by Giles Blunt
Background music switches to the Rolling Stones.
A series of distant clicks.
"That could be the camera, maybe," Delorme observed, still at the window.
The girl: "Please let me go now. I promise I won't tell anyone. Take your pictures and let me go. I swear to God I'll never tell anyone."
"… repeat myself…"
"You're not listening! I have to be somewhere. I have band practice. It's really important! We have a concert in Ottawa and if I don't show up they'll call the police! There'll be all kinds of trouble! I'm trying to help you!" [Inaudible.]
"Where? I live on the reserve. Chippewa. But my father's a policeman. He's with the OPP. I'm just warning you. He's gonna go crazy."
[Inaudible.]
"No. I don't want to do that. I won't."
Footsteps approach. Fierce sounds of rustling cloth. Then the girl, barely coherent, "Please! Please! Please! I have to be at practice before eight o'clock. If I don't-" Ripping sound, possibly duct tape. Her voice is a muffled whimper.
Clicks continue.
Music changes to a familiar female vocalist.
Muffled sobs.
More clicks.
More clicks.
A rustling sound.
A man coughs, close to the microphone.
More rustling sounds.
Ninety seconds of silence.
A final click as the recorder is switched off.
The rest of side one was blank. So was side two. They listened to the entire half hour of tape hiss to make sure, Cardinal, Delorme, and Setevic in utter silence. It was a long time before anyone spoke. Cardinal's voice sounded terribly loud, even to himself. "You got anybody in Documents who can tell us more about this?"
"Uh, no," Setevic said, still stunned.
"Because we just listened to the murder of a young girl, and I want to know everything there is to know about this tape. Don't you have anyone in Documents?"
"Documents? Documents people are strictly paper and handwriting. Bunco stuff. But I'll-" Setevic coughed. Cleared his throat. He was a big man, looked like a man who could take care of himself, too, was Cardinal's assessment. But he was still having a hard time with what they'd heard. "I'll give you a phone number," he said at last. "There's a guy the OPP likes to use."
THE new headquarters of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Front Street had cost a scandalous amount to build, and Cardinal could see why. The atrium, bathed in a wash of soft light from the skylight eight floors up, was like an indoor park, profuse with trees. Marble gleamed underfoot. His tax dollars at work.
Cardinal and Delorme followed a luminous receptionist to the elevator. Thin pale men glided across the corridors. The receptionist led them past a series of studios to the end of a hallway. She opened a crimson door, and they entered a dimly lit recording studio.
A man in a houndstooth jacket was parked in front of a bank of electronic controls, a pair of headphones clamped over his head. A yellow bow tie sat primly at his neck. His crisp white shirt looked as if it had just been unwrapped. Cardinal had never seen anyone so neat.
The receptionist announced them loudly, "Your police friends, Brian."
"Thank you. Have a seat. Be right with you." He did not raise his voice the way most people do when wearing headphones.
Cardinal and Delorme sat down behind him on high-backed swivel chairs.
"Oohh," Delorme said, caressing the chair. "We're in the wrong job."
The studio smelled strongly of new carpet- even the walls were carpeted- and the atmosphere had a pleasant hush.
For the next five minutes they watched the technician's pale hands flutter gently over the controls- now nudging a slide up, now tweaking a dial. Lights and graphs blinked along the length of the console. The man's face, with its serious, abstracted expression, was reflected in the glass above the console, hovering over them like a disembodied intelligence.
Over the speakers an interview droned on and on, two gravel-voiced men jawing about federalism. Delorme rolled her eyes and made a spinning gesture of tedium with her index finger. Finally the interview came to an end, and the man removed his headphones and spun around, hand extended into space. "Brian Fortier," he said. He had a "radio" voice, deep and resonant. His hand waited in the air independently of him, and Cardinal saw that he was blind.
He shook the man's hand, introducing himself and Delorme.
Fortier jerked a thumb toward the tapes. "Cleaning up some archival material for rebroadcast. That was John Diefenbaker and Norman DePoe. Don't make them like that anymore."
