Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (64 page)

Curious to see who the man communicated with, Green connected to the internet and pulled up his email screen. Not a single email in his inbox. Same story with his “sent” box and his “trash”. Green was astounded. What mere mortal had a completely empty email account? Certainly no one in his acquaintance. Either this man stored all his files in a secret place, or someone who knew computers had wiped his entire system clean.

Green clicked through subdirectories in search of hidden files, uncovering mostly folders with recognizable program names. Under “web”, however, one folder name stood out from the rest. Mistwalker. Eagerly he clicked on it. Wiped clean. Green sat back in puzzlement. Mistwalker was a peculiar word. Even mysterious, and certainly whimsical for a man as obsessive and analytical as Fraser. But tantalizing as the puzzle was, Green was stymied, for he’d exhausted all his admittedly primitive computer skills. This was a job for the younger guys on the force.

Yet his snooping had paid off some dividends. He now had the little black address book and, with it, access to the people in Fraser’s life. On his way out, Green paused at the door to examine the locks. Crystal had exaggerated; there were only five. Plus a peephole. Each was sufficient to keep out an unwelcome caller, and two of them could only be locked and unlocked from the inside. There were no scratches or chips to suggest that any of them had been forced. If Matt Fraser had had a caller that night, after he’d arrived home and barricaded himself in, then he had checked through the peephole and opened the door of his own free will.

Pretty reckless stuff for a paranoid agoraphobic who rarely left his apartment except to walk his dog.

Three

“Yessir!” Sergeant Lonsdale
sat ramrod straight and spread his hand to encompass both the paltry stack of paper on his desk and the computer humming in the corner. “Any case you want to take a look at, you’re more than welcome, sir.”

He was a squeaky clean man with slick hair and a glossy smile, but beneath the joviality, his tone was tinged with anxiety. Although he might be happy to have his docket lightened by one file, Green knew he was nervous about such close scrutiny of his turf. Justifiably. Green suspected the rookie sergeant was just passing through Missing Persons on his way towards a comfortable desk in the upper echelons, so keeping his image buffed and his butt covered ranked at least equal to the cause of justice. Green’s unsolicited involvement in a case often presented a risk to both image and butt.

Ignoring the man’s discomfiture, Green scanned the woefully short file containing nothing but Janice Tanner’s report and the results of Lonsdale’s interview with the building super, which he’d probably conducted by phone without even looking up from the business section of the
Globe
.

“Did you contact any relatives?” Green asked.

“Not yet, sir. No one else has reported him missing, and the man was of age with no suggestion of ill health. He probably just wanted to drop out of sight. Besides, the complainant was a little...” Lonsdale started to twirl his finger but Green’s frown stopped him short.

“Do you know who he is?” Green asked.

Lonsdale’s hand strayed to his tie, perhaps hoping that a perfectly centred knot would make up for the slight indiscretion Green had caught. “Yessir, I ran his name. It seemed all the more reason to drop out of sight, in my opinion. People like that don’t change their ways, if you know what I mean. Maybe he was afraid he was about to get caught again.”

Green considered the idea. It was certainly one explanation for Fraser’s hurried arrival home that afternoon, and for the rapid locking of his door; he’d been one step ahead of some irate father’s boot. It did not, however, explain Modo’s being left to die.

“Or maybe,” Green countered, “he has been caught again, by someone interested in a more direct form of justice.” He jotted down the case number and turned toward the door. “I’ll just make a couple of calls.”

Lonsdale made a grasping gesture, as if to retrieve the file for a second look, but Green was already out the door, pondering his next step. Which was to track down an actual next of kin, so that he had more tangible grounds on which to pursue the case. Lonsdale’s file listed the next of kin as unknown, and when Green thumbed through Fraser’s old address book back in his own office, he found no listing for a Fraser or a Mom or Dad. There were, however, some possibilities. Almost all entries were carefully recorded by first and last name, telephone number and address, including postal code. But one was simply a name. Rose. Plus an address in the far eastern suburb of Orleans.

