Once Upon a Time (23 page)

For the moment, Walker was gone. Green's mind was caught in a whirl of questions. He'd only ever known his mother to play piano, with such reverence that he thought she'd been born to it. Violin? He thought of her as a young girl still in her teens at the start of the war, pretty and musical, rescued from Auschwitz at the end of the war. A violinist, who hadn't picked up a bow in all the time he'd known her. A modest woman, who'd never worn a white blouse or navy skirt in all the years of her marriage. Had that been his mother's secret? Did he dare ask? Even as he searched for words, he saw the distant glaze in his father's eyes and knew there was an even more important question.

“What about you, Dad? What did you feel?”

Sid was back in the war looking into the chasm. When he spoke his voice was raw, as if dragged over gravel.

“I felt nothing. You lose and you lose and you lose, and after a while you think there is nothing more they can take from you. Until they take away yourself, and then you don't think any more. You cannot live like that—a body sitting on the ground with nothing inside. But in the Red Cross camp after the war, I met your mother, and I found a little bit of me left inside myself. And so I went on.”

“Oh, Dad!” Green murmured, the two simple words all he could manage safely. Surprising himself, he reached forward and took his father into his arms. He felt his father clutch him, as he had so often in the past, and for the first time he understood.

*    *    *

Unexpectedly, Green found himself driving through a blur of tears on the way back to the station. He must have still looked raw when he arrived; Sullivan took one look at him and followed him into his office without a word.

“This fucking case,” Green muttered to cover his embarrassment. “I get the feeling no matter what we turn up, there will be no happy endings for anyone involved.”

“Hey, it hasn't exactly made for sweet dreams for me either, buddy,” Sullivan replied, dropping into the chair opposite and propping his feet on Green's desk. “I've been reading your books on the Holocaust, and I had nightmares all last night. Haven't had ones like that since I was a rookie. So for you, with your father…” His voice trailed off, leaving the emotion unvoiced.

“I've been a lousy son,” Green said. “My father was only twenty-three when he lost his first wife and son. He waited nearly twenty years before he felt ready to invest his hopes in another. And look at me.”

“Yeah, look at you. You've stayed here close to him, you see him every week, you pay all his living expenses, you've given him a fabulous daughter-in-law and grandson.”

“But I don't really give him the time. Even Sharon's better with him than me. He brought me into this world, and I treat him like an afterthought.”

“Well, listen, it's a hell of an emptiness you're supposed to fill. No one could do that. Would you expect that of Tony someday?”

Green stared at his desk top morosely. “I hope not. But I'm not much better at this father business either. Sharon takes the lead on that too.” He looked up, putting on a smile he hoped would lighten the mood. “You're the guy with all the experience. What's a good gift for me to buy Tony?”

“For a one year-old? Anything, as long as it's safe to chew.”

“Sharon's looking for some kind of meaningful father-son thing. Something that stands apart from the two hundred stuffed animals and trucks and riding toys my in-laws have lavished on him. But she refuses to give me any hints.”

“I think the important point of the gift is that you think of it,” Sullivan replied.

“Some help. The party's tomorrow night, and I'm running out of time. Those toy stores are scary places. Do you want to come tomorrow, by the way?” He hoped the request sounded like a casual afterthought. In all their years of friendship, the two had never gone beyond the bounds of the job. “Be another world-weary cop's voice among all the techies?”

Sullivan made a face. “All the way out in Barrhaven? I've got Scouts tomorrow night, but maybe I'll drop in later if I can.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Green leaned forward and knocked Sullivan's feet off the desk. “Now let's stop wasting time here. We've got a case to solve.”

Fortunately Sullivan took the hint. “What did Walker's widow say?”

Green summarized his visit with Ruth Walker. Sullivan put his feet back on the desk and chewed a pen as he listened.

“So she thinks he didn't even remember he was Jewish?”

