Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (73 page)

She planted her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “The problem is, at the first hint of funny business, people go ballistic, imagining all sorts of horrors. Parents started phoning each other and questioning their children. Teachers went paranoid because they didn’t know which children had complained or what the substance of the complaints was. They started questioning their own behaviour and wondering if they’d be the next to be accused.”

She was on a roll now, the rawness of her feelings welling up through her words. Green could tell that ten years had not buried this case for her one iota. Devine might be trying to refashion herself as a corporate administrator, but beneath the tailored navy suit and the expensive blouse, her passion for the fight was with her still.

“And we couldn’t do a damn thing to reassure anyone. Naturally, I told the principal to assure his staff that no ordinary behaviour, not even hugs or sitting the little ones on laps, would get them in trouble, but I couldn’t tell them Fraser had made the little girl undress, he’d made her give him blow jobs, and he’d ejaculated between her thighs. Becky was graphic and clear on this, Mike. No matter what the teachers said and what the defence alleged—that Becky had been a behaviour problem all along, that she was a habitual liar and drama queen—no child makes those details up. And these child molesters are smart. They don’t penetrate or leave marks, so there’s no physical proof, and they pick the marginalized children whom no one will believe. Children who are already angry and upset, who crave the attention and whose new problems will be masked by the behaviour problems they already show. And that’s exactly what happened. My worst nightmares came true in that case, Mike. Parents pumped their children, children embellished their stories, the defence tore their evidence apart on cross. And the creep walked.”

“But you should have seen that coming,” Green replied. “With no information or direction from us, hysteria would take over.”

“I did see it coming!” she snapped. “But we couldn’t handle things any differently. We couldn’t just interview every little girl he’d had any substantial contact with over the last four years. That would have been a fishing expedition which would have biased the public’s perception of the accused and endangered his right to a fair trial by undermining the presumption of innocence. Talk about handing Bleustein his defence on a silver platter. Not to mention he’d have accused us of manufacturing evidence.”

“On any new cases that surfaced, possibly. But what about Rebecca Whelan herself? Surely with that graphic description, you had more than enough to proceed with her alone. If you’d charged him immediately, there would have been less time for the rumours to start and less time for her to get confused about her story.”

Her face flamed, and he thought for an instant she would leap over the desk at him. “I didn’t screw up this case, Green, if that’s what you’re implying! The girl wasn’t stable. She kept changing her story of the events—the sequence, the times and places. Sometimes it was last week, sometimes last year, all normal enough for a little kid who doesn’t understand time. But white, middle-aged, male judges don’t always understand that. Twenty-six sexual abuse cases I had that year, Green, and twenty-six acquittals. I wanted this one to stick, for once. So I was trying to get other cases to back her up. Waiting for other parents to come forward with more complaints on their own. That took months!”

“Did you know about the kids he drove home late from school?”

Her eyes clouded, and she snorted at the memory. “Oh, yes. And that was an example of the parents being too overzealous. When they got wind of the rumours, they questioned their kids and asked them point blank ‘Did Mr. Fraser do this, did he do that, did he give you candy, did he ever touch you?’ By the time we got to them, the kids were telling me about every little pat on the shoulder. Only two cases sounded suspicious, but in the trial—”

Devine’s phone rang, and her demeanour changed instantly from backroom cop to polished professional as she picked it up. She listened in silence for a moment, then her gaze flicked towards Green. A scowl marred her mask of calm.

“That won’t be necessary, counsellor. It was Inspector Green, who is right here. Shall I put him on, or—?” She paused to listen, then glanced at her watch. “How about twenty minutes. He’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Green raised an eyebrow as she hung up, but he waited her out. Her scowl deepened. “Green, I don’t need this crap. That was Quinton J. Patterson, of McKendry, Patterson and Coles. The little girl’s stepfather. And he’s on the warpath.”

Quinton Patterson arrived five minutes early, suggesting that he had come directly from his law office, which was just up Elgin Street, opposite the main court house. Feeling perverse, Green kept him waiting ten minutes and endured two pages over the station’s PA system while he refreshed his memory about the family background.

