None So Blind (4 page)

“Well, we’re not in a rush,” Sue said, careful to avoid Bob’s eye. He’d been listening to her increasingly frustrated rants for months. “We’ve been looking so long, if it’s a few more months till —”

“I’m not selling, period.”

Sue cast a longing look at the sorry little house, with its overgrown roses and magnificent view. She felt a tug of kinship. “If we’ve come at a bad time …”

“No.”

Belatedly, Bob came to life. “Thank you for your honesty, Mrs. Carmichael. Sue, let’s check out that other place.”

“What other place?”

He gave her another look. The time-for-a-sock-in-it-Sue look. In the ten months since their wedding, she had become much better at reading him. Just because he stammered and became all flustered under stress, it didn’t mean he was a pushover. In his own quiet way, Bob could be as immovable as a tank. A trait she would have to learn to manage. But not now. Not with the outraged homeowner about to erupt.

Marilyn Carmichael softened as they retreated toward their car. “I’m sorry. It’s a bad time at the moment. The place is a mess. I’m still sorting through things and I can’t think beyond that.” She pressed her hand to her mouth as if she were struggling for control.

As Bob babbled apologies, Sue climbed into the car, puzzled. Green had said the woman was anxious to sell, anxious to move on. Grief takes many forms and travels many paths, as Sue knew only too well. The road to recovery from a catastrophic loss was not smooth or straight. It was full of setbacks, shocks, and disappointments.

As they bumped back down the muddy lane toward the main road, she looked back at the little house, where Marilyn still stood in the drive, her arms crossed and her body rigid. Watching them.

“You shouldn’t have told them!”

Green was surprised by the vehemence in Marilyn’s voice when he phoned to apologize. Meeting Gibbs and Peters in the cafeteria that morning, he’d found them strangely evasive. Since Gibbs usually became red and tongue-tied in his presence, Green would have given it little thought if bulldozer Peters hadn’t had difficulty meeting his eyes.

A simple question had elicited a mumbled confession from Gibbs that their impromptu visit to Navan had not gone well. Not well, Peters burst out. The woman had refused to let them in the door and had virtually kicked them off the property.

Twenty years ago, Green had met this ferocious side of Marilyn Carmichael. When her emotions were fired up, she was a formidable force, but Green was surprised that a simple visit to the house, no matter how unexpected, would have roused her to the point of rudeness. She might be feisty, but her British courtesy was deeply ingrained.

That emotion was all the more puzzling because barely two weeks earlier she had been looking ahead to the sale of her house and the chance to start afresh. Now she seemed back in the mire.

On the phone now, he tried for a reassuring tone. “I’m sorry, Marilyn. You’re right. I was trying to be helpful.” He didn’t add that although he had told the newlyweds about the house, he’d stopped short of suggesting a visit, particularly unannounced. He should have known Peters would seize the opportunity and charge ahead under full steam.

“It was an invasion of my privacy.”

He was chastened for a moment as he finally grasped the subtext. The Carmichaels had endured twenty years of prying eyes and invasive questions, both from media and community. Their life had been laid bare and dissected. If Marilyn had become hardened and less forgiving, she could hardly be blamed. The sight of a strange car in her drive must have flooded her with old fears.

Nonetheless, he sensed another emotion lingering beneath the surface of her indignation. “Marilyn, is there something —”

“I’ve decided not to sell, that’s all.”

“Fair enough.” He trod carefully. “As you said, you have friends there now. The book club and the arts fair …”

His voice trailed off when she left him dangling awkwardly in silence. Mumbling reassurances into the empty air, he hung up and sat looking at the phone. Worry piqued him. Marilyn sounded brittle and on the edge again. On his last visit, she had appeared to be looking forward to her new life, so he had been lulled into complacency. But Marilyn could act with the best. She could hide her deepest pain. Living with her broken husband and navigating the complex feelings of her children, she had had plenty of practice.

And then there was the gin …

“I’ve seen her crash before, when the trial was over,” he said to Sharon later that evening. He had waited until she had a rare moment of peace, nursing their daughter who had fallen asleep at her breast on the living room sofa. He had lit a fire and placed a cup of herbal tea at her elbow. Modo, their hundred-pound rescued mutt, was in her favourite spot, stretched beneath Sharon’s feet. Snoring gently.

