Forty Words for Sorrow

11

CARDINAL CALLED VLATKO SETEVIC in Forensic’s Micro section. They had taken hair and fibre from Katie Pine’s thawed-out body.

“Quite a few fibres we found. Indoor/outdoor stuff. The kind they use in cars or basements. Fibres are red, trilobal.”

“Can you narrow it down to makes? Ford? Chrysler?”

“No chance. It’s very common, except for the colour.”

“Tell me about the hair.”

“Exactly one hair we found—other than the girl’s own. Three inches long. Brown. Probably Caucasian.”

Delorme looked disgusted when Cardinal told her the results. “It’s no use for anything,” she said, “unless we get another body. Why do they take so long down there? Why are we still waiting for the pathologist’s report?”

Cardinal spent the next two days on the phone, chasing down the out-of-town cases: calls to originating police departments, calls to parents or others who made the initial complaints. Delorme helped out, when she wasn’t following up on old robberies. They cleared five more cases. That left two that looked like they might have finished up in Algonquin Bay: a St. John’s girl who had been seen in the local bus station, and a sixteen-year-old boy from Mississauga, near Toronto.

Todd Curry had been reported missing in December. The notice was just the standard fax sent to all police departments in such cases; the photo was not high-definition. One thing caught Cardinal’s eye: the kid’s size was listed as five-four, ninety-five pounds. To a killer with a taste for runts, Todd Curry might look like prime prey.

Cardinal called the Peel regional police and established that none of the boy’s parents or friends had heard from him in the past two months. Missing Persons gave him the name of a relative in Sudbury, Clark Curry.

“Mr. Curry, this is John Cardinal, Algonquin Police.”

“I imagine you’re calling about Todd.”

“What makes you say that, sir?”

“The only time I hear from the police is when Todd is in trouble. Look, I’m just his uncle, I’ve done all I can. I can’t take him back this time.”

“We haven’t found him. We’re still trying to track him down.”

“A Mississauga boy is being sought by the Algonquin Bay police? He’s really turning into a federal case.”

“Has Todd contacted you since December? December twentieth, to be exact?”

“No. He was missing all through Christmas. His parents were frantic, as you can imagine. He called me from Huntsville—this was the day he took off—called from Huntsville and says he’s on the train, can he stay with me. I told him he could, but he never arrived, and I haven’t heard anything since. You have to understand, this is one messed-up kid.”

“In what way, sir? Drugs?”

“Todd got his first sniff of glue when he was ten and hasn’t been the same since. Some kids can mess with drugs, other kids they get one whiff and it becomes their vocation. Todd’s one joy in life is getting high—if you can call that joy. Mind you, Dave and Edna say he’s gone completely clean, but I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

“Will you do me a favour, sir? Will you call me if you do hear from Todd?” He gave Curry the number and hung up.

Cardinal hadn’t taken a train in years, although he never passed by the station without remembering the long trip out west he and Catherine had taken on their honeymoon. They had spent practically the entire trip sequestered in their narrow, rocking bed. Cardinal checked with the CNR and learned that Huntsville was still the second-last stop on the Northlander before Algonquin Bay. There was no way to tell if Todd got off in South River or Algonquin Bay. He could have stayed in Huntsville, he could’ve continued north to Temagami or even Hearst.

Cardinal took a run over to the Crisis Centre, at the corner of Station and Sumner. Algonquin Bay had no youth hostel, and sometimes runaway kids ended up in the Centre, which was just two blocks from the train station. The place was meant for domestic emergencies—mostly battered wives—but it was run by a lanky ex-priest named Ned Fellowes, and Fellowes had been known to take in the occasional stray if he had room.

Like most of the houses in the centre of town, the Crisis Centre is a two-storey, red brick affair with a roof of grey shingle, steeply pitched to slow the buildup of snow. Some workmen repairing the roof of the veranda had covered the front of the house with scaffolding. Cardinal could hear them cursing in French overhead as he rang the bell—tabarnac, ostie—taking their swear words from the Church, unlike the anglos, who wield the usual sexual lexicon. We swear by what we’re afraid of, Cardinal mused, but it was not a thought he wanted to dwell on.

“Yes, I remember him. That’s not a good likeness, though.” Ned Fellowes handed the fax photo back to Cardinal. “Stayed with us for one night, I think, around Christmastime.”

“Can you tell me exactly what night that was?”

Fellowes led him into a small front office in what used to be a living room. A fireplace of painted brick was filled with psychology texts and social-work periodicals. Fellowes consulted a large maroon ledger, running his finger down lists of names. “Todd Curry. Stayed the night of December twentieth, a Friday. Left Saturday. I remember I was surprised, because he had asked to stay till the Monday. But he came in Saturday lunchtime and said he’d found a cool place to stay—an abandoned house on Main West.”

“Main West. There’s a wreck of a place where St. Claire’s used to be. Is that the one? By the Castle Hotel?”

“I wouldn’t know. He certainly didn’t leave a forwarding address. Just wolfed down a couple of sandwiches and left.”

There was only one empty house on Main West. It was not in the downtown area, but a couple of blocks beyond it, where the street turned residential. St. Claire’s convent had been torn down five years ago, exposing a brick wall with the faint outlines of a sign exhorting one to drink Northern Ale—a product of a local brewery out of business for at least three decades. After the convent, other houses had fallen one by one, making way for Country Style’s ever-expanding parking lot. Surrounded by overgrown weeds and stumps of long-dead trees, the house leaned in its corner lot like one last rotten tooth waiting to be pulled.

It made sense, Cardinal considered as he drove down Macpherson toward the lake: the place was just a block from D’Anunzio’s—a teen hangout—and a stone’s throw from the high school. A young drifter couldn’t ask for a better address. A slight humming sensation started up in Cardinal’s bloodstream.

The Castle Hotel came up on his right, and then he parked in front of a jagged, tumbledown fence tangled in shrubbery. He went to the front gate and looked through bare overhanging boughs at the place where the house used to be. He could see clear across the block to D’Anunzio’s over on Algonquin Avenue.

The acrid smell of burnt wood was strong, even though the ruins were covered with snow. They had been bulldozed off to one side in a heap. Cardinal stood with hands on hips like a man assessing the damage. A charred two-by-four pierced the thin coverlet of snow, pointing a black, accusing finger at the clouds.