None So Blind (14 page)

Even from halfway up the walkway, he could hear the screaming which he recognized all too well. Toddler meltdown. Aviva hadn’t reached that stage yet, but by the age of two, Tony had developed a pair of lungs any tenor would die for. Green hesitated yet again before steeling himself to press the bell.

More bellows from inside, this time from the adults disputing who would answer “the fucking door.” In their place, he doubted he would even bother. Most evening callers were peddling some dubious charity or even more dubious religion.

The door jerked open, and he found himself staring up at a very tall young man with flaming red hair and cheeks to match. He glowered down at Green. “Yeah?”

Green introduced himself. “I realize this is a bad time, Mr. Henriksson, but —”

“We don’t want the body,” he snapped. “It will cost us ten grand to bury him. Let the government pay for it; you’re the ones who screwed up in the first place!”

“Tom? Who’s that?”

“Some cop!” Tom shouted back before skewering Green with another glare. He had a tangle of red eyebrows that almost eclipsed his blue eyes. “We don’t owe that man a damn thing! He ruined Paige’s childhood and he deserved everything he got. I’m glad he finally saw it that way.”

Paige appeared in the doorway, trying to peer around her husband’s broad shoulders. She was pale, and deep charcoal circles under her eyes gave her a haunted look. Green wondered if she’d slept at all since her father’s death.

Tom swung on her. “Where’s the baby?”

“Upstairs in his crib.” Screaming reverberated through the halls. “That’s what the doctor said to do.”

“Yeah. And when he wrecks that crib too? The doc going to pay for that?”

“Tom, let me handle this. You go check on Oliver.”

The beleaguered husband hesitated, his gaze flitting from Green to his wife before he shoved the door open and stalked away. Paige stood on the threshold. Despite herself, tears gathered in her eyes and she dashed them away as if ashamed.

“He’s only trying to protect me. He knows the scars my father left on me — on both of us — growing up, and he’s read the newspaper reports of Jackie’s murder. Even in death, he says, my father is screwing us.”

“Can you spare a moment to talk about it?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. The screaming had abated but her husband was hovering at the top of the stairs, bouncing the toddler on his shoulders. Green realized they had little chance for a meaningful discussion with Tom poised to swoop down.

“How about some fresh air? It’s a beautiful evening for a walk.”

Gratefully she nodded and stepped onto the porch, drawing her sweater around her, more for protection than for warmth, he suspected. The sun was just sinking below the rooftops and the sky was bathed in amber streaks of light. The suburban lawns were rich green and a soft breeze brought the fragrance of spring flowers and freshly cut grass. Neighbours were out in their gardens with trowels and bags of compost.

They strolled a moment in silence before he spoke. “Can your mother and sister contribute to the burial costs even though they won’t come?”

“My mother and sister want my father to rot in hell.”

“It’s not that easy, is it?”

She tugged at her sweater. Buried her chin in its collar. “It would be easier if I hadn’t met him, if I hadn’t seen him as an ordinary, middle-aged man in a wheelchair — my son’s grandfather — instead of a sex-fiend monster. If I didn’t see my grey eyes, my hair, even my long neck. My mother never mentioned that Pam and I look like him. She always said, ‘Oh, you’re throwbacks to my grandmother.’”

“Do you know the official cause of death?”

She caught her breath. “The coroner told me it was definitely suicide.” She faltered. Paused to wave at a neighbour, feigning cheerfulness. “That doesn’t make it any easier. Tom says it’s just one more way he’s sticking it to us. A coward’s way out, leaving us with nothing but guilt.”

“Tom didn’t meet him. What do you think?”

“I think my father was the one feeling the guilt and wanting to make amends. That’s what I don’t understand. I got the impression he wanted a relationship, but only if I wanted it too. He was determined not to push me. But he was … like a kid … barely holding his excitement back. And I was scared. Who wouldn’t be? I had Tom’s objections to contend with. But I hadn’t closed the door. That’s what I don’t get.”

“But you didn’t return his call afterwards.”

She stopped short. Eyes searching, jaw open. “I needed time! It didn’t mean …” She shook her head back and forth. “That doesn’t explain it. Killing himself now doesn’t make any sense! That chaplain, did he see this coming? Does
he
say my father was depressed because of me?”

“No. Quite the contrary.”

“Maybe the coroner was wrong. Maybe it was an accident. Anyone can mix booze and pills in a careless way.”

That doesn’t seem likely
, Green wanted to say, but he kept his opinion to himself. If Paige needed this sliver of possibility to lessen the guilt of her father’s death, the small deception was worth the price. He wanted that sliver of possibility too, for Rosten’s suicide made accomplices of them all. Not just Corrections staff, parole officers, Horizon House staff, and Archie, but Green himself. None of them had seen the risk.

