Forty Words for Sorrow

Edie sniffed. "Couldn't wait, could you. Pig." They hadn't fed him for at least twenty-four hours, or given him anything to drink, so using the basin they had set under the hole in his chair seemed a deliberate provocation.

She checked his leg wound. It was just a little hole with a bit of a burn around it, nothing serious.

The prisoner was trying to say something, grunting and groaning under the tape. Edie sat on the bed and observed him. "Pardon me, prisoner? Can't hear you." The red eyes bulged wider, the groans were louder. "What's that, prisoner? Speak up."

Whatever it was he was trying to communicate, he must have been shouting it. It filtered through the tape as a kind of subterranean roar.

"Stop that racket. I'll get a screwdriver and stick it in your bullet hole. Want me to do that?"

The prisoner shook his head in a comic, exaggerated way.

She squatted down in front of him. "You know the only reason you're still alive?" she said softly. "I'll tell you. The only reason you're still alive, prisoner, is because we're trying to find a place where no one will hear you scream."

Suddenly a hot tear fell on Edie's wrist, and she jumped back, staring at it. "Bastard," she said, and spit, catching him square in the face.

The prisoner bent his head down to evade her.

Edie had to squat down again to get him. She spat at him again and again- calmly, there was no passion in it- and after a while her prisoner stopped even trying to avoid it. Edie kept spitting until his face was glistening all over. She didn't stop until she was completely out of spit.

42

CARDINAL led Fast Freddie back to his cell and ushered him inside. "I had nothing to do with no killings, and you know it. You ain't got a shred of evidence."

For the tenth time, Cardinal told Fast Freddie that no one suspected him of any killings, but Fast Freddie was a small-town drunk and druggie- he lived out beyond Corbeil when he was not in jail- and being charged with murder would be the only interesting thing that ever happened to him.

"I have an alibi, you son of a bitch. I can prove where I was, and you know it. I'm gonna have Bob Brackett on your case, man. Fix your ass good."

Of course Freddie could prove where he was: Approximately twenty-seven inmates at the district jail- not to mention the guards- could testify that Fast Freddie had been securely locked in that institution for the past two years less a day. Cardinal had confirmed this within ten minutes of Fast Freddie's crack-up on Highway 11. He closed the cell door.

"You can charge me with murder, manslaughter, homicide, or whatever the hell you please, you ain't taking me down, Cardinal. I did not kill no one."

"Freddie, I know you find this hard to accept, but the fact is you're only charged with theft auto, driving under, and liquor forty-two."

Despite his useless clarity on his innocence, Fast Freddie was hazy on the one thing of any interest to Cardinal: Had he seen anyone parking the van at the parking lot of the Chinook Tavern? Cardinal had people out there now, tracking down tavern patrons and staff, anyone who might have seen the van drive into the parking lot. Fast Freddie's memory was unreliable on anything that happened after his second pitcher of Labatt's Ice.

Five minutes later, Cardinal relayed this to Delorme as they headed down the corridor to the garage. "That's it?" she said sharply. "That's all you got out of him?"

"Guy gets drunk, suddenly he has an urge to go to Toronto. Nothing else to get."

Delorme had been uptight the last couple of days, and Cardinal wanted to ask what was up. She may already have proof of his own crime; she could be waiting to spring the trap shut at any moment.

"Ready?" Delorme paused with her hand on the doorknob.

"Ready for what?"

The smell hit Cardinal like a ball-peen hammer. "My God. Don't you guys believe in oxygen?"

Arsenault and Collingwood were poring over Woody's van. Nobody loves their work like ident guys, Cardinal thought. The two of them had been in this stinking garage for going on ten hours, fuming the scorched wreck with superglue.

Arsenault waved a gloved hand like a white paw. "Just about done, here. You ever see so many prints? Must be like four billion or so." He giggled.

"All Woody's, right?"

"Also Woody's left." Arsenault looked at young Collingwood, and the two of them fell into gales of helpless laughter.

"You guys are high," Cardinal said mildly. "You better take a break." Woody's van- the entire vehicle- had been encased in Plexiglas for the fuming, but now that the Plexiglas had been removed, the glue vapors were overpowering. "Come on," Cardinal said. "Outside."

The four of them stood outside in the blinding sun, all heaving in deep breaths. It was warmer than it had been since December. You got strange periods of warmth like this sometimes in February, just long enough to fool you into thinking spring was near. The snow at the edges of the parking lot was the color of cinders. Patches where it had melted steamed in the sun.