Honour Among Men

by Barbara Fradkin

  She thought of phoning Mike, but stopped herself. She had nothing to report and nothing to contribute to the case. What could she say? I’m sorry, and I hope you’re holding up all right? That was a ridiculous luxury. Mike was probably up to his eyeballs in crises, trying to coordinate the investigation and respond to the dozens of pressures from the media, the brass and the public at large. No matter how much he might need a supportive word, that was not her place.

  He had a wife, after all.

  She set her jaw, squared her shoulders and forced herself to think. The best way to help him was to follow up on the case down here, where it had all begun. She felt as if she was in a holding pattern while she waited for details on Daniel Oliver’s military contacts. Yet something had stirred up the case ten years after Oliver’s murder. Something had happened to set Patricia Ross on the road to Ottawa. Just a tenth anniversary epiphany? Or something more concrete—an encounter, a discovery, a stray fact?

  McGrath sat bolt upright. The newspaper! In all that had happened, she’d forgotten the newspaper in Patricia Ross’s apartment, with its missing Page 10. It might not be much, it might just be the light-fingered tenant from the apartment below, as the landlord claimed, but it was a place to start. A thread to tug, that might unravel the entire web of secrets.

  She clipped on her police belt, snatched up her coffee, and headed for the door. Back issues of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald were kept at the public library on Spring Garden Road, a few short blocks from the police station. The chip wagons were out in force along the street, and the air was laden with the smell of stale oil and vinegar. She had to dodge the buskers and the Tai Chi enthusiasts to get in the front door. Inside, a flash of her badge and a quick word sent the young librarian in charge scurrying to the nearby shelves where the latest issues were stacked. He returned with the Sunday Herald of April 9th and pointed to a long reading table. Only one other reader was there, and he didn’t even look up from the notes he was taking.

  The paper was full of election campaign news, most of it local, and she flipped rapidly through the results of polls and the profiles of candidate hopefuls until she came to Page 10. “Top Ten Ridings to Watch”, announced the headlines, and below were brief capsules of federal ridings identified by political pundits as either traditional swing ridings or ones where candidates could pull off a surprising upset. The article profiled each riding and the main candidates in the race. In each case the journalist, whom Kate recognized as a born and bred New Democrat, had predicted a winner.

  The whole article seemed rather more intellectual than the reading Kate would have predicted of Patricia, but she scanned the ridings curiously. Two were in British Columbia, which was way too far from either Halifax or Ottawa to be of interest. Two were in the Greater Toronto Area, representing the ethnically diverse communities that surrounded the metropolis. Surely Toronto was still too far away. Patricia had chosen Ottawa for a reason, yet none of the ridings were in the Ottawa area. Her hopes jumped when she found one in Nova Scotia, but after reading the article, she couldn’t for the life of her see how it fitted in with old murders, the military, peacekeepers, or Ottawa.

  The caption for the next riding stopped her in her tracks, however. Military is wildcard in conservative Ontario riding. She studied the map of the riding. It sat just beyond the northwestern extremity of the City of Ottawa, and more importantly, right near the centre of it, perched on the edge of the Ottawa River, was the town of Petawawa.

  Her heart raced with excitement as she scanned the article. The riding was currently held by a hard-line Conservative and was comprised largely of rural, socially conservative voters. It was generally regarded as a safe Conservative win, and yet the journalist was predicting a tight race and a possible Liberal upset because of strong support among the military for the local Liberal candidate, John Blakeley. Who was himself an ex-army colonel and a highly experienced and decorated veteran of numerous overseas missions. Blakeley’s photo showed a man with a frank, steady gaze.

  “Colonel Blakeley speaks to the hearts and minds of soldiers in this riding,” said his campaign manager, Roger Atkinson, reached at Blakeley’s campaign office in Petawawa. “His firsthand understanding of military issues would be an invaluable asset in the halls of power.” As an interesting aside, the journalist noted, Roger Atkinson, born in Sheet Harbour and educated at Dalhousie University, brings a local Nova Scotia connection to this most exciting race.

