Firm.
She took out her cell and checked the list of calls. Chouinard, Cardinal, Cardinal, Loach, Cardinal. You can damn well wait, John Cardinal. She dialed an old number she had for Leonard Priest. There was no ring, no response of any kind. She dialed Club Risque and asked to speak to him.
“I’m sorry, Len is not in tonight. Perhaps I could help you?”
