Forty Words for Sorrow

Then another figure entered the scene. It was Eric, pretending to be the outraged husband, shouting the most ridiculous phrases. "You do this to me? After the way I've treated you?" It was even worse than he had imagined.

Eric pulled the woman away, still shouting inanely.

The kid, for his part, did a terrible job of acting- holding up his hands in the hammiest way. He looked ridiculous with his pants half-down.

Then Eric struck a theatrical pose in the foreground, raising a hammer. "You try to screw my wife behind my back! I'm going to kill you!"

"No, please," the kid pleaded, laughing of course. "Please don't kill me! I didn't mean it! I'll make it up to you!" Then, hopelessly out of character: "Sorry. I can't help it. It just feels so stupid, you know?"

"You think it feels stupid?" Eric stepped forward, the hammer high. "I'll show you what feels stupid."

The hammer came down on the boy's head, changing everything. Even with the bad quality of the sound, Keith knew instantly that the crunch of bone was real. Also real was the sudden emptiness in the boy's face- the open mouth, the vacant, astonished eyes.

Eric swung again. "You bastard, you scum, who do you think you are?"

There was another minute and a half of video. As it played on the screen before him, Keith remained utterly still in the flickering pool of light. Then he raised his head and howled like a dog.

30

OUTSIDE, someone was stuck in the snow. The futile whine of tires could be heard even in the interview room, where Cardinal was listening to a sad young woman named Karen Steen. It had been an unhappy morning altogether. First, he had stopped off at the O.H., only to find Catherine sullen and uncommunicative. He had cut the visit short when he felt himself getting angry with her. His first phone call of the morning had come from Billy LaBelle's mother- crying, her speech slurred under the influence of too much of whatever her doctor had prescribed to dull her pain. Then Mr. Curry had called (only out of concern for his wife, of course), and Cardinal had had to tell him he was still no closer to catching whoever had beaten his only child to death. Then Roger Gwynn had called from the Lode, asking in his halfhearted way if there was any progress. When Cardinal responded in the negative, Gwynn had lapsed into an ode to their days at Algonquin High, as if nostalgia would make Cardinal more forthcoming. This was followed in short order by calls from The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and Grace Legault from Channel Four. The newspapers were no problem, but Grace Legault had somehow got ahold of the tidbit about Margaret Fogle. Was it true they had thought she was also a Windigo victim? And she had turned up alive and well and living in B.C.?

Cardinal summed it up for her: Margaret Fogle had been a missing person. She had in some ways fit the killer's profile. However, now she was found and no longer of interest to the Algonquin Bay police. The call rattled him because it meant someone was talking to Legault without keeping him informed. The thought of having this out with Dyson made him very, very tired.

Cardinal wanted to devote his time to footwork. He and Delorme had split the camera and clock leads. They had rerecorded the sounds from the tape, making multiple copies that they would send to camera and clock repair experts in Toronto and Montreal. Delorme would have run through twenty camera repair shops by now, while Cardinal had got nowhere. Instead, he had got caught up first on the phone and now in person with this sincere young woman who was telling him about her missing boyfriend.

Cardinal was angry at Sergeant Flower for telling Miss Steen he would see her. Especially when it turned out she was from Guelph, a largely agrarian community some sixty miles west of Toronto. "If your boyfriend's from Toronto," he told her, "you should be talking to the Toronto police."

Karen Steen was a shy woman- girl, really, not more than nineteen or so- who tended to stare at the floor between sentences. "I decided not to waste a lot of time on the telephone, Officer Cardinal. I thought you'd be more likely to pay attention to me if I came in person. I believe Keith is here in Algonquin Bay."

All young women made Cardinal think of his daughter, but- except for her age- Ms. Steen had nothing in common with Kelly. Kelly was the epitome of the hip and casual- in Cardinal's eyes at least- whereas the young woman seated across from him in the interview room had a kind of girl-next-door look. She was wearing a business suit that was too old for her, and silver wire-frames that gave her the air of a scholar. A very serious girl next door.