Dream Chasers (37 page)

An hour later, Gibbs emerged from the interview room with the entire confession neatly on disk. For the first time in weeks, he wore a broad smile, but he was reluctant to hang around for congratulations.

“I want to go see Sue, tell her the good news. Keeping up with the cases...” He flushed and gave a shy smile. “It kind of makes her day.”

Green knew there was no rebuke in his words, but he felt the sting anyway. It had been on the tip of his tongue to tell Gibbs to say hello to her for him, but he stopped himself. That was not something that could be done by proxy any longer.

Gradually, the squad room emptied as detectives headed off shift for a celebratory drink together. Green spotted Sullivan shrugging on his coat and shoving his keys in his pocket, ready to head out alone. At the end of the session, he had not joined in the general cheer, but had left the video room without a word and had busied himself with follow-up notes.

Green stopped him with a firm hand on his arm. “We need to talk.”

Sullivan ran his broad hand through his hair, making it stand in erratic spikes. “Mike, can it wait till tomorrow? I'm bushed.”

“Let's go grab a quick beer by ourselves at the Mayflower. My tab.”

The Mayflower Pub had been a fixture on Elgin Street for decades, long before trendier pubs and restaurants had gentrified the neighbourhood. A noisy cluster of patrons ringed the bar watching a baseball game, but the two detectives found a quiet booth at the rear and ordered draughts. Green waited while Sullivan took a deep slug of Kilkenny. The big detective had been avoiding his eyes, but now he looked him square on.

“Okay, Mike. What's on your mind?”

“You should have shot him when we got to the doorway. It turned out okay, but that rifle could have killed any one of us if it had gone off. Not to mention I could have shot you myself. If the brass ever found out...”

Sullivan's eyes probed his. “They're not going to hear it from me, Mike.”

“Nor me, you dope. But don't put it past McIntyre to use anything he can to discredit our actions.”

Sullivan shrugged. “McIntyre is pond scum. I wasn't going to shoot Ted just to save his despicable ass.” His expression grew sombre. “I've never shot a man, Mike. It's not as easy as our training tries to make it. I looked at Ted in the doorway, and I saw a father of a teenage boy, a father who spent most of his free time driving that kid around the province in pursuit of his dream. A dream that's just been shattered in the blink of an eye, because he'd put his trust in that snake. I could feel his rage. There but for the grace of God...”

Green set down his beer, untouched. “But don't forget the other side of that rage. That same dream drove the father to strike an innocent woman and then chop her body into pieces.”

“I know. I wasn't thinking of that when my finger refused to squeeze the trigger. Maybe if I had...” He tossed back half his beer, and Green saw the faint tremor in his hand.

It was almost nine o'clock when Green arrived back home. The sky had cleared, and the June sun had just set. Long spears of orange shot across the darkening sky. He had stopped on his way home to visit Sue Peters and had walked with her and Gibbs out onto the grounds of the rehab centre to enjoy the last warm rays of the sinking sun. Sue had leaned on Gibbs as they walked, but Green sensed that perhaps that was more by choice than by necessity. Her face still bore the scars of her beating, and her speech was more measured, as if each word now required conscious thought. But she had stood unsupported while he told her he was looking for a way to get her back into the squad room, even if only a couple of hours a week for now, and he pretended not to see the tears that sprang to her eyes.

Afterwards, he had longed to drive straight down to the cottage, but when he drove through a red light and missed the turn to his own street, he realized the roller coaster day had finally caught up with him. Besides, there were still far too many loose ends to tie up on the case before he could even consider escaping to the country. Furthermore, he'd not had a chance to connect with Hannah since her close call the day before, and he was grateful to hear the television blaring through the house when he opened the door.

He found Hannah sitting on the living room floor, chatting on her cell phone as if nothing had happened. He felt an overwhelming desire to hug her, but contented himself with a quick kiss on her head. To his surprise, she hung up her phone and shut off the
TV
.

“I've been watching the news. That unidentified female minor they're talking about at the agent's house? Was that Crystal?”

Green hesitated, then threw the rule book out the window. After what she'd done for Crystal yesterday, Hannah deserved to know. He sat down beside her on the couch. “Yes. She's all right. Physically, that is. McIntyre claimed he wasn't going to hurt her, just persuade her not to implicate him in the drugs Lea took.” Seeing her roll her eyes in disbelief, he shrugged. “I know. Hard to disprove, though. He claimed the bad drugs were all Crystal's doing, to get Riley away from Lea.”

“That's bullshit.”

“Is it?” She raised her head, startled. She was without her trademark pale make-up and black eyes, which had served so well to camouflage her, and without them she looked ten years old. Her pixie expression grew thoughtful.

“When we were talking yesterday,” she said, “she didn't seem upset about Lea—like, dying and stuff. I mean, not as upset as you'd expect. She was more worried about herself, about getting caught and going to jail. She never said that McIntyre tricked her or that she didn't know about the laced drugs, just that no one was supposed to die.”

Green thought about her increasingly worried cell phone messages to Lea that night. Yes, the girl had known the drugs were dangerous. Potentially deadly. “Do you think she could be that conniving and cold-blooded to not care if Lea died?”

“She always was a stupid, selfish girl. Beyond that...” Hannah lifted her palms in a gesture of defeat. “They were probably in it together. Who knows which one had the original idea.”

We'll probably never know for sure, thought Green, reviewing the fleeting glimpses he'd had of the girl. First, standing at the accident scene, slack with horror and grief at the carnage she had unleashed. Then slouching defiantly out of the interview room under the dead-eyed stare of her stepfather. And finally, cowering in the corner of McIntyre's lair, her raw fear already giving way to defeat.

The fight for survival, the primacy of self, was all she'd ever known.

