down and down. You must hate me. I hate me.'
But she said nothing, now. Just remained motionless, with her neck bent forward at a painful angle.
Three months before, Catherine had been bright and cheerful, her normal self. But gradually, as it often did in winter, her cheerfulness had ballooned into mania. She began to speak of traveling to Ottawa. It became her sole topic of conversation. Suddenly, it was vital she see the prime minister, she must talk sense into Parliament, she must tell the politicians what had to be done to save the country, save Quebec. Nothing could jog her from this obsession. It would start every morning at breakfast; it was the last thing she said at night. Cardinal thought he would go mad himself. Then Catherine's ideas had taken on an interplanetary cast. She began to talk of NASA, of the early explorers, the colonization of space. She stayed awake for three nights running, writing obsessively in a journal. When the phone bill arrived, it listed three hundred dollars' worth of calls to Ottawa and Houston.
Finally, on the fourth day, she had spiraled to earth like a plane with a dead engine. She remained in bed for a week with the blinds pulled down. At three o'clock one morning, Cardinal awoke when she called his name. He found her in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub. The cabinet was open, the rows of pills (none of them in themselves particularly lethal) waiting. 'I think I'd better go to the hospital,' was all she had said. At the time, Cardinal had thought it a good sign; she had never before asked for help.
Now, Cardinal sat next to his wife in the overheated sunroom, humbled by the magnitude of her desolation. He tried for a while longer to get her to speak, but she stayed silent. He hugged her, and it was like hugging wood. Her hair gave off a slight animal odor.
A nurse came, bearing a single pill and a paper cup of juice. When Catherine would not respond to her coaxing, the nurse left and returned with a syringe. Five minutes later, Catherine was asleep in her husband's arms.
The early days are always bad, Cardinal told himself in the elevator. In a few days the drugs will soothe her nerves enough so that the relentless self-loathing will lose its power. When that happens she will be- what?- sad and ashamed, he supposed. She'll feel exhausted and drained and sad and ashamed, but at least she'll be living in this world. Catherine was his California- she was his sunlight and wine and blue ocean- but a strain of madness ran through her like a fault line, and Cardinal lived in fear that one day it would topple their life beyond all hope of recovery.
8
IT wasn't until Sunday that Cardinal got the opportunity to review background material. He spent the entire afternoon at home with a stack of files labeled PINE, LABELLE, and FOGLE.
In a city of fifty-eight thousand, one missing child is a major event, two is an out-and-out sensation. Never mind Chief R. J. or the board of commissioners, never mind the Algonquin Lode or the TV news, it was the entire town that wouldn't let you rest. Back in the fall, Cardinal could not so much as shop for groceries without being peppered with questions and advice about Katie Pine and Billy LaBelle. Everyone had an idea, everyone had a suggestion.
Of course, this had its bright side: There was no lack of volunteers. In the LaBelle case, the local Boy Scouts had spent an entire week treading step by step through the woods beyond the airport. But there were drawbacks, too. The station phones never stopped ringing and the small force had been overwhelmed with false leads- all of which had to be followed up sooner or later. The files filled up with stacks of supplementary reports-sups, as they were not very affectionately called: follow-ups on tips that led like a thousand false maps to dead ends.
Now, Cardinal sat with his feet to the fireplace and a fresh pot of decaf on the stove, weeding through the files, trying to winnow the stack of data into facts: From these solid facts, newly regarded, he hoped to extract one solid idea, one fragment of a theory, because so far he had none.
Armed Forces had graciously lent them a tent big enough to cover Windigo Island and two heaters formerly used to heat hangars for the local squadron of F-18s. Down on their knees like archaeologists, Cardinal and the others had culled the snow foot by square foot. That took most of the day, and then, turning up the heaters bit by bit, they had slowly melted the snow and examined the sodden carpet of pine needles and sand and rock that lay beneath. Beer cans, cigarette butts, fishing tackle, bits of plastic- they were buried in trash, none of it tied to the crime.
The lock had yielded no fingerprint.
This, then, was Cardinal's first sad fact: Their painstaking search had rendered not a single lead.
KATIE Pine had disappeared on September 12. She had attended school that day, leaving just after the final bell with two friends. There was the initial report- a phone call from Dorothy Pine- and then there were the sups: Cardinal's interview with Sue Couchie, McLeod's interview with the other girl. The three girls had gone to the traveling fair that was set up outside Memorial Gardens. Cardinal set this among the solid facts.
The girls didn't stay long. The last they'd seen of Katie she'd been throwing balls at some bowling pin targets, hoping to win a huge stuffed panda she'd liked the look of. It was almost as big as Katie, who was thirteen but looked eleven, tops.
Sue and the other girl had gone to a dark little tent to have their fortune told by Madame Rosa. When they came back to the ball-throwing attraction, Katie was gone. They looked around for her, couldn't find her, and decided she must have left without them. This was around six o'clock.
There was Cardinal's interview with the young man who operated the ball-throwing game. No, she didn't win the bear, and he hadn't noticed anyone with her, hadn't seen her leave. No one saw her leave. The ground, as Dyson said, had opened up.
Thousands of interviews, thousands of fliers later, Cardinal had learned nothing more about her disappearance. She had run away twice previously, to relatives in Mattawa. But her father's drunken rages had driven her to it, and when he was dead, her running stopped. Dyson had not wanted to hear it.
Cardinal got up and put a dressing gown on over his clothes, stirred the fire in the woodstove, and sat down again. It was only five, but it was already dark and he had to switch on the reading lamp. The metal chain was cold to the touch.
He opened the LaBelle file. William Alexander LaBelle: twelve years old, four foot-eight, eighty pounds- a very little kid. The address in Cedargrove was upper middle-class. Catholic background, parochial school. Parents and relatives ruled out as possible suspects. History of running, though only once in Billy's case. Never mind, it was enough for Dyson. 'Look. Billy LaBelle is the third son in a family of high achievers. He's not doing as well as his football-star brothers, all right? He's not getting the grades of his high-wattage sisters. He's twelve and his self- esteem is in the basement. Billy LaBelle opted out, okay? The kid took a walk.'
Where the boy had taken a walk to was a matter of less certainty. Billy had disappeared on October 14, one month after Katie Pine, plucked from the Algonquin Mall where he had been hanging out with friends. Sup reports included interviews with teachers and the three boys who had been with him at the mall. One minute he's playing Mortal Kombat in Radio Shack (sup reports of interviews with the salesman and cashier), the next minute he says he's going to catch the bus home. He's the only one of the four friends who lives in Cedargrove, so he leaves by himself. No one ever sees him again. Billy LaBelle, age twelve, steps out of the Algonquin Mall and into the case files.
Dyson had given Cardinal free rein for a few weeks after Billy's disappearance, and then the walls had closed in: no proof of murder, a history of running, other cases deserved priority. Cardinal resisted, certain that both kids had been killed, probably by the same person. Dyson on Billy LaBelle: 'Christ, man. Look at his problems. He's got nothing going for him. My guess is he offed himself somewhere and he'll turn up in the spring floating in the French River.'
But why were there no previous attempts? Why no obvious depression? Dyson had cupped his ear, feigning deafness.
Cardinal tossed the LaBelle file aside. He poured himself another cup of decaf and put another log into the woodstove. Sparks shot up like smithereens.
He opened the Fogle case, which contained little more than the top sheet- the facts from the initial report- courtesy of the Toronto police. I should have seen how things would go, Cardinal reflected, and perhaps he had. Dyson had been right: He had spent a lot of money, a lot of manpower. What else were you supposed to do when