Sharon hadn’t been part of his life back then. He had been on his own, his first wife having stormed out of his life in the middle of the case, taking their infant daughter with her. Ashley had been in way over her head as the young wife of a brand new detective. While Green waded hip-deep in human depravity and despair, she had been overwhelmed and self-absorbed, leaving Green without the support and safe haven he hadn’t even known he needed.

Until Sharon. Now she was sprawled amid pillows, with her head resting on his shoulder and her tiny feet propped on the coffee table. Her diminutive frame had more curves now and her rich dark curls were shot through with silver, but she still stirred him. Although her eyes were shut, he knew she was listening, and he felt a twinge of guilt for burdening her. But no one had better insight into the contortions of the human mind than Sharon. No one listened better, and no one knew him better.

She nodded drowsily. “The trial was probably her only reason for getting up in the morning. Once the killer was convicted, her work was done.”

He took a sip of wine, his mind replaying the memories. “Not quite. The jury took four days to reach a verdict. Arguments must have been fierce, because they finally brought down a compromise verdict of second-degree murder. The Crown was going for first.”

“That wouldn’t be punishment enough for her,” Sharon said. It was a statement, not a question. Opening her eyes, she ran her finger down her daughter’s plump, pink cheek.

For a moment he found it difficult to speak. His inexpertly laid fire sputtered and he disentangled himself to prod it back to life. “The jury split over the notion of premeditation. The Crown argued that Rosten had strangled her in the course of a sexual assault gone wrong. Murder committed in the course of another crime is automatically first degree. But the evidence for sexual assault was pretty flimsy. The post-mortem found signs of sexual activity, but no lacerations or semen. It was enough for the defence to drive a small wedge of reasonable doubt into that argument.”

“Evidence of sexual activity wasn’t enough?”

“A condom was used. Rapists don’t usually bother with such niceties.”

“They might if they’re a biology professor familiar with DNA.”

“The Crown tried that argument. But she had a boyfriend too. Marilyn was furious. ‘How can they say it wasn’t rape,’ she said. ‘Jackie was half naked! Her hands were bound and a gag stuffed into her mouth! And how can they say it wasn’t premeditated? She was way out in the country on a remote logging road that wasn’t even on the map. She wouldn’t even have known that road existed, and in any case she had no car. He drove her there! If that doesn’t show planning, what the hell does it take?’

“I kept trying to explain how the law and juries’ minds worked. A first-degree conviction carries a mandatory twenty-five to life sentence, which is almost as brutal and final as an acquittal. Second-degree allows the hope of parole at the discretion of the judge.”

“So he gets to walk free some day, while her daughter never does.”

“More or less. The judge gave him eligibility after fifteen years, which is pretty stiff, although almost the whole world wanted at least twenty. We’d just had a high-profile sex killer get off on a technicality because his previous rape history was excluded. So the public was in a lynching mood. But the judge was afraid of giving the defence more grounds for appeal.”

“Was that likely?”

“Oh yes, and they took every goddamn ground they could get. The case was largely circumstantial. The victim was last seen walking across campus with Rosten. One of her long hairs was found on the passenger headrest of his car. A car matching his was spotted in the vicinity the afternoon of her disappearance. The dirt in its tire treads was consistent with the dirt in the woodlot where she was killed. Rosten had dirt on the knees of his jeans and a small cut on his forehead. But there was no tissue under her fingernails and no evidence she’d fought her assailant before being bound and gagged, and as Rosten’s lawyer pointed out, the dirt could have come from his cottage near by.”

“So the mother hit a brick wall.”

“The whole thing finally wore her down. She hung on through all the appeals and motions, which dragged on for years. But I don’t think she had a restful night’s sleep or ate a full meal for years, and by the end she was a wraith. When she was finally admitted to hospital in complete collapse, every organ in her body had rebelled. For a few days, even her survival was in doubt.”

Green fell silent, reliving those days sitting in the ICU waiting room during his off-duty hours, fending off Julia’s anxiety and Lucas’s drunken tears. Gordon was already overseas and not inclined to return home for his mother’s latest drama.
Call me if she dies
seemed to be his message.

Green knew he should have seen the collapse coming. Marilyn had been fighting Rosten and the justice system with the fanaticism of someone running for her life. As indeed she was. Running from her own loss and impotence, from the image of her daughter’s last terrified moments on that remote logging road. But he had been young and as yet unbowed by the emotional cost of his job. Mentally, he had long ago shoved Jackie Carmichael’s death into the closet and moved on to other cases.

