“Just give it to me, Paul.”

  “In the end, I got it from the Immigration database—and no, I’m not going to tell you how. We got a British national, moved here a couple years ago.” He handed a printout through the window.

  It showed two thumbprints. The photograph above them was kinder than the general run of such documents. In the curly hair, the salt-and-pepper beard, it captured the canine amiability of the man. Frederick David Bell, MD. When Cardinal got to work, he called Bell and arranged to meet him on his lunch hour up at the psychiatric hospital.

  He drove out along Highway 11 and turned in at the all too familiar driveway of the Ontario Hospital. Cardinal had been here countless times—professionally, because it often housed criminals, and personally, because of Catherine. Usually when she was booked in here, it was the dead grey month of February.

  The red brick building was nearly lost amid the glory of the leaves. A crisp wind blew over the hilltop, and the poplars and birches dipped their heads like dancers. All of Cardinal’s history with the place blurred into one long ache, all the times Catherine had been taken here because she was manic and spouting some loony idea as if it made perfect sense, or because she was so depressed she was an inch away from sliding a razor across her wrist.

  He took the elevator to the third floor. Dr. Bell’s door was open. He was in his chair, looking out over the parking lot and the hills beyond. He sat very still, and Cardinal was put in mind of a dog at the window, waiting for its owner to return.

  He knocked—loudly, with the intent to startle—and was gratified to see the effect. Bell’s shoulders shot up and he turned around. He stood up when he saw Cardinal.

  “Detective. Please come in. Have a seat.”

  Cardinal set his briefcase on the floor and sat down.

  “You were right about the cards,” he said. “They weren’t from a murderer.”

  “No, I thought not.”

  “They were from a guy I put in jail for fraud a few years back.”

  “Well, that makes perfect sense. Fraud is such a sneaking, knavish thing. Fits in with the style of the poisoned pen. And did he lose his wife as a result of your efforts?”

  “Yes. You were right about that too.”

  “Probably not by suicide, though.”

  “No. But how would you know that?”

  “Because—at least on the face of things—the shame in such a case would be all with the criminal and not the criminal’s family. Different story if, say, the crimes were a long-standing series of sexual assaults, or racist violence, something a spouse might be expected to know about, or at least suspect. Do you have something else for me? Is that why this sudden trip up here? I was thinking, just before you arrived, that it would be painful for you to come up here. All the memories of Catherine.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference where I am.”

  Cardinal opened his briefcase and pulled out Catherine’s suicide note. This time he handed the doctor the version that had been through the ESDA machine. It was encased in plastic, the writing a ghostly white script on a background of graphite, Catherine’s small prints dotting one edge and a fat splotch of thumbprint at the bottom.

  Dr. Bell put on small reading glasses and peered at the note. “Mm. You showed me this before. I see it’s now been processed in some way.”

  “Right again, Doctor. And that’s your thumbprint at the bottom.”

  Cardinal was watching Bell’s face for any reaction, but there was none. Of course, he was a psychiatrist, trained to keep his own emotions hidden while others wept and wailed.

  Bell handed the note back. “Yes. Catherine did show me such a note a few months ago.”

  “Funny, you didn’t mention that when I brought it to you last week.”

  Dr. Bell winced and removed his glasses, massaging the bridge of his nose. Without the thick lenses he looked oddly vulnerable, a lemur in daylight.

  “I’ve gone and put my foot in it, haven’t I. Detective, I’m so sorry. I admit I wasn’t keen for you to know I’d seen this. I was afraid you’d think I’d been negligent in some way, that Catherine had written a suicide note in a pitch of agony and I had blithely ignored it.”

  “Now, why would I think a thing like that?” Cardinal said. “After all, it’s only a suicide note. She only has a history of serious depression.”

  “Well, of course, now you’re angry—”

  “She even shows you the note, hoping against hope that somehow you will help her with these terrible urges. You have a little chat, and at the end of the hour you hand it back.”

