Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

"I can't search his place without a warrant."

"Of course not. I merely point out that you're partners. You will spend a lot of time together. If you should find yourself in his house- well, use your imagination. Not, I hasten to add, that I think he's guilty."

"I can't run a check when I'm clearing old cases. When am I supposed to look at the Corbett files?"

"I have been known to approve overtime, you know. I'm not the Scrooge people like McLeod and Cardinal make me out to be."

"With respect, D. S., why are we pursuing this now? The Pine case, surely it outweighs all this."

"Kyle Corbett is not just a former drug dealer and current counterfeiter. He's a stone-cold killer, as the world will know, if we ever catch the bastard. If someone's been tipping him off, that is not a petty crime. It's corruption, it's aiding and abetting a murderer, and I want the guilty party off my team- if he is in fact on my team- and in jail where he belongs."

"Me, I think we should both be down in Toronto chasing Forensics."

"Forensics can do their job without our breath condensing on their necks. By the way, there's a stack of burglaries in that backlog that I expect you to clear by the end of the week. We all know who's doing them, it's just a matter of nailing the little creep."

Snow flurries were ticking at the windowpane behind him, and the window reflected as a perfect white rhomboid on Dyson's polished head. Oh, she wanted to smack him.

Now, a pretty Indian soloist finished her rendition of "Abide With Me," and the priest stepped into the pulpit. He spoke for a few moments about the promise that was Katie Pine's life. He spoke warmly of her intelligence and her sense of humor, and the sobbing in the front rows intensified. If it were not for his slight hesitation every time he said Katie's name, Delorme might have thought he had actually known the girl. Holy water was sprinkled on the coffin. Incense was burned. The 23rd Psalm was sung. And then the coffin was trundled to the back of the church, hoisted awkwardly by four pallbearers into a waiting hearse, and driven away to the cemetery where all that remained of Katie Pine would be transformed into smoke and ash.

LATER that afternoon, Delorme carried a box of personal stuff out of her old office and dumped it on her new desk, back-to-back with Cardinal's. She stared down at his things without a trace of guilt. Squad room desks were one right next to another; anything left out was on public display. McLeod's desk was a landfill of overstuffed manila folders, a junkyard of evidence envelopes, affidavits, sup reports: geysers of paper shooting from accordion files.

Beside it, Cardinal's desk was by contrast a field lying fallow. The metal desktops were made to resemble, not at all convincingly, fine oak. Most of Cardinal's with its swirls of faux grain lay exposed to the open air. Pinned to the corkboard above it was a copy of Dyson's latest memo. (The new Beretta automatics: every officer expected to become a shining example with the new weapon by end of February, and let's show the opposition what's what in the annual contest, which the Mounties, damn them, always won. Dyson did not think this could be blamed on budgetary imbalances.)

There was a picture of Cardinal's daughter, a pretty girl with her father's confident smile, and beside this, a parking ticket. Delorme leaned over without touching anything to read the address on the parking ticket: 465 Fleming Street, right downtown, it could mean anything.

The Rolodex was open to Dorothy Pine's number. Delorme flipped it back to A, and for the next twenty minutes made her way through to F, not looking for anything definite. It was full of hastily scrawled names that meant nothing to her, along with the numbers of various lawyers, probation officers, and social workers that any cop would have on hand. There was Kyle Corbett, but you'd expect that. It listed three different addresses and several phone numbers, which Delorme copied into her notebook.

There was a noise from out front, and Delorme turned back to face her own desk. Low voices, laughter, a slamming locker. Delorme lifted the handset on Cardinal's phone and hit the automatic redial button. While waiting for it to pick up, she stared at a snapshot pinned next to Dyson's memo. It was a felon, obviously- a huge man with a flat head made flatter by a brush cut. He was leaning back, apparently at ease, on a car, his weight seriously depressing the vehicle's springs. Cops often kept pictures of their favorite collars, men who had shot them, that kind of thing.

Delorme's reflections were interrupted by a voice she recognized. "Office of Forensic Medicine."

"Oh, sorry. Wrong number."

Cardinal's top drawer was open, hardly the habit of a guilty man- on the other hand, possibly the calculated gesture of a man who was very guilty indeed.

The door banged open and a voice called out, "Well, well. Imagine my surprise to find the office of Special Investigations taking her own private inventory."

"Give me a break, McLeod. I work here now, remember?"

"On Sundays, too, apparently." McLeod was carrying a big cardboard box labeled CANADIAN TIRE. He eyed her suspiciously over the top through red-rimmed lids. "Thought I was the only dedicated bastard in this place."

"You are. I was just moving some of my stuff over," said Delorme.

"Fine. Welcome. Make yourself at home." McLeod slammed the box down on his desk. Something inside it clanked. "Just stay away from my desk."

CARDINAL called Vlatko Setevic in Forensic's Micro section. They had taken hair and fiber from Katie Pine's thawed-out body.

"Quite a few fibers we found. Indoor/outdoor stuff. The kind they use in cars or basements. Fibers are red, trilobal."

"Can you narrow it down to makes? Ford? Chrysler?"

"No chance. It's very common, except for the color."

"Tell me about the hair."

"Exactly one hair we found- other than the girl's own. Three inches long. Brown. Probably Caucasian."

Delorme looked disgusted when Cardinal told her the results. "It's no use for anything," she said, "unless we get another body."

Cardinal spent the next two days on the phone, chasing down the out-of-town cases: calls to originating police departments, calls to parents or others who made the initial complaints. Delorme helped out, when she wasn't following up on old robberies. They cleared five more cases. That left two that looked like they might have finished up in Algonquin Bay: a St. John's girl who had been seen in the local bus station and a sixteen-year-old boy from Mississauga, near Toronto.

Todd Curry had been reported missing in December. The notice was just the standard fax sent to all police departments in such cases; the photo was not high-definition. One thing caught Cardinal's eye: The kid's size was listed as five-four, ninety-five pounds. To a killer with a taste for runts, Todd Curry might look like prime prey.

Cardinal called the Peel Regional Police and established that none of the boy's parents or friends had heard from him in the past two months. Missing Persons gave him the name of a relative in Sudbury, Clark Curry.

"Mr. Curry, this is John Cardinal, Algonquin Police."

"I imagine you're calling about Todd."

"What makes you say that, sir?"

"The only time I hear from the police is when Todd is in trouble. Look, I'm just his uncle, I've done all I can. I can't take him back this time."

"We haven't found him. We're still trying to track him down."

"A Mississauga boy is being sought by the Algonquin Bay police? He's really turning into a federal case."

"Has Todd contacted you since December? December twentieth, to be exact?"

"No. He was missing all through Christmas- his parents were frantic, as you can imagine. He called me from Huntsville – this was the day he took off- called from Huntsville and says he's on the train, can he stay with me. I told him he could, but he never arrived, and I haven't heard anything since. You have to understand, this is one messed-up kid."