Once Upon a Time (6 page)

“You didn't like your father-in-law, did you?”

Don shifted in his chair edgily. “Does that make me a suspect?”

“No more than anyone else at this point,” Green said amiably.

“Eugene was a cold, self-absorbed bastard. My wife suffered a lot because of him, and I get sick of the whole family making excuses for him.”

“What was he like as a father?”

“Unpredictable. That was the worst of it, really. If he had always acted like a cold, disinterested bastard, his kids might have been able to write him off and get on with their lives. But he'd dole out these tiny morsels of love at unexpected times, and it kept them coming back for more.”

“That's a classic abuser's technique. Keep 'em guessing, keep 'em hoping, but afraid. It's a powerful way to control people.”

Don nodded his head slowly up and down, and his edginess dissipated. “Yeah, that was Eugene. And it left its mark on Margie. She's so goddamn unsure of herself. The least hint of trouble, she crumbles. I don't have the patience for all this love and understanding shit, Inspector. I mean—not that I don't believe in love, but I figure you've got to take what life gives you and get on with it. None of this I-can't-be-a-decent-human-being-because-of-what-I-went-through-in-the-war crap. I mean, if we had that attitude, we'd let all the crooks out on the streets and you'd be out of a job, right?” He grinned, but when Green did not join him, he sat forward as if preparing to leave.

“Did Howard have the same insecurities as his sister?”

Don sat back in the seat again. “Howard was trying to write him off and get on with his life. But Eugene still played him like a trout on the line. Even three hundred kilometres away, the hook is well set. The poor kid is going to kill himself trying to be everything his father was not.”

*    *    *

After Reid left, Green ran Eugene Walker's name through the police computer, hoping at least to find out the outcome of the assault charge. But as he feared, there was nothing. The Canadian Police Information Centre coughed up no record of the case at all, merely one conviction of impaired driving five years earlier, which had resulted in suspension of his licence. Whatever had transpired between Walker and the visitor from Hamilton, only the Renfrew police files would tell. If they even still existed.

It was Friday night, and November darkness had long since set in. Green locked up and hastened out to begin the homeward trek before he was hopelessly late for Shabbat dinner. The trek to Barrhaven took an incredibly long time, he'd discovered in the two months they'd lived there. He called the suburb the End of the Earth and had only moved there as a concession to Sharon, who wanted clean air, safe streets and a house that wasn't falling apart. They'd acquired that, plus a fifty-minute commute across the cornfields of the Greenbelt, then along the congested Queensway that traversed the city.

He hated it. Hated sitting in his car crawling from red light to red light. Hated living in a plastic cookie-cutter house on a postage-stamp sized lot with a few twigs for trees and endless acres of baby carriages as far as the eye could see. He was an inner city boy raised in the crumbling brick tenements of Lowertown. The rooftops had been his playground and the narrow alleys perfect for a pick-up game of hockey. Pick-up hockey was against the law on the back crescents of Barrhaven.

His suburban neighbours were all ten years younger than him, fresh-faced high techies or junior company managers with their foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and their eyes on the top. Unlike him, they didn't have ex-wives and hefty support payments for a teenager who'd been forced into every West Coast therapy her desperate mother could find. All for being the same type of ornery, restless teenager he'd been, Green suspected. No doubt his ex-wife was trying to eradicate even the remotest gene that tied the girl to him.

That night it was brittly cold and the road was a icy sheet as he nudged his car into the traffic jam on the Queensway. Red tail lights danced in the swirls of exhaust that stretched ahead forever. With a sigh he slipped in a Tragically Hip CD and let his mind roam. Usually the Hip put his mind in a mellow, meandering mood. But not tonight. Tonight his mind was like a hound on the scent.

It headed straight back to the case. What had really happened in that bar twenty years earlier? What foreigner had Walker talked to on the afternoon of his death? And were the two events linked? So many questions, and no one interested in the answers but Green.

