Once Upon a Time

by Barbara Fradkin

  “This fucking case,” Green muttered to cover his embarrassment. “I get the feeling no matter what we turn up, there will be no happy endings for anyone involved.”

  “Hey, it hasn’t exactly made for sweet dreams for me either, buddy,” Sullivan replied, dropping into the chair opposite and propping his feet on Green’s desk. “I’ve been reading your books on the Holocaust, and I had nightmares all last night. Haven’t had ones like that since I was a rookie. So for you, with your father…” His voice trailed off, leaving the emotion unvoiced.

  “I’ve been a lousy son,” Green said. “My father was only twenty-three when he lost his first wife and son. He waited nearly twenty years before he felt ready to invest his hopes in another. And look at me.”

  “Yeah, look at you. You’ve stayed here close to him, you see him every week, you pay all his living expenses, you’ve given him a fabulous daughter-in-law and grandson.”

  “But I don’t really give him the time. Even Sharon’s better with him than me. He brought me into this world, and I treat him like an afterthought.”

  “Well, listen, it’s a hell of an emptiness you’re supposed to fill. No one could do that. Would you expect that of Tony someday?”

  Green stared at his desk top morosely. “I hope not. But I’m not much better at this father business either. Sharon takes the lead on that too.” He looked up, putting on a smile he hoped would lighten the mood. “You’re the guy with all the experience. What’s a good gift for me to buy Tony?”

  “For a one year-old? Anything, as long as it’s safe to chew.”

  “Sharon’s looking for some kind of meaningful father-son thing. Something that stands apart from the two hundred stuffed animals and trucks and riding toys my in-laws have lavished on him. But she refuses to give me any hints.”

  “I think the important point of the gift is that you think of it,” Sullivan replied.

  “Some help. The party’s tomorrow night, and I’m running out of time. Those toy stores are scary places. Do you want to come tomorrow, by the way?” He hoped the request sounded like a casual afterthought. In all their years of friendship, the two had never gone beyond the bounds of the job. “Be another world-weary cop’s voice among all the techies?”

  Sullivan made a face. “All the way out in Barrhaven? I’ve got Scouts tomorrow night, but maybe I’ll drop in later if I can.”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Green leaned forward and knocked Sullivan’s feet off the desk. “Now let’s stop wasting time here. We’ve got a case to solve.”

  Fortunately Sullivan took the hint. “What did Walker’s widow say?”

  Green summarized his visit with Ruth Walker. Sullivan put his feet back on the desk and chewed a pen as he listened.

  “So she thinks he didn’t even remember he was Jewish?”

  Green shook his head adamantly. “I’m positive at some point he remembered. I don’t know exactly when, but twenty years ago when he had that fight with Mr. G., he knew. He remembered the guy from Ozorkow, and my hunch, if I could only prove it, is that he remembered him from somewhere else, too. From the camps or the ghettos. I think Mr. G. was a Nazi collaborator, and that’s why Walker attacked him. It’s something he would have felt strongly enough about to have provoked that attack. Walker had kept a really low profile all his life, the quiet drunk, then all of a sudden—pow!”

  “But Mike,” Sullivan ventured, “if Gryszkiewicz was a war criminal, why would Walker cover it up? You’d think he’d be yelling it all over town. Here’s one of the bastards getting off scot-free. I mean, it explains why Gryszkiewicz pretended not to understand a thing about the fight, but why would Walker hide it? What’s he got to lose?”

  “His secret,” Green replied instantly, his eyes alight. “Walker would have had to reveal that he was Jewish, dredge up all the past, face the pain and the memories…and for what? Even if he were willing to face all that, twenty years ago no one was prosecuting war criminals. No one wanted to hear about them.”

  “So you’re thinking that this Mr. G. killed Walker to keep him from talking now? But that fight happened twenty years ago,” Sullivan pointed out, always the pragmatist. “And if Walker didn’t rat on him then, why would Mr. G. suddenly decide he was a threat now? The Justice Department has been turning up the heat on war criminals for almost fifteen years now.”

