Do or Die

by Barbara Fradkin

  Melanie and the thousand dollars a day notwithstanding, Professor Baker was clearly relishing his role as computer sleuth. His eyes danced as his imagination took flight. Green cast about for some gentle brakes. “I thought you said he faked them.”

  “He must have, but how?” Reverence mixed with determination on Baker’s face. A man not unlike myself, Green thought, fascinated by the mystery of facts. “It’s so damn clever, so well hidden. Just a couple of small changes in the algorithm, like a weighting factor here or a regression sequence there, and it throws Difalco’s data off completely. But the real beauty of it is that Miller’s own research data fit together properly too. He could have fooled Halton, me— hell, the whole scientific community! He would have been the one to go to Yale on a research fellowship, and no one would have known he was a fake. If Difalco hadn’t stuck up for himself, and if Halton hadn’t asked Blair to do an independent replication…”

  “Blair wouldn’t be dead.”

  Baker blinked. “Well, yes, there’s that. But evoked potential word processing research might have gone off in the wrong direction for years. That’s the point. Miller’s that convincing.” He shook his head ruefully. “I don’t envy Myles the job of cleaning up this mess.”

  “He fired Miller already.”

  “Well, yes, but Myles was supposed to present this research in Stockholm next month, and this is going to be a major blow to his credibility. Plus, Yale won’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole now. It’s going to be a long while before his work is credible again.”

  “Was it credible before?”

  “Oh very. And potentially very useful too, which of course was what he wanted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Baker seemed to hesitate as if he had overstepped his bounds, then reached for another muffin. “Well, you know we are often influenced in our choice of career by personal problems. Wilder Penfield, the great pioneer in brain surgery, had a sister with epilepsy. Halton has a son in an institution, brain-damaged from birth. Myles was a graduate student at Berkeley at the time.”

  Green masked his surprise. “I only knew about the two daughters.”

  Baker shook his head as he chewed. “He never talks about it. Some deep dark secret, I gather. But it’s his driving force, so to speak. That and, let’s face it, he’s ambitious as hell.”

  Twelve

  Afterwards, Green was so deep in thought as he arrived back at his office that he failed to see Marianne Blair’s executive assistant lying in wait outside his door. Peter Weiss seized him by the elbow and spun him around.

  “You haven’t answered any of my calls.”

  Green shook him off. Around the squad room, heads turned curiously. “Do you want the case solved or do you want me chatting on the phone?”

  “From what I hear you’ve been busy sleeping with witnesses.” “Actually, I was up all night watching a suspect.”

  Weiss wrinkled his nose as if smelling a foul odour. “An Arab. Yes, I know.”

  Green hesitated. Weiss must be getting his information from somewhere else. He hoped it was Jules. “A Canadian, Mr. Weiss. Of Lebanese origin.”

  “CSIS should be informed.”

  Green rolled his eyes. “This has nothing to do with international terrorism, or with Mrs. Blair for that matter. This is about Jonathan’s girlfriend.”

  “Then you’re naïve, Inspector,” Weiss retorted. “If it’s an Arab, it’s political. If it’s a Jew, it’s political, if it’s a black, it’s political—”

  “That’s your problem,” Green snapped, pushing past Weiss into his office. “I’m just investigating a homicide, and so far, the only politics involved are the ones I have to play with you guys. I don’t mean to be rude, and there’s no disrespect implied, but you’re wasting precious time. I’ll phone Mrs. Blair myself.” He picked up the phone as if to convey his sincerity. “I’ll tell her all I can. But I have several urgent leads to follow up, and that’s where I can help her the most.”

  Weiss glowered in the doorway, searching for a toe-hold of authority. When Green began to dial, he spun on his heel and stalked out, flicking at the sleeves of his linen suit as if to rid himself of the taint of crime. Green’s tone with Marianne Blair was more diplomatic, but his message much the same. After dispensing with her as quickly as possible, he flipped hopefully through his stack of phone messages, but none was from Sharon. He called home but got the answering machine. It’s still early, he told himself. She could still be at the beach or at a friend’s, especially if she didn’t have to work until the evening. Full of hope, he called the ward where she worked, but the ward clerk told him Sharon had called in sick earlier in the day and requested a few days off. The woman was surprised he didn’t know and asked if Sharon was all right, because she had sounded strained and upset.

