None So Blind (24 page)

He left her blinking in dismay as he slipped out the door. Sullivan stood in the corridor.

“The fire investigator just called from the site. They found bones in the rubble. MacPhail’s on his way out to the site right this moment.”

Green sucked in his breath. “What kind of bones?”

Sullivan shook his head. “They don’t know. A couple of long, thin bones that could be human femurs.”

“Or deer bones. Or coyote. It
is
the country.”

“Right. And the fire boys can’t tell how long they’ve been there either. As soon as the investigators found them, they stopped everything and called the cops. The first responders were on the ball.”

“So it’s been secured as a potential crime scene?”

“Yup. Until MacPhail tells us they’re human or not.”

Green glanced at his watch. By now the time was creeping toward five o’clock. Time for him to be home discussing his father’s house plans with Sharon while she still had some energy.

Unfortunately, it was also time for MacPhail to be well into his fourth or fifth whisky of the day. Not a reassuring thought.

G
reen
arrived to find Dr. Alexander MacPhail already on scene, knee deep in soggy ash. His rubber coverall and cap were askew but he was shouting orders in a firm, clear voice. Four Scotches or not, the adrenaline brought on by the unusual remains had whipped him to sobriety.

The charred remnants of the walls, roof, and floor beams had been removed, leaving the foundation hole a jumble of debris. MacPhail and a fire investigator were poking carefully through the rubble in the corner, lifting burnt planks and bricks one at a time to look underneath. Half a dozen police and fire crew were standing around in excited vigil.

The stink of wet ash was still strong but the blue sky and late afternoon sun lent a benign air to the clearing. Beyond the ring of scorched trees, a gentle breeze tickled the leafy canopy, and the yellow police tape fluttered.

As Green approached, MacPhail brandished two black objects, one the size of a stubby pencil. “I believe this is a finger,” he announced triumphantly. “And this is a femur.”

Green felt a heavy weight descend on him. This case grew more complicated at every turn, the noose around the Carmichaels tighter. “Human then.”

“Unless cows and moose have fingers. Or is it meese?”

Not as sober as I thought
. Green sighed.

MacPhail, still sputtering at his own joke, attempted to rein himself in. “Unless you’re wanting to challenge my professional opinion on this too, Inspector.”

Green ducked the salvo. “So it’s a major crime scene?”

“Possibly. Or possibly the poor bugger was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Green pondered his next move. MacPhail had his huge Wellington boots planted firmly in the middle of the evidence but tact was required to extricate him. “Can you determine anything else about the remains? Length of time they’ve been there?”

“I imagine they’ve been here at least since the fire, lad.”

“Age and gender?”

“I can’t possibly know that until I dig them up and get them on the table.”

Green abandoned tact. “I’d like to get Dr. Jeffry Synes’s assistance with the excavation. He’s a physical anthropologist at the Museum of History —”

“I know who he is, Inspector. He’s a little man who displays an inordinate amount of glee at the discovery of every minuscule piece of bone. It will take him days and an army of graduate students to dig all the bits out of this black muck.”

“All the same, we need to know the age of the bones, the position of the deceased when they died, gender and size …” Seeing MacPhail about to dismiss Synes’s exacting work as voodoo science, he pressed forward. “For eventual court, you know. The more by-the-book we are, the more airtight the case.”

MacPhail rolled his eyes. “Inspector Green by the book? There’s a new one. You do realize this is probably the bugger who set the fire in the first place, trapped by his own stupidity, and it will never get to court. But suit yourself, lad,” he muttered as he tossed the burnt finger down and began to trudge out of the muck. “Get your expert down here and I will go back to the fine Merlot and barbecued steak that are waiting for me. Synes can work all night for all I care; this lot isn’t going anywhere. And once you’re good and ready, bring the box of nice, clean bones to the morgue and I’ll have a proper look.”

Green offered thanks, allowing MacPhail to save face as he headed back to his car, where fortunately his assistant-cum-driver was waiting. MacPhail was right about one thing. Jeffry Synes was an expert in bones, and he brought the same level of boyish enthusiasm to fossils that were several thousand years old as he did to the occasional human skeleton he was called to analyze.

These bones were unlikely to be thousands of years old, having been found in the basement of a house built in the 1940s, but Lucas and Marilyn had lived in that house for thirty-five years, during which time the basement had been Lucas’s private man cave. Had there been other victims that Lucas had buried in the cellar? Was that what Marilyn had found? Was that what she’d been so desperate to hide?

It was going to be a long night.