  With a whoop of joy, McGrath jumped up and got the librarian to make her a dozen copies of the page. Barely pausing to thank him, she raced out of the room with the pages shoved under her arm and sprinted back to the station. At her desk, as she punched in Green’s number, she tried to catch her breath and collect her thoughts so that she could sound coherent when he answered. But after four rings, his voicemail came on. She cursed.

  “Mike! Oh, damn it! I’ve caught a huge break. Check your fax!”

  Leaving Sullivan to prepare for the trip to Petawawa, Green had headed over to the hospital, where Sue Peters remained in the ICU, hooked up to tubes and looking uncharacteristically fragile and still. He hated hospitals and managed to stay only thirty seconds, long enough to lose the battle with other memories from long ago, of the grey, birdlike figure of his mother dwarfed among the pillows and machines that had escorted her to her death. He’d always hoped it was painless at the end, at least for her.

  But Peters wasn’t going to die, he told himself over and over as he looked down at her. The doctors were promising nothing, and the nurses were gently hinting at the worst, but Green shrugged them off. She was too young and brazen to be silenced this way. She would awaken to tell the police all they needed to know, and they would nail this murderous bastard for good.

  He left the hospital fired with new resolve and with a long list of inquiries to be followed up. En route back to the station, he phoned Constable Jeff Weiss’s staff sergeant to arrange a meeting later in the morning.

  “Good man,” said Staff Sergeant Vaillancourt once Green had explained his request. “He’s pretty new to General Assignment, so I don’t know much about his background, but I’ll bring the file. He had some problems with insubordination sometimes, but I could always trust him to think on his feet.”

  Right, Green thought grimly as he hung up. Like this time, putz? As one of the NCOs under his command, Green had known Vaillancourt for several years, but the man’s police instincts had never filled him with confidence. Green suspected he would have to do some additional detective work of his own to get the real story on Jeff Weiss. Just one more small task to add to his pile. Next he phoned Frank Corelli of the Ottawa Sun for an update on his anonymous news source.

  “Not a word since that botched meet,” Frank said. “She’s either a crank, or she’s gone to ground. Maybe something about the set-up spooked her.”

  Green pondered Frank’s words as he pulled into the parking lot of the station. The latter theory made a lot of sense, but even if the woman had gone to ground, he needed to find her. Now more than ever. If she really had seen Patricia Ross’s killer, she might be the only person who could stop him.

  As he parked, signed in and waited for the elevator, his thoughts kept drifting back to Twiggy. She had been in the vicinity at the time of the murder, she was clever enough to know how to use her knowledge to her own advantage, and she was just jaded and fearless enough to do so. Yet Twiggy, despite her relentless path to self-destruction, had an instinct for survival. Never again would she let some bastard try to dictate the terms of her exit from this world. If Twiggy had caught even a whiff of trouble, she’d be gone.

  Or so he hoped. But she was also old, fat and sick. Not to mention she was up against a calculating, determined killer who didn’t hesitate to target a cop. Indeed, if Twiggy did know something, Green needed to find her for her own safety as much as for her knowledge of the case. Yet Twiggy would never cooperate with any of the police officers he could assign to look for her. She hated cops, courts, jud
ges, social workers and just about any official representative of the society that had failed her. If anyone was going to find Twiggy and get her to talk, it had to be him.

  The unhappy realization came to him on the elevator trip upstairs. He really couldn’t afford to take off up to Petawawa and leave all these crises simmering here. The last time he’d done that, one of his officers had nearly died.

  By the time he got off the elevator, he’d decided to send Gibbs along with Sullivan instead. The young detective deserved as much. The squad room was nearly deserted, but Gibbs was hard at work reviewing reports on the canvass of downtown Ottawa bars. No doubt sifting each word for a nugget of information that might trip up their killer. Green told him to round up Sullivan and meet him in his office.

