Forty Words for Sorrow

by Giles Blunt

  "All your traveling. No doubt you picked up some exotic bug somewhere."

  "Please, Eric. Take me to the hospital."

  "Sorry. Can't. I don't drive."

  "Oh, come on." He tried to sound stern, but it was hard when he could barely keep his eyes open. "You told me you had a van. The other night. You said you'd bring the tape stuff over in your van."

  "My license has expired. I just discovered it this morning. It expired six months ago."

  "Edie, then. Let Edie drive me. God, I'm so sleepy."

  Darkness closed around him. Once more he was drifting down a web-filled corridor, pulled as if on skates toward a receding tower of light. Or was it the CN Tower? Insects the size of cats hung from a low ceiling; their mandibles worked up a foul white foam that dripped on him and scalded his flesh.

  He slept and woke, slept and woke.

  Then finally he woke with a new clarity. Whatever succubus had been draining his energy seemed to have relaxed its grip, and except for the aching muscles, he felt almost normal. He discovered pen and paper beside the bed, even a stamped envelope. He wrote a letter to Karen, a letter filled with love and longing. He remembered her face with tenderness, her body. Details of the physical joys he and Karen had shared came back to him, and he wrote of them in vivid images. He had to stop for a moment; he was trying to think of another word for rapture; enthrallment wasn't right, and he'd already used pleasure twice. Bliss, he was thinking. He was about to write the word, when a noise from upstairs made him stop with pen poised over the paper: the muffled but unmistakable sound of a ringing phone.

  26

  EDIE'S stomach hurt, she was laughing so hard.

  "I've been very sick for a week," Eric was reading. "I'm not exactly sure how long, but you wouldn't believe how boring throwing up can get after the tenth time."

  "See, Eric. Keith liked my ipecac cocktails. My magic barf potions. It's mixing it with the Valium does the trick. Gives it that extra something special." Oh, she loved it when Eric laughed. Why couldn't he be like this all the time? So funny, so easy. At times like this, she could almost believe they were a normal couple, just your normal basic couple enjoying a good laugh together. You could forget the dreary winter and the endless cold. At times like this she could almost forget what she looked like: Oh yes, she had seen Keith London's eyes do that male survey of her face and figure, summing her up and spitting her out, despite his friendly manner. He'd just as soon run her over. But it didn't matter when Eric was with her, when Eric was happy.

  "Better ease up on the ipecac and stick with the Valium," Eric was saying. "Can't have him throwing it up as soon as we give it to him. Listen to this."

  There was a thump, thump, thump from upstairs. God, Gram, give it a rest. I'm with the man I love and I'm having fun for once in my life. Why can't you let us be?

  Eric's response to the summons was just to read all the louder. "I'm staying with a young couple. They're very strange, Karen, but the fact is without them I'd probably be dead."

  "Hear that, Eric? Without us, Keith would probably be dead."

  "The woman, Edie, works in a drugstore and gets all sorts of medicine free. At least she says she gets it free. I have a feeling she's just stealing it."

  "That rotten little prick," Edie said. "He's going to wish he never wrote that letter, Eric. You watch. I'm going to make him scream."

  Another thump, thump, thump from upstairs.

  "Listen to this." Eric read, "I think of you, I dream of you, I miss you. I miss making love with you- you make me feel so good!" There were some very explicit passages after that, and Eric read them in a funny, high-pitched voice that had them both doubled over with laughter, tears rolling down their faces.

  "Eric told me they don't have a phone here, but I heard one ringing just now. It's a little disturbing."

  "A little disturbing, is it, Keith? You find the phone ringing a little disturbing?"

  "We'll show you disturbing, Keith. We'll disturb your balls right off your bloody carcass."

  "We'll disturb your brains right out of your bloody head, you little shit. What's wrong?"

  Eric had suddenly gone quiet.

  "What is it, Eric?"

  He showed her the letter, pointing to a line scrawled across the bottom. It was Edie's address. "How did he remember the address, for God's sake? He was drunk as a skunk."

