Forty Words for Sorrow

12

DELORME WONDERED IF CARDINAL was making any headway. It was irritating as hell to go back to this small stuff when there was a killer out there. Wasting half the morning with paperwork on Arthur “Woody” Wood, Delorme came to realize how badly she wanted to nail Katie Pine’s killer. Perhaps only a woman could want to punish a child-killer as badly. Delorme was thirty-three and had spent many hours fantasizing about having a child, even if she had to raise it herself. The idea that someone could snuff out a young life put her in a rage that she could barely control.

But was she allowed to go out and work on tracking down this sick, this disgusting, this grossly evil thing? No. She got to interview Arthur “Woody” Wood, the poster boy for petty crime. Delorme had been following him along Oak Street in an unmarked car. After he sped up to make the light, she had pulled him over for “burning an amber,” only to see a vintage MacIntosh all-tube amplifier on the seat beside him. She had read the description to him from her notebook there on the street, right down to the serial number.

“Okay,” Woody said now, as she led him out of the cells. “Suppose by some freak of nature you get me for one little case. I can’t exactly see that putting me away for life, can you, Officer Delorme? You’re French, I guess. They tried to teach me French all the way through grade school, but I don’t know, it never stuck. Miss Bissonette—man, was she a Nazi. Are you married, by the way?”

Delorme ignored it all. “I hope you haven’t sold the rest of your haul, Woody. Because in addition to going to Kingston for ten years, you might have to make restitution, and then where will you be? It would be a nice gesture if you gave the stuff back. It might go easier for you.”

Engaging criminals are a rarity, and when one comes along, police tend to be overly grateful. Arthur “Woody” Wood was a hopelessly amiable young man. He had unfashionably long sideburns that gave him the look of a fifties rockabilly singer. He had a bounce in his walk and a rangy slouch to his shoulders that put people at their ease—especially women, as Delorme was finding out. She was right now having an argument with her own body: no, you will not react this way to the physical attractions of this silly little thief. I won’t allow it.

As she led him toward the interview room, Woody yelled a greeting to Sergeant Flower, with whom he proceeded to carry on a lively conversation. Sergeant Flower only stopped gabbing when she registered Delorme’s high-intensity scowl. Then Woody had to say hi to Larry Burke, just coming in. Burke had apprehended him six years ago with a car radio in his fist—installing it, Woody had claimed.

“Woody, listen to me,” Delorme said in the interview room.

Someone had left The Toronto Star on one of the chairs, and Woody snatched it up. “The Leafs, man. I can’t believe this team. It’s like they have this appetite for self-destruction. This craving. So unhealthy.”

“Woody, listen to me.” Delorme took the paper with its two-column headline: No Leads on The Windigo Killer. “That bunch of burglaries down Water Road is giving me hives, okay? I’ve got you cold for the Willow Drive job, but I know you did the others too. So why don’t you save us both a lot of time and energy: confess to one, we’ll maybe forget the others.”

“Now hold on.”

“Confess to one, that’s all I’m saying, and I’ll see what I can do. I know you did the others too.”

“Hold your horses, there, Officer Delorme. You don’t know I did them.” Woody’s grin was beatific; it held no trace of guile or suspicion or malign intent. Honest men should have such grins. “You’re indulging in exaggeration, plain and simple. If you suspect me of some old burglary, well, I can understand that—I have been known to keep company with objects not my own, after all. But suspect is not know. You could drive a Mack truck between suspect and know.”

“There’s another count, Woody. Suppose somebody actually saw you? Then what? Suppose somebody actually saw a blue ChevyVan pulling away from the Nipissing Motor Court?” The proprietor of the motel hadn’t in fact got a decent look at him, but he had seen someone driving off in a van just like Woody’s. Three thousand dollars’ worth of TVs missing. No jewellery.

“Well, if the guy saw me, I guess you’d put me in a lineup. Ms. Delorme, you’re single, aren’t you?”

“Suppose they saw your van, Woody? Suppose we have a licence plate?”

“Well, if they give you the licence plate, I guess you better hang me for that one. You look single to me. You have the air of a single person. Officer Delorme, you ought to get married. I don’t know how I’d get through life without Martha and Truckie. Family? Children? Why, it halves the sorrows of life and doubles the pleasures. It’s the single most important thing there is. And police work involves a lot of pressures.”

“Try and pay attention, Woody. A blue ChevyVan was seen driving away from the job on Water Road. You say you were home, but other witnesses say your van was not parked in your driveway. Add that to the one who saw your van at the scene, and what do you come up with? Ten years.”

“How can you even say that to me? Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Hell, you know as well as I do, nobody ever sees me. I like to go about my work undisturbed. God’s sake, ma’am, I didn’t get into this business to meet people.”

Sergeant Flower knocked on the door. “His wife’s here. She paid his bail.”

“I’m going to nail you for the whole bunch, Woody. You can make a plea now, or you can make me catch you. But I’m going to nail you for the whole bunch.”

“If I wanted to meet people, I’d be a mugger.”

One ability Delorme prided herself on was a knack for putting anything that wasn’t immediately essential out of her mind. When, later that afternoon, she drove along the winding south branch of Peninsula Road, Arthur Wood had left her thoughts entirely and she was once more in the murky waters of Corporal Musgrave’s suspicions.

