Giles Blunt - Forty Words for Sorrow

Until then, her only experience of the police had been their sporadic arrests of her husband, a gentle soul who used to beat her without mercy when drunk. He had gone to Toronto to find work shortly after Katie's tenth birthday and had found instead the business end of a switchblade in a Spadina Road flophouse.

Cardinal's finger shook a little as he rang the doorbell.

Dorothy Pine, a tiny woman who barely cleared his waist, opened the door and looked up at him and knew instantly why he had come- she had no other children, there could be only one reason.

"Okay," she said, when he told her Katie's body had been found. Just the one word, "Okay," and she started to shut the door. Case closed. Her only child was dead. Cops- let alone white cops- could be of no assistance here.

"Mrs. Pine, I wonder if you'd let me in for a few minutes. I've been off the case for a couple of months and I need to refresh my memory."

"What for? You found her now."

"Well, yes, but now we want to catch whoever killed her."

He had the feeling that, had he not mentioned it, the thought of tracking down the man who killed her daughter would never have entered Dorothy Pine's head. All that mattered was the fact of her death. She gave a slight shrug, humoring him, and he stepped past her into the house.

The smell of bacon clung to the hallway. Although it was nearly noon, the living room curtains were still drawn. Electric heaters had dried the air and killed the plants that hung withered on a shelf. The place was dark as a mausoleum. Death had entered this house five months ago; it had never left.

Dorothy Pine sat down on a circular footstool in front of the television where Wile E. Coyote was noisily chasing the Roadrunner. Her arms hung down between her knees, and tears plopped in miniature splashes onto the linoleum floor.

All those weeks Cardinal had tried to find the little girl, through the hundreds of interviews of classmates, friends, and teachers, through the thousands of phone calls, the thousands of fliers, he had hoped that Dorothy Pine would come to trust him. She never did. For the first two weeks she telephoned daily, not only identifying herself every time but explaining why she was calling. "I was just wondering if you found my daughter, Katharine Pine," as if Cardinal might have forgotten to look. Then she'd stopped calling altogether.

Cardinal took Katie's high-school photograph out of his pocket, the photograph they'd used to print all those fliers that had asked of bus stations and emergency wards, of shopping malls and gas stations, Have You Seen This Girl? Now the killer had answered, oh yes he had seen this girl all right, and Cardinal slipped the photograph on top of the television.

"Do you mind if I look at her room again?"

A shake of the dark head, a shudder in the shoulders. Another tiny splash on the linoleum floor. Husband murdered, and now her daughter, too. Eskimos, it is said, have forty different words for snow. Never mind about snow, Cardinal mused, what people really need is forty words for sorrow. Grief. Heartbreak. Desolation. There were not enough, not for this childless mother in her empty house.

Cardinal went down a short hallway to a bedroom. The door was open, and a yellow bear with one glass eye frowned at him from the windowsill. Under the bear's threadbare paws lay a woven rug with a horse pattern. Dorothy Pine sold these rugs at the Hudson Bay store on Lakeshore. The store charged a hundred and twenty bucks, but he doubted if Dorothy Pine saw much of it. Outside, a chainsaw was ripping into wood, and somewhere a crow was cawing.

There was a toy bench under the windowsill. Cardinal opened it with his foot and saw that it still contained Katie's books. Black Beauty, Nancy Drew, stories his own daughter had enjoyed as a girl. Why do we think they're so different from us? He opened the chest of drawers- the socks and underwear neatly folded.

There was a little box of costume jewelry that played a tune when opened. It contained an assortment of rings and earrings and a couple of bracelets- one leather, one beaded. Katie had been wearing a charm bracelet the day she disappeared, Cardinal remembered. Stuck in the dresser mirror, a series of four photographs taken by a machine of Katie and her best friend making hideous faces.

Cardinal regretted leaving Delorme at the squad room to chase after Forensic. She might have seen something in Katie's room that he was missing, something only a female would notice.

Gathering dust at the bottom of the closet were several pairs of shoes, including a patent leather pair with straps- Mary Janes? Cardinal had bought a pair for Kelly when she was seven or eight. Katie Pine's had been bought at the Salvation Army, apparently; the price was still chalked on the sole. There were no running shoes; Katie had taken her Nikes to school the day she disappeared, carrying them in her knapsack.

Pinned to the back of the closet door was a picture of the high-school band. Cardinal didn't recall Katie being in the band. She was a math whiz. She had represented Algonquin Bay in a provincial math contest and had come in second. The plaque was on the wall to prove it.

He called out to Dorothy Pine. A moment later, she came in, red-eyed, clutching a shredded Kleenex. "Mrs. Pine, that's not Katie in the front row of that picture, is it? The girl with the dark hair?"

"That's Sue Couchie. Katie used to fool around on my accordion sometimes, but she wasn't in no band. Sue and her was best friends."

"I remember, now. I interviewed her at the school. Said practically all they did was watch MuchMusic. Videotaped their favorite songs."

"Sue can sing pretty good. Katie kind of wanted to be like her."

"Did Katie ever take music lessons?"

"No. She sure wanted to be in that band, though."

They were looking at a picture of her hopes, of a future that would now remain forever imaginary.

WHEN he left the reserve, Cardinal made a left and headed north toward the Ontario Hospital. Advances in medication coupled with government cutbacks had emptied out whole wings of the psychiatric facility. Its morgue did double duty as the coroner's workshop. But Cardinal wasn't there to see Barnhouse.

"She's doing a lot better today," the ward nurse told him. "She's starting to sleep at night, and she's been taking her meds, so it's probably just a matter of time till she levels out- that's my opinion, anyway. Dr. Singleton will be doing rounds in about an hour if you want to talk to him."

"No, that's all right. Where is she?"

"In the sunroom. Just go through the double doors, and it's-"

"Thanks. I know where it is."

Cardinal expected to find her still adrift in her oversize terry dressing gown, but instead, Catherine Cardinal was wearing the jeans and red sweater he had packed for her. She was hunched in a chair by the window, chin in hand, staring out at the snowscape, the stand of birches at the edge of the grounds.

"Hi, sweetheart. I was up at the reserve. Thought I'd stop in on the way back."

She didn't look at him. When she was ill, eye contact was agony for her. "I don't suppose you've come to get me out of here."

"Not just yet, hon. We'll have to talk to the doctor about that." As he got closer, he could see that the outline of her lipstick was uncertain, and her eyeliner was thicker on one eye than the other. Catherine Cardinal was a sweet, pretty woman when she was well: sparrow-colored hair, big gentle eyes, and a completely silent giggle that Cardinal loved to provoke. I don't make her laugh enough, he often thought. I should bring more joy into this woman's life. But by the time she had begun this nosedive, he had been working burglaries and was in a bad mood himself most of the time. Some help.

"You're looking pretty good, Catherine. I don't think you'll be in here too long this time."