Forty Words for Sorrow

by Giles Blunt

  "The Algonquin Mall, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Mrs. Pine, thank you."

  Delorme tossed him his down coat. She already had hers on.

  "Grab Collingwood. I want a scene man with us."

  EVEN a place the size of Algonquin Bay has a rush hour, and rivers of slush made the going even more mucilaginous than usual. It was not quite six o'clock, and they had to use the siren on the bypass, and then again on Lakeshore. Collingwood sat in the back of the car, whistling under his breath.

  Cardinal tried to look nonchalant as they went through the mall, but there was a rush hour here, too, and he found himself pushing people aside outside Pharma-City to get to the music store.

  "Mr. Troy, is Carl Sutherland here?"

  "He has a pupil at the moment. Can I help you with something?"

  Cardinal headed to a series of doors past the counter and beyond the shelves of guitars. "Which room?"

  "Wait a minute, now. What on earth is this about?"

  "Collingwood, stay here with Mr. Troy."

  The first door was a supply closet. In the second, a startled woman looked up from the piano where she was counting aloud to a metronome. In the third room, Carl Sutherland was shaping the little fingers of a ten-year-old boy around a guitar chord. He looked up sharply.

  "Are you Carl Sutherland?"

  "Yes?"

  "Police. Would you come with us, please?"

  "What do you mean? I'm in the middle of a lesson."

  "Would you excuse us?" Delorme said to the boy. "We have something to discuss with Mr. Sutherland."

  When the boy was gone, Cardinal shut the door. "You gave Billy LaBelle guitar lessons, didn't you?"

  "Yes. I already talked to the police about-"

  "And you also knew Katie Pine, didn't you?"

  "Katie Pine? The girl who was murdered? Absolutely not. I saw her picture in the paper, but other than that I never saw her in my life."

  "Our information is different," Delorme put in. "Our information says Katie Pine was in here two days before she disappeared."

  "If she was, I didn't see her. Why are you coming to me? It's a big mall out there. Everybody in town goes through."

  "Everybody in town doesn't get picked up for public indecency, Mr. Sutherland."

  "Oh, God."

  "Everybody in the mall doesn't get arrested for exposing himself in the back seat of a porno theater."

  "Oh, God." Sutherland swayed slightly in his seat, his face utterly white. "I thought that was over and done with."

  "You want to come down to the station and tell us about it? Or maybe we should ask your wife."

  "You can't bully me like this. I was acquitted on that charge." Sutherland's voice was now harsh, indignant, but his face was still white. "I'm not proud of what happened. But I don't see why I have to be humiliated over it, either. A pitch-dark theater is not public. It's not public, and the judge agreed. Besides which, what went on was entirely between consenting adults and it's none of your business."

  "Billy LaBelle is our business. You were one of the last people to see him alive."

  "Well, what does this have to do with Billy LaBelle?"

  "Why don't you tell us?" Delorme said. "You were his teacher."

  "Yes, I was Billy's guitar teacher. I've already discussed all this. Billy left the store one Wednesday night- the same as every other Wednesday night- and I never saw him again. It's very sad. Billy was a really nice kid. But I didn't do anything to him. I swear I didn't."

  "Are you telling us you don't know this boy?" Cardinal produced the photo of Keith London playing guitar.

  "I don't. I don't know every kid that happens to play guitar."

  Sutherland hadn't been phased at all by the picture. He was scared, yes, he was shaken, but the picture of Keith London did not seem any particular threat. Cardinal's certainty began to slip. He pulled out the picture of Katie Pine.

  "That's the girl who was killed. I recognize her from the papers. Other than that I don't think I've ever seen her."

  "She was in here two days before she disappeared. She bought a musical charm for her bracelet. You sell them out front."

  "She could have got it somewhere else."

  "She bought it here."

  "I never saw the girl, I'm telling you. Look in the inventory, and you'll see."

  "Inventory?"

  "We've had computerized inventory for years, now. It'll tell you who sold the thing to her. It's not like we sell a million of them. Three or four a month, I'd say."

