39

MALCOLM Musgrave and his team were encamped at the Pinegrove Motel. The room was a standard-issue box, with faux colonial furniture and violent orange curtains. Maid service had apparently been suspended. Between tape recorders, video monitors, and radios, a heap of pizza boxes and Chinese food containers had grown into a precarious pyramid.

The place stank of sweat and old hamburgers.

Delorme was surprised to find Musgrave personally involved in the stakeout and said so.

"What, and miss all this?" He waved a massive arm at their surroundings, shoulder holster creaking. "I could have stayed out of it, sure. In fact, my hands-on attitude has been known to upset the more sensitive troops. But you know what? I don't give a damn. Call me vindictive, but this boy fucked up my operation royally, and I want to reel him in myself. With your help, of course," he added with feigned politeness.

Musgrave hoisted an extremely ugly chair across a bed and set it down for Delorme. He sat on the bed, crushing it almost to the floor, and shouted at a gray-faced man in headphones, who until now had paid them no attention whatever. "Play back our prize for Detective Delorme, here, Larry. It's showtime."

Larry put another tape on the reel-to-reel outfit in front of him. He set it winding forward so fast that Delorme thought she could see traces of smoke. He punched a button, twiddled a couple of dials, and yanked out the headphone jack so they could all hear.

"Came in a couple of hours ago," Musgrave said. "Don't you return your calls?"

"I was working with Cardinal and couldn't get away. We're trying to catch a killer right now, in case you haven't heard."

"Don't try and put me in my place, Ms. Delorme. It's above yours." Musgrave nodded at his associate, and the tape started at the end of a conversation.

"- because that's the way we do business, that's why. Tell Snider to get his act together. Fucking asshole."

"That's Corbett," Musgrave said. "Nice bedside manner."

"How many times we going to deal with this shit? You tell him. One more time and he's gonna be-"

"I got it, Kyle. I hear ya."

"Peter Fyfe. Longtime Corbetteer. He was actually a cop at one point, for about two weeks, down in Windsor decades ago. Only thing on his sheet's assault and battery, 1989. Been a choirboy ever since, just like Corbett."

"He's gonna wish he never knew my name, you tell him."

"I'll tell him, Kyle."

"I mean it this time. Only reason I tolerated him this long is Sheila. And that is not going to cover his sorry ass anymore."

"I'll give him the word."

"Do that."

There was a click as Corbett and Fyfe hung up. The tape recorder being voice-activated, the next conversation started exactly ten seconds later.

"Yeah."

"Kyle, any way you can get out of Fat Boy?"

"Fat Boy's got a lot of juice, Pete. I can't just dump him."

"We know who Fat Boy is," Musgrave said. "Gary Grundy, runs the Lobos gang down in Aylmer, weighs three forty if he's an ounce."

"Well, I got the word from our pet cop is all. He's got something hot he doesn't want to talk about by phone."

"Fine. Tell him to come to the Crystal."

"As if. He suggested the Library."

"Brilliant. No one's ever gonna notice me at the public fucking library."

"Not the public library, Kyle. The Library Tavern. It's above the Birches Motel. Most boring bar you ever saw. Listen, he don't even want me talking to you about this by phone. Says the Mounties probably got us bugged."

"They do not have us bugged. Why do you think I pay a fucking fortune to my master hacker? We are clean."

"Well, he says they got us bugged and not to say nothing on the phone. But I'm fucked if I'm driving in from fucking Sudbury to play messenger boy."

"Tell him the New York, two A.M. I'll be at the bar."

"Two A.M. I'll tell him."

"Not tonight, for Christ's sake. I told you I gotta sit down with Fat Boy."

"Okay, okay, I got that."

"We'll do it tomorrow night. Two A.M. And tell him I'm gonna want everything. I haven't heard from him in a fucking century."

"Needless to say, the 'master hacker' Corbett consults with is one of ours. Very handy with a mouse, this guy."

"Nice." It really was nice. Delorme knew the Mounties got things right most of the time. Unfortunately, that wasn't what tended to get them into the papers. "Tomorrow night, two A.M.," she said. "Can we get a tape unit in place at the restaurant that fast?"

Musgrave rose from the bed, and it was like watching a time-lapse film of the growth of a Douglas fir. "Where's your faith, Sister Delorme? Our little monks are making arrangements even as we speak."

40

EDIE Soames kept her eyes on the clock until it finally inched its way to lunchtime, then she told Quereshi she was breaking and went to the Pizza Patio at the other end of the mall. She always had lunch by herself; Eric never got lunch at the same time. The need to be with him was particularly bad right now. They'd been holding the boy for so long, Edie's anticipation was in danger of turning into fear. Eric kept putting off the party, apparently enjoying stretching this one out. He loved having a prisoner; it gave him a renewed sense of purpose. But Edie was feeling restless and jumpy, as if her skin were on too tight.

At the next table, her ex-friend Margo sat with her back to the entrance, giggling with two other Pharma-City employees. Edie never sat with Margo anymore; Margo was not a serious person. A year ago, before Eric came along, she had confided to her diary, Margo knows how to have fun- something I've never learned. I think I may be in love with her. She came round and set my hair last night, and we had such a good time. But then Eric had come along, and Margo and Eric disliked each other on sight. One day, before Margo realized how much Eric meant to Edie, she had commented carelessly that he looked like a ferret. Except for unavoidable interchanges at work, Edie hadn't spoken to her since.

Edie ordered a diet Coke and two slices of pizza. She was halfway through the second slice when she heard her name. Margo had shrieked it out, but Edie wasn't being called, she was being discussed. "Oh, my God," Margo was saying. "Such a sourpuss. I mean that face could stop a truck. And she must wear like a quart of Obsession. That girl needs a makeover, big time."

"Big time," Sally Royce agreed. "A personality makeover."

The voices went low for a moment, and then there was a burst of laughter.

Edie pushed aside the rest of her pizza and left. Bitches should read the papers, get acquainted with the Windigo. They wouldn't be laughing so hard if they knew what she was capable of. She could scare the shit out of them, if she felt like it. Have them begging for mercy like that stupid Indian brat. She might've done Billy LaBelle herself, if the little runt hadn't died on them. Her courage had failed only once: She'd had to cover Todd Curry's head with that seat cover before she could help Eric move the body.

But she was getting stronger all the time. Why, less than twenty-four hours ago she'd been driving a dead body out to Trout Lake. Eric was amazing. So cool, so calm. Killed him like he was nothing, not even a bird. And then we dumped him like a bag of garbage. Garbage- that's exactly what he was- left him at the side of the road. But the really brilliant touch- totally Eric's, of course- was leaving the van out at the Chinook Tavern. "Somebody'll steal it before you can say Rumpelstiltskin," he said. Totally correct, as usual.

The Algonquin Mall has a massive Food Town at one end, and at the other an equally gigantic Kmart. Between them the mall itself forms a wide, fluorescent L. It is meant to afford this northern city a Main Street without winter. Blizzards, ice storms, windchill factors, who cares? A shopper can stroll from store to store, window-shopping all afternoon if the mood strikes, without freezing to the marrow.