Forty Words for Sorrow

30

OUTSIDE, SOMEONE WAS STUCK in the snow. The futile whine of tires could be heard even in the interview room, where Cardinal was listening to a sad young woman named Karen Steen. It had been an unhappy morning altogether. First he had stopped off at the O.H. only to find Catherine sullen and uncommunicative. He had cut the visit short when he felt himself getting angry with her. His first phone call of the morning had come from Billy LaBelle’s mother—crying, her speech slurred under the influence of too much of whatever her doctor had prescribed to dull her pain. Then Mr. Curry had called (only out of concern for his wife, of course), and Cardinal had had to tell him he was still no closer to catching whoever had beaten his only child to death. Then Roger Gwynn had called from the Lode, asking in his half-hearted way if there was any progress. When Cardinal responded in the negative, Gwynn had lapsed into an ode on their days at Algonquin High, as if nostalgia would make Cardinal more forthcoming. This was followed in short order by calls from The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and Grace Legault from channel four. The newspapers were no problem, but Grace Legault had somehow got hold of the tidbit about Margaret Fogle. Was it true they had thought she was also a Windigo victim? And she had turned up alive and well and living in B.C.?

Cardinal summed it up for her: Margaret Fogle had been a missing person. She had in some ways fit the killer’s profile. However, now she was found, she was no longer of interest to the Algonquin Bay police. The call rattled him, because it meant someone was talking to Legault without keeping him informed. The thought of having this out with Dyson made him very, very tired.

Cardinal wanted to devote his time to footwork. He and Delorme had split the camera and clock leads. They had rerecorded the sounds from the tape, making multiple copies that they would send to camera and clock repair experts in Toronto and Montreal. Delorme would have run through twenty camera repair shops by now, while Cardinal had got nowhere. Instead he had got caught up first on the phone and now in person, with this sincere young woman who was telling him about her missing boyfriend.

Cardinal was angry at Sergeant Flower for telling Miss Steen he would see her, especially when it turned out she was from Guelph, a largely agrarian community some sixty miles west of Toronto. “If your boyfriend’s from Toronto,” he told her, “you should be talking to the Toronto police.”

Karen Steen was a shy woman—girl, really, not more than nineteen or so—who tended to stare at the floor between sentences. “I decided not to waste a lot of time on the telephone, Officer Cardinal. I thought you’d be more likely to pay attention to me if I came in person. I believe Keith is here in Algonquin Bay.”

All young women made Cardinal think of his daughter, but—except for her age—Ms. Steen had nothing in common with Kelly. Kelly was the epitome of the hip and casual—in Cardinal’s eyes at least—whereas the young woman seated across from him in the interview room had a kind of girl-next-door look. She was wearing a business suit that was too old for her, and silver wire-frames that gave her the air of a scholar. A very serious girl next door.

Miss Steen looked at the floor again—at the little puddle of melted snow at her feet. Cardinal thought for a moment she was going to cry, but when she looked up, her eyes were clear. “Keith’s parents are away on a dig in Turkey—they’re archaeologists—and it’s going to be impossible to reach them. I didn’t want to wait for them to tell me what to do. I’ve read about the murders you’ve had up here. They weren’t just murders—the people were missing for some time before they were killed, I think.”

“That doesn’t mean everyone who disappears has been abducted by this lunatic. Besides, your boyfriend’s hitchhiking across Canada; it’s a big piece of real estate to be missing in. You say he was expected in the Soo on Tuesday.”

“Yes. And it isn’t like him to just not show up somewhere. One of the things I love about Keith is he’s very considerate of other people. Very reliable. He hates to cause trouble.”

“It’s out of character, you’re saying.”

“Way out of character. I’m not hysterical, Mr. Cardinal. I didn’t come here lightly. I have reasons.”

“Go on, Miss Steen. I didn’t mean to imply anything, except—well, go on.”

The young woman drew a deep breath and held it a minute, staring into the distance. Cardinal suspected this was a habitual gesture of hers, and it was an attractive one. There was a pleasing gravity to Miss Steen. He had no trouble imagining a young man in love with her.

“Keith and I are opposites in many ways, but we’re very close,” she said finally. “We were going to get married after high school, but then we decided to put it off for a year. I wanted to go straight on to university, and Keith wanted to see the world, so to speak, before settling down to study again. Anyway, we thought it wouldn’t hurt us to wait another year. I’m only telling you this so you’ll understand that when Keith said he would write to me, he meant it—it wasn’t casual. We even arranged the timing of our letters to make sure they wouldn’t cross.”

“And has he written? The way he said he would?”

“His letters haven’t exactly come like clockwork, but yes—one letter a week, and one phone call, and sometimes an e-mail. Every week. Until now.”

