None So Blind (3 page)

While Green waited for James Rosten to be summoned from his cell, he wondered what to expect. He hadn’t seen Rosten since his trial, but he knew he’d been severely injured in an assault by fellow inmates at Kingston Penitentiary ten years earlier. His face had been sliced and his spine damaged.

Green remembered him as a driven young man who’d fought for his freedom with every ounce of his considerable brains and energy. Yet, over the years, his letters had become increasingly bitter and desperate, no longer focused on freedom but on revenge. Twenty years of lost life, not to mention his injuries, had surely aged him. Green steeled himself for a shrivelled, hard shell of a man.

Despite that effort, he was not prepared when the automatic door glided open and James Rosten wheeled himself in. With slow, laborious turns he manoeuvred his wheelchair through the narrow space around the table and came to a final stop so close that his toes nearly touched Green’s.

James Rosten was a study in grey. Grey hair, grey skin, grey lifeless eyes. His skin hung in crepe folds on his shrunken frame. A pale, glistening scar ran from his temple to his jaw, twisting his face into a parody of mirth. His hands were bony, his cheekbones sharp and angular, and his eyes now so deep-set they seemed to retreat inside his skull. Green searched them for a glimmer of the passion and fight he’d once displayed, but only defeat gazed back at him. Green felt the last vestiges of his anger slide away. He extended his hand across the corner of the table toward the man, whose hands were encased in fingerless gloves to provide better grip on the wheels.

Rosten, however, merely stared at his extended hand, resolutely still. “Can’t say it’s a pleasure, Inspector. What do you want?”

“How have you been, James?”

“Just hunky dory. I love it here, as well you know. So richly deserved.”

In the silence, Green could hear the wheeze of Rosten’s breath in his lungs. He relinquished his plans for subtlety. “James … You have to let it go. It’s over. Your appeals are done; there is nothing further to be served by pointing fingers. It’s time to think about what’s next. For everyone, including you.”

“Ah yes. The boundless, limitless possibilities of my future. Reinstatement at the university, reunion with my wife, a warm, fuzzy rapprochement with my kids. I’m a grandfather, by the way. Did you know that? Of course, I only learned that by reading the birth announcements online.”

“Plenty of people have to start over.”

“People who have paid their dues, who deserve what they got.” He pressed his eyes shut. “Oh, fuck it. It doesn’t matter.
I
don’t matter. But at least now the family is safe from that monster. Julia is safe. Although I suppose …” He opened his eyes again and gave a twisted smile. “I keep forgetting she’s over forty now. Hardly Lucas Carmichael’s type. But does she have children?”

Green felt a chill. He had no intention of giving this man any new fuel to feed his fantasies. He had no idea whether Julia had ever married or had children, but it was safest to shake his head.

“Good. Gordon?”

“Neither Gordon nor Julia live in the country.”

“How wise of them. But now they’re safe.” He shut his eyes again and drew in a weary breath. “Finally.”

“Yes they are.” Green leaned forward. “Time to let it go. Time to let
them
go.”

Rosten kept his eyes shut. His frail body twitched. He breathed in. Out. Slowly he nodded. “You’re right, time to let it all go. I’ve done what I could, to no avail, for myself or for them. I won’t bother them anymore, if that’s what you came about.”

Green sensed a true change in the man. A final laying down of the sword he had brandished for so long. Once the battle barricades were gone, Green felt the pull of a question he had never dared broach before.

“James? Why are you so convinced it was Lucas Carmichael?”

Rosten’s face grew rigid and his eyes flew open. Angry and accusatory, the James Rosten of old. “I sent you all those fucking letters! Didn’t you read them?”

How should I answer that?
Green thought. He had read them, at least at first, but had tried to dismiss them as self-serving rants. After all, he’d rarely met a con who didn’t protest his innocence and blame even the most unlikely of suspects. Instead, he didn’t answer, but merely waited.

Finally the belligerence in Rosten’s face faded. He edged his chair even further forward, so that his knees touched Green’s. He stared squarely into Green’s eyes. “I have one big advantage over you; I know I didn’t do it. So I looked around to see who could have. I remembered seeing a car like Lucas’s near the cottage that day, and Julia’s behaviour toward him got me thinking. This wasn’t a random, serial killer–style attack by a stranger in the street. This person
knew
her. He knew she took my course, knew I was giving her private tutoring.” He faltered only briefly over the phrase. “Maybe he’d even seen her in my car. This person had access to her papers, knew I had a cottage near Arnprior, and knew that dumping her body there would point suspicion toward me. So I asked myself, who would know all this? It’s a classic stepfather scenario — man befriends single mother in order to have access to her children.”

