Forty Words for Sorrow (29 page)

Mr. Troy, his anger giving way to fascination, nodded. Cardinal held the guitar out toward Collingwood.

Collingwood, silent as ever, dusted a small amount of powder along the top of the soundboard, then blew it off. Two perfect thumbprints took shape. He pulled the Forensics card from his pocket, the thumbprints lifted from Arthur Wood’s throat.

“Perfect match,” Collingwood said. “Perfect match, plain as day.”

50

E
RIC AND
E
DIE HAD BEEN RIGHT
about duct tape. It was even more effective—and less trouble for them—than the drugs. Strain as he might, Keith London could not get the tape to give even a sixteenth of an inch. Each wrist, each ankle was securely fastened. The only tape he had managed to loosen at all was the tape on his mouth. By wetting it, he had gradually loosened it so he could actually make audible sounds now.

But there was some give in the wooden chair to which he was fastened. Rocking from side to side, he could feel the joints loosening.

Whenever Eric and Edie were out of the house, as they were now, Keith rocked from side to side, feeling the joints widening, the screws chewing their way through the wood. They hadn’t fed him for a couple of days now, and his efforts were exhausting. He had to stop every few minutes to catch his breath.

Eric and Edie would be moving him soon. They would inject him with a sedative and haul him to some isolated place and—he tried to banish from his mind the memory of the videotape.

He had been rocking for over an hour this morning, ever since he had woken up; his wrists and ankles were chafed raw; his wounded leg was pure agony. But there was some progress: he could feel some give in the chair. It leaned about twenty degrees to either side when he shifted his weight.

He paused, listening. Footsteps crossed the ceiling, and then there was the sound of chairs scraping. Eric and Edie were directly overhead. Keith started rocking again, despite his terror that they would hear him. No, he told himself, the chair is on concrete, the noise won’t travel, they won’t be able to hear.

He leaned again, side to side, side to side, rocking the chair and straining at the tape. Once. Twice. Three times. Yes, the chair back was definitely looser. He could twist it a little now. If he could just put strain in the right place, shift his weight over just the right spot, put stress where the chair back joined the seat, it could be broken.

Upstairs, Eric opened the duffle bag—Keith’s duffle bag—and emptied it onto the floor. He felt no sense of trespass, exposing another’s personal belongings: the pairs of socks, neatly folded, the long underwear slightly stained. There were sunglasses and suntan lotion—Christ, was he planning to take up skiing?—a Frommer’s guide to Ontario and a dog-eared paperback of
The Glass Bead Game
.

Eric stood up and brushed off his jeans. “I’ll read from the list. You put the stuff in the bag.” He took the list from his back pocket and unfolded it. “Duct tape.”

Edie pulled it from the drawer beside the fridge and put it in the duffle. “Duct tape.”

“Rope.”

Edie picked up the tight coil of clothesline, purchased in Toronto, and put it into the bag.

“Screwdriver, flat head …”

“Screwdriver, flat head.”

“Screwdriver, Phillips head …”

“God, Eric. Who else would make a list of screwdrivers? Whole
categories
of screwdrivers.”

Eric looked at her coolly. “Someone else would get caught. Pliers …”

“Pliers.”

“Blowtorch …”

“We’d better test it first, make sure it works.” Edie pulled a box of kitchen matches from the drawer. Eric opened a brass collar on the blowtorch, and the nozzle started to hiss. Edie struck the match and held it out; the torch lit with a
pok
. She turned the collar, and the blue, bullet-shaped flame nearly caught Eric’s sleeve. “Oo,” she said. “This’ll be incredible.” She turned the collar, and the flame slipped back into the bottle like a tongue.

“Crowbar …”

“We don’t have a crowbar.”

“I left it here after the island. It’s down the basement, beside the stairs.”

Edie left the table and headed for the basement.

“Check on the prisoner while you’re at it.”

Eric took a filleting knife out of his knapsack. He unsheathed it and tested it with his thumb. He turned toward the basement and called, “Bring a whetstone too, if you have one!”

He pulled the shrink wrap off a package of PowerUp and laid out six pills along the edge of the table. He found a glass in the cupboard, and ran the water until it was cold and clear. Then he sat at the table and took the tablets one by one, shaking his head each time to help them go down. A shiver ran up his spine.

“Edie!” he yelled again at the doorway. “Bring a whetstone!” He listened for a moment, one ear cocked toward the basement. Then he set down his glass of water, very deliberately, not making a sound. He sheathed the filleting knife and stuck it in his front pocket. He moved to the top of the stairs. This time he spoke quietly. “Edie?”

“Come and get her, you pathetic prick.”