  Eric folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope they had steamed open. "I'll throw it away. In fact, I'll flush it down the-"

  "What's going on in here? Why didn't you come when I called you?" Edie's grandmother tottered in the doorway, leaning on her walker. Her red-rimmed eyes were pits of accusation.

  "Sorry, Gram. We were just listening to some music."

  "I don't hear any music. I've been banging and banging, Edie, and you didn't come. Banging and banging. Why is Eric still here?"

  "Hello, Gram," Eric said with a sweet smile. "Want me to bash your skull in for you?"

  "What's he say?"

  "Nothing, Gram. Come on, I'll take you upstairs."

  But Gram wasn't finished. You could never shake her off an indictment when she got going. "I don't see why you can't come when I call, Edie. I don't ask you to do much for me. A lot of people would ask a lot more of the person they raised up as if they were their own."

  "It's because she hates you, Grammy. Nothing to worry about. She just hates your stinking guts."

  "Leave her alone, Eric. I'll take her." Edie helped her grandmother get turned around, glaring at Eric over the old woman's shoulder.

  When they were gone, Eric went into the tiny bathroom under the stairs.

  There, he stared at the letter for a long time. He had intended to tear it into tiny pieces, but the erotic sections had captured his interest. He closed the lid of the toilet and sat down to read them again. This Karen must be quite an interesting number. It would be a shame not to send her a little something.

  27

  YOU could have cast Jack Fehrenbach in a magazine ad for hiking boots, all six-foot-eight of him. He looked the perfect outdoorsman- right down to the five o'clock shadow. You would photograph him pitching a tent or frying a freshly caught trout on a Coleman stove. His shoulders were a wide solid shelf, and the rest of him looked to be cut from the same oak. The outdoors effect was softened somewhat by a conservative tie and a pair of bifocals that Fehrenbach snatched from his face to get a better look at Cardinal and Delorme, who had arrived on his doorstep unannounced.

  "I hope this isn't about parking tickets," he said, when Cardinal showed his ID. "I've told them five times- I've told them till I'm blue in the face- I've paid the damn things. I have the canceled check, for God's sake, I sent them a photocopy. Why can't they keep track of these things? We have the technology. Do they not have a computer at City Hall? Where exactly is the difficulty?"

  "This isn't about parking tickets, Mr. Fehrenbach."

  Fehrenbach scanned Cardinal's face for defects and found plenty. "Then what can you possibly want?"

  "May we come in, please?"

  The man allowed them to penetrate no more than four feet into his home. The three of them were stuffed into a small foyer full of coats. "Is it about one of my students? Is someone in trouble?"

  Cardinal pulled out a photograph of Todd Curry. It was a good snapshot that Delorme had sweet-talked out of the boy's mother. His smile was wide, but the dark eyes looked preoccupied, as if the eyes did not trust the mouth. "Do you know this boy?" Cardinal asked.

  Fehrenbach peered at it closely. "He looks like someone I met exactly once. Why do you want to know?"

  "Mr. Fehrenbach, do we have to stand in the vestibule? It's a little crowded, don't you think?"

  "All right, you can come in, but you have to take your shoes off because I've just polished the floor. I don't want you tracking snow in here."

  Cardinal left his galoshes behind and joined Fehrenbach in the dining room. Delorme followed a moment later in her socks. The room was light
and airy, with plants everywhere. The hardwood floors gleamed, and there was a pleasant smell of wax. Along one wall four massive shelves sagged under their burden of history: Fat tomes were crammed together in rows and stacked at odd angles. Beneath them, a computer was all but buried.

  "I won't beat around the bush, Mr. Fehrenbach." Cardinal pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and read the words he had copied there. "Five-four? Hundred and twenty pounds? Good things come in small packages, Galahad, and you certainly sound like the kind of package I'd love to receive."

  Fehrenbach's response was surprising. Instead of shock, a look of disappointment crossed his face. Almost sadness. Cardinal read a little more: "In fact, I'll even pay the postage, if you'd care to mail yourself to me…"

  "Where did you get it?" Fehrenbach took the paper from Cardinal's hand and scrutinized it through his bifocals. The corners of his mouth had gone white. The bifocals came off again, the eyebrows drew together over the hawkish nose. He would be stern in the classroom. "Officer, this is private correspondence, and you have no right to it. Have you heard of improper search and seizure? We happen to have a constitution in this country."