It was, of course, a scenario that the OPP detectives had investigated at the time, even after charging Rosten. “But Jackie was not a child. She was twenty years old, not the usual prey for a pedophile.”

“But she had been a child when Carmichael came on the scene. You know yourself that abuse goes on for years in these cases. Maybe it had ended but she was threatening to blow the whistle on him.”

Another theory they had all considered early in the investigation. Considered and rejected. Green thought back over the details. Julia had made some dark hints but balked at specifics, and Green had thought them more likely the product of Julia’s fanciful imagination. Jackie had never exhibited any of the classic signs of an incest victim. No drug use or wild behaviour, no anxiety or depression, no hint of sexual problems. She had never breathed a word to teachers, counsellors, or friends. Everyone, including her boyfriend at the time, had described her as a happy, well-adjusted young woman.

“The facts simply didn’t point that way, James,” he said. “Even if you buy the idea that her body was dumped there to implicate you, it’s still a leap to Lucas Carmichael. Would he even know you were tutoring her? Do twenty-year-old kids tell their parents everything that’s going on in school?”
Certainly not mine
, he thought, but wisely kept his personal life to himself. “It’s much more likely Jackie would tell a friend or her boyfriend. In fact, at one time I remember
he
was your chief suspect.”

Rosten flicked his hand dismissively. “That was before I saw the hapless fellow on the stand and heard the whole of the Crown’s case. Then I realized that although you were a tunnel-visioned, cocky young buck, you were right about one thing; this was a mature, cold-blooded set-up, not the work of a jilted college kid. The boyfriend would have panicked and botched it, at best tried to make it look like a serial killer copycat. Where would he have gotten the vehicle to transport her body? How would he have known, on the spur of the moment, where my cottage was, so that he could conveniently plant the body in the woods nearby? You saw Erik Lazlo during the trial. A penniless country boy savouring his first rush of big-city freedom. He was a silly, shallow boy, more enamoured with marijuana and music than with romantic commitment. He wasn’t serious enough about her to carry out a crime of passion.”

“But if he found out she was sleeping with you —”

Rosten rolled his eyes. “That tired old crap? If you had proof of that, you’d have trotted it out in the trial. I’ve admitted I tutored her. I gave her a lift to her residence one evening. Unwise, certainly, especially in light of how that hair on the upholstery crucified me, but hardly criminal.”

“So you say. But Erik Lazlo may have thought —”

Rosten shook his head. “I didn’t sense they had a grand passion. I’ve had that, Inspector, whether you believe me or not. With my ex-wife. I know the signs. Jackie and Erik had known each other a long time; they were friends long before they were lovers. Remember, he was Gordon’s friend first; in fact he dated Julia too. Jackie was just the kid sister.” He paused, caught up in the memories.

Green waited, filling the silence with his own memories of Erik Lazlo, a wiry, good-looking young man who shared Gordon’s passion for dirt bikes, bush parties, and punk music, thrust by his parents into an engineering program for which he had no interest and even less talent. Certainly no match for the bright, ambitious Jackie. Beyond his looks, he could not have held her attention for long.

Rosten was right. Erik Lazlo was addicted to the next thrill. He liked fast music and faster bikes. He was not the type to brood or obsess about what had been lost.

Gradually Green became aware of Rosten’s eyes on him. “You still believe I’m guilty, don’t you?”

“What I believe doesn’t matter. It’s done. You’ve done your time —”

Rosten slammed the table. “It matters to me! You’ve built a nice career for yourself on the back of this case, but my life is ruined! Over! By God, at the end of it all, it would be nice to hear you admit you made a mistake.”

Green pushed his chair back and started to edge around the wheelchair. “A word of advice …”

“From you? Hah!”

Green sat back down again. “Listen, you arrogant jackass, you still have a chance to salvage something. Fuck the past, fuck the injustices you think you’ve suffered, fuck —” He jerked his hand up to silence Rosten’s protest. “Fuck the lost years. You’re hurting no one but yourself by hanging on to this bitterness. Guys can turn over the page, even after twenty years inside. You’re only fifty years old. You might have thirty or forty years left. You’re smart and educated. Make a place for yourself!”

“In here? And in this?”

“Wheelchairs are not the barrier they once were. And next time you’re up for parole —”

“I’ll never get parole. They want to hear me confess my sins.”

