Forty Words for Sorrow

by Giles Blunt

  Thirteen-year-old Jane had been the cause of it. If she had not been so stuck up, things would have gone smoother, he would have settled in better, he would have been able to relax. But she was always working him up, the way she flicked her hair at him, the way she ignored him. When he had kidnapped her dog, he had found himself strangely free of yearning for Jane. He could talk to her. He could even comfort her, when she cried for her lost pet.

  But less than a week after the dog was dead, Eric was tormented again with a ferocious aching in his chest. Jane had gone back to ignoring him, treating him as if he were a clod of dirt under her heel. He swallowed his pain until he could stand it no more, until finally he determined that- for one night, at least- Jane would pay attention. Beyond this, he did not really know what he was going to do. He was going to play it by ear.

  He stayed awake one night until his foster father's grizzly-sized snores shook the walls of the house. Then he put on his jeans and a shirt- even his socks- and tiptoed down the hall to Jane's door. The door had no lock, he knew, none of the bedrooms had locks.

  Sometimes Jane stayed awake reading or listening to her pink plastic radio, but there was no light under her door now. Eric did not even pause. He turned the knob, stepped right into her room, and closed the door. His eyes were already adapted to the dark, and he could clearly see the outline of Jane's hip beneath the covers. She was curled up facing the wall, her features hidden behind a curtain of blond hair.

  The room smelled of running shoes and baby oil. Eric stood perfectly still for a long time, watching the rise and fall of Jane's rib cage, listening to the soft swell of her breath. She's fast asleep, Eric thought. I can do anything I want.

  He held his hands out just above the outline of her body as if she were a radiator and he could absorb her heat. Then he touched her hair, hooking a yellow strand over his index finger and breathing in the smell of Halo shampoo.

  There was a hitch in Jane's breathing, and Eric froze. You're just having a dream, he almost said out loud, it's just a dream and there's no need to wake up. But she did wake up. Her eyes opened, and before he could stop her, Jane sat up and screamed. Eric covered her mouth, and she bit his hand and cried out, "Mom! Dad! Eric's in my room! Eric's in my room!"

  A long night followed, a night fraught with tears and raised voices, and in the end, Eric's claim that he had been sleepwalking was not believed.

  And so, to his astonishment, Eric Fraser was banished from his fourth and final foster home, not for the abduction and torture of their pet dog, nor for the abduction and torture of their cat, nor for burning their neighbor's field. He was exiled for the apparent felony of setting foot in their daughter's bedroom.

  That was it for foster homes. Instead, Eric was shipped to one group home after another, where his behavior quickly deteriorated. More animals went missing, more fires were set. A smaller boy who made fun of Eric for wetting the bed was tied up and beaten with an electrical cord.

  This last offense landed Eric in the Juvenile Court at 311 Jarvis, his third and last appearance. He was found to be a young offender under the meaning of the Act and consigned to Saint Bartholomew Training School in Deep River, where he remained under the care and guidance of the Christian Brothers until he was eighteen years old.

  The only good thing that happened to him in Deep River was that a fellow inmate named Tony taught him how to play guitar. When they got out of St. Bart's, they moved down to Toronto and formed a grunge band, but the rest of the members were more talented than Eric, and it was only a matter of weeks before they got rid of him. After a succession of progressively less interesting jobs, and a succession of smaller and smaller rooms, he began to feel that he was drowning in Toronto. Oh, that suffocating sensation, as if his lungs were closing down. He made no friends. He spent his evenings alone, with magazines that arrived in plain packaging, his fantasies turning darker and darker.

  Toronto was killing him, he decided. He would move to someplace with lots of fresh air, where you wouldn't feel like you were choking all the time. In his methodical way, he made lists of small cities and their various amenities, finally narrowing his choices down to Peterborough and Algonquin Bay. He decided to visit them both, but the day he arrived in Algonquin Bay he had seen the help-wanted ad for Troy Music, and that had made up his mind. When he met Edie in the drugstore a week later, some inner part of him had suddenly felt stronger. Those first flickers of utter devotion in her eyes gave him the sense that this was someone he could share his destiny with. Whatever it might be.

