Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (78 page)

Often, Green had to admit, but asked if at any time in the investigation the father had come under suspicion. She sat a few seconds in silence, her long wine-red nails clicking the tabletop as she thought. Her coffee sat forgotten at her elbow. “No,” she replied finally, sounding faintly surprised. “At least not for sexual abuse, and I suppose that’s the biggest point in his favour. As usually happens in nasty custody disputes, they both accused each other of every heinous crime under the sun, but that one never came up, even though the father was flinging all kinds of accusations at her—”

“Like what?”

“Oh, mainly that she was neglecting the children while she ran around with her new man. That Becky cried in her sleep when she came to visit him and didn’t want to go back to her mother’s—”

“And that didn’t make you the least bit suspicious that all was not kosher with the respectable Quinton J. Patterson?”

She flushed, and her tapping fingernails came to an abrupt halt. “We had our man, Green. And to be honest, I didn’t consider anything Steve Whelan said credible. He was insanely jealous, and he was trying to pry the kids from their mother.”

Plus, Steve Whelan doesn’t have the baby-faced charm and the fancy connections that Patterson has, does he? Green thought. An uncharitable thought, but probably true. The harmless young Fraser had presented a convenient scapegoat for a lot of people in this case.

Including his fellow teachers, Green realized with a jolt. It seemed a long shot, but as long as they were considering all the men in Rebecca’s life who had access to her, it ought to be considered. “What about Ross Long? Any dirt stick to him?”

At first Devine looked baffled by the name, then incredulous. “Fraser’s teacher friend? What the hell does he have to do with anything?”

“He was the only other male teacher in the school. But he was older and more of an authority figure, so maybe Becky was afraid to point the finger at him.”

Devine waved the red fingernails in dismissal. “Straws, Green. Why not the school custodian? Maybe he sneaked her off behind the boiler.”

“Becky would have squealed on the custodian way before she turned on a helpful young teacher whom all the kids liked.”

Devine stared at the ceiling as if seeking patience from some celestial source. “There was never anything to implicate Ross Long. Normal guy with a wife, kids and a house in Barrhaven. How’s that for squeaky clean?”

He cringed inwardly, but there was not the slightest glint of mockery in her eye. “Appearances can be deceiving,” he replied, deadpan. “I’m still keeping him up there. Every bit as much access as Fraser, and with his years of experience, probably a lot more practised at keeping it under wraps. What did you dig up about the guy?”

She shrugged, her eyes bored. “Dead end guy stuck in a dead end job. He wasn’t a very good teacher; he hadn’t changed his methods in years, and he trotted out the same old yellowed lesson plans year after year. Didn’t matter what the curriculum said. The kids found him boring, the parents tried to get rid of him or at least get their kid out of his class—”

“Oh?” he demanded sharply.

“Nothing sinister, Green. Just a waste of their year, and to this kind of parent, a less than scintillating year does irrevocable damage. In our day, we had some terrific teachers and some awful ones, and we just endured them, and it all balanced out in the end, right? But the Duke of York parents are from the ‘flash cards in the cradle’ school, who see a child’s brain turning to mush every moment it goes unchallenged.”

Green eyed Devine with curiosity. The woman was full of intriguing surprises. He would have pegged her as one of those “never waste an opportunity” types herself, whereas he had cherished those endless idle hours of childhood. Hours he could wander lazily down dead-end pathways in his mind, exploring, poking, pondering and maybe occasionally discovering something. He pictured himself being rushed through today’s childhood, herded through minor league hockey and cub scouts towards some invisible goal and given no chance to linger along the way. He would have hated that childhood. Thank God his parents had had no energy for herding and no idea of the goal anyway. They were too busy putting one foot in front of the other, avoiding the demons in their memory and the yawning chasm in their hopes by never raising their head to look beyond the present. Just one more legacy of the Holocaust.

