Forty Words for Sorrow (25 page)

41

W
HEN SHE GOT HOME FROM
the mall, Edie kicked off her snow boots, which were soaked through with slush, and went upstairs in damp socks to check on Gram. The old biddy was snoring away, mouth hanging open like a garage door. She hadn’t even asked about the gunshots the other day, more concerned about the shouting. Time to check on the prisoner.

The three bolts were still in place. Edie put her ear to the door and listened for a full minute before opening it. Eric had told her not to speak to the prisoner unless he was there too, but they’d been holding him so long, Edie could no longer resist. What was the point of having a prisoner if you couldn’t show him who was boss?

He was seated upright in the chair, his wrists and ankles still securely fastened. The blanket had fallen off, leaving him completely naked. His entire body was pimpled with goosebumps.

He raised his head when Edie came in. Above the taped mouth, the eyes were red and pleading.

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

C
ARDINAL LED
F
AST
F
REDDIE 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 smalltown 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 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 might 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 vapours 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 colour of cinders. Patches where it had melted steamed in the sun.

“Sorry,” Arsenault said weakly. “Sorry about that.”

“You ever hear of ventilation? You guys are lucky to be alive.”

“I think we’ve built up a tolerance for it, right, Bob?” Collingwood, hugging himself against the cold, nodded solemnly.

“Almost all the prints are Woody’s—those that aren’t smudged. The ones on the wheel that are liftable all belong to Fast Freddie. Dashboard and driver door are just smudges. Somebody wiped that sucker down—interior, anyways.”

“Christ, Arsenault. You didn’t get anything?”

Arsenault looked offended. “We got tons of stuff. Picked up two completes right off the rear-view. Lifted those even before we started fuming. Idiots always forget to wipe there.”

“And?” Cardinal looked from Arsenault to Collingwood and back.

“We’re running it now for national,” Arsenault said. “If there’s a record, we should know soon. Couple of hours, max.”

“I don’t believe you guys. You didn’t compare the prints on the van with the prints Forensics lifted off Woody’s neck? You got a fax pinned up in your office. Are you out of your minds?”

“Oh, those. Yeah, we got a thumbprint matches right up.”

“Right. But you weren’t going to mention it.”

“We were waiting for the computer matchup. We wanted to surprise you, eh?”

Delorme shook her head in wonder. “You guys are completely stoned.”

Collingwood and Arsenault shuffled a little, looking sheepish. Cardinal stood at the garage door, looking at the dissected van. Fumes from the glue had formed white deposits wherever a human hand had touched the surface, giving a polka dot effect.

“One time we did a whole Cessna,” Arsenault volunteered. “Wasn’t much bigger than this, though.”

“Get outta here, Paul. The Cessna was way bigger than this thing. Specially if you count the wings.”

Cardinal, Delorme and Arsenault turned to stare at Collingwood. It was the first time any of them could remember him speaking without being spoken to. He stood there facing the van, a lopsided grin on his face, the sunlight shining through his ears.

After lunch, Cardinal and Delorme drove to Woody’s place, a tiny whitewashed bungalow out in Ferris. They sat in the kitchen, where Martha Wood focused intently, almost desperately, on feeding her toddler, as if even a glance at anything else while she spoke of her dead husband might blast her into smithereens.

“Woody liked stereos, boom boxes, tape recorders—stuff that was easy to carry, easy to sell. Laptops, when he could get his hands on them. He’d wait until he had enough to fill up the van, then he’d drive down to Toronto with it. He’d usually be back the same day. Come on, Truckie, eat some more.” She spooned a little more poached egg into the toddler’s mouth. The boy swallowed it, blinked and reached for the spoon for more. “You like that, don’t you. Yes, I know.”

Sorrow takes people in different ways. From the far end of the kitchen table Cardinal watched the way Martha Wood turned gingerly, the delicate way she scooped the egg. She was struggling mightily to deal with the routine of feeding, to deal with the cops. All her movements were slow, careful, as if she had suffered burns. Cardinal sensed an edge of anger under her obvious pain, but it was hard to read; her answers were all aimed at Delorme.

“He’s so cute,” Delorme said. She reached out and touched the thin, soft film of dark hair on the baby’s head. “You call him Chuckie?”

