Forty Words for Sorrow

by Giles Blunt

  "Do you see that look in her eyes?" he'd said. "There's nothing like the look of fear. It's the one look you can trust."

  The girl was tied to the brass bedstead, gagged with her own underpants and then a scarf tied round on top of that. All you could see was the tiny little nose, the brown almost black eyes widened to their limit. Deep pools of terror from which you could drink deep and long.

  "You can do it just like that," Eric had said a few nights earlier. They had been talking by candlelight in the living room, Gram fast asleep upstairs. Eric liked to come over at night and sit with her in candlelight- not eating, not drinking, just talking or sharing long silences. He had been telling her his ideas for weeks, giving her books to read. He had leaned forward toward the coffee table, the candlelight deepening his sharp features, and snuffed the flame with thumb and forefinger.

  And he did it just like that: with a little pinch of the nostrils. Snuffed her little life out with a delicate pinch of thumb and forefinger. It wasn't in the least violent, except for how the girl struggled.

  Edie's knees had wobbled, and her stomach had turned over, but Eric had held her, and made her a cup of tea, and explained that it took a little getting used to but that eventually there was nothing like it.

  He was right about that. Virtue was just an invention like the speed limit: a convention you could obey or not, as you saw fit. Eric had made her understand that you didn't have to be good, there was nothing forcing you to be good. A realization like that was pure jet fuel in your bloodstream.

  That day had been weirdly hot for September, and when the girl was dead the room seemed suddenly full of birds, singing with delicious sweetness. Sunlight spilled through the window like gold.

  Eric packed the body into a duffel bag that he could sling over his shoulder, and they set off in his Windstar for Shephard's Bay where he had rented a small boat. He'd even rented fishing rods, thoroughness and foresight being just two of the qualities Edie admired in him. Eric barely crossed the street without first writing out a detailed plan of action.

  The boat was a twelve-foot aluminum thing with a thirty-horsepower Evinrude clamped on the stern. Once he had started the motor, Eric was content to let Edie steer. He sat in the prow by the duffel bag, the wind ruffling the soft spikes of his hair.

  The wind seemed to tear right through Edie's thin nylon jacket. And it was suddenly colder when she steered out of the bay into the expanse of Lake Nipissing. The clouds fused into a somber landscape, and before long, it became dark as evening. Edie stayed near the shore, and soon they were passing Algonquin Bay, the limestone cathedral white against the charcoal sky. The city seemed tiny from out on the lake, hardly more than a village, but Edie was suddenly afraid that someone on the shore would sense something wrong about the boat- sense something odd in the couple heading into the teeth of a storm. Then a boat would approach, and police would demand that they open the duffel bag. Edie twisted the throttle, and the waves smacked louder at the hull.

  Eric pointed west, and Edie turned the motor so that the town hove round behind them. Across the whole vaporous landscape, there wasn't another boat in sight. Eric grinned and gave her the thumbs-up sign, as if she were his copilot on a bombing run.

  Soon, the island took shape on the horizon, the shafthead rising into the sky like a sea monster. Edie steered toward it and lowered the throttle. Eric made a circling gesture, and Edie took them slowly round the tiny island. There was nothing else besides the mineshaft, there wasn't room. They scanned the lake for other boats, but there were none in sight.

  Edie steered around a rocky point and nosed the boat in. Waves rocked them wildly, and when Eric stood up he had to clutch the gunwale, nearly pitching over the side. He jumped onto a flat rock with the rope. He pulled the boat the rest of the way onto the pebbly beach, the stones screeching against the hull.

  "I don't like the look of those clouds," he said. "Let's get it done fast."

  The duffel bag weighed a ton.

  "God, old Katie's a dead weight, isn't she."

  "Very funny," Edie said.

  "You can let go, now. I've got it."

  "You don't want me to help you up that slope?"

  "Stay in the boat. I won't be long."

  Edie watched Eric stagger up the slope with the duffel bag. Good thing no one had seen them with it: From this distance, it was obvious the bag contained a body. The girl's spine was a vivid curve inside the canvas, the bumps of her vertebrae clearly outlined. There were twin bumps where her heels strained against the fabric. There was a hard straight line where Eric had slipped the crowbar he would need to break the shafthead lock.