Rebecca Whelan’s parents had separated when Rebecca was just a baby and her brother Billy was eight. Custody had been awarded to the mother after a bitter court dispute in which both parties had accused the other of being unfit, but the children continued to have regular weekend visits with their father up until at least the time of the trial.

On one of her many court appearances during the custody battle, Rebecca’s mother had met Quinton Patterson, who was appearing in the same court on an unrelated matter, and they began an intense love affair which led to their marriage as soon the papers were finalized in her divorce. It was the first marriage for him, and the couple had no subsequent children of their own, but police reports at the time of Fraser’s trial described Quinton Patterson as fiercely devoted to his stepchildren, although more so to little Becky than to his stepson, who’d been a surly ten when Quinton came on the scene. Although he’d only been a junior lawyer in his firm at the time, Barbara Devine had clearly felt the pressure of his legal sabre-rattling to lay a charge in this case.

So does the man come now as friend or foe, Green wondered as he made his way down to the lobby. Is he hoping I have new evidence or a fresh resolve to put Fraser away, or is he trying to put the lid back on the whole painful mess? As a lawyer, Patterson certainly knows about double jeopardy, which prevents our retrying the case in criminal court, but perhaps he’s hoping for some new legal toehold by which he can go after Fraser and the teacher’s union—indeed why not the whole school board and the police department—in a civil suit. Green’s answer came the minute he laid eyes on the man striding back and forth across the marble foyer with a cellphone glued to his ear.

Quinton Patterson had a baby face he was trying very hard to counteract. He had soft, rosy cheeks, a mop of black curls and only the faintest shimmer of silver above his ears. Like Green, he looked barely thirty, but unlike Green, who enjoyed the camouflage that his youthful looks provided, Patterson had affected a corporate power dress and a haughty sneer in an attempt to bulk up his image. Today he was crisply dressed in a navy pinstripe suit, coordinated royal blue tie and polished Italian shoes, and his face was a dangerous shade of pink as he snapped orders into the phone. The man’s not pleased with the latest developments, Green decided.

“Mr. Patterson,” he began. Patterson held up a sharp finger to silence him and turned his back.

“He can try all he wants, that’s our final offer!”

“I’m Mike Green.” Green extended his hand.

“Wait a—” Patterson barked, then swung around to give Green an incredulous look. Green smiled inwardly. He hadn’t bothered to put on his sports jacket, and his wrinkled shirt and scuffed shoes were clearly not what Patterson expected. “I’ll call you back,” he said into the phone and snapped it shut. Ignoring Green’s outstretched hand, he started toward the elevator.

“Is your office on the third floor?”

Yet another subtle putdown, Green observed, for Patterson almost certainly knew that the third floor was reserved for the senior brass. Three putdowns in the space of ten seconds. No wonder Barbara Devine said she didn’t need this crap.

“I’ve reserved one of the interview rooms,” Green replied and pointedly headed toward the stairs, which had a fire escape decor that didn’t quite match the imperial mood Patterson was striving for. Neither did the interview room, which was small, windowless and contained nothing but a table and three moulded plastic chairs. Green took one and gestured Patterson into another.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Patterson?”

Patterson inspected the seat before sitting down, then set his briefcase on the table and flipped it open. After extracting a yellow legal pad, he balanced a pair of reading glasses on the bridge of his nose. Glancing at his watch, he made a note on the blank pad.

“I understand you’ve been making inquiries into my daughter’s sexual molestation case.”

“Who told you that?” The question was not simple fencing. Green was genuinely interested in Patterson’s connections.

“Is it true?”

“Who told you?”

Patterson jotted again on his legal pad, then peered at Green over the rims of his glasses. “Josh Bleustein.”

Green had suspected as much, although he’d thought Bleustein and Patterson would be on opposite sides of this issue. Bleustein had defended the hated child molester and won. On top of that, Bleustein was the quintessential loudmouth, brawling Jew, and Patterson was old-firm Rockcliffe Wasp. But the legal fraternity was full of strange bedfellows.

