Black Fly Season (32 page)

She copied down the number of the Crisis Centre on a cocktail napkin.

‘Tell him I need to speak to him right away.’

‘I will. Sure.’

‘One last question.’

‘Okay.’

‘Where would I go if I wanted to buy some dope?’

Bob’s smile disappeared into his beard. Disapproval rode his brows. ‘I’m not into drugs,’ he said.

The either. But if you were …’

‘Try Oak Street. The World Tavern. Not in the tavern itself. There’s a parking lot across the street. Here, I’ll draw you a map.’

Outside, the breeze had picked up. It started to rain as Terri crossed the street. Okay, so I’m not a detective and I’m not a spy. I don’t know how to get information without just coming out and asking for it. Let me just do it fast, find Kevin, and haul him back to Vancouver and the rehab centre. I don’t care if I have to drag him by the hair.

Oak Street was uncomfortably dark. And the entire block on the far side seemed to be a vast parking lot. Terri found herself looking over her shoulder. The World Tavern wasn’t far. Had Kevin taken her there, too? It didn’t look familiar. She saw a group of shadows in the parking lot across the street, and the smell of marijuana came to her mixed with the smells of the lake and wet pavement.

She crossed the street toward the shadows.There were two young men, boys really, in nylon jackets,

and a girl whose low-rise jeans exposed a good two inches of butt cleavage. They were standing in the lee of a billboard. Their laughter died down, and they eyed Terri silently. One of them stomped out a smoke, but it did nothing to disperse the rich cloud of grass and rain.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you can help me.’

‘Depends what you want,’ the larger boy said. His jacket hung down to his knees. Trying to look cool, giving her the narrowed eyes.

‘I’m looking for a friend of mine named Kevin Tait. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?’

The trio looked at each other then back at Terri.

‘Nope,’ the one in the knee-length jacket said. ‘Guess not.’

‘Well, maybe you’ve seen him. Dark curly hair? Carries a notebook?’

The smaller kid and the girl shook their heads. The oldest one shrugged. ‘Sounds familiar. But I couldn’t say for sure.’

‘I’m not a cop. I’m his sister.’

‘Still can’t help you.’

‘Well, let me ask you this. Where would you go if you wanted to score some heroin?’

‘Whoa, dude. You wanna know where you can score smack?’ He took a step back, all but vanishing into his jacket.

‘Not for me. It’s just a way to find Kevin.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to look for smack. Not

my kind of thing.’ The kid had adopted a superior look, no longer interested in her. Snobbery runs rife even in drug circles.

Terri looked at the girl. ‘Help me. He’s in trouble.’

‘Sorry. I don’t know anything.’

She looked at the smaller guy.

‘Hell, no. Me either. Smack, man. Not for me.’

‘All right. Thanks, anyway.’

She started to walk away.

The big one called after her. ‘Now, if you wanted something to smoke, that might be a different story.’

Terri gathered her hood against the wind and kept walking.

Cars were starting up all along Main Street; the theatre was letting out. Terri walked down Worth Street, heading back toward the Crisis Centre. She cut through a park where a bronze soldier glistened in the rain.

When she emerged on the far side of the park, she had to wait for the light. The line of gleaming cars stretched back to Main Street, wipers flapping. The wind tore at her hood and she gave up trying to hold it, it was soaked through anyhow.

Leon was already through the light by the time he registered who it was he had just seen. The red hair, the turned-up nose, it had to be her. Not possible. Maybe she’s got a cousin or there’s someone else who just looks an awful lot like her.

But what clinched it was the bandage on the side of her head.

The scene came back to him: the falls, the flies, the trembling girl. He had urged her forward through the woods, the gun at her back, taking her to the same place he and Red Bear had slaughtered the biker. It had had to be the same place; he had never killed a woman before, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it anywhere else. But when they got to the falls, she made a break for it. Leon’s hiking boot slipped on a rock, and she just took off. He had had to run behind the falls and out the other side to cut her off. Man, the smell.

On the corner, the wind blew her hood back and she clutched at it. It was the sudden motion that had caught his eye, stuck in this bloody traffic. Then she let go of the hood and folded her arms across her chest and there it was on the right side of her head, a small white patch.

