This Thing of Darkness (28 page)

Omar blinked. “A Jew?”

“You knew that. You ripped the religious chain from his neck.”

“You think I'd attack him because he was a Jew?”

“A lot of people think the Jews have done some pretty awful things to innocent people.”

Beside him, Levesque sucked in her breath. Green forced himself not to look at her. Not to break the spell.

Omar wet his lips. “The Jews have suffered a lot themselves. They're the perfect example of what violence does to people.”

“Like your mother.”

“Yes, like my mother. I'd never beat up a Jew just because of what they've done.”

“How do you know?” Green countered, leaning in. “If you don't remember, how do you know you didn't? Just like your mother, maybe you lost control. You were drunk, wasted, and finally all that anger burst out.”

Minutes later Levesque stormed into Green's office, leaving Omar Adams in the interrogation room. Green was on the phone trying to reach Deepak, the head of the Hate Crimes Unit. It was Saturday, but one could always hope. He watched as she wrestled her outrage under control. Caution, and concern for her future, finally won.

“I thought you believed he was innocent, sir. Now you think he's perpetrated a hate crime?”

Deepak's voice mail kicked in. Green hung up and weighed his thoughts before answering. In fact, he hadn't a clue what the truth was. He had a mystery prostitute with a personal connection to the victim, he had the victim's son on the loose with a secret agenda of his own, he had a known gang member with a history of assault, and now he had a physically and emotionally brutalized young man looking for a scapegoat for his troubles. Green had been prepared to dismiss Omar Adams as a suspect, but now he was not so sure.

In the old days, he would have rehashed the case in detail with Brian Sullivan over a couple of beers and a smoked meat. Thinking of that, his chest tightened. Those days might be gone forever. For now, he was on his own.

Finally, he chose to equivocate. “I'm exploring possibilities, Marie Claire, that's all. These are leads to follow up. Until we know exactly what happened that night and how all the players fit into the picture, we need to keep pursuing all the leads.”

“Fine, but I want to detain Mr. Adams in the meantime.”

“That's premature.”

“With all due respect—”

“First, you need to find David Rosenthal and the mystery prostitute. Now that her photo has been released, we should be hearing from the public any minute. And you need to talk to Deepak of Hate Crimes about Omar.”

She glanced at her watch pointedly. The two pink spots of fury on her cheeks were fading, but her tone was icy. “How much more do you want me to do on Saturday afternoon?”

He sighed. Another lost era. Sullivan and he would have stayed on the case until they had personally tracked down the loose ends. They would have hounded colleagues and witnesses and suspects, in their own homes if necessary. But with an effort, he stifled his frustration. That attitude had cost Sullivan dearly. Now even he, Green, had to go home, because Sharon had already left for work and Hannah, the fall-back babysitter, would be drumming her fingers with impatience. Her Saturday social life awaited. And Tony was waiting for his dad to play.

“You can assign those tasks to the weekend staff however you want, just get Hate Crimes started on Omar's background.” He stopped abruptly. “When you searched the Adams's house, did you find a computer?”

She shook her head. “They had one, but it was broken.”

“All the same, have it brought in and ask the tech guys to search it. Chances are Omar still has an email account and uses the internet at the library or school. He may even have a Facebook or MySpace page. Get the tech guys on that too.”

She'd been jotting reluctant notes, but now she frowned. “Why?”

“Because if this guy harbours extremist views, or any views at all regarding politics in the Middle East, they're going to show up somewhere. On chatrooms, listserves, in posts to various websites. A lot of people feel anonymous on the web and feel safe to vent the worst kind of hatred, especially when they're with like-minded individuals. Get Deepak and Criminal Intelligence's help to tell you where to look. They'll know all the Jihadist and Islamist websites. There are thousands.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Now you think he's a terrorist?”

“No, I don't. But he may be a confused, angry young man looking for a place to vent.”

She looked doubtful as she wrote in her notebook. “This could take weeks and be a total waste of time.”

He merely looked at her, and in the end she slipped her notebook in her purse without further protest. A quick study, he noted with satisfaction, who was learning that in murder, he left no stone unturned.

Nineteen

S
haron stood in the nursing station and studied the inpatient charts with dismay. She had arrived ten minutes early, full of apprehension and resolve. All day she'd been rehearsing how she would handle Caitlin O'Malley. The woman had still been very fragile the night before, but she had been responding to her meds amazingly fast. Perhaps by this afternoon, her thinking would be coherent enough and her paranoia blunted enough that Sharon could ask her straight out about her relationship with Dr. Rosenthal.

She couldn't ask about her presence on Rideau Street or her possible witnessing of his murder, or even about her prostitution activities, because she, Sharon, wasn't supposed to know about any of that. But she could at least ask about Rosenthal himself, whether he'd ever treated her and whether she'd continued to see him. If Caitlin's paranoia didn't kick in, she might even venture further. Her hope was to encourage the woman to go to the police voluntarily and tell them what she knew about that night. If necessary, Sharon would facilitate the contact with Mike. That was far preferrable to violating her ethical and legal obligations by informing Mike herself.

When she'd arrived on shift, she'd immediately gone to check Caitlin's chart to see what kind of day the woman had had, only to discover the chart was nowhere to be found.