“What exactly did Bleustein tell you?” Green asked.

“That Matthew Fraser was probably dead, and I should be prepared for the police to come after me and my family.”

“How collegial of Mr. Bleustein, given that he worked the other side of the fence.”

“Josh never believed Fraser was innocent.”

“Then you must despise him for being so good at his job.”

Patterson had been scribbling industriously on his notepad, and now a faint flush spread up his neck. “I despise the education system for betraying the innocence of children, and the police department for acting like spineless sycophants.”

“So what can I do for you, Mr. Patterson?”

“I want to protect the interests of my family. You’ll forgive me if I haven’t much faith in your department’s ability to do that, nor in your investigative competence. My daughter’s case is ancient history. The death of this man—if he is Fraser, and my sources tell me that’s far from assured—has nothing whatever to do with us, and I’m here to tell you that I will regard any attempt to connect the two as police harassment.”

“You may regard it however you wish, Mr. Patterson. I have a suspicious death to investigate, and I’m sure you know the law well enough to—”

“Don’t patronize me, Green! Personally, I want to pin a medal on whoever killed him, but if it was going to be me or someone in Becky’s case, we would have done it ten years ago, when it mattered! Not now, when it’s all over and buried. And you know damn well that’s true!”

“In my business, it doesn’t pay to know damn well anything is true until I’ve looked into it. My team will be pursuing any and all lines of inquiry that we deem relevant.”

“He’s probably done it again, you know! Have you thought of that?”

Green inclined his head slightly. “Your daughter’s case is one of several lines of inquiry.”

Patterson scribbled furiously on his notepad, and after a moment he stopped and tapped his pencil rapidly on the page. He seemed to be calculating his next move.

“Very well,” he snapped. “However, I want your agreement that if you have something to ask of my family, you will direct it to me. I will cooperate with you.”

“Have you or your family had any contact with Mr. Fraser since the trial?”

Patterson sat with pen poised. “So do I have your agreement you’ll go through me?”

The man’s intensity vibrated through the small room. Green sensed that beneath the adversarial legal façade, Patterson was a father dealing with powerful emotions in the only way he knew how, by playing the game he knew best. Green softened his tone. “Of course not, and you couldn’t have expected any other response. But I’m not insensitive to the pain in this case, sir. I’ve been in Major Crimes more than fifteen years, and I know how a crime like this leaves the victims feeling brutalized and betrayed. Those feelings never really go away; they just get paved over with a thin veneer that can easily be picked away. I can’t deny this investigation will do that, but I’ll try to be as sensitive as I can be. That much I can promise you.”

Patterson sat suspended for a moment, then dropped his eyes and made a show of jotting more notes on his pad. The pen quivered in his hand and his tone, although brusque, was conciliatory.

“We haven’t seen Mr. Fraser in over six years. After the trial, I kept track of his activities until he left town. It was my form of citizen’s justice. I didn’t want him to feel secure when our daughter would never feel secure again, so I sent him letters and made anonymous phone calls at night. I wanted him to know someone was watching him, so he’d better not go near any other child.”

“Did the other members of your family know about this activity?”

Patterson set his jaw. “This was my decision, Inspector. My wife had been through hell with her first husband—in fact, he was still jerking her around and keeping the children on an emotional roller coaster. His reaction to the molestation was to blame her for not giving Becky enough attention. When Fraser walked away free, she was almost a candidate for the Rideau Psychiatric Hospital. The only thing that kept her going was that Becky needed her help. So I let her focus on Becky, while I took on Fraser.”

Green heard the brittle edge to the man’s tone and shifted his focus gently. “Can we talk about Becky? Did she recover?”

Patterson removed his glasses to examine a speck on the flawless glass. The tiny interview room was soundproof, and for a few seconds the hum of the air conditioning was the only sound to fill the room. “We had several really rough years, during which we got useless advice from every single professional in the city. Then finally she seemed to settle down. She never got over it, but at least now she keeps it in the corner of her life. That’s why I insist—”