  But Eric Fraser did not like to think of the past. Those terrible, suffocating years in Toronto, the hostility of St. Bart's. It was as if there had been a bureaucratic mix-up and he had been assigned a cramped little life that had been meant for someone else. His own life, his real life, had been stolen.

  And all of it could have been prevented, he thought, as he drove past the old CN station on the way to Edie's. The whole damn mess need never have happened, if only he'd been smart enough to tape Jane's mouth shut.

  44

  LISE Delorme had not spent a lot of time on stakeouts. She was discovering on Wednesday night that she was not much good at standing around waiting, especially in the middle of the night in an unheated storefront next door to the New York Restaurant. Luckily, the warm snap- assisted by a space heater- made it just about bearable.

  The New York Restaurant has been a favorite with Algonquin Bay's criminal element for as long as anyone can remember, certainly stretching back well before Delorme's time. No one quite knows why, but they know it isn't because of the food, which must give pause to even the most hardened ex-con. McLeod claimed the steaks were Aylmer-issue policewear. Perhaps the big-city name lends it- to the mind of a small-city thug- a certain glamour. It is doubtful in the extreme that any of Algonquin Bay's casual assortment of lawbreakers has been anywhere near New York City; they're no more keen on high-crime cities than anyone else.

  Musgrave thought it was the two entrances. The New York is the only Algonquin Bay eating establishment that you can enter from the bright lights of Main Street at one end and exit into the darkness of Oak Street at the other. Delorme thought it might be the gigantic gaudy mirrors on one wall that made the place seem twice its actual size, or the red vinyl, gold-flake banquettes that must have dated from the fifties. Delorme had a theory that bad guys were in many ways like children and shared the toddler's taste for bright colors and shiny objects, in which case the New York Restaurant, from its gold-tasseled menus to its dusty chandeliers, is a felon's natural playpen.

  And of course the New York is open round the clock, the only restaurant in Algonquin Bay that can make that claim, which it does boldly, in a flashing crimson neon invitation- or warning: "The New York Never Sleeps."

  Whatever the reason for its popularity, the New York is as a result of great interest to the various law enforcement agencies as well. Cops are encouraged to eat there, and often do, smack in the midst of people they have put in jail. Sometimes they chat with each other, sometimes merely nod, sometimes exchange cold stares. Unquestionably, it is a place where a smart cop might overhear useful information.

  "Couldn't have picked a better location," Musgrave said. "Anyone spots you, it's easy to explain how you happen to be in the company of a creep like Corbett. Not that anyone's going to see them at two A.M. on a cold Wednesday morning."

  The former linen shop next to the New York Restaurant had been empty for six months, and the landlord, a bank, had happily provided the Mounties with a key. To cover their activities, they had boarded up the window with an OPENING SOON sign. The only lights in the place came from clip-ons above the electronic gear. Delorme was waiting in the shadows, along with Musgrave and two Mounties dressed in workman's coveralls who- probably on orders- said not a single word to her. The "contractors" had been in place since noon; Delorme had come at nine P.M., entering through a back hall shared with a candle shop. Pleasant smells of sawdust and bayberry hung in the air.

>   A black-and-white video monitor showed a wide angle that took in most of the bar. Delorme pointed to the screen: "The camera's movable?"

  "Corbett said he'd be at the bar. Be very hard for Cardinal to explain how he happens to be at a table, actually sitting down with Canada's number-one counterfeiter. Being at the bar's a little different. You don't control who your neighbors are."

  "Yes, but what if-"

  "The camera's on a turret; we can move it with a joystick from in here. We have done this before, you know."

  Touchy bastard, Delorme almost said. Instead she walked over to the boarded-up window and watched the street through a small hole carefully drilled in the dot over the I in OPENING SOON. She knew he would enter through the back, the Oak Street entrance, if he came at all, but she wanted to be looking at something other than that vacant bar or the backs of her unfriendly colleagues. The peephole didn't afford much of a view. The slush on Main Street was ankle-high. The sidewalks, thanks to their shopper-friendly heaters, were dry. Across the street an arts center that had once been a movie theater advertised an exhibition, called True North, of watercolors by new Canadian artists and an evening of Mozart courtesy of the Algonquin Bay Symphony Orchestra. The snow that had been forecast was coming down now as a light drizzle.