“Anyway,” Devine added, breaking into his thoughts, “Ross Long had two daughters of his own who seemed perfectly well adjusted, and—” She frowned as if to catch an elusive memory. “I didn’t write it down, but I’m pretty sure he had a woman on the side. Another teacher on staff, who’d been quietly transferred to another school a year earlier to avoid a scandal. The parents would have loved the ammunition to force his transfer. It’s almost impossible to get rid of a teacher, just like a cop. The union’s all over you like a dirty shirt, and there are a thousand contractual hoops the principal has to jump through to get someone’s competence reviewed. But you can transfer them through quiet agreement.”

Green sighed. He was not looking forward to Tony’s encounter with the school system, not if his son was anything like himself. He thought of Hannah and longed to check on her, but not with Devine in earshot. He forced himself to get back to business.

“Consider this,” he said, continuing to play devil’s advocate. “Ross’s little piece was out of reach, and everyone thought he was a real loser. Isn’t that the profile? Guys feel inadequate and disrespected, so to boost their spirits, they pick on someone even more powerless and needy?”

“Millions of guys feel crappy and belittled, but they don’t turn to kids! It’s a long way to connect the dots.”

“Which is exactly my point about Fraser himself. For my money, Long has as good a profile as Fraser.”

“But the little girl didn’t accuse Long. She accused Fraser.”

Another point taken, he conceded, aware that he was only thinking with half his mind. The other half hovered somewhere out in the vast unknown between Vancouver airport and downtown Ottawa.

“Okay,” he said briskly, anxious to get back to the search for Hannah. “That’s three. Is there anyone else who should be on the list? Grandfathers, uncles, coaches or clergy who were close to Becky?”

She clicked her nails in thought, then slowly wrinkled up her nose. The effect was oddly endearing, once again out-ofcharacter with the corporate image she strove to project. It occurred to him she might be a very different woman away from the office and out of her power suits.

After a moment’s reflection, she shook her head, and Green reviewed the suspects grimly. Although Devine was reluctant to see any of them as likely culprits, her information gave them all plausible motives for Sullivan and his team to sink their teeth into.

“One last question,” he said as Devine was crumpling her styrofoam cup and preparing to rise. “Any one of these guys could have done it. Besides Matt Fraser, who gets your vote?”

Her reluctance vanished in a flash. “No contest. Steve Whelan.”

Eleven

When Green rushed back
to his office, there was still no sign of Sullivan or Hannah. Likewise, Constable Blake at the front desk reported no sighting. When Green called up his email, however, there was a new one from Fred Pollack which wasted no words. “Photo attached.” While Green waited impatiently for the photo to download, he put in a call to the staff sergeants in charge of the uniform patrols in the East and Central East districts. After a brief explanation of the situation, he asked them to distribute Hannah’s description and photo to the street patrols, particularly in the downtown and airport areas as well as on the bus routes in between. He was just finishing the request when the photo began to fill his screen. Transfixed, he stopped to watch.

Hannah was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a cat in her lap, looking up at the camera with an insolent half smile. Her hair stood out in a halo of blue-tipped spikes around her tiny, heart-shaped face. Even with the silver studs in her eyebrow and the white gloss on her lips, she looked so much like his mother that he felt a sharp twinge of pain.

“Inspector Green?” came the staff sergeant’s voice over the silent line.

“Yeah. Ah... I’ll send the photo along with the email.” He hoped his voice sounded neutral as he hastened to ring off. Five minutes later, he had the photo and description up on an electronic bulletin for all the patrols to see in their car computers and had printed two dozen copies for the bicycle patrols and for street canvassing. A quick glance out his office door revealed still no sign of Sullivan, so Green stuffed some of Hannah’s photos into his briefcase and turned to do one final check of his email. In his long list of unread messages, the name Quinton Patterson in the sender column suddenly caught his eye. Sent at 3:07 a.m. the night before. The prick had evidently not slept well following their confrontation yesterday, Green thought. Now what? More legal browbeating?

Curious, he clicked on the message and was surprised when a long, unlawyerly note filled his screen.

Dear Mr. Green,
it began.

