This Thing of Darkness (30 page)

Thankfully, because of the rain, there were no pets or small children to contend with, but Levesque had to dodge the occasional bike, each time with a muttered
“calice”
or
“tabernac”.
Green refrained from advice. She was a good driver; she kept the Lexus in view but made no attempt to catch it.

There were few access roads out of this maze of streets, and no matter where the woman fled, she would likely end up at the same intersection. Green dialled the com centre and requested back-up to intercept the Lexus once it reached the major arterial of Blair Road. Levesque relaxed marginally but still drove hunched forward, gripping the wheel with both hands. She risked a glance at Green.

“You think it was Caitlin?”

“I couldn't tell,” he said, “but it's a strong possibility. People don't usually take off on the police unless they have something to hide.”

She was silent while she negotiated a four-way stop sign. The Lexus had blown right through it, but cross traffic stopped Levesque from taking the same risk. The Lexus disappeared from view up ahead.

“I wonder how she knew we were police,” she mused as she gunned forward again.

Green didn't bother to answer. Plain clothes and an unmarked car did not disguise the aura of authority that street people and criminals instinctively seemed to recognize on sight. Perhaps as an attractive young woman, Levesque had encountered that less often, but Sullivan could not step into a room without everyone falling silent.

On the straight stretch of road up ahead, the Lexus was visible again, along with the stop sign marking Blair Road. Green frowned. There was still no sign of police cruisers. The Lexus approached the stop sign, where two cars waited ahead of her. Cross traffic streamed by, sparse but steady. Green sucked in his breath as the Lexus brake lights came on and it slewed sideways. He could imagine the panicked driver fighting with the wheel. As it hurtled towards the cars at the stop sign, the Lexus jumped the curb, ran through a hedge and a signpost, and flew off the curb again. It landed with a thump on Blair Road, inches in front of a delivery truck. Horns blared and tires screamed. The Lexus roared ahead.

Levesque raced towards the stop sign, where the two cars still sat as if stunned. She glanced across at Green, seeking permission. Still no cruiser in sight, which was hardly a surprise. In this remote corner of the city, hemmed in by the sprawling National Research Complex, the Ottawa River and the Greenbelt, a routine patrol car was likely to pass by less than once a week.

He shrugged. “Go for it. She's already paved the way.”

Levesque flicked on her emergency lights and deftly steered towards the demolished hedge. Broken branches tore at the undercarriage, but she managed to avoid the signpost, which was bent in two. She swerved back onto the road in front of the startled driver of a Hyundai.

Green was already studying the map, tracing their route north towards the Ottawa River. “She's not going far. Blair Road dead-ends just before the parkway. Unless she wants to get trapped in another maze of residential crescents, she'll end up—” He broke off as they crested the hill just in time to see her brake lights disappearing down a small road on the left.

Levesque cursed. “Where does that go?”

He squinted at the map. “Under the parkway to a parking lot by the river. There's nothing there but a boat ramp and bike trail through the bush.”

“Not much of an escape plan.” Levesque muttered as she swerved onto the side road.

They found her in the parking lot, standing on the boat ramp in the rain, peering out into the roiling chop of the river. She turned at the sound of gravel crunching under their wheels and watched without moving as they climbed out of the car.

The woman was tall and slender, dressed in an elegant, red leather coat and hastily wound white silk scarf that did nothing to offset her pale, pinched face. At first glance, the resemblance to the photo was so strong that Green thought it was Caitlin, but as he drew closer, he could make out crow's feet around her eyes and deeply etched furrows in her brow.

“Mrs. O'Malley?” he guessed, extending his hand. Beside him, Levesque had her badge ready.

The woman glanced at the badge and Green's hand but said nothing. Her nostrils flared with fear, but her scowl was defiant. A strong odour of Scotch wafted around her.

“I'm Inspector Green, and this is my colleague Sergeant Levesque.” He made a show of glancing up at the damp sky. “Let's speak inside my vehicle.”

“Why were you chasing me?” she demanded.

