Black Fly Season Read Free Page A

space. She’s also showing flattened affect and a dramatic level of amnesia. She could be a schizophrenic or bipolar off her meds. Do we know anything at all about her?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Jerry said. ‘She may be local, but I doubt it. She says she woke up in the woods.’
    ‘Yes, I saw the bites.’
    An attendant handed the doctor a clipboard. He flipped a page once, twice. ‘Her chem screen. Negative for intoxicants. First thing I want to do is call the psychiatric hospital and see if any of their patients are awol. If everyone’s accounted for, I’ll call for a psych consult, but that won’t happen till morning. In the meantime, we’ll take a skull X-ray. Frankly, I don’t know what else to do.’
    He opened the examining-room door and brought the girl out.
    ‘Who are you?’ she said to Jerry.
    ‘Do you remember who I am?’ Dr Fortis said.
     
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘I’m Dr Fortis.The kind of trouble you’re having with your memory just now is usually a symptom of trauma. I’m going to take you down the hall and take a picture.’
    Jerry went back to the waiting area. It was filling up now with the usual cursing drunks, and infants wailing from colic or fly bites. He called into the city station to see if there was a missing person report on the redhead. The duty sergeant joked around with him; Jerry was with the Ontario Provincial Police, now, but he’d worked for the city before that, and the sergeant was an old friend. No missing redheads on file.
    Jerry thought about what would need to be done for her. It would be a city problem, not his, but if the hospital didn’t admit the girl, they’d have to find her a place to stay, maybe the Crisis Centre. And if it turned out she was the victim of an assault, it would mean going back to the bar and finding out if anybody knew her, trying to back-track to when she came in and where she was before that. He wondered how she came to be in the woods. She wasn’t dressed for camping.
    He found John Cardinal signing forms, talking to the young man behind the counter. The guy was listening, nodding attentively. Cardinal had always had the knack of making people feel that what they did was important, that how they
     
    handled the details mattered. It was a knack that could mean the difference between making a case and blowing it. Jerry waited for him to finish.
    ‘I think I got a case for you,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t have enough to do.’
    ‘I told you never to call me here, Jerry.’
    ‘I know. But without you, I’m only half a cop. My life is a stony, barren place.’
    ‘Haven’t seen you around lately. I suppose you’ve been snorkelling down in Florida or somewhere.’
    ‘I wish. Been stuck in Reed’s Falls working surveillance. Came across something in town tonight, though. Bit of an anomaly.’ Jerry told him about the redhead.
    ‘No drugs? Sounds like she took a knock on the head.’
    ‘Yeah. No ID, no keys, no nothing.’
    Dr Fortis came back from radiology, a worried expression on his face.
    ‘Something unexpected,’ he said to Jerry. ‘Come and take a look.’
    ‘John should probably be in on it. She’ll be a city case. You know Detective Cardinal?’
    ‘Of course. Come this way.’
    Cardinal followed them down the hall to an office where darkened X-rays were clamped to light boards. Dr Fortis snapped on the light, and the gracile cranium and neck bones of the young woman glowed before them, front and side views.
     
    ‘I think we’ve found why our redheaded friend is in such a placid mood. In fact, we’re going to be sending her down to Toronto for surgery,’ Dr Fortis said. ‘You see here?’ He pointed to a bright spot in the middle of the lateral view.
    ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Cardinal said.
    ‘I can tell you I’m feeling pretty incompetent right about now. Totally missed it on physical examination. I can only plead the thickness and colour of her hair.’
    ‘Looks like a .32,’ Jerry said.
    ‘Entered