Green shook his head adamantly. “I'm positive at some point he remembered. I don't know exactly when, but twenty years ago when he had that fight with Mr. G., he knew. He remembered the guy from Ozorkow, and my hunch, if I could only prove it, is that he remembered him from somewhere else, too. From the camps or the ghettos. I think Mr. G. was a Nazi collaborator, and that's why Walker attacked him. It's something he would have felt strongly enough about to have provoked that attack. Walker had kept a really low profile all his life, the quiet drunk, then all of a sudden—pow!”

“But Mike,” Sullivan ventured, “if Gryszkiewicz was a war criminal, why would Walker cover it up? You'd think he'd be yelling it all over town. Here's one of the bastards getting off scot-free. I mean, it explains why Gryszkiewicz pretended not to understand a thing about the fight, but why would Walker hide it? What's he got to lose?”

“His secret,” Green replied instantly, his eyes alight. “Walker would have had to reveal that he was Jewish, dredge up all the past, face the pain and the memories…and for what? Even if he were willing to face all that, twenty years ago no one was prosecuting war criminals. No one wanted to hear about them.”

“So you're thinking that this Mr. G. killed Walker to keep him from talking now? But that fight happened twenty years ago,” Sullivan pointed out, always the pragmatist. “And if Walker didn't rat on him then, why would Mr. G. suddenly decide he was a threat now? The Justice Department has been turning up the heat on war criminals for almost fifteen years now.”

Green hesitated as he searched for an explanation. Sullivan was right. What had triggered the murder almost twenty years later? What had made Walker's secret knowledge so much more dangerous? He seized the phone. “I'm going to see if the War Crimes unit is investigating Mr. G. right now. That would explain why he suddenly decided to bump off a witness.”

By a great stroke of luck, when the call went through, David Haley was just settling down to his lunch at his desk, and he was in an expansive mood.

“I've got a name for you, Haley,” Green announced. “Josef Gryszkiewicz. Recognize it?”

Silence. Noisy slurp. “Nope.”

Green felt his excitement deflate. “The War Crimes Unit has never heard of this guy?”

“Well, remember, Mike, I'm not in the unit any more, and I'm no longer privy to all their comings and goings.”

“You're not missing much,” Green remarked.

There was a pause on the line, then a chuckle. “No comment. You could always try asking them if his name has come up.”

“Would they tell me?”

“Probably not. Seriously though, we looked at over two hundred names, all the guys who were uncovered by the Deschenes Commission, and I don't remember that name. So unless new evidence has come up, stuff nobody knew or reported back in the eighties…”

Green pondered that possibility after he hung up the phone. Justice Deschenes' mammoth inquiry had lasted nearly two years and examined the evidence on eight hundred potential war criminals living in Canada. If Gryszkiewicz had escaped the dragnet, he must have felt home free. Probably figured that the only person who knew he was a war criminal was not going to talk. Had something happened to change his mind? Had he learned something that made him fear he was about to be exposed?

“Brian,” Green said, breaking the silence which had hung since the phone call. “What's the word from the Hamilton Police on Mr. G? Any sign of him?”

“Last I checked,” Sullivan replied, “there was nothing, and they're getting pretty damn nervous down there about an old man running around with a gun. They've talked to the coworkers he used to work with, and they say the guy could get paranoid as hell. Thought the office phone was bugged and the surveillance cameras were hooked up to the RCMP.”

That's one for my side, Green thought. It wouldn't take much for this guy to think the War Crimes Unit was on to him. Maybe just a few more screws loosened by age. “Let's get the Hamilton Police to check his alibi for the time of the murder too. You said the family claimed he was home all that day?”

Sullivan nodded. “For what that's worth. The wife would swear he was at the Last Supper if she thought it would help. But I'm ahead of you, Mike. Once I learned about the gun, I did ask the Hamilton boys to start checking his alibi. We may find a hole.” He sighed. “But we're still a long way from building a case. We're cops, not storytellers. What have we really got to tie this Gryszkiewicz—or anybody—to Walker's death? No physical evidence, no prints, no tissue under the fingernails, no murder weapon. No eyewitnesses—”

“I'll get them, Brian. Even if I have to go to the press and get Crime Stoppers to feature it, I'll catch this guy.” He raised his voice over Sullivan's protest. “Just because the guy's eighty years old, he's not getting away with any more murders.”