  The first heavy raindrops falling into the boat sounded like gravel hitting a bucket. Edie huddled in her nylon jacket. Clouds flew overhead at incredible speed. The waves were frothing into whitecaps.

  Eric had been gone about ten minutes when there was a loud throbbing, and a small outboard appeared at the end of the point. A boy stood up and waved at Edie. She waved back, gritting her teeth. Go away, damn you. Go away.

  But the boat came purring closer. The boy clutched his windshield and shouted, "Are you all right?"

  "Yes, just had a little engine trouble." The worst possible thing to say, and Edie immediately regretted it.

  The boy brought his boat in closer, dead slow among the rocks. "Let me take a look for you."

  "No, it's nothing. I just flooded it, that's all. And now I'm waiting for it to clear. It'll be fine. It's just flooded."

  "I'll stick around, just in case."

  "No, don't. You'll get soaked."

  "That's all right. I'm already wet."

  What if Eric came back out of the trees with the duffel bag still slung over his shoulder?

  "How long ago did you try to start her up?"

  "I don't know," Edie answered miserably. "Ten minutes maybe. Fifteen. It's all right. Really."

  "Let me give her a pull for you." He drew alongside and gripped the aluminum gunwales, grinning. "Can't leave a damsel in distress."

  "No, please. I want to give it a bit longer. It floods easily, this motor."

  From beyond the boy's shoulder, Eric appeared. Seeing their visitor, he drew back among the trees.

  The boy was smiling at Edie. He was a gawky adolescent, all pimples and Adam's apple. "You from in town?"

  Edie nodded. "Maybe I'll try it now," she said, lurching around. She yanked at the cord, and the motor coughed blue smoke.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Eric threading his way through the trees and down to the point. Another minute and he would be directly behind the boy. Something long and black gleamed in his hand. The crowbar, slick with rain.

  "Is the pressure good? Better pump up the tank there."

  "What?" Edie yanked the cord. And again.

  "The rod on top of the gas tank. You probably have to pump it up. Want me to do it?"

  Edie grasped the pump and worked it up and down. She felt the resistance stiffen, and it began to hurt her thumb. She pulled the cord again, and this time the motor caught with a roar. She gave the boy a big grin. Eric was maybe twenty yards behind him, half-hidden among the pines. He raised the crowbar over his shoulder.

  "If you want, I can ride alongside. Make sure you get home okay."

  "No, thanks. I'd rather do it alone."

  The boy revved his own engine a couple of times. "Don't hang around too long. Storm could get a lot worse." There was a clunk as he slipped into reverse, the waves exploding into spray over the stern. When he was pointed away from the island, he gave her a solemn wave and went throbbing off into the storm.

  Edie looked over at Eric, standing like a woodsman among the trees with his crowbar on his shoulder. "Jesus Christ," she said. "I thought he'd never get out of here."

  Eric waited until the boy was a white speck in the distance before jumping into the boat.

  "Jesus Christ," Edie said again. "I thought I'd wet my pants."

  "Would have been simple enough t
o bust his head open." Eric dropped the crowbar, and it hit the floor of the boat with a bang. "Lucky for him I didn't happen to be in the mood."

  Thunder cracked, and spears of lightning flung themselves at the horizon.

  BUMP, bump, bump.

  "All right, for God's sake!"

  She went upstairs.

  The old woman lay festering among the pillows. The air in the room was stale and hot. The television was on, but there was no picture.

  "What do you want?"

  "The thingamajig's gone. It's nothing but snow."

  "You called me up just for that? You know it's always in your bed."

  "It isn't in the bed. I've looked all over."

  Edie flounced into the room and plucked the errant remote from the floor. She aimed it at the television and pushed the button till there was a picture.

  Gram snatched the remote from her. "That's French! I don't want French!"

  "What do you care? You don't have the sound on anyway."

  "What?"

  "I said, you don't have the sound on anyway!"

  "I want company, that's all. People I could talk to if I met them." As if Alex Trebek's going to stop in for tea on his way to the studio.

