Sullivan nodded. “The fire investigators and Arson are looking at it.” He pointed to the empty bottle which an Ident officer was just slipping into an evidence bag. “The label’s burned off, but it might have been some cheap brew.”
“Alcohol doesn’t burn hot enough for this.”
“No, but maybe something homemade, or even something more flammable. If the guy was lying down and tried to drink from the bottle, he’d spill some on himself and the mattress. The fire investigators have taken their samples, and we’ll have to wait for their findings.”
“Then what started it?”
“Most likely a cigarette. He could have dropped the cigarette in the booze, and it went up so fast he had no time to react. It’s a theory, anyway. But...” Sullivan’s rugged, square face creased with dissatisfaction. “What do you think, Mike?”
Green’s eyes roamed the room, studying the layout and the position of the body on the bed. MacPhail had begun cautiously bagging what was left of the hands, and his impatience was showing. “It’s possible, I suppose,” Green replied. “But it looks set up to cause maximum damage to the body. Damn convenient.”
Sullivan nodded. “Convenient how?”
“Because it makes it hard to identify him. Plus—I’m trying to imagine how a guy, lying in bed, spills booze, sets himself on fire, and then lies back to enjoy the blaze. The pain should have driven anyone up out of the bed in two seconds flat.”
MacPhail straightened up and nodded to his assistant. “Well, I’m taking him away, lads, before he decomposes in this heat. Michael, we’ll be checking him upside down and sideways to determine what substances he had in his system, and whether they were sufficient to render him unconscious entirely. In the meantime we’ll wait for the fire investigators to complete their investigation before we draw any conclusions about accident, suicide, or what have you.”
Sullivan glanced at Green, whose mind was already tracking a new possibility. In her missing persons report, Janice Tanner had estimated Matt Fraser’s height as five foot ten and his weight about one hundred sixty-five pounds, figures which came pretty close to MacPhail’s estimate of medium height and weight for the dead man. Of course, it also fit half the men in the city, and why Fraser would leave the sanctuary of his apartment and the protection of his dog to hole up in a roach-ridden room in Vanier was a mystery. And if he had come here to die anonymously, why had he waited six days before doing the deed? Gathering the courage?
Sullivan seemed to read Green’s puzzlement. “You got a theory?”
“Rush the DNA , and keep your eyes open during the post mortem that this guy might have taken a lethal overdose.”
“DNA takes at least three weeks, Mike, no matter how much you try to push it through. And besides, we have to have some family members to compare it to, in order to establish who it might be.”
“I know.” Green was already ahead of him, thinking of Rose Artlee, the tough-tender woman he had left in the Tim Hortons booth, defiantly smoking her second cigarette and lost in her own private thoughts. No doubt worrying if her final rejection had been more than her brother could bear.
DNA comparisons with a corpse would cheer her up no end.
Four
Sharon Green stepped onto the hospital elevator and heaved a sigh of relief as she punched the button for the main floor. Home. A thousand things awaited her there, but at least she could close the door on the soul-sapping depressives, the fragmented schizophrenics and the compassion she had to find within herself all day long. She leaned against the back of the elevator, shut her eyes, and didn’t open them until the elevator jerked to a stop and the doors rattled open. Then she found herself face to face with her husband, who looked slightly smudged and smelled awful.
“Oh, good, you haven’t left yet,” he said as he drew her out.
She wrinkled her nose. “God, what have you been rolling in?”
“A case. A fire. That’s not important. I need your help.” He had that glint in his eye she’d come to recognize as Mike on the hunt. She thought of her swollen feet, her aching back, her son pining at the sitter’s, and the unmade dinner still to come. She groaned.
“Green, no chance this can wait till tomorrow?”
He flashed his most disarming grin, the slightly crooked one that had first brought her into his arms five years earlier, despite all her friends’ and family’s advice to the contrary. “Probably, but I’m here,” he said, taking her elbow and steering her to a chair in the lobby. “Matt Fraser. I need to talk to his doctor, and I figure I’ll step on fewer toes if you give me an introduction.”
“I don’t know who his doctor is.”
“Then find out.”
“It’s four o’clock. Everyone is getting ready to go home now.”
“That’s perfect. On his way out, the good doctor can spare me five minutes to answer one simple question.”
She folded her arms stubbornly. “Green, spill it.”
“Could Fraser have killed himself? That seems to be his sister’s theory on his disappearance.”
“Well, if he’s already done it, there’s hardly an urgent reason for violating his right to confidentiality, is there?”
“But what if he hasn’t done it yet? What if he’s wandering around trying to screw up the courage?”
She couldn’t resist a smile. When he wanted, he could manipulate with the most accomplished psychopath, and it was society’s luck that he, unlike the psychopath, never used the talent for personal gain. “For six days?” she said.
He pulled a face that might have been sheepish. “It’s an arguable point, isn’t it? At least let me run it by the doctor and see if he buys it.”
She weighed the idea, intrigued in spite of her aching feet. There was no harm in at least finding out who the doctor was, and that would give her a hint of their receptiveness to Mike’s dubious plan. When she cajoled the medical records clerk into checking the database, however, her heart sank. Matt Fraser’s doctor was Bradley Emmerson-Jones, psychology’s imitation of Fort Knox.
“I’ll run this by the doctor myself,” she told Mike as she returned to the lobby.
He stood up. “But you don’t know enough—”
She placed her fingers on his lips to restrain him. “Green, I do. Trust me.”
She had sounded more confident than she felt as they took the elevator to the third floor. En route, she steeled herself to confront the prissy little man whom she’d met only at the occasional hospital function, although he’d been working at the hospital as long as she had. He was currently the senior psychologist assigned to the Mood and Anxiety Disorders program, and he cut through his patients’ fears with a ruthlessly behaviourist knife. “Show me the data” was his favourite cry, which sent the social workers and other newly minted students of the human soul scurrying elsewhere for mentorship. Thus, over the years, he had collected around himself a small but dedicated cadre of like-minded neo Skinnerians, but found himself rarely consulted by the mainstream clinical staff.
Sharon found him sitting alone at his computer, peering over the rim of his reading glasses at some blips on the screen. His office made little attempt at a cozy, supportive atmosphere; besides his massive desk, it contained nothing but a large bookshelf crammed with journals, and a pair of utilitarian armchairs placed on either side of a small work table, as if to stress the business nature of the interaction. Not a single knick-knack, picture, or even professional degree graced the walls. Emmerson-Jones swivelled at the sound of her knock and arched his eyebrows questioningly.