Forty Words for Sorrow

48

DELORME PLACED A BAGGIE on top of the computer. Something metallic gleamed dully through the plastic.

Cardinal glanced at it. “What’s that?”

“Katie Pine’s bracelet. It came with her clothing from Forensic. Negative for prints except hers. You going to join us in the Museum, or what?” The Museum of Unsolved Crime was Delorme’s personal term for the boardroom, which was now fully taken over by their case materials. The bracelet would join the audio tape, the fingerprint, the hair and fibre, the Ballistics and Forensics reports—the growing catalogue of leads that led nowhere.

“Give me a few minutes,” Cardinal said. “I have to finish this now.”

“I thought you did all your sups at night.”

“It’s not a sup.”

Delorme could see his computer screen from where she stood, but Cardinal was pretty sure she couldn’t read it. If that was a flicker of suspicion in her eyes, fine, let her wonder. Delorme reluctantly left, and he read the last part of what he had written. I’ve come to realize that, because of my past, my continuing presence on the Pine–Curry case could jeopardize the outcome of any trial. I must therefore …

I must therefore get the hell out of this and all my other cases, because evidence from an admitted thief is not going to carry a lot of weight. I am the weak link in the chain; the sooner I get out, the better. For the hundredth time that day he wondered how he would tell Catherine, pictured for the hundredth time how her face would crumple, in grief not for herself but for him.

He had outlined the facts of his guilt for the record. It had happened his last year on the Toronto force. They had raided a dealer’s house—Rick Bouchard’s distribution centre for Northern Ontario—and while the others on the squad had been reading rights to the likes of Kiki B. and Bouchard himself, Cardinal had found the cash in a hidden compartment of a bedroom closet. To his everlasting shame he had walked off with nearly two hundred grand; the other five hundred was used as evidence in court. The suspects, he added, had been convicted on all charges.

In my defence, I can only plead … But Cardinal had no defence, not in his own mind. He picked up the Baggie from the top of the computer. There is no defence, he said to himself, moving the little charms between thumb and forefinger like prayer beads: a miniature trumpet, a harp, a bass fiddle.

In my defence, I can only plead that my wife’s illness had upset me so much that… No. He would not hide behind the sorrows of the person he had most wronged. He deleted the sentence and typed instead, I have no excuse.

Jesus Christ, he said to himself. Not a single extenuating circumstance? Nothing to soften the image of himself as a uniformed thug? None of the money was for myself, he typed, and quickly deleted.

It had happened during Catherine’s first hospitalization. Cardinal was still a junior detective on the Toronto Narcotics Squad, and had been living the nightmare of watching his wife transformed by mental illness into a person he didn’t recognize: dull, lifeless, depressed to the point of speechlessness. It had terrified him. Terrified him because he knew he was not strong enough to live with this debilitated zombie who had taken the place of the bright, chipper woman he loved. Terrified him because he knew nothing at that time of mental illness, let alone the complexities of raising a ten-year-old girl by himself.

Through the Baggie his fingers traced the form of a tiny guitar.

Catherine had spent two months in the Clarke Institute. Two months with people who were so confused they couldn’t write their own names. Two months while the doctors tried various combinations of drugs that seemed only to make things worse. Two months during which she recognized her husband only intermittently. After a torment of inner debate Cardinal took Kelly to see her mother, which was a mistake for all concerned. Catherine could not bear even to look at her daughter, and it took the little girl a long time to get over it.

Then Catherine’s parents had come up from Minnesota to visit and had been horrified by the doleful, panda-eyed creature that had shuffled through the hospital corridor toward them. Although they were never less than polite to him, Cardinal could feel their stares boring into his back: somehow he had caused her breakdown. They began to talk up American health care (“Finest in the world. Cutting edge. Brilliant psychiatrists. Who do you think writes all the books?”), and the message was plain: if Cardinal truly cared about their daughter, he would seek treatment for Catherine south of the border.