"That was Diefenbaker? He turned my hometown into a nuclear arsenal when I was a kid."
"You're from Algonquin Bay, then."
Delorme said, "You're from up North, too, you?"
"No, no- Ottawa Valley boy." He said a few sentences to Delorme in French, which Cardinal did not exactly follow, but he saw Delorme instantly relax. Fortier said something that made her laugh like a girl. All Canadians study French into high school, and Cardinal had struggled with it right up to grade twelve. But there had been little call for French in Toronto, and by the time Cardinal had moved back to Algonquin Bay, he'd forgotten most of it. Have to take that extension class at Northern U., he told himself for the fortieth time, I'm such a lazy bastard.
"OPP says you have a tape for me?"
Cardinal took the tape out of the envelope. "The content does not leave this room, Mr. Fortier. Are you comfortable with that?"
"Investigation in Progress. I know the drill."
"And I'll have to ask you to wear these latex gloves while you handle it. The tape was found in a-"
A pale hand flew up to cut him off. "Don't tell me anything- I'll be more use to you if I hear it fresh. Give me the gloves."
He put on the gloves, and they watched his sheathed fingers palpate the cassette, turning it this way and that, stopping to feel and think like small independent animals. "Safety holes are covered up. Whatever's on here, someone didn't want it recorded over. Cassettes are all virtually identical from the outside. What make is this?"
"Denon. Thirty minutes. Chromium dioxide. We know it's a common type, available pretty much anywhere."
"Well, you wouldn't find it in the smallest towns, maybe, but certainly in a place as big as Algonquin Bay. It's not a cheap product. It'll run you five times the cost of the bottom end, maybe more."
"Would you classify it as a professional product?"
"A professional sound recordist- recording engineer, anybody with a passion for quality- would not use a cassette; you want a faster tape speed and the flexibility of more tracks- depending on the job of course. It's up there: Ampex, Denon, sure. But as I say, you can get it anywhere."
Delorme said, "He could have stolen it. Shoplifted it, no?"
"Retailers tend to keep these behind the counter- or at least near the register." Fortier's thin face wagged from side to side for a moment, as if he were sniffing for a lost aroma.
"What," Cardinal said. "You're not happy."
"Second thoughts. I said a professional wouldn't use a cassette. I meant a sound-recording professional. But musicians use them all the time. If I were putting a demo song on tape, for example, I'd use a high-quality cassette like this. There are so-called portable studios made for cassettes- Tascam, Fostex- the sound isn't clean, but with pop music, clean is often beside the point, right?"
"What about stand-up comics, people like that who want to audition?"
"Stand-ups send video. They want you to see how they look on stage. But radio announcers send cassettes to us all the time. Sure, someone like that."
Fortier opened a cassette slot on the console and popped in the tape. Delorme and Cardinal sat watching his back as they listened to the tape from beginning to end once more. The sound was much clearer on the professional equipment, and like an image being focused ever sharper, it became clearer still as Fortier adjusted various dials and knobs. The leather of his chair creaked beneath him as he leaned
this way or that, his hands hovering over the console like hummingbirds.
"Some physical deterioration there. Obviously wasn't stored in optimum conditions."
"To put it mildly."
Under Fortier's ministrations, the tape hiss all but vanished. Within moments, Katie Pine's voice sounded as if she were in the room with them. Her terror in such proximity, her attempts to talk her way out, the fictitious cop father- Cardinal fought an urge to cry out. Fortier cocked his head like a spaniel, identifying sounds as they came up. "Girl's voice: twelve or thirteen years old. That accent, she's got to be an Indian."
"That's correct. What about the male?"
Fortier hit a pause button. "He's too far from the mike to place with any certainty- definitely not French, or even francophone. Ottawa Valley's out, too. Southern Ontario, though, that's possible. He doesn't have those terribly round vowels you get up North. Not a lot to work with there, I'm afraid. He's just too far from the mike."
When the tape was done, Fortier spoke quickly as if afraid he might forget something if he stopped to breathe. "First thing: This was made on a pretty good machine with a pretty good microphone."
