None So Blind (10 page)

“I’m on this. I’ll get back to you.” He whipped the car back onto the road. As he accelerated back toward the train station, he phoned the NCO for an update. Two units had been dispatched to the train station as soon as the alert came in, but they had missed him. Station staff remembered a man in a wheelchair leaving the station and getting into a taxi. No licence plate, no descriptions, but uniforms were canvassing the remaining cabbies in the line as well as any fellow passengers still in the station.

So far there were no answers.

Green scoured his brain for explanations. This made no sense! Rosten must know that he would be apprehended within hours, that one man in a wheelchair was no match for the police resources of a major city. What did he hope to accomplish? What — or who — was he looking for? Someone from his past? From his trial? From his family?

After twenty years, the list was very small. Green himself was the most obvious target, but surely it would be utter folly for Rosten to go after a high-profile police officer in person. There were the witnesses at his trial, most of whom were professionals from forensics or pathology, along with a few university students who had probably long since moved on.

There was Rosten’s own family, but most were either in Sudbury, where he’d grown up, or in Halifax, where his wife had moved. Only one lived in Ottawa, the daughter whom he barely knew but who merited more attention.

But there was one person who positively screamed danger. “We need a unit out to Marilyn Carmichael’s house in Navan. It’s …” He scrounged his memory for the address.

“Already on its way,” the sergeant replied. “Luckily, the bastard can’t do much sneaking around in that wheelchair.” He paused. “You were the investigator on that case. What do you figure this is? Payback?”

Green felt a wave of relief. Sergeant Bowles came from a background in the Tactical Unit and quickly zeroed in on state-of-mind issues.

“I have no idea. But he’s not a guy to let go once he gets something in his sights, and he remembers every damn word of his trial. We have to be prepared for revenge.”

Green broke off as an awful thought occurred to him. Was this what Rosten had intended all along? Was this the real reason he had changed his story and sought his release from prison? Not for some belated desire to teach, but for revenge? Anger swept through him. Had they all been duped? Archie, the prison psychiatrists, the tough-minded PO, the director of the prison school?

“Get hold of his court file and check every witness whose testimony helped put him behind bars,” he snapped. “We have to find out who’s still in the city and get units over there. If he’s going to strike, it will be fast. He knows he’s only got hours before we catch him.”

After signing off, he phoned Archie back. By this time, he was closing in on the train station.

Archie answered on the first ring, as if the phone had never left his hand. “Any news?” he said, quashing any hope Green had that Rosten had phoned in.

“Not yet. Archie, what the hell is he doing?”

“I don’t know! I had no idea … I told the cops, ‘You think we’d have let him go on his own if we had any idea he was planning this?’ He’s been quiet as a mouse. Compliant, helpful …
goddamn
!”

“Any unusual outings or visitors?”

“Visitors, yes. Two. One was his daughter, the one I told you about.”

Green’s hopes surged. “She actually came to visit?”

“Yes. I’ve been working on it and I finally persuaded her to meet with James and me. She only stayed fifteen minutes. I don’t think they knew what to say to each other, but it was a start.”

A huge start
, Green thought. For Rosten, who had lived with nothing but the memory of a tiny toddler for all these years, this was a step beyond all he’d hoped for. Maybe that joy, that hope, had swept him away. Surely that was where he’d gone.

Archie was still talking about the meeting, but Green barrelled through. “What’s her name and address?”

Once Archie supplied the address, Green rang off immediately to notify the NCO. He knew that within minutes a patrol car in the area would be on its way to the daughter’s house. He was breathing more calmly as he swung into the long, curving entrance drive to the train station, now lined with impatient taxis. He pulled up beside a patrol car. The officer was inside on his radio, fiddling simultaneously with his in-car computer. Green tapped on the window and held up his ID.

“Any luck tracking down the cab that picked him up?” he asked the surprised officer who rolled down his window.

“Not yet, sir. The cabbies here didn’t recognize him, said he wasn’t one of the regulars. But we have calls in to all the taxi companies and they’ll put the word out on their radios.”

“Tell them to be careful about what they say over the air,” Green said sharply. “This man should be considered dangerous.”

The patrol officer nodded. “He didn’t take an accessible van, just an ordinary sedan — the cabbie put the wheelchair in the trunk — so it’s going to take more time. And some of these guys are only part-timers who borrow their uncle’s taxi to make a bit of extra money. He might be off duty now and not listening to dispatch.”

Green left the officer to his phone calls and headed into the train station to check with the man’s partner. A few passengers in Rosten’s first-class car had been intercepted and questioned, but no one noticed anything unusual or suspicious about him. The wheelchair had been immobilized for the trip, and one woman remarked he spent almost all his time looking out the window. Not gazing as if in a daydream, but staring as if he were drinking up every sight. Since there was little to see but barns, cows, and endless freshly ploughed fields, it seemed to her an odd scrutiny. His facial expression barely changed, she said, but she did detect a small smile as the first suburban houses of Barrhaven came into view.