Cardinal nodded. Miss Steen was not just a serious young woman, she was also—and this was not a judgment Cardinal made very often—a good person. She had been well brought up, probably strictly, to respect other people and the truth. She looked Dutch, with her wheat blonde hair cut short as a boy’s and her eyes the deep blue of new denim.

“Keith’s last phone call was Sunday the fifteenth—a week and a half ago. He sounded fine. He was in Gravenhurst, staying at a hideous little hotel and not having a particularly good time, but he’s basically a cheerful person, Keith—the kind who makes friends easily. He’s a pretty good musician—lugs his guitar everywhere. People tend to take him in. That’s partly what worries me.”

Lucky Keith, Cardinal thought, to have someone like Miss Steen worrying about him. She pulled a photograph out of her purse and handed it to Cardinal. It showed a boy with long, curly brown hair, sitting on a park bench. He was playing an acoustic guitar, frowning with concentration.

“He just hasn’t got a suspicious bone in his body,” she continued. “He’s always getting cornered by pamphleteers and people like that, because he always believes their opening pitch, you know what I’m saying?” Her denim blue eyes—dark, and slightly turned up at the corners—implored him to understand. “Which is not to say he’s stupid. Far from it. But the others who disappeared, they weren’t stupid either, were they?”

“Well, two of them were very young, but no—none of them were stupid.”

“Keith was planning to head for the Soo on Monday, but he wasn’t really looking forward to it. He’s not really big on seeing relatives, but …” She looked away, took a deep breath again and held it.

Keith, my man, Cardinal thought, if you let this young woman get away, you are truly an idiot. “What is it?” he asked gently. “You’re hedging now.”

The breath was let go in a long sigh. The serious blue eyes held him once more. “Detective, it’s only honest to tell you that Keith and I had a—a bit of a quarrel as well. A couple of weeks ago, when he called. I guess I was feeling kind of lonely and vulnerable. Anyway, we went over a lot of old ground about how we’re spending our respective years. He’s lugging his guitar cross-country—I mean, really, if I have a rival for his affections, it’s that Ovation of his—but I’m not as spontaneous as he is, I just want to get on with my education. It wasn’t a serious fight—please believe that. We didn’t hang up angry or anything. But it was a quarrel, and I wouldn’t feel right not telling you.”

“But you don’t think this quarrel is the reason for Keith’s … sudden silence.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.”

“I appreciate your telling me. How were things left, exactly?”

“Keith said he would probably stop off in Algonquin Bay—he’d call me when he got here.”

“Miss Steen, Keith didn’t want to go to the Soo, didn’t want to see his relatives. Now, you say he wasn’t angry with you, and I accept that, but why should we assume he’s in trouble when he doesn’t show up at a place he said quite clearly he didn’t want to go?”

“On its own, I agree, it wouldn’t be alarming. But no letter? No phone call? No e-mail? After being so reliable about it? And you have these unsolved abductions here, these murders, right?”

Cardinal nodded. Miss Steen was holding her breath again, working her way to another thought. Cardinal waited for her to reach it. Lise Delorme leaned in the doorway, but Cardinal shook his head, warning her off.

Miss Steen resolved whatever hesitations she had; when she spoke, her voice was louder. “I told you there was no letter this past week, Detective.”

“Yes. You made quite a point of it.”

“Well, that isn’t quite true. And that’s really why I’m here.” Miss Steen reached into her purse and pulled out a manila envelope. “The letter’s in here—the envelope, I mean, it isn’t a letter. It’s Keith’s handwriting on the address, but there wasn’t any letter inside.”

“It arrived empty?” Cardinal took the manila envelope from her.

“Not empty.” This time she didn’t look at the floor. Her serious blue eyes looked directly into his.

Cardinal tore off the top sheet of his desk blotter pad and emptied the contents of the manila envelope onto a fresh sheet. The smaller, enclosed envelope was postmarked three days ago, Algonquin Bay. Using tweezers, Cardinal opened the flap, saw the yellowish, dried contents, and closed it again. He folded it into the clean blotter sheet and put both back inside the manila envelope.

In the brief silence that followed, Cardinal was certain of two things: every word this young woman had told him was true, and—if he were not already dead—Keith London had very little time left to live.

He dialed Jerry Commanda’s number, then put his hand over the mouthpiece. “When did this arrive?”

“This morning.”

“And you came straight here?”

“Yes. It didn’t occur to me for one moment that Keith did it. But he did address the envelope, I know his handwriting. I’m right to be frightened, don’t you think?”

Jerry Commanda was on the line now. “Jerry, this is important. I need to helicopter something down to Forensic. What are my chances?”

“Zero. If it’s desperate, I might be able to weasel something out of the flight school. How urgent are we talking?”

“Very. I think our boy just mailed us a sample of his semen.”