Free By the Time You Read This by Giles Blunt Page A

something fast. He’s destroying this kid’s life.”
    “Problem with posting a picture is, the perp is most likely gonna see it before the kid does. Pedophiles aren’t usually violent, but if he thinks she’s gonna put him away for years, he just might kill her.”

9
    N EXT MORNING , K ELLY CAME into the kitchen in her running gear—black leggings, mauve sweatshirt with a tiny elephant stitched on it—and grabbed an orange off the counter. Catherine bought those oranges, Cardinal thought. Did you buy half a dozen oranges when you were about to kill yourself?
    He poured his daughter a coffee. “You want some oatmeal?”
    “Maybe when I come back. Don’t want to lug any extra weight around. God, you look exhausted, Dad.”
    “You should talk.” Kelly’s eyes looked puffy and red. “Are you managing to sleep at all?”
    “Not much. I seem to wake up every half hour,” she said, dropping bits of orange peel into the green bin. “I never realized how physical the emotions are. I wake up and my calves are locked up, and I feel like a wreck even though I haven’t done anything. I just can’t believe she’s gone. I mean, if she came in that front door right now I don’t even think I’d be surprised.”
    “I found this,” Cardinal said. He held out a photograph he’d discovered buried in an album crammed with loose pictures, a black-and-white portrait of Catherine, aged about eighteen, looking very moody and artistic in a black turtleneck and silver hoop earrings.
    Kelly burst into tears, and Cardinal was taken by surprise. Perhaps in an effort to ease his own grief, his daughter had been comparatively restrained, but now she wailed like a little girl. He rested a hand on her shoulder as she cried herself out.
    “Wow,” she said, coming back from washing her face. “I guess I needed that.”
    “That’s how she looked when we met,” Cardinal said. “I just thought she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. The kind of person you’re only supposed to meet in movies.”
    “Was she always that intense?”
    “No, not at all. She made fun of herself all the time.”
    “Why don’t you come running with me?” Kelly said suddenly. “It’ll make us feel better.”
    “Oh, I don’t know …”
    “Come on. You still run, don’t you?”
    “Not as often as I used to …”
    “Come on, Dad. You’ll feel better. We both will.”

    Madonna Road was just off Highway 69, so they had to run along the shoulder for half a kilometre or so and then make a left onto Water Road, which skirted the edge of Trout Lake. The day was brilliant and clear, the air with a sharp autumn tang.
    “Wow, smell the leaves,” Kelly said. “Those hills have every colour except blue.”
    Kelly was not by nature a perky young woman; she was making an effort to cheer Cardinal up, and he was touched by it. He was indeed aware of the beauty of the day, but as they ran through the suburb, their steps seemed to beat in time with the words Catherine’s dead, Catherine’s dead . Cardinal felt the contradictory sensations of being both hollowed out and yet extremely heavy—as if his heart had been replaced by a ball of lead.
    “When do you have to be back in New York?” he asked Kelly.
    “Well, I told them I was going to take two weeks.”
    “Oh, you don’t have to stay that long, you know. I’m sure you need to get back.”
    “It’s fine, Dad. I want to stay.”
    “How about today? You have any plans?”
    “I was thinking about calling Kim Delaney, but I don’t know. You remember Kim?”
    Cardinal recalled a big strapping blond girl—angry at the world and very political. She and Kelly had been inseparable in their last years of high school.
    “I would have thought Kim would have ventured out into the big bad world by now.”
    “Yeah, so would I.”
    “You sound mournful.” Cardinal accidentally brushed against a recycling bin. A Jack Russell bounced up and down on the other side of the fence, yapping elaborate