Once Upon a Time (9 page)

“Maybe he really doesn't remember. The stuff we've learned about sexually abused kids—about them blocking the whole thing from memory—that tells us anything is possible if the trauma is horrible enough. War's a horrible trauma, for sure, but the question is—is it horrible enough? As Don Reid said, lots of men went through the war.”

Sullivan grunted but drove in silence, hunched over the wheel, his brows drawn down over his eyes.

Green frowned at him. “You were pretty quiet back there. This is your home turf. You should be full of impressions.”

“That's the problem,” Sullivan muttered.

“What does that mean?”

Sullivan shook his head. “Nothing. Just brings back memories.”

“Come on, didn't you have one of those idyllic, big family, down-on-the-farm types of childhood?”

“You got part of it right.” Sullivan glanced over. “Let's forget it. You're right, this is getting weirder and weirder.”

“I wonder what Gibbs has unearthed about Walker's immigration record. I want you to call him when we get back to Renfrew.”

“Hey! You know Gibbs will run circles for you. Don't ride his ass.”

Green let the silence lengthen, but Sullivan's mood piqued his curiosity. “Tell me, are things as bad as people say about these country cliques? About the importance of religion and lineage and sticking to your own kind.”

Sullivan nodded. “Especially with the old timers. It's opened up now, with the younger generation coming and going, but when I was growing up, boy, it was the Poles, the Irish and the Protestants, and you bloody well toed the line. But I can tell you, a hell of a lot of nasty, unChristian stuff went on in the name of religion and Christian morals.”

Tell me about it, Green thought wryly.

By the time the two detectives arrived back at the Renfrew OPP station, Karl Dubroskie had been waiting for over two hours. The farmer paced the outer hall in his mud-caked boots, which looked ludicrously oversized on his spindly legs. An old army peacoat hung open over his sunken chest, and his blue eyes glowered in his leathery face. Green realized that any chance for a friendly, cooperative interview had long vanished.

“You boys from Ottawa might think I got nothing better to do than sit here watching the clock tick, but I do. I got snow fencing to patch and cows to milk, so you got ten minutes and you better make it good.”

Green dispatched Kennelly to bring a pot of coffee and ushered Dubroskie politely into the little interview room at the rear. The farmer looked around the barren room with grim satisfaction. “I sat in this very room the last time I set foot in this station, to talk about Walker beating up my cousin. I don't know why you want to see me about that, I got nothing to say. Everything I know I told Wells, and that was piss all. I got no reason to lie. Walker…he was nothing to me but a drunken old Polack, and I wasn't even sure about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean ‘what do I mean'?”

“What weren't you sure of?”

Dubroskie looked bewildered as he tried to retrace his steps. He grew sullen. “I don't know. Just he didn't act very Polish, that's all.”

“In what way?”

Dubroskie fidgeted, then gestured vaguely with his hands. “He didn't act like we were…together. He didn't even seem to like us.”

Green kept his face impassive as he proceeded. “What about your cousin? What kind of man was he?”

“He didn't start it, if that's what you're saying. He's a hardworking guy that just wants to stay out of trouble. He had plenty of it back in Poland, and he's just trying to make a good life.”

“What kind of trouble did he have in Poland?”

Dubroskie's eyes narrowed warily, as if he'd sensed too late a trap. “My cousin's a good, honest man and a fine Canadian citizen. If you got any questions about him, you go ask him yourself.”

“Oh, I'd be happy to, Mr. Dubroskie,” replied Green cheerfully. “If you'll be so kind as to give me his full name and address.”

Once Dubroskie had left the room, Sullivan turned to Green in dismay. “You're not going to go all the way to Hamilton. Jules will never approve the travel request. He'd kill us if he knew we were out here pounding the pavement. He'd kill us if he knew we've invested good time on a guy MacPhail says died of natural causes.”

Green grinned as he shrugged on his parka. “Well, you only die once, right? Besides, it's on our own time, and I'm paid to make executive decisions. I'm making one.”

Sullivan had opened his mouth to escalate his protest when there was a sharp knock on the door, and Kennelly stuck his head in.

