Mist Walker

by Barbara Fradkin

  Quinton Patterson had a baby face he was trying very hard to counteract. He had soft, rosy cheeks, a mop of black curls and only the faintest shimmer of silver above his ears. Like Green, he looked barely thirty, but unlike Green, who enjoyed the camouflage that his youthful looks provided, Patterson had affected a corporate power dress and a haughty sneer in an attempt to bulk up his image. Today he was crisply dressed in a navy pinstripe suit, coordinated royal blue tie and polished Italian shoes, and his face was a dangerous shade of pink as he snapped orders into the phone. The man’s not pleased with the latest developments, Green decided.

  “Mr. Patterson,” he began. Patterson held up a sharp finger to silence him and turned his back.

  “He can try all he wants, that’s our final offer!”

  “I’m Mike Green.” Green extended his hand.

  “Wait a—” Patterson barked, then swung around to give Green an incredulous look. Green smiled inwardly. He hadn’t bothered to put on his sports jacket, and his wrinkled shirt and scuffed shoes were clearly not what Patterson expected. “I’ll call you back,” he said into the phone and snapped it shut. Ignoring Green’s outstretched hand, he started toward the elevator.

  “Is your office on the third floor?”

  Yet another subtle putdown, Green observed, for Patterson almost certainly knew that the third floor was reserved for the senior brass. Three putdowns in the space of ten seconds. No wonder Barbara Devine said she didn’t need this crap.

  “I’ve reserved one of the interview rooms,” Green replied and pointedly headed toward the stairs, which had a fire escape decor that didn’t quite match the imperial mood Patterson was striving for. Neither did the interview room, which was small, windowless and contained nothing but a table and three moulded plastic chairs. Green took one and gestured Patterson into another.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Patterson?”

  Patterson inspected the seat before sitting down, then set his briefcase on the table and flipped it open. After extracting a yellow legal pad, he balanced a pair of reading glasses on the bridge of his nose. Glancing at his watch, he made a note on the blank pad.

  “I understand you’ve been making inquiries into my daughter’s sexual molestation case.”

  “Who told you that?” The question was not simple fencing. Green was genuinely interested in Patterson’s connections.

  “Is it true?”

  “Who told you?”

  Patterson jotted again on his legal pad, then peered at Green over the rims of his glasses. “Josh Bleustein.”

  Green had suspected as much, although he’d thought Bleustein and Patterson would be on opposite sides of this issue. Bleustein had defended the hated child molester and won. On top of that, Bleustein was the quintessential loudmouth, brawling Jew, and Patterson was old-firm Rockcliffe Wasp. But the legal fraternity was full of strange bedfellows.

  “What exactly did Bleustein tell you?” Green asked.

  “That Matthew Fraser was probably dead, and I should be prepared for the police to come after me and my family.”

  “How collegial of Mr. Bleustein, given that he worked the other side of the fence.”

  “Josh never believed Fraser was innocent.”

  “Then you must despise him for being so good at his job.”

  Patterson had been scribbling industriously on his notepad, and now a faint flush spread up his neck. “I despise the education system for betraying the innocence of children, and the police department for acting like spineless sycophants.”

  “So what can I do for you, Mr. Patterson?”

  “I want to protect the interests of my family. You’ll forgive me if I haven’t much faith in your department’s ability to do that, nor in your investigative competence. My daughter’s case is ancient history. The death of this man—if he is Fraser, and my sources tell me that’s far from assured—has nothing whatever to do with us, and I’m here to tell you that I will regard any attempt to connect the two as police harassment.”

  “You may regard it however you wish, Mr. Patterson. I have a suspicious death to investigate, and I’m sure you know the law well enough to—”

  “Don’t patronize me, Green! Personally, I want to pin a medal on whoever killed him, but if it was going to be me or someone in Becky’s case, we would have done it ten years ago, when it mattered! Not now, when it’s all over and buried. And you know damn well that’s true!”