Several minutes of searching through computer databases yielded a last name to go with Rose—Artlee, not Fraser as he had hoped—and an age. Forty-four. An older sister perhaps, whose name had changed through marriage? On a chance, he dialled the number, and when the cheerful woman who answered the phone confirmed she was Mrs. Rose Artlee, he introduced himself and blithely asked if she were Matt Fraser’s next of kin.

Complete silence.

“Hello?” he prompted.

“What’s happened?” she asked in a voice so low it was barely audible. All trace of cheer was gone.

“Are you a relation?”

“Why do you want to know?”

It was a strange game of cat and mouse, but he supposed she’d earned the right to be suspicious. No doubt the press had been merciless during the trial.

“He’s been reported missing by a friend, Mrs. Artlee. I’m following up to see whether his family knows of his whereabouts.”

“Oh, no!” she breathed, not a denial of his question but an exclamation of dismay, as if something she’d long feared had come to pass.

“Do you know something?”

“No,” she replied as if hastily collecting her wits. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Mrs. Artlee,” he said, “perhaps I should drop around for a quick chat.”

“I told you I don’t know anything!”

“But you sound worried.”

“Because you said he’s disappeared. Of course I’m worried. If you find him, tell me—” She hesitated. “No, I’ll call back in a few days.”

He sensed she was about to hang up. “Just a quick chat. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“No! I—I mean I’m on my way out. I’ll meet you…” He could feel her haste through the wires. “At the Tim Hortons on Montreal Road, just off the Queensway.”

She’d hung up before he could get in a word, and he glanced at his watch in dismay. This was not a high priority case. In fact, it was hardly a case at all, and meanwhile, several active cases were bubbling in the major crimes squad, demanding his attention. Not the least of which was Brian Sullivan, who’d been trying to contact him since before noon about his rooming house death in Vanier.

I’ll drop by the Vanier scene on my way back from Tim Hortons, Green promised himself as he buckled on his radio and headed out his door. Tim Hortons doughnut shops were proliferating across the city like mushrooms, and Green wasn’t sure which one Rose referred to, but luckily it was easy to spot amid the strip mall scenery just north of the Queensway. Inside, a handful of workers lingered over lunch, but Green was able to pick out Rose without difficulty. Only one woman was sitting alone in a booth, with her back against the wall and her eyes glued to the door, a heavy-set woman with a doughy face and short, spiked hair which seemed to be her only attempt at fashion. Round glasses accentuated her moon face, and behind them her eyes were pale and wary. As a peace offering, he picked up two ice cappuccinos before approaching the table. She launched into a pre-emptive strike before he could even introduce himself.

“I don’t know what I can do for you. I haven’t seen Matt in years.”

“Why?”

She looked taken aback. “Why? Because of what he did. I have two daughters, and even if I didn’t, I—”

“But he was acquitted.”

“Because it was the word of a six-year-old against him and a whole slew of his teacher friends.”

“So you’re saying he was guilty?”

Her jaw jutted out, and the wattle beneath her chin quivered. “Is that so wrong of me? He may have been my brother, but I don’t shut my eyes to right and wrong.”

“Do you think a whole slew of his teacher friends would? Just because he was a colleague?”

“Teachers stick together. But the proof was, afterwards, they wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

“But you’re saying they all lied to protect one of their own. And left a six-year-old to twist in the wind.”

She mixed her drink with short jabs of her straw. “I sound bitter, don’t I? Well, I have a right to be. Ten years ago, my brother dragged our family through the mud. Vandals broke our windows so many times we had to move, my little girls got picked on in school, I got let go at the day care where I worked, because—hey, I must have had the same screwed up childhood, right? By the end, my husband couldn’t stand the stress and took off to Calgary. He came back, but not before I’d been through three years of hell on welfare. My brother molested little girls, but we’re the ones who paid the price. So yeah—” she barked out a short laugh, “I guess I’m bitter.”

“You’ve more than earned the right,” he replied. “And I’m not reproaching you for your feelings about your brother, believe me. But when I called, you said ‘oh no’ as if you were worried about him.”

His ploy had the desired effect, and some of the fight died from her eyes. She rummaged in her purse and extracted a package of DuMaurier cigarettes. Ignoring the “no smoking” signs plastered around the walls, she lit up and sucked a grateful breath into her lungs.

