Читать книгу None So Blind - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 5

Green 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.”

“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?”