“Truckie. His real name’s Dennis, after Woody’s father, but Woody always called him Dumptruck.” She wiped some egg from her child’s face, scooped up another microscopic portion on the end of the spoon. Small, fat fingers clutched at the spoon and misguided it toward an eager mouth. “When I was pregnant, Woody used to say, ‘But we don’t
need
a baby! We need a
radio
, we need a
reading lamp
, we need a
dumptruck!
Why can’t we call him one of those?’ So we used to joke and refer to him as Reading Lamp and Dumptruck, and unfortunately…”

The kitchen was full of baby smells—powder, wet sheets, bleach. Cardinal thought he had never seen anything sadder than this pretty woman with her baby and her perfect features.

“Hi, Truckie,” Delorme said, and stroked the soft hair. “How you doing?”

For the first time Mrs. Wood looked directly at Cardinal. “Would you leave, please?”

“Me? You want me to leave?” Cardinal was caught off guard. He’d assumed he was the last thing on her mind at this moment.

“You knew my husband was dead, yesterday, the whole time. And you just kept asking me questions like it didn’t matter. Like it was just nothing. How do you think that made me feel?” She was a strong woman, but her voice was trembling now.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wood. I wanted to get the information as fast as possible.”

“You made me feel horrible. You made me feel like shit. And I don’t want you in my house.”

Cardinal stood. “I made a mistake,” he said. “The pressure was on and it threw my judgment off. I’m sorry.”

He left by the side door and sat in the car making notes. Christ, I’m a rotten cop, he thought. People have no idea how rotten. A stupid piece of misjudgment had cost him the opportunity to look around Woody’s house. He would never even know how far back that set the investigation. Let channel four get hold of that one, they’d have a field day.

Delorme came out half an hour later. “That poor woman,” she said, slipping into the driver’s seat.

“Did she let you look around?”

“Yeah. There wasn’t much to see. But I found these.” She handed him a manila envelope.

Cardinal pulled out a stack of Polaroid photographs, some of them stuck together. There were pictures of the Algonquin Mall, the Airport Hill Shopping Centre and Gateway Mall, all taken from the back.

“I just glanced at them,” Delorme said, “but it looks like he was casing the malls.”

“Seems out of character for Woody.”

“He only hit houses, far as I knew. We never nailed him for anything else.”

“There’s just the one of Gateway. There’s more of the other two places.”

“Lot of parking lot in there. Maybe he was following a particular car?”

“He wouldn’t need to take pictures of that. But he might take pictures of stores he wanted to break into. Someone may have seen him. Might’ve seen somebody
with
him.”

43

E
RIC FRASER FINISHED POLISHING
the D-35 and hung it up on the rack behind the counter. It was one of his tasks to polish the guitars once a week, and he preferred it to working the cash or uncrating amplifiers. He liked cleaning things; it was pleasantly mindless, allowing his thoughts to drift wherever he cared to let them—to the island, to the abandoned house, to the boy in Edie’s basement.

“How much is the Martin?” a fat kid with a moustache of sweat wanted to know.

“Three-thousand, six.”

“And what about the Gibson you got there?”

“This one’s twelve hundred.”

Eric could tell the kid wanted to try it out, but he didn’t suggest it. Alan didn’t like people trying out the expensive guitars unless they were serious.

The kid shuffled over to the music books, and Eric started polishing the Gibson. He never played the guitars himself. Carl and Alan were real musicians, and Eric hated to display his lack of talent in front of them. Keith London’s guitar, an Ovation in excellent condition, lay at home beneath his bed. He’d tried it out, but he was so out of practice that the strings hurt his fingers.

A young girl came in and started studying some sheet music, trying to memorize a Whitney Houston song. She was about twelve, with long, straight hair. It was wonderful to be able to look at her without desire; having a prisoner made him impervious. Katie Pine had not been so lucky. Eric had actually been thinking about Billy LaBelle when Katie Pine happened along, looking at the band instruments but not buying. But the moment she came in, Eric had felt the grip of destiny: she would be his, and nothing anyone could do would stop it.

The LaBelle kid was a different matter. Billy LaBelle came in regularly for his lessons, and Eric had watched him over a period of weeks. Always came in by himself, always went home alone after a lesson, lugging his guitar. He’d had big plans for Billy, and then he’d gone and died on them. Well, he and Edie had learned their lesson; it wouldn’t happen again. No, no, he had big plans for this one.