  As they came out of the practice room, Alan Troy called, "What is it, Carl? What's going on?" But Sutherland ignored him, leading Cardinal and Delorme to a cramped office in the back. Almost buried among stacks of invoices, a computer screen glowed with columns of numbers. Sutherland sat down and typed in a couple of commands. The screen went dark, except for the cursor pulsing in the top left corner.

  "You have the date?" he asked without looking at them. "The date the girl disappeared?"

  "September twelfth, last year. She bought the charm two days before."

  "Fine. Now, I need the item number." He consulted a printout the size of a telephone book, flipping through the double-sized pages until he found what he wanted. He typed in the number. "This should tell us how many we sold in the past year." He drummed his fingers on the desk as he waited. "Seven. Okaaay…" He typed in another command, the monthly breakdown.

  "September tenth." Delorme pointed at the screen. "Two days before."

  Sutherland moved the mouse and clicked. The screen filled up with a copy of the register receipt. He tapped the long fingernail of his right hand on the upper right corner. "You see that number three? That's the salesperson. One is Alan, two is me, three is Eric."

  "Eric who?"

  "Eric our part-timer. Eric Fraser. Mostly he helps with the stock, but busy times- lunch hours, after-school rush- he helps with the cash, too. If you look at the top left there you can see the time of the transaction: four-thirty P.M. If you look at our calendar, it's going to show you I was teaching a lesson at that time. I think you want to talk to Eric Fraser."

  "Mr. Sutherland, is there anything around here that Mr. Fraser touched recently? Something nobody else touched?"

  Sutherland thought for a minute. "Follow me."

  Alan Troy dodged around Collingwood, finger jabbing the air, demanding to know what was going on. Sutherland cut him off. "Alan, did Eric polish the Martins yesterday?"

  "I'm calling the chief of police on this. My employees do not get treated in this way. These people have to-"

  "Alan, for Chrissake, just tell them. Did Eric polish the Martins yesterday?"

  "The Martins?" Troy squinted first at Sutherland, then at Delorme, then at Cardinal, and back to Sutherland. "You want to know if Eric polished the Martins. Suddenly the urgent question of the moment is, did Eric Fraser polish the Martins? All right, then, yes. Eric did polish the Martins."

  Cardinal asked if anyone else had touched the guitars. No. Business had been slow, Martins are expensive, no one had touched them.

  Cardinal, still wearing his gloves, reached up for the guitar hanging against the wall. "He'd have to hold it at the bottom to put it back up there, right?"

  Mr. Troy, his anger giving way to fascination, nodded. Cardinal held the guitar out toward Collingwood.

  Collingwood, silent as ever, dusted a small amount of powder along the top of the soundboard, then blew it off. Two perfect thumbprints took shape. He pulled the Forensic card from his pocket, the thumbprints lifted from Arthur Wood's throat.

  "Perfect match," Collingwood said. "Perfect match, plain as day."

  50

  ERIC and Edie had been right about duct tape. It was even more effective- and less trouble for them- than the drugs. Strain as he might, Keith London could not get the tape to give even a sixteenth of an inch. Each wrist, each ankle was securely fastened. The only tape he had managed to loosen at all was the tape on his mouth. By wetting it
, he had gradually loosened it so he could actually make audible sounds now.

  But there was some give in the wooden chair to which he was fastened. Rocking from side to side, he could feel the joints loosening.

  Whenever Eric and Edie were out of the house, as they were now, Keith rocked from side to side, feeling the joints widening, the screws chewing their way through the wood. They hadn't fed him for a couple of days now, and his efforts were exhausting. He had to stop every few minutes to catch his breath.

  Eric and Edie would be moving him soon. They would inject him with a sedative and haul him to some isolated place and- He tried to banish from his mind the memory of the videotape.

  He had been rocking for over an hour this morning, ever since he had woken up; his wrists and ankles were chafed raw; his wounded leg was pure agony. But there was some progress, he could feel some give in the chair. It leaned about twenty degrees to either side when he shifted his weight.

  He paused, listening. Footsteps crossed the ceiling, and then there was the sound of chairs scraping. Eric and Edie were directly overhead. Keith started rocking again, despite his terror that they would hear him. No, he told himself, the chair is on concrete, the noise won't travel, they won't be able to hear.

