Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

"You can charge me with murder, manslaughter, homicide, or whatever the hell you please, you ain't taking me down, Cardinal. I did not kill no one."

"Freddie, I know you find this hard to accept, but the fact is you're only charged with theft auto, driving under, and liquor forty-two."

Despite his useless clarity on his innocence, Fast Freddie was hazy on the one thing of any interest to Cardinal: Had he seen anyone parking the van at the parking lot of the Chinook Tavern? Cardinal had people out there now, tracking down tavern patrons and staff, anyone who might have seen the van drive into the parking lot. Fast Freddie's memory was unreliable on anything that happened after his second pitcher of Labatt's Ice.

Five minutes later, Cardinal relayed this to Delorme as they headed down the corridor to the garage. "That's it?" she said sharply. "That's all you got out of him?"

"Guy gets drunk, suddenly he has an urge to go to Toronto. Nothing else to get."

Delorme had been uptight the last couple of days, and Cardinal wanted to ask what was up. She may already have proof of his own crime; she could be waiting to spring the trap shut at any moment.

"Ready?" Delorme paused with her hand on the doorknob.

"Ready for what?"

The smell hit Cardinal like a ball-peen hammer. "My God. Don't you guys believe in oxygen?"

Arsenault and Collingwood were poring over Woody's van. Nobody loves their work like ident guys, Cardinal thought. The two of them had been in this stinking garage for going on ten hours, fuming the scorched wreck with superglue.

Arsenault waved a gloved hand like a white paw. "Just about done, here. You ever see so many prints? Must be like four billion or so." He giggled.

"All Woody's, right?"

"Also Woody's left." Arsenault looked at young Collingwood, and the two of them fell into gales of helpless laughter.

"You guys are high," Cardinal said mildly. "You better take a break." Woody's van- the entire vehicle- had been encased in Plexiglas for the fuming, but now that the Plexiglas had been removed, the glue vapors were overpowering. "Come on," Cardinal said. "Outside."

The four of them stood outside in the blinding sun, all heaving in deep breaths. It was warmer than it had been since December. You got strange periods of warmth like this sometimes in February, just long enough to fool you into thinking spring was near. The snow at the edges of the parking lot was the color of cinders. Patches where it had melted steamed in the sun.

"Sorry," Arsenault said weakly. "Sorry about that."

"You ever hear of ventilation? You guys are lucky to be alive."

"I think we've built up a tolerance for it, right, Bob?"

Collingwood, hugging himself against the cold, nodded solemnly.

"Almost all the prints are Woody's- those that aren't smudged. The ones on the wheel that are liftable all belong to Fast Freddie. Dashboard and driver door are just smudges. Somebody wiped that sucker down- interior, anyways."

"Christ, Arsenault. You didn't get anything?"

Arsenault looked offended. "We got tons of stuff. Picked up two completes right off the rearview. Lifted those even before we started fuming. Idiots always forget to wipe there."

"And?" Cardinal looked from Arsenault to Collingwood and back.

"We're running it now for national," Arsenault said. "If there's a record, we should know soon. Couple of hours, max."

"I don't believe you guys. You didn't compare the prints on the van with the prints Forensics lifted off Woody's neck? You got a fax pinned up in your office. Are you out of your minds?"

"Oh, those. Yeah, we got a thumbprint matches right up."

"Right. But you weren't going to mention it."

"We were waiting for the computer matchup. We wanted to surprise you, eh?"

Delorme shook her head in wonder. "You guys are completely stoned."

Collingwood and Arsenault shuffled a little, looking sheepish. Cardinal stood at the garage door, looking at the dissected van. Fumes from the glue had formed white deposits wherever a human hand had touched the surface, giving a polka-dot effect.

"One time we did a whole Cessna," Arsenault volunteered. "Wasn't much bigger than this, though."

"Get outa here, Paul. The Cessna was way bigger than this thing. Specially if you count the wings."

Cardinal, Delorme, and Arsenault turned to stare at Collingwood. It was the first time any of them could remember him speaking without being spoken to. He stood there facing the van, a lopsided grin on his face and the sunlight shining through his ears.

AFTER lunch, Cardinal and Delorme drove to Woody's place, a tiny whitewashed bungalow out in Ferris. They sat in the kitchen, where Martha Wood focused intently, almost desperately, on feeding her toddler, as if even a glance at anything else, while she spoke of her dead husband, might blast her into smithereens.

"Woody liked stereos, boom boxes, tape recorders- stuff that was easy to carry, easy to sell. Laptops, when he could get his hands on them. He'd wait until he had enough to fill up the van, then he'd drive down to Toronto with it. He'd usually be back the same day. Come on, Truckie, eat some more." She spooned a little more poached egg into the toddler's mouth. The boy swallowed it, blinked, and reached for the spoon for more. "You like that, don't you. Yes, I know."

Sorrow takes people in different ways. From the far end of the kitchen table, Cardinal watched the way Martha Wood turned gingerly, the delicate way she scooped the egg. She was struggling mightily to deal with the routine of feeding, to deal with the cops. All her movements were slow, careful, as if she had suffered burns. Cardinal sensed an edge of anger under her obvious pain, but it was hard to read; her answers were all aimed at Delorme.

"He's so cute," Delorme said. She reached out and touched the thin soft film of dark hair on the baby's head. "You call him Chuckie?"

"Truckie. His real name's Dennis, after Woody's father, but Woody always called him Dumptruck." She wiped some egg from her child's face, scooped up another microscopic portion on the end of the spoon. Small fat fingers clutched at the spoon and misguided it toward an eager mouth. "When I was pregnant, Woody used to say, 'But we don't need a baby! We need a radio, we need a reading lamp, we need a dumptruck! Why can't we call him one of those?' So we used to joke and refer to him as Reading Lamp and Dumptruck, and unfortunately…"

The kitchen was full of baby smells- powder, wet sheets, bleach. Cardinal thought he had never seen anything sadder than this pretty woman with her baby and her perfect features.

"Hi, Truckie," Delorme said and stroked the soft hair. "How you doing?"

For the first time, Mrs. Wood looked directly at Cardinal. "Would you leave, please?"

"Me? You want me to leave?" Cardinal was caught off guard. He'd assumed he was the last thing on her mind at this moment.

"You knew my husband was dead, yesterday, the whole time. And you just kept asking me questions like it didn't matter. Like it was just nothing. How do you think that made me feel?" She was a strong woman, but her voice was trembling now.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Wood. I wanted to get the information as fast as possible."

"You made me feel horrible. You made me feel like shit. And I don't want you in my house."

Cardinal stood. "I made a mistake," he said. "The pressure was on and it threw my judgment off. I'm sorry."

He left by the side door and sat in the car making notes. Christ, I'm a rotten cop, he thought. People have no idea how rotten. A stupid piece of misjudgment had cost him the opportunity to look around Woody's house. He would never even know how far back that set the investigation. Let Channel Four get ahold of that one, they'd have a field day.

Delorme came out half an hour later. "That poor woman," she said, slipping into the driver's seat.