LITMIR.BIZ

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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 fabled Inspector Green intuition?”

      “Something like that. Could you maybe, subtly, ask around about this guy? Find out if he’s missed any appointments or left word about his plans?”

      She paused with her coke can to her lips. “Subtly?”

      “Okay, forget subtle. Find out who his therapist is. Find out what kind of guy this Matt Fraser is.”

      She raised one eyebrow slowly in silent rebuke that he would ask her to violate patient confidentiality. He raised his palms in a classic Yiddish shrug which said it was the furthest thing from his mind. Both of them dealt with confidential material all the time, and he knew no further words were necessary. She would make casual inquiries about Matt Fraser at the hospital, and if, in her judgment, anything suspicious or worrisome emerged, she would quietly pass it on to him.

      In the meantime, because curiosity had always been one of his greatest failings as well as his greatest asset, he decided that when he got bored in the morning, he would pull the police file on Matt Fraser and see what he could learn.

      * * *

      The file on Fraser’s old case proved to be voluminous, suggesting that although the man had only had one criminal charge, it had been a complicated one. It was all on microfiche in the records department, and over the phone, the records clerk implied that Green shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for her to print it out.

      After he’d hung up, Green eyed the clutter on his desk and the list of unread emails stacked up in his electronic inbox. A rooming house fire in Vanier during the night had claimed at least one life and drawn a team of Ident officers and Major Crimes detectives out to the scene, including Brian Sullivan. The Staff Sergeant in Youth wanted a meeting to discuss the rise of swarmings in Ottawa’s south end, and Superintendent Adam Jules had asked him to review the agenda for yet another meeting. The last thing Green needed was fifty pounds of microfiche print-outs dumped on his desk as well.

      He drummed his fingers on his desk as he considered other approaches. Barbara Devine had been the lead investigator on the Fraser case. Plain Detective Devine back then, Inspector now. After her stint in sex crimes, she’d made the rounds through the departments on her way up the ladder and was now ensconced in an office one floor closer to the gods than his, pushing paper and keeping company with the senior brass. Backroom gossip held that she’d once been an idealistic, hardhitting detective who’d soured on the nobility and purpose of what she was doing and turned her attentions instead to the cause of her own advancement. Although he’d never worked directly with her, she was a contemporary of Green’s with a string of relationship disasters that eclipsed his own. Currently, having burned her way through three husbands, she’d set her sights on Superintendent Adam Jules, the austere and resolutely celibate chief of CID . The thought made Green’s lips twitch irrepressibly.

      Counting on the lure of an old case to draw her into his quest, he grabbed his notebook and headed up the stairs to her office. Devine owned an array of power suits from Holt Renfrew, and today she had packaged herself in dark red with fingernails and lips to match. The door to her spotless office was ajar, and he could see her typing furiously away at her computer. She scowled at him dubiously as he strode in. Probably afraid I’ll want her to do some actual police work, he thought and cut off any incipient protest by dropping into a chair and tossing his notebook on her desk.

      “Barbara, I need to pick your considerable brain. Remember Matthew Fraser?”

      She sat back, her fingers still poised over the keyboard and her eyes slitting warily. “Certainly. One of the most frustrating and disappointing cases I’ve ever worked. Why do you ask?”

      “His name’s come up. Tell me about the case.”

      “What’s he done? Offended again?”

      “No, he’s

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