This Thing of Darkness (17 page)

Victor gasped. His hollow eyes bulged. “Dr. Sam is dead?”

Green said nothing, waiting for the mother to enlighten him. She waved a dismissive hand.

“Yeah, yeah, I caught it on the news. Didn't want to upset you, hones.” She turned to Green. “I can tell you what you need, but I don't want Vic upset.”

“Just a few questions,” Green said, summoning his most harmless expression.

She stepped back, muttering under her breath, and headed back inside. “At least let me get my tea.”

She didn't offer any to Green, nor even to her son, but Green followed her into a tiny, oppressively hot living room. Blinds were drawn tight against the morning sun. The air was stale with booze, cigarette smoke, and the stench of old clothes and dishes that seemed to clutter every surface. He pushed some magazines aside so that he could squeeze into a corner of the sofa.

Victor was pacing restlessly, staring at the floor and twirling a cigarette in his fingers. “I liked him,” he said finally. “Bastard didn't know what the fuck he was doing, but at least he listened. More than I can say for the shrink I have now. Ten minutes in and out of his office, ‘eating okay, sleeping okay, no voices, good, here's your new prescription'.”

“But at least you're well,” his mother said, emerging from the kitchen with a cup of steaming liquid and an unlit cigarette.

“I'm not well, Mother,” Victor said. “I'm keeping a lid on. That's different.”

Mrs. Ikes' face hardened. She'd put on a slash of pink lipstick, most of which was now on the rim of her cup. She landed onto the sofa with a thud, nearly sending Green off the other end. “We don't pay him to be a nice guy. That quack nearly cost my son his life.”

Victor's pacing increased. “Sometimes this so-called life hardly feels worth saving. Dr. Sam gave me hope, he made me feel worthwhile and energized, not like some chemical reject with parts missing in my brain.”

“He should have known better. He was supposed to be a trained specialist in diseases of the mind, not a guru with some half-baked theory from Tibet. And that's the thing, Vic. You have a disease, no different than diabetes or high blood pressure, and you don't talk yourself out of those. You take medication to correct the problem.” She eyed him shrewdly as he continued to pace. “Goddamn it, Vic, you went off them again, didn't you?”

He stopped pacing. Looked trapped. “Just while I do this audition, Mum. I need that energy, that edge. The drugs kill it.”

“That edge is called mania. And you know what happens next.” She sighed and swivelled to face Green. “It took me years to undo the damage that quack did by telling him all this stuff was part of his ‘natural state'. That maybe his black days were the price to be paid for the ‘pingpong brilliance of his manic mind', Rosenthal called it. And that he could learn to manage his excesses with fish oil and mind control. Rubbish. Victor is bipolar. His good-for-nothing father, who blew his brains out at thirty-four, was bipolar. Victor was on track to do the same thing if I hadn't put my foot down.”

“What happened?” Green asked.

Mrs. Ikes lit the cigarette with tremulous hands and dragged the smoke deep into her lungs. Green tried not to cough as smoke curled his way. “I knew something was wrong,” she said, puffs of smoke escaping with every word. “I could see the swings—the drug binges, the wild parties for days on end, then the weeks he couldn't get out of bed. But I was only his mum. My opinion didn't count. Vic was an adult, Rosenthal said, and he could make his own decisions. Rosenthal wouldn't even talk to me, wouldn't return my phone calls. Patient confidentiality, he said.”

“He knew you were part of the problem, Mum. Not letting me grow up, always expecting the worst of me, hiding all the knives and razors and pills—”

“I did that to keep you alive! In spite of yourself and that quack!”

“Fuck it. You never did get it.” Victor resumed pacing.

Mrs. Ikes drew in another hit of smoke. Behind the hank of hair, her eyes were bleak. “But he managed to get pills anyway. Legal and illegal, he took the whole lot at once. Ended up in hospital, where he lay in a coma for a week, and I had a chance to have a good long chat with the doctor in charge. That's how we got him on proper meds and back on an even keel.” She glowered at her son. “Most of the time. But the brain damage was done. Vic has short-term memory problems now, and he has a tough time memorizing his lines.”

“It's the drugs, Mum. I keep telling you. They deaden my mind.”

“No, it's not, Vic. It's the—” She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head as if to spare her son further. “Anyway, you get the picture, Detective. That's all water under the bridge. I hated that damn Jew for years, and I'm not sorry he's dead. But neither of us took a hammer to his head.”

Sullivan winced when Green related the story, but Green just grinned.

“I got my own back. I was going to tell them about the half million-dollar inheritance, which it looks as if they can really use, but I decided they could wait. You have to feel for the woman, though. For both of them.”

“You planning to do this with all six beneficiaries on the list?”

“No, Gibbs can do that. I was just getting a sense of the nature and scope of the problem.” He sobered. “It's big. For people with a serious mental illness, every day can be a struggle. They're vulnerable and desperate, and they put their trust in Rosenthal. If he betrayed them in some way... That's a powerful motive, Brian. That new will was stolen from Rosenthal's apartment, so somebody knew about those bequests. Levesque needs to take this more seriously.”

Sullivan passed a weary hand over his face, as if wishing the problem would simply go away. Then he nodded. “You're right. But I'm not sure Gibbs is the right one for the job.”

He didn't elaborate, but he didn't need to. Both men had watched Gibbs wrestle with his own emotional demons over the past year and a half. His progress, though considerable, was fragile, and his own emotional grip still tenuous. Green heard the sound of the elevator door, and through his half-open door he saw the reason for that progress—Detective Sue Peters, making her slow, careful way into the squad room. He was getting used to the sight, but it still tightened his chest. Eighteen months after her near fatal beating, she was still a ghost of her former self. Her fiery red hair had been shaved for the neurosurgery and had grown back a bland brown, and her clunky, bulldozer stride had been replaced by a cautious shuffle. By sheer determination and fury, she had learned to walk without a cane, but Green could tell it was a precarious triumph.

