This Thing of Darkness (42 page)

David Rosenthal stood near the front, looking stiff and ill-at-ease as his father's acquaintances filed past offering condolences. He wore the traditional mourner's black tie, cut to symbolize the tearing of garments, and it contrasted oddly with his brown cords, suede jacket and steel-toed boots. Standing at least a head taller than the crowd, he spotted Green easily and detached himself to join him. He grabbed Green's elbow and steered him outside to a private corner of the garden.

“I was going to call you today. I've been a fucking moron the past few days, and I apologize.”

Green masked his surprise. “I didn't take it personally, Dr. Rosenthal. Losing a loved one to murder is an awful shock.”

“Yeah, well, I've never been good at tact. Been told that often enough, starting with my father.” David extricated a thin sheaf of folded papers from his inner jacket pocket. “I found these in my father's desk. I think they're as close to a death-bed accusation as you'll ever get.”

Green glanced at the dense, handwritten pages. One was an annotated list of people and the other some notes about Caitlin O'Malley, including one dated the night of his death. The handwriting was spidery and difficult to read. “Is this why you went looking for her on Saturday?”

David's gaze flickered with surprise. He seemed about to protest, then thought better. “I should have gone to you instead, but I didn't recognize their significance. I figured that was the list of my father's beneficiaries, and I wanted to see her for myself, to see if she was conning him.” He shrugged. “That's my style, Inspector. I see something needs doing, I do it.”

“Thanks to that style, my best friend is still alive.” Tempted as he was to try to decipher the notes, Green slipped them into his pocket of his leather jacket for later study. He took out a plastic evidence bag. “I have something for you too. It's broken, but I know a good jeweller.”

David's tangled brows shot up. “My mother's Star of David.”

Green nodded. “The inscription says
To life and hope, my darling.
It seems fitting.”

David took it from the bag and held it up by its chain. It spun lazily. A peculiar mix of resentment and regret flitted across his face. “She didn't choose life, you know. She hated the chemo. It might have bought her a couple of years, but it made her so sick that she decided what was it worth, this life she had left? So she took up some macrobiotic diet and meditation to fight the cancer with her mind. It didn't work, but my father told me it gave her the best few months she could have asked for. At the time I was so furious at him, I didn't even hang around for
shiva.
But now...”

Footsteps crunched on the gravel path, and both men turned to see Rabbi Tolner approaching. He looked spry and tanned, wearing a rumpled suit that was now too big for him and a black
yarmulke
perched on the top of his shiny pate.

“It's time, David.”

Back inside, the funeral was quick. Tolner whipped through the formalities, leading the mourners through some traditional prayers and speaking briefly about his own admiration for the deceased before inviting David Rosenthal up to give the eulogy. David strode to the lectern and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his back pocket. Even from a distance, Green could see it was heavily scribbled over in red. The speech had not come easily to him. He smoothed it out, surveyed the crowd of expectant faces and took a deep breath.

“Most of you are luckier than me. You knew my father. Growing up with Samuel Rosenthal, learned student of the mind, was a challenging task for a little boy who was blessed with his father's brains and stubbornness but not his wisdom. Like any child, I was self-absorbed and defiant but also hurt by what I felt was the crushing burden of his expectations. My father's compassion for his patients, his devotion to their care and well-being, his forgiveness of their sins—none of that was accorded to me. I say this not to criticize him but to show how poorly I understood him. Neither my father nor I were very good at explaining ourselves, least of all to each other.”

Grey heads bent in the congregation, whispers were exchanged and frowns suppressed. The unrest seemed to galvanize David.

“In the past seventy-two hours, I've been reading his private papers and now have an idea where he was coming from. It made me feel better, I'm only sorry it took till now, when he's gone.

“I chose a career in biomedical engineering for the simple reason that, although the challenges are huge, the wiring extraordinarily small and the connections infinitely complex, at least they are physical. I can see, touch and manipulate them. The human brain is not only a thousand times more complex, with millions of synapses, receptors, and neurotransmitters interwoven in intricate, precise patterns, but it is overlaid with human consciousness, with interpretation, understanding, and an overarching search for meaning that governs every choice we make.” He glanced up and cleared his throat nervously before returning to his notes. Green had to smile in admiration. The speech was far more polished than the man, proof of what he could do when he brought the full force of his intellect to a task. He pictured David labouring over every word.

“This is hardly a new idea,” David said. “Religious scholars, existential philosophers and Eastern mystics have been trumpeting the notion for centuries. But in his later years my father tried to cultivate it in that most sterile of soils, modern psychiatry. While most of his colleagues preferred to tinker with receptors and neuro-transmitters through the use of drugs, my father understood that to become truly well, his patients had to stay in charge of that search for meaning. How they understood their world, how they defined their illness and how they chose to manage it was more crucial to their recovery than the right dose of the latest wonder drug.

“I don't think he was foolish enough to believe that mental illness was merely a state of mind or that medication had no role to play, but he came to abhor our pill-popping shortcuts and our tendency to define every deviation from the mean as a disorder to be corrected. Once in my childhood, some doctor diagnosed me as
ADHD
. This was undoubtedly true, for it caused me a lot of grief—disciplinary trouble in school, conflicts with my parents and friends, for example. It still costs me, in relationships and in financial and career stability. But it is also a gift that allows me greater vision to imagine what's possible, greater courage to take the needed risks, and greater energy to carry them through. I was perhaps my father's first guinea pig, to see whether I could understand and channel the challenges of my brain and to incorporate them into who I was and where I was going, rather than simply drugging them away.”

