Forty Words for Sorrow

"YOU can't possibly say it's the same killer." Dyson spread his spatulate fingers fanlike and counted off his reasons. "One: the victim is in his thirties; the others were teenage or younger. Two: totally different MO. The others were beaten or strangled. Three: he was dumped where he'd be easy to find."

"Not that easy. If the Hydro guys hadn't been working on that particular transformer, it could have been months before he was found. Next time they plowed 63, the body would have been totally covered up."

"Arthur Wood was a well-known criminal. Had to have a lot of enemies."

"Woody didn't have an enemy in the world. You couldn't hope to meet a nicer guy- long as you kept your eyes on the silverware."

"Bad blood from prison, maybe. Talk to his old cellmates, talk to the guards in his wing. We don't know everything about our clientele."

"Woody was a hardworking thief. This time, he broke into the wrong house. When we find that house, we find our killer." He's going to assign it to McLeod, Cardinal could see the decision forming in Dyson's all-but-transparent dome. The letter opener stirred a furrow through the dish of paper clips. "Look," Dyson said, "you've already got enough to do."

"Yeah, but if this is the same guy, we're just going to be-"

"Let me finish, please." The voice was soft, still thoughtful. "You've got more than enough to do, as I say. But why don't we do this: You take the Woody case for the time being. It's your case so long as nothing comes up that definitely disconnects it from Our Local Maniac. Moment that happens, and I mean instantly, it's McLeod's case. Understood?"

"Understood. Thanks, Don," Cardinal said, and flushed a little. He never used the detective sergeant's first name, it was just the excitement of the moment. Before he opened the door, he turned back and said, "Sudbury TV got ahold of the thing on Margaret Fogle."

"I know. That was my fault. I apologize."

Dyson apologizing. One for the record books. "Didn't exactly help. I don't even see why it would come up."

"Grace Legault is not Roger Gwynn. That woman is not going to linger long on Sudbury's esteemed Channel Four. That's a Toronto-bound bitch if ever I saw one. Knows what she's doing. Somehow, she got ahold of a bunch of Missing Persons and- well, it doesn't matter- she caught me off guard. Obviously, I should have kept you informed. My mistake. Now I think we're done here, aren't we?"

As he came out of Dyson's office, Cardinal bumped smack into Lise Delorme. "I've been looking all over for you," she said. "Woody's wife is out front. She wants to report him missing. We'll have to take her up to the O.H. to identify the body."

"Don't jump the gun here, Lise. I don't want to tell her right away."

Delorme looked shocked. "You have to tell her. Her husband is dead, for God's sake. You can't keep that from her."

"The moment we tell her, you can forget about getting any information out of her. She'll be too upset. I'm just saying we don't tell her right away."

MARTHA Wood hung her coat on a rack in the hall and beside it her son's tiny down parka. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans- an outfit that on her tall, lean figure looked like something out of Vogue. She sat in the interview room where both cops had interviewed her husband numerous times over the years. Her toddler, like his mother, dark-haired and dark-eyed, sat quietly on the chair beside her, squeezing a plastic Yogi Bear that from time to time emitted a nasal moan.

Martha Wood twisted her wedding ring as she spoke. "When Woody left the house, he was wearing a blue V-neck sweater, Levi's 505s, and cowboy boots. They're black. Lizard skin."

"Okay. It was cold on Saturday. What kind of coat did he have on?" The body with its nine bullet wounds had been found naked. Woody's clothes might turn up somewhere else.

"A blue down parka. Shouldn't I be filling out a form or something? A Missing Persons form?"

"We're taking it all down," Cardinal assured her.

"You need his height and weight, right?"

"We have that," Delorme said.

"Oh, right. I forgot about his arrest records. It's weird, all this time I go around thinking of cops as the enemy. Now Woody's disappeared, I feel different."

"We do, too," Cardinal said. "Was Woody driving that old ChevyVan of his?" They had already put out an all-points for the van, license plates and all.

"Yes. I should give you the license plate number." She reached into her purse for keys.

"I have the plate numbers from before," Delorme said. "His van, it's still blue?"

"Still blue, right." Mrs. Wood paused with her hand in her purse. "But he liked to change the license plates sometimes when he went on a job. I don't know if he did that or not this time. The sign is new: It says COMSTOCK ELECTRICAL REPAIRS on the side."

"You knew he was going out on a job?"