Mist Walker

by Barbara Fradkin

  He set his coffee aside and leaned back into the pillows. “What should I do? I’ve already got the uniforms keeping an eye out.”

  “You could try hiring a sky writer to say ‘Hannah, call your father.’”

  He didn’t rise to her laughter. “Some Jewish mother you make.”

  “I’m serious, Mike. Hard as it is, you have to wait. She’s circling the landing strip, gathering the courage and getting the lay of the land. She took off on a whim, and now she’s probably wondering what happens next. She’ll turn up once she’s figured out what to do.”

  “Can you be home? Stay by the phone?”

  She eyed him knowingly. “Yes, I’m staying home with you, remember? Monitoring your concussion.”

  He contemplated the current chaos of his situation; Anne Patterson unconscious, Quinton out for his blood, Rebecca Whelan a giant unknown, and his own daughter on the lam in unfamiliar waters. To say nothing of the mystery arsonist who was trying to obliterate all evidence of a past crime.

  And worst of all, a dizzying fatigue that made every word an effort. He couldn’t even think which problem to attack first, let alone how, and all he really wanted to do was crawl back under the covers.

  Fortunately, at that moment, a familiar old Chevrolet pulled into the drive, and Brian Sullivan climbed out.

  * * *

  Sullivan hadn’t slept well. He’d lain awake in his darkened room, staring at the ceiling and listening to the whir of the air conditioner and the muffled cheep of crickets outside his closed window, chasing futile worries through weary loops in his mind. Green was going to be a wipe-out, perhaps for days, unable to remember things and subject to bouts of fatigue and nausea which would sap him of his usual vim and acuity. It left Sullivan all alone to confront Quinton Patterson and the possible scandal brewing within the force.

  Saturday was supposed to be a short shift, and he hoped to spend the afternoon with his boys at the antique air show out at Uplands Military Base. At barely six a.m., as the sun was just skimming the rooftops across the street, he slipped out of the house and headed down to the station for one more peek at Fraser’s file. Perhaps he had missed something yesterday. Perhaps the report on the psychologist’s visit to Barbara Devine was somewhere in Devine’s notes, and he had simply missed it. It was a huge file, with pages of witness statements, reports and interview transcripts. Surely somewhere in Devine’s official records or court briefings there would be a reference to Anne Whelan asking the psychologist to change her story.

  There was nothing. There were several neatly prepared official witness statements signed by the psychologist attesting to her initial conversation with Rebecca, as well as photocopies of her rough case notes in which key parts had been highlighted in yellow. Sullivan peered at the highlighted sections closely, trying to decipher them.

  Becky very active today, wiggly in seat, trouble sitting still. Says she has go peepee, hurts down there. Touching her panties. How? ‘not supposed to tell.’ Q (n.a.) Q ‘Mr. Fraser’ (looks frightened) Q ‘wouldn’t let me go.’ Report CAS The next notation was made at 2:10 p.m. the same day. Report made Jocelyn Marquis, CAS intake, referred to case worker, will be in contact. The next notation was at 2:30. Principal R. S. informed, impressed on him need for confidentiality.

  Neither the psychologist’s case notes nor her formal statement contained any direct statement implicating Matthew Fraser. She was very careful to report that Becky had made a series of comments about needing to urinate, about her crotch hurting and about Mr. Fraser, but that the connection between the ideas was unclear. Although the psychologist had refrained from asking more questions in order not to compromise the CAS investigation, she felt Becky’s agitated behaviour and her reference to keeping a secret provided reasonable grounds to suspect abuse.

  Sullivan flipped through subsequent witness statements and numerous transcripts of interviews, but as he had feared, there was no report in the file to the effect that only days after the initial disclosure, Rebecca’s mother had approached the psychologist and asked her to change her story. And even more damning, the psychologist had not been called to testify for either the prosecution or the defence. The Crown had apparently thought that the testimony of the CAS social worker and that of the investigating police officer were more probative than that of the psychologist, who had already indicated in her statement that the connection between the pain and Fraser was very unclear.

