Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

"This isn't about parking tickets, Mr. Fehrenbach."

Fehrenbach scanned Cardinal's face for defects and found plenty. "Then what can you possibly want?"

"May we come in, please?"

The man allowed them to penetrate no more than four feet into his home. The three of them were stuffed into a small foyer full of coats. "Is it about one of my students? Is someone in trouble?"

Cardinal pulled out a photograph of Todd Curry. It was a good snapshot that Delorme had sweet-talked out of the boy's mother. His smile was wide, but the dark eyes looked preoccupied, as if the eyes did not trust the mouth. "Do you know this boy?" Cardinal asked.

Fehrenbach peered at it closely. "He looks like someone I met exactly once. Why do you want to know?"

"Mr. Fehrenbach, do we have to stand in the vestibule? It's a little crowded, don't you think?"

"All right, you can come in, but you have to take your shoes off because I've just polished the floor. I don't want you tracking snow in here."

Cardinal left his galoshes behind and joined Fehrenbach in the dining room. Delorme followed a moment later in her socks. The room was light and airy, with plants everywhere. The hardwood floors gleamed, and there was a pleasant smell of wax. Along one wall four massive shelves sagged under their burden of history: Fat tomes were crammed together in rows and stacked at odd angles. Beneath them, a computer was all but buried.

"I won't beat around the bush, Mr. Fehrenbach." Cardinal pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and read the words he had copied there. "Five-four? Hundred and twenty pounds? Good things come in small packages, Galahad, and you certainly sound like the kind of package I'd love to receive."

Fehrenbach's response was surprising. Instead of shock, a look of disappointment crossed his face. Almost sadness. Cardinal read a little more: "In fact, I'll even pay the postage, if you'd care to mail yourself to me…"

"Where did you get it?" Fehrenbach took the paper from Cardinal's hand and scrutinized it through his bifocals. The corners of his mouth had gone white. The bifocals came off again, the eyebrows drew together over the hawkish nose. He would be stern in the classroom. "Officer, this is private correspondence, and you have no right to it. Have you heard of improper search and seizure? We happen to have a constitution in this country."

"Galahad is dead, Mr. Fehrenbach."

"Dead," he repeated, as if Cardinal were a student who had volunteered a wrong answer. "How can he possibly be dead?" A fine sweat had broken out on his upper lip.

"Just tell us about your meeting with him."

Fehrenbach folded his arms across his chest, a movement that threw muscles into sharp definition. You wouldn't want to piss him off, Cardinal thought, the man could do damage. "Look, I didn't know he was a kid- he told me he was twenty-one. Come in and I'll show you- it's still on disk. I can't believe he's dead. Oh, my God!" A hand flew to his mouth- a gesture egregiously feminine in a figure of such heroic proportions. "He's not the one that was found in that house, is he? The one who was…?"

"What makes you think that, Mr. Fehrenbach?"

"Well, the newspaper said that boy was from out of town. And he'd been dead a couple of- I don't know. Your manner suggested it."

Nothing about him betrayed guilt, but Cardinal understood that the person who had killed Katie Pine and Todd Curry could be anyone. He had planned his killings and he had tape-recorded at least one of them. That spoke of control. The profile had said the killer would be able to hold down a job, and he might well prefer employment that kept him near kids.

"Look, Officer Cardinal. I'm a high-school teacher, and Algonquin Bay is a small place. If this gets out, I'm finished."

"If what gets out?" Delorme put in. "If what gets out, Mr. Fehrenbach?"

"That I'm gay. I mean, this is not just a local case anymore- even the Toronto Star's going on about the Windigo, now. And the e-mail- how's that going to look on Channel Four? You have to understand something: From the gay perspective, e-mail is safe sex. It's infinitely preferable to cruising bars or-"

"But you weren't going to leave it at e-mail," Delorme insisted. "You arranged for Todd to come up here. To stay with you."

"You know what my first words were to that boy when he showed up on my doorstep? Oh, no. God's truth. I looked at him standing there- a little runt of a thing, and I said to him, Oh, no- this will never do. Not a chance. You're far too young. You can't stay here."

Cardinal had telephoned Kelly the previous night, sending roommates scurrying in search of her, finally dragging her out of the studio where she had been working late. Her take on Fehrenbach: "Jack Fehrenbach is a world-class teacher, Daddy. He gets you involved in the material, gets you thinking about history. Yes, he makes you learn your dates and numbers, but he also forces you to think about causes and effects. He's enthusiastic as hell, but he doesn't try to be your buddy, know what I mean? He was kind of aloof, when you get right down to it." In response to Cardinal's observation that the man was gay: "Every student in Algonquin High knows Mr. Fehrenbach is gay- and not one of them cares. That should tell you something. You know they'd be merciless, if he gave them any reason. He never did. He's just not the kind of guy students give a hard time to." In short, Jack Fehrenbach was one of the three best teachers Kelly'd ever had- and she didn't even like history.

Cardinal wasn't about to let his only suspect know any of this. "You'll appreciate, Mr. Fehrenbach- having read what we've read- that it's a little hard to believe you decided to turn this kid away. Suddenly you were so concerned about correct behavior."

"I don't care what you believe! Who do you think you are!" The hand shot up again and clamped itself over his mouth for a second. Then he said, "I don't mean that. I'm just upset. Obviously, I care very much what you think. I'd invited Todd to come up here. I felt bad. I made him some dinner, and let me tell you, the conversation was tough going. I don't know about you, but my knowledge of the complete works of Puff Daddy is sketchy at best. I mean, I think this kid's highest ambition was to be a DJ- the kind that scratches records for a living. In any case, he was none too friendly, after I told him he couldn't stay the night. I'm sorry- a sixteen-year-old stranger? In a gay man's apartment? A high-school teacher?- I'm not crazy. I dropped him off at the Bayshore with enough money for one night, his return bus fare, and breakfast. Why are you looking like that? I'll show you his e-mail."

It took a couple of minutes for Fehrenbach to boot up his computer and call up his correspondence. "Here. Look. Very early on- this is our second private exchange. I say, Tell me about yourself. What do you do? How old are you?" He scrolled up the screen. "There's his reply."

Delorme leaned beside him and read, "I'm twenty-one and I'm hung like a bull- what more do you need to know, Jacob?"

"It never occurred to me that he'd be younger than he said. See, most people on-line lie about themselves in the other direction. I've been known to shave a few years off my age. Anyway, it was all explicitly sexual at first, but then when he got iffy about meeting, I realized he wasn't secure with his sexuality. It became more of a friendship then- I didn't want to rush anything, and I suppose I became a bit of a mentor."

Delorme said, "Excuse me, but your correspondence did not look that intellectual."

"Intellectual, no. That doesn't mean it was unintelligent. Look, things may be more liberal than they were when I was growing up, but the fact remains that coming to terms with yourself- accepting that your sexuality is going to be regarded by the majority of people as deviant- is the most difficult piece of self-analysis most people are ever called upon to make. If you're fair, you'll see that our chat becomes much less explicit after the first five or six notes."