  Green hesitated as he searched for an explanation. Sullivan was right. What had triggered the murder almost twenty years later? What had made Walker’s secret knowledge so much more dangerous? He seized the phone. “I’m going to see if the War Crimes unit is investigating Mr. G. right now. That would explain why he suddenly decided to bump off a witness.”

  By a great stroke of luck, when the call went through, David Haley was just settling down to his lunch at his desk, and he was in an expansive mood.

  “I’ve got a name for you, Haley,” Green announced. “Josef Gryszkiewicz. Recognize it?”

  Silence. Noisy slurp. “Nope.”

  Green felt his excitement deflate. “The War Crimes Unit has never heard of this guy?”

  “Well, remember, Mike, I’m not in the unit any more, and I’m no longer privy to all their comings and goings.”

  “You’re not missing much,” Green remarked.

  There was a pause on the line, then a chuckle. “No comment. You could always try asking them if his name has come up.”

  “Would they tell me?”

  “Probably not. Seriously though, we looked at over two hundred names, all the guys who were uncovered by the Deschenes Commission, and I don’t remember that name. So unless new evidence has come up, stuff nobody knew or reported back in the eighties…”

  Green pondered that possibility after he hung up the phone. Justice Deschenes’ mammoth inquiry had lasted nearly two years and examined the evidence on eight hundred potential war criminals living in Canada. If Gryszkiewicz had escaped the dragnet, he must have felt home free. Probably figured that the only person who knew he was a war criminal was not going to talk. Had something happened to change his mind? Had he learned something that made him fear he was about to be exposed?

  “Brian,” Green said, breaking the silence which had hung since the phone call. “What’s the word from the Hamilton Police on Mr. G? Any sign of him?”

  “Last I checked,” Sullivan replied, “there was nothing, and they’re getting pretty damn nervous down there about an old man running around with a gun. They’ve talked to the coworkers he used to work with, and they say the guy could get paranoid as hell. Thought the office phone was bugged and the surveillance cameras were hooked up to the RCMP.”

  That’s one for my side, Green thought. It wouldn’t take much for this guy to think the War Crimes Unit was on to him. Maybe just a few more screws loosened by age. “Let’s get the Hamilton Police to check his alibi for the time of the murder too. You said the family claimed he was home all that day?”

  Sullivan nodded. “For what that’s worth. The wife would swear he was at the Last Supper if she thought it would help. But I’m ahead of you, Mike. Once I learned about the gun, I did ask the Hamilton boys to start checking his alibi. We may find a hole.” He sighed. “But we’re still a long way from building a case. We’re cops, not storytellers. What have we really got to tie this Gryszkiewicz—or anybody—to Walker’s death? No physical evidence, no prints, no tissue under the fingernails, no murder weapon. No eyewitnesses—”

  “I’ll get them, Brian. Even if I have to go to the press and get Crime Stoppers to feature it, I’ll catch this guy.” He raised his voice over Sullivan’s protest. “Just because the guy’s eighty years old, he’s not getting away with any more murders.”

  Abruptly he rose to his feet and shrugged on his jacket. “We’ve got to go back to Renfrew. We have to find out where Mr. G. has gone, even if we have to turn his cousin upside down and shake the information out of him!”

  * * *

  Sullivan took his foot off the gas and let the nondescript police-issue
blue Taurus bump slowly down the rutted lane, splattering slushy muck in all directions. The cold snap of the past few days had broken abruptly, turning Karl Dubroskie’s front yard into a pond. Unlike Walker’s two neighbours, Dubroskie lived in a boxy, fifties-style split level with none of the decaying charm of the original homesteads. Green scanned the surroundings for signs of activity. An old man scurrying for cover behind the barn might be too much to hope for, but he did hope to spot something out of the ordinary. Not just the bored gaze of cows in the paddock, nor the desultory cluck of hens poking in the muddy straw, nor the usual, haphazard jumble of tractors and rusty pick-ups by the woodshed. But something furtive.

  There was nothing but soggy snow and mud.

  “Pull in out of sight behind the barn there,” he said. “Let’s nose around a bit first.”

  Sullivan snorted. “The guy will have seen us the second we turned into his lane.”

