Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

Keith tried to focus. God, what was in that drink?

Time passed. Five minutes, possibly twenty. Eric drew the covers up to Keith's chin. "I'm excited about this film, Keith. So is Edie. You're just right for the part. You said you like experiences. This film will be a new experience."

Keith finally managed to work his tongue. "What's wrong with me? I can hardly move." He was sinking down, down into oblivion, so he couldn't be sure if he just imagined this, but Eric Fraser leaned over and kissed his forehead. Then whispered, "I know."

"TELL me how good I am, Cardinal. We have this tape sitting here, I don't even touch it. You wouldn't have waited. You'd have listened to it five times by now."

"It's a character flaw of mine," Cardinal said, still stamping snow from his boots. "Did Len Weisman call yet?"

"No. I got the feeling you didn't want me to bug him too much."

"Two days, though. How long can it take to match dental records?"

Delorme just shrugged. Cardinal was suddenly aware of her breasts and felt his face color. For God's sake, he scolded himself, Catherine's sick in the O.H. Besides which, Detective Lise Delorme may have a cute shape and a good face, but she's also trying to nail me to the wall and I will not allow myself to be attracted to her. If I were a stronger person, it wouldn't happen.

Delorme handed Cardinal a postal carton the size of a shoe box. Inside, swaddled in bubble wrap, lay a brand-new cassette tape. Someone had written across the CBC label in blue Magic Marker: "Digitally Enhanced."

"I borrowed Flower's Walkman," Delorme said. "It takes two sets of headphones." Delorme handed him a pair and they both plugged in.

Cardinal cleared a patch of her desk and sat down, holding the wire that connected them like Siamese twins joined at the ear. He switched on the tape and stared out the window at a grader shooting up a tidal wave of snow. Immediately, he hit the pause button. "It's a lot clearer, now. You couldn't hear that jet before."

"You think it's up Airport Drive, maybe?" Delorme's face when she was excited became wonderfully animated; Cardinal could see the girl she had been. For a fleeting moment he thought he might be wrong: She really had left Special, she really wasn't investigating him. Then back to the horror on tape.

All hiss was gone. When the windows rattled, it was as though you could reach into that faraway room and shut them. The killer's footsteps rang out like rifle shots. And the child's fear, well, that had come through loud and clear on the first version. They listened through the last tears Katie Pine had shed. The killer's footsteps receded from the microphone. Then there was a new sound.

Delorme snatched off her headphones. "Cardinal! Did you hear that?"

"Play it again."

Delorme rewound. They listened again to the girl's last sobs, then the footsteps, and then, unmistakably, just a split second before the machine was switched off, the solemn chiming of a clock. Halfway through the third chime, the recorder had been switched off, and silence followed.

"It's fantastic," Delorme said. "You couldn't hear it at all on the original."

"It's great, Lise. All we have to do is match it to our suspect's clock. The one minor problem, of course, being that we don't have a suspect." Cardinal used Delorme's phone to dial the CBC.

"You got the tape, I take it." Fortier's radio-announcer voice came over the line deep and clear, as if he, too, had been digitally enhanced.

"You did a great job, Mr. Fortier. I'm worried you did a little too well."

"There's nothing added that wasn't on the original, if that's what you mean. With an analogue equalizer you're limited to boosting or suppressing frequencies. With digital, you can play around with individual sources. I split each source into an individual track- one for the windows, one for the clock, one for his voice, one for hers. What you have in your hand is the final mix, not intended for courtroom evidence, obviously, but possibly useful in other ways."

"Can you do anything about the man's voice? It still sounds like he's down a well."

"Hopeless case, I'm afraid. He's just too far from the mike."

"Well, you've done a terrific piece of work."

"Any engineer could have done it- assuming he heard that clock in the first place. I have the advantage of being blind, of course. Even so, I didn't hear the clock till the fourth or fifth pass."

"Sounds like a grandfather clock to me."

"Not at all. Listen to it. It's not nearly resonant enough for a grandfather clock. It's a shelftop- and fairly old, I'd say. What you want now is a clock expert- some gnarled old Swiss guy. You play it back for him, he tells you the make, model, and serial number."

Cardinal laughed. "If I can ever do anything for the CBC, give me a call."

"A budget increase would be nice. And say hi to Officer Delorme. She has a very attractive voice."

"Actually, Brian, you're on the speakerphone here."

"No, I'm not, Detective. Nice try, though."

"You like him," Delorme observed, when he hung up. "You don't like a lot of people, but you like him."

"He said you have a nice voice."

"Really? And about the clock?"

"Shelf-size, probably old. Said we should play it for an expert."

"In Algonquin Bay? What expert? Zellers? Wal-Mart?"

"Must be some place that repairs clocks. If not here, certainly in Toronto."

The phone rang and Delorme picked it up. After a moment, she held it out to Cardinal and said, "Weisman."

"Len, what the hell happened? Where's our dental report?"

"Fucking dentist, I can't believe this guy. Keeps putting us off, screens his calls, doesn't show up, etcetera. Finally, I get ahold of the creep personally and we go in. Know why he's putting us off? Turns out he's been overbilling like crazy."

"What do you mean, Len? What's on the chart?"

"It's full of fillings the guy never did. Makes it look like the kid had enough fillings to pave Lake Ontario. Patient in the morgue, on the other hand, shows only five small fillings."

"But those five, Len, those five. Do they match?"

"Luckily, the work this crooked bastard really did was marked in a different color. Five little fillings marked in red pen: perfect match. Our patient is Todd William Curry."

TODD Curry's parents lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Mississauga, a vast sprawl on the western edge of Toronto that ranges from charmless malls and high-rises to a leafy wood shot through with rivers and streams. They did not live in the leafy part. The Currys had been told to expect the two detectives from Algonquin Bay and consequently had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare; smells of Windex and Mr. Clean hung heavy in the air. There was not a cushion out of place.

"They told us you'd be coming." Mrs. Curry greeted them at the door. "My husband stayed home from work."

"Hope that won't upset your boss too much," Cardinal said to the man who rose energetically out of a well-padded armchair.

"I'm not worried about it. Place owes me about a year's worth of vacation days." He shook hands forcefully, as if to prove that grief could not dent his manly vigor. He even managed a broad smile, but it lasted no longer than a camera flash, and then he sank back into his chair.

Cardinal turned to the mother. "Mrs. Curry, did Todd have any relatives in or around Algonquin Bay?"

"Well, there's his uncle Clark in Thunder Bay. But that's hundreds of miles away."

"What about friends. Maybe someone he met at school?"

"Well, I wouldn't know about that. But there were certainly no friends that we knew of from Algonquin Bay."

The father roused himself out of reverie. "What about that young man who came to stay last summer? The one with the mismatched sneakers."