  “In my business, it doesn’t pay to know damn well anything is true until I’ve looked into it. My team will be pursuing any and all lines of inquiry that we deem relevant.”

  “He’s probably done it again, you know! Have you thought of that?”

  Green inclined his head slightly. “Your daughter’s case is one of several lines of inquiry.”

  Patterson scribbled furiously on his notepad, and after a moment he stopped and tapped his pencil rapidly on the page. He seemed to be calculating his next move.

  “Very well,” he snapped. “However, I want your agreement that if you have something to ask of my family, you will direct it to me. I will cooperate with you.”

  “Have you or your family had any contact with Mr. Fraser since the trial?”

  Patterson sat with pen poised. “So do I have your agreement you’ll go through me?”

  The man’s intensity vibrated through the small room. Green sensed that beneath the adversarial legal façade, Patterson was a father dealing with powerful emotions in the only way he knew how, by playing the game he knew best. Green softened his tone. “Of course not, and you couldn’t have expected any other response. But I’m not insensitive to the pain in this case, sir. I’ve been in Major Crimes more than fifteen years, and I know how a crime like this leaves the victims feeling brutalized and betrayed. Those feelings never really go away; they just get paved over with a thin veneer that can easily be picked away. I can’t deny this investigation will do that, but I’ll try to be as sensitive as I can be. That much I can promise you.”

  Patterson sat suspended for a moment, then dropped his eyes and made a show of jotting more notes on his pad. The pen quivered in his hand and his tone, although brusque, was conciliatory.

  “We haven’t seen Mr. Fraser in over six years. After the trial, I kept track of his activities until he left town. It was my form of citizen’s justice. I didn’t want him to feel secure when our daughter would never feel secure again, so I sent him letters and made anonymous phone calls at night. I wanted him to know someone was watching him, so he’d better not go near any other child.”

  “Did the other members of your family know about this activity?”

  Patterson set his jaw. “This was my decision, Inspector. My wife had been through hell with her first husband—in fact, he was still jerking her around and keeping the children on an emotional roller coaster. His reaction to the molestation was to blame her for not giving Becky enough attention. When Fraser walked away free, she was almost a candidate for the Rideau Psychiatric Hospital. The only thing that kept her going was that Becky needed her help. So I let her focus on Becky, while I took on Fraser.”

  Green heard the brittle edge to the man’s tone and shifted his focus gently. “Can we talk about Becky? Did she recover?”

  Patterson removed his glasses to examine a speck on the flawless glass. The tiny interview room was soundproof, and for a few seconds the hum of the air conditioning was the only sound to fill the room. “We had several really rough years, during which we got useless advice from every single professional in the city. Then finally she seemed to settle down. She never got over it, but at least now she keeps it in the corner of her life. That’s why I insist—”

  “So what’s she up to now? She must be almost seventeen. Still in high school?”

  “No.” The man paused while he polished his glasses and perched them back on his nose. “School and Rebecca never did see eye to eye. Anne and I tried to put the awful experience behind us and cooperate with her teachers over the years, but Rebecc
a never could. She felt constantly in danger, and she was so angry deep down inside that she took it out on every teacher she’s had since.”

  “When did she drop out?”

  “Oh, about Grade One?” Patterson looked bleak for a moment and pushed up his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. When he replaced them, he was all business again. “I don’t see how all this is relevant, Inspector. Rebecca’s been through hell and back, but she’s pulling out of it, and eventually she’ll overcome it. But as far as her contact with Matthew Fraser goes, it ended the last time he stuck his—” He sat rigid, his eyes fixed on his notepad, but Green could almost see his rage battling for expression. “Please let her continue her recovery in peace.”

  I only hope I can, Green found himself thinking. For your sake and for hers. He steered the interview to less sensitive ground. “What about your wife and son? Billy, I believe it is. He’s in his twenties by now, right? Either of them have any recent contact or interest in Mr. Fraser?”

