I said was the Quebecois have some legitimate grievances. What the hell is he talking about?’
‘Can we not get into it, please?’
While McLeod muttered to himself over his sups, Cardinal and Delorme cleared three cases in under an hour – a simple matter of matching initial reports with follow-up faxes announcing that the subject was no longer missing. They organized the remaining cases in descending priority: two of the reports had been posted nationally, meaning there was no particular reason to think the subjects – one from Newfoundland, one from Prince Edward Island – had ever set foot in Algonquin Bay.
‘This one looks interesting.’ Delorme held up a fax photo. ‘She’s eighteen but looks thirteen. Only five feet tall and ninety pounds. She was actually seen at the bus station.’
‘Hang on to it,’ Cardinal said, as he answered the phone. ‘Criminal Investigations, Cardinal speaking.’
‘Len Weisman – yes, I’m in the morgue on a Sunday night – why? Because a certain detective of the female persuasion was making my life a living hell. Does she realize Toronto is an actual city? Does she know how many cases we get? Does she have any idea what kind of pressures we have?’
‘The victim was thirteen, Len. She was a child.’
‘And that’s the only reason I’m talking to you. Just tell your junior, next time she waits in line like everybody else. Did Chemistry section call you?’
‘Nope. All we got is Odontology, and we got that the other day.’
‘Well, Chemistry should have something for you – they kept her long enough.’
‘What can you give us, Len?’
‘Wasn’t a lot to work with – you saw the body – so I’ll cut to the chase. One finding on the limbs: the one wrist and one ankle both showed ligature marks, so she was tied up somewhere; Chemistry may have more for you on that. Star attraction? We had one eyeball, and fragments of upper lobes of the lungs. Both places, Dr Gant found signs of petechial hemorrhage. Wouldn’t have left a trace if she hadn’t been frozen. Never would’ve seen it.’
‘You’re saying she was strangled?’
‘Strangled? No, Dr Gant doesn’t say strangled. Not much neck left, you know – so no ligature marks there and no available hyoid bone. Call the doc if you want, but strangled, no, I don’t think we can go out on that particular limb. One way or another, though, this little girl suffocated.’
‘Any other findings?’
‘Talk to Setevic in Chemistry. His report says one fibre: red, trilobal. No blood, no hair – except the girl’s.’
‘Nothing else about the fibre?’
‘Talk to Setevic. Oh, there’s a note here – they found a bracelet of some kind in her jeans pocket.’
‘Day she disappeared, Katie was wearing a charm bracelet.’
‘Right. Says here it’s a charm bracelet. You’ll get it with the rest of the stuff. Is Detective Delorme there with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve never met this woman, but I’m guessing she’s good-looking. Sex appeal in the red zone?’
‘Yeah, you could say that.’ Delorme just then was squinting at a fax, creases of concentration between her brows. Cardinal tried and failed not to find it appealing. ‘You want a phone number or something, Len?’
‘Do I ever not. Her attitude is like someone used to getting her way, that’s all. In fact, put her on right now. Let me talk to her.’
Cardinal handed the phone to Delorme. She closed her eyes and listened. Gradually the skin over her cheekbones coloured; it was like watching the mercury rise in a thermometer. A moment later she placed the receiver gently on the hook. She said, ‘Okay. That’s fine. So some men they don’t react well to pressure.’
McLeod yelled from across the room, ‘I heard that, Delorme.’
The turnout for Katie Pine’s funeral was larger than anyone had expected. Five hundred people showed up at St Boniface, a tiny red brick church on Sumner Street, to pray over the small, closed coffin. The media were out in force. Delorme recognized Roger Gwynn and Nick Stoltz from the Lode. Nick Stoltz had got her into hot water as a teenager by snapping a picture of her and her boyfriend romantically entwined on a bench in what was then Teacher’s College Park. To him and most readers of the Lode it was simply a picture of autumn splendour, but to Delorme’s parents it meant that their daughter had not, after all, spent the evening with her friends at the sodality. She had been grounded for two weeks – a punishment that gave her boyfriend’s wandering heart time to conceive an affection for Delorme’s rival. Ever since, photographers had been assigned a place in Delorme’s personal inferno only slightly cooler than that reserved for rapists.
There was the Sudbury newswoman, with a female camera operator, Delorme noticed, and a three-hundred-pound soundman. She had seen a CBC van out front, and two pews up she recognized a reporter from The Globe and Mail who had done a piece on Delorme after she had put Algonquin Bay’s three-term mayor in prison. It’s not every day a child is found murdered on a desolate island in a frozen lake, but Delorme hadn’t figured it for national news.
The Globe reporter trained his famished newshound’s eye on Dorothy Pine, slow with grief, being led up the front steps. The reporter moved forward, but Jerry Commanda somehow managed to interpose his frame between him and the grieving mother, and when the aisle cleared, the reporter had subsided into his pew, apparently nursing a sudden abdominal spasm.
The police were here not only to pay their respects to a murdered little girl but also on the off chance the killer might show up at the funeral. Delorme was in the last pew, a good vantage point from which to see any lurkers. Cardinal was standing at the front, well off to one side, looking sombre in his black suit and – Delorme had to admit – handsome in a battered kind of way. Bruise-coloured rings under his eyes lent a soulful cast to his appearance that a romantic – and Delorme did not for one minute consider herself a romantic – might find very compelling. Fiercely loyal to his wife, Cardinal, despite her bouts with mental illness, if what Delorme heard was true. It was mentioned only infrequently in the squad room, and then in hushed tones.
As a ticket out of Special Investigations, working a homicide with the subject of her own investigation was not what Delorme would have chosen. Not a way to make friends or influence people, but then that isn’t why you go into Special Investigations in the first place.
John Cardinal seemed as uncorrupt as any cop Delorme had ever met; it was hard to give much weight to Musgrave’s worries about him. Before the funeral began, he’d chatted amiably with the old priest, whom Delorme pegged as a not too secret drinker. She hadn’t thought of Cardinal as a churchgoer. She’d never seen him in St Vincent’s, but then he’d hardly be likely to attend the French church.
The truth was, she didn’t know him well. The nature of her job kept her aloof from the rest of the force. And one thing you learn