  Which should have been music to the defence lawyer’s ears, so why Josh Bleustein had not called her, Sullivan didn’t even like to guess. It certainly lent credibility to Steve Whelan’s supposition that Quinton Patterson and Becky’s mother had carefully orchestrated the evidence to throw the trial without shifting the spotlight to anyone else in the family.

  The question was—had Barbara Devine been party to that orchestration? And did he even want to know? He could forget he’d ever heard the story, but if in fact Anne was covering up for her new husband, then he might very well be Matthew Fraser’s killer. And scandal or not, fellow police officer or nor, Sullivan couldn’t turn a blind eye to that.

  The simplest way to check the story’s veracity was to ask the psychologist, but doing so might open up a Pandora’s box which no one, not even Green, could shut again if a cover-up were revealed. Sullivan stared morosely into space. Before he did anything irreversible, he needed to meet Anne Patterson herself and probe a little into her past, to judge for himself the type of woman she was.

  When he pulled onto the grounds of the Ottawa General Hospital, he spotted a cluster of people on the front lawn and a white van with a local TV station’s logo parked at the curb. With intuition honed from years on the job, he recognized trouble. He parked his unmarked Taurus behind the van, and as he climbed out, his instincts were confirmed. In the centre of the cluster, flanked by the local news reporter and facing the camera resolutely was Quinton Patterson, looking suitably outraged and distraught. He had taken the time to comb his dark curls and throw on a clean shirt, but his eyes were bloodshot and his face dark with stubble.

  “I can’t tell you all the details, but I also can’t keep silent any longer,” he was saying. “My wife may never recover. Ten years ago, the justice system failed her, the police failed her, and the man who destroyed our world walked free. How do you reconcile yourself, when the guilty walk free and the innocent are condemned to an eternal hell? How do you reconcile yourself, when the people you trusted betray you and the system you believed in deserts you? The answer...” He paused with a look of infinite sadness, and the ring of people hung on the silence.

  “The answer is you can’t. My wife couldn’t. She needed help. She needed compassion and support and someone to erase the pain. I failed to. I know that, and I’ll live with that forever. But at least I tried, and maybe in time with our children slowly healing, I would have succeeded. But this case wouldn’t let her rest, and the police, after their bungling had messed it up in the first place, wouldn’t let her rest. Wouldn’t let her forget or let me take the brunt of their intrusion.”

  Patterson leaned forward, his gaze skewering the camera. “Yesterday an Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green turned up on our doorstep—on our own private doorstep, for God’s sake!—to catch my wife off guard, and told her things I’d been shielding her from. And then, not content to let her escape down the street, he chased her, called in the troops as if she was a common criminal, and spooked her so badly she ran right in front of them. I hold Inspector Green personally responsible for the accident, and if my wife dies, I’ll hold him personally responsible for her death. Yes, I hit him. I’d just seen my wife’s mangled body. Yes, I knocked him out. And I’d do it again.”

  Sullivan listened with disgust. The camera had never wavered, and the reporter had not said a single word. She was clearly a rookie and no match for the slick and practised legal orator. She had simply given Patterson his soap box and allowed him to do what he did best—sell a case to the jury. To the jury sitting in every livin
g room in the city, who would now declare Green guilty, no matter what the facts might say. No matter that Patterson’s wife was nowhere near death and had been pissed to the gills behind the wheel of her car.

  At the end of his summation, Patterson turned to leave and the reporter suddenly came to life. “Mr. Patterson, what case are you talking about?”

  He shook his head and continued to walk towards the hospital entrance. The reporter scrambled after him. “Was it a criminal case?”

  He ignored her, and the cameraman swung his camera off his shoulder, ready to pack it up. Sullivan hung back unobtrusively, waiting for the crowd of onlookers to disperse. Suddenly he heard footsteps and a frantic cry.

  “Dad! Dad!” He turned to see a young woman about his own daughter’s age hurrying across the lawn from the street, tottering awkwardly on her platform shoes. Her dreadlocks shone green in the sunlight, and her black-rimmed eyes looked sepulchral. Sensing a story, the cameraman hoisted his camera back onto his shoulder and flipped it on. Patterson whirled on him.