He thought about his prisoner all the time now, imagining all sorts of things to do to him. Keith London’s picture was everywhere—it was up in the mall right outside Troy Music, on the streets, at the bus stops—but he’d only been in town about two hours before disappearing. No one was ever going to find him—certainly not the cops he’d seen on TV.

If only he could find exactly the right place. Somewhere secluded but easy to equip, somewhere he could really be free in. Somewhere he could set up camera and lights. It wasn’t easy. Abandoned houses don’t come along all that often.

“Finish that tomorrow, Eric. Look after the cash for a while, will you?”

“Okay, Alan. You said there was some inventory stuff too.”

“You can take care of that tomorrow. Look after the register now.”

The reason I have to look after the register, he thought, is because you have to play the old expert, don’t you. Have to show these suckers how to play a thing or two, right? Alan was tuning up a Dobro for some guy with hair down to his knees. In some ways, with his firmness and his gentleness, Alan reminded him of his last foster father.

The girl finally gave up trying to memorize the chords right there in the store, and decided to buy the Whitney Houston song after all.

“You play piano?” This bit of friendliness for Alan’s benefit, of course.

“Piano, yeah. A little bit.”

“That’s good. These chords will sound good on piano. They’re not great for guitar. Too many flats.” It was easy to talk when he was feeling so free. Having a prisoner available enabled him to chat with people just like Alan and Carl did. Eric tore off the receipt and taped it to the bag. “Good luck with this, now. Let us know if there’s any other music you’re looking for.”

“Oh, thanks. That’s great.” Sprinkling of acne, mouth full of braces. Amazing. Just a week ago I’d have been too upset to speak to her, too
gripped
. My heart would have been pure thunder, and terrible images would have blotted out the cash register.

Now Eric could watch her flick that long, straight hair without a trace of nerves. This was control.

Jane, his foster sister, had had long, straight hair like that, except Jane’s was blonde. It used to fascinate him. She was always playing with it, too, twirling a strand unconsciously while she watched TV, squinting at it cross-eyed looking for split ends. Sometimes Eric would touch it and she wouldn’t even know. If she was sitting in the front of the car, say, and he was sitting in the back, he could touch that golden, sweet-smelling stuff and she’d be none the wiser.

He daydreamed about Jane for a while. All the things he would have done to her if he’d had the chance. Eventually, Alan Troy told him it was looking pretty slow, he could take the rest of the night off.

“You sure, Alan? I can hang around for a while, if you want.”

“No, that’s okay. Carl’s here to close up.”

Eric had his coat on and was just about out the door when, on an impulse, he asked, “How much you figure an Ovation’s worth, second-hand?”

Alan didn’t look up from the register, where he was counting money. “Why, Eric? You have one to sell?”

“Some guy tried to sell me one the other day. Wanted three hundred for it.”

“Well, it depends on the model, of course. You can’t get an Ovation new for under eight hundred, though, so it sounds like a good deal—depending on the action and so forth.”

“Seemed pretty good. I’m not exactly an expert, though.”

“Why don’t you bring it in, if the guy’ll let you? I’ll check it out. Give you a mechanic’s report, so to speak.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. I think the guy left town, though. ’Night, Alan.”

“Goodnight, Eric.”

“Be careful driving home. It’s turning into slush city out there.”

Alan gave him an amused, assessing look. “You’re in a good mood these days.”

“Am I?” Eric thought about it. “Yeah, I guess I am. Had some good news from home. My sister just got her pharmacy degree.”

“Hey, that’s great. Good for her.”

“Yeah. Jane’s a good kid.”

Eric had not in fact heard from his foster sister for over fourteen years. He had always figured he would get tossed out of the foster home because of the fire he started next door, but they never caught him for that. Never caught him for the wretched series of parties he had with the dog and cat that went missing, either. In the end they got him for something completely stupid. In the end they got him for nothing at all.

Thirteen-year-old Jane had been the cause of it. If she had not been so stuck up, things would have gone smoother, he would have settled in better, he would have been able to relax. But she was always working him up, the way she flicked her hair at him, the way she ignored him. When he had kidnapped her dog, he had found himself strangely free of yearning for Jane. He could talk to her. He could even comfort her, when she cried for her lost pet.