Leon hit the brakes on the far side of the intersection but the cars behind him leaned on their horns. Worth Street was one-way; he couldn’t turn around. He rolled down his window and jerked his side mirror so he could see her. Yeah, she was still on the corner. The light was about to change, dammit.

At the next corner he swung a right and zoomed up the block, scaring the hell out of a couple of pedestrians. Then another right at the first stop sign and back down to Macintosh. The traffic

wasn’t so bad here, though he could still see the line of wet lights stretching back to Main. Right again and then he was back to Worth Street.

No sign of her.

Leon crossed the intersection and drove slowly for half a block. She’d been heading this way. She must have gone into one of these houses. Either that, or she could have crossed north again once she got across Worth. He got out of the car, not even bothering to lock it, and ran. He stopped at the corner of Station Street, already out of breath. He turned in one direction then another, squinting into the rain.

We got to find out where she’s staying,’ Leon said. ‘That bitch cannot be alive. She’s gonna finger me and they’ll put me away for, like, ever, man. I can’t do jail, man. I couldn’t take that again.’

Red Bear was brushing his hair. He spent a long time doing that each morning before the mirror, like he was in love with it or something.

‘We got to deal with this,’ Leon said. He heard the whining in his own voice but he couldn’t help it. ‘We got to do something. We got to lay plans, man.’

Red Bear glanced at him in the mirror.

‘I will consult the spirits.’

‘Consult the spirits, hell. Don’t you get it? She talks to the cops I go away to Millhaven again. You know how long they stuck me in solitary, man?’

‘Forty-eight days. You told me already.’

‘Yeah, well, you try doing forty-eight days in that fucking hell-hole. See how long you keep your cool, then. I want to plug that bitch. Put her away, man. She cannot be walking the earth.’

‘I will consult the spirits, Leon.’

‘We already got Kevin locked up, we could do a sacrifice, man. A double sacrifice. That’s what we should do. Make sure we get this right.’

‘We will do a sacrifice, when the time is right.’

‘So let’s do it, man. Get those spirits working for us big time. Let’s get it done.’

Red Bear put aside his brush and picked up a pump bottle. He sprayed something into his palm and rubbed his hands together. Then he patted his hands over his hair. He picked up the brush again.

‘I have already explained to you. I cannot perform a sacrifice until the moon is waxing. Right now it is still waning. Do a sacrifice while the moon is waning and the entity will control you. That is not what we want.’

‘What I want is one dead redhead.’

Red Bear turned to him. Those eyes of his. Sometimes they caught the light in a certain way and it was like being stared at by a corpse.

‘Whose fault is it she’s alive?’

‘That’s not my fault. It’s that fucking gun, man. I told you. I pumped two of those motherfucking bullets into Toof’s head and he wouldn’t even lie down. Guy’s still up and around and yakkin’ away. Had to go at him with my Louisville Slugger. If I’d a known, I’d a put five in her head stedda one, man. It’s not my fault. I mean, where in the fuck have I sinned?’

Red Bear turned back to the mirror.

‘Try not to panic, Leon. I will consult the spirits.’

Lise Delorme had been spending an awful lot of time chasing down a lead that seemed certain to propel her face-first into a dead end. According to Jerry Commanda, the strange hieroglyphics on the walls of the cave behind Nishinabe Falls had nothing to do with Ojibwa Indians. So Delorme had followed his advice and called Frank Izzard of the OPP’s behavioural sciences unit, then faxed him a photograph of the markings.

Delorme had googled Izzard on the Internet before calling. Izzard was a cop with an advanced degree in psychology and a particular interest in Satanism and other esoteric practices that have attracted serial killers over the past few decades. His papers on the subject had appeared in the Annals of Forensic Psychology and he had done a widely respected book-length study of Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker who had terrorized Los Angeles twenty years previously. Just from her reading on the Internet, Delorme discovered that Satanism was far more widespread among serial killers than she had supposed.

‘Most of them don’t get into it in any organized way,’ Izzard told her on the phone. ‘They dabble. They go into it with about as much devotion as the average housewife gives her yoga philosophy.’

