Forty Words for Sorrow

"Just sign the warrant, Your Worship, I'll be out of your hair. We have zero leads on Billy LaBelle, and as for Katie Pine, this is it. This is all we've got." Katie Pine was the magic number- Katie Pine and Billy LaBelle were a combination that would slip the tumblers in Gagnon's tiny heart. Cardinal could hear the mechanism turning over: Famous case equals opportunity. Opportunity seized equals advancement. Personal advancement equals justice.

The J.P. furrowed his toy brow, timing his resistance like a modestly talented actor. "If there were people living in this house, no way would I sign this. No way would I let you disrupt a sovereign household on grounds this tenuous."

"Believe me, Your Worship, I know how tenuous this is. I wish I had something ironclad to give you, but unfortunately the killer decided not to leave his name and address next to Katie Pine's body."

"That's not a high moral tone, I hope. You're not lecturing me, are you?"

"God, no. If I wanted to lecture J.P.s I'd have been a politician."

Justice Gagnon vanished into his overcoat as if into a fog, then reemerged decisively from cuffs and collar. He snatched up the Bible from his desk and shoved it at Cardinal. "Do you swear the contents in the application are true, so help you God?"

FIVE minutes later, Cardinal was back at the Cowart place, scooping snow away in handfuls from in front of the basement window. His knees were numb as wood. The snow was stratified into alternate layers of powder and ice. Cardinal went back to the car and retrieved a shovel from the trunk.

There were crowbar marks at both ends of the two-by-four that held the plywood in place, and the nails were loose. The two-by-four came away easily, then the plywood. There was no pane of glass behind it.

Cardinal removed his down coat, and the frigid air sucked the breath out of him. He dropped to his knees and crawled backward into the opening, lowering himself inside. Snow got under his shirt and into his pants, melting against his skin. He could feel a platform, possibly a table, under his foot. Whoever had broken in had probably put it there to ease his exit.

Cardinal pulled his coat inside after him, fought with the zipper, then stood there on the table flapping his arms and exclaiming at the cold. The few foot-candles of light that squeezed through the window did little to ease the darkness.

He climbed down from the table- a laundry table, he could now see- and switched on his flashlight. It was a heavy-duty instrument that took six D-cells and on occasion had doubled as a billy club; the glass was cracked and the tube dented. It swept a white beam like a cape over the silent furnace, the washer and dryer, a tool bench he immediately envied. There was a drop saw he'd seen going at Canadian Tire for close to five hundred.

Even in the cold, he could smell the stone and dust, the raw old wood, the laundry smells from the washer and dryer. He opened a door, breaking old spiderwebs with his flashlight, and found shelves of preserves: peaches, prunes, even a gallon of red peppers that looked like fresh hearts.

The stairs were new, unfinished, and open. The flashlight beam revealed no obvious footprints, but Cardinal kept to the edges and took the stairs two at a time to preserve any marks he might have missed.

The door opened to the kitchen. Cardinal stood for a moment to take in the feel of the house. Cold and dark, it exuded despair. Cardinal held in check the excitement of the chase, the sense of something about to happen. He had long ago learned to distrust such feelings; they were almost always wrong. Evidence of intruders did not mean a killer had been here, or even the errant Todd Curry.

The kitchen looked untouched. A thin layer of dust covered every surface. A narrow flight of stairs was tucked in the corner with a cupboard underneath. Cardinal lifted the latch with the toe of his boot, revealing neat rows of canned food. On the wall above the cupboard, a calendar from a local sporting goods store showed a man fishing in a plaid hunter's jacket with a little boy laughing beside him. A sudden memory of Kelly, a summer vacation, a cottage: her little girl's excitement at catching the fish, her squeamishness at baiting the hook. How his daughter's brassy hair had flashed against the deep blue sky. The calendar showed July, two years ago, the month the owner had died.

In the plastic garbage pail he found nothing but a crushed doughnut carton from Tim Hortons.