Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

The dog was back on the couch, but Burnside didn't seem to notice.

As Delorme was putting her boots on, he looked her up and down. She got a lot of that, but for once she didn't think it was sexual. "You're working that Windigo thing, too, aren't you? Well, I know you are."

"Yeah, I am. I'm moving out of Special."

"Windigo's an ugly case."

"Uh-huh."

"A real ugly case, Ms. Delorme. But investigating your own partner, well, there's a lot of cops- Mounties, OPP, you name it- a hell of a lot of cops would say investigating your own partner's a lot uglier."

"Thanks for the coffee. I needed warming up." Delorme did up the snaps of her coat, put on her gloves. "But I never said who I was investigating."

D'ANUNZIO'S was still a magnet for teenagers, just as it had been when Cardinal was growing up. Part fruit store, part soda fountain, at first glance D'Anunzio's had always been an unlikely hangout. But Joe D'Anunzio, with the manners of a monk and the girth of an opera star, numbered everyone who came into his store among his friends. He looked after his soda fountain with the expertise of an old-time bartender and treated his young patrons like his old ones, letting them linger for hours in the wooden booths at the back over their Cokes and chips and chocolate bars. As kids, Cardinal and the other altar boys had always trooped over from the cathedral after Mass, and later, when they had grown out of their surplices and soutanes, they would come to D'Anunzio's instead of Mass- substituting Rothmans and Player's for the frankincense, ice-cream floats and Aero bars for the bread and wine.

Cardinal sipped his coffee and watched the kid playing the video game.

In Cardinal's day it had been a pinball machine. A pinball was more physical, less hypothetical, and for your nickel you got lots of bells and rattles. Under the ministrations of the youth at the controls, its replacement uttered an irritating series of beeps and boops.

"When did that house burn down, Joe?"

"Over on Main there?" Joe served cherry Cokes to two blond girls who had their hair cut identically: buzzed on one side, long on the other. Both sported nostril studs, which looked to Cardinal like chrome zits. In his day the girls had worn their hair long and parted in the middle, giving them- at least to Cardinal's nostalgic eye- a gentle, soulful look. Why did these girls scar themselves with fashion?

Joe came back the length of the counter to the cash register. "November, I think it was. Early November. Must've been five or six fire trucks out there."

"You sure it wasn't later? After New Year's?"

"Definitely not. It was before my hernia operation, and that was November tenth." Joe swung his girth around and poured more coffee into Cardinal's cup. "How could you miss a fire like that?"

Two missing kids. And November was when Catherine had started to drift. Cardinal had had other things on his mind.

He took his coffee to the other end of the counter near the front window. On the west side of the square, a funeral was coming out of the cathedral, four men in black suits bearing a coffin on their shoulders. They had to be freezing with no overcoats on. Across the square in the empty lot stood a man wearing a green and gold parka with matching toque. He was writing notes of some kind, his breath ragged plumes lit by the sun.

Cardinal left the soda fountain and dodged through the traffic on Algonquin. The man was filling in a form on a clipboard. Cardinal introduced himself.

"Tom Cooper. Cooper Construction. Just certifying our lack of progress with the demolition guys. They were supposed to clear the entire mess away by Tuesday. It's now Friday. It's hard to find professionals in this town. I mean real professionals."

"Mr. Cooper, I imagine a contractor keeps an eye out for lots like this. You wouldn't happen to know of any other vacant houses on Main West?"

"Nope. Not on Main West. Got one over on MacPherson. Another one out on Trout Lake. But in town here they don't stay empty long."

"It's just I heard there was an empty place on Main West. Empty in December, anyway. Some teenagers were hanging out there, possibly a drug thing. You hear about anywhere like that?" Cardinal could hear the hush in his voice. Such a frail thread, this lead, the slightest weight might snap it.

Cooper pressed the clipboard under one elbow and squinted west up the street, as if an empty house might appear there. "Nothing on Main that I know of. Oh, but maybe you're thinking of Timothy." He swung back around, seeming to pivot on his heels. "It's not really a Main Street address, but it's on the corner."

"The corner of Timothy and Main? By the railroad tracks?"

Cooper nodded. "That's it. No way teenagers were hanging out there, though. Place is sealed tight as a drum. It's been in probate court for over two years. Contentious family's what I heard."

"Mr. Cooper, thank you. You've been very helpful."

"This wouldn't be in reference to that wretched Windigo thing, would it?"

Cooper, like everyone else in Algonquin Bay, was keeping abreast of the case. Any suspects? Was it strictly a local thing? Any chance of the Mounties coming in on it? You couldn't blame people for being curious. Cardinal had to listen to a theory involving a satanic cult before he could get free.

He drove the half-dozen blocks to Timothy Street, taking it slow over the ridge of the railroad tracks. The northern line was mostly freights taking oil up to Cochrane and Timmins. The hoot of its whistle as it crossed Timothy woke Cardinal every night when he was a kid. A lonely sound but somehow comforting, like the cry of a loon.

The house was an old Victorian place with a wraparound verandah. The red brick above the boarded-up windows was blackened with years of railway soot, so that the building looked not just blind but black-eyed. Massive icicles were fixed to the roof corners like gargoyles. The yard, which was large by Algonquin Bay standards, was surrounded by a high hedge.

Cardinal got out of the car and stood on the snow where the front path should have been. Except for the faint hieroglyphics of bird tracks, there was not a single footprint.

The stairs to the verandah were filled in with hardpack snow. Gripping the rail, Cardinal stomped his way up and examined the front door, also boarded over. The public trustee's seal was intact. The lock had not been tampered with. He checked the boarded-up windows, and then did the same around the side of the house.

The crossing bell started to clang, and as he checked the side door a train clattered by, a long one.

Anyone breaking into this house would be likely to go through the back: There was nothing there but the high hedge and the railroad tracks. And thieves liked basement windows. Trouble was, the basement windows were buried below the snow. Using the heel of his boot, Cardinal dug a trench along the back wall of the house.

"Damn." He'd scraped the back of his leg on the thick crust of ice. About four feet from the corner he found the top of a window. After clearing away the crust, he pulled the rest of the snow away with his hands.

"Gotcha," he said quietly.

THE Provincial Court in Algonquin Bay is on McGinty Street. It's a modern, plain-brick building with no pretensions; it might be a school or a clinic. Perhaps in compensation for its plainness, the sign that announces it as Provincial Court, District of Nipissing, is the size of a highway billboard.

The receptionist told him Justice Paul Gagnon was in traffic court until lunch, and lunch was booked for a meeting.

"See if he'll squeeze me in, will you. It's for the Katie Pine case." Cardinal knew Gagnon would never grant him a search warrant to pursue some runaway Mississauga youth who was now over the age of sixteen. He filled out the necessary form, and while he was waiting for court to get out he called in to headquarters. Delorme was out on the Woody case and was not expected back for at least another hour. Cardinal felt a twinge of guilt for leaving her out of this; she'd been upset about handling his backlog.