“Why were you running?” Levesque countered. Not the approach Green would have used, but he resisted the urge to glare at her.

“Because you were chasing me.”

“You didn't answer the door,” Levesque said. “You sneaked out and took off—”

“I didn't know you were the police!” the woman snapped. “Not until I saw your red flashing lights.”

“Who did you think we were?”

Mrs. O'Malley clamped her jaw shut. She was trembling in her thin leather coat. Green stepped in front of Levesque and took the frightened woman's elbow. “Come, let's talk in the car.”

This time the woman responded and allowed him to guide her into the rear of the Impala. He slipped in beside her, leaving Levesque no choice but the front seat. She twisted around and draped her arm over the seat back, scowling.

In the small confines of the car, the smell of booze was almost dizzying. Black mascara was smudged beneath her eyes, but otherwise she wore no make-up. Her brown hair, long and uncombed, showed half an inch of grey roots. Green could see the telltale web of broken capillaries in her eyes and across her cheeks. Drink had been this woman's companion for a long time. He tried for a gentle smile. “Why don't you start at the beginning? Why were you afraid of someone coming to the door?”

“What is this—good cop, bad cop?”

“You're not in trouble, Mrs. O'Malley. We were simply coming to your house to ask about your daughter Caitlin.”

The woman heaved a deep, defeated groan. “So you've identified her.”

He nodded. “We want to talk to her about an incident she may have witnessed—”

“Dr. Rosenthal's murder.”

“Did you know him?”

She shook her head. “We saw the news clip.”

“He wasn't one of the psychiatrists who treated your daughter over the years?”

“You make that sound like she's a revolving door,” she snapped, then dropped her gaze to wipe a rain drop off her jacket. “Which she was. A revolving door with more advice and prescriptions than we knew what to do with.”

“Did he treat her?”

Vague apprehension flitted across her face, as if some ill-defined fear were niggling. “Not unless she saw him during one of her more outlandish stints when she wouldn't talk to us for months on end.”

“Do you know what she was doing on Rideau Street on the night he was killed?”

She swallowed and ran her tongue around her chapped lips, as if yearning for a drink. “My daughter is a very ill woman. She has battled schizophrenia for eight years, and sometimes it makes her turn on those who care about her the most. My husband used to comb the streets for her, staying out all night. He visited the shelters and volunteered at the Shepherds of Good Hope, thinking maybe someday he'd look up from his soup pot, and there she'd be. Every time we heard of a car accident or rape or unidentified overdose, we'd be terrified.”

Green waited while the woman brushed every rain drop from her coat and scrubbed at an invisible stain. “I suppose she was...soliciting again. It paid the bills. We stopped giving her money, because she'd give it all away to every bum and addict she came across. Or she'd buy something ridiculous like a mink coat that would be stolen the next day. One of her psychiatrists explained that soliciting gives Caitlin some independence. Some power, for God's sake. We tried everything to stop it. Community treatment orders that she ignored, fancy private hospitals in the U.S. We even had her committed to an institution for awhile, so at least she'd be cared for, but in the final analysis, we decided we had only two options. Bar her from the house and live in constant fear of a phone call from you folks or the morgue, or let her come and go on her own terms.”

“So does she live at home?”

“We still keep her room ready, but she's more an occasional visitor. My husband still tries. He still tries to reason with her. I...” The woman pressed her eyes shut and waved a dismissive hand. “Some days I'm beyond caring any more. But it's hard for a father to accept his little princess selling her body on the street.”

Green felt a wave of sorrow for them both. He remembered his own desperation when Hannah had been out of control, staying out all night, sleeping with God knows what pimply-faced punk, and swallowing dangerous drugs by the handful. Through perseverance, patience, and a hope he often doubted, she'd come around. However, she did not have a mind-altering illness.

“Was she at home when we called at the house just now?” Levesque asked, and Green saw the implication he'd overlooked, that perhaps the mother had fled to draw the police away from her daughter. But Mrs. O'Malley shook her head. Offered no alternative.

“Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

“She's not in trouble,” Green said. “If fact, if she saw something, she may be in danger.”

The woman stiffened. “Why?”

Green didn't answer but instead took a guess. “She has been in touch, hasn't she? Is she scared?”

He could see the woman teetering on the brink. She looked exhausted from years of battling the complexities of her daughter's psyche.

“We only want to help her,” Levesque interjected, just as the woman began moving her lips. Mrs. O'Malley shot her a disbelieving look and pressed her lips closed. Inwardly, Green cursed.

“I don't know where she is,” Mrs. O'Malley said. “But she would be scared. She would have seen her picture splashed all over the news, and she'd know that every police officer on every corner would be looking for her.” A ghost of a smile twitched her lips. “A paranoid's nightmare.”

“Where would she go if she was on the run?” Green asked.

“I don't know that she's on the run. I just know how her mind works. She'll think nowhere is safe. She has a thing about satellite surveillance, Google Earth, wireless signals. She thinks they're all part of the Devil's network, and we're fools not to be suspicious. Sometimes she even convinces me. Besides...” She paused, doubt flickering in her bloodshot blue eyes.

“Besides what?”

“Did you guys phone this morning, looking for her?”

Green's senses grew alert. “It wasn't us. Who phoned?”

“I don't know. Some man with a big, booming voice who said he was an old friend of Caitlin's.” She grunted. “That put me on guard immediately. Caitlin doesn't have any old friends whom she hasn't driven away with her craziness.”

“Was there a caller
ID
?”

“It said ‘private caller'. Normally I don't answer, but Patrick wanted to keep the line open in case—” She broke off, but Green understood. Against all rationality, you hope they'll call.

“What time was this?”

“Eleven thirty. Just before I usually walk the dog.”

Green and Levesque exchanged glances. Eleven thirty was after the internal police bulletin had been issued but before the photo had been circulated to the media. Someone had known her name and address even before seeing the photo. Green asked Mrs. O'Malley to repeat the conversation as precisely as she could.

“Not much of a conversation. He asked if she still lived there, and when I asked who he was, he said he was an old friend who really wanted to get in touch with her, and did I know where he could reach her. I said she hadn't been in touch for some time, but he didn't sound as if he believed me. He said that doesn't sound like Caitlin, which is when I knew he was lying, because it's exactly like Caitlin. He had a loud voice and a laugh that sounded forced. I admit I was unnerved. I waited quite awhile before I took the dog out. When I came back, as I was walking up the street, I saw a car parked in front of the house. Was that one of yours?”

“What kind of car?” Green asked, his mind exploring possibilities.

“A regular car. Dark green. I'm not good with makes, but I don't think it was out of the ordinary.”

“Did you see anyone in it?”

She nodded. “I gather that wasn't you people? I could make out someone in the driver's seat, but from where I was, that was all. The windows were tinted.”

“What happened next?”

“I stayed where I was. Pretended Zoë was doing her business. He stayed a couple of minutes and then he drove off really fast.”

“He?”

“It certainly looked like a man. I had a quick glimpse of him climbing into the car when I first rounded the corner. I think he may have rung the doorbell. But it was alarming how he sat there afterwards, as if he were spying.” She pressed a shaky hand to her lips. “I've always feared that some day one of the unsavoury characters my daughter consorts with...”

Green felt a flood of understanding. No wonder the woman had fled when he and Levesque came calling. “Did you report this to the police?”

“No, Patrick didn't think it was worthwhile. Anyway, right after that we saw Caitlin's photo on
TV
, and we figured that perhaps it was the police. But if it wasn't...”

“Your husband was home at the time of this visit?”

“Yes, but he was in the backyard planting tulip bulbs, and he didn't hear the bell.”

Green thought of the silver sports car in the drive. “Is he home now? Perhaps he saw something useful.”

She shook her head. “He went out right after we saw the story on
TV
. Probably out looking for her.” She paused, vague apprehension crossing her face again. “I think the strange visit worried him.”