  Inside his office, he looked at the pile of papers on his desk and the furious blinking of his phone. No matter how many times he checked his message box, there were always new ones. With a sigh, he flicked the machine on speaker phone so he could listen as he sifted through his paperwork. Several calls were from the media and fellow officers, asking for news or volunteering information.

  Then the voice of Kate McGrath broke through, breathy and excited. Check your fax! He pawed through the papers on his desk. What huge break? Had she already ID’d one of the military photos?

  Papers scattered to the floor, but no fax. He dashed outside to the fax machine and snatched up the wad of waiting papers. Cursing the office inefficiency, he scanned them until he came to the one from Kate. Not an ID of a photo, but a page from a newspaper, with several lines highlighted. He skimmed these, then the whole article, and fell back down in his chair with a thud.

  Good God, what was this? Another twist? Another tentacle? How did all this fit in with old peacekeeping secrets and a ten-year old murder? Or was it a red herring, its significance only peripheral to the investigation. He was still puzzling over it when Gibbs and Sullivan walked into the squad room. Silently Green handed Sullivan the fax.

  The big detective’s eyebrows shot up as he read it. “Well, well, well. Politics gets into the act.”

  “It could have nothing to do with politics. This may be how Patricia Ross discovered the whereabouts of Roger Atkinson, who was a witness to her fiancé’s murder.”

  “You going to warn Devine, just in case? This could get even hotter than the military connection.”

  Green shook his head. If they were ever going to learn anything from Blakeley and Atkinson, stealth was of the essence. Barbara Devine didn’t do stealth. “Not until you’ve had a go at them up in Petawawa, see if you can make a connection.”

  Sullivan looked startled and opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped himself. He glanced at Gibbs instead. “Can you dig up all the background you can get on Blakeley and Atkinson? I need some information before I go head to head with them.”

  Gibbs nodded, and as Sullivan continued to look at him, he jumped to his feet. “Now, sir?”

  Sullivan checked his watch. “Now. I’ll be rolling into Petawawa about two p.m., so that gives you less than three hours.”

  Once Gibbs had loped back outside, Sullivan nudged the door gently shut with his toe. “You’re not coming with me to Petawawa?”

  Reluctantly Green shook his head. “I want nothing better, believe me. But I can’t justify it. We don’t need two experienced field officers on this, and there’s just too much happening down here for me to take off. I should never have gone to Halifax. And now, with an officer down and all the staff up in arms, they need me to be here.”

  Sullivan eyed him shrewdly, as if he knew what the decision had cost him. “Good call.”

  “I figured you could take Gibbs.”

  “I need him on background and file coordination. No one works those computers better than Bob.”

  “Well, there are several officers volunteering for extra duty—”

  Sullivan slapped the desk with his broad palm, making the scattered papers jump. “I know just who to take.”

  “Who?”

  “Jeff Weiss.”

  Green stared at him. Besides the fact that Weiss was a physical and emotional basket case, the man’s actions were suspicious. When he said as much, Sullivan shrugged.

  “All the more reason to take him. To keep an eye on him and see what he does. Plus the guy’s been up there already with Sue, and he knows what they’ve already covered.”

  “So take his notes—”

  “His notes aren’t worth shit—he hardly wrote a thing apparently—but it should be all in his head. I think he’s the perfect partner to take along.”

  Green mulled over the idea uneasily. Sullivan’s proposal made sense, and if he hadn’t already had one officer downed by this killer, he probably wouldn’t be hesitating.

  “Okay, get him up here,” he said finally. “But Brian . . . Watch your back.”

  Sullivan reached across Green’s desk for the phone and called down to the duty sergeant in General Assignment. The conversation was short and terse. Sullivan jotted down a number before hanging up.

  “He’s not in today. Called in sick.”

  “Which he probably is,” Green replied with relief. “He was up half the night, in pretty rough shape.”

  “Still . . . I could phone him at home.”

  “Where he’s probably sleeping one off. Face it, Brian, he’ll be no good to you.” He nodded towards his door. “Take one of the guys outside.”