  Green hung up, fighting a sense of foreboding. It was time for some serious damage control. He had to explain the necktie, but to do that he had to find her. That meant calling her friends, all smart, capable nurses like herself, who thought he was cute but entirely unreliable as a life partner. It meant calling his in-laws, who had been keeping their fingers crossed ever since their career-woman daughter had finally reeled in this rather unlikely marital prospect—Jewish at least, but a divorced policeman who’d forget to eat, sleep or change his clothes if no one was there to stand over him. His mother-inlaw’s screech would echo all the way from Mississauga, and his father-in-law would have them both packed on the next plane up. Green shuddered. Could he face that? On top of Lynch, Weiss, Marianne Blair and all the other naysayers on his back right now?

  Closer to home and easier to drop in on without inventing excuses was his father, whom Sharon adored. She knew he stayed alive only for the moments he could spend with his son and grandson. She would never leave town without visiting him to say good-bye, and no matter what excuse she gave, his father would know the truth. For a man who sat alone in his apartment all day watching TV, Sid Green had an uncanny knack for reading people. He would know if Sharon were leaving for good.

  But Sid Green’s knack for seeing through people might prove tricky, Green realized as he knocked and breezed into his father’s living room, trying to look cheerful. Sid looked up from his chair, where he was watching some indeterminate soap opera. There were spikes of bristle on his chin which his razor had missed, but at least he was still trying to shave, Green thought.

  “What’s going on?” his father demanded irritably. Any change to his routine, no matter how pleasant, seemed to irritate him.

  Green held up a paper bag. “I brought you cheese bagels from Nate’s. You hungry?”

  Sid said nothing, but watched his son suspiciously as he slipped into the tiny kitchenette to heat up the food. Sensing the heavy silence, Green stalled in the kitchen, looking for an oblique approach to his inquiry. But as it turned out, he didn’t need one. Returning to the living room, he found his father’s rheumy eyes fixed on him knowingly.

  “Sharon was here.”

  Green kept his expression neutral. “Oh, really? When?”

  “She already bought me cheese bagels from Nate’s. She made some for her and me, but she didn’t touch her own.”

  “Did she…say anything?”

  Still Sid held his gaze balefully. “She brought me some new pictures. Mishka, don’t do this to me again.”

  Green blinked. “Do what?”

  “Chase her away. She will move to Toronto and take Tony away from me. When I am dead, that will be time enough to get a divorce.”

  “Hey, Dad, she brought over some baby pictures. Who’s talking about divorce?”

  Sid didn’t reply, and Green felt his heart turn to stone. “Was she?”

  Sid took a deep breath. “She took a picture from the drawer when she put her pictures away. She doesn’t think I saw, but she took the picture of you with your mother at the river. That time you carried her down there just before she died.”

  Our last family picnic, on my twenty-fir
st birthday, Green thought. Sharon had always admired that picture, but surely she knew how his father cherished it! “God, Dad, I’m sorry.”

  “I have copies. But why did she do that, Mishka? To have a memory of you together, for Tony, when she takes him to Toronto.”

  Green felt sick, but he forced himself to laugh. “She’s not going to Toronto, Dad. I asked her to get that picture. I…well, I need it for something.”

  He didn’t know how he was going to cover up that lie, but right now it was the least of his worries. He stayed a few minutes longer, filling the silence with chatter, but he knew his father was unconvinced. As Green left, he searched for a way to cheer him up. Depression and loss could be fatal.