"Begins to sound like a professional again."
Fortier shook his head impatiently. "No way. Placement of the microphone is grabbing a lot of air. Lot of noise. A professional gets as close to the source as possible."
"Can you tell us anything about the place?"
"Let me put it through again. I had it set to bring up the voices. Let me set it for the background." He lowered some of the sliders on the console and raised others. His index finger sat poised over the play button. "Just for the record, Detective: Those are the ugliest sounds I've ever heard."
"I'd be worried if you didn't think so."
Almost immediately, Fortier hit the pause button. "Something I can hear that maybe you can't: This is a small room, quite bare. Hardwood floor. I can hear the reverberation off his heels. Hardwood floor… leather soles- big heels, possibly cowboy boots."
Even Katie's voice sounded thin and far away, now. But the footsteps, the rustling of cloth, the slaps- these pressed themselves into the dark studio.
"Not much traffic outside. One car, one truck in the entire, what, fifteen minutes? You're not near a highway. It's an old house- you can hear the glass rattle in the window when the truck goes by."
"I can't," said Delorme.
"I can. Blind as a bat and hearing to match. He's taking photographs now." He hit the pause button. "Random thought for you: Do a soundprint of the shutter and winding mechanism. Then you can record other camera models until you get a match."
Delorme looked at Cardinal. "It's a good idea," she said.
Fortier was still focused on what they'd heard. "I'm no camera buff, for obvious reasons, but the technology on that camera is old- no servo motor, no auto advance, and you can hear the click is mechanical, not electronic. Puts the technology- at the latest- somewhere in the mid-seventies. The shutter is slow, which tells me he's in a low-light situation, arguing again for nighttime, right?"
"Good thoughts, Mr. Fortier. Keep 'em coming."
He restarted the tape. "I'm out on a limb here, but I think you've got an upstairs situation. The car and the truck sound like they're coming from below, slightly."
"Can you really tell that?"
"Listening for the internal combustion engine is one of the first things a blind person learns to do."
"What about the music? We know the approximate date. If we can find out which radio station played those songs in that order, we'll know what day and time Katie was killed."
"Uh, sorry to disappoint you, Officer Delorme, but I don't think that music was coming from a radio."
"But it was by all different performers."
"Yes, I can name them: Pearl Jam, the Rolling Stones, and Anne Murray. I'm sure you know the Stones album, and I can tell you the others, if you like. But two things: First, it's an odd selection of music. The first two selections might be played together on the air, but it would be very peculiar to follow the Rolling Stones with Anne Murray. I doubt if any broadcaster would do that. And, second: There was too long between cuts for that to be a radio station. No radio station- even up North- is going to give you that much dead air."
"But there's no sound of records being changed. He walks over, hits a switch, and the music comes on."
"My guess- well, it's more than a guess- is that it's a home recording."
"He might have borrowed the record, you mean. From a library?"
"It's a CD. Even through two tape players, I can hear that electronic sheen they have- a sort of brassy veneer over everything. Not to mention the lack of tics and pops. Yes, lots of people borrow music from the library and tape it. Drives the copyright folks mad."
"But if he's already using the tape recorder to record what's going on…"
"Right. He would have to have two tape recorders."
16
THE Sundial restaurant just outside Orillia on Highway 400 is as circular as its name suggests. The dining room is bright and cheerful, surrounded with high curved windows, and the waitresses are friendly. Cardinal always stopped here on his way home from Toronto.
Delorme came back from the ladies' room, threading her way through the pink vinyl banquettes. She had a distracted look on her face, and when she sat down, she muttered something about getting back on the road before the snow turned into a real blizzard.
"Can't go yet," Cardinal said. "I just ordered the coconut cream pie."
"In that case, I'll have more coffee."
"Personal tradition of mine: stop at the Sundial, have the coconut cream pie. It's the only place I ever eat it."
