None so blind, p.2
None So Blind, page 2
“But you like being the boss?” she asked, with a knowing twinkle in her eye.
He grinned. “It comes in handy. But I miss the real policing.”
The kettle whistled. As she poured water into the teapot, she nodded to his left hand. “You’ve a new woman in your life, I see.”
“I do. And two more children, plus a dog. You wouldn’t recognize me.”
She laughed, but her joy was fleeting. The remark had reminded them both of her own loss. She handed him his tea and led the way to the living room.
“In a way, I suppose he’s at peace now,” she said, choosing a hard-backed chair facing the window. “He never was during his life. Not for the past twenty years.”
As he searched in vain for a worthy platitude, she peered at him through the gloom. After a pause, she rose to draw the drapes back a few inches, allowing bleached winter sun to leak into the room. She stood squinting out at the snow, her face hidden.
“We tried to move on, you know. I was never a quitter and I know Jackie would not have wanted that. Of course, at first there was all that horrid suspicion, but even after Rosten’s conviction, there were those who still thought … Luke never really escaped the cloud, did he? And that dreadful man himself, throwing up every roadblock, every argument. Even warning me to keep a watch out for Julia with Luke.” She broke off. Took a deep breath. Shook her head sharply and turned back to him.
“I’m sorry, Mike. It’s been difficult watching Luke fade away over all these years. At first he tried to keep working at the shop, but once they started cutting back his hours … the shop was all he had to hold on to, really. Jacqueline had been his favourite. Well, she would be, wouldn’t she? She was a sunny girl, never difficult like Julia. Never gave us a moment’s worry. But it’s no use dwelling on that. It was nice of you to drop by, Mike. Not too many people have. I guess they find it awkward, and to be honest, we’ve kept to ourselves. Easier that way. Normal chit-chat is such a struggle.”
She returned to her chair and picked up her cup. “Will you be coming to the memorial?”
He hadn’t intended to. He hadn’t meant to re-enter this family’s life after all these years. But he found himself nodding.
Chapter Two
Green had hoped to be inconspicuous when he slipped into the cramped interior of the church and perched on an unforgiving wooden pew at the back. Outside, the tiny church had a quaint neo-Gothic charm, with a classic Ottawa Valley limestone façade and an elaborate bell tower that soared into the pallid sky. Inside, he felt trapped between stained-glass portraits of Mary at the rear and Jesus’s Last Supper directly ahead. He could almost feel their steely stares.
He felt like an imposter. Up at the front, a handful of mourners were scattered across the pews, heads bent together in whispers. Green couldn’t put names to most of them but assumed they were friends and neighbours, for he recalled that Lucas had no family and Marilyn had none on this side of the ocean. The pulpit was as yet unoccupied, but an organist sat at the side playing doleful hymns.
Green recognized Marilyn’s bowed white head in the front pew. She was deep in whispered conversation with a thin man wearing a fedora and long purple scarf. Green has last seen Gordon Carmichael as a pudgy, downy-cheeked student, heading off to Paris ostensibly to study music, but really to put as many miles as possible between himself and the pain at home. Paris had clearly left its bohemian mark. In profile he resembled a large lizard, with bulbous eyes and a chin that disappeared behind the folds of the scarf. Deep in conversation, neither he nor his mother noticed Green’s arrival.
The same could not be said for the woman on the other side of Marilyn. She was lounging in the pew, her gaze taking in the room. When it fell on Green, her face brightened. She reached his side in half a dozen stiletto strides.
“I was wondering if you’d come.”
The years had taken away the lush schoolgirl curves, but Julia Carmichael was still an attractive woman — platinum blonde now with sparkling blue eyes and a deep golden tan. Her smile was teasing, but he was relieved to note it no longer stirred him.
“Hello, Julia. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Her smiled faded and she grimaced. “I’m not.”
“I suppose not. It’s been a long time since you saw him.”
