Cover
Chapter One
The letter lay in the middle of his new desk amid the jumble of the day’s mail. It had no return address but Inspector Michael Green recognized the handwriting right away. Jagged and harsh, as if every pen stroke were the thrust of a sword. The address on the envelope was always the same:
Michael Green
474 Elgin St.
Ottawa, Ontario
K2P 2J6
No mention of Green’s rank or the Ottawa Police Service headquartered at that address. At first, Green had assumed the man was hoping the letters would slip past the prison’s Visits and Correspondence staff unnoticed, but over the years he’d come to see the exclusion of his rank as a subtle sign of contempt. Green had no doubt the man had kept scrupulous track of his progress through the ranks and knew every major investigation he’d headed up in the past twenty years.
Green’s gut tightened as the memories flooded back. He’d hoped the letter campaign was over. After a silence of more than two years, he’d thought the man had finally capitulated and moved on. Despite his facility with computers, he’d always written the letters by hand, as if the vitriol contained in them demanded a more intimate touch.
At first Green had read them carefully, hoping for a change of heart, a confession, or even a reluctant acceptance of some sort, but none materialized. In the early years, Green had even phoned the prison psychiatrist and the chaplain, concerned for the man’s relentless despair, but to no avail. Recently, he’d just skimmed the letters and added them to the pile in the man’s file.
He picked up the cheap white business envelope warily. Usually the letters were stuffed with pages of meticulous counter-argument refuting the Crown’s case against him. But this time the envelope was surprisingly thin. One sheet at most. A change in tactics, perhaps? Or was he finally running out of words?
Green debated not opening it this time, but in the end, curiosity, along with a perverse sense of kinship he had developed with the man over the years, won out. He slid his finger under the tightly glued flap, slipped out a single sheet of white paper and unfolded it.
Two words, printed in large block letters — once again a departure for the man who usually wrote with an elaborate cursive hand — followed by three exclamation points and underlined three times. Precision in all things, even now.
HE WINS!!!
Green knew immediately who “he” was. No need for explanation or context, only the puzzling question of how? And why now? The knot in his stomach tightened. Despite his best efforts, the man had gotten to him again. In all his twenty years of homicide investigations, no killer had haunted him more than this one. Green had two untenable choices — to dismiss the letter as just one more taunt from a damaged, embittered man …
Or to find out what he meant.
Green excavated his calendar from the clutter on his desk. It was only mid-morning, but he had his new office to sort out and a dreary budget report to draft. Worse, his computer calendar was blinking a reminder from his brand new boss at CID, Superintendent Inge Neufeld, who wanted a thorough briefing on all personnel, policies, and procedures under her command. The three dreaded p’s of his administrative duties.
Green had broken out the champagne a year earlier when his former boss, Barbara Devine, had finally snagged her much coveted transfer to East Division, the next rung on her ladder toward chiefdom. Green had even enjoyed the revolving series of acting superintendents who replaced her, for none had been around long enough to meddle. Despite Inge Neufeld’s permanent status, Green had expected her to be no different, at least in the short term. A Calgary native who had climbed the ranks, first in the Calgary Police Service and later in the Manitoba RCMP, Neufeld was an outsider with no knowledge of Ottawa, its unique police culture, or the many competing law enforcement players in the National Capital Region. Green had hoped that learning curve would keep her out of his hair for a while.
But after less than a week on the job, Inge Neufeld was already meddling, and with this request, she was signalling her intention to dot every i and cross every t. “Just what I need,” Green grumbled as he hunted for a spare half hour in which to meet with her.
He’d hoped to make an early getaway that day. Fresh snow had been falling since early morning and at least ten more centimetres were forecast before the January storm finally blew east toward the Maritimes. By rush hour, traffic would be snarled in snowdrifts, and after a day cooped up with their daughter, his wife’s patience would be fraying. Aviva was tiny for five months, but she already had the willpower of an Olympian and the lungs of an opera star. Sharon could barely take her eye off her without the little girl finding some trouble, and at forty-one, Sharon was finding it hard to keep up. Many of the other domestic chores, including cooking, were left to Green’s dubious skills, and if he was late getting home, the entire household might starve.
Irritated, Green pencilled in “super” in his late afternoon slot. Then he scribbled James Rosten file on a yellow Post-it Note, slapped it on the letter, and tossed it in his outbox. At that moment, a tall, muscular figure filled his doorway. Staff Sergeant Brian Sullivan tapped on the doorframe and entered without waiting for an answer. There was no trace of a smile on his broad, freckled face.
“Got a minute?”
Green was about to mutter about Neufeld but Sullivan’s expression stopped him. The two men had been friends for twenty-five years and Green knew every worry line on his face. There was a new one he didn’t recognize. Sullivan was the best NCO he’d ever worked with, head of the Major Crimes Squad, and used to handling gang executions and grisly domestic murders with equal calm. If Sullivan was worried, it had to be something more personal.
Sullivan had recently shed fifty pounds and was in training for next year’s marathon, but less than eighteen months ago the job had nearly killed him. Praying it wasn’t a new crisis with his health, Green gestured him inside. Sullivan paused and cast a dubious eye around the room. After twenty years as a detective and six as an inspector, Green had finally graduated to an office larger than a utility closet, with enough space for more than one guest at a time. At the moment, however, every surface was buried under boxes, binders, and books. Beneath the chaos, it was still a windowless cube painted dreary institutional beige. “Think of it as taupe,” Sharon had said, but taupe lent it an elegance it did not deserve. At least beige was a kinder word than some that came to mind.
Sullivan shifted a box of procedure manuals to the floor and pulled the chair close.
“What’s up?” Green asked.
Sullivan studied the desk, as if searching for a way to begin. His eyes lit on the letter in Green’s outbox and his brows arched. “Rosten?”
Green nodded. “I was hoping I’d heard the last of him.”
“What does he say?”
“A cryptic riddle. He wins. I assume I’m supposed to ask who and why. His new strategy to draw me out.”
Sullivan frowned. “Hmm,” was all he said.
“I know who, of course. Rosten’s been fixated on the stepfather all along.”
Sullivan hadn’t been Green’s partner during the original case, but in the years since, he had listened to Green relive it many times. He knew what the case had cost him in terms of sleepless nights and self-doubt. “The investigation was rock solid. You know that, Mike. The guy’s just slinging mud every which way, hoping some of it will stick anywhere but him.”
“But it’s just such an idée fixe. That’s what bothers me. Even his counsellors and the chaplain could never shake it. Reverend Goodfellow once told me he thought Rosten actually believed it.”
Green