This Thing of Darkness

by Barbara Fradkin

  Caitlin sat up at the far edge of her bed. “No one can know the whole. Even angels can’t know, but can only walk with you on the journey.”

  “Have you met anyone who walked with you?”

  She recoiled, her grey eyes darkening as if prelude to a storm. “Why?”

  “Well...” Why indeed, Sharon thought, still feeling her way along her tightrope. “Maybe they could still help.”

  “Still. All still.” The woman pressed her eyes shut, and a small moan escaped her lips.

  Sharon began a mental retreat. “Do you want—?”

  “No!” Caitlin’s hand shot out and knocked the water glass out of Sharon’s hand, drenching the wall and Sharon’s clothes. “Don’t trick me! Gone, gone, go, go, out, out, spots and all!”

  One question too many, Sharon thought as she backed away to stand at the door, watching carefully to see whether her retreat would be enough or whether another shot of meds was in order.

  It was three hours before Green could get to the hospital to check on Sullivan and the patrolman. He was delayed at the scene dealing with the duty inspector, the collision investigation unit, and various other members of the brass, including Barbara Devine, who demanded to be kept informed of every detail pertaining to Lindsay Corsin’s death. Because the girl had been waiting in the back of Green’s staff car, on his instructions, and she had been killed by another police officer, a Special Investigations team would be convened from outside the Ottawa Police Services to determine if there was any blame to be laid. Devine wanted no surprises.

  Green was being peppered from all sides, including from the media, who lined the police cordon three deep in places. Zoom lenses were trained on the twisted wreckage of his car, no doubt picking up Lindsay’s blood that had pooled on the sidewalk. Green forced himself to focus. There were tasks to be done, families to be notified and reports to be given. He could help no one if he dwelled on the memory of his friend’s inert body as it was whisked into the ambulance, nor on the bloody body of the lonely young girl from Timmins who had perished because of him.

  Throughout it all, he was aware of David Rosenthal, who like himself had been treated by the paramedics at the scene for hand lacerations from the broken truck window but who had refused their recommendation to go to the hospital. He chose instead to stay at the scene answering police questions and providing a far more lucid account of the crash than Green could muster. The paramedics credited him with the fact that Sullivan had even survived for the ambulance ride.

  “I’ve had medical training,” he told the investigators. “I just never practiced, because I prefer research. I don’t know where the strength came from. I work out regularly, and I do a lot of sports, but nothing to explain hauling a two hundred-and-fifty-pound man through the window of a truck.”

  Adrenaline, Green thought, recognizing the signs of it in his own body. The racing heart, hyper-alertness, sense of readiness and need for action. They lasted until he was finally able to climb into a cab and go to the hospital. En route, like a wave crashing on the shore, his strength crumbled, leaving him weak-kneed and tremulous. His hands throbbed beneath the bandages. He got out of the cab at the emergency entrance to the Civic Campus and paused to lean against the rough brick wall by the door. He forced deep breaths. He couldn’t let up yet. On the other side of that door, a crisis was still unfolding. Sullivan was one of the most deeply loved and respected officers on the force. Green had been fielding calls to his cellphone all afternoon from worried officers. He knew the hospital waiting room would be full.

  And then there was Mary.

  Mary Sullivan was Brian’s high-school sweetheart, who at eighteen had followed him to the city from her farm outside Eganville, who had put up with the stress, shift work and long, gut-wrenching hours the job demanded. Who had given him support and correction in equal measure, along with three children now in their teens. She’d learned resilience on her rocky, hard-scrabble farm, and when things got tough, Mary got fighting mad.

  Mary was going to be furious. Green took a final, bracing breath, pushed open the glass doors and walked into the emergency room. The waiting area was filled with people slouched in chairs, reading a book, trying to doze, or pacing nervously. The quiet was punctuated by the rattle of carts and the staccato chatter of the hospital’s paging system, but otherwise the atmosphere was routine. There was not a police officer in sight.