  He leaned again, side to side, side to side, rocking the chair and straining at the tape. Once. Twice. Three times. Yes, the chair back was definitely looser. He could twist it a little now. If he could just put strain in the right place, shift his weight over just the right spot, put stress where the chair back joined the seat, it could be broken.

  UPSTAIRS, Eric opened the duffel bag- Keith's duffel bag- and emptied it onto the floor. He felt no sense of trespass, exposing another's personal belongings: the pairs of socks, neatly folded, the long underwear slightly stained. There were sunglasses and suntan lotion- Christ, was he planning to take up skiing?- a Frommer's guide to Ontario and a dog-eared paperback of The Glass Bead Game.

  Eric stood up and brushed off his jeans. "I'll read from the list. You put the stuff in the bag." He took the list from his back pocket and unfolded it. "Duct tape."

  Edie pulled it from the drawer beside the fridge and put it in the duffel. "Duct tape."

  "Rope."

  Edie picked up the tight coil of clothesline, purchased in Toronto, and put it into the bag.

  "Screwdriver, flat head…"

  "Screwdriver, flat head."

  "Screwdriver, Phillips head…"

  "God, Eric. Who else would make a list of screwdrivers? Whole categories of screwdrivers."

  Eric looked at her coolly. "Someone else would get caught. Pliers…"

  "Pliers."

  "Blowtorch…"

  "We'd better test it, first. Make sure it works." Edie pulled a box of kitchen matches from the drawer. Eric opened a brass collar on the blowtorch, and the nozzle started to hiss. Edie struck the match and held it out; the torch lit with a pok. She turned the collar and the blue bullet-shaped flame nearly caught Eric's sleeve. "Oo," she said. "This'll be incredible." She turned the collar, and the flame slipped back into the bottle like a tongue.

  "Crowbar…"

  "We don't have a crowbar."

  "I left it here after the island. It's down in the basement, beside the stairs."

  Edie left the table and headed for the basement.

  "Check on the prisoner while you're at it."

  Eric took a filleting knife out of his knapsack. He unsheathed it and tested it with his thumb. He turned toward the basement and called, "Bring a whetstone, too, if you have one!"

  He pulled the shrink wrap off a package of PowerUp and laid out six pills along the edge of the table. He found a glass in the cupboard and ran the water until it was cold and clear. Then he sat at the table and took the tablets one by one, shaking his head each time to help them go down. A shiver ran up his spine.

  "Edie!" He yelled again at the doorway. "Bring a whetstone!" He listened for a moment, one ear cocked toward the basement. Then he set down his glass of water, very deliberately, not making a sound. He sheathed the filleting knife and stuck it in his front pocket. He moved to the top of the stairs. This time, he spoke quietly, "Edie?"

  "Come and get her, you pathetic prick."

  Eric stepped softly down the stairs. He could get around this, he could handle it. Everything depended on conquering emotion. At the bottom of the stairs he picked up the crowbar and hooked it on his belt behind his back. It felt heavy and it dangled precariously, but it would not be visible from the front- unless it fell from his belt.

  Eric took a deep breath and stepped into the tiny room. It stank of shit and fear. The chair was a tangle of tape and broken wood. The prisoner had Edie from behind, a wooden bar- a piece of the chair- pressed against her throat.

  "Lie down on the floor."

  "No. Let her go."

  "Lie down on the floor, or I'll break her neck."

  He won't kill anyone, Eric thought. If he was strong enough to kill, he would have forced Edie to the top of the stairs. Edie was looking frightened and ugly, her skin glistening where the eczema cracked and wept, her whimpering muffled by duct tape. The wooden bar pressed tighter against her throat, and her face purpled.

  "Lie down on the fucking floor! I'll kill her, you creep, I don't give a fuck."

  Remain calm, Eric told himself. The prisoner is half-starved, he's terrified, and he's still wounded- how strong can he be? If we fight, I will win. Remain calm. Think. "The problem, Keith, is that once I lie down, there's nothing to stop you killing us."

  "I'll kill her right now, if you don't."

  "Calm down, Keith. You're choking her."

  "Damn right I am." His words were tough, but tears were streaming down the prisoner's face; he was sobbing so hard he could hardly speak. A weird reaction, Eric thought. Was it nerves? Was it self-pity? Whatever the prisoner's emotional state, the wooden bar was biting cruelly into Edie's throat. Oh, prisoner, you are making such a mistake, you will die so badly for this.