Yet he knew, all wishing to the contrary, that Rosten’s overdose had been no accident. MacPhail had said the man had washed the pills down with straight Scotch in a quantity and time span that could only be deliberate.

“Suicidal people don’t always let on what they’re up to,” Sharon said later that evening, once he finally arrived home to overcooked, twice-heated chicken. Aviva was already asleep and Tony was playing video games in his room. “They can hide it really well, especially the serious ones who want to make sure they succeed. And once they’ve made that decision, sometimes their mood even improves. They feel relieved and liberated, and people mistake that for getting better.”

He pushed aside his half-eaten food and reached for his wine. “So all the lesson plans — that was a burst of energy?”

“Or part of the deception. Rosten obviously planned this whole scenario carefully, from the cottage locale to the delicious meal to the fine Scotch. A perfect, painless exit. He spent days laying the ground work, setting up the deception of the chaplain, and figuring out where to buy diazepam.” Sharon’s chocolate-brown eyes glowed with warmth. “Don’t feel bad that none of you saw this coming, honey. You weren’t supposed to.”

Green nodded, but without conviction. From his years of training and experience, he knew all the hallmarks of suicidal intent. If they had been there, he should have seen them. “But don’t seriously suicidal people take action to tidy up their lives? They leave notes of explanation, they write wills or give away valued possessions. Rosten did none of that.”

“What personal possessions did he have to give away, or to will to anyone? He’d been twenty years on the inside.”

“A note then. Some kind of final commentary. Rosten loved the last word.”

“Who was he going to write the note to? He had no family who cared to get one.”

“His daughter! She deserved an explanation.”

“Come on, you said he was an intelligent man. What explanation could he give that would make her feel better?”

“Anything! Like this isn’t your fault. Some reassurance and encouragement, after all he’d put her through.”

“He probably thought he had nothing worthy to say, that a quiet exit from her life would be best for her.”

“But —”

“I’m not saying it’s true, Mike. It’s how depressives think.”

He sat back, frustrated. “The chaplain, then. Archie deserved a note. Rosten must have known he’d get the blame.”

She was silent a moment as she sipped her tea. “Yes,” she admitted finally. “But it doesn’t mean he’d care.”

“And what about me! My God, Sharon, this is a guy who’s been sending me letters for the last twenty years. How would he even be able to resist? His last hurrah!”

She twirled her glass. In the silence, faint bursts of tinny music echoed from Tony’s room, but otherwise the evening peace was bliss. “Maybe … maybe he did write a note, and no one’s found it yet.”

A
t
eight o’clock the next morning, Green strode through the station and into the Ident labs at the back. He found Cunningham squinting at fingerprints on his computer. The forensics officer had eagle eyes that once could have spotted a stray hair from across the room, but years of staring at minutiae, not to mention encroaching middle age, had begun to take their toll. He was now fiddling with a brand new pair of rimless reading glasses.

“Did you guys search every inch of the cottage and grounds at Rosten’s place?”

Cunningham looked up, surprise turning to affront as he peered over his glasses.
What a stupid question
, his expression seemed to say. When have you ever known me to skimp on a scene? He confined himself to asking why.

“For a note.”

“A note. Imagine me not thinking of that.”

Green smiled in spite of himself. “Sorry, Lyle. I’m just dotting
i
’s.”

“The dozens I leave undotted, you mean.”

“Just one. No one is perfect all the time.”

“Is that right?” Lyle responded. He returned to his computer. “It’s all in my report, including the absence of a note.”

Green resisted the urge to return the salvo. The truth was, Cunningham’s reports were so tedious and excruciatingly detailed that they put even the keenest detectives to sleep. Instead, he made his exit and headed up to his office, where the usual piles of emails and memos greeted him and the message light blinked on his phone. Ignoring all this, he put in a call to Archie Goodfellow.

“Have you cleared out Rosten’s room yet?”

The chaplain sounded not exactly cheerful, but back in control. “Yes, we just got the go-ahead on that yesterday when the coroner’s verdict came in. We’re going through it now. Not much to clean up.”

“Any sign of a will, disposition of property, suicide note?”

“I’ve been looking for that. Or at least for some clue what he was thinking. But there’s nothing.”

“What about on his computer?”

“Like I said, nothing but lesson plans and research.”

“What kind of research?”

“High school curriculum. Biology labs. Stuff you’d expect.”

“Nothing on overdosing? Drug effects?”

“No. Well … there was one weird thing. He visited some websites like the
DSM-5
— that’s the diagnostic manual for psychiatrists — and the American Psychological Association. Looking at criminality, sexual deviance, violence, nature vs. nurture.”

Trying to reassure his daughter, Green suspected. Had she told him she was worried about her son? Or had he himself harboured his own fears about the twisted genes he’d passed on?