  “They transferred him over to the Heart Institute,” the admissions clerk told him, then fired off directions about the maze of corridors and stairways he should follow. He got lost twice and ended up wandering the back parking lot in a daze, staring at the sprawl of aging, interconnected, red brick buildings that comprised the hospital. He spotted the entranceway to the Heart Institute by chance.

  Inside the surgical waiting room, he found the bedlam he was expecting. The nurses had apparently given up efforts to cull the crowd. Dozens of officers, some in uniform, others in plain clothes or off duty, crammed into every seat and stood leaning against the walls, sipping coffee and talking about anything to stave off thought as they waited for news.

  Green heard snippets of conversation. “The new goalie—”, “Sens game last night?”, “The guy blew point one nine!”, “If Devine gets it—”

  There was no sign of Mary, but Green spotted Gibbs and waded through the crowd to his side. A few hands reached out to pat his shoulder as he passed. A few faces registered surprise.

  Gibbs mirrored the surprise of others. “You okay, sir?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I heard it was your car he hit.”

  So that was one of the rumours buzzing around. Green waved an impatient hand. “But I wasn’t in it.” Gibbs looked pale and wan. Like himself, Gibbs fought grim memories when he was in a hospital. “What’s the latest news?”

  “Touch and go, sir. They rushed him into surgery. That balloon thing they do.”

  “Balloon?” Green tried to think through his exhaustion. “You mean angioplasty?”

  “Yeah. They’re throwing everything they have at him, but the nurses here aren’t telling us much. All the guys think that’s a bad sign.”

  Green dared not think too hard. In all his experiences in hospital waiting rooms, he’d found nurses only too eager to share reassuring news, but when the news was bad, they clammed up and let the doctor carry the ball.

  He was still grappling to make sense of Gibbs’s words. “What’s wrong with his heart?”

  Gibbs’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “He had a heart attack, that’s what caused the crash. The accident itself barely hurt him at all.”

  Green’s mind reeled. He thought back over the days, indeed the weeks, before the accident. Now with the clarity of hindsight, all the warning signs had been there screaming to be noticed. The high blood pressure, the fatigue, and constant popping of antacids. But the man was only forty-six! Who thought of heart disease in a forty-six-year-old who’d been an athlete all his life?

  Other officers approached him, some with sympathies and others with questions. After the fact, everyone was an armchair physician.

  “I didn’t think he was looking too good.”

  “I noticed his weight was creeping up.”

  “It’s the stress. My uncle was only forty-two when he dropped dead, and he didn’t have an ounce of fat.”

  A wave of claustrophobia washed over Green. He detached himself from the crowd and walked outside, sucking in the cool autumn air gratefully. On a patch of grass nearby, a group of smokers huddled against the cold. Green shook his head at the irony.

  The door opened behind him, and he turned to see the tall, cadaverous figure of Superintendent Adam Jules. Jules had been his boss for years before being replaced by Barbara Devine, and he had been both his mentor and his chief advocate in the inner chambers of the force. He had rescued Green from Patrol and brought him into Investigations, where his intelligence, obsessive drive and unorthodox viewpoint were assets. He had also paired him up with B
rian Sullivan. Now he gave Green a melancholy smile. “How are you holding up, Michael?”

  “Worried,” Green said. He felt precarious and off-balance. “But Brian’s a strong man, and this is a state-of-the-art facility. He’ll pull through.”

  Jules dipped his lean, equine head in agreement. The grim line of his lips was the only hint of his own distress, but Green knew that the austere, solitary bachelor felt the threat to one of his own more keenly than he would ever show. He had nurtured all their careers.

  “Tragic about the young woman,” he said now. “No one’s fault, but still...”

  He didn’t elaborate. Jules never said two words when one would do. Both of them knew the self-recrimination that Green and Sullivan would feel.

  “Has the OPP located the family?” Green asked, anxious to fill the void where feelings massed. “The university only had an aunt’s name.”

  Jules nodded. “The girl was an orphan. Living on her own since she was sixteen and couldn’t wait to leave the place behind. Aunt’s been milking the media and talking about lawsuits, but the OPP officer who delivered the news didn’t see much grief.”

