This Thing of Darkness. Barbara Fradkin

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      “Street gangs,” she said with a smug smile. “That’s what this is all about. It isn’t important who he was or what went on last week. It’s only important that at that moment of that night, he crossed their path.”

Four

      Green’s late night walk around the block with Modo was a ritual he’d grown to love. His huge dog padded peacefully at his side, stopping to browse the scents in the bushes along the way, unhurried and unconcerned. Their street of modest old homes tucked behind overgrown maples and shrubs was never busy, and by ten o’clock it was a morgue. Not a single person passed him in the crisp autumn night. It was a time he could lose himself in thought, sort through the events of the day and ready himself for the next.

      Some nights when Hannah was home to babysit, Sharon would join him, and they would walk hand in hand. She’d talk about a difficult patient, or he’d talk about a heartbreaking case. It was a refuge in their busy lives, for which he was grateful.

      He hadn’t expected to like Modo. When he’d agreed under duress to take in the abandoned hundred-pound mutt—half Lab, half Rottweiler, as close as the vet could tell, but with the temperament of a dwarf rabbit—he’d sworn it was only for a month or two until a proper home could be found. Green had never had pets as a child. His home had been full of irrational fears and long, secretive silences that were oppressive to an only child. His mother had flinched at the mere sound of barking. Forever seared into her brain was the memory that dogs had terrifying magical powers to sniff out hiding places and hunt down fugitives. But Sharon had grown up with dogs in her happy suburban Mississauga home, and she’d taken to the traumatized animal instantly. Modo and Green had needed much longer to trust and value each other.

      That evening, Sharon was still doing laundry in preparation for the busy week ahead when he set off for his walk. Random threads of the homicide investigation drifted through his mind as he walked. He considered the theory he was constructing about the victim, once a respected psychiatrist but torn from his moorings by the death of his wife. Like a man of faith, he had questioned the very nature of his professional beliefs. He’d sold his gracious home and bought instead a rundown turreted mansion, where he had to tolerate garbage bins in his front yard and student parties overhead. A solitary man who went out for his daily walk dressed in a suit from his professional days. A creature of habit like Green’s own father, but proud, elegant, unafraid, and unlike Green’s father refusing to be intimidated by the human dangers on the street. Refusing to be violated, even when the violators came to his own home. Ready to fight.

      Tragically, ready to die.

      For once, the walk did not put Green in a better frame of mind. It did not energize him for the week ahead but left him feeling outraged and ready to fight as well. When he came back inside, he found Sharon curled up on the living room sofa with her petite feet tucked under her, sipping a cup of tea. Finally at rest. He made himself a cup and sank down beside her, reluctant to drag her back into the ugly reality of murder. In the end, his expression must have given him away, because she snuggled against him.

      “What is it, Mr. Bigshot Detective?”

      “You know the man who died on Rideau Street? We still need a positive ID, but it looks like he was a psychiatrist named Samuel Rosenthal. He used to work at Rideau Psychiatric.”

      She pulled back, looking puzzled. Recognition widened her eyes. “Dr. Rosenthal! Of course. I didn’t know him while he worked there, but everyone knew of him. My God, poor man.”

      “Was he controversial?”

      “Well, I remember we often had to patch up patients whom he’d taken off their meds. He was into patient empowerment and natural remedies. St. John’s wort for bipolar disorder, for example.”

      “Do you remember anything about what he was like?”

      She took a slow, thoughtful sip of tea. “It was awhile ago. His patients were very loyal to him, so I think he meant well. And he was right, sometimes we are far too quick to pump patients full of drugs when psychotherapy or a healthy lifestyle change would be better. Drugs are faster and cheaper for the healthcare system.”

      She was slowly waking up. She uncurled herself and set down her tea as if to better marshall her arguments. Sharon had been on this high horse before, railing against a public healthcare system which funded doctors to dole out pills during fifteen-minute sessions but not other therapists who might actually talk to the patients to help them sort out their lives. It sounded as if Sam Rosenthal had shared her view.

      “Still,” he said, “he must have made some enemies that way.”

      She chuckled.“Looking for a colleague driven mad by him contradicting their advice?”

      Or a patient. The thought came out of the blue and seemed far-fetched the moment he formed it. Rosenthal had barely practised in years.“Did he treat all kinds of problems?”

      “I don’t know. Most of the trouble came with his young patients. Misdiagnosed bipolars or first-episode schizophrenics. Those were the real tragedies.” He must have looked blank, for she twisted around to study him dubiously.“Do you really want to know all this?”

      “I don’t have much to go on with this guy. The working assumption is a random gang assault, but you know me. Never overlook the longshot.”

      She laughed. “Yes, the champion of zebras. Okay. Schizophrenia can be a devastating lifelong disease, but if there’s any illness where proper drugs can make a huge difference, this is it. But to have the best outcome you should catch them early, before or during their first psychotic break. Typically that’s in their teens or early twenties, where it can be hard to distinguish from other problems, especially if there is illicit drug use. Kids, even their parents, don’t want to accept the diagnosis either, so they’re willing to grasp at straws.”

      “Like a nice herbal remedy.”

      “You got it. Megavitamins or some fancy diet. My favourite is Bach’s flowers, based on some guy’s wacky ideas from the 1930s, as if we haven’t learned a thing about the disease in the decades since then. I’m not saying Western medicine has all the answers in the treatment of mental illness and there’s no place for alternative approaches, but the field is full of quackery and fake science, trading on people’s fears and hopes. That was the biggest problem we saw with Rosenthal’s patients. They’d been treated at the hospital for schizophrenia or bipolar and stabilized on the latest drugs. Then after discharge they’d trot off to Rosenthal complaining of side effects, and he’d take them off. A few months later, bingo, they’re hearing voices again and they’re back inside. With each psychotic break, their life spirals down. Jobs are lost, marriages destroyed, dreams and plans shattered.”

      Green had seen enough schizophrenics to know they often stopped taking their meds of their own accord anyway. They’d cross his path when they ended up on the streets acting crazy enough to scare people. He’d heard their reasons often enough. They felt so good after awhile on the meds, they decided maybe they’d been cured and they didn’t need them any more. Or they hated the side effects, which gave them the shakes and made them feel they were living their life inside cobwebs. A doctor like Rosenthal, who told them they didn’t need the meds after all, would have been greeted like the Messiah.

      If they ever realized they’d been duped, however unintentionally, they would have felt betrayed.

      Betrayed enough to seek revenge? he wondered, then shook his СКАЧАТЬ