“My brother and I were never what you’d call close. I’m eight years older than him, our dad left us when I was twelve, and we had to leave the farm and move to the city so our mother could work. I lost all my friends and got stuck in a crappy little apartment taking care of Matt. He was delicate as a kid. Always had colds or asthma. He cried if you yelled at him, but the kid had brains, and he was really good at making me take the blame for whatever went wrong. Mom never took the time to listen to my side. I was trouble, I admit it. I mean, look at me. I was a big, fat, ugly kid with attitude, and I’m still a big fat, ugly broad. Attitude? In spades. I’ve never been in trouble with the law, I don’t mean that. But I never caught on to the finer points of how to win friends and influence people. Matt did. But that was his downfall too. He never toughened up. He’d rely on his helpless act, and people would rescue him left, right and centre.”

She blew out a lungful of smoke before resuming. “That’s why this trial thing killed him. Sure, he got all his colleagues to rally around, and he played his poor-little-me-wouldn’thurt-a-fly routine, and he got off. But then it all came apart. Suddenly he was alone. I’d had enough, and anyways if I’d tried to help him, my husband would have killed me. His teacher friends dropped him, the school board fired him, and everywhere he went, people pointed fingers. Hell, his story had been plastered over the news for months, and nobody believed for an instant that he was innocent. If this had been farm country and not Ottawa, he’d have been strung up by the balls behind a barn somewhere within days of the verdict.”

She stopped as if suddenly realizing she’d lost her place, and her eye caught the frown of an employee behind the counter. Muttering, she busied herself mashing out her cigarette on the floor. Green waited patiently. He knew what he’d heard when he’d told her Fraser was missing, and no amount of blustery denial on her part would convince him this woman didn’t love her brother. And sure enough…

“Well, you know,” she resumed, and her eyes didn’t meet his, “old habits die hard. I mean, I’ve been taking care of Matt since he was four, and I knew him inside out. I wanted nothing to do with him because what he did makes me physically sick, but I did wonder how the hell he was going to carry on when everyone dropped him. I mean, it was justice in its own funny way, right? I did figure he deserved it, but I got to wondering. I never contacted him, I never answered his calls, and pretty quick he got the message and stopped.”

“Where was your mother during all this?”

“Oh, Mom was in Florida with her new man, pretending she was twenty years younger than she was, and certainly never admitting she had any son at all, let alone a fully grown pervert.”

“Are you the only other family he has?”

She nodded, then stopped herself. “Well, Dad showed up for the trial. That was a treat. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years, and Matt didn’t know him from Adam. ‘Just wanted to show my support, son’, and all that crap. I sent him packing.” She chopped at her drink with a vigour that shook the table. “All slick and polished like that, he’d do more harm than good to Matt’s case, and Matt just about came apart at the seams when he met him.”

He propped his chin in his hand and smiled at her slightly. “So you really did look out for him, didn’t you. It’s second nature. And privately, even now, you still worry.”

“Well... I wonder. I mean, ten years is a long time, and I got to wondering if he’d gotten himself together. After the trial, he tried to go away and make a new start, but the word always seemed to spread, and anyways he was no good at starting new. Matt was a kid who liked the same thing for dinner every night, and if you changed the brand of frozen orange juice, he’d notice.” She paused as if caught in the memory. “Anyways, I heard he came back here and found himself an apartment.” Her jaw jutted out again. “But I don’t know what he was doing with himself, and I don’t care. I almost forgot about him.”

“But?” he prompted, not believing her for a second. She said nothing but chewed her lip as if wrestling with how much to reveal herself. He gave her a gentle push. “Something reminded you?”

Her eyes grew shuttered. “He did. He phoned last week.”

“What day was that?”

“Wednesday.”

Green’s pulse jumped, but he was careful to keep his tone neutral. “What did he want?”

“I don’t know. I refused to talk to him.” She paused, her fingers gripping the cappuccino cup so hard it dented. “Look, he took me by surprise, okay? I hung up on him. I was thinking of calling him back.”