The moon was thin, but it cast a cool, metallic light on the rock cut. Cardinal kept to the shadows as he skirted the clearing. He found a trail on the other side and followed it into intermittent darkness. The soil was loamy underfoot; he could move almost silently.
A little further on, another trail branched to the right. If he kept straight, the trail would lead to the water’s edge. He doglegged to the right, and the trail grew rapidly narrower. A slight rise in the terrain and then, across a clearing, a rock face reared up before him. The moon had gone behind a cloud. In the deeper dark, it was hard to make out handholds in the granite wall.
Later, Cardinal couldn’t be sure what had alerted him. A slight rustle overhead? A glint of moonlight on metal? For whatever reason, he stepped to one side, so that when Beltran dropped from the darkness above, his knife missed Cardinal’s neck and only ended up grazing his shoulder and upper arm. Cardinal was thrown off balance and stumbled forward as Beltran crashed to the ground behind him.
Cardinal had his gun half raised when Beltran came at him again, knife flashing. The two of them locked together, Beltran gripping Cardinal’s gun hand, Cardinal catching Beltran’s wrist just as the knife arced toward his chest. They staggered against the rock face.
Beltran leaned into Cardinal with all his weight, and the two of them tumbled over a boulder. A sharp edge of granite bit into Cardinal’s shoulder blade. The knife dropped to the ground, point first, and quivered there. Beltran twisted hard on Cardinal’s arm and the gun hit the dirt with a thud.
When they came up again, Beltran had the knife and Cardinal’s hands were empty. Beltran was babbling something incoherent, veering in and out of English. He kept crying out something like “Ellegua! Ellegua, protect me,” followed by a torrent of some language Cardinal had never heard before. Cardinal was focused on the knife, which Beltran swung at him in wide arcs, forcing him to hop back.
Beltran swung again, and this time Cardinal kicked hard and connected. The knife flew against the rock face, sparking on granite. Beltran fell, then scrabbled after it on all fours. Cardinal hauled him back by the shoulder.
Why was it that everything he had learned at police college about hand-to-hand combat always seemed irrelevant when it came to an actual fight? In the heat and commotion, so-called crippling grips fail to even grip, let alone cripple. Nothing in the courses prepared you for the speed with which a cornered human being can move. Beltran’s fists seemed to be everywhere at once; and when Cardinal stepped out of reach, Beltran kicked him so hard in the gut that he went down like a spavined horse.
Cardinal landed hard on his knee, and pain shot up his leg. But it wasn’t granite he had landed on, it was gun-metal. He snatched up the Beretta just as Beltran wheeled on him once more with the knife.
He was yelling, shouting out to Ellegua to pound his enemies into dust. He came at Cardinal, knife shining. Cardinal aimed for body mass and fired. The bullet hit with an odd sound—a clang—and Beltran fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
He touched a large medallion that hung around his neck.
“You see,” he said. “You cannot kill me. I am protected.”
He came forward a step, still on his knees. He raised the knife, and Cardinal fired again, this time emptying the magazine.
Beltran fell forward, and the knife slithered from his grasp. His blood spread beneath him, flowing outward over the rocks in a black pool, in which the white moon shimmered like a blade.
56
LISE DELORME WAS SITTING IN HER CAR, in the parking lot of the Ontario Psychiatric Hospital. She had tried waiting outside, but up here, near the forest, the flies were still too bad. They were getting better, though. Another week or so and you might actually be able to enjoy a walk in the woods.
She stared at the massive red-brick building with its many dark windows, some of them barred. Something about mental hospitals makes them haunting in a way that, say, prisons or other grim institutions are not. Even now, in the broad, white light of summer, the place made you want to turn your back and think of other things.
In an arrangement almost certainly peculiar to Algonquin Bay, the local coroner shares office space with the psychiatric hospital. Delorme had come here to speak with Dr. Rayburn and get his written, signed reports. That had taken only a few minutes, but when she had come out she had noticed Cardinal’s Camry in the lot and decided to wait for him. The coroner’s reports were just a formality, just another batch of pages for a very thick file. They contained the routine but necessary observation that the three deceased—Raymond Beltran, Leon Rutkowski and Alan Clegg—had met their ends by foul play and that the services of a forensic pathologist were required.
Add to that list Toof Tilley, Wombat Guthrie and God knew how many others in Miami and Toronto, and Beltran’s body count started to look seriously depressing.
A young woman came out the side door of the hospital, followed by Cardinal.
Delorme got out of her car and met them at the edge of the lot.
“Lise.” Cardinal’s voice was softer than usual. Delorme had never seen anyone look so exhausted.
“How’s the shoulder?”
“Not too bad. Kind of throbs sometimes.”
“No bowling for you.”
“No left-handed bowling, anyway. I don’t think you’ve met my daughter. Kelly, this is Lise Delorme.”
“The famous Sergeant Delorme,” Kelly said, and shook hands. She had a beautiful smile that resembled her mother’s. But she had her father’s eyes. Sad eyes, even when she was smiling. “Dad’s told me a lot about you.”
“Uh-oh,” Delorme said.
“No, no. It’s all good. He really admires you.”
“That isn’t what he tells me,” Delorme said, but she felt the heat in her face. Admires? She’s got to be joking. She glanced at him, but if Cardinal was embarrassed, she couldn’t see it beyond the exhaustion.
“I’ll wait in the car,” Kelly said to her father, and then she was gone, leaving an impression of youth, alarming honesty and, beyond that, something else. There was a spark of glamour in the way she held her head, in the way she wore those New York clothes. Kelly Cardinal was something special.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” Delorme said. “I just thought you’d want to know. We matched a gun we found at the camp with the bullets that killed Tilley.”
“Excellent. That’s good to hear.”
“Rutkowski’s prints on it. Not Beltran’s.”
“Huh,” Cardinal said. “Soulmates.”
His response was so muted, Delorme wanted to shake him. Or hug him. Something. His pain was so clearly not physical.
“They’ve also confirmed the head was Wombat Guthrie,” Delorme said, wishing she could shut up about it.
“How are Terri and her brother?”
“Both pretty traumatized. I think it may have cured Tait’s drug problem, though. That’s a start. By the way, you were right about the locket. It’s Terri’s.”
“Great.”
“You’ll also be glad to know Steve Lasalle and Harlan Calhoun were denied bail.”
“Good. Well …”
“How’s Catherine, John?”
“Oh. You know. Hard to say.” Cardinal looked off toward the trees, the sunlight bringing out the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. “Seems she didn’t want visitors.”
“I’m sorry,” Delorme said. “That’s rough.”
“Tell Chouinard I’ll be in tomorrow.”
“Take longer, John. There’s no need to come back so soon.”
“Yes, there is. Tell him I’ll be in tomorrow.”
Delorme watched him head across the lot. Kelly was waiting for him by the car.
The young woman suddenly bent forward and covered her face with her hands. Cardinal put his arms around her and held her close. They stood together like that for a long time. They were still standing like that as Delorme drove away, Cardinal’s left hand stroking his daughter’s hair.