soon!'
Dated December 19. After that, nothing.
'You didn't meet him at the train station?'
'No, I'd already mailed him the money for the train and a cab. By then, I was worried he was not as old as he claimed. I certainly didn't want to be seen in the company of a minor.'
'You're awfully careful, Mr. Fehrenbach,' Delorme observed. 'Some people, they might say you were suspiciously careful.'
'I have a friend in Toronto- he used to live in Toronto- who liked to have long friendly chats with his students in his office. Private chats, with the door closed. Based on that, and based on the testimony of a boy he had failed, my friend got sent to prison for four years. Four years, Officer. No, no. I'm prudent, that's all. My door stays open-wide open- and I never see students anywhere outside of school.'
'According to that note,' Cardinal said, 'and according to what you're telling us, Todd would have been at the Bayshore on December twentieth.'
'That's right. I drove him there. I watched him go in. I stayed in the car, but I watched him go in.'
'Must have been hard to do. You'd had all this hot talk, you were expecting a hot weekend, and then you cut it off right at the threshold. Must have been difficult.'
'It wasn't. You say he was sixteen; he looked fourteen. That's still a child in my book. I sleep with men, Officer Cardinal, not children.'
'We need to know where you were the rest of that weekend.'
'Well, that's easy. I was at loose ends because I had set aside the weekend, and now it was going to be empty. So I took up an earlier offer from a friend in Powassan and spent the weekend with him. On the Monday I went straight down to Toronto to spend Christmas with my parents. My friend will remember. I told him exactly what I just told you, and he had a good laugh at my expense.'
'We'll need a name. And keep in mind that if you call this person to rehearse your stories we'll know it from phone records.'
'I don't need to rehearse the truth. Neither will he.' Fehrenbach fetched his address book and gave the details to Delorme, who wrote them all down. He kept leaning over her shoulder, making sure she got it right, as if he were checking her homework.
Cardinal remembered the respect in Kelly's voice: 'How many teachers do you know who get kids arguing, arguing about Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain? The man is Mister Correct Procedure, Mister Memorize Your Dates and Gather Your Thoughts and Review Your Notes Because You'll Be Tested On This.'
Cardinal held out a hand. 'Mr. Fehrenbach, you've been very helpful.'
The teacher hesitated, then took his hand.
Delorme was sullen in the car. Cardinal knew she had a temper, and he could sense her attempts to control it. As they turned onto Main, the car suddenly fishtailed on a patch of ice, and Cardinal took the opportunity to pull over.
'Look, Lise- the guy has a sterling reputation, all right? First-rate teacher, nothing against. His manner was open and honest and straightforward- a lot more honest than I would have been in his situation.'
'This is a mistake we're making. Right now, Fehrenbach is sitting at his computer erasing every trace of his mail with that kid.'
'We don't need it. We have it all from Todd's computer. We'll check his alibi, and we'll post some guys to keep an eye on him. And none of it will lead anywhere.'
THE desk clerk at the Bayshore didn't remember Todd Curry from the photograph. And the kid had never signed the register.
'See,' Delorme said. 'Fehrenbach was lying.'
'I didn't expect to see the kid's signature here. Fellowes at the Crisis Center already told me Todd Curry checked in there on December twentieth. He hung out somewhere, heard about the Crisis Center, and decided to save the money Fehrenbach had given him by staying there for the night. And at some point between the Crisis Center and the house on Main West, he met the killer.'
28
DELORME didn't have a lot of close friends on the force. Working in Special Investigations didn't exactly encourage camaraderie, and Delorme had never been the sort to put herself forward, insert herself into a group. For friendship, she relied on old high-school friends, and a lot of the time it was tough going. There were those who had gone away to college and come back changed or married, usually both. There were those who had not gone on to college, whose horizons lay no farther away than their high-school boyfriend and a baby at the age of eighteen.
Most of them had kids now, meaning Delorme did not share the central concern in their lives. Even when she did see old friends, she sensed in their eyes that they saw a change in her. Working around men all the time, around cops, had hardened her, made her more guarded and, in some way she could not quite fathom, made her less patient with women.
It all added up to a lot of time alone, which was why, unlike practically everyone else on the force, she had a quiet dread of the end of shift. So when Cardinal suddenly suggested- in the middle of a sup-writing marathon- that they go out to his place to brainstorm that evening, a flock of confused feelings took wing in Delorme's heart like swallows around a barn. 'Don't worry,' Cardinal had said before she could reply. 'I won't inflict my cooking on you. We can order in a pizza.'
Delorme, stalling, had said she didn't know. By the end of the day she'd be pretty tired; she wouldn't bring much brain to the storm.
'Fehrenbach checked out, right? There's nowhere else to go with that.'
'I know. It's just…'
Cardinal had looked at her, frowning a little. 'If I was going to make a move on you, Lise, I wouldn't do it at home.'
SO they had driven their separate cars out to Cardinal's freezing little cottage on Madonna Road, and Cardinal had built a fire in the woodstove. Delorme was touched by how friendly he was. He showed her some carpentry work he'd done in the kitchen. Then he showed her a huge landscape painted by his daughter- a view of Trout Lake with the NORAD base in the background- when she was twelve years old. 'She gets the artistic genes from her mother. Catherine's a photographer,' he said, pointing to a sepiatinged photograph of a lonely rowboat on an anonymous shore.
'You must miss them,' Delorme said, and immediately regretted it. But Cardinal had just shrugged and picked up the phone to order the pizza.
By the time it arrived, they had begun tossing out ideas. The ground rules of brainstorming were that you couldn't laugh at anything the other person suggested, you couldn't say anything inhibiting. Which was why it was a good idea to do it away from headquarters; they could zing out some really wild ideas and not feel too foolish.
They were just getting warmed up when the telephone rang. Cardinal's first words into the receiver: 'Oh, shit. I'll be there in ten minutes.' He tossed the phone onto the couch and started putting on his coat, patting his pockets for keys.
'What? What's going on?'
'I forgot, we have a press thing at six. R. J. arranged it, so Grace Legault doesn't get her knickers in a knot. Sorry. You know, it's one of those deals where we tell them things we don't really want them to know, so that they don't say things we don't want them to say. That's the idea, anyway.'
'Whose idea?'
'Dyson's. I went along with it, though.'
'Well, I guess I should go, then.'
'No, no. Please. Don't let the pizza get cold. Shouldn't take more than an hour.'