“We've got a guy here who used to be a good friend of Howard Walker's. You said you wanted background witnesses. He's one of the few we could find.”

Green looked at his scowling colleague and shrugged. “What the hell, we're here.”

Jeff Tillsbury proved to be a sensitive, articulate man in his mid thirties who had gone to Guelph University to study Veterinary Medicine. He had opened a practice on his return to Renfrew ten years earlier and had kept in sporadic touch with Howard throughout the intervening years. If he thought there was anything odd about two Ottawa police officers making routine background inquiries into the deceased's “state of mind”, he gave no sign as he delved candidly into the family's past.

“Howard will be very upset by his father's death,” he said. “He didn't get along with him—actually, that's an understatement. By the end he hated his father as much as he loved him. I have never seen Howard so upset as when he'd just been dealing with his father. They hadn't spoken for five years, and Howard told me that as far as he was concerned, he no longer wanted anything to do with his father. He kept in touch with his mother through his sister but refused to call or write to the house.”

“Do you know the reason for this rift?”

“Yes.” Jeff hesitated as if weighing how much to betray a confidence. “Howard married a Jewish girl he met at McGill. Not only Jewish, but wealthy, and her father was very influential in the Montreal Jewish community. From what he told me, I gathered his father was very upset.”

Beside him, he felt Sullivan fidget awkwardly, but Green had long ago learned not to let personal reactions show through.

“Did his father attend the wedding?”

“Oh, no. Howard said his father wouldn't be caught dead in a synagogue. In any case, he wasn't well enough. I went. I was the only one from around here whom Howard invited. It was a beautiful wedding, and his wife seems very nice.”

“Were Howard and his father on good terms before the marriage?”

“As long as I've known Howard, Detective—and that's about thirty years—his relationship with his father has been difficult.” Jeff ran his long-boned fingers over his thinning scalp and frowned in search of words. “No one—not Howard's mother, not his sister—really understood how his father used to torture Howard. Maybe if Howard had been thicker-skinned, it wouldn't have been so bad. But Howard was a sensitive kid. He liked poetry and wild birds. He cried when kids picked on him in school. And they sure did. They picked on him for having an immigrant father, because he was half Catholic—we went to the public school—and of course for just being a sissy. They picked on him because he was small and skinny.” Jeff shook his head wryly at the memory. “We were both small and skinny.”

Green nodded, remembering. He'd been small and slight as a boy too, and the inner city streets had been a cruel training ground in the concept of might is right. It hadn't influenced his decision to join the police, but he had to admit to a secret twinge of satisfaction whenever his rank and profession cowed some swaggering brute into submission. “That can be pretty rough on a boy.”

“Yes. Whenever Howard came home from school in tears, his father would throw him back outside with an order to beat the kids up and not come back till he did. He called him an old woman, so Howard learned to keep his hurts to himself and lie to his father about how many boys he'd beaten up. His father seemed to despise all the qualities about Howard that made him really special—his gentleness, his compassion, his moral sense. Howard could never seem to do anything right in his father's eyes. He could never seem to please him. His father was tremendously moody, I noticed that even as a kid. One day he'd take Howard and me into the back of the shop and show us some beautiful new fishing lure. Another day he'd bite our heads off and throw us out of the shop. He scared me. I hated to go over there. I can't imagine living with him! Howard was always trying to second-guess him, to anticipate his moods and avoid at all costs something that would set him off.”

Green jumped into the flow of memories. “How did Howard's mother figure in all this?”

Jeff shifted his lanky body in the chair and stroked his bald spot. “She tried to keep the peace, basically. Tried to coach the children on how to avoid aggravating their father. I do remember at times she tried to act as a buffer—you know, she wouldn't tell her husband that someone had stolen Howard's hat or dumped his bike in the ditch. With the bike incident I remember it backfired on her, and he accused her of turning the children against him. There was a scene in the back of the shop that day. I was there helping Howard after school, and I remember his father screaming at her and throwing merchandise around. Everyone was hiding behind the shelves. Howard was mortified. He never would discuss the incident with me.”