  There were no pedestrians. A quarter to two in the morning, why would there be? Don't come, Delorme was thinking. Change your mind, stay home. Sergeant Langois had called from Florida, confirming her worst suspicions, less than three hours before. From that moment on, her feelings had been all over the place. All very well to talk about putting the cuffs on a man who sold out the department and the taxpayers to a criminal; another thing to destroy the life of someone you work with every day, the actual person, not the abstract prey. Even when she had bagged the mayor- now there was a man who had betrayed the city and had every reason to expect a stretch in jail- Delorme had gone through the same regret-in-advance process. When it came time to lock him up all she could think about were the unintended victims of her expertise, the mayor's wife and daughter. Collateral damage, she thought. I'm some true-believing pilot on a mission, following orders no matter what the cost: I should have joined the Air Force, I should have been American.

  A red-and-white Eldorado came gliding into view, fishtailed a little in the slush, and stopped in front of the restaurant. Bright lights, shiny metal, like something you'd hang in miniature over an infant's crib. Here we go, Delorme thought, too late for regrets now. It's probably just stage fright, anyway. The car had pulled too far forward for her to see who got out.

  A radio crackled, and a male voice said, "Elvis is here," and Musgrave tersely acknowledged. Delorme hadn't even realized they had men positioned elsewhere. She hoped they were indoors somewhere.

  She joined Musgrave in front of the video monitor. On-screen, Kyle Corbett was handing his coat to someone out of view. Then he sat at the bar, well within the camera angle. Corbett looked mid-forties but styled himself like a much younger man, perhaps a rock star. He had long hair, cut all one length and swept back from a knobby brow, and an artistic goatee. His sports jacket was suede, with wide lapels, and he wore a crew-neck sweater underneath. He leaned forward to adjust his hair and mustache in the mirror, then swiveled on his stool to greet the bartender. He flashed a billboard-size smile. "Rollie, how's it going?"

  "How you doing, Mr. Corbett?"

  "How'm I doing?" Corbett gazed up at the ceiling for a moment as if pondering deeply. "Prospering. Yeah, I think you could say I'm prospering."

  "Pilsner?"

  "Too cold. Gimme an Irish coffee. Decaf. I wanna sleep sometime this century."

  "Decaf Irish coffee. Coming up."

  "That's my man."

  Delorme was trying to place what it was about Corbett's manner that was so familiar: the big smile, the apparent thought expended on trivial questions. Then she realized what it was. Kyle Corbett, former drug runner and current counterfeiter, had adopted the kindly condescension of the very famous. Delorme had once seen Eric Clapton in the Toronto airport, cornered by fans, signing autographs. He chatted with them in the same easy yet distant manner that Corbett had appropriated for himself.

  He had swiveled his back to the camera and spread his arms along the bar as if the place were his. "He doesn't look that dangerous," Delorme observed.

  "Tell that to Nicky Bell," Musgrave said. "May he rest in peace." Then he gave a thumbs-up to his men. "Crystal clear, sound and picture both. Nice piece of work."

  The radio crackled again. "Taxi on Oak."

  Musgrave spoke into his radio. "Tell me it's our man of the hour."

  "He's getting out now." There was a pause. "Can't see his face. It's raining and he's wearing his hood. Headed your way, though."

  There was a loud clink of glassware, and the two men at the video console suddenly sat back.

  "Jesus Christ," Musgrave said. "The screen's blank."

  "They put something in front of it. Stacks of bar glasses." Frantic hands twiddled at dials. "It's those huge dishwasher trays they have."

  "Jesus. Hit the joystick. Can't you swivel around them?"

  "I'm trying, I'm trying."

  "Shhh!" Delorme said. "Let's at least hear what's going on."

  Corbett was greeting somebody loudly, expansively, in his best "just folks" manner, and implying for the benefit of any restaurant staff that this meeting of cop and criminal was entirely accidental. "You gonna join me for a drink? Always glad to know a fellow insomniac, even if he's playing for the wrong team."