  “Maybe. But our man might be here, and we need to know what we’re walking into.” Which was partly the truth. The other part being Green’s insatiable love of snooping.

  The two detectives checked their guns, stepped out of the car and sank ankle deep in mud and straw. Sullivan gave Green a quick grin, but Green kept his profanity to himself. No point underscoring his status as big city wimp. He picked his way around the edge of the barn until the front yard was in view. The stench of manure, hay and livestock choked his lungs, but he refused to cough. How could people live like this!

  As if reading his mind, Sullivan grinned again. “You should smell it on a hot day in July.”

  Barely were the words out of his mouth when two massive black dogs came barrelling around the side of the house, barking wildly.

  Green caught the glint of white fangs beneath curled lips. “Holy fuck!”

  “Back away. Slowly.” Sullivan said.

  Green was just calculating the distance back to the car when the barn door banged open, and Karl Dubroskie strode out. At the sight of the two detectives, he hesitated, and worry flashed across his face.

  “Puppies!” he roared, and instantly the dogs subsided and retreated to the porch. Dubroskie took in the Taurus half hidden behind the barn and faced the two detectives with frank suspicion. “Officers? What can I do for you?”

  “I suspect you already know, Mr. Dubroskie,” Green replied. “I suspect your cousin’s wife was on the phone to you the minute Sergeant Sullivan left her home.”

  The farmer’s eyes narrowed at the accusation, but he didn’t refute it. “Come inside,” he said, and turned on his heel.

  Inside the kitchen, a large, heavy-bosomed woman eyed them sharply as they filed by into the living room.

  “You need me, Karl?”

  “Nope.”

  His dismissal was curt, and she turned back to her work, but Green suspected she’d be tuning a keen ear. She didn’t look the submissive type.

  “Mr. Dubroskie,” Green began before the farmer could take command, “this investigation is now a lot more than idle curiosity about some old barroom brawl. As you know, your cousin has been missing for three days. And as you also no doubt know, he left with a gun.”

  In spite of himself, Dubroskie showed his surprise. “Didn’t know he had a gun.”

  “How proficient is he with it?”

  Dubroskie shrugged. “We haven’t been in contact for twenty years.”

  “Don’t play me for a fool. You called him Saturday to warn him we wanted to question him.”

  “Officer, whether you’re a fool or not, time will tell. But I did no such thing.”

  Green leaned forward urgently and met the man’s unwavering gaze. “Be very careful whose side you choose, please. Not for the sake of the police or the authorities, but for the sake of the innocent people he might have set his sights on. He’s a frail, paranoid old man who sees spies and traitors behind every bush. If he thinks he’s in danger, he’ll strike. As he did with Walker.”

  “Tell him, Karl!” came an urgent voice from behind them. Then Mrs. Dubroskie filled the doorway, her face flushed with apprehension.

  “Jeanie, stay out of it!”

  “You don’t owe him anything!” she shot back, planting herself firmly on the chair beside him. “He came out of nowhere, suddenly some long-lost relative from behind the iron curtain. We couldn’t even do a proper check on who he was!”

  “Please, that’s—”

  But she was unstoppable, for which Green silently celebrated his luck. A good three inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, she ran her husband with a practised hand. “He visited half a dozen times, spooky as a cat at midnight, asked a thousand questions about our neighbours, one time he even put black-out curtains on all our windows. Black-out curtains, for God’s sake! In the middle of Renfrew County, thirty years after the war! He’s more than a few bricks short of a load, I can tell you, and there’s no way I’m having anything on my conscience.”

  Green’s suspicions stirred. “When did this black-out incident occur?”

  “The last time he was here, after that fellow beat him up. We brought him home from Renfrew Victoria Hospital so he could rest up a few days before making the trip home.”

  “It was that bang on the head, Jeanie,” Dubroskie interjected wearily, as if they’d had this argument many times. “The doctors said it made him confused.”

  “Yeah,” she retorted, still at full tilt. “So confused he started spouting German and insisted his name was Jozef Fritsch, which really gave me the willies—”

  “Jeanie—”

  “I mean, I lost my father at Dieppe, and when I thought there might be one right under my roof—”

  “Fritsch was his mother’s maiden name, that’s all,” Dubroskie amended, but there was little fight in his voice.

