Cardinal

Commanda finds a confused young woman, alone at a roadside bar. The red-haired woman has no memory of who she is, how she got there, or who shot her. Even after the bullet is removed, “Red” can’t remember anything. He turns the case over to Cardinal and Delorme, who must protect Red while trying to uncover her identity and find her shooter. While on the trail of a stolen gun that may be the murder weapon, Cardinal and Delorme find another victim, not shot this time but ritually murdered and left in a gruesome tableau.

Cardinal and Delorme ID the latest body as the gun thief, Dave, their only suspect, and learn he was murdered almost two weeks before Red’s shooting. Back to square one. Tracking Dave’s last days leads them to the local Northern Raiders biker gang, so they enlist the help of an expert, OPD Staff Sergeant Alan Clegg. With Clegg’s help, they ID a suspect, Raiders chief enforcer “Wombat” and track him to a stash house. They discover it’s been scrubbed of drugs as well as blood. It looks like Wombat was taken, and likely killed.

Cardinal and Delorme retrieve security footage of Red that helps ID her as Terri Tait, a student from Vancouver. Terri claims she still can’t remember anything, but after she sends them on a wild goose chase, Cardinal and Delorme realize she’s lying. When they return to the hospital to confront her about her lie, Terri has fled. The hunt to find her is on, but Cardinal and Delorme aren’t the only ones looking: Terri’s shooter is looking to finish the job.

Having tracked down Terri, Cardinal gains her trust. Terri’s recovered memories give he and Delorme new information to work with and they make progress tracking Terri’s shooter – and her brother, Kevin. But is Kevin an innocent victim, or part of the plot to kill her? Meanwhile, Cardinal’s personal life draws his attention away from the case and Delorme gets tragic news – and an unexpected lead.

During the investigation of a new murder, Cardinal and Delorme uncover a connection between the victim, Terri’s brother, an ex-con, and an Ojibwe drug dealer named “Northwind”. But when Commanda digs into Northwind’s story, he discovers a scam designed to steal the heroin trade away from the Northern Raiders biker gang. As Cardinal and Delorme close in on the killers, they don’t realize one of their own is feeding information to the man calling himself “Northwind”.

While Cardinal and Delorme uncover all they can about the killers, Terri’s shooter abducts her. It’s a race against time as the police try to find Northwind before the new moon, when he is likely to kill again. Cardinal gets a lead on their location, but before he can get there, he faces a deadly threat from an unexpected source. Delorme and Commanda race to find Cardinal before it’s too late.