Saturday was his day off as well as Sullivan's. Tony's first birthday was coming up later in the week, and Green had been planning to spend the weekend getting ready for the big celebration, to which Sharon seemed to be inviting half the neighbourhood. The house sported a few pieces of furniture from their old one-bedroom apartment, but it was entirely without decor. Sharon had a long list of chores for him to perform, which included painting and picture hanging to be completed in time for the birthday party. He knew she was right, and he owed her that much, despite his aversion to the Dreaded Vinyl Cube. But given his facility and enthusiasm for household chores, he suspected Tony would be married and moved out before he made it to the bottom of the list.

Given a choice between painting walls or chasing murder, if it were up to Green, there would be no contest. Renfrew beckoned. And the lure of a puzzle waiting to be solved.

Four

February 10th, 1940

In my mind the bayonet pricks me still.

I've cleared rubble from the square for three days,
barehanded and hatless in the bloodied snow.

German orders pummelled my ears, their bayonets spurred me on.

As I lie against the soft swell of her belly,
her fingers probe, her tongue clucks.

She will not lose me to German sport, she says.

Already fear and death have taken half of us.

Henryk arrives with bread stolen right off a Nazi truck.

He roams everywhere, hears everything.

As she feeds me, he smiles
And tells of a farm in the rolling hills far from town.

The farmer reads the pain in my eyes, takes my hand gently.

By planting time, he says, you'll be strong again.

At eight o'clock
Saturday morning, Green and Sullivan were headed west along Highway 17 towards Renfrew. The sun lay pale and cold on the horizon behind them, and the rolling fields and scrub on either side were blanketed with snow.

“I don't believe I'm doing this,” Sullivan muttered as he accelerated around a slow-moving pick-up. “What the hell am I doing here with you, Green?”

“The valley's your turf, and I need your experience. You think they're going to talk to a city boy like me?”

“And what the hell are you doing here? You should be home with your wife and son.”

“I promised Sharon and him this evening and the whole day tomorrow. I even promised to paint the living room.” Green had practically had to sell his soul, but he didn't admit that to Sullivan. Sullivan loved his home, and to him, fun was a weekend spent finishing the basement or restaining the deck. Fifteen years of listening to Sullivan's do-it-yourself tales had almost put Green off home ownership for good.

Sullivan turned off the main highway and wove expertly down the narrow country road toward Renfrew. After a few minutes of silence, he shrugged. “Well, she'd better not be holding her breath.”

Green had no time to think up a comeback before they pulled onto the main street crammed with little shops, and he had to turn his attention to finding the OPP station. The Ontario Provincial Police were housed in the Town Hall, a self-consciously impressive brick building set back behind the town's war memorial. Inside the grand exterior, the reception area of the OPP was little more than a closet. On the other side of a glass window, a huge uniformed officer was wedged into one of the chairs behind a desk, sipping coffee. He glanced through the glass as the two detectives came in, then leaped to his feet, eyes lighting up.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Brian Sullivan!”

“Kennelly!” Sullivan had time to reply before the door flung back, and he was clasped into a thumping embrace. When the two separated, Kennelly looked him up and down. They were the same height, broad shouldered and powerfully built, although Kennelly's midriff sagged even lower than Sullivan's. He grinned with delight.

“What're you doing back here? Thought you hated these parts.”

“Back for my adrenaline fix,” Sullivan laughed. “I'm with Ottawa CID. This is Mike Green.”

Sullivan slipped the introductions by casually, without reference to Green's rank, which would have torpedoed any chance for collegial solidarity. As Green had hoped, Kennelly engulfed his hand in a friendly iron grip, tossed in a greeting, then swung back to Sullivan with a laugh. “Will you look at you! I couldn't believe it when I heard you were a cop! I thought you were going off to the big city to make a million.”

Sullivan grinned ruefully. “Well, I made it to the big city, anyway.”

“I used to play football with this guy,” Kennelly said to Green. “We went to the same high school up in Eganville, and I tell you he was one fine mean ball player. I heard you married Mary Connolly. That still on?”

Sullivan nodded. “Three kids too.”

