Читать книгу None So Blind - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 6

Facing 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?

Green 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.

Once the introductions and procedural formalities were over, the lead board member, who had introduced himself as Pierre Anjou, invited the institutional parole officer to summarize the case. Green leaned forward curiously. From previous cases, he remembered Gilles Maisonneuve as an experienced PO with a reputation as a hard-ass. If he had bought Rosten’s sudden conversion to remorse, perhaps the board would too.

After giving a brief sketch of Rosten’s criminal history, which was essentially unblemished until his current offence, Maisonneuve sped through Rosten’s twenty years of anger, protest, and endless legal wrangling before arriving at the past three months. Maisonneuve had personally worked on Rosten’s release plan and administered a number of standard risk- and needs-assessment measures. In drawing the board’s attention to the man’s moderate scores, he explained they would have been even better had Rosten co-operated more fully in recommended treatments and not lost all ties to friends and family on the outside.

However, Maisonneuve was quick to add, despite his reluctance to assume responsibility, Rosten had never presented a discipline problem, had no history of substance abuse, and had co-operated fully with CSC rules and routines. He had used his advanced education and skill as a teacher to help in the prison school program by mentoring and tutoring students toward high-school diplomas and even advanced science credits. This was a skill he intended to carry into his community placement.

“But what about insight and remorse?” the lead board member said.

Maisonneuve paused and leaned across the table, conversational now. “As I mentioned and his records show, although Mr. Rosten has been a model inmate, exhibiting no violent or disruptive behaviour, some attitudinal problems have hindered his progress in the past. He has had difficulty accepting responsibility for his crime and coming to grips with its implications for himself, the victim’s family, and the community at large. It has been a difficult admission for a man in his position, and one that until recently he has been reluctant to make. The professional opinion of CSC counsellors and psychologists is that the crime was so repulsive to him and so contrary to his values and self-image that he denied it happened. Perhaps he even blocked out all memory of it. We may never know. However, he has now come to accept that he committed this crime while under the stress of his new job at the university and the increased financial pressures of his family. His wife had recently given birth to twin girls and no one was getting much sleep.”

Ridiculous, Green thought, just as Anjou echoed his thoughts. “Everyone has pressures, Mr. Maisonneuve. Some of us even have children.”

“Agreed. It’s not an excuse. But his circumstances are very different now. He has no family obligations, financial or otherwise — in fact there’s been no contact with his family at all since his incarceration, and none is anticipated. He has no job pressures, other than the job he will be applying for if his parole is granted. He is no longer a young man, and his spinal cord injury has left him with considerably diminished sexual capacity. Certainly his capacity to physically assault and overpower a victim is greatly diminished, should he ever feel the urge.”

“So what are your recommendations, Mr. Maisonneuve?”

“At this stage of his life, James Rosten wants to use his skills to help others with literacy and schooling. Based on extensive discussions with Mr. Teske here, who is the director of the prison school at Warkworth, with other CSC personnel, and with CSC psychologist Dr. Kim Lee, whose report is before you, I consider him a minimal risk to reoffend and I support the following plan:

“Number one. Release to serve the remainder of his sentence in Horizon House, a new, fully wheelchair-accessible, community-based residential facility in the City of Belleville. It has private rooms, communal meals, and 24/7 supervision. Belleville is nearly three hundred kilometres from Ottawa, where his offence took place.

“Number two. Employment as an online tutor and instructor with adult male clients in CSC programs, initially on a volunteer basis, but with the potential to expand to educational and employment centres if it works well and if funding can be secured. As a precursor to that, Mr. Rosten will be working hard to familiarize himself with digital and online technology, which was in its infancy when he was incarcerated.

“Number three. Financial support will be available through the Ontario Disability Support Program and private personal investments, and there is the potential to supplement that sum through his teaching.”