“Twenty years.” She sat down beside him and ran a finger over the polished wood. “Life’s treated you well. New wife, I hear. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I hope life has treated you well too.” He knew it sounded stiff. He didn’t look at her, pretending instead to study the few incoming guests. “I’m glad you came, like me, for your mother’s sake.”
A small frown pinched her brow. “Luke was a useless, self-pitying drunk, but what I thought of him isn’t important. Mum is one of those ‘for better or for worse’ types, and she would never hear a word against him.”
“She and Luke have been through a lot. You all have. She’ll need your support.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry.” She looked away, her tone hardening. “She’ll just erect another shrine, dust off her British stoicism, and carry on.”
Still the same old changeable Julia, he thought, as he searched for a safe topic of conversation. When he was a young detective, barely older than her, she seemed to enjoy confounding him. Playful and passionate, but as unpredictable as a summer storm.
But just as abruptly as the storm clouds blew in, they abated. She sighed and leaned in toward him. “I’m sorry. Being back here after all this time has brought out the bitch in me. I thought I’d conquered her but sometimes she storms the barricades. All this gives me the willies.…” She gestured to the crucifix and the stained-glass windows. “Churches, funerals, meaningless religious babble. I guess I’m just worrying about Mum. I have no idea what she’s going to do now that she has no …”
She looked up as a hush settled on the church. At the front, the minister had entered and was speaking to Marilyn with head bent and hands clasped piously over hers. “No one to fuss over but herself,” she finished.
Green eyed her thoughtfully. Perhaps she’d matured in the last twenty years after all. “Will you be staying? At least for a while?”
“I can’t be away from my job that long. I just started a new one as a hostess at a resort, and this is the busy season. But I’ve invited Mum to come visit me in Costa Rica when she’s up to it.” She cast him a playful smile. “You should come down too. Bring your wife and family.”
The organ pounded out some final chords and silence descended on the small crowd that barely filled the first three rows. The minister took his place at the pulpit and Green steeled himself for clichés of death and resurrection.
“Here we go,” Julia muttered, putting words to his thoughts. Her brusque manner returned and she shifted down the bench, but made no move to return to her mother’s side.
The minister, and the service, were mercifully brief. After the second hymn, played with gusto by the organ but sung by only a few straggling voices in the group, Marilyn rose to speak. She was dressed as Green had always remembered her, in the tailored navy suit that she’d worn every day at the trial. It hung around her frame now, faded and threadbare at the cuffs, and the chancel seemed to swallow her up as she stood on tiptoe to reach the mic.
She looked out over the scattering of upturned faces, squared her shoulders, and cast her voice out over the room as if it were filled with a thousand friends. “Thirty-five years ago last month,” she began, “a stranger came by my house to pick up a load of laundry for his aunt. It was snowing like the Dickens and I offered him a cup of tea. I was fairly new to Canada back then and too naive to realize that a glass of whisky would have gone down better, but in any case, I had none on offer. He accepted with delight. I don’t know what he thought. I must have been a sight, a single mum raising three small children in a basement flat you could barely swing a cat in, and I hadn’t entertained a man in my house in years. My only common room was given over to laundry. Piles and piles of it, some wanting washing, some ironing, some mending. He had to move the ironing board just so he could sit down, and the whole place was as hot as a Turkish bath.
“But he stayed for three hours to help me fold sheets and feed the children. Porridge, if I recall. The next time he brought us all pizza and stayed for dinner; and when the spring came, he borrowed his aunt’s car and took us all to a sugar bush in Quebec. That night, when he asked me to marry him, I never hesitated. I still wouldn’t. He wasn’t perfect — what man is? He had his moods and he wasn’t much for talking, but I wish you could have known the man he used to be. Always ready with a hand to help out, a joke to make you smile, and a heart big enough to take in me and my children without a moment’s pause. When my Jackie died — no, when our Jackie died — it ripped that heart right out of him.”
