Once Upon a Time (15 page)

She looked shocked. “Goodness, no. I would never have put him through that. You must understand, Inspector. Eugene didn't remember what he'd been through, and I wasn't sure it would be a blessing for him to remember. Sometimes even the sound of German or Polish being spoken would make him tremble.”

“What did you tell your children about his past?”

Her lips tightened in a firm line. “Nothing specific. They knew he'd been through hardship, but what good would it have done to upset them?”

“It might have helped them to understand him.”

“Eugene would have hated the pity. He was old world, the man of the house. One endured one's own burdens.”

And you endured them for everyone, he thought. “Do you have a picture of him when he was young? A wedding picture or…?”

She stiffened at the abrupt change of direction. “Why do you want that?”

“I'd like to borrow it for a few days,” he replied vaguely. He was hoping to show it to any Ozorkow survivors Naomi Wyman managed to unearth for him.

He could sense from her frown that she was not satisfied, but she tried a more oblique approach. “Frankly, I can't see how all this ancient history has anything to do with his death. All it does is stir up pain.”

He could have soothed her with some vague platitudes, but he was getting tired of family secrets. Perhaps it was time to cast a lure and see what he caught.

“I'm a stickler for the whole picture, Mrs. Walker. Did you know, for instance, that the man Eugene brawled with twenty years ago was from Ozorkow, too?”

For an instant, he thought she froze before she pulled the veil firmly down on her emotions.

“No,” she replied. But he didn't believe her.

Eight

March 4th, 1941

Lodz. City of legend, of vice and opportunity.

Wide-eyed, we feast on its cobbled streets, grand balconies,
shop windows overflowing with wares.

Furs and bright fashions fill the streets.

She smiles at me. Resettlement, the Germans called it.

Maybe even a small apartment, a bed and stove.

The truck lumbers on
deeper into the city, into grime and crumbling stone.

Faces in the street follow us, toothless and bleak.

Ahead, barbed wire and a massive gate,
Policemen everywhere.

Papers, stamps, permits, questions, lines.

More lines.

Just say you have a trade, whispers a beggar at my side.

Metal worker or bootmaker are the best.

So the poet becomes a tinsmith.

Monday morning dawned
blustery and grey, with a northeast wind that whipped the snow across the fields, iced the roads and snarled the traffic on the way into town. Green spent over an hour fuming in bumper to bumper gridlock and missed the early morning meeting he'd scheduled with Sullivan. He'd spent an hour on the phone with Sullivan the evening before, going over questions to ask the mysterious Mr. G. in Hamilton, but a few more had popped into his head over the course of his half-sleepless night.

This ridiculous commute won't work, he thought as he finally pulled into the station. I'm in charge of Major Crimes, I can't be an hour away from command central when a crisis strikes. He had a dreary committee meeting scheduled for most of the morning, and he didn't dare stretch Jules' magnanimity by skipping it. But he had a list of tasks he needed to address before he went to the meeting, and very little time in which to address them. Now that the case was officially a homicide investigation, courtesy dictated that he at least let the Major Crimes staff sergeant know that it was on the books.

When he reached the second floor, he found Sullivan already gone to the airport and Detective Gibbs hovering outside his door. The tall, lanky young officer was all spit and polish in his new grey suit, and he brightened like an eager puppy at the sight of Green.

“Oh, Gibbs, I've got a job for you.” Green opened his office and strode around his desk.

Gibbs followed him in. “Yes, sir? I've got the forensic reports Sergeant Sullivan asked me to get, and he said to give them to you right away. He said it's a whole new ball game.”

Green looked up from his drawer. “What did he mean—a whole new ball game?”

“He didn't say, sir. Just that you'd know what he meant.”

Green sighed. Sullivan and his riddles again. He'd be laughing all the way to Hamilton as he pictured Green's face. “Tell me what you've got,” he said.

Gibbs perched on the edge of the visitor's chair, his back rigid at attention as he rifled through his notebook. He cleared his throat, his Adam's apple bobbing.

“First the RCMP lab. They identified the tire tread from the Walker laneway. Umm—it's a motomaster SR175 all-season radial made by Canadian Tire. They said you'd be thrilled.”