Green knew his flash of temper had been excessive, born as much of guilt as of anger. He forced himself to put his hand on the man’s arm, feeling the thin ropes of muscle through the coarse fabric of his shirt. Rosten flinched beneath his touch but didn’t pull away. “They’re only words, James. And they might be worth it. To get you outside again.”

“I’ve got no place to go.”

“Talk to Archie Goodfellow. There are halfway houses. Agencies.”

“Right. Ready to welcome the confessed schoolgirl murderer with open arms.”

Green said nothing. He knew it was a hell of a millstone, but he’d also seen people rise above much worse. Above unimaginable loss.

“And what would I do?” James added.

“That’s a question only you can answer. What do you want to do with the thirty years ahead? Rot in here, consumed with a bitterness and anger that everyone else has forgotten? Or get out there and see what use you can be.”

G
reen
could have phoned Marilyn right away, but a vague unease held him back. At the funeral she had almost spat out Rosten’s name and Green could feel her suppressed fury. Lucas’s death and Rosten’s letter had torn the scab off the old wound, exposing it raw and bleeding to the open air. More than talk, she needed time to heal.

After two weeks of inner debate and doubt, however, he found himself back on the road to Navan, hoping his message would ultimately bring her peace. The day was crisp and clear, but the March sun held no warmth as it glared off the snowy fields. Parked in Marilyn’s drive behind her ancient Honda was an unfamiliar pickup with stacks of folded cardboard boxes in the back.

Green skidded to a stop inches from its bumper and picked a path through the icy ruts to the front door. From inside came the warbling strains of “Yesterday” by The Beatles, sung with more gusto than accuracy. He tapped on the front door and the singing stopped abruptly. After an apparent eternity, he heard shuffling in the front hall and the door cracked open. Marilyn peered out, blinking with apprehension in the dazzling sunlight. Her face flushed deep red as she pulled the door wide.

“Oh my, but you gave me a fright! I’m sorry you had to hear that. I don’t generally inflict my singing on my worst enemy, let alone my very dear friends.”

He stepped into the narrow hallway and was hit by a wave of hot, stale air, redolent with chocolate and gin. Since it was barely noon, he suppressed a twinge of worry. It was not his business; the woman was entitled to use whatever crutch she needed to get through these first few months. He remembered his own father, who had retreated behind a silence so impenetrable after the death of Green’s mother that Green had been powerless to breach the walls. In Sid Green’s case, too, the scars of a previous unbearable loss had been ripped open again. The terrors of the Holocaust, the loss of his first wife and two infant children … All had come flooding back. No one had the right to judge how a survivor gets through the day.

Instead Green merely smiled. “We’ll try a duet next time. Drive both our friends and enemies away.”

She laughed and pushed wisps of white hair from her face. Her cheeks were still red and her eyes shone a little too brightly, but Green detected an inner peace in her expression. A softening of the brittle edges he had seen at the funeral. Perhaps she had even put a little weight on her frail frame.

“You’re looking well,” he said. “The kids still here?”

She tried for a light-hearted shrug. “What are they going to do here? Get in my hair? Make more work for me with all that cooking and washing up? They have no friends out here anymore, and truth be told, not many left in Ottawa either. When the trial ended, they both couldn’t wait to get away. Start fresh. Can’t blame them, can you? They were young and they had their own paths to make. I myself left my parents to come over here when I was just nineteen, and I never looked back. I went home to Leeds for their funerals but that was it. It’s nature’s way, isn’t it?”

Green thought of his own daughter, Hannah, who swirled in and out of his life, leaving an ache in her wake and a delicious thrill at each return. He nodded. “You’re right, of course. But I was wondering about that truck in the drive.”

“Goodness, where are my manners? Come in! I’ll put the kettle on.”

As he followed her inside, he scanned the stuffy little house with a cop’s practised eye. One could tell a great deal about a person by analyzing her surroundings. Despite the gin and her slightly manic air, Marilyn’s house was well kept. The furniture was clear, the dishes washed, the tables dusted. There were no telltale glasses or bottles littered about.

“I’m doing okay,” she said, as if she had read his mind. She stood at the kitchen tap, filling the kettle. “I know you’re worried about me. But … I need to make a new life. Get out of the house, get involved in things. There’s a marvellous group of women in the village and they’ve been after me to join their book club and their walking club. The Navan Streetwalkers, they call themselves. Isn’t that a hoot?”