Her voice quavered and she reached out to grip the edge of the podium. Even from the back of the hall, Green could see her limbs trembling. She wet her lips and plunged on. “We were all the family Luke had. His parents died when he was a teenager, so he came from Cape Breton to stay with his aunt. She was a spinster who did the right thing by him, but truth be told, she viewed him as unpaid help at best and a nuisance at worst.
“God must have seen the need we had for each other when he brought us together. Those joyful memories are all that sustained us during our more recent trials, and I draw some comfort from the fact that his passing was quick and painless for him, and that now, wherever their souls reside, he and Jackie are together.”
Beside Green, Julia muttered. He shot her a quick glance, but her gaze was fixed on the ground. She did not look up when Marilyn walked over to the photo of Lucas, kissed her fingertips and brushed them over the glass.
“Good night, sweet Luke, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
After the service, Green was hoping to pass on his condolences and slip away before the reception, pleading the demands of work. He waited dutifully as Marilyn made her way up the church aisle, stopping to smile her gratitude to people along the way. As soon as she spotted him, her smile vanished. She clutched at his hands like a survivor lost at sea.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Why don’t I phone you tomorrow?”
She shook her head and glanced at Julia, who was still standing beside him. Uncharacteristically, she raised her arms to hug him and pressed her lips to his ear. “Please, stay for the reception.”
Reflexively, he held her for an instant, feeling her bird-like frame in his arms and her heart hammering against her chest. Catching Julia’s raised eyebrow, he extricated himself gently and searched Marilyn’s face. But it was a smiling mask again as she turned her attention to the next guest. Soon Green found himself alone in the church, watching as Julia and her mother filed out through the wooden doors.
Frustration battled curiosity as he walked outside. Fat, lazy snowflakes floated down, melting on the slick tarmac but already gathering in soggy piles along the verges where a scattering of cars was parked. At the station, he had a calendar packed with dreaded committee meetings, but the prospect of spending an hour making small talk with strangers in the church hall had even less allure. Resolutely, he turned to track down Marilyn, hoping she could find a moment for him now.
In the plain white hall behind the church, the small gathering hovered around a banquet table spread with sandwiches and squares. Urns of coffee and tea sat on a side table. Green’s stomach contracted, for in his trek out to the country he had neglected to have lunch, but one glance at the small, crustless egg sandwiches dissuaded him.
He found Marilyn in the corner, talking intently with her children. Gordon was slouched against the wall, his fedora tilted and his eyebrow cocked with boredom, but Julia’s arms were crossed in annoyance. Green strode up, catching Julia’s impatient tone as he drew close.
“You should just bulldoze the whole place.”
“But there are memories —”
“There are memories everywhere, Mum!”
“Marilyn —” Green began.
She turned. The exasperation in her eyes died instantly. “Oh good! You’re still here! A lovely service, don’t you think?” She linked her arm through his and led him out of earshot. “I know people feel awkward, but everyone’s been so kind.”
“Marilyn, is there something —?”
“He wrote to Julia.”
Green stopped so abruptly that she stumbled. “Who?” Although he knew.
“That man. That horrid James Rosten!” Her eyes filled and her chin quivered. “He had the nerve to contact Julia. Not me, mind you, but poor Julia!”
“What did he say?”
“Some nonsense about how he knew the truth and he hoped she had some peace now.”
Green’s jaw tightened. Bastard! Rosten knew Julia was the vulnerable link in the family, and he’d gone straight for it. He glanced at Julia, who was pretending to talk to Gordon but was, in fact, watching their exchange obliquely. Wariness hooded her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “How did she take it?”
“Oh, she didn’t see it. Thank God! The letter came to the house and I intercepted it.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.” She hugged her thin arms to her chest. “He didn’t waste any time, did he?”
“Have there been any other letters?”
“Not yet, but I’ll keep a sharp eye out certainly. Not that he’s likely to write me or Gordon; we’re hardly his type.”
“May I see the letter?”
