Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

"Sir, I think this could clear the air relatively-"

The chief cut her off with a wave of the hand. "I'm rather surprised that you're seriously- you are serious, aren't you? Yes, I can see you are- proposing to wiretap your own partner."

"With respect, sir. You're the one who assigned me to investigate him. Well, you and Dyson. If you want me to stop, I'd be happy to stop anytime."

"You see this?" Kendall pointed to a frigate parked in the midnight-blue St. Lawrence. "This assembly here, with the mainmast and stays? Just that part of this project took a week to put together."

"Incredible."

"Sometimes making a thing convincing takes a little time, Sergeant Delorme. A little patience. I hope you're not entirely lacking in that quality."

"My plan is better than thumbing through those endless files. If you look at it objectively, sir, I think you'll agree."

"I am. Hand me the little silver tube, would you? Thank you." Using the point of a pin, the chief dabbed a trace of glue onto a cannonball the size of a bug's eye, and set it onto a tiny stack. "You're still intent on leaving Special Investigations, I suppose. Hate to lose someone with a record like yours."

"Well, Chief, you're not losing me. I'm just moving over into CID."

"I know, I know. But Special Investigations- one could make the case that it's the most important part of the department. Take away Special Investigations, you've got a brain, certainly- all the motor functions are intact- but without Special Investigations, you've got a brain without a conscience. And that, my young friend, is a dangerous thing."

Delorme tucked away that young somewhere warm for later examination. "Sir, if we give him something no one else knows- even if we don't get him on the tap- we'll know he's the guy."

"I have one question." The chief was bending the limbs of a soldier into a climbing position. He dabbed glue onto each miniature hand and knee and pressed the figure into position against the face of a cliff. Then he turned to face Delorme, and his gaze was suddenly almost sexual in its intensity. "Why are you bringing this to me? Why aren't you bringing it to Dyson?"

"I'm working closely with Dyson, sir. But for this plan to stand up in court, there has to be no chance of anyone else having the same tainted information as Cardinal. You and I will be the only ones who know."

"Of course you must do it, there's no question. The sooner the better. Is Corporal Musgrave on board?"

"More than on board, sir. He can't wait."

"Good. Talk to a JP and get your approval."

"We've got it, sir. Musgrave got it."

Kendall cut loose with that big laugh of his, Hah! Hah! Hah! Delorme felt the variation in pressure on her eardrums along with considerable relief. Then the chief held her once more with that prehensile gaze. "Listen to me, young Delorme. I'm older than you and wiser- they're possibly the only reasons I'm your boss, but they're good reasons, so hear me: I have read up on Corporal Musgrave, and Corporal Musgrave is hot to trot, Corporal Musgrave is a barn-burner, Corporal Musgrave does not like our inscrutable Mr. Cardinal. If said Musgrave were under my command, which he is not, he would not be on this case. So you be careful. I'm not saying he's the type to manufacture evidence, but he is the type to blow a case with an excess of zeal. So you be sure and keep your head- which is where, at the moment?"

"Sir?"

"Where is your head on this case, Delorme? How do you see your Cardinal at this point?"

"Do I have to answer that, Chief?"

"Certainly."

Delorme looked up at the ceiling, staring at the exposed beams.

"I'm waiting."

"To be perfectly honest, sir, I don't know. I do know there's no hard evidence against him. Nothing that would stand up to a good defense lawyer. So me, I consider him innocent until proven guilty."

"You're being legalistic. Is that out of loyalty? Are you too close to Cardinal to be objective? You can speak honestly."

"I don't know, Chief. I'm not a very introspective person."

Kendall laughed again, hard and loud, as if Delorme had told a fabulous joke, then he stopped as suddenly as he had started, and the quiet that followed was deep, like the quiet that follows the silencing of a car alarm. "You bring this guy in, you understand me? If he has been selling out to some godless thug, I want him off the force and I mean now. If he hasn't, the sooner you're off his case the better. I'm not a very introspective person, either, Sergeant Delorme. Which means without facts I tend to become bored and upset. You don't want to see me bored and upset."

"No, sir."

"So, run your little experiment. And Godspeed."

AN Ontario Hydro lineman named Howard Bass was repairing a transformer out on Highway 63, about five posts north of the Trout Lake marina. The job required a whole new crossbar, and Howard had been up in the cherry picker most of the morning, freezing his ass off. And, twenty feet up like that, he was catching a bad ricochet of sunlight off the snow that practically blinded him, RayBans and all. A couple of hours into the job, though, and the sun had shifted around, casting a sharp shadow of Howard and the arm of the cherry picker across the snow.

Stanley Betts, who was driving today, had strolled back to the marina to buy them both a couple of doughnuts and Cokes. He came back whistling a risquй little tune called "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl," the cat-eyed Lolita behind the counter having put him in that frame of mind.

This stretch of 63 was always busy. You had the traffic coming down from the NORAD installation, you had the people coming in from Temiskaming, and you had the residential traffic for Four Mile Bay and Peninsula Road. Stan was stranded across the highway for a good few minutes, waiting for the traffic to clear. "I'm turning into a dirty old man!" he called to Howie. "You shoulda seen the little babe at the store!"

Howie didn't turn, didn't hear him over the roar of a speeding eighteen-wheeler.

"I swear, Howie," Stan said again, when he was across the road and clear. "I'm turning into a dirty old man!"

Although cold as hell, the day was perfectly clear. The yellow arm of the cherry picker seemed to flash against the blue of the sky. Howie looked strange up there, his breath making tiny white clouds. He was gripping the edge of the box in a weird way, looking down at something.

"What the hell you staring at?" Stan followed his gaze, but he couldn't see over the six-foot ridge of roadside sludge. He clambered to the top of this and shaded his eyes. When Stan saw what Howie saw, one of the Cokes fell and burst open on his steel-toed boot, shooting a miniature brown geyser over the snow.

"YOU can't possibly say it's the same killer." Dyson spread his spatulate fingers fanlike and counted off his reasons. "One: the victim is in his thirties; the others were teenage or younger. Two: totally different MO. The others were beaten or strangled. Three: he was dumped where he'd be easy to find."

"Not that easy. If the Hydro guys hadn't been working on that particular transformer, it could have been months before he was found. Next time they plowed 63, the body would have been totally covered up."

"Arthur Wood was a well-known criminal. Had to have a lot of enemies."

"Woody didn't have an enemy in the world. You couldn't hope to meet a nicer guy- long as you kept your eyes on the silverware."

"Bad blood from prison, maybe. Talk to his old cellmates, talk to the guards in his wing. We don't know everything about our clientele."

"Woody was a hardworking thief. This time, he broke into the wrong house. When we find that house, we find our killer." He's going to assign it to McLeod, Cardinal could see the decision forming in Dyson's all-but-transparent dome. The letter opener stirred a furrow through the dish of paper clips. "Look," Dyson said, "you've already got enough to do."