The station attendant, having assisted him off the train and pushed him up the ramp, had left him at the exit gate, where Rosten thanked him and indicated he needed no further help. He was polite, the attendant said, not confused but nervous. He had a small bag on his lap, plus a book and a map.

“A map?” Green repeated. “Of the city?”

“Eastern Ontario,” the attendant said. “I’ve got the same one myself. Very handy, shows all the little backcountry roads in the whole region.”

Backcountry roads — Rosten’s specialty. In a flash, Green was back on the phone to Sergeant Bowles. “He’s got a rural backcountry road map. Any word from the unit going to Marilyn Carmichael’s house in Navan?”

“They’re in place. No sign of him.”

“Anything from the daughter’s place yet?”

“No sign of him there either. Uniform spoke to the daughter. She’s scared. Her husband wants her to take the baby and go to a friend’s for the night.”

“Might not be a bad idea.” Green signed off, baffled and frustrated. Every line of inquiry led to a dead end. Had Rosten spotted the patrol cars and aborted whatever mission he’d been planning? If so, where had he gone? What were they all missing?

What the
hell
was Rosten up to?

The answer didn’t come until the next morning. His phone rang before he’d even managed his first cup of coffee. Tony and Aviva were playing peekaboo in the kitchen and Green could barely hear the NCO over the shrieks of laughter.

“We finally tracked down the cabbie. He was at a night class at the university, slept over at his girlfriend’s. He didn’t pick up his message until now.”

“And where did he take the bastard?”

“Some place way the hell out in the country.”

“Navan?”

“No. West Carleton Township. The drive was almost an hour each way. Rosten paid him two hundred in cash, off the meter …”

Green’s pulse leaped. He flew through his memories of twenty years ago. “West Carleton? Let me guess: 12 Timber Way in Vidon Acres near Morris Island.”

“How the hell did you know?”

“That’s his cottage. He’s gone out to his cottage.”

Where his nightmare began
, Green thought.

G
reen
raced west on the Queensway, at first ducking in and out of the rush-hour traffic that crawled toward the high-tech offices in Kanata. Once past it, he barrelled along the increasingly deserted highway through Ontario scrubland. Thanks to the “big is cheaper and more efficient” amalgamation craze of the 1990s, large swaths of Eastern Ontario bush and farmland were now subsumed within the boundaries of the City of Ottawa. When Jackie Carmichael’s body was found, the remote bush by the Ottawa River had been outside the city limits, but it now fell under city jurisdiction, no longer policed by a small rural detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police, but by all the specialist firepower of a large urban police service.

That much was evident as Green reached the turnoff to the winding country road that led into the area. A cruiser was parked at the entrance, screening all vehicles entering or leaving. After being waved through, Green drove through the dense woods, noting a pair of startled deer watching from the verge. He slowed marginally. Soon the whole area would be awash in official vehicles and the deer would melt further into the forest.

The area formed a triangle at the junction of two rivers, the mighty Ottawa and the Mississippi, a much smaller tributary originating in the Lanark Highlands. The rocky point was lushly forested, but still showed scars from its distant logging and mining past. At one time, it had been crisscrossed with railway spurs, rough-cut logging roads, and bush camps, but nature had reclaimed most of the land, leaving clumps of cedar and mixed hardwoods to flourish in the rich, damp soil. As the logging receded, city dwellers had ventured west to tuck modest cottages into the rugged, undulating shoreline, while the outlying rocky islands and peninsulas were protected as a nature preserve.

It was one of the region’s best-kept nature secrets.
However, no secret can remain hidden forever
, Green thought ruefully as he noted the large modern estates peeking through the trees and the developers’ signs advertising lots for sale. As he neared the turnoff to Timber Way, he saw that many of the old cottages from his memory had been replaced by modern homes, complete with paved drives and two-car garages. As he crested the hill and wove through the thick forest, he spotted the flashing red and blue lights of a cruiser blocking the lane to Rosten’s little cottage. A uniformed officer was hunkered down behind the vehicle, probably awaiting instructions. He glanced back at Green drove up.

Green left his car on the road, well out of the way, and stood in the shelter of a tree, pulling his jacket tight against the damp chill of the morning. The blackflies descended in gleeful swarms. Waving them away, he scanned the cottage. Once an unadorned board-and-batten bungalow, it had been transformed to cottage chic. Where once the drive had been a dirt track, it was now finely crushed limestone, and the path to the front door was slate. The overgrown tangle of brush in front had been replaced by sculpted lilies and ferns. The wood siding had been stained deep mahogany and the trim painted green to match the new steel roof.

