Keith pushed the eject button on the VCR, and a tape popped out. Handwritten on the label were the words, Life of the Party. Eric's film, he remembered, either that or home movies. He pushed the tape back in and pressed play.

The scene was badly lit, atrociously lit, in fact. There was a hard circle of light in the center of the screen, and around this, blackness. A boy was sitting in the patch of light, a skinny kid with long hair. He didn't look any too swift, sipping from a beer and grinning a stupid grin. He belched a couple of times, goofing off for the camera.

Then a woman entered the scene- Edie- and sat beside him. Here we go, Keith said to himself. Amateur porn time. God, they grow them kinky up here in the North.

The lighting did nothing to flatter Edie's complexion. Her skin gave off a dull glare as she reached over, felt between the boy's legs, and rubbed at him. The boy laughed, looking nervous and embarrassed. "You guys are too much," he said.

Music was switched on in the background, a boom box, it sounded like, Pearl Jam distorted by cheap speakers. Edie kept rubbing the boy's crotch mechanically. He opened his fly and she reached inside.

Then another figure entered the scene. It was Eric, pretending to be the outraged husband, shouting the most ridiculous phrases. "You do this to me? After the way I've treated you?" It was even worse than he had imagined.

Eric pulled the woman away, still shouting inanely.

The kid, for his part, did a terrible job of acting- holding up his hands in the hammiest way. He looked ridiculous with his pants half-down.

Then Eric struck a theatrical pose in the foreground, raising a hammer. "You try to screw my wife behind my back! I'm going to kill you!"

"No, please," the kid pleaded, laughing of course. "Please don't kill me! I didn't mean it! I'll make it up to you!" Then, hopelessly out of character: "Sorry. I can't help it. It just feels so stupid, you know?"

"You think it feels stupid?" Eric stepped forward, the hammer high. "I'll show you what feels stupid."

The hammer came down on the boy's head, changing everything. Even with the bad quality of the sound, Keith knew instantly that the crunch of bone was real. Also real was the sudden emptiness in the boy's face- the open mouth, the vacant, astonished eyes.

Eric swung again. "You bastard, you scum, who do you think you are?"

There was another minute and a half of video. As it played on the screen before him, Keith remained utterly still in the flickering pool of light. Then he raised his head and howled like a dog.

30

OUTSIDE, someone was stuck in the snow. The futile whine of tires could be heard even in the interview room, where Cardinal was listening to a sad young woman named Karen Steen. It had been an unhappy morning altogether. First, he had stopped off at the O.H., only to find Catherine sullen and uncommunicative. He had cut the visit short when he felt himself getting angry with her. His first phone call of the morning had come from Billy LaBelle's mother- crying, her speech slurred under the influence of too much of whatever her doctor had prescribed to dull her pain. Then Mr. Curry had called (only out of concern for his wife, of course), and Cardinal had had to tell him he was still no closer to catching whoever had beaten his only child to death. Then Roger Gwynn had called from the Lode, asking in his halfhearted way if there was any progress. When Cardinal responded in the negative, Gwynn had lapsed into an ode to their days at Algonquin High, as if nostalgia would make Cardinal more forthcoming. This was followed in short order by calls from The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and Grace Legault from Channel Four. The newspapers were no problem, but Grace Legault had somehow got ahold of the tidbit about Margaret Fogle. Was it true they had thought she was also a Windigo victim? And she had turned up alive and well and living in B.C.?

Cardinal summed it up for her: Margaret Fogle had been a missing person. She had in some ways fit the killer's profile. However, now she was found and no longer of interest to the Algonquin Bay police. The call rattled him because it meant someone was talking to Legault without keeping him informed. The thought of having this out with Dyson made him very, very tired.

Cardinal wanted to devote his time to footwork. He and Delorme had split the camera and clock leads. They had rerecorded the sounds from the tape, making multiple copies that they would send to camera and clock repair experts in Toronto and Montreal. Delorme would have run through twenty camera repair shops by now, while Cardinal had got nowhere. Instead, he had got caught up first on the phone and now in person with this sincere young woman who was telling him about her missing boyfriend.

Cardinal was angry at Sergeant Flower for telling Miss Steen he would see her. Especially when it turned out she was from Guelph, a largely agrarian community some sixty miles west of Toronto. "If your boyfriend's from Toronto," he told her, "you should be talking to the Toronto police."

Karen Steen was a shy woman- girl, really, not more than nineteen or so- who tended to stare at the floor between sentences. "I decided not to waste a lot of time on the telephone, Officer Cardinal. I thought you'd be more likely to pay attention to me if I came in person. I believe Keith is here in Algonquin Bay."

All young women made Cardinal think of his daughter, but- except for her age- Ms. Steen had nothing in common with Kelly. Kelly was the epitome of the hip and casual- in Cardinal's eyes at least- whereas the young woman seated across from him in the interview room had a kind of girl-next-door look. She was wearing a business suit that was too old for her, and silver wire-frames that gave her the air of a scholar. A very serious girl next door.

Miss Steen looked at the floor again- at the little puddle of melted snow at her feet. Cardinal thought for a moment she was going to cry, but when she looked up her eyes were clear. "Keith's parents are away on a dig in Turkey- they're archaeologists- and it's going to be impossible to reach them. I didn't want to wait for them to tell me what to do. I've read about the murders you've had up here. They weren't just murders- the people were missing for some time before they were killed, I think."

"That doesn't mean everyone who disappears has been abducted by this lunatic. Besides, your boyfriend's hitchhiking across Canada- it's a big piece of real estate to be missing in. You say he was expected in the Soo on Tuesday."

"Yes. And it isn't like him to just not show up somewhere. One of the things I love about Keith is he's very considerate of other people. Very reliable. He hates to cause trouble."

"It's out of character, you're saying."

"Way out of character. I'm not hysterical, Mr. Cardinal. I didn't come here lightly. I have reasons."

"Go on, Miss Steen. I didn't mean to imply anything, except- Well, go on."

The young woman drew a deep breath and held it a minute, staring into the distance. Cardinal suspected this was a habitual gesture of hers, and it was an attractive one. There was a pleasing gravity to Miss Steen. He had no trouble imagining a young man in love with her.

"Keith and I are opposites in many ways, but we're very close," she said finally. "We were going to get married after high school, but then we decided to put it off for a year. I wanted to go straight on to university, and Keith wanted to see the world, so to speak, before settling down to study again. Anyway, we thought it wouldn't hurt us to wait another year. I'm only telling you this so you'll understand that when Keith said he would write to me, and e-mail me when he got the chance, he meant it- it wasn't casual. We even arranged the timing of our letters to make sure they wouldn't cross."