‘I guess it makes sense they’d be interested in anything that appears to condone the evil things they do.’

‘Oh, their interest isn’t ethical. Even with Ramirez. They’re not looking for permission from a supernatural being. When a person seething with rage and lust starts playing with Satanic rituals - that is to say rituals designed to bring Satan or his helpers into your apartment - what happens is they invoke not some supernatural being but an embodiment of their own blackest desires. Imagine a being composed of pure lust and rage - no conscience, no morals, no restraints …’

‘Pretty hideous,’ Delorme said.

‘And it’s going to be powerful. For a loser who is otherwise close to nonfunctioning, it’s going to be the most powerful experience of his life. With Ramirez - and maybe with your guy, too - what can happen is a borderline personality topples over the edge and becomes an outright psychopath.’

‘Which brings us to our hieroglyphics.’

‘You said you may be looking for an Indian? A native?’

‘It’s possible. A couple of witnesses have mentioned an Indian named Red Bear.’

‘Well, these markings have nothing to do with Native Canadians or Americans. Unless you

happen to have an Indian who’s interested in Voodoo.’

‘Voodoo? In Canada?’

‘Oh, sure. You get all kinds of it in Toronto. Even more in Montreal. Comes up by way of the Caribbean countries, and it’s completely harmless in most cases. But these markings you faxed to me, I’ve never seen anything like them. All those arrows bundled together, and so many repetitions, each one slightly different… I frankly don’t know what to make of them.’

‘But you’re sure they’re not Indian?’

‘Let me put it this way. If they are Indian, it’s a completely new type of glyph. There’s been nothing like it in North America so far as I’m aware. No, I’m thinking maybe some personal variation on Voodoo or Santeria. But that’s all I know.’

‘So what are we going to do? Can you point me in some likely direction?’

‘You have to talk to Helen Wasserstein.’

‘Who’s she? RCMP?’

‘Try ROM.’

The Royal Ontario Museum is perhaps the closest Canada gets to the Smithsonian or the British Museum. It is on a much smaller scale than either of those two august institutions, but what it does, it tends to do excellently. Virtually every high school student in Ontario will at some point or other be bussed into Toronto in order to view

its dinosaurs, its Roman collection, or its totem poles.

Helen Wasserstein was the Royal Ontario Museum’s curator of Native Canadian artefacts, but luckily Delorme did not have to travel to Toronto in order to talk to her. As it turned out, Dr Wasserstein was on a dig in the northern end of Algonquin Park, which put her a little more than an hour south of Algonquin Bay.

Delorme liked to drive. And she particularly liked driving out into the forest. But the last part of her trip was over a dirt road that could hardly be called a road at all. More than once her head made contact with the roof of the car, and she was wishing for the first time in her life that she was driving a Jeep or an SUV. She came finally to a barrier constructed of several strips of red tape.

A sign proclaimed the archaeological dig and invited those unconnected with the project to turn back now. There were two jeeps and a pickup truck parked among the trees. Delorme left her unmarked Chevy facing the tape and headed down the slope.

Smells of pine and loam were thick in the air. So were black flies. Delorme swatted the air before her face like a neurotic fighting off intrusive thoughts. At the bottom of the hill lay a wide clearing, almost perfectly circular, from which the top layer of pine needles and soil had been scraped away. Three figures on hands and knees

probed and sifted the dirt. All three, Delorme noted with envy, were wearing bug shirts.

One of the figures stood upright and stared at her. It was like being observed by an astronaut; Delorme wasn’t sure if it was male or female.

‘I’m looking for Dr Wasserstein,’ Delorme said. ‘I understand she’s ‘

The hooded figure raised a little spade and pointed to the other side of the dig. Dr Wasserstein was crouched over a sieve that she was shirring back and forth as if she were a prospector.

‘Dr Wasserstein?’

The shirring stopped. The hood of netting turned to face her.

‘My name is Lise Delorme. I’m a detective with the Algonquin Bay police. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes of your time?’

‘Police? I’m very busy just now. But as you’ve come all this way, I assume it’s something that can’t wait?’