Despite Gibbs's best culinary efforts, she was twenty pounds lighter and had had to buy a whole new wardrobe. Gone were the garish checkered suits and fuchsia jackets that had clashed so defiantly with her hair. She was wearing a blue turtleneck sweater—the better to cover her scars, Green suspected—and loose-fitting grey slacks.

She looked infinitely older.

When she saw them through the open doorway, however, she smiled the same broad, infectious grin she'd always had, now a little lopsided. “Good morning, boys!”

Same irreverent spirit too, Green thought, surprised at his own relief. Sullivan and he exchanged questioning glances, and Sullivan gestured to indicate that it was Green's call.

He strolled over. “Sue, have you got an assignment for today?”

She had reached her desk and was easing herself into the chair. Although she was only on duty three half days a week, Green had assigned her a desk of her own. Part of her mental recovery.

“I'm entering the Rosenthal case on VICLAS.”

Entering all the details of a homicide investigation onto the national
RCMP
violent crimes database was a tedious but necessary job. “Feel like a break?” he said. He realized belatedly that he'd left his notes and list of the beneficiaries at home, but he handed Sue a fresh copy, filling her in on what he remembered. “We're looking for background and current whereabouts,” he said.

Sue grinned and booted up her computer. “Do you want me to call any of them directly?”

Green hesitated. Peters' interviewing skills used to resemble a bull in a china shop. Sullivan intervened before he could find a tactful reply. “Report to me or the Inspector before you do that. We may not want to tip them off.”

Peters' disappointment was visible on her face, but unlike the old days, she turned to her computer without a word of protest.

Eleven

S
haron woke uncharacteristically early but lay in bed awhile, revelling in the silence of the house. Morning sunlight filtered through the pale bedroom blind, washing the room in muted gold. She had always loved the evening shift at the hospital, not only for its freedom from the daytime bustle, but also for these morning hours alone. Thank God for car pools. With Tony at school, she had complete solitude for the first time in years. Her thoughts drifted to the question that had been tantalizing her for months. Did she really want to change that? Did she really want to add to the crazy, crammed, conflicting press of their lives?

She ran her hand over her stomach, remembering the early feelings of pregnancy. The tiny flutter in her belly, the lush, heavy sensuality of her breasts. Morning sickness had barely been an issue with Tony. The pregnancy had been enjoyable, secret, feminine in a primal way she'd never experienced before. She had loved that growing life from her first moment of awareness. Surely she would love the next one just as much.

The question was—would Mike? He was an only child and a workaholic, already reeling from the demands of wife, daughter, son and father. Would he? He'd been avoiding the subject every time she'd drifted near. But while they vacillated, she could hear the fading tick of her biological clock. She was nearing her fifth decade. Mike was in the middle of his. They couldn't afford the luxury of time much longer.

She rolled out of bed, stumbled downstairs into the kitchen and confronted the cold, empty coffee pot. Banishing a twinge of annoyance, she brewed up a pot. While she waited for it to drip through, she hunted for the morning
Citizen,
surprised to discover it was still rolled up on the front porch. Mike must have been in quite a hurry that morning to race out before his morning fix of either coffee or the headlines. She poured a cup, carried it into the sunroom and sank into the easy chair by the sunny window. Peace. Perfection. She unfolded the paper and glanced at the headline about the interrogation of a young Somali man for the murder of Sam Rosenthal.

She read the story from top to bottom, along with the two short sidebars on the life of the young “person of interest”. Omar Adams' story surprised her. Unlike most of Ottawa's Somali community, he had not come to Canada as a refugee from the terrifying brutality in his lawless homeland. His father had been a soldier in the Canadian Airborne Regiment during their ill-fated peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Stories of the Airborne's torture and murder of a Somali teenager had led to the abrupt termination of the mission and the disbanding of the regiment in disgrace.

Yet Omar's father, who was a sergeant with the mission at the time, seemed to have followed a more honourable path. His mother had been an orphaned village girl who'd been taken in to provide domestic services on the base. I can just imagine what those services entailed, Sharon thought. When she became pregnant, Omar's father enrolled in Islamic studies and took care of both her and the baby. When the regiment was recalled, he married her just before the last plane left, then battled red tape to get her and Omar to Canada, describing it as one small gesture to right the many wrongs. Omar spent his first four years in a Somali refugee camp in the desert before the final approvals came through, but at least he and his mother were able to cling to hope.

“This is a mistake,” Mr. Adams was quoted as saying of his son's arrest. “Omar was in a camp, but he has always had a loving, safe family environment. There is absolutely no way he would have beaten anyone in the manner the police allege. Not in spite of what he might have witnessed as a young child, but because of it.”

The official police statement was far less generous. They were continuing to gather evidence but were already confident that the evidence to date could support a charge.

Sharon put the paper down thoughtfully. Her gaze drifted to Mike's computer desk. If the police were so confident, why had he been hard at work at midnight the night before, researching the former patients of the dead man? Despite his assurances, she still had her doubts about his motives. Psychiatric patients made easy targets in the minds not only of the public but even of policy makers and police. The words “nuts”,“crazy” and “psycho” were tossed around callously by people who knew nothing of the genuine struggles and silent suffering of those coping to overcome mental illness. It was disheartening to find fragments of that prejudice in someone who should know better.