  The reply was unintelligible. The other person was somewhere out of mike range, perhaps hanging up his coat.

  "You guys always dress like Nanook of the North when you're off duty?"

  "Larry," Musgrave said icily, "fix the fucking camera. We're losing the main event."

  Christ, Delorme prayed. Let's get it over with.

  "What're you drinking?" It was Dyson who spoke. "Shirley Temple or something?"

  Musgrave whirled on Delorme. "Who is that? Is that Adonis Dyson? I thought you fed this pill to Cardinal."

  Delorme shrugged. A mixture of relief and sorrow was flowing into her veins as if from a hypodermic. "I fed Cardinal one date. Dyson got another."

  "You have something for me?" Dyson was saying on the darkened screen.

  There was a crackle of paper. "Invest it wisely. Personally, I like index funds."

  "I got a cab waiting. So I'll get right to the nitty-gritty."

  "What are you scared of? Didn't you hear I'm immune these days? Amazing what a court order can do. I gotta say, the law's really something when it works."

  "It's late, and I've got a cab waiting."

  "Sit down. Don't you haul ass on me. I told you I want a full fucking rundown. I don't pay you for chicken feed."

  "The Mounties are going to hit you on the twenty-fourth. No chicken feed. The twenty-fourth. That's all you need to know."

  "That's the poison pill," Delorme said quietly. "The twenty-fourth. Dyson's the only one I gave that to."

  "And don't clear out this time," Dyson went on. "Leave something for them to find, and a couple of guys, too. You've got nine lives, I realize, but you're running on number ten and so am I, and if they nail me we're all going down."

  Musgrave spoke into his radio. "We're in play. Close the exits." Then to Delorme: "Let's get him, Sister."

  MUSGRAVE went in through the front door, Delorme through the back, each accompanied by two Mounties. Musgrave took Corbett, and Delorme dealt with Dyson. "Really," Delorme told people later. "It was smooth as a business transaction. Corbett didn't put up any struggle. Just cursed a few times."

  Perhaps Dyson had been expecting this ending all along. He folded his arms and put his head down on the bar in the time-honored pose of the melancholy drunk, hiding his face.

  "D. S., would you put your hands behind your back, please?" Delorme had no need to draw a gun, the Mounties behind her were taking care of all that. "D. S. Dyson," she said, louder. "I
need you to put your hands behind your back. I have to cuff you."

  Dyson sat up, his face paper-white, and put his hands behind his back. "If it means anything, Lise, I'm sorry."

  "I'm arresting you for dereliction of duty, official misconduct, obstructing justice, and accepting a bribe. I'm very sorry, too. The Crown tells me more charges are likely." She sounded very much the well-trained, don't-mess-with-me, modern policewoman. But she wasn't really thinking of the Crown, or the charges, or even Adonis Dyson. The whole time she was executing this by-the-book arrest of her boss, Lise Delorme was thinking of that gawky young daughter she had seen outside his house and of the wraithlike figure who had called her away.

  45

  IT was three-thirty in the morning, and Cardinal had the photographs pinned up on a shelf above the stereo, where a Bach suite was playing. He was not a classical music buff, but Catherine was and Bach was her hero. Listening to his wife's favorite music made the house seem less lonely, as if he might step into the living room and find Catherine curled up on the couch, reading one of her detective novels.

  Katie Pine, Billy LaBelle, and Todd Curry stared at Cardinal from across the room like a very young jury who had found him guilty. Keith London- who might yet be alive- was abstaining from the vote, but Cardinal could almost hear his cry for help, the accusation of incompetence.

  There had to be some connection between all four victims; Cardinal did not believe a killer could be entirely random in singling out his prey. There must be some thread, however slender, that united the victims- something that later would turn out to be obvious and he would curse himself for not seeing sooner. It would exist somewhere: in the files, in the scene photographs, in the forensic reports, perhaps in a stray word or phrase, the import of which had been missed at the time.

  A car prowled by on Madonna Road, its motor muffled by the banks of snow. A moment later, footsteps sounded on his front steps.