‘I imagine you’re calling about Todd.’
‘What makes you say that, sir?’
‘The only time I hear from the police is when Todd is in trouble. Look, I’m just his uncle, I’ve done all I can. I can’t take him back this time.’
‘We haven’t found him. We’re still trying to track him down.’
‘A Mississauga boy is being sought by the Algonquin Bay police? He’s really turning into a federal case.’
‘Has Todd contacted you since December? December twentieth, to be exact?’
‘No. He was missing all through Christmas. His parents were frantic, as you can imagine. He called me from Huntsville – this was the day he took off – called from Huntsville and says he’s on the train, can he stay with me. I told him he could, but he never arrived, and I haven’t heard anything since. You have to understand, this is one messed-up kid.’
‘In what way, sir? Drugs?’
‘Todd got his first sniff of glue when he was ten and hasn’t been the same since. Some kids can mess with drugs, other kids they get one whiff and it becomes their vocation. Todd’s one joy in life is getting high – if you can call that joy. Mind you, Dave and Edna say he’s gone completely clean, but I doubt it. I doubt it very much.’
‘Will you do me a favour, sir? Will you call me if you do hear from Todd?’ He gave Curry the number and hung up.
Cardinal hadn’t taken a train in years, although he never passed by the station without remembering the long trip out west he and Catherine had taken on their honeymoon. They had spent practically the entire trip sequestered in their narrow, rocking bed. Cardinal checked with the CNR and learned that Huntsville was still the second-last stop on the Northlander before Algonquin Bay. There was no way to tell if Todd got off in South River or Algonquin Bay. He could have stayed in Huntsville, he could’ve continued north to Temagami or even Hearst.
Cardinal took a run over to the Crisis Centre, at the corner of Station and Sumner. Algonquin Bay had no youth hostel, and sometimes runaway kids ended up in the Centre, which was just two blocks from the train station. The place was meant for domestic emergencies – mostly battered wives – but it was run by a lanky ex-priest named Ned Fellowes, and Fellowes had been known to take in the occasional stray if he had room.
Like most of the houses in the centre of town, the Crisis Centre is a two-storey, red brick affair with a roof of grey shingle, steeply pitched to slow the buildup of snow. Some workmen repairing the roof of the veranda had covered the front of the house with scaffolding. Cardinal could hear them cursing in French overhead as he rang the bell – tabarnac, ostie – taking their swear words from the Church, unlike the anglos, who wield the usual sexual lexicon. We swear by what we’re afraid of, Cardinal mused, but it was not a thought he wanted to dwell on.
‘Yes, I remember him. That’s not a good likeness, though.’ Ned Fellowes handed the fax photo back to Cardinal. ‘Stayed with us for one night, I think, around Christmastime.’
‘Can you tell me exactly what night that was?’
Fellowes led him into a small front office in what used to be a living room. A fireplace of painted brick was filled with psychology texts and social-work periodicals. Fellowes consulted a large maroon ledger, running his finger down lists of names. ‘Todd Curry. Stayed the night of December twentieth, a Friday. Left Saturday. I remember I was surprised, because he had asked to stay till the Monday. But he came in Saturday lunchtime and said he’d found a cool place to stay – an abandoned house on Main West.’
‘Main West. There’s a wreck of a place where St Claire’s used to be. Is that the one? By the Castle Hotel?’
‘I wouldn’t know. He certainly didn’t leave a forwarding address. Just wolfed down a couple of sandwiches and left.’
There was only one empty house on Main West. It was not in the downtown area, but a couple of blocks beyond it, where the street turned residential. St Claire’s convent had been torn down five years ago, exposing a brick wall with the faint outlines of a sign exhorting one to drink Northern Ale – a product of a local brewery out of business for at least three decades. After the convent, other houses had fallen one by one, making way for Country Style’s ever-expanding parking lot. Surrounded by overgrown weeds and stumps of long-dead trees, the house leaned in its corner lot like one last rotten tooth waiting to be pulled.
It made sense, Cardinal considered as he drove down Macpherson toward the lake: the place was just a block from D’Anunzio’s – a teen hangout – and a stone’s throw from the high school. A young drifter couldn’t ask for a better address. A slight humming sensation started up in Cardinal’s bloodstream.
The Castle Hotel came up on his right, and then he parked in front of a jagged, tumbledown fence tangled in shrubbery. He went to the front gate and looked through bare overhanging boughs at the place where the house used to be. He could see clear across the block to D’Anunzio’s over on Algonquin Avenue.
The acrid smell of burnt wood was strong, even though the ruins were covered with snow. They had been bulldozed off to one side in a heap. Cardinal stood with hands on hips like a man assessing the damage. A charred two-by-four pierced the thin coverlet of snow, pointing a black, accusing finger at the clouds.
Delorme wondered if Cardinal was making any headway. It was irritating as hell to go back to this small stuff when there was a killer out there. Wasting half the morning with paperwork on Arthur ‘Woody’ Wood, Delorme came to realize how badly she wanted to nail Katie Pine’s killer. Perhaps only a woman could want to punish a child-killer as badly. Delorme was thirty-three and had spent many hours fantasizing about having a child, even if she had to raise it herself. The idea that someone could snuff out a young life put her in a rage that she could barely control.
But was she allowed to go out and work on tracking down this sick, this disgusting, this grossly evil thing? No. She got to interview Arthur ‘Woody’ Wood, the poster boy for petty crime. Delorme had been following him along Oak Street in an unmarked car. After he sped up to make the light, she had pulled him over for ‘burning an amber’, only to see a vintage MacIntosh all-tube amplifier on the seat beside him. She had read the description to him from her notebook there on the street, right down to the serial number.
‘Okay,’ Woody said now, as she led him out of the cells. ‘Suppose by some freak of nature you get me for one little case. I can’t exactly see that putting me away for life, can you, Officer Delorme? You’re French, I guess. They tried to teach me French all the way through grade school, but I don’t know, it never stuck. Miss Bissonette – man, was she a Nazi. Are you married, by the way?’
Delorme ignored it all. ‘I hope you haven’t sold the rest of your haul, Woody. Because in addition to going to Kingston for ten years, you might have to make restitution, and then where will you be? It would be a nice gesture if you gave the stuff back. It might go easier for you.’
Engaging criminals are a rarity, and when one comes along, police tend to be overly grateful. Arthur ‘Woody’ Wood was a hopelessly amiable young man. He had unfashionably long sideburns that gave him the look of a fifties rockabilly singer. He had a bounce in his walk and a rangy slouch to his shoulders that put people at their ease – especially women, as Delorme was finding out. She was right now having an argument with her own body: no, you will not react this way to the physical attractions of this silly little thief. I won’t allow it.
As she led him toward the interview room, Woody yelled a greeting to Sergeant Flower, with whom he proceeded to carry on a lively conversation. Sergeant Flower only stopped gabbing when she registered Delorme’s high-intensity scowl. Then Woody had to say hi to Larry