  “Turn that thing off!”

  The cameraman pointed his camera away as if in acquiescence, but Sullivan could see it was still on. More importantly, it was now pointing towards the approaching girl. She was red-faced from the unaccustomed burst of exertion, and she panted as she lumbered up.

  “What happened? Did Mom do it on purpose? Did that goddamn cop...?”

  Patterson’s lips were tight, and Sullivan recognized that glacial “where-have-you-been” glare that fathers reserve for teenage daughters, but then the man forced the glare into a smile as he pulled the girl into his arms. He spoke very quietly in her ear, and Sullivan drifted across the lawn casually so that he could see the girl’s response. Instead of fear or worry, her initial panic gave way to disgust, even contempt, as she thrust him away.

  “Oh, that’s rich! Drunken cow runs right in front of a cop car.”

  Patterson yanked her roughly away from the listening media, fortunately in Sullivan’s direction. Patterson tried to keep his voice low, but it shook with outrage.

  “She was rushing to warn you!”

  “More like shut me up,” Rebecca countered.

  “Don’t you even care, you little—” He stopped himself. Gripping her by the elbow, he began to march her toward the hospital. “We’re not having this conversation here. You’re going to come upstairs to see your mother. And don’t you ever call her a drunken cow in my earshot again!”

  Rebecca wrenched herself free of his grip. “Oh, sorry. Forgot the rules. I’m the one who poured the booze down her throat.”

  “All your life, things have been about you!” Patterson snapped. “But just this once, your mother comes first! You’re going to hold her hand and tell her you love her. So help me God, you’re going to help me pull her out of this!”

  Sullivan had fallen into step several yards behind them and followed them through the glass entrance doors and across the marble foyer to the elevators. They both seemed oblivious to his presence among the crowds milling to and fro. Rebecca stared straight ahead and gave her stepfather the deep freeze while they waited for the elevator, but Sullivan recognized the unique mixture of defiance and panic that characterized a teenager out of her depth. Rebecca Whelan was scared to death for her mother but damned if she would let her stepfather know it. Patterson broke the deep freeze first.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  She shrugged, a slight “do I know, do I care” lifting of the shoulders.

  “He should be here too. If ever your mother needed you two, it’s now.”

  “Yeah, that should keep her in a coma forever.”

  “Does he even know?”

  “That would be your job, Dad. He doesn’t talk to me, remember?”

  The elevator finally arrived, and the crowd pushed in, jostling to punch in their floors. Sullivan eased in with the flow and stationed himself in the corner. Rebecca glanced at her stepfather, and in that unguarded moment, Sullivan could see how much her defiance was costing her. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes, and she turned her attention to her black fingernails.

  “Steve might know where he is,” she muttered finally.

  “I spoke to your father last night,” Patterson replied. “Apparently your brother has skipped out on his rent and on some debt he owes his girlfriend.” He sighed as if the tale had a familiar ring. “Any idea where he might have gone?”

  “On the road? Wasn’t he trying to get a tour together?”

  Sullivan made a quick mental note to check the whereabouts of Rebecca Whelan’s brother, then glanced up just as the elevator slid open. When Rebecca and her stepfather disembarked, he hung back and followed at a discreet distance. He saw them stop to talk briefly at the nursing station, saw the nurse shake her head, then watched them make their way through a door down the hall. He approached the same nurse, but her face fell at the sight of his badge.

  “I’m sorry, sir. We’re under strict instructions not to discuss her case with anyone, not even the police, without going through her husband.”

  Sullivan was not surprised. From what little he’d seen of him, the man was a control freak. He gestured to a small row of plastic chairs and said he’d wait there if one of the nurses would be kind enough to tell Mr. Patterson of his arrival.

  He’d barely settled into a chair and opened his duty book when the door burst open and Patterson strode out. On his heels, despite his sharp words of discouragement, was Rebecca. His eyes raked the waiting room angrily, then narrowed with confusion when Sullivan rose to greet him.

