Forty Words for Sorrow

As they came out of the practice room, Alan Troy called, "What is it, Carl? What's going on?" But Sutherland ignored him, leading Cardinal and Delorme to a cramped office in the back. Almost buried among stacks of invoices, a computer screen glowed with columns of numbers. Sutherland sat down and typed in a couple of commands. The screen went dark, except for the cursor pulsing in the top left corner.

"You have the date?" he asked without looking at them. "The date the girl disappeared?"

"September twelfth, last year. She bought the charm two days before."

"Fine. Now, I need the item number." He consulted a printout the size of a telephone book, flipping through the double-sized pages until he found what he wanted. He typed in the number. "This should tell us how many we sold in the past year." He drummed his fingers on the desk as he waited. "Seven. Okaaay…" He typed in another command, the monthly breakdown.

"September tenth." Delorme pointed at the screen. "Two days before."

Sutherland moved the mouse and clicked. The screen filled up with a copy of the register receipt. He tapped the long fingernail of his right hand on the upper right corner. "You see that number three? That's the salesperson. One is Alan, two is me, three is Eric."

"Eric who?"

"Eric our part-timer. Eric Fraser. Mostly he helps with the stock, but busy times- lunch hours, after-school rush- he helps with the cash, too. If you look at the top left there you can see the time of the transaction: four-thirty P.M. If you look at our calendar, it's going to show you I was teaching a lesson at that time. I think you want to talk to Eric Fraser."

"Mr. Sutherland, is there anything around here that Mr. Fraser touched recently? Something nobody else touched?"

Sutherland thought for a minute. "Follow me."

Alan Troy dodged around Collingwood, finger jabbing the air, demanding to know what was going on. Sutherland cut him off. "Alan, did Eric polish the Martins yesterday?"

"I'm calling the chief of police on this. My employees do not get treated in this way. These people have to-"

"Alan, for Chrissake, just tell them. Did Eric polish the Martins yesterday?"

"The Martins?" Troy squinted first at Sutherland, then at Delorme, then at Cardinal, and back to Sutherland. "You want to know if Eric polished the Martins. Suddenly the urgent question of the moment is, did Eric Fraser polish the Martins? All right, then, yes. Eric did polish the Martins."

Cardinal asked if anyone else had touched the guitars. No. Business had been slow, Martins are expensive, no one had touched them.

Cardinal, still wearing his gloves, reached up for the guitar hanging against the wall. "He'd have to hold it at the bottom to put it back up there, right?"

Mr. Troy, his anger giving way to fascination, nodded. Cardinal held the guitar out toward Collingwood.

Collingwood, silent as ever, dusted a small amount of powder along the top of the soundboard, then blew it off. Two perfect thumbprints took shape. He pulled the Forensic card from his pocket, the thumbprints lifted from Arthur Wood's throat.

"Perfect match," Collingwood said. "Perfect match, plain as day."

50

ERIC and Edie had been right about duct tape. It was even more effective- and less trouble for them- than the drugs. Strain as he might, Keith London could not get the tape to give even a sixteenth of an inch. Each wrist, each ankle was securely fastened. The only tape he had managed to loosen at all was the tape on his mouth. By wetting it, he had gradually loosened it so he could actually make audible sounds now.

But there was some give in the wooden chair to which he was fastened. Rocking from side to side, he could feel the joints loosening.

Whenever Eric and Edie were out of the house, as they were now, Keith rocked from side to side, feeling the joints widening, the screws chewing their way through the wood. They hadn't fed him for a couple of days now, and his efforts were exhausting. He had to stop every few minutes to catch his breath.

Eric and Edie would be moving him soon. They would inject him with a sedative and haul him to some isolated place and- He tried to banish from his mind the memory of the videotape.

He had been rocking for over an hour this morning, ever since he had woken up; his wrists and ankles were chafed raw; his wounded leg was pure agony. But there was some progress, he could feel some give in the chair. It leaned about twenty degrees to either side when he shifted his weight.

He paused, listening. Footsteps crossed the ceiling, and then there was the sound of chairs scraping. Eric and Edie were directly overhead. Keith started rocking again, despite his terror that they would hear him. No, he told himself, the chair is on concrete, the noise won't travel, they won't be able to hear.