“Most of it was science curriculum, though,” Archie was saying. Voices interrupted him in the background. “Hold on.”

A muffled conversation ensued, during which Green began to paw through the piles of paper in his inbox. Reports, memos, yesterday’s mail buried under new reports from today.

Archie’s voice returned. He sounded excited. “There is one thing. One of the day staff just told me. Rosten wrote a letter. We don’t know who it was to, but Rosten asked for permission to go down the street to mail it. About a week ago. Maybe to his daughter?”

Green’s hand froze. Hovered over a plain white business envelope with familiar writing.

I
nspector Michael Green

O
ttawa Police Services

4
74 Elgin St.

O
ttawa

K
2P 2J6

He’s added my professional rank this time
, Green noted with bemusement. Not so dismissive anymore. “No, it was to me,” he said as calmly as he could before signing off.

His impulse was to rip open the letter on the spot, but fortunately his police training kicked in first. He rummaged for a pair of neoprene gloves in his drawer and snapped them on before picking up the letter. It felt like the last one he’d received. Thin, perhaps no more than one sheet. Apart from the full address and title, the writing was the same. Slashing, stabbing, precise.

He slid the letter into a manila envelope and rushed downstairs to Cunningham’s lab. No doubt dozens of postal and police employees had left their fingerprints but he needed to be sure James Rosten had as well. He wasn’t sure why. The death investigation was closed, the pieces all in place. Perhaps it was just part of his lingering dissatisfaction with the picture they made.

Luckily Cunningham was even more of a by-the-book investigator than he was, and required no half-baked explanation to photograph and fingerprint the letter.

“Come back in an hour. I’ll have it all done.”

Green fidgeted. “Can’t you slit it open and have a look first?”

Cunningham gave him a look. He peered at the paper with his illuminating magnifier and shook his head. “The less disturbance the better. I’ll probably have to fume it. You want it done, or you want it accurate?”

Suppressing his impatience, Green headed upstairs to wait for the call. While he waited, he forced his attention to his inbox. True to his word, Cunningham called in less than an hour. For the dry, obsessive technician, he sounded excited.

“You’re going to want to see this.”

Green took the stairs two at a time, bursting through the lab doors in less than fifteen seconds. The choking stench of glue still hung in the air.

“The prints aren’t his?” he demanded.

Cunningham held out a single piece of paper, safely encased in a plastic evidence bag. “Not the prints. This.”

Green snatched the paper. Like the others, it was a short note, without salutation or closing. Only a date and five short lines.

I
’ve been blind. I’ve spent twenty years pursuing the wrong villain. Lucas didn’t kill Jackie, but I have a horrible suspicion who did. I just have a couple of tests to run and I will prove it to you!

Green reread the letter several times in disbelief. His head began to spin. “What the fuck is this?”

Cunningham shrugged. “Not a suicide note, that’s for sure.”

“Did you copy it?”

“Didn’t think of that.” Cunningham gestured to a pile of copies on his desk. “Help yourself.”

Green handed back the original note and snatched three copies from the desk. “Keep this with the rest of the stuff from the scene until we get to the bottom of this.”

He was out the door before Cunningham could muster a sarcastic retort. Upstairs, Green spotted Brian Sullivan bent over Levesque’s computer, conferring with her. Green jerked his head toward the office, and without a questioning word, Sullivan followed him inside. Silently Green handed him the note, which Sullivan studied without reaction.

“What do you think it means?” Sullivan asked finally, looking up.

“It means a week ago, suicide was the furthest thing from his mind.”

Sullivan inclined his head in doubtful agreement. “A lot could change in a week. Don’t forget his medical appointment.”

“But this is the old Rosten, still on the warpath. That whole repentance thing was a sham so he could get out on parole.”

“Could be.”

“Could be?” Green was incredulous. “What do
you
think it means?”

Sullivan pursed his lips. “I don’t like his final statement.
I will prove it to you!
This is personal, Mike.”

“Of course it’s personal. It’s always been personal for us!” Green corrected himself. “For him.”

“Maybe this is his final payback. His best payback yet.”

Green took the note to study it again, trying to imagine James Rosten — relentless, never-say-die combatant — crafting these words. Gauging not their truth, which may have been irrelevant, but their impact on Green. Despite himself, the note quivered in his hand.

“You think he wrote this whole letter just to mess with me? To leave me in permanent doubt about Jackie’s murder and about the circumstances of his own death?”

Sullivan steepled his fingers and nodded softly. “Is that possible?”

Green stared at the ceiling. Searched his whole understanding of Rosten. Not just as the tenacious, obsessive professor on trial, but also as the humbled, lonely man trying to start over.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “I don’t know.”

“Because if it’s not possible, then you realize what this note tells us?”

