The hall below filled with the thunder of a hundred feet, and children’s chatter reverberated off the walls. Long broke off his diatribe and moved toward his door. “I’ve got to get to my class now, detective. So if you’ve got more questions, they’ll have to wait.”
“That’ll do for now.” Green flipped his notebook shut. “I appreciate your honesty.”
“Yeah, well, you know—” Long paused in the doorway and watched as the upstairs hallway filled with students. Sweaty, redfaced, and irritable from the heat, they jostled one another noisily. “It was a difficult time for everybody, and we just wanted to be fair. Frankly, we didn’t think that was true of everyone.”
Those words stayed with Green as he plowed his way through the crowds back down the stairs. Crime always aroused strong feelings in those it touched, and as a police officer he’d often borne the brunt of the public hysteria and finger pointing that followed. And nowhere were the feelings more intense and personal than when the victim was a child. Teachers, like police officers, could change from protector to traitor in the public eye on the strength of one word.
Once downstairs, Green headed back toward the principal’s office to inform her he was done and found his way blocked by a massive woman in a purple and yellow floral tent dress and a straw hat. She overflowed the secretary’s chair and took up all the remaining space in the little outer office. She eyed Green with a chilly stare no doubt designed to make the most rebellious student rethink his approach. When Green introduced himself, the stare grew shrewd.
“Oh, it’s you. Mrs. Allen said to keep an eye on you. She’s gone to a meeting, and she said if you had more questions, you should give her a call.” The woman reached a pudgy arm across her desk to pick up a dish of mints. She offered one to Green, which he declined, before popping one into her mouth. “Waste of time talking to her, anyway,” she continued, sucking noisily. “She’s only been here three years.”
Changing his mind, Green reached over, selected a mint, and regretted it the instant it hit his taste buds in full force. He propped himself as casually as he could against the edge of her desk. “How long have you been here?”
“Twenty-three years. And you’re right, I remember it all.”
“Remember what?” Green asked in surprise. Ross Long hadn’t had time to tip off the office, even if he’d wanted to.
“The Fraser case. That’s what this is about, right? Those teachers you wanted, they all testified at the trial.”
Shrewd doesn’t do the woman justice, Green thought, and gave her an appreciative smile. “Did you testify?”
The woman looked askance, her jowls shaking with the vigour of her denial. “Hell, no. I had to work with these people. Back then, I was on my own with three kids to support, no car, no child care, and this job was around the corner from my house.”
“So you thought you’d better not take sides?”
“Listen, this community’s got some powerful people in it. There are parents who are crown attorneys themselves, or justice lawyers, or work for big firms with lawyers up the yingyang. Consider this school’s been slated to close three times—look at it, it’s a dump!—but if the school board closed it, the kids would have to be bussed out of their community, maybe even meet the big bad world in the Glebe. So each time, the parents had enough clout to make the board, the trustees, the director and his backroom boys all back down.”
The mint was slowly burning a hole in Green’s tongue, and he eased it carefully into the corner of his mouth, trying to look attentive. “And were they out for blood on this case?”
“Blood? No, the kid’s balls. And the balls of the principal, who didn’t act fast enough on the first complaint, and the balls of the board, who didn’t fire the kid on the spot.”
“By kid you mean—?”
“Matt,” she exclaimed, crunching her mint and sending spittle flying. “He was a kid from where I sat. One of those nice, soft-spoken guys who loved teaching and who had a special touch with the timid ones. He started off in Grade Six, but the big kids walked all over him, so the principal moved him down to Grade One. He loved the little ones, and they loved him.”
“No hanky-panky?”
She hesitated and eyed him dubiously from under folds of flesh. Then, with excessive care, she leaned forward and took another mint from the bowl. “Who’s going to know all this?”
Green, who hadn’t even extracted his notebook, gave an exaggerated shrug. “Maybe nobody. We’re not reopening the case, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m just trying to fill in some holes. Are you suggesting there may have been some hanky-panky?”
“Not that I ever saw, mind you. I wouldn’t have kept quiet if I really knew something. I mean, I have kids myself, and the parents would have had to get in line behind me to get a piece of his balls. But—” She paused to tug on her dress and to redirect the overflow of her breasts. In the heat, she sweated freely. “There was something weird about Matt. You know those soft, gentle kinds of men? They seem to feel safer with kids, maybe even sexually, you know? This is just my feeling. I mean, the sex drive is there, right, and the guy’s got to make it with somebody, and if he’s too damn shy to try a woman and he gets tired of going solo—well, it makes sense, eh? And that’s what creeped me out. I didn’t have a thing to go on, I never saw him look at a kid funny or sneak one off to a back room somewhere, but he hung around with the little kids, and he didn’t show much interest in the pretty young thing we had here at the time who was trying to catch his attention.”
Just as well you kept these thoughts to yourself, Green thought. Without substantiation, your speculation about Fraser’s sexual inclinations probably wouldn’t have done much to enhance Barbara Devine’s case, but it would have been chewed to bits by defence council.
“Is that what most of the teachers thought? That he was a bit strange and just might be guilty?”