She shook her head. “I burned it. I shouldn’t have, I realize now, but I was so furious. Mike, he reached out from prison and came right into our home! I didn’t know he even remembered where we live! We’re unlisted now. For pity’s sake, we’ve spent twenty years trying to escape the past and the press!”
He felt an angry knot in his chest. It had been bad enough when the man directed his obsession at Green, but if he was now turning his sights on the victim’s family and on the surviving sister, he had gone way over the line. The letter should never have made it past prison security.
“I’ll alert the prison, Marilyn. We’ll stop him, I promise. It won’t happen again.”
Her pallid face tilted up, her eyes locked on his. “And if it does?”
“Then keep the letter and call me immediately. I’ll lay charges.”
But it damn well won’t come to that, he was thinking as he calculated how long it would take to drive to the penitentiary and whether the snow would prevent his going that day.
Warkworth Penitentiary was a brutal grey scar seared into the gently rolling farmland of Northumberland County, about three hours’ drive southwest of Ottawa along country highways slick with salt. Green arrived at noon, having been forced to delay his visit for almost a week, not only to untangle the red tape of the Correctional Service of Canada but also to convince his new boss it was part of his job. Managing Neufeld, he realized, was going to require even more finesse than previous bosses.
Although Green had had several discussions with security and medical staff at the penitentiary since Rosten was transferred there ten years earlier, he hadn’t visited in years and was dismayed but not surprised by the tightened security. Warkworth had been conceived fifty years ago as a model of hope and rehabilitation, but its recent troubles with riots, lockdowns, and overcrowding reflected the harsher reality.
As he approached the first exterior gate, the looming twenty-foot perimeter fence with its barbed-wire cap was a stark reminder that, although this was a medium-security facility, it housed over six hundred violent criminals, 40 percent of them lifers. Despite the dire talk of stress among correctional officers, Green was relieved to find the guards at the gate cheerful and jocular as they waved him through. Outbuildings were scattered across sprawling lawns, and in the distance he glimpsed the grassy playgrounds and picnic areas designed to simulate normal family life.
Inside, it was still a place of steel, concrete, menace, and despair.
It took him nearly fifteen minutes to proceed through security, despite being allowed to bypass the straggling line of civilian visitors waiting to see their family and friends on the inside. Finally he was ushered into a small, windowless interview room.
In the week since Marilyn had told him of the letter, his anger had cooled to a slow simmer. The warden had expressed suitable outrage and had promised to investigate how a letter addressed to a victim’s family could have slipped through their scrutiny. Likely a momentary lapse due to overcrowding and overwork.
While Green waited for James Rosten to be summoned from his cell, he wondered what to expect. He hadn’t seen Rosten since his trial, but he knew he’d been severely injured in an assault by fellow inmates at Kingston Penitentiary ten years earlier. His face had been sliced and his spine damaged.
Green remembered him as a driven young man who’d fought for his freedom with every ounce of his considerable brains and energy. Yet, over the years, his letters had become increasingly bitter and desperate, no longer focused on freedom but on revenge. Twenty years of lost life, not to mention his injuries, had surely aged him. Green steeled himself for a shrivelled, hard shell of a man.
Despite that effort, he was not prepared when the automatic door glided open and James Rosten wheeled himself in. With slow, laborious turns he manoeuvred his wheelchair through the narrow space around the table and came to a final stop so close that his toes nearly touched Green’s.
James Rosten was a study in grey. Grey hair, grey skin, grey lifeless eyes. His skin hung in crepe folds on his shrunken frame. A pale, glistening scar ran from his temple to his jaw, twisting his face into a parody of mirth. His hands were bony, his cheekbones sharp and angular, and his eyes now so deep-set they seemed to retreat inside his skull. Green searched them for a glimmer of the passion and fight he’d once displayed, but only defeat gazed back at him. Green felt the last vestiges of his anger slide away. He extended his hand across the corner of the table toward the man, whose hands were encased in fingerless gloves to provide better grip on the wheels.