  “My wife wouldn’t have the energy, and frankly I doubt Billy would have the interest.” Patterson’s expression hardened subtly, as if he’d remembered where he was. “You see, Rebecca wasn’t the only casualty of that useless legal charade. While all of that was going on, Billy didn’t get the attention he deserved. He was ten when I came on the scene. He’d spent years watching his father torment his mother, and then years dealing with his father’s emotional blackmail. So at first Billy wanted no part of me. When the sexual allegations came to light, we expected him to understand Rebecca was our first priority. Instead, he started dabbling in goth culture and drugs, and before we noticed, he had a major cocaine addiction. He was out for nights on end, stealing from us and bringing dubious characters around, and in the end he went to live with his father. Broke his mother’s heart.”

  “Are things better with Billy now?”

  Patterson slapped his pen down on his notepad and peered at Green over his glasses. “You know, Inspector, I believe I’ve been more than forthcoming in my replies to your questions, but our private vicissitudes are not something I feel obliged to share further with you. At this point, I think if you want to know anything more about my stepson, you should ask him yourself.”

  Green made a mental note to do just that, before casually turning the page of his notebook. “I do appreciate your candour, Mr. Patterson. I have one last question of a less personal nature. Rebecca’s natural father—do you know his reaction to the verdict and his current feelings towards Fraser?”

  Quinton thrust his notepad away and sat back. No need to take notes on this topic, Green observed. “Steve Whelan is a chronic malcontent, and I don’t imagine he’s undergone a transformation for the better since I last saw him. If you bother to read the files, no doubt you’ll find all the information you need. Steve wrote dozens of letters of complaint to the police chief and commission on your department’s handling of the case, he filed numerous motions with the courts about our failure to protect her, I believe he wrote the school board, the teacher’s union, the trustees and probably the Minister of Education in Queen’s Park to complain about their cover-up on Fraser’s behalf. The only person he never blamed was himself, for making her the confused, angry and vulnerable child whom Fraser found so easy to prey upon and whom the middle-aged, middle-class judge found so easy to disbelieve. Adults, Inspector, all banding together against a hyperactive, defiant and decidedly naughty little girl.”

  Green felt again the tug of pity. “What about now? Is her father still bitter?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly. But I expect he’s far too busy attending to the slights against himself to dedicate much effort to the suffering of others.”

  “Ever known him to be physically violent?”

  Patterson considered the question in silence for a moment, then pulled his notepad back and jotted down a few notes. “To those weaker than himself like Anne, yes. But when it comes to facing down another man, he wouldn’t have the courage.”

  Perhaps not, Green thought after he’d thanked Quinton Patterson for his cooperation and escorted him out of the interview room. But Fraser was himself a meek man, crippled by fears and doubts. A beaten man, perhaps weak enough in Steve Whelan’s eyes to be no threat at all.

  Green returned to his own office with his curiosity piqued to learn more about both Steve Whelan and his son, who’d be a young man by now and capable of some revenge of his own. On speculation, Green ran a police computer search on both of them. The computer spat out a long list of police contacts with the father, but nearly all in his role as complainant, with a couple of harassment charges and one impaired driving. Nothing violent. If Steve had been mistreating his wife as Patterson claimed, the police had never been called. Not unusual in domestic cases, but hardly a confirmation of any hard-core violent tendencies on Steve Whelan’s part.

  The son’s sheet painted a picture more pathetic than sinister. William Steven Whelan had a sealed Young Offender file and three pages of minor offences as an adult involving break and enters, drug dealing and disturbing the peace. He’d done some minor time in previous years but nothing in the past six months. Either he’d grown smarter, or he’d cleaned up his act. Some of his known associates were local players in organized crime, but it was a stretch to think that this petty criminal, whose antics seemed to do harm mainly to himself, would have the daring to commit murder any more than his father did.

  Still, neither man could be ruled out. If Patterson was to be believed, Billy had spent his formative years learning the art of violence from his father, and as an inadvertent, invisible, unacknowledged victim in this tragedy, he certainly had the motive. And Steve had a memory for wrongs that could rival an elephant’s. It was worth checking both men out, to see what they’d been up to in recent weeks.