During the PO’s entire presentation, Rosten had barely moved a muscle. He seemed to be staring at his hands, which were clasped on the table before him. The board members asked a few questions but showed almost no interest in Rosten’s belated change of heart, preferring to dissect the minutiae of his job plans and his potential to endanger the public.

Green’s mind wandered. He was cast twenty years into the past, once again trying to understand how a promising young professor who had just completed his post-doc and landed a rare tenure-track position in the biology department of Carleton University, who had just bought a big new house in the upscale suburb of Whitehaven, and who had just become the proud father of twin baby girls — how a man on the brink of his dreams — could lure a young college student under the pretence of helping with her studies, drive her out into the country, strangle her, and bury her half-naked body in the woods.

Furthermore, he wondered, how could such a man could return home to hug his young daughters and show up for his class the next morning as calm and self-assured as ever?

No explanation had ever been put forward by the defence during the trial, because the possibility of guilt had never been entertained. So the police and the Crown had been left to wonder. All these years without a credible theory … until now. Was the PO’s theory of repression possible? Green wracked his memory for clues. Had there been any signs of stress in Rosten’s life? Rosten’s wife had stuck by him, loyally providing an alibi of sorts, until the exam comments were released. And until other students, mostly female, admitted receiving similar notes offering private help and described him as flirtatious and full of himself. Then a chill had descended over her demeanour, and, by the end of the trial, she had stopped visiting him in the detention centre. The very day of the guilty verdict, she had packed up the children, climbed into the family minivan, and headed home to her parents in Halifax.

Had she sensed an invisible darkness in him, even before all the evidence was out? Had it remained hidden even from himself, as the PO claimed, or was this latter-day insight just an elaborate sham to win his way out of prison? Green wished he could see Rosten’s face and look him squarely in the eye as the story was told.

The prison school director, Theodore Teske, was speaking now about Rosten’s patience and commitment to the inmates he’d helped in recent years. His involvement had begun slowly, even grudgingly, when he was spending much of his free time hiding out in the prison library, avoiding the threats from other inmates and poring over law books. Other inmates began to ask him questions and he helped them understand the material they were struggling to read. The librarian spoke to Teske and to the chaplain, who encouraged Rosten to form a tutorial group. Bit by bit, Rosten became engaged. His natural love of teaching took over, almost in spite of himself. He treated even the slowest inmate as a challenge.

Green listened first with disbelief but gradually with reluctant surprise. He had never seen any emotion from Rosten but resentment and contempt. If anything, Rosten had conveyed an arrogant belief that he did not belong in prison and had nothing in common with the losers who surrounded him.

How many sides were there to James Rosten, and would he ever reveal his true self? Green found his heart pounding as the school director wrapped up and the board members turned their sights on Rosten himself.

With the flair of a trial attorney, Pierre Anjou slapped his file shut and fixed Rosten with a disbelieving stare. Rosten stiffened, and Green saw Teske touch his arm. To caution him, or reassure him?

“Unlike most of the inmates in this prison, Mr. Rosten, at the time you committed your offence, you had been living a very successful life. You had advanced education and skill, a stable job, financial security, and a loving family. Yet despite all those advantages, you chose to murder a young woman. I’ve read the psychological reports and listened to Mr. Maisonneuve here describe the pressures of university teaching, the exhausting demands of twin babies, your repression of the memory of the crime, but I see little evidence in these reports of the steps you’ve taken to rectify that. No counselling, stress- or anger-management programs. No admission even of the need for them. Then, three months ago, with this review coming up, suddenly you change your tune. According to your file, you’ve spent years fighting your conviction and denying your guilt, and only three months facing the truth. That raises concerns for me. Raises doubts about your sincerity.”

Rosten said nothing. Initially he had tried to meet Anjou’s stare, but as the criticisms mounted, he bowed his head. Wise, Green thought. Staring down a member of the Parole Board of Canada would not advance his cause.

“Was all that denial of your guilt a lie?”