Anxious to avoid a media frenzy, Green tried to keep the news of the remains as quiet as possible, telling only the Arson Unit, Sullivan, Neufeld, and Jeffry Synes. In the era of Twitter and cellphone videos, however, he knew he couldn’t keep the social media groundswell at bay for long. So, before heading gratefully for home, he called for a team case conference first thing in the morning.

By the time he arrived at 8 a.m., most of the team were already gathered in the incident room. At the front, Levesque was scribbling on the Smart Board, filling in more points on the timeline of events surrounding Rosten’s death.

Green studied the dates. Laid out chronologically, the story of Rosten’s last days came alive. It had all begun with the letter from his daughter Paige six weeks ago, followed by their meeting two weeks later. Only fifteen minutes long and by Archie’s account filled with awkward silences, but life-changing enough to give Rosten a spark of hope. Enough for him to make an appointment with Dr. Ansari in Kingston for a clearer view of his prognosis.

Two weeks after the meeting with Paige was the meeting with Marilyn Carmichael — a meeting held at her request — which appeared to set him on his fateful track. He persuaded Archie to let him travel alone to his appointment in Kingston, he withdrew fifteen hundred dollars from his bank account, and he set off on his final day. On that day, there had been a phone call to his daughter, which went unanswered, a letter mailed to Green promising proof of the real villain’s identity, a trip to Ottawa, purchase of food and security cameras, but not Scotch, and a taxi ride out to his cottage at 6:30 p.m.

At 8:31 p.m. an unknown visitor arrived, driving a dark-coloured SUV and carrying what appeared to be a liquor-store bag. The visitor ducked the camera system but seemed to be recognized and expected by Rosten. Why expected? Had Rosten called them or had they communicated through Facebook?

At 9:47 p.m., the visitor left, again hiding from the camera.

At 8:15 the next morning, Rosten’s body was found, and death was estimated at between 6 p.m. and midnight. No other arrivals and departures were noted on camera during this timeframe.

On a separate screen, Levesque had written a list of persons of interest — Rosten’s ex-wife Victoria and twin daughters, Paige and Pamela; Tom Henriksson; Erik Lazlo; Percy Mullenthorpe; and Julia, Gordon, and Marilyn Carmichael. She had filled in known alibis for the time frame of Rosten’s death. Pamela and Victoria were both confirmed to have been in Halifax, and Paige was at her friend’s house knocking back wine. Mullenthorpe had left a trail of petty convictions across the country before ending up a semi-vegetable in a hospital in Red Deer, Alberta. Life on the edge had apparently caught up with him.

Gordon’s presence at nightclubs was partially confirmed by the bartender but his time estimates were vague. Julia’s alibi was also partially confirmed. According to Hill Island border control, she had crossed the St. Lawrence River the morning of Rosten’s disappearance, and, by a stroke of luck, Peters had uncovered a parking ticket issued to her rental vehicle in nearby Brockville the evening of his death.

“A parking ticket. I thought that only happens in the movies!” Peters exclaimed as the whole room laughed. Only Levesque did not smile.

“Any confirmation on where she was staying?”

Peters’s face fell. “Local uniforms are working on it. But Brockville is an hour and a half drive —”

The incident room door flew open and Gibbs rushed in, clutching a sheaf of papers. Levesque’s eyes lit up.

“Lazlo’s phone and bank records?”

He nodded as he brought them to the front. “I had a quick look. His credit card has been active since the day he disappeared, but not often and not for big purchases.” Gibbs looked less fried today but his voice still sounded like chains dragged over gravel. “Food and gas mostly. I checked the pending charges with VISA and the card was last used yesterday at the Ultramar gas station in Pembroke.”

What the hell was Lazlo doing in Pembroke?
Green wondered. The small town was about a hundred and fifty kilometres northwest of Ottawa along the Ottawa River, essentially en route to the hinterland of northern Ontario. As an escape route, it was an unwise choice. If Lazlo was hoping to disappear by fading into the crowd or catching a quick flight out of the country, he was going in the wrong direction.

“Find out from the wife whether he has any history or contacts there,” Levesque said, making a note on the board. “Friends, family, former residence. What’s in his phone records?”

“That’s going to take some time,” Gibbs said. “There are dozens of calls and texts in the last month, the last one yesterday. I checked that one. It’s to a motel in Pembroke.”

“Phone them,” Levesque said. “Find out if he’s there.”

