By the Time You Read This

20

“CAN YOU GIVE ME an address on Neil Codwallader?” Cardinal was heading into town on 63. The heat of his anger surprised him. He could feel it pulsing in his wrists, throbbing in his temples.

“Neil Codwallader is single now, John. He doesn’t have anyone to beat up at the moment.”

It was Wes Beattie on the other end of the line, a parole officer. Beattie had an imperturbable and comforting purr of a voice; it was hard to believe he had ever been a cop, but he had put in fifteen years with the OPP before being reborn into the gentler avatar of parole officer. Whenever he spoke to Beattie on the phone, Cardinal pictured a fat tabby.

“I need to see him about something else,” Cardinal said, and honked at a Focus that suddenly changed lanes without signalling. “And I need to see him now.”

“You sound rather ruffled there, John. If Neil has committed some kind of breach, you’d better tell me about it. Can’t go keeping secrets from our brother and sister agencies, now, can we?”

“I’ll tell you after I talk to him. Are you going to give me an address?”

“Six-ninety Main Street East. But he won’t be there right now. He’s working two jobs.”

“Let me guess: he’s a volunteer counsellor at the Crisis Centre.”

“No, I can’t imagine Neil will be consoling battered women any time soon, but he is working at Wal-Mart three days a week. And he puts in another four at Zappers.”

“The photocopy place?”

“The very one. Listen, John, you’re not going to go crashing around and jeopardize his employment, are you? I don’t nurse any more affection for wife beaters than you do, but Neil has paid his debt to society and now he’s making an honest effort to—”

“Well, what do you know? Here I am at Wal-Mart,” Cardinal said, and disconnected. He swung into a parking lot the size of several football fields.

Cardinal rarely set foot in Wal-Mart. It was always so difficult to find anything, and the prices didn’t seem to justify the aggravation. Half the time the aisles were jammed with obese couples pushing prams, although today they were relatively empty. In any case, he preferred to support the independent downtown stores—a goal that seemed more quixotic with each passing year.

The only thing Cardinal liked about Wal-Mart was that it employed older people. Although it had its fair share of teenagers expert in feigned helplessness, it also had a good many retirees supplementing their pensions by helping bewildered shoppers find their elusive consumer items. He asked a tiny lady who looked near seventy where he could find greeting cards.

“You’re already there,” she said. “They’re in the next aisle over.”

Cardinal zeroed in on the sympathy area. Yes, there were plenty of Hallmark cards.

“Here we go,” he said under his breath. “‘With deepest sympathy …’”

He picked out a card identical to the third one he had received, and then another, identical to the second card. Apparently the first card had sold out.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” the tiny lady asked him as he walked by.

“I did. Thank you. Can you tell me if Neil Codwallader is working today?”

“Neil? Is he the tall gentleman who works in the photo place?”

“Lots of muscles, lots of tattoos,” Cardinal said.

“Oh, yes. He was here earlier. But I believe he’s gone home.”

She directed him to the photo booth, several aisles west and one south. You really needed a moped to get around this place.

“Neil left an hour ago,” the kid in the photo department told him. “He’s got another job somewheres.”

Ten minutes later Cardinal was on the other side of town, parked illegally on Lakeshore in front of Zappers.

Zappers was the kind of place you go if you’re from out of town and you need to check your e-mail right this instant, or if you need to send or receive a fax, or if you run a fraudulent business that requires an anonymous mailbox. Mostly it offered the use of obsolete computer equipment at minimal rates. There was only one customer in the place, an Asian woman typing at lightning speed.

Codwallader was behind the counter, his back to the store, photocopying an enormous stack of paper. When he turned around, he did not appear to recognize Cardinal.

His long hair and walrus moustache would have been in fashion thirty years ago, assuming he had been a rock star. Prison had not reduced the muscles that threatened to burst the seams of his T-shirt. His forearms were paisley with tattoos.

“Help you?” he said.

“You tell me,” Cardinal said.

Codwallader went still, not looking Cardinal up and down the way a normal person might, but giving him the dead cold prison stare.

“I know you,” he said. “You’re the cop.”

“And you’re the wife beater.”

“So you said. That doesn’t make it true.”

“Well, the hospital records, the doctors and the social workers all seemed to agree. Not to mention Cora herself.”

“I got nothing to say to you, pal. I don’t even remember your name.”

“Cardinal. John Cardinal. I’m the one who told the judge how I found your wife with her nose broken and her arm fractured and patches of her hair torn out. How both her eyes were blackened, and how her clothes had been all cut up.”

“Like I told the court, I didn’t do any of that shit.”

“Spoken like a true abuser. Never guilty, never wrong.”

“The reason I got no wife now is thanks to people like you. People who like to interfere. Right now I’m just doing what I have to do to get by, one day at a time. So if you’re not gonna use a computer or something, why don’t you just get the hell out?”

“Actually, it was your printers I was interested in.”

“Printers are over there.” A paisley finger indicated a row of three machines. “Two bucks first page, after that ten cents a page. Knock yourself out.”

Cardinal opened his briefcase. He took out a computer disc, slid it into one of the computers and selected a letter he had written to his insurance broker. That policy would have to be changed now, since Catherine had been his beneficiary.

Cardinal selected printer number one, then two, then three, and printed out three copies of the letter. There were various flaws in the characters, but no hairline scar across the capitals. Of course, in a shop like this, the cartridges would be changed often. If all the messages had been printed out at the same time—say, a day or two after Catherine died—that cartridge would no longer be in these machines. For that matter, if Codwallader had done it, he could have used his own cartridge.

Cardinal put the copies into his briefcase and took his disc out of the computer.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Two seventy-five plus tax. Three sixteen.”

Cardinal paid him.

“Tell me something, Cardinal. You married?”

Cardinal held up his left hand, showing the plain gold band. Catherine’s name was engraved on the inside. He had always planned to be buried with it on his finger.

“You’re so righteous and all,” Codwallader said. “Tell me the truth. You never feel like giving your wife a tap on the head? A little smack? I’m not saying you acted on it. I’m just asking. Be honest. You don’t never sometimes feel like giving her a smack?”

“No. And now I need you to answer me one question. Where were you on the night of October 7? Last Tuesday.”

“Tuesday? I woulda been right here. We’re open till ten p.m. weeknights. Listen, if something happened to Cora, I got no idea where she even lives or if she changed her name or nothing. So if she got beat up Tuesday night or whatever, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

“So you say.”

“You can check the security cameras.” He pointed at the tiny camera above the entrance. “They go back at least a month. Ask the manager.”

“I will. Where is he?”

“Away. He’ll be back next week. Fucking Cora. I thought I was through with that bitch.”