Someone was taking excellent care of this cottage. It looked deserted, however. No cars other than the police cruiser sat in the drive, and all the curtains were drawn. No sound could be heard except the intermittent crackling of a police radio.

He joined the officer and squatted behind his cruiser, trying to ignore the bugs. After identifying himself, he asked for a status report.

“We’re securing the area, sir, and waiting for backup. My partner is circling to the back of the house. Our sergeant is on his way.”

“Is the subject inside?”

“We’re attempting to establish that, sir. We’ve seen no sign of movement and so far he hasn’t responded to our calls.”

Green nodded to the neighbouring house about a hundred feet away. Although it was barely visible through the trees, Green could make out another police officer talking to a woman. “Have the neighbours seen him?”

“Not this morning. They said there was some activity late yesterday afternoon, and they thought they heard a car later in the evening.”

“Then perhaps he has driven away,” Green said.

“The sergeant said to take no chances. We have him contained, so we can wait him out.”

Green peered over the roof of the cruiser at the cottage again. It looked dark and still. How much danger could Rosten present, even if there was a gun at the cottage, which was unlikely? As he recalled, Rosten had disliked guns.

“What do we know about the cottage?” he asked. “Does he still own it?”

“According to land registry, yes, sir. But the neighbour says it’s been rented out during the summer by a property management firm. No one’s rented it yet this season, though.”

That explained the cottage’s facelift. All the time Rosten was in prison, he had been collecting a tidy rental income. Had the money gone to the wife and daughters, or had he socked it all away in a bank account he now had access to?
The bastard
, Green thought once again.
Has he played us all for fools?

Anger made him step around the car and walk toward the house. From sheer force of training, his hand strayed to the handle of his Glock, but he doubted Rosten would shoot him. So far on this outing, the man was only guilty of breach of parole. Shooting a police officer would put him back behind bars forever. If he wasn’t shot dead on the spot himself.

The uniformed constable watched in shocked silence as Green crunched up the gravel drive to the front door. Not a single shadow moved behind its glass. He pressed himself against the protection of the wall. “James! It’s Inspector Green. We have to talk!”

No answer. He pressed his ear to the wall. No sound. Twisting the front door knob gingerly, he found it locked. He walked around the side of the house and peered through the window into a bedroom, which was neat and empty. The bunk beds were stripped. He called out again, to no avail.

Around the back of the house, a large patio door gave onto a new deck overlooking the river. Patio furniture had been stacked in the corner for the winter. The blackflies were ferocious, and he gritted his teeth as he mounted the deck stairs toward the door. Not a curtain twitched. By now, he was convinced Rosten had left. Whatever reason had drawn him to the house — nostalgia or a long-cherished memento — it no longer held him there. Green eased his hand from his gun.

He peered through the glass door. Under the canopy of trees, the cozy living room was dark, but he could make out a fieldstone fireplace and twin loveseats angled toward the lake. The fireplace too was new. Green remembered a smoky black woodstove that barely kept the place warm in the fall.

At first he could see no other details, but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he made out the shiny chrome of a wheelchair. The curve of the wheel, the footrests and the vague outline of a man’s legs.

A chill shot through him. He grabbed his gun handle and ducked back against the wall, his heart hammering. He took a deep breath to regroup before peering through the glass again. The figure had not moved. Was the man lying in wait? In silent ambush? Had this been his plan all along? Lure Green out to exact his ultimate revenge?

Green unclipped his gun. Peeked in. The shadow did not move. He called out, banged on the door. Not even a reflexive flinch. Dread stole in past Green’s fear. The patio door slid open soundlessly beneath his touch, and a rush of stale, pungent air flowed out. Gun drawn and eyes riveted to the wheelchair, he stepped inside.

He spoke softly. “James, it’s over. Don’t make it worse by …”

His voice faded as he crossed the room to the motionless man. James was upright in his chair, his head bent forward and his hands limp on the wheels.

Green pulled a pair of neoprene gloves from his pocket. Even before he touched Rosten’s cold, rigid neck, he knew the man was dead.

“You couldn’t find one lowly coroner out here, laddie?”

Green almost smiled in spite of himself. He had watched the forensic pathologist stride up the gravel lane toward the yellow cordon, swiping at blackflies and cursing in his colourful Scottish brogue. Dr. Alexander MacPhail was ageless, his face creviced by acne and booze, and his white hair flying from the elastic he used to capture it. Green could tell from the glint in the man’s bloodshot eyes that he was enjoying the novelty of the call.

“What, and deprive you of this chance to sink your teeth into a real mystery? Dead man still sitting in his wheelchair, no sign of a struggle, no sign of anyone else on the premises.”

“A dead man.”

Green nodded, catching a whiff of stale booze as the doctor spoke.

“I haven’t pronounced yet, laddie. You been earning a medical degree in your spare time?”