“Oh well, you always were a good Catholic boy. Fell in love with the first girl you laid eyes on and then never looked at another.” He shook his massive head mockingly. “Boy, I tell you, it's a small world. So is this a social call, or are you boys here to learn a thing or two?”

“A man named Eugene Walker used to own a hardware store here,” Sullivan asked. “Did you know him?”

“No, but maybe my partner did. He's been here since the Great Flood.” Kennelly led them inside and bellowed in the direction of the back room. “Tom! Come out and meet a buddy of mine.”

A smaller, older man emerged from an office behind the main desk and came forward, smiling expectantly. Once the introductions were complete, Sullivan explained their mission.

“Yeah, I knew him,” Tom Wells said. “In a small town like this, you get to know pretty near everyone. Walker wasn't a troublemaker, he kept to himself pretty much. I'm not sure we can be much help to you up here. When I heard he died, I asked around to see if anybody'd heard from them recently, just out of curiosity, you know? 'Cause I used to get my fishing and hunting gear at his shop. But no one seen much of them since they moved out to the country.”

Green spoke for the first time. “I understand he had an assault charge, maybe twenty years ago. Any chance there's still a file on that?”

Tom Wells scrunched his craggy, sun-weathered face in an effort to remember, then shook his head. “We don't keep stuff that long, and in that case, the charge was dropped.”

“So you remember the case?”

“Yeah, I was the one took the call,” Wells said. “I remember I was surprised. Eugene was a regular at Paddy's place on Saturday nights. There were more than a few times when me and my partner had to bring him home and put him to bed. But he was a quiet drunk. Never got into fights, never bothered anybody. So I thought it was kind of strange. In fact, I asked him about it. I didn't want to lay an assault charge, and I was hoping he'd tell me why he did it, but he never said a word. Just said he'd had one too many, his mistake.”

“Why were the charges dropped?”

“The fellow he assaulted wouldn't press charges. I tried to persuade him to—I mean, when Eugene wouldn't give any excuse. The fellow was a visitor, and I had a bar full of drinkers waiting to see if I was going to apply the law. But nobody would say a word if Dubroskie and his cousin weren't going to. In this town, everybody minds everybody else's business, including the cops'.”

“Dubroskie?”

“Local farmer, good man. Cousin's name was something unpronounceable. Polish, began with G.”

“So what did this Mr. G. say about it?”

“Nothing,” Wells said with a shrug. “He was an immigrant, heavy accent, seemed awful confused. Apologizing all over the place if he'd upset anybody.”

Immigrant! Green hid his excitement as another possible piece of the puzzle slipped into place. “And Dubroskie? Did he or anyone else in the family have any idea what was going on?”

Wells shrugged his shoulders. “I've known the Dubroskies all my life. Family's owned a farm west of town since the pioneer days. I went to high school with Karl, and my kids went to high school with Karl's kids. We never been close friends, because here in the valley, the oldtimers tended to stick with their own. Poles with Poles, Irish with Irish. And people kept the secrets within their own group, you know? I mean, the Poles might fight like cats and dogs among themselves and one family hate another's guts, but a Protestant Welshman like myself is never going to find out why.”

“So you think people are hiding something about this assault, but only a Pole is going to find out what it is. But Walker's British—why would he keep an insider's secret?”

Sergeant Wells' eyes widened. “Walker? Are you kidding? He was Polish!”

It was Green's turn to be surprised. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure! He had an accent thick enough to cut with a knife. He came here after the war.”

“But his wife… And his name…”

“The wife's British, you're right. Fine lady. We always figured he took her name. When he first came, there was quite a stir in the Polish community. I remember my father talking about it. Back then, the communities around here were very traditional—you'd know that, Brian—everyone had their place. Walker fitted nowhere. His wife was British and a Protestant, and the Poles thought he'd turned his back on his Polish roots when he changed his name. Plus he would never talk Polish. He would never talk about the old country. He was one of them, but he avoided them. Him and his wife didn't really fit in anywhere.”