Crystal had no priors, and she was only sixteen years old. She came from a wretched, loveless home and had been lured into dubious company. She'd get a slap on the wrist, maybe six months' probation, then she'd be free again, back in the same wretched home with the same sleazy friends. Until life dangled another temptation in front of her eyes.

As if she were reading his mind, Hannah leaned over and picked a long dog hair off her grungy jeans. “I've been thinking... Next fall I want to go to regular high school. The kids at Norman Bethune... I don't really fit in any more.”

Next fall, he thought, and his chest tightened. He'd won a reprieve, and maybe—just maybe—he was starting to be a father to this girl.

Barbara Fradkin
was born in Montreal and obtained her PhD in psychology. Her work as a child psychologist has provided ample inspiration and insight for plotting murders.

Her novels featuring Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green are
Do or Die
(2000),
Once Upon a Time
(2002),
Mist Walker
(2003),
Fifth Son
(2004),
Honour Among Men
(2006), and
Dream Chasers. Fifth Son
won Best Novel at the 2005 Arthur Ellis Awards, and
Honour Among Men
repeated the honour in 2007.

Fradkin lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Dream Chasers
is a work of fiction, and although all the locales in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario do exist, the people and events are the invention of the author, and any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental.

As always, I am grateful to all the people who contributed to the accuracy or polish of this manuscript. First of all, to my terrific friends in the Ladies Killing Circle, Joan Boswell, Vicki Cameron, Mary Jane Maffini, Sue Pike and Linda Wiken, who scoured the earliest draft with an eye to logic flaws and bad writing. Secondly, to my agent, Leona Trainer, editor Allister Thompson and publisher Sylvia McConnell at Napoleon for all their support. Thanks also to Dr. Doug Lyle for his input on issues related to drowning.

Lastly, a very special thanks to Mark Cartwright of the Ottawa Police for his continued generosity and support in reviewing my work to ensure that I don't bend police procedure beyond all recognition.

Do or Die

In the first novel of the series, Inspector Michael Green is obsessed with his job, a condition which has almost ruined his marriage several times. When the biggest case of his career comes up, his relationships and many people's lives are put into grave danger. A student is found expertly stabbed in the stacks of a university library. As Green probes into the circumstances of the man's life, a web of jealousy and intrigue is revealed. He finds himself emboiled in a rivalry in the delicate arena of university politics, where gigantic egos collide.

“
Do or Die
is a wonderfully entertaining first novel.”
-Peter Robinson, author of the Inspector Banks mysteries

ISBN 978-0-929141-78-7, $12.95 CDN, $10.95 U.S., 264 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade paper

Shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel

Once Upon a Time

When an old man dies a seemingly natural death in a parking lot, only Green finds it suspicious. Why did the victim have a mysterious gash on his head? The family secrecy only increases Green's curiosity. A search of his house turns up an old tool box containing a German ID card from World War II. Was the victim a Jewish camp survivor or a collaborator who had sold out his own people? Could someone have tracked him down for revenge? This tightly plotted police mystery is a compelling tale of unhealed emotional wounds from a time of unspeakable atrocity.

“An entertaining, darkly comedic tale worth the price of admission...”
-The Ottawa Citizen

ISBN 978-0-929141-84-8, $12.95 CDN, $10.95 U.S., 264 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade paper

Mist Walker

Matthew Fraser was an idealistic young teacher accused of sexually assaulting a schoolgirl and acquitted in a sensational case that left the truth hidden and his life in tatters. Ten years later, his distraught confidante walks into Inspector Green's office insisting that Fraser has vanished. Green's curiosity is piqued when he discovers that Fraser left behind his beloved dog and an apartment crammed with research on his case. Has Fraser fled to escape the wrath of his victims, new or old? Or was he innocent all along and spent the last few years trying to clear his name?

“...leads us through an unsettlingly realistic investigative maze that
lays bare the mine fields surrounding pedophilia...
Mist Walker
is the gold standard for the series.”
-The Ottawa Citizen

ISBN 978-0-929141-78-7, $12.95 CDN, $10.95 U.S., 264 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade pape
r

Winner
of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel

Fifth Son

Accident or suicide? That's the simple question put to Inspector Green when a derelict stranger falls to his death from an abandoned church tower in a quiet river village at the edge of his jurisdiction. But when the victim turns out be a long lost son of a local farm family cursed in recent years by tragedy, madness and death, Green begins to suspect something far more sinister is at work. Probing the family's past, he uncovers a toxic mix of rigid fundamentalism, teenage rebellion and a family secret so horrific that twenty years later, someone is still desperate to prevent the truth from coming to light.

“Barbara Fradkin's Inspector Michael Green series gets better with
every book...it all works beautifully right up the twist at the end.”
-
The Globe and Mail

ISBN 978-1-894917-13-1, $13.95 CDN, $11.95 U.S., 304 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade paper

Winner
of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel

Honour Among Men

Inspector Green is coping with an office job, still eager to get back into the day-to-day fray of policing. His chance comes when an unidentified woman is drowned in the Ottawa River. In her possession is a Medal for Bravery from a Canadian peacekeeping mission. As Green and his team dig deeper into the military past, Green finds himself sucked not only into the murky past of a peacekeeping unit but into the high-stakes present of a federal election race. What crime was committed in Yugoslavia more than a decade ago? And does the diary of a dead soldier hold the key?

“Fradkin...gets better with each outing...
the story seems eerily prescient.”
-The Globe and Mail

“Canadian crime fiction is having a banner year...
with the publication of Barbara Fradkin's
Honour Among Men
, it just got even better.”
-Halifax Chronicle-Herald

ISBN 978-1-894917-36-0, $15.95 CDN, $13.95 U.S., 352 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade paper