“That’s tough, Perry,” Burke said. “That’s a lot to handle. You know, it might not hurt to give yourself a little time to get over this.”

  The man ignored him.

  “I was supposed to go to McGill. They were going to pay all my tuition. All I was going to have to cover was books and living expenses, and now I can’t go. See, it wasn’t just she didn’t want to go to Montreal. That was not the problem. The reason she dumped me was she was sleeping with a guy I thought was my friend. Let him be Z. Stanley, my so-called friend.”

  Burke might have thought he was making progress here, getting the guy talking about himself and his troubles. But he wasn’t speaking with any feeling. He was quacking his way through his algebra of misery and was not about to be distracted. All that mathematical jargon, like his life was just some math problem. The coldness in that voice, the lack of feeling, had Burke’s heart beating double time.

  “Well, hell, Perry. This just gets worse and worse. No wonder you’re down in the dumps. Anybody would be. You need some time off, fella. Some time to recuperate from all the punishment you’ve taken.”

  “Time off. I was supposed to show up for my graduate course weeks ago. I’ve lost my slot there now. And as for my girlfriend …”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Margaret. Everyone calls her Peg, though.”

  “Margaret. That’s an Irish name.”

  The guy wasn’t listening.

  “She’s been screwing around,” he said, as if he hadn’t already mentioned it. “Kinda brings a new vector into the equation. She’s been unfaithful to me. For a long time now, behind my back. She says no, it’s just recent. I can’t prove it, but I know she’s lying. It’s just a feeling I get. Everything’s false.”

  The guy should be crying now, but he’s got that dead voice, that it’s-all-over voice. The machines have all gone quiet, except for one dryer slamming against the back wall. Burke hears cars pulling up: the cavalry at last. He has a sudden inspiration, the kind of hunch worthy of a CID man. He points around at the laundromat.

  “Is this where you met her, Perry? Would this happen to be where you and Margaret first met?”

  “A-plus plus,” the guy says, and gives him a big grin.

  Connection! Burke figures. Now we’re getting somewhere. And just as he’s thinking that, Perry Dorn flips the shotgun so the muzzle is under his own chin and pulls the trigger.

  12

  ONE OF THE ASPECTS of small-city police work that makes it both more interesting than big-city stuff and more frustrating is that a detective has to deal with all sorts of crimes. He or she is not a vice cop, or a homicide cop, or a bunko specialist; they take whatever gets assigned to them by their detective sergeant. With Cardinal on bereavement leave and McLeod and Burke on their days off, that meant Lise Delorme was now, in addition to her new hunt for a child molester, covering another suicide—this time in a laundromat that smelled of lint and hot metal and soapy water.

  But Delorme could also smell the blood. The spray had hit the ceiling along with a good deal of brain matter, and there were streaks and blotches and scarlet smears where he had fallen against the washers. The pool on the floor was already dark and congealing.

  “Gee,” Szelagy said. “What do you suppose could be the cause of death?”

  Standing next to Ken Szelagy was like standing next to the Empire State; he was six-four and always made Delorme feel puny, which she was not. She tended to compensate by being gruff with him, which was unnecessary, since Szelagy was the easiest-going member of CID.

  They were hanging back a little so the coroner could go about his work. It was Dr. Claybourne again, reflections of fluorescent lights gleaming on his head.

  Delorme flipped through the dead man’s wallet. It was hard to pull out the individual cards and papers wearing latex gloves, but she finally managed to extract a driver’s licence, not that the stern, somewhat lopsided face in the licence bore any resemblance to the carmine wreckage on the floor.

  “Perry Wallace Dorn,” she read. “Lives on Woodruff, if this address is still current.”

  “Kinda far from here,” Szelagy said. “You’d think he’d at least pick his own laundromat. Maybe a machine ate his quarter.”

  Delorme bypassed several credit cards, Algonquin Bay library card, medical insurance card, Chapters bookstore discount card, Northern University student card, expired.

  “Here we go,” she said. “Birth certificate.”