She plugged the kettle in and fetched two cups from the drainboard. “I’d never got involved before because I had Luke and, well, my focus was him. He wasn’t one for going out, and toward the end, I didn’t like to leave him just to go out with the girls. But now I’m free to —” She broke off and looked up at him with glistening eyes. “That sounds dreadful. I didn’t mean …”

“I know what you meant. I’ve seen a lot of people coping with grief, Marilyn. You’re doing better than most.”

“I’ve had practice. One foot in front of the other, I always say. There are so many things waiting to be done. I haven’t read a book in years! Luke liked the telly. And I thought I’d try my hand at painting again. There’s a marvellous arts and crafts fair here in the spring if I can still paint a decent tree.” She laughed and rolled her eyes. “The truck is my friend Laura’s. She’s going to help me clear out Luke’s things. For a man who barely had two pennies to rub together, he accumulated masses of stuff. Besides his clothes, there are his sports and woodworking magazines, catalogues, and oh! The basement! I haven’t even begun that. That was his private space, and his workshop is full of tools and half-finished projects. I don’t think he finished half the things he started! Birdhouses, jewellery boxes, and dollhouse furniture for the girls … I’ll have to sort it out and figure out what to toss and what to donate. I was thinking of a yard sale in the spring with some of the things I don’t need. I could bring in some money and get rid of a lot of clutter in one fell swoop.”

She paused to catch her breath and to pour water into the teapot. Once the tray was loaded, she picked it up and headed for the living room.

A question danced at the corner of his mind, unapproachable. The last time he’d checked, the Carmichaels had not yet parted with a single memento of Jackie’s life. They had preserved her small bedroom as a memorial, complete with her linen on the bed, her college texts on the desk, and her Blue Rodeo and Sarah McLachlan posters on the walls. From the living room, Green could just see the closed bedroom door at the far end of the hall, leaving him to wonder if it remained untouched to this day.

An ordeal far greater than clearing out Lucas’s workshop.

Instead, he followed her lead. “It will be good to give the place a new look. Fresh paint, new furniture.”

“You won’t recognize the place.” She set the tea on the table and sank onto the loveseat, caressing the rough, worn brocade. “Luke loved this old sofa, always said it knew just where to give and where to fight back. He said it would be like throwing out an old friend. But it’s past done its job now. In fact, maybe this weary little house has done its job.”

Green, who had been fighting a broken coil in the chair seat opposite, looked up sharply. “You’re thinking of selling?”

“Yes, maybe. I’ve had a real estate agent through it already, just to see what he thinks I could get. I was pleasantly surprised. The house itself is worth very little, he said, but the land might appeal to a developer. Who knew when we bought this little patch of forest in the back of beyond that the city would be lapping at our toes one day, and all this rock and maple bush might be in demand for houses. ‘All the beauty of the country — at an affordable price, within twenty minutes’ drive of the city,’ the real estate agent said.” She grinned at him with a twinkle in her eye. “Twenty minutes in the dead of night perhaps, as long as you boys in blue don’t catch them streaking along the deserted Queensway.”

“How much property do you have?”

“Eight acres.” She shook her head as she poured the tea, remembering to place a sliver of lemon on his saucer. “I hate to see it overrun with bulldozers and cement, but the money … well, I could certainly use it. Not that I’ve breathed a word to the children yet. They’re eager enough to get their hands on the money. I told them I’m making friends and it’s my home, which is true.”

“Don’t rush into anything, Marilyn. Take your time. Whatever you do, don’t let a real estate agent talk you into putting it on the market until you’re absolutely certain. And I … I have some ideas I’d like to check out first.”

“Why? You fancy moving out here?”

He laughed. “No, not me. You know me and the country. My city lawn is already a challenge.”

She eyed him keenly over the rim of her raised teacup. “Oh, all right then, be mysterious. What did you come all the way out here for then? Certainly not to hear my singing.”

“I came to reassure you about James Rosten. I paid him a visit. He won’t be writing any more letters to you, or to Julia.”

“Oh!” She set her cup down hastily and clasped her hands together. “Thank you.” She breathed deeply as if wrestling back memories. “I suppose I should ask how he is.”

“You don’t have to do anything. You owe him nothing.”

“I know. How is he?”

“Still in a wheelchair but quite mobile. He’s working in the prison school, keeping to himself but out of trouble. In short, a model prisoner. Just one small flaw; he won’t face up to his past. At least that keeps him behind bars.”

Green was silent a half second too long. She jerked her head up. “It will keep him behind bars, won’t it?”