  "Galahad is dead, Mr. Fehrenbach."

  "Dead," he repeated, as if Cardinal were a student who had volunteered a wrong answer. "How can he possibly be dead?" A fine sweat had broken out on his upper lip.

  "Just tell us about your meeting with him."

  Fehrenbach folded his arms across his chest, a movement that threw muscles into sharp definition. You wouldn't want to piss him off, Cardinal thought, the man could do damage. "Look, I didn't know he was a kid- he told me he was twenty-one. Come in and I'll show you- it's still on disk. I can't believe he's dead. Oh, my God!" A hand flew to his mouth- a gesture egregiously feminine in a figure of such heroic proportions. "He's not the one that was found in that house, is he? The one who was…?"

  "What makes you think that, Mr. Fehrenbach?"

  "Well, the newspaper said that boy was from out of town. And he'd been dead a couple of- I don't know. Your manner suggested it."

  Nothing about him betrayed guilt, but Cardinal understood that the person who had killed Katie Pine and Todd Curry could be anyone. He had planned his killings and he had tape-recorded at least one of them. That spoke of control. The profile had said the killer would be able to hold down a job, and he might well prefer employment that kept him near kids.

  "Look, Officer Cardinal. I'm a high-school teacher, and Algonquin Bay is a small place. If this gets out, I'm finished."

  "If what gets out?" Delorme put in. "If what gets out, Mr. Fehrenbach?"

  "That I'm gay. I mean, this is not just a local case anymore- even the Toronto Star's going on about the Windigo, now. And the e-mail- how's that going to look on Channel Four? You have to understand something: From the gay perspective, e-mail is safe sex. It's infinitely preferable to cruising bars or-"

  "But you weren't going to leave it at e-mail," Delorme insisted. "You arranged for Todd to come up here. To stay with you."

  "You know what my first words were to that boy when he showed up on my doorstep? Oh, no. God's truth. I looked at him standing there- a little runt of a thing, and I said to him, Oh, no- this will never do. Not a chance. You're far too young. You can't stay here."

  Cardinal had telephoned Kelly the previous night, sending roommates scurrying in search of her, finally dragging her out of the studio where she had been working late. Her take on Fehrenbach: "Jack Fehrenbach is a world-class teacher, Daddy. He gets you involved in the material, gets you thinking about history. Yes, he makes you learn your dates and numbers, but he also forces you to think about causes and effects. He's enthusiastic as hell, but he doesn't try to be your buddy, know what I mean? He was kind of aloof, when you get right down to it." In response to Cardinal's observation that the man was gay: "Every student in Algonquin High knows Mr. Fehrenbach is gay- and not one of them cares. That should tell you something. You know they'd be merciless, if he gave them any reason. He never did. He's just not the kind of guy students give a hard time to." In short, Jack Fehrenbach was one of the three best teachers Kelly'd ever had- and she didn't even like history.

  Cardinal wasn't about to let his only suspect know any of this. "You'll appreciate, Mr. Fehrenbach- having read what we've read- that it's a little hard to believe you decided to turn this kid away. Suddenly you were so concerned about correct behavior."

  "I don't care what you believe! Who do you think you are!" The hand shot up again and clamped itself over his mouth for a second. Then he said, "I don't mean that. I'm just upset. Obviously, I care very much what you think. I'd invited Todd to come up here. I felt bad. I made him some dinner, and let me tell you, the conversation was tough going. I don't know about you, but my knowledge of the complete works of Puff Daddy is sketchy at best. I mean, I think this kid's highest ambition was to be a DJ- the kind that scratches records for a living. In any case, he was none too friendly, after I told him he couldn't stay the night. I'm sorry- a sixteen-year-old stranger? In a gay man's apartment? A high-school teacher?- I'm not crazy. I dropped him off at the Bayshore with enough money for one night, his return bus fare, and breakfast. Why are you looking like that? I'll show you his e-mail."