  “I was expecting Inspector Green.”

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Sullivan. I’ll be handling the investigation.”

  “What investigation?”

  “Please sit down, Mr. Patterson. It won’t take long.”

  Patterson didn’t move. Hovering just behind his shoulder, Rebecca glared out from under her green mop. “What investigation? My wife’s accident?” Patterson repeated.

  “To ensure objectivity, all incidents involving the police, including your wife’s accident, will be handled by the Special Investigation Unit. I’m assigned to the assault on Inspector Green.”

  “Assault? That’s ridiculous. I was in a state of shock due, I might point out, to the extreme provocation of that same officer. No judge in his right mind would find me culpable.”

  “We’re not at the stage of charges yet, Mr. Patterson. I’m still investigating, but are you prepared to give me a statement as to your recollection of the incident?”

  “Certainly not while I’m standing vigil—”

  “Don’t even try, Dad,” Rebecca chimed in. “He’ll twist it and turn it, until pretty soon he’s making you say things you never meant to say, and claiming you said things you never did.” Sullivan eyed her sharply, wondering if she was referring to her own attempt to change her story. The whiff of rot that he’d detected yesterday floated by again, but he steered carefully away.

  “How is your wife, sir?”

  “Not well,” he replied curtly. “She’s in extreme pain.”

  “Is she conscious? Able to speak?”

  “Under no circumstances would I permit you to speak to her even if she were. She’s had a severely traumatic experience.”

  “I won’t be disturbing her, I assure you, sir. I asked out of concern.”

  “Right. Concern for just how much trouble I can make for the Ottawa Police, isn’t that correct, Sergeant?”

  “Sir, as you’re aware, Inspector Green was investigating the death of Matthew Fraser—”

  “He what!” Rebecca barged in, her black-rimmed eyes suddenly huge with shock. Too late, Sullivan realized no one had told her. All the bravado and armour in the world could not hide the raw horror that raced across her face. “How did you—”

  But before she could react further, Patterson caught her arm. “Rebecca, that’s what your mother was rushing to tell you.”

  Emotions warred across the girl’s face so quickly
that Sullivan had no time to interpret them before she wrestled her veil of sullen bravado back into place. “What happened to him?”

  “We don’t know yet.” Sullivan thought quickly. Patterson looked close to apoplexy and about to leap to her rescue, but perhaps some useful tidbits could be gleaned from the few words she let escape before he silenced her. “Have you seen or heard from Mr. Fraser in recent weeks, Miss Whelan?”

  “Why would you think I’d seen him?”

  Her mask hadn’t slipped. Chilly piece of work, Sullivan thought, looking for a way to unsettle her again. “Because he was trying to prove—”

  “That’s enough.” Patterson gripped his stepdaughter firmly by the elbow. “We don’t have time for idle police speculation. Come on, honey, let’s go find your brother. Your mother’s asking for him, remember?”

  * * *

  As Sharon ushered Brian Sullivan into the living room, Green struggled to a sitting position and hoped he looked better than he felt. Sullivan was dressed in jeans, golf shirt and his trademark mirrored sunglasses, and the lines of worry across his brow eased at the sight of Green.

  “I can’t stay long, but I wanted to see how you were doing—” He spotted Modo, who was planted in the middle of the living room, her massive head lowered and her dark eyes watchful. “Holy Mother of God! What’s that?”

  “That’s Sharon’s latest charity case,” Green replied. “Meet Quasimodo.”

  As Green explained, Sullivan folded his bulk into the armchair and tried to get the dog’s attention, but to no avail. Modo returned to her guard post at Sharon’s feet.

  Sullivan smiled at Green grimly. “You look a hell of a lot better than yesterday, buddy. But I hope you’re going to take a few days off.”

  “Two weeks, the doctor said,” Sharon interjected.

  Green snorted. “That means one week, and I’ll take two days. But tell me what’s up? How’s Anne Patterson?”

  “Conscious, I think. Patterson’s pissed.”