Forty Words for Sorrow

"Everybody works robbery. You will, too, because A-" and here he started counting off on those weird flat fingers of his, which always drove Delorme crazy. "Cardinal is heading up a major murder case and does not have time to handle anything else; B: because you are his junior on the squad; and C: because Cardinal bloody well asked me to put you on them. End of mystery, end of discussion. Look, you need an excuse to get away from him anyway, right? Get a little distance? You can hardly investigate the guy when you're sharing an unmarked all day. In fact, you could do worse than to check out his house- should the opportunity present itself."

"I can't search his place without a warrant."

"Of course not. I merely point out that you're partners. You will spend a lot of time together. If you should find yourself in his house- well, use your imagination. Not, I hasten to add, that I think he's guilty."

"I can't run a check when I'm clearing old cases. When am I supposed to look at the Corbett files?"

"I have been known to approve overtime, you know. I'm not the Scrooge people like McLeod and Cardinal make me out to be."

"With respect, D. S., why are we pursuing this now? The Pine case, surely it outweighs all this."

"Kyle Corbett is not just a former drug dealer and current counterfeiter. He's a stone-cold killer, as the world will know, if we ever catch the bastard. If someone's been tipping him off, that is not a petty crime. It's corruption, it's aiding and abetting a murderer, and I want the guilty party off my team- if he is in fact on my team- and in jail where he belongs."

"Me, I think we should both be down in Toronto chasing Forensics."

"Forensics can do their job without our breath condensing on their necks. By the way, there's a stack of burglaries in that backlog that I expect you to clear by the end of the week. We all know who's doing them, it's just a matter of nailing the little creep."

Snow flurries were ticking at the windowpane behind him, and the window reflected as a perfect white rhomboid on Dyson's polished head. Oh, she wanted to smack him.

Now, a pretty Indian soloist finished her rendition of "Abide With Me," and the priest stepped into the pulpit. He spoke for a few moments about the promise that was Katie Pine's life. He spoke warmly of her intelligence and her sense of humor, and the sobbing in the front rows intensified. If it were not for his slight hesitation every time he said Katie's name, Delorme might have thought he had actually known the girl. Holy water was sprinkled on the coffin. Incense was burned. The 23rd Psalm was sung. And then the coffin was trundled to the back of the church, hoisted awkwardly by four pallbearers into a waiting hearse, and driven away to the cemetery where all that remained of Katie Pine would be transformed into smoke and ash.

LATER that afternoon, Delorme carried a box of personal stuff out of her old office and dumped it on her new desk, back-to-back with Cardinal's. She stared down at his things without a trace of guilt. Squad room desks were one right next to another; anything left out was on public display. McLeod's desk was a landfill of overstuffed manila folders, a junkyard of evidence envelopes, affidavits, sup reports: geysers of paper shooting from accordion files.

Beside it, Cardinal's desk was by contrast a field lying fallow. The metal desktops were made to resemble, not at all convincingly, fine oak. Most of Cardinal's with its swirls of faux grain lay exposed to the open air. Pinned to the corkboard above it was a copy of Dyson's latest memo. (The new Beretta automatics: every officer expected to become a shining example with the new weapon by end of February, and let's show the opposition what's what in the annual contest, which the Mounties, damn them, always won. Dyson did not think this could be blamed on budgetary imbalances.)

There was a picture of Cardinal's daughter, a pretty girl with her father's confident smile, and beside this, a parking ticket. Delorme leaned over without touching anything to read the address on the parking ticket: 465 Fleming Street, right downtown, it could mean anything.

The Rolodex was open to Dorothy Pine's number. Delorme flipped it back to A, and for the next twenty minutes made her way through to F, not looking for anything definite. It was full of hastily scrawled names that meant nothing to her, along with the numbers of various lawyers, probation officers, and social workers that any cop would have on hand. There was Kyle Corbett, but you'd expect that. It listed three different addresses and several phone numbers, which Delorme copied into her notebook.