Green nodded. A slow horror spread through him. It had lingered at the edges of his consciousness since he’d first read the note, but he’d been loath to acknowledge it. “It wasn’t suicide or accident after all.”

For the rest of the day, Green drove all vestiges of emotion from his thoughts as he summoned the investigating team to his office, quietly, one by one. Only Sullivan remained throughout, his chair tipped back against the wall in the corner as he lent an objective ear. Levesque was the first person Green called. She arrived clutching all her notes and planted herself just inside the door. Green held out the note.

“This came to me from James Rosten this morning. Postmarked in Belleville a week ago.”

“Bravo for Canada Post,” she said drily as she took the note. Her disdain vanished the moment she read the words. Crossing the room, she dropped into a chair and her mouth fell open.

Green held up his hand. “I don’t want to speculate on what it means. There are numerous possibilities. What I need from you is the answer to one question. Is there anything we missed?” He chose the word
we
deliberately. No point in backing her up against a wall. “A small detail from the crime scene — an observation by a neighbour, a random comment to the taxi driver — that suggests that someone else might have been involved? That it might not have been suicide, but murder?”

Levesque swallowed. The investigation had been closed, the crime scene released. Green prayed that like Cunningham, she had dotted every
i
. “It wasn’t a full-scale murder investigation, sir. It was a death investigation, and once the coroner ruled —”

“But you did interview neighbours. You did search the grounds.”

“Yes, sir.” Levesque bowed her head and fingered her papers. She seemed to be thinking rather than evading. No pout, no denial or affront, Green noted with relief. Just an immediate grasp of the implications. He let the silence grow. Finally she flipped open her notebook and began to scan.

“There is one thing, sir,” she said finally. “A small discrepancy, but since this was the country and the neighbours couldn’t actually see anything through the woods, it was easy to explain it.”

“What?”

“The time of his arrival, sir. Detective Okeke interviewed the taxi driver, who stated he delivered Rosten to the cottage at about 6:30. He says he helped him up the drive and wheeled him inside —”

“How did Rosten get in?”

“Apparently the driver was vague. Couldn’t remember exactly. Thought Rosten had a key.”

Green calculated the timeline from the train station. “The train got in at 4:20. That’s more than two hours, a long time, even for a trip all the way out there.”

“Well, there was the stop for takeout, probably for the Scotch as well.”

“Probably? Did they stop for Scotch or not?”

“The taxi driver wasn’t sure.”

“Nonsense.” He knew an evasion when he heard it. It was more likely the cab driver had stopped not only for Scotch but for drugs as well. But Levesque’s rookie detective had missed it. “Did you draw up a detailed timeline?”

Levesque merely looked at him, the answer in her silence. He had to fight to keep his voice even. “I want every second of his time accounted for from the time he got off the train until his body was found. Was that two-hour delay the discrepancy you mentioned?”

Levesque roused herself. “No sir. The neighbour’s dogs barked at about 8:30, and the neighbour thought she heard a car arrive at that time. However, she couldn’t actually see which house it went to —”

“How did she pinpoint the time so exactly?”

“She was a bit curious. Typical country busybody, I think. She said the cottage is normally unoccupied at this time of year because of the blackflies, and she looked at the clock because she thought they were arriving pretty late. It was becoming dark.”

“Headlights?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Go back and ask her,” Green said. “Did she hear the car drive away?”

Levesque pressed her lips together in dismay. “Her dog barked again much later, and she thought she heard a car. She was already in bed and she thought whoever was there must have left. Later, when the body was discovered, she —” Levesque stumbled. She wasn’t reading from her notes now and Green suspected she hadn’t even written it down. “She said the car must have been visiting another house.”

“Did you turn up any trace of another vehicle? Tire tracks? Footprints?”

“No sir. But Ident processed the scene.”

Green bit back a reprimand and let her go with orders to re-interview the taxi driver herself, as well as all the neighbours. Then he called up Cunningham, who arrived within moments with a flash drive in hand. If he sensed the tension in the room, he gave no sign.

“I wondered when you’d get around to taking a second look, so I’ve been reviewing all our findings.” Cunningham fished his glasses from his pocket and propped them on his nose. “We can start with the scene photos.”

The three men clustered around as Green pulled the photos up on his computer. They watched in silence as the video panned the living room, first in long shots and then close-ups. Cunningham’s dispassionate voice could be heard providing commentary. It was a remarkably benign scene, far removed from the chaotic, blood-spattered scenes they usually encountered.

Cunningham flipped through less important photos of empty rooms and ended with the close-ups of the Indian takeout containers in the garbage bin under the sink. Apart from this, and the restaurant receipt, which Cunningham had also bagged, the bin was empty. The receipt confirmed that the food had been picked up at 5:16 p.m. and paid for with cash.

A single dirty plate and fork lay in the sink.