Gibbs took out his phone to make the call. Tuning half an ear, Green wandered up to peruse the phone records he’d left on the table. He tracked his finger down the list of calls Lazlo had received in the two weeks between Marilyn’s meeting with Rosten and the man’s death. If Rosten had phoned Lazlo to set up a meeting at the cottage, the call would have been made during that timeframe.

Belleville and Kingston had the same 613 area code as Ottawa, but a call from either place would be logged as long distance. Sure enough, there was one long-distance call from a 613 number, made to Lazlo four days after Rosten’s meeting with Marilyn and ten days before his death. Time enough for Rosten to track down Lazlo’s number and set the trap. A quick computer check revealed the call was from a Belleville payphone not far from Horizon House.

Levesque added that call to Rosten’s timeline just as Gibbs finished his call to the motel. He shrugged. “The motel says they had one late-night check-in last night, but wrong name and description.”

“Could be a disguise or a diversion,” Green said. “To throw us off the track. Let’s check it out and get an alert out on this guy ASAP as a suspect in Rosten’s death.”

A buzz arose in the room as Levesque began firing off assignments. Green picked up the phone list and continued to scan the numbers. Most were meaningless and would take long, painstaking hours to eliminate, but one had a familiar ring. He wracked his memory before pulling out his own phone to search through his contacts. And sure enough …

His chest tightened. Erik Lazlo had made two calls to Marilyn Carmichael’s house — the first a few days before Rosten’s death, and then again on the morning after.

As Green left the incident room, he considered which of the many tentacles of this case he had to pick up next. Neufeld was pushing for a high-level meeting with all the players implicated in Rosten’s wrongful conviction case. Although it was not technically a wrongful conviction yet, since the man had not been definitively cleared by new evidence such as DNA, Neufeld rightly wanted to warn the Crown Attorney’s office, the Justice Department, and the legal departments of the various police services involved that there was trouble brewing so they wouldn’t be blindsided by a media leak.

Green knew she also wanted to protect the Ottawa Police Service’s flank and ensure the blame was spread around should accusations and lawsuits begin to fly. Neufeld was new to the force and this would be the first major test of her mettle.

Green, however, had no wish to be the straw man set up by the brass to absorb the blame. It was bad enough that the threat of Support Services hung over his head.

He fell in step beside Brian Sullivan. “I’m heading out to the fire site to see if the bone doctor has any information for me yet.”

Sullivan cast him a doubtful look. “Didn’t Neufeld want —”

“I’ll have a whole lot more answers for her if Jeff Synes can tell me about the remains — age, sex, time in the ground, manner of death, and such. And we have to set up a separate major case investigation.”

“Isn’t that premature?”

“Regardless of who the body is and when they died, it’s a suspicious death. Warrants a major case file.”

“Maybe some poor guy just got caught in the fire.”

“Uh-huh. And I’ve got a swamp to sell you.”

Sullivan chuckled. “Okay. We’re running out of personnel. I’ve got two detectives on holiday. How about Gibbs?”

“Gibbs is a witness. He called in the fire.”

“Right.” Sullivan paused outside Green’s office, mentally reviewing the officers in the unit.

“How about you?” Green countered. “At least until we know for sure whether it’s a homicide.”

Sullivan folded his arms and looked down at Green, his blue eyes twinkling as if twenty years had been taken from his life. As if the two of them were back in the trenches together, caught up in the thrill of a case. “I’m fine with it if you are, Inspector.”

“Good. Done. And right now, I’m going out to Navan to see what Synes has uncovered. Love to watch those guys work. And while I’m there, I might just check out a few leads in the Lazlo MisPers.” He grinned at Sullivan’s raised eyebrows. “That’s the great thing about being the inspector. As the boss, I get to do whatever the hell I want.”

When Green arrived at the Carmichael fire site, he found Jeff Synes conducting a mini-archaeological dig. The diminutive scientist had gridded off the entire foundation, and two impossibly young-looking students, properly suited up and under the supervision of the arson investigator, were doing a methodical search while Synes concentrated on the remains themselves. Even from the edges of the cordon, Green saw that he had already excavated much of the body, and he wondered whether the man had begun at the first blush of dawn.

The skeleton lay wedged in the corner, curled by the fire into the classic pugilist pose. Synes was brushing off the skull with short, soft strokes, as if it were a piece of priceless, thousand-year-old pottery. He looked up with a jaunty wave.

“Almost perfectly intact,” he said. “No animal activity, no shifting with frost. The fire didn’t burn hot enough to destroy the bone. House fires typically don’t. My students are learning a tremendous amount from Sergeant Keller here.”