“Probably. He is scheduled for a routine parole review in a couple of months, and it’s possible, depending on what he says —”

“He wouldn’t be sent to a halfway house around here, surely!”

He held up a placating hand as he saw her indignation gathering steam. “No. But it won’t come to that. He will almost certainly say the wrong thing.”

“Holy Jumpin’, Sue! The place looks like it died and went to house hell twenty years ago!”

Detective Sue Peters stepped out into the soggy leaves and melting snow and eyed the bungalow at the end of the lane. Bob was right; it was a sorry sight. Way too small for the four kids she hoped to have; boxy and toad-like, with grimy peepholes for windows and a cracked cement porch that listed with age. Even the brick was ugly. Not the rich red of premium heritage brick, but the grey, second-class brick of the working class.

She and fellow detective Bob Gibbs had spent most of their days off since their honeymoon searching for the perfect house. Having grown up on a farm, Sue longed for wide-open fields, bridle paths, and a swimming hole for those hot summer nights. But Bob had never known a yard bigger than a postage stamp. He couldn’t imagine living deep in the country, and, besides, as Major Crimes detectives, they couldn’t afford an hour-long commute to headquarters in case of emergencies or overtime. The Village of Navan seemed like the perfect compromise.

When Inspector Green had mentioned the hilltop country house overlooking eight acres of rolling fields and woodland, Sue had pictured whispering trees, sunlit meadows, and a gingerbread cabin by the creek, not this plain little box. The house had been built during the Second World War, when no one had the luxury or the supplies for style. It stood now, seventy years later, overrun by lilac and juniper, its legacy built not on elegant lawn parties and ladies’ teas, but on sweat and struggle and simple dreams.

Sue loved it instantly.

“But we’d have to tear the place down,” Bob said, struggling to extricate his beanpole frame from her little Echo. “Start from scratch.”

“Not necessarily,” Sue shouted over her shoulder as she squelched through the mud toward the house. Bare canes of climbing roses clung to the brick, promising a beautiful display in the summer, and spring crocuses were already poking their tips through the decaying leaves. “It’s as solid as a tank. It’s real brick all the way around, not a phony façade. It just needs a second storey. Imagine the view we’d get over that valley.” She tilted her head up to the towering pines and maples that ringed the house. “And these trees! They must be as old as the house. Probably planted by the original owners. Oh, Bob, just think what we could do with all this land! A pond, a horse stable …”

Bob headed across the yard to the shed, which he pried open with a screech. “It’s full of junk,” he called out. “It’s going to be a real job just to clear it all out. Most of these tools probably haven’t worked in twenty years.”

Three sharp blasts of a horn startled them. Bob whirled around just as an aging Honda CR-V slewed into the lane. It jerked to a stop beside their car and a middle-aged woman climbed out. She was wearing a windbreaker that was much too large for her and her white hair stood out in all directions.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

Bob was frozen, with that deer-in-the-headlights look that Sue knew all too well. She stepped back into the drive. Aware that her pink-and-green neon ski jacket did not exactly scream
cop
, she tried for her most formal tone. “Mrs. Carmichael? Sorry to startle you. I’m Sue Peters and this is my husband, Bob Gibbs. We’re detectives, we work under Inspector Green. He told us …” Her voice faded under the woman’s scowl. “Maybe we jumped the gun. He mentioned you wanted to sell, and we’ve been looking for the perfect place for months.”

The woman’s glare softened marginally at the mention of the inspector. Sue walked closer, trying to disguise her limp. On damp days, or under stress, the old injuries still ached. The doctors said they always would.

“Well, he didn’t tell me,” Mrs. Carmichael said, slamming her car door and crossing her arms. “I wish he had. I would have told him not to rush out looking for buyers just yet.”

“Well, he didn’t really —” Sue broke off. The inspector had not actually said the house was on the market yet, but Sue had wanted an advance peek. What could be the harm in scouting the place out? The land and the location were the key elements anyway. “We figured it would be nice to save us all the real estate fees.”

“B-but we don’t mean to intrude, ma’am. We — we should have called.” Bob, already hustling down the lane, shot Sue an I-told-you-so glance. It had been her idea to drive out to Navan unannounced. But she had been so excited by the possibility they might have finally found their house that she brushed aside all his concerns.

Mrs. Carmichael merely stared at them stonily, making no move toward the house. “I’m not selling,” she said. “I toyed briefly with the idea and I did mention it to Inspector Green, but I’ve changed my mind.”