  She turned it over. Unfortunately, it was the short-form certificate that did not give parents’ names. She handed the card to Szelagy. “Call the Registrar General and get the parents’ names, and see if Perry was ever married.”

  Szelagy flipped open his cellphone, and Delorme reached down to take a piece of paper that Dr. Claybourne was handing to her.

  “It was in his jacket pocket,” he said. Dr. Claybourne’s face was bright red. A matter of his complexion, Delorme reminded herself, whatever McLeod might say. McLeod was always wrong about everything; it was amazing he ever managed to make detective.

  The note had been crumpled up in a tight ball at some point, then smoothed out and folded up again more neatly. In any case, it would not be going down in the history of great romantic letters.

  Dear Margaret, it said. Then that had been crossed out and rewritten several times in different spots on the page. Dear Margaret, Dear Margaret, Dear …

  No points for eloquence there, Perry. But then Delorme reconsidered. Perhaps that was all that needed to be said when you were going to quit the scene. No thanks. I’ve had enough. You guys go on without me. Maybe Perry Dorn had distilled the suicide note to its essence: Dear …

  You’d think it would be just losers, Delorme thought, complete failures or people with no prospects at all. But she had seen enough by now to know that suicide was an equal-opportunity exit. Smart or stupid, ugly or beautiful, anyone could walk out at any time. But why this particular time? Why October? Delorme knew enough about suicide to know that the myth was wrong: there was no Christmas rush, not in Ontario. The numbers were worst in the month of February. Which made sense, because by February you were so sick of snow and cold that suicide could look like a reasonable option. Which was why, come February, virtually the entire population of Algonquin Bay transposed itself to Florida or the Caribbean.

  Why kill yourself in the fall? It was so beautiful, the hills heartbreaking swells of colour. The fall was the time Delorme felt happiest. It was always autumn, not New Year’s, when she made her resolutions. Maybe it was just a legacy of the educational system; the fall was when you bought bright new notebooks, their fresh clean pages inviting you to write neat, comprehensive notes. Later in the year, your notes deteriorated into ambiguous little blurts that jogged the memory inconclusively if at all. But those first few days, when the air carried the first crisp notes of winter and the sky burned blowtorch blue, it was impossible, at least for Delorme, not to be happy. Even though every summer seemed to bring a new romantic reversal, each fall made her heart expand with hope.

  Outside, the sun was so bright, the parking lot looked overexposed. Inside, everything that wasn’t bloody was grey and drained of colour, like clothing that has been through the wash too many times.

  The door slammed on its springs and Burke came in, notebook in fist. “Checked his car. Back seat’s full of new books and binders and crap.”

  Burke was trying to sound gruff, but his face was white and his hand was shaking.

  “We have his student card,” Delorme said. “Listen, Larry, why don’t you go home and lie down for a while? Guy blows his head off in front of you, it’s not something you’re going to get over in five minutes.”

  “Look at this, though.”

  He handed her a sheet of paper, expensive letterhead with a red crest. Dated early April.

  “‘Dear Mr. Dorn,’” she read. “‘I am delighted to inform you that McGill University has accepted you into its graduate program in Mathematics. In view of your extremely impressive record at Northern, I think I am safe in saying that this acceptance will come with a substantial grant. Subject to confirmation from the student awards department, your expenses will probably be limited to rent and other living expenses. We look forward to meeting you in the fall.’ School year started ages ago. If he’s accepted at McGill, why isn’t he in Montreal?”

  “Clearly the guy didn’t have all his marbles,” Burke said. “Jerk,” he added, but he was not a convincing hard-ass.

  “Really, Larry,” Delorme said, “go home and lie down. You’re not in shape to be working. Go ahead. No one’s going to think badly of you.”

  “I’m all right. Kinda thing’s all in a day’s work. Kinda shit we deal with, right?”

  “No, it isn’t. I’ve never seen anyone shoot themselves, and I don’t ever want to. What’s that in your hand?”

  “Huh?” Burke held up a PalmPilot and stared at it as if it had just been beamed into his hand. “Oh, yeah. Was in his car. Figured you might want it.”