  Edie opened the window. She refilled the water glass, plumped the pillows, brought up a Woman's Day and a Chatelaine she'd swiped from the drugstore. Oh, Eric, save me from this.

  "Edie, honey?" The wheedling tone was nauseating.

  "I don't have time. Eric's coming over."

  "Please, sweetie-peetie-pie? For your old Gram-Gram?"

  "We just did your hair three days ago. I can't be dropping everything just to do your hair. It's not like you're going out dancing."

  "What? What's that?"

  "I said, it's not as if you ever go anywhere!"

  "Please, honey. Everyone wants to look nice."

  "For God's sake."

  "Come on, honey. We'll watch Jeopardy together." She fiddled with the remote until the sound from the TV was earsplitting. A newscaster was going on about Todd Curry, promising an in-depth report at six. Yesterday's Lode had carried a high-school picture of him, looking a hell of a lot more innocent than he really was. Was it a drug deal gone bad or is there a serial killer at large? Pulse News at Six.

  Edie fetched the basin and washed Gram's hair. It was so thin it took only a few minutes, but she hated the soaked-dog smell. She put the rollers in, while Gram shouted wrong answers at the television.

  Edie emptied the basin of dirty water, and when she was on the landing the doorbell rang, making her jump so hard she dropped the basin. She was sure it would be the police. But when she peered through the curtain, her blood leaped. Whenever Eric appears at my door, the chasm I dwell in seems suddenly a shallow, bearable place and not the black pit I imagine when he's gone. All the darkness seems a figment of my imagination. Then there is air, and hope once again. Suddenly, it becomes a livable place, my bottomless pit. What light breaks over the rim!

  19

  "I must say, it's all very fascinating," the librarian said. She was plump and pale, with bright blue eyes that shone behind a pair of glasses that were unflattering in the extreme. "Not to be ghoulish or anything, but there's nothing quite like a good murder to prick the intellect, get the brain humming, don't you find?"

  "Did somebody mention a homicide?" Delorme said quietly. "I didn't say I was investigating a homicide."

  "Oh, come now. You and that other detective were on Channel Four the night they found the Pine girl. Dreadful business. And when the boy was found in that house. No, no, Detective, you don't forget a thing like that. This isn't Toronto, you know. Have you definitely connected the two? It just gives one the shivers."

  "Ma'am, I can't talk about an investigation in progress."

  "No, no, of course you can't. You police have to keep certain details to yourself- otherwise any old nut could confess and who would ever know the truth? But what could possibly be the motive in such a case? I mean, the boy was sixteen- approximately sixteen I believe they said in the Lode- but that's still a child, and what kind of monster kills a child? Two children. The Windigo Killer, the National Post calls him. Ugh, it makes your blood run cold. You must have some theory you're working on?"

  The librarian, surrounded by stacks of Agatha Christie and Dick Francis, living out her days among towers of Erle Stanley Gardner and P. D. James, seemed to imagine that Delorme had stepped out of a mystery novel for the sole purpose of enlivening her day. A fine sweat beaded on her upper lip.

  "Ma'am, I can't discuss that case with you. Are you coming up with anything?"

  The librarian's attack on her keyboard was like a murder lifted from one of her authors- a multiple stabbing. "This computer system," she said with a frustrated hiss, "is less than state of the art. Quite wretched, in fact. Oh, damn this thing."

  Delorme left the librarian inflicting futile injuries on her keyboard and found the bins of CDs. Around her, readers drifted in and out of the stacks. Delorme had spent a lot of time here as a teenager, even though the library was notoriously short on French books. She had preferred to do her homework here, among the smells of print and paper, the quiet rustle of pages, rather than at home with the hockey game blaring on television and her father yelling at his beloved Canadiens. Of course, Delorme had done a lot of daydreaming here, too. She couldn't wait to go away to college, and then she had surprised herself in her final year at Ottawa U. by realizing she was homesick. It was sometimes weird to be a cop in your hometown- she had arrested more than one former classmate- but the big city was not for her. She had found the people in Ottawa far colder than anything Algonquin Bay could throw at her.

  The library's CD collection yielded no Pearl Jam, no Rolling Stones, but yes, she did come up with the Anne Murray. The plastic cover was smudged and smeared with a thousand fingerprints. She slipped it into an envelope and went back to the counter.