  “Anyway, that’s when I sent him packing. And I said to Karl, Karl, I don’t want that man in my kitchen ever again, and I don’t think you want to be having anything to do with him either. So Karl, don’t tell me you called him Saturday and tipped him off that the cops were looking for him.”

  Green turned his attention to her husband, who looked wretched.

  “No dear, I didn’t call him. I wasn’t going to fight his battles for him, and if he got himself into trouble, I was going to let the chips fall where they may.”

  Green looked at him thoughtfully, at the way he barely met his wife’s eye, and wondered whether that was the truth. Or just what his wife wanted to hear.

  * * *

  As Green negotiated the bumper-to-bumper traffic back down Highway 17 towards Ottawa, he listened to Sullivan’s end of the conversation on the cellphone and tried to piece together the news from Hamilton. It didn’t sound good. When Sullivan disconnected, he confirmed Green’s fears.

  “Still no sign of him. He’s not gone to any of his old haunts, or checked with any of his old pals.”

  “He’s gone to ground,” Green replied grimly. “Let’s just hope he’s skipped the country without leaving any bullet-riddled bodies behind.”

  Sullivan stared out the window a moment at the flat, monotonous snow fields. “You know, you could be wrong. He could just be a scared old man like his daughter said, still spooked from his persecution and escape from the Soviets, distrustful of police and afraid we’ll frame him for something he didn’t do. So he grabs a gun and takes off. God knows where he’ll end up when he stops running.”

  Green listened impatiently. “What about Walker’s murder?”

  “Let’s face it, Mike, we don’t have much evidence to prove Walker was even murdered.”

  “We don’t have much evidence, but we know he was.”

  “What do we have that we can possibly substantiate in court? A bump on the head that we can’t explain? MacPhail will get up on the stand and say the guy died of natural causes. A doctor hurrying past hears a mumble of voices from Walker’s car, but he can’t even say for sure there was more than one person in the vehicle. A defence lawyer would make mincemeat of him.”

  Green fo
rced himself to consider the points; much as he hated to admit it, this was how Sullivan and he worked best. Sullivan provided the sober second thought that kept Green’s feet on the ground.

  “We’ve got the dark grey car at the country house and the footprints someone tried to wipe out,” he muttered finally.

  “What’s that got to do with anything? That was Don Reid’s car. And if we’re looking for a believable murder suspect, there’s one I could sell to the Crown. It was his vehicle, his prints on the investment bonds. Two thousand bucks’ worth are missing, and Don Reid’s finances are the pits. According to Watts’ latest report, Reid’s house is second-mortgaged to the limit, he owes fifteen grand on his little BMW toy, his credit cards are cancelled and his chequing account is two thousand dollars overdrawn. He’s even borrowed from friends. This guy goes through money like water. He must have a hole in him somewhere.”

  “It’s cocaine,” Green interjected.

  Sullivan absorbed this with a look of surprise. “Nice of you to tell me, buddy. Cocaine. That’s perfect. We all know what cocaine does—makes you nuts, you can’t think straight, can’t control your temper. You get desperate for the next hit. Reid could have stolen the bonds from old man Walker and gotten into a fight with him over it in the car that day. Reid’s wife doesn’t know about their money problems, and maybe he didn’t want her finding out. The old man threatens to blow the whistle, things get out of hand and Reid hits him. The day after the death, he sneaks out to the house and checks it out to make sure there’s nothing around that might incriminate him.”

  Green had been listening intently for flaws in the logic, and now he shook his head. “It was Howard Walker who sneaked into the house.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Neither Don nor Margaret drove out there that day. They both invented stories, but they didn’t know the time nor the duration of the visit. I could tell Don didn’t even know the trip had taken place. Margaret did, and she was covering for someone. Howard Walker claims he didn’t even know his father was dead until Thursday evening, but the phone records from the hotel show that he made a long-distance call from Toronto to Margaret at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. After the murder but before the trip to the country house. He learned of his father’s death, swore his sister to secrecy, borrowed her car, and went out to the house. Probably to get something.”