  “It’s easy to make it sound bad in retrospect.”

  “And during the next three months, as these suicidal thoughts are apparently building up and building up, and Catherine is coming to see you two or three times a month, you never see fit to admit her to hospital. You don’t even see fit to call me in for a consultation. After all, I’m only her husband, I’ve only lived with her for decades, why should you bother to let me know? So, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, Catherine is doing fine. You, on the other hand, happen to know she’s planning to kill herself, and you choose to do nothing about it.”

  “Detective, you’re making exactly the sorts of assumptions I was afraid you’d make. I labour in the fields of grief and despair—with people who are unbearably depressed. Sadly, they often want to end their lives and sometimes they succeed. It’s no one’s fault. Families get upset and they can rush to judgment. I’m sure it happens in your line of work too. I read in the paper that the Dorn family is extremely upset with the way the police handled that young man’s suicide.”

  “The difference is, the officer did everything he could to stop that guy.”

  “And I did everything I could to help your wife.”

  “Allowing her to carry around a suicide note for three months. So that one night, when she’s in the middle of an interesting photographic project, on impulse, she pulls it out and jumps.”

  “Detective, I’ve been dealing with depression for over thirty years now, and believe me, at this point there’s nothing that would surprise me. The only certainty with this disease is that it will surprise you.”

  “Really? Personally, I’ve always found it hideously predictable.”

  “Forgive me, Detective, but clearly not. You didn’t see it coming any more than I did. As to her using a note she’d written earlier, it’s most likely an example of Catherine’s thoughtfulness. She wanted to use words she’d written when she was not too overwrought, a note that would express her feelings less harshly than something scribbled in the heat of the moment. Most suicide notes, as you probably know, are not full of concern for those left behind.”

  “Did you even think about calling me after she wrote that note?”

  “No. Catherine was not upset when she brought it in. We discussed it as we would a dream or a fantasy. She was emphatic that she had no imminent plans to harm herself.”

  “I believe her. I would have seen it coming.”

  “You’re still suggesting there’s some other explanation for her death? The original reason you suspected she might have been murdered was that you were receiving those nasty cards in the mail. You thought that only someone who had killed your wife would do such a thing. And so you tracked down the person who wrote them, and it turns out he hasn’t killed anyone. Isn’t that right? Or am I missing something?”

  I’m off my game, Cardinal thought. The shrink has me nailed: I have no hard evidence. Nothing.

  “She wasn’t upset the day she died,” was all he could manage. “She gave no sign that she was thinking of suicide.”

  “Over the years, she gave every sign. I’ve read her medical records, Detective. Catherine has stayed in this hospital more than half a dozen times—once for an episode of mania, but all the other admissions were for unmanageable depression. All those times she was feeling that she wanted to die, that suicide was the only way out for her. It seems clear to me that she decided to actually do the deed when she was in a relatively lucid state, when she could carry it out with some degree of control, some forethought.”

  “I would have seen it coming,” Cardinal said again, knowing how lame it sounded. Catherine, what have you done? What have you done to me?

  “Surely, in your line of work, Detective, you’ve had occasions where people miss the obvious about people they live with?”

  Cardinal thought of the mayor and his trollop of a wife. Am I that blind? Does everyone know the truth but me?

  “Is it not possible, Detective, that you, in your grief, are missing what is obvious to everyone else? Why not allow yourself the possibility of being wrong? You’ve lost your wife, your thinking is bound to be clouded at best, and who wouldn’t be subject to the palliative effects of denial? The nasty cards were sent by a resentful ex-con; there’s no reason to believe anyone killed your wife. I knew Catherine for going on two years, and I can’t imagine her having any serious enemies. You’ve known her for decades—have you come up with anyone who might have a motive?”

  “No,” Cardinal said. “But motives aren’t always personal.”

  “Psychopaths, you mean. But there’s no reason to suppose this was the work of a serial killer. Especially not one who had handy access to her suicide note and could leave it behind at the scene of the crime.