  “Good thinking. Now, go home.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go sit outside for a few minutes,” Burke said.

  Szelagy snapped his cellphone shut. “Registrar’s gonna call me back.”

  “Might not need them,” Delorme said. She was poking the stylus at the Palm, scrolling up and down through addresses. Not under D for Dorn, not under P for parents. “Here we go. Under M for mom.”

  13

  CARDINAL FEELS A STRANGE happiness suffusing his body. Here the three of them are—Catherine, Cardinal and Kelly—at the Trianon Restaurant having the best meal Algonquin Bay has to offer. The Trianon is their tradition for special occasions: birthdays, wedding anniversaries, or sometimes just because Kelly is up for a visit. And here she is, visiting from New York, and Catherine is in a great mood, the hospital a distant, green-tiled memory. Cardinal’s heart is aloft in his chest like a helium balloon.

  He may have had a little too much to drink, because he is bubbling over with sentimentality, saying, “This is great. This is the way it’s supposed to be. We could be a heartwarming TV show. The Goode Family.”

  Kelly rolls her eyes. “Dad, really.”

  “No, look at us,” Cardinal insists. Okay, so he’s feeling all that Bordeaux, but he has to say it. “Beautiful, intelligent daughter, competent husband—”

  “Mad wife,” Catherine interjects, and the other two smile.

  Cardinal covers her warm hand with his. “I’m just so grateful,” he says. “Gratitude isn’t a big enough word for what I feel. I’m just so—”

  “Dad, what are you going on about!” Kelly looks as if she’s going to signal for the cheque and catch the first plane back to New York. “Can’t we just have a normal conversation?”

  “This is a normal conversation,” Cardinal says. “That’s what’s so wonderful. I dreamed Catherine was dead, and now here we all are together, just being normal.” He lays a hand on his heart, feels the warmth from that furnace of joy.

  Catherine’s serious brown eyes, sizing him up, tiny parentheses forming at the corners of her mouth. “You dreamed I was dead?”

  “And it was so real! It was horrible!”

  “Poor you,” Catherine says. The honey of concern in her voice. She puts a hand on his cheek and he feels the heat of the blood flowing through her fingers. “Are you okay now?”

  “Okay? Am I okay?” Cardinal laughs. “Oh, I’m so okay, they could bottle it and sell it on street corners. It would put heroin and ecstasy out of business. I’m so okay, I could …” His voice cracks, and now he can’t speak because he’s crying. He’s actually crying tears of happiness, tears of joy, wife and daughter rippling through his tears like computer effects.

  The sensation of tears cooling on his face woke Cardinal up. He’d been sleeping on his back, and the tears were puddled in his eyes. His nose was running, his upper lip hot with a rivulet of mucus, tears cooling around his ears and neck. Such joy! He wiped his eyes and turned over on his elbow to tell Catherine.

  The dream set his nerves on edge. Every move he made was amplified tenfold. The mere placing of a cup on the kitchen counter made a clack that hurt his ears. Water running in the kitchen sink was rough and ugly, mingling cutlery a torture. Even the newspaper, as he turned a page, made noises that were glassy and sibilant. And he could read nothing, take nothing in. Even the headlines were opaque.

  And Catherine was everywhere. Every object in his house had its degree of Catherine-ness. Anything she had chosen was high on the scale. She had put effort into it, made a trip to buy it, thought about it. Anything she used daily was highly Catherined: in the medicine cabinet, her raft of medications, the little tubes of shadow eraser and moisturizer. Her hairbrush, with strands of her hair. Do you keep such things? How do you come to throw them out?

  There were tulips she had brought home—was it two weeks ago?—long wilted in their vase. Cardinal couldn’t bring himself to toss them out; neither could Kelly, apparently. Then there were the photographs Catherine had chosen to frame: a portrait of Kelly, a quiet shot of the two of them she had taken with a timer. The music cabinet was stacked with CDs she had chosen: the Goldberg Variations, the Well-Tempered Clavier by Gould and by Landowska. Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow. Will I ever be able to bear that music? Should I throw it out?