Eric stepped softly down the stairs. He could get around this, he could handle it. Everything depended on conquering emotion. At the bottom of the stairs he picked up the crowbar and hooked it on his belt behind his back. It felt heavy and it dangled precariously, but it would not be visible from the front—unless it fell from his belt.

Eric took a deep breath and stepped into the tiny room. It stank of shit and fear. The chair was a tangle of tape and broken wood. The prisoner had Edie from behind, a wooden bar—a piece of the chair—pressed against her throat.

“Lie down on the floor.”

“No. Let her go.”

“Lie down on the floor or I’ll break her neck.”

He won’t kill anyone, Eric thought. If he was strong enough to kill, he would have forced Edie to the top of the stairs. Edie was looking frightened and ugly, her skin glistening where the eczema cracked and wept, her whimpering muffled by duct tape. The wooden bar pressed tighter against her throat, and her face purpled.

“Lie down on the fucking floor! I’ll kill her, you creep, I don’t give a fuck.”

Remain calm, Eric told himself. The prisoner is half-starved, he’s terrified and he’s still wounded—how strong can he be? If we fight, I will win. Remain calm.
Think
. “The problem, Keith, is that once I lie down, there’s nothing to stop you killing us.”

“I’ll kill her right now if you don’t.”

“Calm down, Keith. You’re choking her.”

“Damn right I am.” His words were tough, but tears were streaming down the prisoner’s face; he was sobbing so hard he could hardly speak. A weird reaction, Eric thought. Was it nerves? Was it self-pity? Whatever the prisoner’s emotional state, the wooden bar was biting cruelly into Edie’s throat. Oh, prisoner, you are making such a mistake, you will die so badly for this.

“You’ve got a knife in your front pocket. I can see the handle. Take it out slowly and toss it over here.”

Eric did as he was told, bringing the knife out, sheath and all, and tossing it past the prisoner, where he could not reach it.

“Now get the fuck down on the floor.” Eric hesitated, and the prisoner started shrieking, “Do it now!” over and over again until Eric started to lower himself toward the floor.

Behind him, the crowbar hung heavily from his belt. The problem was, he couldn’t swing it at the prisoner without bashing Edie. “I’m getting down, Keith. Just don’t hurt anyone, all right? I’m getting down.” He sank slowly toward his knees.

What happened next took only a moment to unfold. Eric reached behind for the crowbar. Keith screamed something at the top of his lungs and pulled back on Edie’s throat, trying to shield himself with her. But Eric didn’t swing for the prisoner, he swung for Edie.

The iron bar caught her a solid blow to the side of the head. Her knees buckled and she sank toward the floor. The prisoner staggered and lost his grip. He launched himself toward the door, but by then Eric had flipped the crowbar so that he was holding it by the straight end. The prisoner was not even halfway out when the crowbar hit him—a terrible blow to the back of his neck just below the skull—and he crumpled like a poleaxed cow.

51

T
HE ADDRESS, ACCORDING TO TROY’S
records, was 675 Pratt Street East. They were heading there now, without sirens. The radio had been predicting a snowstorm, but the warm patch had held, and rain hammered on the roof of the car. The wipers squawked on the windshield. Cardinal had already called for backup, plain dress, but there were no cars in sight when they got to the corner of Pratt and MacPherson.

“I didn’t know there was anything after the five hundred block,” said Delorme. At the end of the five hundred block the ONR tracks crossed Pratt Street, and after that the road wasn’t even paved and the small, ratty houses on the far side were hidden behind a rock cut.

The radio sprayed static, and Mary Flower’s voice filled the car. “Could be a wait for backup. Jackknifed tractor-trailer on the overpass’s got traffic backed up for two miles.”

“Acknowledged,” Cardinal said into the mike. “What’s the computer say about Eric Fraser?”

“Nada. Zero locally on Eric Fraser. Nada.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Cardinal said. “Troy says he can’t be more than twenty-seven, twenty-eight.”

“Also zero for nationwide,” Flower said. “Clean as a whistle.”

“What about juvie? That’s where we’ll find him, if he has a record.”

“Hold on. Juvie’s coming.” They heard Flower scream to someone to bring her the printout sometime before next Christmas. “Bingo on juvie. You ready?”

“Cruelty to animals,” Cardinal said to Delorme. “Bet you anything. Go ahead, Mary.”

“Age of thirteen, break and enter. Age of fourteen, break and enter. Age of fifteen, cruelty to animals.”

“That’s our boy,” Delorme said.

A faint electrical charge tingled along Cardinal’s fingertips. If he had to resign, this was the way to go: stop a serial killer in mid-career. You couldn’t ask for a better exit.