  "You've got a knife in your front pocket. I can see the handle. Take it out slowly and toss it over here."

  Eric did as he was told, bringing the knife out, sheath and all, and tossing it past the prisoner where he could not reach it.

  "Now get the fuck down on the floor." Eric hesitated, and the prisoner started shrieking, "Do it now!" over and over again until Eric started to lower himself toward the floor.

  Behind him, the crowbar hung heavily from his belt. The problem was, he couldn't swing it at the prisoner without bashing Edie. "I'm getting down, Keith. Just don't hurt anyone, all right? I'm getting down." He sank slowly toward his knees.

  What happened next took only a moment to unfold. Eric reached behind for the crowbar. Keith screamed something at the top of his lungs and pulled back on Edie's throat, trying to shield himself with her. But Eric didn't swing for the prisoner, he swung for Edie.

  The iron bar caught her a solid blow to the side of the head. Her knees buckled, and she sank toward the floor. The prisoner staggered and lost his grip. He launched himself toward the door, but by then Eric had flipped the crowbar so that he was holding it by the straight end. The prisoner was not even halfway out when the crowbar hit him- a terrible blow to the back of his neck just below the skull- and he crumpled like a poleaxed cow.

  51

  THE address, according to Troy's records, was 675 Pratt Street East; they were heading there now, without sirens. The radio had been predicting a snowstorm, but the warm patch had held and rain hammered on the roof of the car. The wipers squawked on the windshield. Cardinal had already called for backup, plain dress, but there were no cars in sight when they got to the corner of Pratt and MacPherson.

  "I didn't know there was anything after the five hundred block," said Delorme. At the end of the five hundred block, the ONR tracks crossed Pratt Street, and after that the road wasn't even paved, and the small ratty houses on the far side were hidden behind a rock cut.

  The radio sprayed static, and Mary Flower's
voice filled the car. "Could be a wait for backup. Jackknifed tractor-trailer on the overpass's got traffic backed up for two miles."

  "Acknowledged," Cardinal said into the mike. "What's the computer say about Eric Fraser?"

  "Nada. Zero locally on Eric Fraser. Nada."

  "Doesn't surprise me," Cardinal said. "Troy says he can't be more than twenty-seven, twenty-eight."

  "Also zero for nationwide," Flower said. "Clean as a whistle."

  "What about Juvie? That's where we'll find him, if he has a record."

  "Hold on. Juvie's coming." They heard Flower scream to someone to bring her the printout sometime before next Christmas. "Bingo on Juvie. You ready?"

  "Cruelty to animals," Cardinal said to Delorme. "Bet you anything. Go ahead, Mary."

  "Age of thirteen, break and enter. Age of fourteen, break and enter. Age of fifteen, cruelty to animals."

  "That's our boy," Delorme said.

  A faint electrical charge tingled along Cardinal's fingertips. If he had to resign, this was the way to go: stop a serial killer in mid-career- you couldn't ask for a better exit.

  McLeod pulled up at the corner by MacPherson, wipers flapping. Cardinal had warned everyone to stay away from the house till he got there. When McLeod saw them he got out of the car and came sprinting across the intersection, holding his hood up with one hand against the rain. He climbed in the back with Collingwood, cursing. "Fucking February, I ask you. Who ever heard of a fucking monsoon in February? It's the fucking pollution from Sudbury doing it. Whole fucking town's melted."

  Flower said, "Fraser also did a stint at St. Bartholomew's Training School. Two years less a day."

  "Assault, I bet," Cardinal said into the mike.

  From the radio, "Aggravated assault. Had a disagreement with his shop teacher concerning the whereabouts of certain equipment."

  "And he did some carving on him, right?"

  "Nope. Right there in class. Went after him with a blowtorch."

  52

  KEITH London dreamed he was swimming in a bright green pool, deep in a jungle, where monkeys sat in a row upon a low-hanging branch and drank thirstily with cupped hands. Except for the ripples that spread outward from the monkeys' hands, the surface was tranquil as jade. The smell of water was strong.