“The teachers?” She snorted. “They weren’t allowed to have an opinion. Or if they did, they didn’t dare voice it. The teacher’s union swooped in here almost as soon as the shit hit the fan and told everybody that their duty was to stand behind a fellow teacher and show him a united front against these false accusations. They weren’t supposed to talk to anyone about it, not the parents, not the press, and they were supposed to answer police questions only about things they personally knew.”
“Wise under the circumstances.”
“Sure. And what did that tell the parents? You have no idea how many upset parents came through that door to complain to me the teachers were implying the kids were lying—”
“Kids? What kids?”
“Well—the ones who said Matt molested them.”
“I thought there was only one.”
“Only one that went to trial—and what a little piece of work she turned out to be—but there were a few who started reporting things in the months after her. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The point is the union told the teachers to support Matt, which meant saying the charges were false, which meant saying the kids were lying. Or at least imagining things.”
“Where did the school board stand on this?”
“Where it usually does, as far from the stink as possible. Don’t want to interfere with the case, that was their line. Offer counselling to the families, keep Fraser away from kids, and let the courts do their thing.”
“Also probably wise under the circumstances.”
Her baleful look returned. “Easy for you to say, you see this kind of thing every day. But schools are supposed to be like families, and here we had the parents suspecting the teachers, and the teachers accusing the parents of lynching, and the board not supporting either the parents or the teachers.”
“In other words, a mess.”
“You got that right. After Matt was acquitted, the guys in power—I mean the parents, the board and the union—had two choices for the mess. Blame the six-year-old girl who started it all, or blame Matt Fraser. Some choice, eh? Especially when the lawye
r who was heading up the parent group happened to be the little girl’s stepfather.”
“So Matt Fraser was history.”
She nodded and went for her third mint. “Best all around, don’t you think?”
Eight
Best all around, except for Matt Fraser, Green thought, as he switched the car’s air conditioning on full and sat for a moment studying the school. The inscription “Duke of York Elementary School, 1924” was set in stone over the transom of the front door, and the overall effect was one of dignified decline. There was no hint of the pain and vitriol which had fomented inside.
Schools were supposed to be like families, the secretary had said. Green tried to envision Tony arriving home one day with a dark, bewildered tale about his favourite teacher. Or even his daughter Hannah, who emerged from his ex-wife’s infrequent letters as little more than a disembodied scrap of rebellion. The mere thought of either of them in the clutches of a predator knotted his gut. Faced with the most primal and abhorrent violation of their child, what parent could be blamed for losing their head? And what teacher would fail to sympathize, no matter where their professional allegiance lay?
“Mike, what are you doing?” Barbara Devine demanded when he posed her those very questions back at the police station half an hour later. He had found her in her office eating a soggy hotdog with her stocking feet propped on the window ledge and an open policy binder balanced on her lap. She swung around to her desk and shoved her feet back into her high heels.
“The Fraser disappearance may become a homicide investigation,” he replied blandly. “I’m gathering background.”
“Oh, damn,” she muttered, then dropped the half-eaten hot dog in the garbage and scrubbed the mustard from her hands with a napkin. “Why do you assume it goes back to this abuse case, rather than some new trouble he’s got himself into?”
Green debated whether to tell her about Fraser’s visit to Bleustein or the CAS , but decided against it. He didn’t entirely trust her not to meddle. “Instinct,” he said instead.
She eyed him for a long moment. A smudge of mustard on her upper lip detracted from the look of professional disinterest she affected. “Mike, you don’t know sex crimes. Trust me, these guys don’t change. Fraser has probably made a hundred new enemies by now, while you’re busy barking up the wrong tree.”
“Then enlighten me. I want to know why the investigation took so long and why things got so out-of-hand.”
She sighed. “There was no way to handle that case without it getting messy, because everything had to be kept secret. You know the laws on sex crimes and offences against minors, Mike. We couldn’t reveal who the victims were or what Fraser was alleged to have done to them. In fact, before we laid the charges, we couldn’t even confirm that Fraser was under investigation, and we certainly couldn’t solicit information or question classmates about other incidents.”
“Even subtly?”
She folded her arms across her chest brusquely, a sure sign he was getting to her. “Investigating child abuse is not like any other criminal case, Green. You can’t inquire subtly about it. I’d investigated dozens of allegations against teachers and other professionals, many of which had no substance whatsoever. Building a credible case is like dodging landmines in the dark. You have to protect the rights of the accused and the privacy of the children, but still uncover the facts in the case, all the while watching your back so the accused doesn’t sue the pants off you if he gets off. You don’t want a witch hunt; you don’t want the man’s reputation slandered or his name smeared, nor do you want the defence to be able to argue undue influence. So you keep as tight a lid on the information as you can.”
She planted her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “The problem is, at the first hint of funny business, people go ballistic, imagining all sorts of horrors. Parents started phoning each other and questioning their children. Teachers went paranoid because they didn’t know which children had complained or what the substance of the complaints was. They started questioning their own behaviour and wondering if they’d be the next to be accused.”
She was on a roll now, the rawness of her feelings welling up through her words. Green could tell that ten years had not buried this case for her one iota. Devine might be trying to refashion herself as a corporate administrator, but beneath the tailored navy suit and the expensive blouse, her passion for the fight was with her still.