  In the empty kitchen, Cardinal poured himself a bowl of Corn Flakes. He never ate Corn Flakes, but he thought they were bland enough to go down without his noticing. He was staring at the flakes floating in milk when the phone on the kitchen counter rang.

  Cardinal got up to answer it. There was a woman on the other end, not a voice he recognized.

  “Hello, is Catherine there?”

  Cardinal stood by the sink, gripping the phone, unable to move.

  “Hello? Is this the right number for Catherine Cardinal?”

  “Yes,” Cardinal managed. “Yes, it is.”

  “May I speak to her, please?”

  “Uh, no. She, uh—she isn’t here.”

  “When will she be back, do you know?”

  “No. I mean, I’m not sure.”

  “Oh. Well, if I leave my name and number, could you have her call me when she gets in? Do you have a pen?”

  Cardinal picked up a pen and listened as she told him her name and Toronto number. Catherine should call her about a weekend workshop in advanced digital photography. Cardinal held the pen above the little notepad that he and Catherine used to relay phone messages, but he wrote nothing down.

  He escaped to work. Catherine had set foot in the squad room probably no more than half a dozen times. Except for her picture on Cardinal’s desk, there were no reminders of her there. It was a guy place, despite the presence of Lise Delorme and Sergeant Flower and Frances and the other support personnel. The squad room was a guy place; Catherine could not claim him there.

  “You’re back,” McLeod said. “Just when the place was beginning to seem civilized.”

  “I’m not here,” Cardinal said. “Just came in to clear up a few things.”

  “Really,” McLeod said. “I just came in to catch up on my sleep.”

  Cardinal grabbed his desk calendar and flipped it back to January. The Renaud case: two brothers who had pulled a series of break-ins. The back of their van had looked like a pawnshop when they were pulled over for a moving violation. It would have ended there, if one of their break-ins had not gone horribly wrong. One of the houses they broke into had surprised them by being occupied, and in a panic the brothers had beaten the owner half to death. Cardinal had interrogated them over a period of weeks, finally managing to get one to turn on the other. They were both in the Kingston Pen now, doing six years.

  “What are you doing here?” Delorme said. She came right up and gave him a hug, and Cardinal, hypersensitized by grief, felt himself choke up. Delorme cast an investigative eye at his desk, the open calendar, and said, “Aha! Bad guys you have known and loved. Me, I’d say you’re tracking down whoever’s behind that horrible card.”

  “Cards,” he said. “I got another one.”

  Delorme scanned his face. “Same postmark?”

  “This one’s from Sturgeon.”

  Sturgeon Falls was about half an hour west of Algonquin Bay. It only took Delorme a second before she voiced Cardinal’s own thoughts on the matter. “Mattawa. Sturgeon. Assuming it’s from the same person, makes me think he’s probably from here. It’s like disguising his handwriting.”

  “I’m pretty sure he used the same printer again, too.”

  Delorme’s desk was right next to Cardinal’s. She sat down in her chair and swivelled to face him. “You gonna show me?”

  “You didn’t want to know, before.”

  “Oh, John. Don’t twist what I said.”

  Calling him by his first name in the office. Cardinal was surprised by how it touched him. He pulled the card in its plastic sleeve out of his briefcase.

  How she must have hated you. You failed her so completely.

  “Bastard,” Delorme said. “Assuming it’s a guy. Women can be pretty nasty too, I’m sure you’ve noticed. You think it’s the Renaud brothers?” She pronounced it brudders—her French-Canadian accent tended to flower when she was emotional. “If they did this, I will personally drive down to Kingston to kick their asses.”

  “I don’t think they did it. For one thing, how would they even know Catherine was …”

  “News travels fast in prison, you know that. And they’ve still got family in town. Someone could have mentioned it.”

  “And then what? They get someone to send one card from Mattawa, and another one from Sturgeon Falls, but both out of the same printer? Seems like a stretch to me.”

  “Well, you know your caseload better than me.”