Green knew next to nothing about cars and cared even less, his view being that a car was a box that got you from point A to point B. Preferably without breaking down. “Why?” he asked.

“It's probably the most common tire on the road, sir. But the lab said there's about fifty Ks wear on it, and there are enough accidentals on the tread that they should be able to give us a positive ID on the vehicle if we bring it in.”

“Which doesn't help us find it. Did they make a guess at the type of vehicle? Big or small?”

“Judging from the wheel span, a subcompact. And they said Canadian Tire is a replacement tire, so they guess there's a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres on the car, give or take. That makes it likely five years old or more. On probability.”

Green checked his notes of the Renfrew visit. The old woman on the neighbouring farm had described the car she'd seen as black and flat-roofed. “That means we're probably looking for a not-so-new black subcompact hatchback.”

“Yes, sir, do you want me to start looking—”

“No, I need you working on the black tool box. Did you look into it?”

“Oh yes, sir.” Gibbs sat up straighter, if that was possible, and flipped back through his notebook, in which Green caught a glimpse of meticulous rows of tiny script. “I checked the antique dealers in the city, and I also called the Canadian Antique Dealers Association. No one really knows about European tools, but they gave me the name of a dealer near Toronto who specializes in collectible tools and locks. Do you want me to call him?”

Green shook his head sharply. “Take it to him.”

Gibbs blinked. “What, sir?”

“If you hurry, you can just catch the plane Sergeant Sullivan is on. I want you to ask the dealer about the keys. I'm not interested in the tools, just the keys. Who made them, when, and for what purpose.”

Gibbs was gaping at him. As a detective, Gibbs was meticulous and thorough, perhaps to a fault, but he didn't handle curve balls well. Green stood up to herd him towards the door.

“But sir, I have the fingerprint report from Sergeant Paquette as well. The one Sullivan says makes a whole new ball game.”

“I'll get it from Lou myself.”

“But I—I—what about travel authorization, sir?”

“I'll phone the airport and buy your ticket myself. Just go. The box is in Property.”

Green was still grinning when the flustered young detective disappeared into the elevator, trailing his parka behind him, but the grin had faded considerably by the time he'd wrestled with airline red tape and managed to book the flight. He glanced at his watch, swore and scanned the squad room impatiently. Two detectives were just strolling to their desks with fresh cups of coffee in their hands. Green knew they were just tying up loose ends on a big file they'd worked, which meant they were free for the picking.

“Watts, Leblanc! I want you to check the make and colour of the cars belonging to the relatives and friends of Eugene Walker.” Seeing their blank faces over the rims of their coffee cups, he snapped his fingers impatiently. “The stiff in the Civic parking lot Wednesday. I'm looking for a dark subcompact hatchback. When you find it, match it to the tread the lab has.” He held up his hand to forestall their bewildered protest. “I'll explain later. Just check family members, neighbours, whatever. Start with the Reids.”

Afterwards Green went down the hall and found Sergeant Lou Paquette in his fingerprint lab, shrugging on his parka. He looked bleary-eyed and grim, and when he saw Green he groaned.

“I gotta go out on a call, Mike. Didn't Bob Gibbs give you my report?”

“No time. I figured I'd get it from the horse's mouth.”

The Ident man sighed and sat down again. “I don't know why I keep doing this for you. I must be crazy. I tell you, if I'd had any place to go on the weekend, you wouldn't have seen me for dust.”

“What have you got for me?”

Lou Paquette gave him a long stare, then shook his head. “You never were a guy to waste words on thank yous. I've got a suspect for you, if that's what you mean. Don Reid. Boy, was he pissed off when I showed up to take his prints Sunday. Said he was going to call the commissioner, the mayor, his MP. Anyway, his prints were all over the investment bonds. All over the booze in the basement too, but I don't see how that makes him a murderer.”

“Anyone else's prints on the booze?”

“Yeah, the stiff 's and his wife's. Plus an unidentifiable. But every liquor store clerk from here to Seagram's could have touched those things.”

“It doesn't matter. What matters is that Don Reid did.” Green swung around, pausing in the doorway to grin. “Thanks, Lou. Go out to your call. And then maybe try your bed.”