The fire crackled in the silence. He felt Sharon’s hand on his, her gentle squeeze.

“If you’re worried, honey, go see her,” she said.

“She may see that as an intrusion,” he said. “She clearly didn’t want to talk.”

“Then don’t go visit her. Just worry.”

He turned his head to look at her. Her deep brown eyes were sympathetic, but a little smile twitched the corners of her lips. As a psychiatric nurse, no one cut through crap better than Sharon.

He breathed deeply. Chuckled. “Put that way …”

“The worst that happens is she runs you off her property. A moment of humiliation is a small price to pay for peace of mind.”

“I’ve been run off worse places,” he replied. The baby cooed and snuggled more deeply into the crook of Sharon’s arm. Aviva was nearly eight months old now and a crawling speed demon most of the day, but they both cherished these rare moments when she was still an infant in arms.

He leaned over to plant two kisses on the women he loved. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Do you want me to put her to bed?”

“That would be lovely. And on the way back, can you bring me an itty bitty glass of something stronger than tea?”

F
acing
yet a third drive out to Navan in as many months, Green used the Internet to discover a backcountry route that circumvented the infuriating traffic of the Queensway, which alternated between parking lot and NASCAR racetrack. The route did not end up being any faster, but he arrived with his pulse and blood pressure below incipient coronary levels. The farm country was just awakening to spring. Fields still wallowed in mud, and leaf buds gave the merest dusting of green to the skeletal grey trees. The cows were out in the pasture, however, nibbling the dried grass and basking in the April sun.

Marilyn’s SUV was in the drive, which was now a muddy swamp, but her friend’s pickup was gone. To avoid outright rejection, Green had not called ahead, but he had chosen the late afternoon when she was most likely to have tea. He hoped she’d be ready to relax.

The house was quiet and still, the curtains drawn. Just as he was approaching the front door, however, a scream shattered the silence. Alarm shot through him as he pounded on the door. No answer. He knocked again, shouting. Tried the handle and shoved his weight against the door. It gave way, bouncing off the wall with a crash, and he blinked to adjust to the gloom.

Before he could move, Marilyn came running up the basement stairs. Dirt smudged her face and her clothes looked as if they’d been dragged from the bottom of the basement closet. She stared at him, her blue eyes leeched of colour by grief and lack of sleep. Gin fumes wafted around her.

“Good God, Marilyn,” he exclaimed, reaching instinctively to steady her. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“But you screamed.”

“I — I stubbed my toe.”

“It sounded like …”

“That’s all!” For an instant she clutched his hand before pulling back with an impatient shake of her head. “Why did you come?”

“Because I was worried. You’re having a rough time.”

“I’m mourning my husband! Can’t I do that in peace?”

“Let’s get some tea.” He eased past her gently and headed toward the hall.

“No! Don’t come in.”

It was too late. He stood at the entrance to the living room, gawking. Boxes were everywhere, their contents spilling out onto the floor. Old clothes, old magazines, toiletries, and cleaning supplies were packed willy-nilly. Other clothes were stuffed into garbage bags or piled in a loose jumble in the hall.

Mail lay scattered on the coffee table, some of the letters unopened. Green stole a surreptitious peek, wondering whether she had received another letter from Rosten. The smell of stale food, mildew, and booze hung in the air. Marilyn glared at him, tears of shame glinting in her eyes. She clenched her fists. “Oh, why did you have to come? Damn it, Mike, leave me be!”

He turned in a slow circle, searching for the right words as he surveyed the chaos. “You need help with this, Marilyn. This is too much work for anyone alone. Are you eating? Sleeping?”

She still hovered in the hall, as if the room repulsed her. “I have … pills. Luke’s pills. I do get some sleep. I just — I just … I’m doing it one day at a time.”

Green reached down to pile some clothes back into the box nearest him. “Look, I’m off for the weekend. Why don’t I help you —”

“Please don’t touch that.”

He looked at the jacket in his hand. It was an old plaid work jacket, smudged with paint. “At least let me bring a couple of my officers out here and we’ll help you clear this out.”

“No!” She clutched the doorframe and whipped her head back and forth. Pink blotched her pale cheeks. “This is my job. My house. I don’t want strangers pawing through Luke’s possessions. Throwing them out like he doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Okay, I get that.” Green set the jacket down again gently. In his work he’d seen grief take many paths. Jackie Carmichael’s room had been left untouched throughout the trial, as if she had just stepped out to go to class. And for three years after his mother’s death, his own father had been unable to move a single item of hers, including her nightgown.

