And yet, following up on the library CD made her heart beat a little faster. The library CD was something she could hold in her hand; it gave the illusion of direction because it led somewhere right now, not a week from now- and besides, the library CD was her only lead.

Mr. Leonard Neff's address was a modern brick bungalow in Cedarvale, an affluent subdivision of mewses, courts, and places laid out with sterile precision at the top of Rayne Street. There was a hockey net set up in the driveway, where a couple of boys in Montreal Canadiens jerseys were firing slapshots at each other. The Taurus parked out front had ski equipment strapped to the roof rack. Apparently a sporting family, the Neffs. The windows of the house were modern and triple-glazed, not likely to rattle with every passing truck. In any case, Cedar Crescent, Cedar Mews, and Cedar Place (the town council apparently did not waste its creative energy on the naming of streets) attracted little traffic of any sort, certainly not trucks.

Delorme's second stop was the home of the unruly Mr. McGrath. This turned out to be a small apartment house at the turnoff to Airport Road. Delorme got out of the car and listened a moment. The drone of an Air Ontario plane coming in for a landing. Highway 17 was less than fifty yards away; the traffic was a constant hiss. A woman heavily burdened with groceries tottered up the front steps and struggled with her keys. Delorme rushed to hold the front door open for her and entered the building enveloped in the woman's gratitude. Mr. McGrath's apartment was on the first floor at the far end of the building. Delorme stood in the hallway, listening. No traffic, just sounds from other apartments: a vacuum cleaner, the cry of a parakeet, the metallic chatter of a TV game show.

The last name on the list sounded like a little old lady: Edith Soames. All right, I know it's a dead end, Delorme told herself. There isn't a chance in hell that Todd Curry or Katie Pine was killed by some little old lady, but sometimes you just go with what you have, you take a flier, you see what happens.

The Soames address was just two blocks east of the house Delorme had grown up in, and she was sidetracked for a few moments by nostalgia. She drove past the rock cut where at the age of six Larry Laframboise had given her a split lip. On the corner was the North Star Coffee Shop where she had overheard Thйrиse Lortie- formerly a friend- saying Lise Delorme could be a real slut sometimes. Half a block farther: the park bench where Geoff Girard had told her he didn't want to marry her. She recalled the sudden heat of tears streaming down her face.

She drove by her old house and tried not to look, but at the last minute she slowed the car and stared. The place looked more rundown than ever. She and Geoff used to sit on that dilapidated front porch for hours, feeling each other up under a blanket. One night her father had come out and chased him halfway down to Algonquin Avenue, sixteen-year-old Lise screaming at him the whole time. It was on that porch that she had first had sex- with another boy, not with Geoff. Maybe Thйrиse Lortie had been right.

Well, her father was long gone- vanished out west to Moose Jaw or somewhere, and her mother was dead. Geoff Girard was married and father to about fourteen bright blond children out in Shephard's Bay. The house had long ago been divided into apartments, as had most of the old houses in the neighborhood.

The Soames house was as rundown as the rest of the block. The facade of fake red brick had blackened with age and was peeling around the windows, which were the heavy ancient storm variety. Delorme had a sudden memory of her father teetering on a ladder with one of those huge windows clutched in his hands. When traffic went by, they rattled.

The door opened, and a little old lady was helped onto the porch by a woman in her twenties, perhaps a granddaughter or a visiting nurse. Their progress was hampered by heavy winter coats and the old woman's terror of slipping on the icy steps. The young woman steadied her elbow and frowned impatiently at the faltering steps.

Delorme got out of the car and waited for them on the sidewalk. "Excuse me," she said, flashing her badge. "I'm working on a string of burglaries in this neighborhood." It was true that Arthur Wood had looted several apartments in the area, but Delorme didn't mention that the burglaries had occurred three years previously.

"What's that?" the old woman yelled. "What's she saying?"

"Burglaries!" the younger one shouted back. She made a face of helplessness at Delorme, a face that said, Old people- what can you do with them? "We haven't had any break-ins," she said.

"Have you seen anything unusual? Vans hanging around? Strangers watching the street?"

"No. I haven't noticed anything strange."

"What's that! What's she saying! Tell me what she's saying!"

"It's okay, Gram! It's nothing!"

Delorme gave them the ritual warning to keep their doors and windows locked. The young woman promised they would. Delorme felt a twinge of pity: a bad case of eczema or some other disease had damaged her face. Her skin looked as rough as elephant hide, and there were raw patches, as if it had been scrubbed brutally with wire wool. The woman was not ugly, but the hangdog look and the averted eyes spoke of an inner conviction that she was. The world was unlikely to offer her anything other than this crabbed existence with her aged grandmother, and the young woman knew it.

"What's she saying? Tell me what she's saying!"

"Come on, Gram! The store'll be closed by the time we get there!"

"Tell me what's going on! I like to know what's going on, Edie!"

So, the younger one was Edith Soames. Well, as grandmother and granddaughter they might both have that name; it made no difference. A lonely young woman had once borrowed from the library one of the most popular records in the country, a record thousands of people had bought or borrowed or taped; it meant nothing.

Delorme left them to their slow struggle toward MacPherson Street. It would have been so nice to report to her suspicious partner that she had made some headway. But Delorme turned the corner, swerving a little on the icy road, certain that the morning's progress amounted to exactly zero.

20

ERIC Fraser opened the side of his brand-new hot-off-the-truck Sony video camera. He put in a tape, fresh from a shrink-wrapped pack of three- courtesy of the Future Shop's five-finger discount- and slapped the side of the camera closed. He told Edie to just act natural, to pretend he wasn't there, but it seemed to make her all the more nervous.

"Why do you want a tape of me doing dishes?" she whined. "Can't you wait till I'm doing something more interesting?" She was scrubbing vigorously at the bottom of a saucepan. "I haven't even brushed my hair."

As if brushing her hair would make some incredible difference. He wanted to test the camera before putting it to use in the field. On location, so to speak. The last tape had been very poor quality- the lousy camera he'd used had pretty much ruined it.

He opened the lens to its widest angle, taking in Edie, the cupboards, even the back door with its cracked window, its view of the scraggly, snowy tree. Can't beat the Japanese when it comes to cameras; the lens was first-class. Sound was supposed to be good, too. Eric had read up on the specs.

Edie was plunging the dishmop in and out of a glass so that it made exaggerated sucking noises. It made Eric want to hit her. Sometimes I don't know why I bother, he said to himself. I swear I don't. This was the running commentary Eric Fraser carried on with himself all the time. Yet it was hard to resist Edie's sheer worship of him; he had never experienced anything like it. And if she didn't look the way he wanted her to look, well, he told himself, maybe I shouldn't even think of her as a woman. I should think of her as a pet, some kind of reptile.