  It took a couple of minutes for Fehrenbach to boot up his computer and call up his correspondence. "Here. Look. Very early on- this is our second private exchange. I say, Tell me about yourself. What do you do? How old are you?" He scrolled up the screen. "There's his reply."

  Delorme leaned beside him and read, "I'm twenty-one and I'm hung like a bull- what more do you need to know, Jacob?"

  "It never occurred to me that he'd be younger than he said. See, most people on-line lie about themselves in the other direction. I've been known to shave a few years off my age. Anyway, it was all explicitly sexual at first, but then when he got iffy about meeting, I realized he wasn't secure with his sexuality. It became more of a friendship then- I didn't want to rush anything, and I suppose I became a bit of a mentor."

  Delorme said, "Excuse me, but your correspondence did not look that intellectual."

  "Intellectual, no. That doesn't mean it was unintelligent. Look, things may be more liberal than they were when I was growing up, but the fact remains that coming to terms with yourself- accepting that your sexuality is going to be regarded by the majority of people as deviant- is the most difficult piece of self-analysis most people are ever called upon to make. If you're fair, you'll see that our chat becomes much less explicit after the first five or six notes."

  He scrolled down a couple of notes. What he said was true: Gradually, the content changed from lingering, almost painterly, fantasies to focused discussions of sexuality in general. Fehrenbach's e-mails were as he claimed- those of a mentor addressing someone facing an enemy he had long ago engaged and overcome.

  Toward the end, there was a specific exchange about the logistics of getting "Galahad" from Toronto to Algonquin Bay- should he take bus or train, and how to get the money to him.

  "I'm catching the eleven forty-five tomorrow morning. Supposed to be in Algonquin Bay by four. See you soon!"

  Dated December 19. After that, nothing.

  "You didn't meet him at the train station?"

  "No, I'd already mailed him the money for the train and a cab. By then, I was worried he was not as old as he claimed. I certainly didn't want to be seen in the company of a minor."

  "You're awfully careful, Mr. Fehrenbach," Delorme observed. "Some people, they might say you were suspiciously careful."

  "I have a friend in Toronto- he used to live in Toronto- who liked to have long friendly chats with his students in his office. Private chats, with the door closed. Based on that, and based on the testimony of a boy he had failed, my friend got sent to prison for four years. Four years, Officer. No, no. I'm prudent, that's all. My door stays open-wide open- and I never see students anywhere outside of school."

  "According to that note," Cardinal said, "and according to what you're
telling us, Todd would have been at the Bayshore on December twentieth."

  "That's right. I drove him there. I watched him go in. I stayed in the car, but I watched him go in."

  "Must have been hard to do. You'd had all this hot talk, you were expecting a hot weekend, and then you cut it off right at the threshold. Must have been difficult."

  "It wasn't. You say he was sixteen; he looked fourteen. That's still a child in my book. I sleep with men, Officer Cardinal, not children."

  "We need to know where you were the rest of that weekend."

  "Well, that's easy. I was at loose ends because I had set aside the weekend, and now it was going to be empty. So I took up an earlier offer from a friend in Powassan and spent the weekend with him. On the Monday I went straight down to Toronto to spend Christmas with my parents. My friend will remember. I told him exactly what I just told you, and he had a good laugh at my expense."

  "We'll need a name. And keep in mind that if you call this person to rehearse your stories we'll know it from phone records."

  "I don't need to rehearse the truth. Neither will he." Fehrenbach fetched his address book and gave the details to Delorme, who wrote them all down. He kept leaning over her shoulder, making sure she got it right, as if he were checking her homework.

  Cardinal remembered the respect in Kelly's voice: "How many teachers do you know who get kids arguing, arguing about Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain? The man is Mister Correct Procedure, Mister Memorize Your Dates and Gather Your Thoughts and Review Your Notes Because You'll Be Tested On This."

  Cardinal held out a hand. "Mr. Fehrenbach, you've been very helpful."

  The teacher hesitated, then took his hand.