David's voice had picked up confidence. The audience unrest was gone now, each listener barely moving as he turned over the page.

“Paradoxically, a person defined only by their synapses and neuro-transmitters is diminished when an expert deems these physical functions to be defective. That's why the halls and outpatient waiting rooms of psychiatric hospitals are filled with people who feel like failures. There's a huge sense of inadequacy that needs to be overcome. My father's goal was to try to connect with the person inside the illness, to listen to them and to draw out their hopes and fears and challenges. His hope was to be a partner with them to fight for those things they felt were not only healthy and fulfilling but also provided mastery and meaning to their life.

“Finding that balance was often a case of trial and error, and towards the end, my father recognized he had sometimes tipped the balance too far. Ultimately, such an error cost him his life, and even more tragically, the lives of others. But despite this, I hope we can all applaud the inspiration he provides all of us to look ahead with hope. In his own words, he believed that even inside the darkest, sickest brain, that messy little enigma—the thinking mind—was the ultimate agent of recovery.”

A message not just for mental illness but for all of us, Green thought as he made his way back to the station after the service. A hokey idea, this need for meaning. For Sullivan, it would determine the ultimate path of his recovery. For Sharon, it rose from deep inside her biological core—a clarion call that scared the hell out of him. He'd been ambivalent about another child since Sharon's first subtle hints, but Sullivan's brush with death had added another layer of doubt which he knew he had to face. Someday.

For Levesque, however, just beginning her career in major crimes, meaning was all about catching bad guys and making them pay for their assault on social order. She would be waiting at the station to begin the next round of interviews with Patrick O'Malley. He wondered what forensics had uncovered since yesterday, and whether they would ever know what had really happened. Whether there was a bad guy to catch at the end of this chase, or just a series of tragic tales.

Omar Adams had crept back home late the night before, once the news linking Caitlin to Rosenthal's death had finally reached him, and his father had brought him into the station himself that morning. Green found them waiting when he arrived back from the funeral. The young man looked gaunt and subdued but no longer so afraid. His father sat at his side, grim and ramrod straight, but with a hint of something new in his eyes. Light.

“He wants to cooperate,” Frank Adams said. “We had a long talk, and he knows it's the right thing to do. He still doesn't remember much, but now at least he knows he didn't kill that man.”

“Whatever else I did...” Omar muttered, then shrugged in acceptance as the duty sergeant led him away.

Charges would have to be laid against him, Nadif and the others. They might not have killed Rosenthal, but they had certainly beaten and robbed him. Without their help, Caitlin might not even have succeeded in her goal. Ultimately the young men needed to be held accountable for their part in the tragedy that had followed. Green doubted it would do much to deter Nadif from his path of crime, but Omar might still be turned around. As with Dr. Rosenthal's patients, the proper remedy needed to be chosen with care.

In the squad room, the sense of urgency no longer hung in the air. They were no longer hot on the trail of a villain; Nadif, Omar and Patrick were all in custody, awaiting the interview and forensic results that would construct the case for court. Levesque was busy at her desk, the white bandage already replaced by a much more fashionable flesh-coloured bandaid. She sported two black eyes that made her look wan and frail, but she counteracted the effect by wearing a tailored navy suit and for the first time ever, a subtle pink lip gloss. She'd come prepared for battle against the high-powered, charismatic lawyer.

She glanced up belatedly as Green reached his office door, then gathered up some print-outs and came to join him. “I booked the video interrogation room for Mr. O'Malley at one o'clock, sir. His lawyer, Elliot Solquist, will be joining us. I thought you'd like to know the latest forensics before that.”

He sat behind his desk and scowled at the blinking voicemail light on his phone. No doubt there was a similar pile-up of messages in his email inbox as well. He gestured Levesque to a chair. “The executive summary, Marie Claire.”

She smiled. “At the Rothwell Drive scene, they found the weapon used to kill the mother. An eight-inch pair of fabric shears. It was placed in the cosmetics drawer in the daughter's en suite bathroom, still covered in blood and smeared with fingerprints. Lou Paquette identified a useable one as Caitlin's.”

“None from Patrick?”

She shook her head, pouting slightly as if disappointed.

“What about other prints? There were bloody handprints and footprints all over that scene.”

“Still being processed. Lou says he'll be busy all month. They did find some traces of blood washed down the sink in Caitlin's bathroom.”

Green thought back. “That also supports the father's version of events.”

“But—!” Quickly she flipped to another report. “At the Montreal Road bungalow, Lyle Cunningham found some interesting prints on the prescription bottle and the water glass. The ones on the bottle were overlapping and partial, so he could only get enough points for a conclusive match on one. Caitlin's. But he said some of the partials might have been Patrick's.”

Green waved his hand in dismissal. “Patrick might have handled his wife's sleeping pills any time. It means nothing that his prints are on it. What about the glass?”

“A couple of partial prints match Caitlin's, but—” she smiled, the pout vanishing in her triumph, “the clearest, most complete print belongs to Patrick. His right thumb.”

It wasn't much to go on, Green reflected once Levesque left the office. The crumpled phone message, the fingerprints on the fabric shears, the blood in Caitlin's sink...everything was consistent with Patrick's story. Most of the puzzle pieces fit. Even Patrick's prints on the glass could be explained away.