Forty Words for Sorrow

KATIE Pine had disappeared on September 12. She had attended school that day, leaving just after the final bell with two friends. There was the initial report- a phone call from Dorothy Pine- and then there were the sups: Cardinal's interview with Sue Couchie, McLeod's interview with the other girl. The three girls had gone to the traveling fair that was set up outside Memorial Gardens. Cardinal set this among the solid facts.

The girls didn't stay long. The last they'd seen of Katie she'd been throwing balls at some bowling pin targets, hoping to win a huge stuffed panda she'd liked the look of. It was almost as big as Katie, who was thirteen but looked eleven, tops.

Sue and the other girl had gone to a dark little tent to have their fortune told by Madame Rosa. When they came back to the ball-throwing attraction, Katie was gone. They looked around for her, couldn't find her, and decided she must have left without them. This was around six o'clock.

There was Cardinal's interview with the young man who operated the ball-throwing game. No, she didn't win the bear, and he hadn't noticed anyone with her, hadn't seen her leave. No one saw her leave. The ground, as Dyson said, had opened up.

Thousands of interviews, thousands of fliers later, Cardinal had learned nothing more about her disappearance. She had run away twice previously, to relatives in Mattawa. But her father's drunken rages had driven her to it, and when he was dead, her running stopped. Dyson had not wanted to hear it.

Cardinal got up and put a dressing gown on over his clothes, stirred the fire in the woodstove, and sat down again. It was only five, but it was already dark and he had to switch on the reading lamp. The metal chain was cold to the touch.

He opened the LaBelle file. William Alexander LaBelle: twelve years old, four foot-eight, eighty pounds- a very little kid. The address in Cedargrove was upper middle-class. Catholic background, parochial school. Parents and relatives ruled out as possible suspects. History of running, though only once in Billy's case. Never mind, it was enough for Dyson. "Look. Billy LaBelle is the third son in a family of high achievers. He's not doing as well as his football-star brothers, all right? He's not getting the grades of his high-wattage sisters. He's twelve and his self-esteem is in the basement. Billy LaBelle opted out, okay? The kid took a walk."

Where the boy had taken a walk to was a matter of less certainty. Billy had disappeared on October 14, one month after Katie Pine, plucked from the Algonquin Mall where he had been hanging out with friends. Sup reports included interviews with teachers and the three boys who had been with him at the mall. One minute he's playing Mortal Kombat in Radio Shack (sup reports of interviews with the salesman and cashier), the next minute he says he's going to catch the bus home. He's the only one of the four friends who lives in Cedargrove, so he leaves by himself. No one ever sees him again. Billy LaBelle, age twelve, steps out of the Algonquin Mall and into the case files.

Dyson had given Cardinal free rein for a few weeks after Billy's disappearance, and then the walls had closed in: no proof of murder, a history of running, other cases deserved priority. Cardinal resisted, certain that both kids had been killed, probably by the same person. Dyson on Billy LaBelle: "Christ, man. Look at his problems. He's got nothing going for him. My guess is he offed himself somewhere and he'll turn up in the spring floating in the French River."

But why were there no previous attempts? Why no obvious depression? Dyson had cupped his ear, feigning deafness.

Cardinal tossed the LaBelle file aside. He poured himself another cup of decaf and put another log into the woodstove. Sparks shot up like smithereens.

He opened the Fogle case, which contained little more than the top sheet- the facts from the initial report- courtesy of the Toronto police. I should have seen how things would go, Cardinal reflected, and perhaps he had. Dyson had been right: He had spent a lot of money, a lot of manpower. What else were you supposed to do when children vanished into thin air?

Margaret Fogle- at seventeen not really a child- had been the straw that broke Dyson's back. A seventeen-year-old runaway from Toronto? Not high priority, thank you very much. Last seen in Algonquin Bay by her aunt. McLeod's sup report with characteristic misspellings (where for were, "her parents where separated") was in the file. The girl's stated destination: Calgary, Alberta. "Which leaves half a continent and several hundred police forces responsible for finding her," Dyson had pointed out. "You hear me, Cardinal? You are not the country's sole policeman. Let the Horsemen earn their keep for a change."

All right, give him Margaret Fogle. With her out of the equation, it seemed even clearer there was a killer at work.