Forty Words for Sorrow

Perhaps Dyson had been expecting this ending all along. He folded his arms and put his head down on the bar in the time-honored pose of the melancholy drunk, hiding his face.

"D. S., would you put your hands behind your back, please?" Delorme had no need to draw a gun, the Mounties behind her were taking care of all that. "D. S. Dyson," she said, louder. "I need you to put your hands behind your back. I have to cuff you."

Dyson sat up, his face paper-white, and put his hands behind his back. "If it means anything, Lise, I'm sorry."

"I'm arresting you for dereliction of duty, official misconduct, obstructing justice, and accepting a bribe. I'm very sorry, too. The Crown tells me more charges are likely." She sounded very much the well-trained, don't-mess-with-me, modern policewoman. But she wasn't really thinking of the Crown, or the charges, or even Adonis Dyson. The whole time she was executing this by-the-book arrest of her boss, Lise Delorme was thinking of that gawky young daughter she had seen outside his house and of the wraithlike figure who had called her away.

45

IT was three-thirty in the morning, and Cardinal had the photographs pinned up on a shelf above the stereo, where a Bach suite was playing. He was not a classical music buff, but Catherine was and Bach was her hero. Listening to his wife's favorite music made the house seem less lonely, as if he might step into the living room and find Catherine curled up on the couch, reading one of her detective novels.

Katie Pine, Billy LaBelle, and Todd Curry stared at Cardinal from across the room like a very young jury who had found him guilty. Keith London- who might yet be alive- was abstaining from the vote, but Cardinal could almost hear his cry for help, the accusation of incompetence.

There had to be some connection between all four victims; Cardinal did not believe a killer could be entirely random in singling out his prey. There must be some thread, however slender, that united the victims- something that later would turn out to be obvious and he would curse himself for not seeing sooner. It would exist somewhere: in the files, in the scene photographs, in the forensic reports, perhaps in a stray word or phrase, the import of which had been missed at the time.

A car prowled by on Madonna Road, its motor muffled by the banks of snow. A moment later, footsteps sounded on his front steps.

"What are you doing here?"

Lise Delorme was on his doorstep, rain sparkling in her hair, her cheeks pink. Her voice was full of excitement. "It's a ridiculous hour, I know, but I drove past on my way home and saw your light was on and I have to tell you what just happened."

"You drove by on your way home?" Madonna Road was three miles out of her way. Cardinal held the door open for her.

"Cardinal, you aren't going to believe this. You know the Corbett case?"

DELORME sat on the edge of the couch, hands flying every which way as she told Cardinal everything, from Musgrave's first appearance to Dyson's laying his head on the bar like a man about to be guillotined.

Cardinal leaned back in his chair by the woodstove, countercurrents of dread and relief flowing across his belly. He listened as she outlined Musgrave's suspicions, Dyson's ambivalence, her own moments of doubt when she discovered the Florida condo, the boat receipt.

"You searched my place without a warrant," Cardinal said with as little inflection as possible.

She ignored him, small hands moving in the light, her accent stronger than he'd ever heard it. "For me, the worst moment." Hand on heart, small round breast momentarily emphasized. "Worst moment absolutely was finding that boat receipt."

"Which boat receipt was that?" Cardinal placed the question between them with a coolness he did not feel. Brazen as a professional thief, Delorme went straight to his file cabinet. She half knelt to open the drawer, and then her pale fingers were riffling through his papers. Cardinal was citizen enough to feel outrage at the invasion, cop enough to feel admiration, and man enough, he noted with annoyance, to find it slightly erotic. Delorme pulled out the receipt: One Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, fifty-thousand dollars. "When I saw that date, my heart went like the Titanic. Boom. Straight down."

"It's right after we raided Corbett." Cardinal held the thing to the firelight, looking for- well, he wasn't sure what for. "It's not mine."

"You know what saved you? The three Fs saved you." She proceeded to explain about Florida and French Canadians and how that peculiar combination had allowed her, from her location nearly a thousand miles north, to run down the purchase of that cabin cruiser. "I fax Sergeant Langois the receipt number, he goes over there, and this guy, he's very good-looking, okay? This poor Florida girl working in the back office she'll do anything for him. I mean, his accent, everything about the guy is charming."