Delorme nodded vaguely, staring out the window. In a mood, apparently. Cardinal debated whether to ask her about it. Instead, he studied the paper place mat decorated with Canadian prime ministers.
The waitress brought the pie and coffee, and Cardinal pulled out his notes. "I'm not convinced the radio stations are as dead an end as Fortier thought. Anyway, it's not like we've got twenty stations."
"I'll check out the library, if you want."
"You sound a little depressed."
Delorme shrugged. "When we first heard the tape I thought for sure we'd nail this guy quick- tomorrow, the end of the week, soon. I mean, how often do you actually have a murder on tape? But we take it to an expert and what do we come up with? Nothing."
"You're jumping the gun, Delorme. Fortier may come up with something more by the time he's finished his digital enhancement. If he can bring up the killer's voice…"
"But he said he couldn't do that."
"Well, there's still the camera angle to follow up."
"I admit I got excited about that in the studio. It sounds so scientific: soundprints. But think about it. Even if we can say for sure that it's the sound of a 1976 Nikon or whatever, how's that going to help? Might be different if it sounded like something manufactured last year- might actually lead to a sales slip, a credit card. But an old camera? An old camera could have gone through ten different owners by now."
"God, you are depressed."
Delorme was half-turned in the banquette, looking out at the tiny flakes of snow that had been drifting down steadily since Toronto. A Pop Shoppe truck was pulling out of the parking lot, wipers flapping. After a few moments she said, "When I was a little girl, I used to think this place looked more like a spaceship than a sundial."
"I thought so, too. I still think so."
In the space where the truck had been, a father was helping his tiny daughter with the zipper of her parka. She was wearing a bright green toque with a bobble that hung down to her waist. Their breath joined together in a mist, and Cardinal became aware of the cupboard in his heart where fear and regret were locked away. A crimson thread of fear ran through a father's love for his daughter, he reflected. That's why we're so protective.
"You have a kid at university, don't you?" Delorme's train of thought seemed also t
o be traveling in the direction of daughters.
"That's right. Her name's Kelly."
"What year's she in?"
"Second-year grad school. Fine arts. Straight A's, too," he couldn't help adding.
"You could have stopped in to see her. We had plenty of time."
"Kelly's not in Toronto. She's studying in the States." As you very well know, Detective Delorme, despite the innocent act. Run your Special Investigation on me, if you must, but don't expect me to help.
"Why'd she go to the States? Is that where your wife's from?"
"Kelly's mother is American. But that's not why Kelly went there. Yale's about the best art school on the continent."
"Such a famous university. And I don't even know where it is." It was just possible Delorme wasn't faking. Cardinal couldn't be sure.
"New Haven. Connecticut."
"I don't know where that is, either. New Haven, I mean."
"It's right on the coast. Ugly place." Go ahead, Delorme, ask me how I can afford it. Ask me where I got the money.
But Delorme just wagged her head in wonder. "Yale. That's great. What did you say she was studying?"
"Fine art. Kelly's always wanted to be a painter. She's very talented."
"Smart girl, sounds like. Doesn't want to be a cop."
"Smart girl."
As they headed north through the snowstorm, the atmosphere in the car was tense. One of the wipers squealed every time it crossed the windshield so that Cardinal wanted to rip it out. He turned on the radio and listened to exactly one verse of Joni Mitchell singing "Both Sides Now" and switched it off again. As they approached Gravenhurst, the first rocks of the Precambrian Shield reared up on either side of the highway. Cardinal usually felt he was truly heading home when he reached that first rock cut, but now he just felt smothered.
At Forensic that morning, Cardinal had telephoned Dyson to bring him up to date. Before he could say anything, the detective sergeant broke in: "I have two words for you, Cardinal."
"Which two?"
"Margaret Fogle."
"What about her?"
"I am holding in my hand- hot off the press, so to speak- a fax from Vancouver P.D. Turns out Miss Fogle is not, as some may have thought, a victim of murder in our fair city. Turns out Miss Fogle is alive and well and having a baby in Vancouver." The glee in Dyson's voice came over the phone line loud and clear.