Abruptly he rose to his feet and shrugged on his jacket. “We've got to go back to Renfrew. We have to find out where Mr. G. has gone, even if we have to turn his cousin upside down and shake the information out of him!”

*    *    *

Sullivan took his foot off the gas and let the nondescript police-issue blue Taurus bump slowly down the rutted lane, splattering slushy muck in all directions. The cold snap of the past few days had broken abruptly, turning Karl Dubroskie's front yard into a pond. Unlike Walker's two neighbours, Dubroskie lived in a boxy, fifties-style split level with none of the decaying charm of the original homesteads. Green scanned the surroundings for signs of activity. An old man scurrying for cover behind the barn might be too much to hope for, but he did hope to spot something out of the ordinary. Not just the bored gaze of cows in the paddock, nor the desultory cluck of hens poking in the muddy straw, nor the usual, haphazard jumble of tractors and rusty pick-ups by the woodshed. But something furtive.

There was nothing but soggy snow and mud.

“Pull in out of sight behind the barn there,” he said. “Let's nose around a bit first.”

Sullivan snorted. “The guy will have seen us the second we turned into his lane.”

“Maybe. But our man might be here, and we need to know what we're walking into.” Which was partly the truth. The other part being Green's insatiable love of snooping.

The two detectives checked their guns, stepped out of the car and sank ankle deep in mud and straw. Sullivan gave Green a quick grin, but Green kept his profanity to himself. No point underscoring his status as big city wimp. He picked his way around the edge of the barn until the front yard was in view. The stench of manure, hay and livestock choked his lungs, but he refused to cough. How could people live like this!

As if reading his mind, Sullivan grinned again. “You should smell it on a hot day in July.”

Barely were the words out of his mouth when two massive black dogs came barrelling around the side of the house, barking wildly.

Green caught the glint of white fangs beneath curled lips. “Holy fuck!”

“Back away. Slowly.” Sullivan said.

Green was just calculating the distance back to the car when the barn door banged open, and Karl Dubroskie strode out. At the sight of the two detectives, he hesitated, and worry flashed across his face.

“Puppies!” he roared, and instantly the dogs subsided and retreated to the porch. Dubroskie took in the Taurus half hidden behind the barn and faced the two detectives with frank suspicion. “Officers? What can I do for you?”

“I suspect you already know, Mr. Dubroskie,” Green replied. “I suspect your cousin's wife was on the phone to you the minute Sergeant Sullivan left her home.”

The farmer's eyes narrowed at the accusation, but he didn't refute it. “Come inside,” he said, and turned on his heel.

Inside the kitchen, a large, heavy-bosomed woman eyed them sharply as they filed by into the living room.

“You need me, Karl?”

“Nope.”

His dismissal was curt, and she turned back to her work, but Green suspected she'd be tuning a keen ear. She didn't look the submissive type.

“Mr. Dubroskie,” Green began before the farmer could take command, “this investigation is now a lot more than idle curiosity about some old barroom brawl. As you know, your cousin has been missing for three days. And as you also no doubt know, he left with a gun.”

In spite of himself, Dubroskie showed his surprise. “Didn't know he had a gun.”

“How proficient is he with it?”

Dubroskie shrugged. “We haven't been in contact for twenty years.”

“Don't play me for a fool. You called him Saturday to warn him we wanted to question him.”

“Officer, whether you're a fool or not, time will tell. But I did no such thing.”

Green leaned forward urgently and met the man's unwavering gaze. “Be very careful whose side you choose, please. Not for the sake of the police or the authorities, but for the sake of the innocent people he might have set his sights on. He's a frail, paranoid old man who sees spies and traitors behind every bush. If he thinks he's in danger, he'll strike. As he did with Walker.”

“Tell him, Karl!” came an urgent voice from behind them. Then Mrs. Dubroskie filled the doorway, her face flushed with apprehension.

“Jeanie, stay out of it!”

“You don't owe him anything!” she shot back, planting herself firmly on the chair beside him. “He came out of nowhere, suddenly some long-lost relative from behind the iron curtain. We couldn't even do a proper check on who he was!”