McLeod pulled up at the corner by MacPherson, wipers flapping. Cardinal had warned everyone to stay away from the house till he got there. When McLeod saw them, he got out of the car and came sprinting across the intersection, holding his hood up with one hand against the rain. He climbed in the back with Collingwood, cursing. “Fucking February, I ask you. Who ever heard of a fucking monsoon in February? It’s the fucking pollution from Sudbury doing it. Whole fucking town’s melted.”

Flower said, “Fraser also did a stint at St. Bartholomew’s Training School. Two years less a day.”

“Assault I bet,” Cardinal said into the mike.

From the radio, “Aggravated assault. Had a disagreement with his shop teacher concerning the whereabouts of certain equipment.”

“And he did some carving on him, right?”

“Nope. Right there in class. Went after him with a blowtorch.”

52

K
EITH
L
ONDON DREAMED HE
was swimming in a bright green pool, deep in a jungle, where monkeys sat in a row upon a low-hanging branch and drank thirstily with cupped hands. Except for the ripples that spread outward from the monkeys’ hands, the surface was tranquil as jade. The smell of water was strong.

He opened his eyes. That smell of water. Was it from rain? He could hear the sound of rain pelting against wood.

His head felt as if it had been split open from crown to nape; the pain made him nauseous. He turned his head slightly and nearly vomited. Wherever he was, the place was very dark, very damp and very cold. He was dressed now, in clothes he did not remember putting on—a torn sweater and jeans—and they were not enough to keep out the cold. Off to one side, a space heater glowed a fierce scarlet, but its heat did not reach him. Eric Fraser was about ten feet away, setting a camera on a tripod.

I’m on a table. They have me on a table in a basement somewhere. That damp smell. I’m near a lake. The damp has a definite full-time smell. And yes, that is rain—rain blowing against boarded-up windows. Huge pipes criss-crossed the ceiling overhead, disappearing into darkness. Of course. The pumphouse.

He tried to move, but his arms were strapped tightly to his sides and to the table. The only thing he could move was his head. Eric was concentrating on levelling the camera, bending down to adjust first one leg of the tripod, then another. Try to reason with him, reach him before he goes into frenzy like he did on that videotape.

“Listen, Eric,” Keith said quietly. “My girlfriend will be missing me by now. I told her where I am, who I was staying with. It was in the letter I wrote.”

This was ignored. Eric Fraser adjusted yet another leg of the tripod, humming to himself, and then, apparently satisfied, began pulling objects out of a duffle bag—Keith’s duffle bag—and laying them out on a wooden counter.

Keith tried not to look. He concentrated on controlling his voice. “Eric, I could get you money. I’m not rich, but I could get you money from somewhere. My family is quite well off. So is my girlfriend’s. They would pay you something, I’m sure they would.”

It was as if Eric Fraser heard nothing of this. He pulled something from the bag—a pair of needle-nose pliers—and then he stood over Keith for a moment with glistening ferret’s eyes, clicking the pliers open and shut just above his nose.

“We could arrange the payments so no one finds out who you are. It should be possible. It wouldn’t have to be a single payment, necessarily. There’s no reason why it couldn’t go on for some time. Please, Eric. Will you listen, Eric? You could make thirty or forty thousand dollars. Maybe fifty. Think what that could buy over the years. Why don’t you let me call them, Eric?”

Eric Fraser pulled a paper bag from the duffle bag and unwrapped a sandwich. There was a sudden smell of tuna fish. He sat in the darkness, blocking the glow from the space heater. A bone in his jaw clicked every time he chewed. After a while he said, “I wish Edie would get here with the lights.” He tapped a large battery on the floor with the toe of his boot. “Lighting will be better in this one. Hate it when you can’t see what’s going on.”

“Think about it, Eric. You could be quite well off. You wouldn’t have to work. You could buy things. You could travel. You could go where you want, do what you want. What’s the use in just killing me? It won’t get you anywhere. You’ll get caught sooner or later. Why don’t you get some money out of this at least? Wouldn’t that be better than just killing me?”

Eric finished his sandwich and threw the wrapping on the floor. “I wish Edie would get here with the lights,” he said again.

“Eric, I’m begging you, all right? If you want me on my knees, I’ll get on my knees. Just tell me what I have to do. Eric? Eric, are you listening? I’m begging for my life. I’ll do anything you want. Anything. Just let me live.”

This got no response whatever.

“Eric, I’ll get more. I promise. I’ll steal it. I’ll rob a store. I’ll do anything, Eric. Just let me go.”

Eric slid down off his stool and selected a pair of scissors. He stood over Keith and snicked the blades open and shut. Then, taking hold of Keith’s hair just above the ear, he cut away a small lock and held it up in a dim shaft of daylight. “I wish Edie would get here with the lights.”