Just as he was leaving Paquette's room, he heard his name being paged. When he glanced at his watch, he saw that he was fifteen minutes late for his committee meeting. Fuck, he thought, Jules sure was giving him no margin for error this morning. Obediently, he ducked into the stairwell and descended to the first floor, where he joined the cross-section of officers on the Building Planning Committee, which was at that moment planning the new Far East station. Green had tried to wiggle out of it, citing the exigencies of his job as well as his complete lack of qualifications for designing buildings, but Jules had been adamant. They needed an inspector, and his number had come up.

But as the discussion of toilets droned around him, Green found himself drifting back to the case. Sullivan should soon be arriving at Gryszkiewicz's Hamilton house. What would he learn there? Where did Mr. G. fit into the saga of concentration camps and stolen identities? And what would Gibbs learn about the keys? Mass produced during World War Two for storage depots or the like, Mr. Fine had said. “Or the like…” Like what? In the story of the three old men, there might be enough intrigue and hatred and secrecy to last a lifetime.

But was there murder? Or were Sullivan's more pedestrian suspicions right? He obviously thought that the motive lay among the missing investment certificates and the hidden whiskey in Walker's cellar, and that the killer was from Walker's present life, not his past. Certainly something didn't seem right about Don Reid. He was hiding something—too edgy, too secretive, too eager to divert the blame elsewhere. He might be a thief, he might even be the clandestine whiskey supplier. But how did that make him a killer?

When Green finally managed to liberate himself from the committee meeting, it was past noon, and he hurried back to check whether there had been any calls from Sullivan or Gibbs. None. But there, sitting at the top of his list of incoming e-mail, was a report submitted by Detectives Watts and Leblanc, brief and to the point.

Dark grey 1994 Honda Civic hatchback L.P. Ont.149 XOA, registered to Donald Reid, 92 Riverbrook Road. Ident is working on a match right now.

*    *    *

“Aw, come off it, Inspector! Am I the suspect of the day? Yesterday Howard, tomorrow…maybe even Ruth?”

“Standard police procedure, Mr. Reid,” Green replied blithely. “I'm simply taking a statement of your whereabouts on Wednesday between eleven and two p.m.”

“Should I have my lawyer?”

Green shrugged. “That's your right, of course. In fact, although I'm not charging you with anything, there are some formalities we should cover.” He went on to recite the standard Charter caution about Reid's rights. Because of the official nature of the visit, he had brought along Detective Leblanc, who had the misfortune to be in the squad room when Green read her memo. They had found Don Reid at work in a glass office tower ten floors above the noon-time bustle of Queen Street. His lunch of a shwarma, coke and Danish was spread out on his desk, and the reek of garlic permeated the room.

Reid had not been pleased to see the two police officers, and, as the precise and official-sounding caution droned on, Green detected a hint of panic beneath the veil of indignation. At the end, Reid leaned back in his swivel chair and surveyed Green across his black lacquered desk. His eyes were slightly pink, and a pen twirled restlessly between his fingers, belying his casual pose.

“I was at lunch with a colleague, Mason Whitmore. His office is on the seventh floor.”

“From when to when?”

Reid looked bored. “About twelve fifteen to two. We ate at Daly's. That's in the Westin Hotel,” he added, as if a mere police officer might never have heard of it. In fact, Green had once questioned a suspect as he ate his goat cheese fettuccine at the discreet rose-linened table. The memory caused him to smile, but only briefly before briskly requesting Whitmore's address and telephone number. He signalled to Leblanc, who slipped her notebook into her pocket and left the room. Green turned back to Don's defiant stare.

“Did you know Ruth and Eugene were coming for tea that day?”

“Oh yes, that's why I worked late that afternoon.”

“Why?”

Reid shrugged. He was now working the pen slowly up and down through his fingers, the restlessness abated but not gone. “Margaret had to play the dutiful daughter for her mother's sake—to help ease the burden—and she was used to Eugene's mean streak. I couldn't stand the guy. I used to try, for Margie's sake, but when he started taking his meanness out on my boys, yelling at them, shoving them around, I drew the line. Now I stay as far away from him as I can.”