It’s three o’clock in the goddamn morning, and thanks to you sleep has disappeared out the door. Sleep has been a fickle, fair-weather friend of mine for years, and even when she came, she used to bring nasty companions. You ever had nightmares? It got so I hated her to come and used to sit awake blasting the TV so I could get through till morning.

Three o’clock is the darkest, lowest hour of the night, and now here I am again, staring into the dark and remembering all those other three o’clocks from years ago. Evil creeps in at the small hours of the morning, detective. Evil memories, evil thoughts, evil wishes. Tonight, thanks to you, it’s visiting our house again.

We all have our tricks to keep it away. My mother is passed out on her bed in front of theTV, my stepfather has been shut up in his study scribbling down legal precedents to keep you out of our lives. Like all the words and pieces of paper and all the laws in the world are going to make a difference. Like they ever have. Quinton thinks the law is a shield. I know it’s more often a knife in the back.

I don’t know you or why you’re doing this, but I overheard Quinton on the phone saying you were going to open my whole case up again. I don’t want it opened. I don’t want your idea of justice. I don’t want the memories or the nightmares or the knockdown fights that put my family at each other’s throats over me. If you think you’re helping, you’re wrong. Or maybe like all the others, you just don’t give a fuck. So what will it be, detective?

Rebecca Whelan

Green reread the email three times, fighting a swirl of very unprofessional feelings. Up until that moment, Rebecca Whelan had been an abstraction, a little girl whose allegation had set in motion a cascade of events that had ended, quite possibly, in the death of an innocent man. It had been the dead man’s cause that Green had been pursuing, lured into the quest by the unanswered tragedy of his death.

Quinton Patterson had tried to warn him about the impact of his inquiry on the living, so had Barbara Devine and even the CAS worker. But Green had thought—arrogantly he realized now with a sick feeling in his gut—that exposing the lie, unearthing the truth, and nailing the guilty man would be cathartic for all involved. Including Rebecca Whelan, the little girl who had never seen justice done in the first place.

The Rebecca Whelan in his thoughts had been the bewildered six-year-old blindsided by a conspiracy of teachers and crushed by an anachronistic legal system run by a cabal of wilfully ignorant old men. Yet here before him was the real Rebecca Whelan, who had learned in her own way to take care of herself, who had overcome the nightmares and made it to morning, metaphorically as well as literally. Tough and jaded though she was, she had nonetheless placed her peace of mind in Green’s hands and challenged him not to destroy it a second time. A challenge made all the more poignant by her underlying suspicion that he would probably fail her.

Do I have any choice? he asked himself as he considered the situation. If Fraser’s death turned out to be a suicide or accident, as others had concluded before he started turning over rocks, then perhaps the whole sorry tale could be allowed to slip into obscurity. He and Sullivan wouldn’t need to resurrect the painful events of years ago, even if they had indirectly driven Fraser over the brink.

But if, as Green feared, Fraser had been murdered in a calculated move to silence him, then Green would have no choice. This investigation wasn’t about the events of ten years ago. It was about the brutal death four days ago of a man whose own clash with injustice had been almost as compelling as hers. Because if Matthew Fraser had been innocent, then it was her lie that had brought it all down on him in the first place. Could Green turn a blind eye to Fraser’s death just to avoid reawakening the demons in the lives of Rebecca and her family?

He heard footsteps outside his office and looked up just as Brian Sullivan filled his doorway. The big man’s face was alive with excitement.

“Well, buddy, your instincts are as sharp as ever.”

Green’s heart sank. The one time he was hoping they were wrong. “Where have you been?” he asked peevishly. “I expected you hours ago.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t here, so I went ahead with some leads. I’ve already talked to MacPhail and the Fire Department. And it’s dynamite.”

Green eyed Rebecca’s email out of the corner of his eye. “Okay, shoot,” he sighed.

Sullivan eyed him curiously then sank into the guest chair and propped his huge feet on Green’s desk. He flipped open his duty book with a dramatic flourish. “Well, the PM’s interesting. So interesting that MacPhail phoned me at six o’clock this morning before he’d even gone for his morning jog. How that guy drinks all night and then gets up at dawn for a run is beyond me.”