Uncle Victor rubbed ointment on the long lines he had cut into Raymond’s back. The pain began to attenuate, to become bearable.
“You will have nothing to fear, Raymond. Believe me. You are going to be the most powerful priest walking the earth. A true collector of souls.” And then Victor did an amazing thing. He knelt down and bowed his head.
25
STEPHEN P. RUSSELL HAD COME prepared—floppy straw sun hat, bright white bug shirt, Off Deep Woods insect repellent—he was ready for anything. As Algonquin Bay’s best-selling watercolourist, Stephen P. Russell prided himself on being an all-weather, all-terrain sort of man. His ancient Volvo wagon was crammed with boots, umbrella, slicker, sandals, sunblock, coffee Thermos, as well as the painterly paraphernalia of the amateur artist: easel, brushes, colours and a none-too-steady folding stool.
Stands of birches were his bread and butter, preferably birches adorned with clumps of snow or dripping with rain. He sold two or three of these works every weekend at the farmers’ market. You couldn’t live on the money it brought in, but it was a nice supplement to a pension from the Nipissing Separate School Board. He prided himself particularly on his ability to render the platinum sheen on the leaves of the silver birch, the very effect he was creating at this moment.
A steady breeze was riffling the leaves and blowing them back like the fur on a cat. A languid chorus line of Scotch pines swayed beside the birches, but the painter ignored them. These he would do with a green wash later, blurry as you please. That was the great thing about watercolours—it was easy to blur everything you didn’t want the viewer to see. Pines were not Stephen P. Russell’s strong suit.
The brushwork on the birch leaves took a lot of doing, a lot of concentration. And for some time, the painter had noticed that his concentration was flickering. Normally he could work for hours, thinking of nothing but his subject and his technique, but today he had finished his Thermos of coffee early, and now nature had to take its course.
He turned from his easel and looked behind him toward the nasty construction site. No, he would have to head the other way. He got up with difficulty from his stool—oh, the aches and agues of the so-called golden years!—and tottered stiffly toward the bushes.
At first he didn’t realize what it was. The thing was only in his peripheral vision, and he was seeing it through anti-bug mesh. It made him jump because he thought somebody had caught him relieving himself outdoors. It was only after he had zipped up, his face burning with embarrassment, that he turned and realized that this person had not seen anything at all.
26
THERE WAS ALREADY A SMALL CROWD of cops at the scene by the time Cardinal arrived. A pale, reedy man separated himself from the knot of people and began filling out a form that kept curling from his clipboard in the breeze. Once again, Cardinal was in luck; this time the coroner was Dr. Miles Kennan. He tore off the flimsy top sheet of the form and handed it to Cardinal.
“We’ve got an obvious victim of foul play here, Detective.” Kennan had a gentle, breathy voice. “I do hope you’ll give my regards to the forensic centre.”
“‘Cause of death,’” Cardinal read from the form, “‘gunshot and/or blunt trauma’?”
“You’ll see what I mean when you take a look,” Kennan breathed. “Either would have killed him eventually, but you’ll need a pathologist to tell you which one actually did him in.” The doctor swatted at his neck. “God, I hate blackflies.”
“Time of death?”
“You’ll have to ask the centre that one. I’d guess he’s been dead between twelve and twenty-four hours. But even that’s a very rough guess.”
“All right. Thanks, Doctor.”
Cardinal stepped under the crime scene tape. Arsenault and Collingwood were down on hands and knees, evidence bags ready. Delorme was on her cellphone, apparently on hold.
“Forensic?” Cardinal asked.
She nodded.
“Who called us?”
“Local artist. He doesn’t know anything.”
Delorme spoke into the phone. “All right, Len. Thanks.” She hung up. “I asked Weisman if someone from ballistics could stay late.”
“It’s already late.”
“Yeah, that’s what Weisman said.” Delorme shrugged. “I charmed him to death.”
“No, you didn’t. Len doesn’t charm. Do we know who we’ve got here?”
“Unfortunately, no. There’s no wallet, no ID, no nothing. He appears to be mid to late twenties, five-five, about a hundred and fifty pounds. Other than that, there’s not much to go by.”
“There was nothing at all in his pockets?”
“A ten-dollar bill, some change and a pack of matches from Duane’s Billiard Emporium.”
Cardinal stood back and looked over the scene as a whole. The brush was thick where the dirt road came to an end. Even Cardinal, no forensic expert, could see recently broken twigs and branches. And there was a lot of blood near the victim’s head. Droplets had sprayed upward against the white trunks of the birches. Definitely killed here, not just dumped.
“I can’t figure out how this went down,” Delorme said. “It’s unlikely the killer was just sitting here in a car waiting for a victim to pass by. The two of them—or maybe there were more, I guess we don’t know—but the two of them come out here for something. Then for some reason they get into an argument and the one guy kills the other.”
“A bullet in the back of the head doesn’t read like a spur-of-the-moment thing to me,” Cardinal said.
“That’s true. It’s more like an execution.”
“Tire,” Collingwood said, restricting himself as usual to a single syllable. He sat back on his haunches so they could see the white patch he was working on. Then he lifted the plaster and turned it over, revealing perfectly formed tread marks.
“Nice work,” Cardinal said. “Let’s hope it belongs to the killer’s car and not to some construction foreman.”
Arsenault was a few yards away, just getting to his feet, exclaiming dramatically at his creaking knees. He was holding up a tiny plastic vial, waggling it at Cardinal the way one waggles a stick at a dog.
“Okay, Sherlock,” Cardinal said. “What have you got?”
“Take a look, man. I don’t have words to tell you how good I am.”
Cardinal peered at the vial. It contained a tiny, papery white pocket, like a shred of popcorn hull.
“Is that a maggot casing?” Cardinal said. “Why is this a big deal?”
“Distance from the flesh,” Arsenault said. “Maggots will eventually fall off a dead body. Cheese skippers even spring off a corpse and land maybe a couple of feet away. But this little guy is eight feet away, right inside a footprint.”
“I hope you’re not telling me one of us stepped in maggots and carried them back here.”
“Nope. Footprint’s got deep treads, probably from a hiking boot. None of us is wearing hiking boots, and none of us has been up to the body and back this way. The tape’ll verify that.” He waved toward a video camera perched on a tripod, its red light throbbing.
Cardinal took in the scene again. “You’re right. And going by the tire marks, this would have been where the back of the car was. The trunk. Whoever killed him must’ve come back this way, around the back of the car and then into the driver’s seat. But why would he have a maggot casing on his shoe?”
“My question exactly,” Arsenault said. “Which is why I’m taking this little fellow to Dr. Chin in his own private limo.”
“The other day you didn’t even want to hear about Chin.”
“Obviously I’m learning under your guidance and inspiration. The guy impressed me, okay?”