Now he turned toward the kitchen. “Let’s make tea. We can have it outside on your patio. The spring sun is out.”

She seemed to relax marginally when he left the living room. The ritual of preparing tea also soothed her, so that by the time she carried the tray outside, her step was steadier and her eyes clear.

There was a small stone patio outside the kitchen door, on which sat a glass table and two plastic chairs, all covered with dead leaves and winter grime. Piled in the corner outside the door were more boxes, and Green noticed another jumble in the fire pit by the shed.

Without bothering to wipe the table, Marilyn placed the tray down and sank into a chair. “I’m sorry, Mike. I didn’t mean to be rude. This …” she nodded toward the boxes, “is difficult but it has to be done.”

“What about your friend? Wasn’t she going to help?”

“I don’t want …” She took a deep breath to refocus. “This is private.”

“But —”

“And I’m not selling the house, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes.”

“What about your fresh start?”

“I was premature. I’m sorry your two officers came out here for nothing. But there are too many memories here. Too much of Luke and Jackie in every nook and cranny.” She broke off. Her hands clutched her teacup and her jaw quivered.

He tried for a lighter tone. “How’s the streetwalking book club?”

“I put all that off for now. Too much else on my plate at the moment.”

Green’s gaze drifted to the jumble of boxes by the door, the decaying remnants of last year’s garden, the leaves waiting to be raked, and the tangled rose canes to be pruned.

The mound of garbage waiting to be burned.

It looked overwhelming, even for him. This frail, worn-out widow was in no shape to tackle it alone. Yet she had almost panicked at the offer of help. What had caused her abrupt reversal? And that scream? Was it simply the next twist in her mourning, or had something else happened? Something to do with her selfish, uncaring children?

Or perhaps with James Rosten?

G
reen knew Archie Goodfellow was a busy man, who spent much of his day not cloistered in a musty church but on his motorcycle visiting prisons and group homes. He had a chaplaincy office in Belleville, but rarely lighted long enough to check his mail, let alone respond to phone messages. Bypassing the chaplaincy office, Green called his cellphone and left a message, hoping the man would find a spare moment sometime that week.

He was pleasantly surprised when Goodfellow returned his call less than an hour later. In the background, Green could hear the soft rumble of engines and the sibilant hiss of tires on wet pavement. Archie was on the move.

“Speak of the devil!” Goodfellow boomed in his deep, honeyed voice long since perfected to waken the sinners in the farthest pews of cavernous church halls. “I’ve been meaning to call you. Good work, Inspector. Whatever you told James Rosten — and I don’t need to know, although curiosity may be the death of me — he’s turned a corner. He has a mandatory parole review coming up, and this time he didn’t waive it. Extraordinary! I’ve been trying for five years to get him to at least go through the process, but he’s always said there’s no point because he’d have to admit his guilt. But now, not only has he asked for a meeting with the prison parole officer, he’s developing a release plan.”

Green swallowed his shock. “Has a hearing date been set?”

“Next week. I’m working with the IPO on the plan. It’s not going to be an easy sell. James has a lot of ground to make up. As you know, he’s been an argumentative sonofabitch all the time he’s been inside, refused the treatment programs offered to help him come to terms with his offence, and also much of the rehab for his spinal injury at the treatment centre.”

“Yes, it’s hard to argue that he’s developed much insight into his behaviour.”

“No, but in the plus column, he’s been no trouble on the inside. Except for the prison fight, of course, but that was ten years ago and he didn’t start it — although he’d just lost his last appeal and I think he was itching for a fight. The guards should have seen that coming. He does his job in the library and even helps run the school literacy program. He stays away from drugs and badasses; he’s co-operative with the routine. Personally, I’d say — and I
will
say in my report — he’s at low risk to reoffend and a minimal risk to the community.”

“The wheelchair would certainly cramp his style anyway.”

Goodfellow chuckled. For a moment his voice was swallowed in the roar of a passing truck. “I’m pleased he’s decided it’s time to get out. I see this as a big step. He has always said he could never lie about his guilt, but I think, underneath it all, he was just afraid to get out. He had no hope of going back to the life he had before — no university or even private college would hire him, he’d never pass a crim records check anyway — and life for a poor, unemployed paraplegic can be really tough on the outside.”