Cardinal had given in. What galled him even now, ten years later, was that he knew that treatment in the States would be no better. He knew they would have the same drugs, the same enthusiasm for shock treatment, the same lack of success. And yet he had caved in. He couldn’t bear to have Catherine’s parents think he was not doing his best for her. (“Don’t worry, we know the fees can be pretty steep. We’ll contribute.”) But they could not contribute much, and the bills at the Tamarind Clinic in Chicago quickly mounted into the thousands, and over the months into the tens of thousands.

In a matter of weeks Cardinal had known he could never pay the bills; he and Catherine would never own a house, never get out of debt. And so, when the opportunity presented itself, Cardinal had taken the money. It had paid off the bills, with almost enough left over for Kelly’s very expensive education. The trouble was, he found, when he crossed that ethical line, he had left his true self stranded on the other side.

I have no excuse, he wrote. Every penny of that money was for my benefit, to keep up appearances in my in-laws’ eyes, to buy the love and respect of the daughter I spoil. For now, the most important thing is that Pine–Curry be pursued without the risk of the department’s credibility being destroyed.

He wrote that he was sorry, tried to improve on that statement and found he couldn’t. He printed the letter out, read it over and signed it. He addressed the envelope to Chief Kendall, marked it Personal and dropped it in the interdepartmental mail.

He had planned to join Delorme in the boardroom, but suddenly, exhausted, he sank back down in his chair with a deep sigh. Katie Pine’s bracelet glittered dully in its plastic cocoon. Katie Pine, Katie Pine—how he would love to get some measure of justice for her before he left the department. The tiny gold instruments seemed out of character for her—or at least for the idea he had of her, of Katie the little math whiz. The tiny gold bass fiddle, trombone, snare drum and guitar—they would be more in character for Keith London. Miss Steen had said he had a guitar with him. And Billy LaBelle had taken lessons at Troy Music Centre—which Cardinal might not have recalled but for the fact that Troy Music Centre was the last place Billy LaBelle had been seen alive.

“And what about Todd Curry?” Cardinal said it aloud, though he hadn’t meant to.

“Are you talking to me?” Szelagy’s head appeared over the top of another computer, but Cardinal didn’t answer. He pulled the file across the desk; it was woefully thin.

“Billy LaBelle, Keith London and Katie Pine were all into music. What about Todd Curry?”

He recalled vividly the boy’s suburban room in his suburban house, his devastated father hanging back in the doorway. He recalled the games in the closet, the map on top of his desk—but music? What sign had there been of music? Yes, there it was in the sup on the interview with the parents: Todd Curry had belonged to music newsgroups online. Alt.hardrock and Alt.rapforum. That’s right—he had thought it strange that a white kid was so into rap music.

Then something else fell out of the file, a scrawled note that made Cardinal’s heart begin to pound. Someone, he couldn’t be sure who, had taken a call from the teacher, Jack Fehrenbach, who was reporting a stolen credit card. “Szelagy, is this your handwriting?” Cardinal waved the note at him. “You take a call from Jack Fehrenbach?”

Szelagy looked at the note. “Yeah. I told you about it, remember?”

“Jesus Christ, Szelagy. Don’t you realize how important this is?”

“I did tell you about it. I don’t know what else you want me to—”

But Cardinal wasn’t listening: he was staring at the note in his hand. An unusual charge on Fehrenbach’s statement had alerted him. On December 21, the night after Todd Curry had visited him, someone had charged two hundred and fifty dollars at Troy Music Centre, apparently for an elaborate turntable.

Cardinal ran down the hall to the boardroom, where Delorme was on the phone, scribbling notes onto a yellow legal pad.

“It’s music.” Cardinal snapped his fingers at her. “Todd Curry was into rap music, remember? Wanted to be a DJ, Fehrenbach said.”

“What’s going on, Cardinal? You have a funny look on your face.”

Cardinal held up the Baggie in which Katie Pine’s bracelet floated like an embryo. “This little item is going to break our case.”