“Oh, she was discharged today,” said the day nurse, who was just changing into her street shoes to go off duty. “Dr. Janic has the chart.”

“Discharged! Already?” Sharon was flabbergasted. The woman had been frankly psychotic only a few days earlier.

The head nurse overheard the comment and drew her aside. “None of us were too happy about it, but the seventy-two-hour assessment period was over. The father called her private psychiatrist, and he told Dr. Janic to sign the discharge papers.”

Sharon winced. Dr. Janic was the psychiatric resident on duty over the weekend, a fresh-faced first year ninny with all the experience and common sense of a door knob. The private psychiatrist had seen her only once over the past few days, choosing instead to dictate his orders over the phone. He would have had to take the resident's word for her miraculous recovery.

“Voluntary? Not even a community treatment order?”

The older woman shrugged at the folly of her superiors.

“When did this happen?”

“Just happened. I'm surprised you didn't run into them in the parking lot.”

“But why? I mean, why risk her recovery? She's proved she's not too compliant with her meds when she's out.”

“Well, that's the thing. The father came in here this afternoon claiming that there had been a mistake, that she had been taking her meds and had missed at most a couple of days—”

“That's not enough to become that ill.”

“I know that, and so should he. He's been dealing with her illness for eight years. But whatever his motives, he said she was much better now, but she was upset about being back in hospital. He was sure she would complete her recovery much faster in her own home under their care.”

Sharon thought of Caitlin working Rideau Street at two in the morning. “Do they plan to supervise her twenty-four hours a day?”

“He said they would, at least for the next two months to make sure she's okay.” The head nurse lowered her voice still further. “Listen, Mr. O'Malley is a lawyer, and he can be very intimidating. Makes you feel like you're on the witness stand being cross-examined. Poor Dr. Janic just rolled over for him. Accepted his assurances and his voiced concern for his daughter.”

Something in the nurse's tone caught Sharon's ear. “You don't think it's genuine?”

The head nurse frowned. “Sharon, I never said this, because I can't substantiate a single word. I think something's up. Earlier in the week, when we first called her parents and he came in to see her, he was so grateful she was here and we were taking care of her. You remember how she was raving on. She didn't want to be here, because we were all robots controlled by Lucifer. Her father was very firm. ‘You stay, you take the pills they give you, and you tell the doctor everything that's going on'.”

Sharon nodded. She had met the father the day after Caitlin's admission, and he'd been both angry at his daughter and concerned for her recovery. In the past year, she'd been doing so well, he'd said. She wanted some freedom. How could they keep a twenty-eight year old captive in her own home? She was entitled to some life, and her parents wanted her to have some friends, some independence and some goals of her own. They had thought she'd do her part. She'd promised to take her meds and see the doctor regularly.

“I remember the father didn't like being duped,” Sharon said. “He'd tried to trust her, and she'd lied.”

The head nurse rolled her eyes. “But honestly, what did he expect? She's a paranoid schizophrenic. She's going to lie if she has to in order to keep her secrets. That father still doesn't really understand that his little girl—the intelligent, rational girl whom he still remembers—is no longer there. That the disease and the woman can no longer be separated.”

The head nurse's lips were pursed, and behind her wire frame glasses, her eyes were hard. Sharon debated what to say. The woman had seen too many patients come back through the revolving door when fragile psyches were sent out into a world too complex and lonely for them to master. She'd become an exceptional organizer and manager, but she had never been a mother. She'd never had to deal with the emotional yearnings and heartbreak that went along with parenting those fragile souls.

Sharon tried to make her voice soft. “That's because when she's well, that intelligent, rational woman comes back to him, at least in glimpses. And he always hopes she'll stay.”

The nurse clucked her tongue. “Wishful thinking, or to be more precise, classic denial. That's what he had in spades today. He came in here on a mission from the moment he got off the elevator. I'm betting Caitlin phoned him and laid on a story about feeling much better—” The nurse paused, her skepticism clearing. “And she
was
better. We were all remarking how well she'd done in such a short time. She was responding appropriately, with no evidence of hallucinations or thought disorder. If she still thought we were robots, she was keeping her opinion to herself. But she was far from out of the woods. That's what paranoids do. The minute they're recompensated enough to pull it together, they hide their craziness. That's where we were with Caitlin today, I'm convinced of it. She still thinks we're robots out to get her, but she's just well enough to be able to fake it. And Daddy, in full denial, bought it hook, line and sinker.”

“Well,” Sharon said, “as long as she's been discharged with some proper meds and outpatient follow-up—”

“No groups, no outreach, just Daddy's psychiatrist friend.”

The nurse's tone said it all. Recovery meant so much more than monitoring of medication. It meant support, encouragement, coaching and even the friendship and understanding of peers. The loving intentions of family were crucial but not enough. Caitlin's history had already proved that.

What now? Sharon thought. She still couldn't tell Mike of the woman's identity without seriously violating patient confidentiality, and with a father like Patrick O'Malley, she wasn't eager to step into that quagmire.

But unless Caitlin was identified soon, Sharon would be faced with an even bigger dilemma. Because now, not only did she know who the mystery hooker in the photo was, but the woman was on the loose again, believing some crazy delusion about an invasion of satanic robots.