But less than a week after the dog was dead, Eric was tormented again with a ferocious aching in his chest. Jane had gone back to ignoring him, treating him as if he were a clod of dirt under her heel. He swallowed his pain until he could stand it no more, until finally he determined that—for one night, at least—Jane would pay attention. Beyond this, he did not really know what he was going to do. He was going to play it by ear.

He stayed awake one night until his foster father’s grizzly-sized snores shook the walls of the house. Then he put on his jeans and a shirt—even his socks—and tiptoed down the hall to Jane’s door. The door had no lock, he knew; none of the bedrooms had locks.

Sometimes Jane stayed awake reading or listening to her pink plastic radio, but there was no light under her door now. Eric did not even pause. He turned the knob, stepped right into her room and closed the door. His eyes were already adapted to the dark, and he could clearly see the outline of Jane’s hip beneath the covers. She was curled up facing the wall, her features hidden behind a curtain of blond hair.

The room smelled of running shoes and baby oil. Eric stood perfectly still for a long time, watching the rise and fall of Jane’s rib cage, listening to the soft swell of her breath. She’s fast asleep, Eric thought, I can do anything I want.

He held his hands out just above the outline of her body, as if she were a radiator and he could absorb her heat. Then he touched her hair, hooking a yellow strand over his index finger and breathing in the smell of Halo shampoo.

There was a hitch in Jane’s breathing, and Eric froze. You’re just having a dream, he almost said out loud, it’s just a dream and there’s no need to wake up. But she did wake up. Her eyes opened, and before he could stop her, Jane sat up and screamed. Eric covered her mouth, and she bit his hand and cried out, “Mom! Dad! Eric’s in my room! Eric’s in my room!”

A long night followed, a night fraught with tears and raised voices, and in the end Eric’s claim that he had been sleepwalking was not believed.

And so, to his astonishment, Eric Fraser was banished from his fourth and final foster home, not for the abduction and torture of their pet dog, or for the abduction and torture of their cat, or for burning their neighbour’s field; he was exiled for the apparent felony of setting foot in their daughter’s bedroom.

That was it for foster homes. Instead, Eric was shipped to one group home after another, where his behaviour quickly deteriorated. More animals went missing, more fires were set. A smaller boy who made fun of Eric for wetting the bed was tied up and beaten with an electrical cord.

This last offence landed Eric in the Juvenile Court at 311 Jarvis, his third and last appearance. He was found to be a young offender under the meaning of the Act and consigned to Saint Bartholomew Training School in Deep River, where he remained under the care and guidance of the Christian Brothers until he was eighteen years old.

The only good thing that happened to him in Deep River was that a fellow inmate named Tony taught him how to play guitar. When they got out of St. Bart’s, they moved down to Toronto and formed a grunge band, but the rest of the members were more talented than Eric, and it was only a matter of weeks before they got rid of him. After a succession of progressively less interesting jobs, and a succession of smaller and smaller rooms, he began to feel that he was drowning in Toronto. Oh, that suffocating sensation, as if his lungs were closing down. He made no friends. He spent his evenings alone, with magazines that arrived in plain packaging, his fantasies turning darker and darker.

Toronto was killing him, he decided. He would move to some place with lots of fresh air, where you wouldn’t feel like you were choking all the time. In his methodical way he made lists of small cities and their various amenities, finally narrowing his choices down to Peterborough and Algonquin Bay. He decided to visit them both, but the day he arrived in Algonquin Bay, he saw the Help Wanted ad for Troy Music, and that had made up his mind. When he met Edie in the drugstore a week later, some inner part of him had suddenly felt stronger. Those first flickers of utter devotion in her eyes gave him the sense that this was someone he could share his destiny with. Whatever it might be.

But Eric Fraser did not like to think of the past. Those terrible, suffocating years in Toronto, the hostility of St. Bart’s—it was as if there had been a bureaucratic mix-up and he had been assigned a cramped little life that had been meant for someone else. His own life, his real life, had been stolen.

And all of it could have been prevented, he thought, as he drove past the old CN station on the way to Edie’s. The whole damn mess need never have happened, if only he’d been smart enough to tape Jane’s mouth shut.