  "My goodness, you're impounding something? You've found actual evidence?"

  "The Anne Murray album. I didn't see any of the others."

  "It seems we don't carry the other two. We never had the Pearl Jam, no surprise there, and the Rolling Stones we used to have but it was so popular it got damaged or worn out or something and it was removed from circulation"- she prodded her keyboard mercilessly-"two years ago. Now, tell me, Detective. Can it really be true you police don't know how that little girl died?"

  "Ma'am…"

  "I know, I know. Just too curious for my own good. But I did dig up those names for you." She adjusted her glasses and peered at a piece of paper on which she had noted the information. "The album you have there was borrowed by Leonard Neff, Edith Soames, and Colin McGrath. As it happens, I remember Mr. McGrath. His behavior was unruly. We had to ask him to exit the premises." She pronounced it premisees.

  "Unruly in what way? Had he been drinking?"

  "Oh, no doubt Mr. McGrath was intoxicated. But there's no excuse for obscenities of that kind. I nearly summoned some of your colleagues- my hand was positively trembling over that dial."

  "And the others- Miss Soames and Mr. Neff. Do you remember anything about them?"

  The librarian closed her eyes as if in prayer, then said with conviction, "Not a thing."

  Delorme pulled out her notebook. "I'm going to need addresses on all three."

  DELORME had ignored Algonquin Bay's retail music outlets. None of the albums was new, all three were extremely popular, and there was no reason to believe they were even purchased in town. Cardinal- except for the possible radio angle- had finally discounted the music altogether. If Delorme had found that all three CDs were held by the library, and all three had been checked out around September 12 to the same person, that might have meant something. But tracking a single piece of music to the library carried no weight at all. After six years in Special Investigations, Lise Delorme knew a dead end when she saw one.

  And yet, following up on the library CD made her heart beat a little faster. The library CD was s
omething she could hold in her hand; it gave the illusion of direction because it led somewhere right now, not a week from now- and besides, the library CD was her only lead.

  Mr. Leonard Neff's address was a modern brick bungalow in Cedarvale, an affluent subdivision of mewses, courts, and places laid out with sterile precision at the top of Rayne Street. There was a hockey net set up in the driveway, where a couple of boys in Montreal Canadiens jerseys were firing slapshots at each other. The Taurus parked out front had ski equipment strapped to the roof rack. Apparently a sporting family, the Neffs. The windows of the house were modern and triple-glazed, not likely to rattle with every passing truck. In any case, Cedar Crescent, Cedar Mews, and Cedar Place (the town council apparently did not waste its creative energy on the naming of streets) attracted little traffic of any sort, certainly not trucks.

  Delorme's second stop was the home of the unruly Mr. McGrath. This turned out to be a small apartment house at the turnoff to Airport Road. Delorme got out of the car and listened a moment. The drone of an Air Ontario plane coming in for a landing. Highway 17 was less than fifty yards away; the traffic was a constant hiss. A woman heavily burdened with groceries tottered up the front steps and struggled with her keys. Delorme rushed to hold the front door open for her and entered the building enveloped in the woman's gratitude. Mr. McGrath's apartment was on the first floor at the far end of the building. Delorme stood in the hallway, listening. No traffic, just sounds from other apartments: a vacuum cleaner, the cry of a parakeet, the metallic chatter of a TV game show.

  The last name on the list sounded like a little old lady: Edith Soames. All right, I know it's a dead end, Delorme told herself. There isn't a chance in hell that Todd Curry or Katie Pine was killed by some little old lady, but sometimes you just go with what you have, you take a flier, you see what happens.

  The Soames address was just two blocks east of the house Delorme had grown up in, and she was sidetracked for a few moments by nostalgia. She drove past the rock cut where at the age of six Larry Laframboise had given her a split lip. On the corner was the North Star Coffee Shop where she had overheard Thйrиse Lortie- formerly a friend- saying Lise Delorme could be a real slut sometimes. Half a block farther: the park bench where Geoff Girard had told her he didn't want to marry her. She recalled the sudden heat of tears streaming down her face.