The road got narrower and narrower, until tree branches heavy with snow scratched at the roof of the car. The white woods reminded her of a sleigh ride long ago. Thirteen-year-old Ray Duroc and she had lain among the heap of juvenile bodies and kissed with closed mouths until her lips were bruised. Last she heard, Ray was living on the other side of the world—Australia or New Zealand or some damn place—where the trees were green instead of white and the sun actually put out some heat.

She noted the names on the mailboxes, then a sharp left, and then she was almost past the driveway before she saw it. There was no name nailed to the tree. She parked the car on the side of the road and went down the driveway on foot. There was a big brown Mercedes at the end of the drive. Delorme didn’t even want to think what it had cost.

After Corporal Musgrave, former senior constable Joe Burnside was pure oxygen. Joe Burnside was blond, six-foot-four in his socks—where does the RCMP find this species, Delorme wondered—and happy as a clam. “You’re working Special? I know you. You’re the one that bagged Mayor Wells! Come in! Come in!”

Delorme shed her boots and joined him in the kitchen, where he poured her a steaming cup of coffee. She revised her estimate: six-foot-six if he’s an inch.

“Man, you gotta get out of police work and into the money,” he was telling her ten minutes later. They were sitting in overstuffed armchairs that faced a blinding white view of Four Mile Bay. “With your background? Your achievements? You’re perfect! Look at me—eight years a corporal in the Commercial Crimes Unit and now I’ve got my own business—me! Joe Burnside! Trust me, I’m the last guy I would have thought could do it and I’m telling you, I’m turning offers away. There’s more work than we can handle. And you know where it’s not going? It’s not going to the RCMP. Excuse me a second.” He crossed to a couch where a bony old collie was curled up asleep. He bent down close to its head and yelled, loud enough for it to hurt Delorme’s ears, “Get offa there, you lazy-ass good-for-nothing mutt!”

The dog opened a glassy eye and regarded him calmly.

“Deaf as a post,” he muttered, and pulled the dog from the couch by its collar, leading it like a pony to the fireplace, where it lay down once more and returned immediately to its canine dreams. “Everybody says I should put him down. Well, people that don’t have dogs say put him down. They don’t cost you a dime for fifteen years, then the minute they get sick, people say kill ’em. Sorry, you want to talk business. Puts me off, though. People have no loyalty. How long you been doing white-collar?”

“Six years.”

“You see what’s happening? With cutbacks? I don’t know about you guys, but I’ll tell you, the Mounties are just toothless. Toothless. They’re taking everybody off white-collar and putting them on the street—you know why? Because street work is visible and white-collar isn’t. People like to see their tax dollars at work. And with the Mounties going out of business, that means someone’s gotta take up the slack. Good ol’ private enterprise. Which—I’m happy to say—is me. A two-month investigation on copyright infringement? Piracy? Forty thousand bucks. And Corporate America is happy to pay it—it’s mostly U.S. companies that hire us. And the great thing about Americans, they don’t trust you unless you ask for a lot of money.”

He’s born again, Delorme thought, he should be a preacher. But all she said was, “Kyle Corbett.”

“Ohhh,” Burnside groaned theatrically. “Don’t remind me. Kyle Corbett. That one really hurt.”

“You had the background sewn up. You had solid stuff. It was you and Jerry Commanda all the way.”

“We had a source. Good source, too. Guy named Nicky Bell worked with Corbett for years, but happened to be facing an unrelated charge on computer porn that Corbett didn’t know about.”

“And he gave you a time and a place.”

“A time? A place? No, no, no, Nicky Bell was the best singer since Gordy Lightfoot. He gave us months of stuff. Me and Jerry picked that bird clean. But the big windup was gonna be at the Crystal Disco out behind Airport Road, and for that we needed one of your guys. We got John Cardinal—smart guy, but always depressed, it seemed to me.”

“What happened then?”

The affable manner disappeared. Burnside’s face—formerly as bright and wide open as Four Mile Bay—suddenly darkened. It was like an eclipse. “You know what happened,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

“You hit the club. You came up empty.”

“Bingo.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing. That’s just the point, isn’t it. Everything went right. Everything went exactly according to plan. It was like watching the insides of a Swiss watch. Except for the ending. Corbett was tipped off. You know it and I know it. But if you’re expecting me to say who I think did it, you’re barking up the wrong tree. There’s no proof of anything.”

“What did your source tell you?”

“Nicky? If you think anybody’s ever going to see Nicky Bell again, you’re in the wrong line of work. Wife confirmed there was a suitcase missing from his house, some clothes were gone, but I think that’s just cover. I think Kyle Corbett sent him to the bottom of Trout Lake.”

The dog was back on the couch, but Burnside didn’t seem to notice.

As Delorme was putting her boots on, he looked her up and down. She got a lot of that, but for once she didn’t think it was sexual. “You’re working that Windigo thing too, aren’t you? Well, I know you are.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m moving out of Special.”

“Windigo’s an ugly case.”

“Uh-huh.”

“A real ugly case, Ms. Delorme. But investigating your own partner, well, there’s a lot of cops—Mounties, OPP, you name it—a hell of a lot of cops would say investigating your own partner’s a lot uglier.”

“Thanks for the coffee. I needed warming up.” Delorme did up the snaps of her coat, put on her gloves. “But I never said who I was investigating.”