  “Poor girl’s probably worth more to her dead than alive,” Green said, then regretted it. A girl’s life had ended, and cynicism had no place in the mourning of her. “But I’ll call in the morning. We should send flowers and make a donation. And if things settle down around here, I’d like to attend her funeral. I feel...”

  Jules nodded, then pursed his lips cautiously. “Anything that’s going to come back to bite you?”

  Green shot him a quick glance. Had Jules been sent by the brass to get the whole story out of him, so they could ready their defences? Once again he felt shame for his uncharitable reaction. Jules was not a lackey. He had always stood up for his officers, even under pressure from the brass.

  He shook his head. “She was waiting to view a photo lineup Brian was bringing over.”

  “Why was he in his own vehicle on police business?”

  Green caught his breath. His frazzled mind raced over all the possible complications of using a personal vehicle on duty. The damage to Sullivan’s beloved new truck likely wouldn’t be covered by his insurance, but was there anything else? Any other liability Sullivan would face if the girl’s family sued?

  “I believe he was going straight home afterwards. He...” Green’s throat closed unexpectedly. “He said he was tired.”

  The glass door slammed open with a whoosh behind them and Mary Sullivan stormed out, all fear and fury. She was immaculately dressed in the power suit and suede overcoat of a successful real estate agent, but her carrot-red hair stood straight up as if she had been pulling it, and her mascara had streaked down her cheeks. Her face grew crimson at the sight of him.

  He reached out. “Mary, I—”

  She slashed his arms away. “Goddamn you, Mike. Goddamn you! He was afraid to tell you. Afraid to disappoint you! And now look!”

  He opened his mouth to ask her “tell me what?”, but Jules’ quiet voice cut him off.

  “How is he?”

  Caught off guard, Mary flicked a glance at Jules before slamming Green again with her rage. “He’s alive. Maybe. But he’s probably lost fifteen per cent of his heart function and God knows how much of his brain. He’s in a coma because this job bled the life out of him, and you let it happen. No, you demanded it. You know what? No more. Whatever is left of him—if he ever wakes up—he’s mine!”

  Fourteen

  Ablack, moonless night had fallen by the time Green could stand the wait no longer. He’d never been good at hospitals, with their grim portent of death. Medical updates kept drifting in, but the essentials remained the same. His best friend hung between life and death, his recovery far from assured. He might never again be the man Green had known, the man who listened to his wild flights into zebra land with a bemused smile, only to gently, patiently remind him of the facts. The man who understood his passion for justice and his determination to beat the bad guys. The man who’d been content to let him lead but who had always watched his back.

  The man who’d forgiven him a hundred times in their years together. This time, for his worst transgression of all, there might never be that chance.

  Green walked the streets blindly, unable and unwilling to think. Memories of the crash kept sweeping through him— the raw shriek of metal, the stench of burning rubber, the taste of dread in his throat. And Mary lashing out in rage and pain. “You demanded it!”

  On his belt he felt his cellphone vibrate and he snatched it up, terrified of news. Private caller, the ID said. Cautiously he answered.

  “Mike? I just heard on the news! Where are you?”

  Sharon’s voice. Relief flooded through him. “Just outside the hospital, taking a break.”

  “How’s Brian?

  Green filled her in, clipped and professional, in his best cop’s voice.

  Sharon was silent a moment. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m... I’m...” His throat closed.

  “I’m going to ask to sign out early. It’s pretty quiet here now. I’ll get someone else to do my rounds.”

  He didn’t protest. He raised his head to look westward down the quiet residential street. She was there, less than a kilometre away. He wanted to rush to her. Never go back inside, never face the grim faces of the nurses and the reproachful faces of his colleagues. He had a reputation for driving his officers hard.

  He tried to sound solicitous of her safety. “I’m on Ruskin Avenue. Walk straight along it and I’ll meet you.”

