In case.”
“What are they asking?"
When Mary told him, he had to suppress a surge of excitement. The price was manageable, even allowing for the astronomical cost of renovating. It was the first manageable price he’d encountered in his search for a house that wasn’t made out of plastic twenty-five kilometres out of the city. Did he really want to get himself all excited, get his hopes up that he had finally found a way out of the tangle of treeless suburban crescents he was condemned to? A quick drive by, that’s all he had to do, to see the crumbling heap of bricks that would dash his hopes as quickly as they’d been raised.
The quick drive by would add less than ten minutes to his schedule, and he’d be home before Sharon even missed him. That resolved, Green turned back to the computer, which had generated a list of Matthew Frasers with police contacts in the city of Ottawa. One was clearly too old and two were too young, but three names remained. Green selected the first and frowned as the man’s lengthy record of police contacts scrolled up onto the screen. Mostly D and Ds and occasional contacts as witness or victim of assault. Likely a regular joe with a weakness for alcohol and some nasty drinking buddies. The second Matt Fraser had been an abusive and threatening husband whose circle of intimidation had extended not just to his wife but to her friends and family as well.
That one was possible, although Green had never known a bully to turn phobic.
The third Matthew Fraser was born in 1967, which made him thirty-six. Furthermore, his list of police contacts was very brief, hardly the stuff of a career criminal. A handful of charges but only one victim. One trial. One acquittal.
For sexual assault, ten years earlier.
Two
Even before Green set foot in his hot, airless kitchen, he extended a silver gift bag through the archway and slipped it onto the kitchen table. Sharon was on her hands and knees beneath the high chair, rescuing Tony’s hamburger, and she peered up at him through damp locks of black hair. Her gaze was frosty. Propped in his high chair, the toddler wiggled with delight at the sight of his father and shouted to be picked up. Sharon’s frown dissolved into a smile as she pulled the gift bag towards her.
“Offerings to the gods, Green?” She peeked inside, then extracted a tub of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream. Her smile widened. She rose, slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “The gods are pleased.”
He lingered over the kiss, savouring the pressure of her soft, petite body against his. “Sorry I’m late.”
She extricated herself to put the ice cream away while he scooped his son into his arms. “So what was Mary Sullivan’s latest catastrophe like, anyway?” she asked.
He hesitated. How to describe the house he’d just seen, with its broad veranda, steeply pitched roof and trademark Ottawa red brick? How to capture its promise and keep Sharon’s mind open? Tony was squirming, Sharon was frazzled, and with the air conditioner on the blink, their new house was a sweltering 28˚C. Such a description was best left until after Tony’s bedtime, when Sharon had her feet up and a glass of wine in her hand.
“Oh...interesting,” he replied as he set Tony down and cracked open an ice cold coke from the fridge.
“Interesting good or interesting bad?”
“Both. But we can talk about it later.”
Tony had pulled open a bottom cupboard and was happily banging pots together. Ignoring the racket, Sharon snatched Green’s coke to take a long swig. “Both. That sounds ominous.”
Green took another coke from the fridge and rolled the cold can across his brow. The sodden summer heat hung in the air, and although Sharon had opened the windows as far as she could, in the treeless pasture where they lived, the sun beat down all day, and the air barely stirred. He thought of the house he’d just seen in Highland Park, so overgrown with brush that it barely saw the light of day. What a welcome thought.
“Not ominous. It just...needs work.”
“Uh-oh.” She eyed him warily. “I sense slanting floors and a ventilated roof. Green, I’m not moving into a place with kerosene lamps and an outhouse.”
“Oh, I think there’s electricity. Maybe a few other surprises—”
“Green!” she protested, obviously too hot for humour. She dove to rescue a glass bowl from her son’s grasp. He began to shout, and barely missing a beat, she gave him a pot and wooden spoon. “God, Mary’s having a field day with you!”
He laughed. “Speaking of surprises, someone who knows you came to my office today. Another reason I was late. A woman named Janice Tanner, a patient at Rideau Psychiatric.”
Sharon looked blank, so he supplied another clue. “She’s in an agoraphobic therapy group.”
“Oh, that’s Outpatients. But the name’s familiar.” Sharon took a deep swig of cola and closed her eyes gratefully. “Janice Tanner. About forty? Tall, thin, nervous-looking? Short, greying hair and glasses?”
He shook his head and raised his voice over the banging spoon. “Tall and thin, yes, but she has red hair and no glasses.”
“Then she’s fixed herself up somewhat since I knew her. I think she was an inpatient on my ward a couple of years ago, admitted because she was too terrified to leave her apartment, and she was slowly starving to death.”
“Could be her.”
“I’d say she’s come a long way if she made it all the way to your office on her own. Either that or she’s desperate.”
“A bit of both, I think. She was certainly persistent. Insisted one of the other phobic patients had met with some serious harm. Was she the type to overreact?”
“A phobic overreact? Unheard of.” She sobered as she watched Tony, tiring of his spoon, run out into the hallway. “You put the gate up, eh? No, Janice was a shut-in, and she’d had very little contact with people for years. I remember nobody ever came to visit her in hospital. But she did have a good heart, and after she’d settled in, she took a couple of our more fragile schizs under her wing.”
Not necessarily a good sign, Green thought, and voiced his misgivings. “Did she have a preference for fragile schizs? I mean, was she drawn to weirdos?”
“Not weird for weird’s sake, but I think she felt more comfortable with people who needed her. Why? Who was the patient she’s worried about? Maybe I know her.”
“Him. Matt Fraser.”
Sharon’s eyebrows shot up. “A ‘him’? My, Janice really has made progress. I don’t know him, though.”
“Who would know him at the hospital?”
“The therapist who runs that group, and I have no idea who that is. And his treating psychiatrist.” She smiled slowly. “Mike, you didn’t promise her you’d look into it.”
“No, I didn’t. You’d be proud of me, I didn’t promise a thing. Well... maybe that I’d check with the officer on the missing persons file. But the case has a curious feel. I don’t know what it is.”
“The