  Passing a pharmacy on his way back to the car, he saw a window display advertising gifts for Father’s Day the next week. Some Father’s Day, he thought grimly. My wife and son in Toronto and my father near his deathbed, full of reproach. It was then that he thought of how to explain the lie. Blown up and beautifully framed, the picture would make a perfect Father’s Day gift. To a man mired in memories, it would be more touching than a hundred sweaters or dressing gowns. The problem was that if Sharon had indeed gone back to Toronto, he would have to steal yet another picture to make the gift.

  Back in the office, there was still no message from her. Had she really left without a single word to him? Anger flared briefly. How dare she have so little faith! And so little appreciation of the pressures he was under? She’d seen him smeared in the press before, and she knew better than to believe a word they said! Surely when she calmed down in a few hours, even a day or two, she’d remember that. Reassured, he decided not to call anyone else, at least not just yet. If she still wasn’t back tomorrow, he’d begin the search in earnest. But she’d be back. She’d stuck by him before, kicking and screaming but still there, through worse than this.

  Having forced his worry into the back of his mind, he turned back to the phone messages that had collected. More than half were from the press, and he tossed them into the waste basket. Fat chance I’ll call you bastards, he thought grimly. All you want is a juicy pound of flesh for the headlines. Carrie’s murder and my tie had done nicely today, but what about tomorrow? In the absence of anything else, perhaps a nice little story about my collapsing marriage. Or my inability to protect witnesses and my failure to charge the suspect staring me in the face.

  Contrary to popular opinion, nothing was staring him in the face but reams and reams of information. To tease out the answer, to make sense of all the conflicting tides, could take days. The crux of the puzzle lay in the motive. Everyone else was betting on the Haddads. Sex and revenge were feelings the public—and his fellow cops—could understand far more easily than the panic of professional humiliation and lost dreams. On the surface too, the evidence clearly favoured Eddie Haddad— the knife, the bloody shirt, the lies about his whereabouts.

  Sullivan, Jules and Marianne Blair were right. Most policemen would have arrested Eddie on the spot. So why was he holding back? On a mere hunch, based on the panic in Eddie’s voice and the earnest look in his eyes? Or was he, as Sullivan the pragmatist often accused him, winging out into the wild blue yonder, seduced by the complex psychic web of Halton’s group? There was a mystery there, as fascinating and sinister as any he’d encountered, but perhaps it was irrelevant. Perhaps Blair’s murder was a mere lucky coincidence for the student who had perpetrated the fraud. Green hated coincidences, the enemy of deduction, but sometimes they were true. Sometimes the obvious suspect was the right one.

  But just then a shadow blocked his doorway, and he looked up to see Brian Sullivan leaning against the frame. He tossed a file down on Green’s desk.

  “Well, buddy, if you were looking for an easy answer to our problems, you can forget it.”

  * * *

  “There’s not one fingerprint in Carrie’s whole apartment!” Green echoed incredulously.

  Sullivan shook his head. His hair stood in straw tufts, and his eyes were red from rubbing. “Nothing useful, and no fibres or tissue we can pin down either. This killer’s no fool. He anticipated all the angles.” Sullivan sighed. “And that’s not all the bad news, buddy. The black hair we got from the shirt? It doesn’t match any of the Haddads. Not even Eddie’s.”

  Despite the forensic dead ends, Green felt a surge of triumph. His intuition had been right! Better than all the computer scans, the forensic minutiae and the balancing of probabilities that formed the core of everyday detective work.

  “It doesn’t really mean anything,” Sullivan muttered, dropping into the chair opposite. “I mean, it weakens the case against Eddie, but it doesn’t kill it. One black hair…it could have been there for months.”

  “The shirt was washed.”

  “Spot washed, forensics says. Mike, it’s staring you in the face. The kid is as guilty as hell.”

  Green wavered. He remembered the neat little bullet hole in the centre of Carrie’s forehead and felt a hard fist form in his chest. He rose. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe—”

  The phone shrilled at his elbow, making them jump. Green pounced on it, hoping it was Sharon, but instead the gravel voice of the desk sergeant came through.

  “There’s a Mr. Pierre Haddad down here, Inspector. He insists on seeing you.”

