The woman’s e-mails seemed to consist mostly to receipts from the Teaching Company, audible. com and online bookstores. In her Sent file, the only messages of any size were chatty e-mails to her son. They stopped some four months prior to her death.
Cardinal sat back in the chair and thought about Mrs. Gauthier’s line of work. Librarian didn’t seem to connect with either of the other cases. Her husband had been in high tech, as had Senator Flint quite a while back, though not medical like Gauthier. Laura Lacroix had been a hospital administrator, which might have some faint connection, but her former husband, Keith Rettig, was a CPA.
He dialed Delorme again and left another message. “Something else. We requested a CV on Keith Rettig. Did we ever get that? Let me know when you call back. Hope Loach isn’t driving you nuts.” He disconnected, thinking he wished Delorme was here to help him go through this room. She had a laser-like eye when it came to reading people’s personal environments. Then again, he just wished she was here.
He started the web browser and opened bookmarks. Gardening sites, libraries, weight loss, and several folders devoted to Alzheimer’s disease-patient forums, family forums, sites of famous clinics and universities. Mrs. Gauthier had subscribed to many listservs and newsfeeds and kept bookmarks for newspapers worldwide.
A folder called “Frank” caught his eye. He opened it and found sites for MRG Robotics, her husband’s former company, and URLs for articles about it. One of these was a corporate profile of her husband that went right back to his childhood in Quebec and his education at Laval and later the University of Toronto, where he had done graduate work in engineering.
His cellphone rang. Delorme in her all-business mode. “I’ve checked, and there are no matches between Marjorie Flint and Brenda Gauthier. Laura Lacroix either. You sure Gauthier is related? She froze, but was she confined? Was she drugged?”
“Not according to the reports, but she was found wearing new clothes that weren’t hers. What’s going on there? It sounds noisy.”
Delorme lowered her voice. “A bunch of us are balking at interviewing every French-Canadian male over the age of fifty in Algonquin Bay. You wouldn’t believe the calls we’re getting. Chouinard’s yelling at everyone to stop yelling.”
“Did Loach add ‘French-Canadian’ to the flyers?”
“Are you kidding? He gave the recording to the radio station. They’ve played it, like, five times already. The phones won’t stop. Everybody knows someone who sounds like that caller. Loach wants us to check out every tip- he can’t get it in his head that we are not Toronto.”
As they talked, Cardinal was examining the boxes and albums of photographs that were stacked in neat piles, each one labelled with a yellow square: History, Friends, Work, several labelled Vacation and one Ancient History, her term for baby pictures, birthday pictures, Christmases. The Gauthiers, like Cardinal himself, were of the last generation whose childhood had been recorded in black-and-white.
“What I’m thinking,” he said to Delorme, “is Lacroix and Flint were not our guy’s first run at this. I think he went after Brenda Gauthier first and it didn’t go the way he planned.”
“What-she didn’t end up dead enough?”
“Didn’t look murdered enough. Clearly he wanted the others to look exactly like what they were. This one doesn’t, it looks like an accident. So he changed his MO.
Did we get Keith Rettig’s CV? If Laura Lacroix wasn’t connected to these people, maybe her ex-husband was.”
“Brunswick Geo swear they couriered it over the day we asked. They’re going to fax it again this afternoon. I have to go. Get back here. This place is a circus.”
Cardinal opened the box labelled History. High school graduation pictures, sports triumphs, the Laval lacrosse team-a muddied and big-haired Gauthier holding the trophy. Brenda Gauthier, svelte hippie in headband and bell- bottoms, clutching her books in front of the University of Toronto’s School of Library Science. Gauthier on the field in King’s College Circle, yellow hard hat over wild hair, clutching a Molson in one hand and an ungainly electronic device in the other.
And then there it was. Not a photograph, but a photocopy of an article from the Varsity, the university’s student newspaper. Cardinal recognized the steps of the Sandford Fleming Building, where three grinning students stood behind what looked like a metal spider on wheels. Except for the colour of his hair, the senator had not changed much over the years. For the other two, Cardinal had to rely on the caption. David Flint and fellow School of Engineering postgrads Keith Rettig and Frank Gauthier crushed the competition at RoboRama, held last month at MIT.
Giles Blunt
Until the Night
From the Blue Notebook
In addition to the central camp, there were three remote sites on our ice island. Two of these, the AES weather tower and my core hut, were now lost to us, though possibly of some use still to Vanderbyl. There was a chance that the that seismic hut, which was located on a different ridge, might still be attached-which would mean shelter, extra clothing, perhaps fuel.
We took stock. None of us was adequately dressed for any drop in the temperature, which now hovered around freezing. Deville was the warmest in a blue down jacket over a light fleece. Dahlberg and I had fleeces over sweaters. Rebecca had a light shell over a fleece. We were all wet to varying degrees from falling to the slushy surface. Dahlberg had badly twisted his knee and was having great difficulty walking. He made no complaint, other than to point out the fact of his situation, but his face was grey with pain.
Rebecca put aside her panic for Kurt and adopted a calm, matter-of-fact manner. Ray Deville was the only one who still appeared to be in a state of shock. His responses to my questions were sluggish, his affect flat. But he nodded his understanding that we had best keep moving.
Who has a weapon? I asked.
Rebecca still had the flare gun.
Dahlberg shook his head.
I turned to Deville’ I thought I could smell gunpowder. Ray? Do you have a gun?
No, me, I don’t ’ave a gun.
We all carried pencils but none of us had any real food. Deville had some Juicy Fruit, Dahlberg had a pack of cough drops and an Aero bar. I had nothing edible, but I still had my field glasses strapped round my neck and a butane lighter in my pocket.
It was decided that we would walk south in hopes of finding the seismic recording hut intact. I say south, but what I mean is south in relation to our base camp. Maintaining a sense of direction is one of the hardest things to do in the Arctic, especially in summer months, when the sun just circles above the horizon-a horizon that is all white and, unless you are near shore, devoid of landmarks.
It was hard travel, let me leave it at that. If you have never had to cross an extreme environment without the proper gear, nothing I say will convey the agony of this venture. It was crucial to move just fast enough to keep warm. To stop moving would mean freezing to death in a matter of fifteen or twenty hours. But moving even slightly too fast would bring on increased hunger, sweat that would soon cool, and exhaustion that would sap body heat quicker than anything except wind and moisture.
Jens could not keep up, and I asked Deville to hang back with him while Rebecca and I moved as fast as we could toward the hut.
Jens protested. Just keep me in sight. I’ll manage.
Don’t worry yourself, Dr. Dahlberg, Ray said. I’ll be wit’ you.
Rebecca and I pressed on ahead with an awkward, high-stepping gait and made reasonable progress. The lenticular cloud had shifted, and the sunlight warmed us as we moved. We kept our hands in our pockets-I had only one glove-although we took them out often for balance in the manner of a clumsy skater.
I don’t know how long we walked-long enough to leave Jens and Ray far behind. Perhaps two hours. I doubt if we exchanged more than a dozen words. Until we knew the status of the remote hut, there was no way to judge our chances of survival. Rebecca expressed no false hope, uttered no prayer. We just kept moving.
Where the seismic shack should have been, there was nothing but open water.
No good, I said. It’s gone.
Are you sure? Even if it’s broken off, shouldn’t we still be able to see it?