  “If you believe Catherine was murdered, then knowing that she wrote a suicide note three months earlier would not have prevented it. If you believe she committed suicide, then you have nothing to investigate, unless you intend to sue me for malpractice. As I say—and as you say—she gave no indication she was intending such an act. None. And so I treated the note at face value. It was the answer to a question I posed to her.”

  “What question was that?”

  “We were talking about the reasons why she hadn’t killed herself, despite years of emotional suffering. Her biggest reason was what it would do to you—to you and your daughter. My question was, What would you say to your husband if you did commit suicide? What would you say in a note? I wanted her to articulate the feelings right then and there, but Catherine didn’t answer me. She said she would have to think about it. And then, to my surprise, she brought a note in, next session. As you see, it clearly expresses her love for you.”

  Cardinal’s throat felt swollen shut. And then, to his horror, he found that he was weeping.

  “You might think about taking some more time off,” Dr. Bell said gently. “Clearly, you haven’t yet had time to grieve properly. Maybe you should consider allowing yourself that kindness.”

  37

  NORMALLY DELORME LOVED THE morning meetings. All six CID detectives would assemble in the boardroom with their coffee and muffins and discuss the status of their various cases with the whole team. What with Ident and the two street-crime guys, the intelligence officer, the joint forces officer and the Crime Stoppers coordinator, some days there could be as many as sixteen people in the room, although today there would just be seven.

  The point of these meetings was to focus the day’s tactics and assign various tasks to individuals. It was always interesting, and sometimes appalling, to hear how other detectives handled their cases, and there was usually a lot of humour. If there were going to be any laughs in the course of a day, this was where they would come. McLeod might go into one of his patented full-tilt rants, or Szelagy would come up with some earnest observation that just cracked everybody up. And Cardinal could be funny too, though his humour tended to be quiet and self-deprecating.

  But today Cardinal’s presence was casting a pall. While they were waiting for Chouinard, everyone just kept to themselves, pretending to read over their notes or look at documents. McLeod was reading the Toronto Sun sports pages. Cardinal himself just sat quietly, his notebook open to a clean page on the table before him. He must have been aware of his effect on the room, and Delorme’s heart went out to him.

  Chouinard breezed in, carrying a giant Tim Hortons mug in one hand and a thin file folder in the other. If oatmeal could be a person, Ian McLeod liked to say, it would be Daniel Chouinard. The detective sergeant was dull but dependable, bland but reasonable, solemn but solid.

  “Don’t get up,” he said. He always said that, because of course no one ever did get up.

  “See, that’s why I want to be detective sergeant someday.” McLeod snatched Chouinard’s thin file and held it up. “We’re all lugging fifty-pound briefcases and he’s carrying a lunch menu.”

  “It’s the natural order of things,” Chouinard said. “Didn’t you study the divine right of kings?”

  “I musta been out that day.”

  “All right.” Chouinard took a huge sip from his coffee and found it good. He opened his file to the single typed sheet he always carried into the meetings. “Sergeant Delorme, ladies first, why don’t you enlighten us on what’s happening with your little boat girl?”

  “I’ve found the cabin cruiser where at least one sexual assault took place. It’s currently in storage at Four Mile Marine. I searched it with the permission of the owners, the Ferriers, but I have not informed them of the finding yet. The little we can see of the perpetrator isn’t enough to absolutely rule out Mr. Ferrier. Also, he’s got a daughter who is blond and thirteen, but I haven’t been able to interview her yet. It’s possible she is the victim, maybe by a friend of the family or an acquaintance.”

  “So we have a crime scene. You didn’t make any effort to preserve it?”

  “It’s years old—the girl’s about eleven in those pictures—and it’s been in wind and water and storage since the crime took place. I don’t think we’re going to get anything off that boat. Even so, I’d like a watch to be put on the storage facility to make sure no one tampers with it.”