  With a sigh, Sullivan hauled himself to his feet. “Okay, I’ll take Luc Leblanc. But I’d like to meet this Weiss guy some time. Get my own read on him.”

  “Get in line, my friend.”

  SIXTEEN

  John Blakeley’s popularity was visible long before Sullivan and Leblanc hit the outskirts of Petawawa. Large red billboards began to pop up on businesses and retirement bungalows amid the forest of Tory blue, announcing “John Blakeley—a Voice for You”. The man’s picture conveyed a mass of contradictions. His battered face looked like he’d taken on all the warlords in Afghanistan singlehandedly, and a jagged scar bisected his left eyebrow. But his thick white hair was swept into perfect place across his high forehead, and his prim smile looked like a kindly preacher trying to hustle his flock into line. Odder still, a clear, no-nonsense intelligence shone in his deep-set eyes.

  Sullivan thought the eyes were likely the true measure of the man, whereas the smile and the hair were the work of Liberal Party spin doctors who thought he looked too scary in his warrior guise.

  As he passed through the struggling farmsteads of the Ottawa Valley, Sullivan had to block out his own aversion to the place. The sparse, rocky landscape fostered a fierce combination of pride, independence and bitterness among those who hung on there. “This Land is Our Land; Back off, Government” warned the huge signs staked in fields along the roadsides. He should have felt pride and sympathy for the families who clung to their land in defiance of bureaucratic red tape and urban ignorance. But for Sullivan, who had grown up in one of them, it evoked memories of isolation and helplessness, drunken violence and wanton neglect. Of starving and hiding and never knowing when he was safe. He’d been eighteen and on the first bus out of town after high school before he ever felt safe.

  The red Liberal signs signalled the invasion of another culture, not based on the land or the seasons, but on the military, whose loyalty depended on who had the power, the purse strings, and the vision to see the world their way. John Blakeley was one of their own.

  Sullivan felt his adrenaline pump as they drew closer to their destination. Six months, he thought. Six months since he’d felt the excitement of a case, of following up leads and tracking down a bad guy. Of doing something more worthwhile than drawing up staffing plans. What the hell had he been thinking when he’d taken the transfer to Strategic Planning?

  He’d been thinking about the next rung on the ladder, the next notch in his belt, the prestige and pay of a staff sergeant’s rank. He’d been thinking about the exhaustion and humiliation of his twenty u
nappreciated years fighting society’s bottom feeders in Major Crimes. He’d been burned out, pure and simple. He’d lost sight of the camaraderie and the sense of triumph when they closed a case. He’d forgotten the novel and unexpected twists of each new day. But damn it, it felt good to be back. This was why he’d become a cop, and this is where he’d always belonged.

  When they turned off the Trans-Canada Highway and headed towards the centre of Petawawa, he instructed Leblanc to pull up his email on the laptop and check for Gibbs’s reports on Blakeley and Atkinson. He’d felt bad leaving Gibbs behind at the station, poring over his computer yet again, while others went on the adventure. Perhaps the trip would have been good for him.

  His guilt disappeared when he saw Gibbs’s reports, which were much shorter than usual. The poor kid was in shock, and in no shape for field work. Sullivan pulled into a gas station out of sight of the Blakeley Campaign headquarters, sent Leblanc out to do the fill-up and swivelled the laptop towards him. The reports were full of typos and oversights the meticulous detective rarely made, and Sullivan felt a twinge of sympathy that the young detective couldn’t be home giving himself some TLC.

  John Blakeley was a local boy born and bred in Renfrew in 1953, the son of an Anglican minister. He had attended Kingston’s Royal Military College and graduated as a civil engineer in 1975. Last summer, after thirty years in the army, he’d retired as a full colonel, having spent the last two years on the staff of the army’s top general at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. His military record looked impressive to Sullivan’s untrained eye. Before this last stint, he’d spent two years at UN headquarters in New York, working with the UN High Commission on Refugees as an expert on the delivery of humanitarian aid. Prior to that he’d served as a military observer and as a staff advisor to peacekeeping operations in six different countries.