Forty Words for Sorrow

The dining room was furnished with heavy old furniture, and Cardinal, no expert in such matters, had no idea if it was antique or reproduction. The painting on the wall looked old and vaguely famous, but Cardinal was no art critic, either. Kelly had been appalled one day to discover he had no idea who the Group of Seven were, stars of Canadian art history apparently. The glass doors of a cabinet displayed pretty glassware, neatly arranged. Cardinal opened a cupboard and found bottles of Armagnac and Seagram's V.O. The chair at the head of the table was the only one with arms, and the fabric was a good deal more worn than the others. Had the old man continued to eat at the place of honor long after his family had dispersed? Had he sat here, imagining his wife and children around him?

Cardinal's flashlight beam found a pair of sliding doors, presumably leading to the living room, but they were frozen shut. He returned to the kitchen and took the back stairs to the second floor.

Upstairs, the bedrooms showed no sign of disturbance. He lingered briefly in the master bedroom, the last one to be occupied. There was a small television on an antique dresser, which would have been easy to steal.

The bathroom cabinet contained antihistamines, laxatives, Fixodent, and a gigantic bottle of Frosst 222s.

Cardinal went down the main stairway into the front den. An old piano took up most of the space. A pair of elaborate silver candelabra stood on top, surrounded by photographs of the Cowart family. A closer examination of the piano lid showed that the candelabra had been moved, the hexagonal bases had left their outlines in the dust, and the candle stubs looked fairly recent. So someone had sat at the piano by candlelight. Possibly Todd Curry. The lid of the keyboard was smudged with hand-prints. Cardinal shuddered; his bones ached from the cold.

The living room looked like a stage set: two armchairs, plant stand with dead plant, circular rug in front of brick fireplace. The fireplace had been used. The ashes of a log fire lay in the grate, covered with a white dusting of snow. Yes, you would need a fire- no heat, no electricity. Anyone planning to stay here in December would have made a fire right away. A fire would have lit the room up. Wouldn't they be afraid someone would see the smoke? A normal person would be, but I'm not looking for a normal person, Cardinal told himself; I'm looking for a runaway drug user and a child killer, and God knows what else.

Cardinal swung his flashlight past a mantelpiece, past a large television. Above the couch hung a dark old painting, a man in black, a Spaniard, judging by the pointy little beard. His cape was a flowing black velvet with unusual markings.

Beneath this, the couch looked as if someone had upended a gallon of paint over the back. The design in the fabric was completely obliterated. Then Cardinal leaned closer and saw that it was not paint but blood. Blood in large quantities. He shone his flashlight on the wall and saw now that what he had taken to be a wallpaper pattern was in fact droplets of blood- droplets flung upward, as if from someone swinging a heavy instrument. There was blood on the painting, too, he now saw. Those marks on the Spaniard's cloak.

He stood in front of the couch, sweeping the flashlight slowly from one end to the other. One of the cushions was bare, the cover having been removed. A burglar could have used the seat cover to carry booty outside, but what did the killer use it for? He didn't bother to steal those silver candelabra, Cardinal thought, or the tiny television upstairs. He doesn't do this for money.

Cardinal was shivering with cold- at least he thought it was the cold- and tried to figure out where they would have put the body. They hadn't taken it outside, he was reasonably sure, and the upstairs had looked untouched. He went down to the basement, wishing fervently he had more light.

He stopped before a flimsy-looking door under the stairs. In older houses you often found coal chutes under the stairs, although nobody burned coal anymore. There were drag marks in the dust.

Cardinal put the flashlight down on the floor. The beam cast his hunchbacked shadow up and down the wall as he bent to open the half door. It came back with a scrape and a clatter. He knew what would be in there. Even though he could not smell it, he knew what would be there. The cold had killed his sense of smell. He wanted to see it, then get the hell out of there and come back with a team. He picked up the flashlight and ducked into the tiny space.