He pulled into the Gateway’s driveway and parked under a sign that said RESIDENT PARKING ONLY; VISITORS PARK ON STREET. A uniformed cop was standing beside a ribbon of crime-scene tape.
‘Oh, hi, Sergeant,’ he said as Cardinal approached. He looked about eighteen years old, and Cardinal could not for the life of him remember his name. ‘Got a dead woman back there. Looks like she took a nasty fall. Thought I’d better secure a perimeter till we know what’s what.’
Cardinal looked beyond him into the area behind the building. All he could see were a Dumpster and a couple of cars.
‘Did you touch anything?’
‘Um, yeah. I checked the body for a pulse and there wasn’t one. And I searched pockets for ID but didn’t find any. Could be a resident, I guess, went off one of those balconies.’
Cardinal looked around. Usually there was a small crowd at such scenes. ‘No witnesses? No one heard anything?’
‘Building’s mostly empty, I think, except for the businesses on the ground floor. There was no one around when I got here.’
‘Okay. Let me borrow your flashlight.’
The kid handed it over and let Cardinal by before attaching the end of the tape to a utility pole.
Cardinal walked in slowly, not wanting to ruin the scene by assuming the kid’s idea of a fall was correct. He went by the Dumpster, which seemed to be full of old computers. A keyboard dangled over the side by its cable, and there were a couple of circuit boards that appeared to have exploded on the ground.
The body was just beyond the Dumpster, face down, dressed in a tan fall coat with leather at the cuffs.
‘I don’t see any of the windows or doors open on any of the balconies up there,’ the young cop said. ‘Probably the super’ll be able to give us an ID.’
‘Her ID’s in the car,’ Cardinal said.
The young cop looked around. There were two cars parked along the side of the building.
‘I don’t get it,’ the young cop said. ‘You know which car is hers?’
But Cardinal did not appear to be listening. The young cop watched in astonishment as Sergeant John Cardinal – star player on the CID team, veteran of the city’s highest profile cases, legendary for his meticulous approach to crime scenes – went down on his knees in the pool of blood and cradled the shattered woman in his arms.
Normally, Lise Delorme would have been irritated at being called in on her day off. It happened all the time, but that didn’t make it any less annoying to be hauled out of whatever you were doing. She had been at a pub, enjoying a particularly pungent curry with a new boyfriend – a very good-looking lawyer only a year or two her junior – whom she had met when he unsuccessfully defended a long-time thug Delorme had nabbed for extortion. This was their third date, and even though the concept of sleeping with a lawyer was extremely hard for her to accept, Delorme had been planning to invite him in for a drink when he took her home. Shane Cosgrove was his name.
It would have been sexier if Shane had been a better lawyer. Delorme actually thought his thuggy client should have gotten off, considering the meagre pile of evidence she had managed to put together. But still, he was good looking and good company and such men, single, were hard to come by in a place the size of Algonquin Bay.
When she returned to the table, Shane asked her if she needed to lie down, she had turned that white. Detective Sergeant Chouinard had just told her that the victim was John Cardinal’s wife and that Cardinal himself was at the scene. A patrol unit had called Chouinard at home and Chouinard had in turn called Delorme.
‘Get him out of there, Lise,’ he had said. ‘Whatever else is going on inside him right now, Cardinal’s been a cop for thirty years. He knows as well as you and me that until we rule out foul play, he’s suspect number one.’
‘DS,’ Delorme said, ‘Cardinal’s been absolutely loyal to his wife through a lot of –’
‘A lot of shit. Yes, I know that. I also know it’s possible he finally got fed up. It’s possible some little straw just broke the camel’s back. So get your ass over there and make sure you think dirty. That place is a homicide scene until such time as we rule out foul play.’
So there was no irritation in Delorme’s heart as she drove across town, only sorrow. Although she had met Cardinal’s wife on social occasions, she’d never gotten to know her well. Of course, she knew what everyone in the department knew: that every couple of years Catherine went into the psychiatric hospital following a manic or depressive episode. And every time Delorme had encountered Catherine Cardinal, she had wondered how that was possible.
For Catherine Cardinal, at least when she was well, was one of the few women Delorme had ever met who could with any degree of accuracy be described as ‘radiant’. The words ‘manic’ and ‘depressive’ – not to mention ‘bipolar’ or ‘psychotic’ – evoked images of the frazzled, the wild-eyed. But Catherine had radiated gentleness, intelligence, even wisdom.
Delorme, single for more years than she cared to count, often found the company of married couples tedious. In general, they lacked the spark of people still on the hunt. And they had an exasperating way of implying that single people were in some way defective. Most upsetting of all, many seemed not even to like each other, treating each other with a rudeness they would never dream of inflicting on a stranger. But Cardinal and his wife, married God knew how long, seemed genuinely to enjoy each other’s company. Cardinal talked about Catherine almost every day, unless she was in hospital, and then his silence had always struck Delorme as an expression not of shame but of loyalty. He was always telling Delorme about Catherine’s latest photograph, or how she had helped some former student get a job, about an award she had won, or something funny she had said.
But in Delorme’s experience there was something imposing about Catherine, something commanding, even when you knew her psychiatric history. In fact, it may partly have been an effect of that very psychiatric history: the aura of someone who had travelled into the depths of madness and come back to tell the tale. Only this time she hadn’t come back.
And maybe Cardinal’s better off, Delorme thought. Maybe it’s not the worst thing for him to be free of this beautiful albatross. Delorme had witnessed the toll on Cardinal when his wife had been admitted to hospital, and at such times she found herself surprisingly angry at the woman who could make his life a misery.
Lise Delorme, she cursed herself as she came to a stop at the crime-scene tape, sometimes you can be a hundred per cent, unforgivable, unmitigated bitch.
If Chouinard had been hoping his speedy dispatch of Delorme would prevent suspect number one from messing up a crime scene, he was too late. As she got out of the car, she could see Cardinal holding his wife in his arms, blood all over his suede jacket.
A young cop – Sanderson was his name – was standing guard by the crime-scene tape.
‘You were first on the scene?’ Delorme asked him.
‘Got an anonymous call from someone in the building. Said there appeared to be a body out back. I proceeded here, ascertained that she was dead, and put in a call to the sarge. She called CID and Cardinal got here first. I had no idea it was his wife.’ There was a trill of panic in his voice. ‘There’s no ID on the body. There’s no way I could’ve known.’
‘That’s all right,’ Delorme said. ‘You did the right thing.’
‘If I’d have known, I’d have kept him away from the body. But he didn’t know either till he got up close. I’m not gonna get in trouble over this, am I?’
‘Calm