“Did his father beat him?” Sullivan had been taking discreet notes and spoke for the first time since the interview had begun. Green was startled, not only by the unexpected interruption but also by the tightness in Sullivan's tone.

Jeff, however, seemed to have anticipated the question, perhaps had posed it to himself before, for he shook his head without hesitation. “I never had evidence of it. He punched walls and he swore a lot, but I never saw him actually hit.”

Green glanced at Sullivan expectantly, but he sat back, shaking his head. Green retrieved the thread of his questioning.

“Are you aware of any feud, any enemies, any reason why someone would want Eugene Walker dead?”

Tillsbury pondered the question carefully, his frown deepening. “I've been out of touch with the family for a while, but there's nothing I can remember. He was a nasty man, but in recent years he hardly went out. I can't imagine who'd bother killing him now.”

“What about Howard? Is he capable of killing his father?”

“Good Lord, no, Howard couldn't kill anyone.” Confronted with Green's expressionless gaze, he reddened in dismay. “All those things I told you, they were to help you understand the father. Now I think I've said quite enough!”

*    *    *

Dusk was already creeping in as the two detectives said their goodbyes and headed back along the county road toward the main highway. Sullivan drove with both hands clenched on the steering wheel, staring grimly ahead into the deepening grey. The melancholy which had first touched him yesterday now cloaked him completely.

“Jeff Tillsbury may not think so, but you can bet old man Walker beat his son.”

Green frowned. “What makes you think so?”

“Because it goes with the territory.”

Green lapsed into thought. Neither detective was a stranger to the parental violence and cruelty that shaped the criminals they saw every day, but Green sensed a more personal struggle. He began to put the mood and the cryptic allusions of the past day together.

“Brian, what's going on?”

For a moment it seemed Sullivan would not respond, but once he started, the words tumbled out. “My old man is a drunk. I never told you that. I never told anyone. You don't tell anyone. Remember the Walker family secrets? Every drunk's family has them. My mother tried to keep it from us at first—Dad's sick, Dad's tired, Dad has business in town. And then when you're tripping over the whiskey bottles in the hall and the truth is screaming at you, you see it. But you don't tell anyone else you see it. You go along with Mom's lies— yeah, Dad's sick, sure he's tired. You don't have friends over, you don't make plans, and then when you're finally good and sick of it and you get mad, you yell at him and you yell at your mother and she tells you the next lies. Dad's had a bad day, the farm's had a bad year, Dad's had a hard life. It's not his fault. It's never his fault. No, it's your fault, because you made too much noise, or woke him up, or asked him at the wrong moment. Anything but admit the bastard's got a hangover, and it's his own damn fault.”

Green was shocked. “Jesus, Brian, I never knew a thing. I've met your father, and I never suspected!”

Sullivan's lips were drawn in a tense line. “No, the old man's good at walking the edge. Very few people suspect. But it's why I left home at eighteen and joined the force. Why my sister Pat lives in Cold Lake, Alberta, and my sister Tracy is on her third husband.” He looked across at Green. “My brothers Ed and Frank are alcoholics too. Of course, they don't think so. They tell me they can handle it, but I've seen them at family parties, and it's like seeing Dad all over again.”

“You've done okay though, Brian. You're one of the most together guys I know.”

Sullivan shook his head grimly. “I've had to work at it. Mary will tell you that. I really have to watch myself. Not so much with the booze—I can take it or leave it. It's the temper. The Irish temper, my father used to call it proudly when he beat the shit out of me. I see that part of him in me and I hate it. No one gets off scot free in a family like that, believe me. Walkers or Sullivans—you look inside, it's a fucking Pandora's box.”

Green absorbed this in silence, thinking how easy it is to keep a secret even from someone you work side by side with every day. It explained Sullivan's strict two-drink limit even when out with the boys, and it explained his fierce sense of duty to his family. “Jeez,” he muttered. “And to think I envied you your big, boisterous family. There I was, an only child of clingy, overly dependent parents, single-handedly trying to make up for the Holocaust.” He grimaced. “And failing miserably.”