“None of that has changed,” Green said.

“But you must have triggered some new idea,” Goodfellow said. “You must have made him think there was something for him. And I’ve got him a place on the outside, a new halfway house in Belleville. It’s fully accessible, he’ll have his own room but share meals, and Belleville is big enough he has a hope of finding some sort of job. Because it’s practically the only wheelchair-accessible house in all of Ontario, he could probably stay there for years if he wanted.”

“Uh-huh.” Green tried to reconcile this new vision of Rosten with the man who’d fought his conviction for twenty years. “All he has to do is say ‘Yes, I understand and regret what I did.’”

“Yeah. I know. It’s a big step.”

Green could hear his own doubt echoed in the chaplain’s voice. “Do you think he means it?”

As the silence dragged on, Green wondered whether the chaplain would reply at all or whether he was treading too far into confidential territory. Finally Goodfellow chose to be noncommittal.

“Honestly, I don’t know. And I don’t plan to ask.”

“Did he mention the Carmichaels at all in his decision?”

“Not at all. It’s never been about them, you know. He has nothing against them. He’s often said he feels sorry for them and wishes they could get real answers.”

“The mother will be notified,” Green said, “and she’s not in such a conciliatory mood. I suspect she’ll prepare a victim’s statement and attend the hearing.”

“Oh, she’s already been notified, although she hasn’t sent in her reply yet. You boys would have been notified too.”

“When were the notices sent out?”

“A couple of weeks ago? If your desk is anything like mine, it’s probably buried in your inbox somewhere.”

Goodfellow roared with laughter, but Green was too busy doing calculations to rise to the bait. The timing was perfect to explain Marilyn’s tailspin. Just as she was struggling to adjust to a new life, news had arrived that the man who had killed her daughter and haunted her husband to his grave was applying for release. As she had always feared, Rosten would be free to get on with his life while her daughter was gone forever. Green knew without doubt that Marilyn would attend that review.

The mother tiger was back.

A
small crowd had already gathered in the waiting room by the time Green arrived with barely two minutes to spare. He’d had to perform some fancy last-minute footwork with Superintendent Neufeld, who didn’t consider parole hearings part of an inspector’s job description, but he was damned if he was going to miss James Rosten’s next move. All Green’s private doubts, all the years of second-guessing the evidence, might be erased in a single afternoon.

Would Rosten admit his guilt? Express remorse? Apologize to the Carmichael family? Was he really a changed man with a fresh vision for his future, or was this just a ploy to advance his own interests?

It was a question of intense importance to Green, but, judging by the sparse crowd, to few others. After twenty years in prison, the man who had commanded media headlines for months barely merited a footnote. Green scanned the faces of the group, spotting Archie Goodfellow in huddled conversation with the parole officer beside him. Normally Archie filled any room he occupied, not just with his six-foot, three-hundred-pound frame but also with his booming baritone voice that could shake the rafters of the largest opera house. Yet today his voice was a mere whisper in the other man’s ear.

Green was just debating whether to approach him when the door opened and James Rosten wheeled in. Green was immediately struck by his transformation. No longer did he look like a shrivelled old man. Muscles rippled down his arms as he propelled his chair across the room.

As he had been during his trial, this was a man gearing up for battle.

Rosten searched the room, nodding briefly to Archie and the parole officer before settling on Green. Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise? Alarm? Before Green could decipher the meaning, the interior door opened and the hearing officer ushered them inside.

It was an unadorned, institutional room with a table in the centre and a row of chairs along the back. Rosten, his parole officer, and a civilian sat at the table, observers and interested parties at the back. There was a shuffle of movement when Marilyn Carmichael entered through another door and took a seat in the farthest corner, her head bowed and her thin frame cradled as if to ward off blows. Unlike Rosten, she did not look geared up for battle, but Green observed with relief that although she was wearing her familiar navy suit, at least it was pressed.

Once everyone was settled, all eyes turned to the two Parole Board members on the other side of the table. The official reports on Rosten were in a file in front of them, documenting Rosten’s insight into his crime, his conduct within the prison, his release plans and sources of support, the impact on the victim, and most important, his risk to the public.

From experience, Green knew how the game was played. Some reports would be favourable, others less so, especially given Rosten’s long history of denial. But Green was only interested in what two people had to say — Marilyn and Rosten himself.