Lucas Carmichael’s type. But does she have children?”
Green felt a chill. He had no intention of giving this man any new fuel to feed his fantasies. He had no idea whether Julia had ever married or had children, but it was safest to shake his head.
“Good. Gordon?”
“Neither Gordon nor Julia live in the country.”
“How wise of them. But now they’re safe.” He shut his eyes again and drew in a weary breath. “Finally.”
“Yes they are.” Green leaned forward. “Time to let it go. Time to let them go.”
Rosten kept his eyes shut. His frail body twitched. He breathed in. Out. Slowly he nodded. “You’re right, time to let it all go. I’ve done what I could, to no avail, for myself or for them. I won’t bother them anymore, if that’s what you came about.”
Green sensed a true change in the man. A final laying down of the sword he had brandished for so long. Once the battle barricades were gone, Green felt the pull of a question he had never dared broach before.
“James? Why are you so convinced it was Lucas Carmichael?”
Rosten’s face grew rigid and his eyes flew open. Angry and accusatory, the James Rosten of old. “I sent you all those fucking letters! Didn’t you read them?”
How should I answer that? Green thought. He had read them, at least at first, but had tried to dismiss them as self-serving rants. After all, he’d rarely met a con who didn’t protest his innocence and blame even the most unlikely of suspects. Instead, he didn’t answer, but merely waited.
Finally the belligerence in Rosten’s face faded. He edged his chair even further forward, so that his knees touched Green’s. He stared squarely into Green’s eyes. “I have one big advantage over you; I know I didn’t do it. So I looked around to see who could have. I remembered seeing a car like Lucas’s near the cottage that day, and Julia’s behaviour toward him got me thinking. This wasn’t a random, serial killer–style attack by a stranger in the street. This person knew her. He knew she took my course, knew I was giving her private tutoring.” He faltered only briefly over the phrase. “Maybe he’d even seen her in my car. This person had access to her papers, knew I had a cottage near Arnprior, and knew that dumping her body there would point suspicion toward me. So I asked myself, who would know all this? It’s a classic stepfather scenario — man befriends single mother in order to have access to her children.”
It was, of course, a scenario that the OPP detectives had investigated at the time, even after charging Rosten. “But Jackie was not a child. She was twenty years old, not the usual prey for a pedophile.”
“But she had been a child when Carmichael came on the scene. You know yourself that abuse goes on for years in these cases. Maybe it had ended but she was threatening to blow the whistle on him.”
Another theory they had all considered early in the investigation. Considered and rejected. Green thought back over the details. Julia had made some dark hints but balked at specifics, and Green had thought them more likely the product of Julia’s fanciful imagination. Jackie had never exhibited any of the classic signs of an incest victim. No drug use or wild behaviour, no anxiety or depression, no hint of sexual problems. She had never breathed a word to teachers, counsellors, or friends. Everyone, including her boyfriend at the time, had described her as a happy, well-adjusted young woman.
“The facts simply didn’t point that way, James,” he said. “Even if you buy the idea that her body was dumped there to implicate you, it’s still a leap to Lucas Carmichael. Would he even know you were tutoring her? Do twenty-year-old kids tell their parents everything that’s going on in school?” Certainly not mine, he thought, but wisely kept his personal life to himself. “It’s much more likely Jackie would tell a friend or her boyfriend. In fact, at one time I remember he was your chief suspect.”
Rosten flicked his hand dismissively. “That was before I saw the hapless fellow on the stand and heard the whole of the Crown’s case. Then I realized that although you were a tunnel-visioned, cocky young buck, you were right about one thing; this was a mature, cold-blooded set-up, not the work of a jilted college kid. The boyfriend would have panicked and botched it, at best tried to make it look like a serial killer copycat. Where would he have gotten the vehicle to transport her body? How would he have known, on the spur of the moment, where my cottage was, so that he could conveniently plant the body in the woods nearby? You saw Erik Lazlo during the trial. A penniless country boy savouring his first rush of big-city freedom. He was a silly, shallow boy, more enamoured with marijuana and music than with romantic commitment. He wasn’t serious enough about her to carry out a crime of passion.”
“But if he found out she was sleeping with you —”
Rosten rolled his eyes. “That tired old crap? If you had proof of that, you’d have trotted it out in the trial. I’ve admitted I tutored her. I gave her a lift to her residence one evening. Unwise, certainly, especially in light of how that hair on the upholstery crucified me, but hardly criminal.”
“So you say. But Erik Lazlo may have thought —”
Rosten shook his head. “I didn’t sense they had a grand passion. I’ve had that, Inspector, whether you believe me or not. With my ex-wife. I know the signs. Jackie and Erik had known each other a long time; they were friends long before they were lovers. Remember, he was Gordon’s friend first; in fact he dated Julia too. Jackie was just the kid sister.” He paused, caught up in the memories.
Green waited, filling the silence with his own memories of Erik Lazlo, a wiry, good-looking young man who shared Gordon’s passion for dirt bikes, bush parties, and punk music, thrust by his parents into an engineering program for which he had no interest and even less talent. Certainly no match for the bright, ambitious Jackie. Beyond his looks, he could not have held her attention for long.
Rosten was right. Erik Lazlo was addicted to the next thrill. He liked fast music and faster bikes. He was not the type to brood or obsess about what had been lost.
Gradually Green became aware of Rosten’s eyes on him. “You still believe I’m guilty, don’t you?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter. It’s done. You’ve done your time —”
Rosten slammed the table. “It matters to me! You’ve built a nice career for yourself on the back of this case, but my life is ruined! Over! By God, at the end of it all, it would be nice to hear you admit you made a mistake.”
Green pushed his chair back and started to edge around the wheelchair. “A word of advice …”
“From you? Hah!”
Green sat back down again. “Listen, you arrogant jackass, you still have a chance to salvage something. Fuck the past, fuck the injustices you think you’ve suffered, fuck —” He jerked his hand up to silence Rosten’s protest. “Fuck the lost years. You’re hurting no one but yourself by hanging on to this bitterness. Guys can turn over the page, even after twenty years inside. You’re only fifty years old. You might have thirty or forty years left. You’re smart and educated. Make a place for yourself!”
“In here? And in this?”
“Wheelchairs are not the barrier they once were. And next time you’re up for parole —”
“I’ll never get parole. They want to hear me confess