  Green glanced at his watch. Past five o’clock. Rebecca’s biological father lived in the eastern suburb of Orleans, which was the wrong end of the city for Green’s drive home. But Billy lived on Woodridge Crescent in the west end. It was an area notorious for poorly planned, overcrowded public housing projects which, despite the proximity of the river and its waterfront parks, had driven real estate prices down and petty crime statistics up. Woodridge Crescent would only require a minor detour on his way home.

  After the usual crawl along the Queensway, Green exited at the Bayshore Shopping Centre, pulled up to the curb outside a large low-rent apartment building and slapped a police sticker in his windshield. There was no answer when he buzzed Billy’s number from the lobby, but he slipped in easily behind a bevy of Somali women negotiating the heavy doors with umbrellas, strollers and shopping bags in hand. It had begun to rain again, and they were all windblown and wet. He made his way up in the elevator to the eighth floor and down the long hall filled with the chatter of foreign languages and the pungent aromas of exotic foods. Number 821 was tucked into the end of the hall against the fire stairs, and there was no answer to his knock. He listened through the door but could detect no noise above the chatter of the French TV next door.

  As he left, he intercepted a young woman letting herself into an apartment down the hall. She had a little girl in tow, both of them sporting matching raincoats and blond pony tails.

  “Do you know your neighbour in 821, a young man named Billy Whelan?”

  She edged away from him, shielding her child and shaking her head sharply. No, of course not, Green thought. This is not a building where you give information to total strangers. He debated whether showing his badge would improve his chances and decided it wouldn’t.

  “I’m a friend of his father’s,” he said instead. “His dad’s worried about him.”

  She unlocked the door and shepherded her daughter inside. “Katie, honey, go watch television, okay? Mummy will be there in a moment.”

  “Is Billy in trouble?” the little girl asked. The woman pushed her again with a sharp look, then turned to Green. She shifted her gum to the other side of her mouth with exaggerated disinterest. She was trying to lo
ok hard, but there was a hint of anxiety in her face. “Why’s his father worried?”

  “Well, you know—Billy’s had his ups and downs.”

  “Not that his dad ever noticed.”

  “Yeah, well Mr. Patterson’s had his ups and his downs too.”

  “Oh, that dad,” she exclaimed. “Now I know you’re lying. His stepfather has no use for him, never sees him. Never even comes to any of his shows.”

  “What shows?”

  The young woman shrugged. “A few gigs here and there. His band even had an opening spot at Barrymore’s last month.”

  Green masked his surprise and thought fast. Barrymore’s was a prestigious downtown club which featured live musicians and entertainers. Most of Canada’s top bands had played the club at one time or another, and for Billy to have landed a spot there, he must be doing something more than racking up summary conviction offences. Green tried his friendliest smile. “So what’s his band called? I’ll try to catch a show.”

  That clammed her up faster than if he’d shown his badge. She blew a huge pink bubble and shrugged her skinny shoulders. “Look, I haven’t seen him, okay? Not in a few days.”

  “But you’re a friend of his—”

  "Was.”

  “Still, you obviously care.” A slight exaggeration, given her emphatic use of the past tense, but he was anxious to keep the conversation going.

  “I care if the cops are looking for him. If he’s fucked up again.” She gave him a long stony stare which told him he hadn’t fooled her for an instant. “He was supposed to cash my cheque for me, days ago. Oh, screw it!” she muttered and closed the door.

  Well, well, Green thought as he made his way back to the car. Someone else who’s dropped out of sight. Although, of course, the girlfriend was simply speculating, and even if Billy had disappeared, it might not be for reasons connected to the case. Billy was a drug user with a habit of getting into trouble and an unexpected fistful of cash in his hands. The lure of the open road might have been irresistible. Tomorrow, in between the paperwork and the report Green was meant to be preparing on cross-jurisdictional collaboration in CID , perhaps there would be time to worry about where Billy had run off to.