“And we couldn’t do a damn thing to reassure anyone. Naturally, I told the principal to assure his staff that no ordinary behaviour, not even hugs or sitting the little ones on laps, would get them in trouble, but I couldn’t tell them Fraser had made the little girl undress, he’d made her give him blow jobs, and he’d ejaculated between her thighs. Becky was graphic and clear on this, Mike. No matter what the teachers said and what the defence alleged—that Becky had been a behaviour problem all along, that she was a habitual liar and drama queen—no child makes those details up. And these child molesters are smart. They don’t penetrate or leave marks, so there’s no physical proof, and they pick the marginalized children whom no one will believe. Children who are already angry and upset, who crave the attention and whose new problems will be masked by the behaviour problems they already show. And that’s exactly what happened. My worst nightmares came true in that case, Mike. Parents pumped their children, children embellished their stories, the defence tore their evidence apart on cross. And the creep walked.”
“But you should have seen that coming,” Green replied. “With no information or direction from us, hysteria would take over.”
“I did see it coming!” she snapped. “But we couldn’t handle things any differently. We couldn’t just interview every little girl he’d had any substantial contact with over the last four years. That would have been a fishing expedition which would have biased the public’s perception of the accused and endangered his right to a fair trial by undermining the presumption of innocence. Talk about handing Bleustein his defence on a silver platter. Not to mention he’d have accused us of manufacturing evidence.”
“On any new cases that surfaced, possibly. But what about Rebecca Whelan herself? Surely with that graphic description, you had more than enough to proceed with her alone. If you’d charged him immediately, there would have been less time for the rumours to start and less time for her to get confused about her story.”
Her face flamed, and he thought for an instant she would leap over the desk at him. “I didn’t screw up this case, Green, if that’s what you’re implying! The girl wasn’t stable. She kept changing her story of the events—the sequence, the times and places. Sometimes it was last week, sometimes last year, all normal enough for a little kid who doesn’t understand time. But white, middle-aged, male judges don’t always understand that. Twenty-six sexual abuse cases I had that year, Green, and twenty-six acquittals. I wanted this one to stick, for once. So I was trying to get other cases to back her up. Waiting for other parents to come forward with more complaints on their own. That took months!”
“Did you know about the kids he drove home late from school?”
Her eyes clouded, and she snorted at the memory. “Oh, yes. And that was an example of the parents being too overzealous. When they got wind of the rumours, they questioned their kids and asked them point blank ‘Did Mr. Fraser do this, did he do that, did he give you candy, did he ever touch you?’ By the time we got to them, the kids were telling me about every little pat on the shoulder. Only two cases sounded suspicious, but in the trial—”
Devine’s phone rang, and her demeanour changed instantly from backroom cop to polished professional as she picked it up. She listened in silence for a moment, then her gaze flicked towards Green. A scowl marred her mask of calm.
“That won’t be necessary, counsellor. It was Inspector Green, who is right here. Shall I put him on, or—?” She paused to listen, then glanced at her watch. “How about twenty minutes. He’ll meet you in the lobby.”
Green raised
an eyebrow as she hung up, but he waited her out. Her scowl deepened. “Green, I don’t need this crap. That was Quinton J. Patterson, of McKendry, Patterson and Coles. The little girl’s stepfather. And he’s on the warpath.”
* * *
Quinton Patterson arrived five minutes early, suggesting that he had come directly from his law office, which was just up Elgin Street, opposite the main court house. Feeling perverse, Green kept him waiting ten minutes and endured two pages over the station’s PA system while he refreshed his memory about the family background.
Rebecca Whelan’s parents had separated when Rebecca was just a baby and her brother Billy was eight. Custody had been awarded to the mother after a bitter court dispute in which both parties had accused the other of being unfit, but the children continued to have regular weekend visits with their father up until at least the time of the trial.
On one of her many court appearances during the custody battle, Rebecca’s mother had met Quinton Patterson, who was appearing in the same court on an unrelated matter, and they began an intense love affair which led to their marriage as soon the papers were finalized in her divorce. It was the first marriage for him, and the couple had no subsequent children of their own, but police reports at the time of Fraser’s trial described Quinton Patterson as fiercely devoted to his stepchildren, although more so to little Becky than to his stepson, who’d been a surly ten when Quinton came on the scene. Although he’d only been a junior lawyer in his firm at the time, Barbara Devine had clearly felt the pressure of his legal sabre-rattling to lay a charge in this case.
So does the man come now as friend or foe, Green wondered as he made his way down to the lobby. Is he hoping I have new evidence or a fresh resolve to put Fraser away, or is he trying to put the lid back on the whole painful mess? As a lawyer, Patterson certainly knows about double jeopardy, which prevents our retrying the case in criminal court, but perhaps he’s hoping for some new legal toehold by which he can go after Fraser and the teacher’s union—indeed why not the whole school board and the police department—in a civil suit. Green’s answer came the minute he laid eyes on the man striding back and forth across the marble foyer with a cellphone glued to his ear.
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