  “That’s easy enough. We’ll get that right away.”

  Delorme opened a manila envelope containing two more pictures Toronto had sent. There was another one of the boat. In this one the girl was dressed, smiling, and in the background there was the hill they now knew to be the hill beside Trout Lake. Part of Highway 63 was visible, snaking off into the trees. The other picture showed her as a much younger girl, naked this time, giggling at the camera, lying on a rug. There was a section of blue sofa in the background.

  “That’s her home, we figure,” Delorme said. “That blue sofa appears in a lot of the shots.”

  “That’s Highway 63 in the background?” Chouinard said.

  “Right. Toronto thinks this one is about two years old. Some of the others show her that age. So we’re looking for a thirteen-year-old girl, blond, green eyes.

  “Toronto thinks this picture is two years old?”

  Everyone looked at Cardinal. Delorme could feel the relief in the room that he had spoken. Spoken about business, something day-to-day.

  “I’m not sure what they’re basing that on,” Delorme said. “Other than the fact that we have no pictures showing her older than about thirteen.”

  “You’re not looking for a thirteen-year-old,” Cardinal said. “She’s going to be eighteen or thereabouts.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Look at the highway lights. Those are the old sodium lights. Don’t you remember when they replaced those with the new white ones?”

  “You’re the only one who lives out that way,” Chouinard said. “Why don’t you remind us?”

  “I can tell you exactly, because I’d just bought my car, and it’s a 1999 model. Day I got it, I’m driving home and this rookie OPP pulls me over for driving too fast for conditions. The lights were all out. He was giving me a lecture about how I should be more careful, nice brand new car and all. I could’ve killed him.”

  “He actually gave you the ticket?” McLeod said.

  “He did.”

  “See, that’s the problem with the OPP,” McLeod said.

  “They train ‘em all wrong right from the beginning. They see the rules, they don’t see reality, they don’t see the situation. Gimme two weeks in Orillia, man—I’d turn that place around.”

  “Upside down is more like it,” Chouinard said.

  “So, if she was eleven or twelve in 1999,” Cardinal said, “she’s got to be seventeen or eighteen now.”

  Delorme was still trying to process what Cardinal had given her. It was like having a bone reset, and it would take her a while to get used to it. She was no longer looking for a thirteen-year-old. She was looking for an eighteen-year-old.

  “I asked Toronto to send me more pictures,” Delorme said. “They say I should have them today. Apparently they’ve just hauled in about a hundred discs from some perv and our girl appears in a lot of the images. I’m hoping the backgrounds in the new shots might be useful.”

  “All right,” Chouinard said. “Cardinal, you work with Delorme on this. I really want to nail this bastard, but I’m not sure we need the whole department on it. It’s not like we’re dealing with a major porn ring here. As far as we know, it’s one guy victimizing one girl. That’s bad enough, but I don’t want to squander resources. And Delorme, please let’s treat these pictures with serious security. Strictly a need-to-see basis, all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “What about the people at the marina? Nobody remembers anything suspicious?”

  “Nothing. It’s a pretty peaceful spot. I’ve just been telling them I’m investigating an assault, so they’re not thinking child rape. Only violence anyone’s mentioned wasn’t actually at the marina. Some guy tried to punch out Frederick Bell outside the restaurant next door.”

  Cardinal looked up.

  “The psychiatrist?” Chouinard said.

  “Right. This was a little over a year ago. A distraught father. Bell had been treating his son, who committed suicide.” Delorme couldn’t bear to look at Cardinal as she said the word, but she could feel his eyes on her.

  “I know how that goes,” Burke said ruefully, and made things worse by adding, “Some people really don’t want to live.”

  “You did all you could. I told Mrs. Dorn that,” Delorme said. Then, praying could they please, God, get off the subject of suicide, she turned to Chouinard. “D.S., I know Perry Dorn’s older sister. I think I should have another word with her.”