“No, but I’ve learned a bit hanging out with you. He’s good and stiff, I’d say he’s been dead since last night.”

“So what’s the mystery?” MacPhail asked, pulling on his white bunny suit. “People do die, lad, with surprising regularity.”

Green said nothing. By now the scene was humming with activity. The uniformed team had strung yellow tape around the cottage grounds, and Ident had laid a trail of paper squares to mark the access route. Ducking under the tape, Green led MacPhail around the side of the cottage, careful to stay on the trail. MacPhail was gazing all around, taking in the dense tree canopy, the swarms of blackflies, and the chilly damp. All grist for a pathologist’s mill.

Once on the back deck, Green gestured through the open patio door. “That’s true,” he replied belatedly. “But not all of them are paroled murderers on the run, three hundred kilometres from their halfway house. This is going to be a mess, Alex. We need to cross every
t
and dot every
i
.”

MacPhail glanced up sharply. “Your case?”

“A lifetime ago.”

With a grunt, MacPhail headed inside, ignoring the Ident team photographing the scene. He stopped to sniff the air, wiggled his bulbous nose, and nodded appreciatively. “Tandoori chicken, lamb korma, and expensive single malt. A man with good taste!” He paused to shake his head dolefully. “Pity.” He leaned over to poke and prod Rosten’s body, which was rigidly molded to the chair. Easing himself down on creaky knees, he shone his flashlight onto the face and hands.

“I do think you are right, lad. He is dead. Rigour is near its peak, so, given the ambient temperature of about ten degrees overnight, your ETD is probably also right. Yesterday evening. Not sure you need me any more, laddie.”

“Can you determine cause of death?”

“Without examining him? Even for me, that would be a neat trick. He’s very pale, your boy —”

“He’s been in prison twenty years.”

“Ah.” MacPhail wielded his flashlight over the body and chair. “I don’t see signs of cardiac arrest, asphyxia, or gastrointestinal upset. Your boy did not thrash about or struggle against death. He went gentle into that good night. Probably coma.”

“Drug overdose?”

MacPhail straightened up, wincing as his back and knees unfolded. “Could be.”

“Shit.”

“But let’s not be getting ahead of ourselves. For now, I will order the autopsy and rule the death suspicious, pending further investigation.”

They were the words Green needed to keep the Ident and Major Crimes teams involved. It was not yet a criminal investigation, but it allowed him to gather crucial evidence that might be needed if it became one. Memories faded and physical evidence was often washed away in the critical few days it took to establish a cause of death.

The Ident team, headed by the consummate obsessive scientist Lyle Cunningham, had already ordered a search of the grounds for footprints and tire tracks. The half dozen or so official vehicles already on the premises had rendered that search nearly futile, but if there were the odd print unaccounted for, Cunningham would pounce on it. He had declared the cottage and grounds off-limits to everyone but MacPhail to avoid scene contamination, so any further evidence from inside the cottage would have to wait for his report. With one final look at the sad figure in the wheelchair, Green headed outside to touch base with Major Crimes.

His newest sergeant, Marie Claire Levesque, had caught the call at Major Crimes that morning and had arrived with her grande latte and her latest rookie from general assignment in tow. While she waited for Cunningham’s preliminary report, she orchestrated a canvas of the neighbourhood. There wasn’t much to canvas, she told Green. According to the first responders, Timber Way consisted of ten homes strung out about two hundred feet apart along the twisting shoreline of the Mississippi River. Half the houses were empty, the other half inhabited year-round by commuters. Many of these had already left for work and their children had been picked up by the school bus.

Only the immediate next-door neighbours were still around by mid-morning, a retired couple with two dogs in a cozy little cottage surrounded by bird feeders. They had, as they told the first officers on the scene, not noticed anyone arrive, perhaps because they were out in their kayaks, but they had seen lights on in the cottage. At some point in the evening, they had heard a car and their dogs had barked. After that, because the lights were off in the cottage, they assumed the visitor had gone.

When MacPhail finally emerged around the side of the house, Levesque broke off her briefing to watch his approach. She tried to keep her face impassive, but a tiny pout pulled the corners of her mouth.
She still doesn’t like my meddling
, Green thought with amusement.
She’d better get used to it on this case
.

“Dr. MacPhail? You called the big guns out today, Inspector?”

MacPhail executed a gallant bow, rendered comical by his bunny suit. His enthusiasm became palpable. Nothing to do with the mysterious death, Green knew, but with Levesque’s willowy, long-limbed figure, perfect cheek bones, and pale blonde hair. Despite her severely tailored clothes and lack of makeup, many a competent male was rendered semi-incoherent at the sight of her.

“Victim is a middle-aged man, roughly 175 centimetres, sixty kilos, with significant atrophy of the lower limbs consistent with spinal cord paralysis, but well-developed musculature in the upper torso.”