Collectively the crowd held its breath. In the silence Green leaned forward to catch every nuance. The moment had come.

Rosten cleared his throat. “I … I … It was too awful a crime for me to face or admit to. Not just for my sake, but for my family and my children. I have two daughters, and I couldn’t bear the thought of them growing up with such shame in and revulsion of their father.”

“So this repression idea is a fiction? You knew all along that you were guilty?”

“No. But a life sentence provides a long period for reflection, especially when you’re in a wheelchair. Over the years, the reality sank in. I had so much invested in that denial, however, that I kept it up on the outside. I reasoned that as long as my children, my colleagues, and my old friends retained the slightest doubt in my guilt, there was hope for us.”

“So what changed? What happened three months ago?”

Rosten raised his head, appearing more confident about this question. “I turned fifty. And I realized I was never going to get my life back. My daughters and my former friends were gone forever. One of the police officers who put me away helped me to see that. In fact, he’s here in the room today. He pointed out that I still had years, potentially decades, to live. And I realized that, even in spite of myself, I had started to build a new life. Here and now. With the men I taught, the guys I made a difference to, guys who went on to earn a credit or diploma and who came back to thank me.”

“Three months is a very short time to change old habits and make effective preparations. Do you think you’re ready to be released?”

For an instant Rosten wavered. He glanced back at the observers and his eyes locked on Marilyn. A faint frown pinched his brow before he averted his gaze. “I do. I will have close supervision and support, and adequate financial means. I’ve been incarcerated a long time, but further incarceration will not make it any easier. I want to learn to use the Internet for teaching, to manage my chair in public, and face the outside world from this chair, with these scars and this baggage, while I still have good people to support me.”

Anjou pursed his lips, looking unconvinced. At his side, the other board member, who until then had merely jotted notes, leaned forward. “You’ve given us a lot of reasons why you’d like to be released, Mr. Rosten. But why should you be released?”

A classic question and one Rosten had clearly been coached in. He leaned forward intently in his chair. “In prison, I saw the difference that basic literacy and a high school diploma can make to the futures of men who never had the chance earlier in their lives. If we teach them to read and write, maybe they won’t end up back in here or on the streets. It’s taken me a long time to stop feeling sorry for myself. My life is not over. There is still some good I can do, and I’d like that chance to make amends. I have walked both sides of the street and that gives me a unique qualification to lend a helping hand to others.”

Damn it, Green thought as he sat back in frustration. Clever bastard. Nowhere in his carefully crafted appeal was there an actual, unequivocal admission of guilt. He had left that to his parole officer. Whether the board members noticed that subtlety, they did not dwell on the issue, choosing instead to ask about the logistics of Rosten’s release plan and his ongoing medical needs.

Finally, Pierre Anjou thanked him and flipped back through the file. “As I said at the outset, the victim’s family has declined to read their statement at this hearing, but requested that it be read out at the close of the hearing. Here then is the submission made by Mrs. Marilyn Carmichael, mother of Jacqueline Carmichael, the victim.”

Anjou selected a single page from the pile and adjusted his glasses. For a long moment he peered over the rims at Marilyn, and then began to read. “When I gave a statement at James Rosten’s sentencing, I tried to describe how Jacqueline’s murder changed my family’s lives. In many ways, ruined our lives. Twenty years later, nothing has changed. The murder took away the warm, vibrant young woman we all loved, made our world a brutal, terrifying place, and destroyed our trust in laws, justice, and basic human goodness. My husband went to his grave recently a broken man, and my remaining two children have left the country and become estranged from me in their effort to run away from the memories.

“I need to pick up the pieces and build a new life. Jackie was a loving, generous girl, and it is her spirit that I must keep alive. Not bitterness, pain, and emptiness. James Rosten has spent the prime years of his life behind bars and he has lost everything including his health in payment for this crime.

“I believe it is time for him too to make what he can of the life he has ahead, and so for my sake and his, I support his release on parole.”