  Raquel’s uncle was tight-lipped and grim as Green ushered him into an interview room near his office, and when he spoke, it was obvious he had rehearsed the speech carefully.

  “Inspector Green, you notice I have brought no lawyer with me. That is because I want to cooperate with the police. My sons and I have done nothing wrong, and we trust that the Canadian justice system will not betray us. I know that the knife and shirt from the murder were found in my garage. I know that my son Edward has lied about being home with us that night. We have talked about it and I believe his explanation. I also believe that you are an honourable man and did not put the knife there. So I appeal to you, as an honourable man, to listen to our side of the story. There can be only one explanation. The Haddad family has been framed.”

  Although he had just been thinking the same thing, Green tried to look sceptical. He arched an eyebrow. “Framed? Why would someone do that?”

  Haddad looked at him as if he thought him a complete fool. “Obviously, so you would blame us instead of him.”

  “I mean, why you?”

  “Perhaps someone saw the boys arguing with Jonathan Blair earlier and took advantage of the situation.”

  “A pretty long shot, Mr. Haddad. They’d have to know who your sons were, who Raquel was and her connection to Jonathan, and they’d have to want Blair dead. Not many people fit that bill.”

  “Probably only one, Inspector. The murderer.”

  Green continued to play devil’s advocate, using Haddad to explore the theory. “It leaves a lot to chance, and it implies Blair’s murder was a spur of the moment thing. When the killer sees a chance to blame your sons, he goes off to the library and sticks a knife in Blair’s gut. That’s another thing— the knife. He had to get himself a Bedouin knife.”

  Haddad waved a hand in dismissal. “Those things are everywhere.”

  “But he’d have to buy it. The fight with Blair was at six-thirty. Many stores are closed at that hour on Tuesday, and even so, it probably would take him more time to hunt one up.” Green shook his head. Detective Gibbs had not yet been able to find where the knife had been bought, and Green knew that if it took Gibbs this long, it would take the killer even longer. “This was much longer in the planning, I’m afraid.”

  “Then it was planned to blame my son Eddie,” retorted Haddad.

  Green analyzed the implications. “For that, the killer would have to know an awful lot about your family.”

  “Raquel could have told anybody about us. That is how the killer could know everything. Even that we did not want her to see Jonathan Blair.”

  Green took the reasoning one step further. For this frame to work, it was equally important that the fam
ily know about her affair with Jonathan. The killer needed the Haddads to make a fuss and to make public their hostility towards Blair. Yet the Haddads said she never talked to them about her friends.

  “Tell me,” he asked as casually as he could. “How did you find out Raquel was seeing him? Did she tell you?”

  Haddad took a deep breath. The faint pink of shame tinged his cheeks. “Jonathan wasn’t the only one. There were others before. When Raquel came to this country, she seemed to go wild. She is so beautiful. The men, everywhere, they chase her. She liked it. She saw how the Canadian women do what they want, go out with boys, choose whoever they want, and she wanted that too. Even before I knew about Jonathan, I decided to send Raquel back to Beirut when her courses were over. But then I found out they were going to move in together.”

  Green hid his surprise. Certainly Jonathan’s mother knew nothing of such plans. In fact Jonathan had told his father only days before his death that he was coming back to Vancouver, perhaps for good.

  “What makes you think that?” he demanded.

  “I found a note from Jonathan to Raquel. It was a—a…” Haddad flushed. “A love letter. Disgusting. Jonathan talked about getting an apartment next week. That made up my mind for sure.”

  Green frowned. “Where did you find this note?”

  “Last Sunday night my boy Paulie found the note on the front walk. She must have dropped it on her way in. When I read it, I said that’s enough.”

  And that’s when the phone calls to Lebanon began, Green thought to himself. “Did you ask Raquel about the note?”

  Haddad nodded ruefully. “Tuesday afternoon, at the university. That was the argument you know about. I asked her about the note and I told her about Lebanon.”

  “What did she say about the note?”

  “She said it’s not true. There is no note. Jonathan and her are not…together. But Raquel always lied to me. Hid things from me.”