was blaring with a game show. Cardinal glimpsed what looked like a dozen cats sprawled around a two-liter bottle of Dr Pepper and an immense bowl of Chee-tos.
There was a blackened bathroom and, at the end of the hall, a closed, new-looking door. 'Police!'
The door was locked. Cardinal kicked at it, and Celeste Markham screamed from downstairs, 'You better not break nothing!'
The door was cheap, hollow-core, and it splintered easily. Cardinal reached through and unlocked it from the inside, and stepped in with the Beretta in his hand, Delorme behind him.
After the stench and filth of the rest of the house, the room was shockingly clean. Instead of cat piss, it smelled faintly of soap. The bedcovers were drawn tight, with hospital corners. The window, although ancient, offered a pristine view of the overpass; someone had cleaned it carefully, and Cardinal did not suspect Celeste Markham. Cars rippled in the old glass. Something Cardinal had often noted in people who'd done time, even juveniles: They kept their rooms neat as Marines.
The closet contained four shirts, all pressed, all on hangers. Two pairs of pants, also ironed, also on hangers. One pair of boots with Cuban heels, well worn, spit-shined.
The desktop was empty. The small drawer contained a ballpoint pen and a yellow notepad, with no writing on it. Underneath the desk, they found a box of maybe thirty books, neatly stacked.
'So empty,' Delorme said, voicing Cardinal's thought. 'It's like no one lives here at all.'
Collingwood filled up the doorway behind them. 'Nothing in the basement. Big Mama says he just uses this room. Doesn't have the run of the house.'
'Where's he eat, even?' Cardinal asked of the room at large. 'It's like the guy's not human.'
'Something under here.' Delorme's voice was muffled; she was down on her knees, checking under the bed. She dragged out a guitar case. Careful not to smudge fingerprints, she pressed open the latches. It was an Ovation guitar, in good condition.
'Keith London plays guitar. I'm pretty sure Miss Steen said an Ovation. We'll seal this room and let Arsenault at it later.'
The search proceeded in silence for the next few minutes. The guitar was solid; it might link Fraser conclusively to Keith London, but it didn't lead anywhere now. Cardinal was getting increasingly frustrated with the neatness of the place. He pulled a file box out of the closet. Nothing but neatly filed receipts. He twisted the lid from an old candy tin. Nothing but paper clips and rubber bands. Then he opened a shoe box- it was bound with a piece of blue velvet ribbon as if it might contain precious mementos. Cardinal was expecting photographs, perhaps a diary. But what he found there was worse than coming upon Todd Curry's body.
'Place is like a hospital,' Delorme was saying. 'I should get this guy to clean my place.'
'Oh, no. I don't think you want to do that.' Cardinal found it an effort to speak. He was staring at three items laid out neatly in the shoe box, three items that made him feel suddenly very weak. Delorme peered into the box, and her sharp intake of breath was an echo of his own feelings.
The shoe box contained three locks of hair, each a different shade and texture, each neatly taped at one end. One lock of hair was straight and black as sable, that would be Katie Pine's; another- almost certainly Todd Curry's- was dark brown and curly, finer. The blond, that would be Billy LaBelle's. There was none for Woody- that killing had been unplanned, almost incidental- nor was there any for Keith London, whose hair was long, straight, light brown.
Downstairs, Celeste Markham and McLeod were hurling threats at each other. If he didn't get out of her way, she had every intent of breaking his other arm. McLeod suggested she might want to repeat that to a judge.
'Collingwood,' Cardinal said at last, 'tell McLeod to keep it down so we can think. Have them argue in the car.'
Cardinal opened dresser drawers one after another: socks stacked like missiles, T-shirts folded into crisp squares, sweaters that looked as if they'd never been worn. Just their luck the guy had to be a neat freak. Even the wastebasket was empty. Cardinal picked up the yellow legal pad again and riffled the pages. Nothing fell out. He held up the top page like a screen against the window. Faint impressions took on shape, a list of some sort.
'What do you suppose 'P.H.' stands for?' he asked in the blessed quiet that filled the place, now. Somewhere a cat was meowing.
'P. H. Maybe some victim we don't know about?'
'No, it says Trout Lake P.H. We know this guy likes to move around: the mineshaft, the empty house. And we know he's familiar with the Trout Lake area because Woody was found near the marina. And look what he's planning to take with him: duct tape, pliers…'
'I think the next one is 'crowbar.' What else does it say?' Delorme was practically climbing over his shoulder. He felt her moist breath on his neck. 'Then it's 'battery' lower down.'
'What's P.H. on Trout Lake, though? What's on Trout Lake that begins with P.H.?'
'Public housing! There's that housing development past St. Alexander's. That's it, John. Another empty house- a house that isn't finished!'
'Except that's not public housing out there. Port Huron? No, there's no Port Huron around there, either.'
'P.H. on Trout Lake…' Delorme touched his sleeve. 'We can check the city directory, find who's got those initials on the roads out there.'
'That'll take too long. It's got to be something simple. I keep thinking 'public beach,' but that's P.B. What else is out there? There's the reservoir and the marina and what else?'
'Well, there's the reservoir itself. I mean, that's pretty big. Pretty isolated.'
In following days, there would be a lot of discussion around the department about who said it first. Some said Delorme, some Cardinal. Collingwood changed his mind about it several times and he was there. But Cardinal would always remember Delorme's wide brown eyes looking at him, how beautiful they were with the beauty of sure knowledge. In the end it didn't matter who first uttered the words 'pump house.' Cardinal, to his later shame, immediately dismissed the idea. 'Can't be the pump house. It's not on Trout Lake.'
'No,' Delorme said. 'But it used to be.'
54
CARDINAL had two calls to make before they could move. He called headquarters and had a patrol unit dispatched to cruise by the old pump house. Normally, his next call would have been to Dyson, but with Dyson out of the picture, he called the chief at home.
'We know where he's planning to kill the London kid. He could be there already.'
'He has the boy with him?'
'We think so. We believe he's still alive. I need eight men, shotguns, and body armor.'
'You want OPP on this?'
'Chief, there isn't time.'
'Go, then. Take what you need.'
Delorme came back from the unmarked, beads of rain glistening in her hair. 'Flower says the patrol unit went by the pump house. Fraser's Windstar is parked outside.'
'They got close enough to see. Let's hope they didn't get close enough to tip him off.'
'Flower says no. They're sticking nearby in case he comes out of there, though.'
'We've got him, Lise. We've got the bastard cold.'
In the car, Delorme said, 'I ordered up the truck- hope that's okay.'
'It's okay. It's good. But next time, ask.'
'You were on the phone.'
'You should have asked. I might have wanted cars only. I might have wanted OPP. You ready for this?'
'I'm ready.'
With sirens, it took less than seven minutes to reach their agreed assembly point, the marina at Trout Lake. Other cars arrived moments later. There was McLeod, Collingwood, Burke and Szelagy, other uniforms. The rain had stopped, but the heavy clouds were a deep gray, almost purple at the edges. It was three o'clock; the gloom made it look like seven.