  The traffic along the narrow residential streets was still heavy as hospital visitors came and went, and the headlights cast the landscape in harsh, constantly shifting shadows. He saw her first as a tiny figure backlit by an approaching car, and he quickened his pace. When they met, she said nothing. She merely reached up to wrap him in her arms. He pressed her to him.

  “Brian’s a strong man,” she said eventually. “The doctors always give the worst case scenario.”

  He pulled away. “He was down a long time. I’ve been replaying the scene. I think he lost consciousness and slumped forward on the horn. That horn was sounding for at least fifteen seconds before he hit my car. Another minute or two for us to reach the truck and realize what was wrong. Two minutes to pull him out of the truck—”

  “Time always slows down when you’re dealing with a crisis. It probably wasn’t that long.”

  He shook his head. “Ambulance response time from 911 call to arrival was five minutes. That much we do know. And we know his heart stopped several times en route to the hospital.”

  “But he was getting CPR,” she said. “And he’s alive. That’s already a huge plus in cardiac arrest cases.”

  “But for what? To be an invalid? A vegetable?”

  She slipped her arm through his as they walked down the street. “We don’t know that. Let’s hope.”

  “And if he wakes up, he’s going to know he killed a twenty-year-old girl. He has to live with that.”

  “I know, and that’s tragic. Poor girl. But it was an accident, hardly his fault.”

  Green gazed up through the tall, brooding trees into the sky. Pinpoints of starlight showered the inky expanse. So far away. Some long dead. “I think he may have known he was in trouble,” he began slowly. “Mary said he was afraid to tell me. She didn’t say what, but maybe he knew he wasn’t well.” He shook his head impatiently. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Because of us, that girl is dead. She was an innocent kid just trying to help the investigation. I put her in harm’s way, and Brian killed her. We can’t either of us escape—” He broke off. Took a deep, ragged breath.

  Sharon stopped him and drew him to a nearby bench on the edge of the hospital grounds. She took his hands in hers. She said nothing, but he felt his defences slowly crumble. He wanted to flee, to scream, to drive a knife into his insides to gut out the pain.

  “Brian came because I insisted. He knew there was something wr
ong, but he pushed his limits because I insisted. He had that heart attack because I—”

  “He would have had that heart attack anyway, honey. Maybe when he was driving 100k an hour on the Queensway, taking a bunch of other innocent drivers with him.”

  “But this was an innocent girl who was there because I put her there. She didn’t even want to stay, because she was late for class, but once again, I insisted.”

  She scrutinized him in the darkness for a moment, then sighed. “This was in connection to the Rosenthal case?”

  He nodded. “She was going to ID a young woman who had regular visits with Rosenthal. Brian was bringing a photo line-up to show her. Because, damn it, I couldn’t wait till tomorrow. Levesque is all set to railroad the Somali kid, and I was determined to find out who this mystery woman was and what she had to do with the murder.”

  Sharon pulled back, her gaze probing. “What did she look like?”

  “I don’t know. Another stupid thing. I didn’t even get a decent description from Lindsay, only that she thought the woman was young and a prostitute. I’ve been out of the trenches for so long, I don’t even follow basic procedures!”

  “What makes you think the woman has anything to do with Rosenthal’s death?”

  “Nothing specific. It’s just a coincidence that has to be clarified. The woman apparently visited Rosenthal at his apartment most Saturday nights. We don’t know if it was for sex or—”

  “He was pretty old.”

  Green shot her a glance but squelched a protest. “He’d also been known to try to help people. One of my street sources says he kept an eye on the street kids. Anyway, for whatever reason, this woman was a regular visitor, but the night he died, she didn’t show. But a sex trade worker was seen on video close to the scene.”

  Sharon shivered and rubbed her arms. The night wind had picked up. “Do you have the photos from Brian’s line-up?”

  He was jolted. “Probably still in the truck. When we hauled him out of the truck, he had nothing with him.” He swung on her, energized. “The truck was towed to our forensic bays, waiting for the Special Investigations team to take a look at it. We should get the photos out of it. They’re crucial to the Rosenthal case.”