None So Blind by Barbara Fradkin

Archie pictured Green trying to reconcile the conflicting faces of Rosten. Archie didn’t try to think so hard. He took a man at face value and accepted that he had secrets and contradictions inside that he was never going to expose. But Green had always tried to climb inside the head of the criminals he pursued, the better to catch them. It was his strength as a detective, but at what cost?
    “Okay, I hear you,” Archie said. “You’re worried Rosten is not what he seems and he may be up to something.”
    “Yes. I wonder about his sudden decision to seek parole. I wonder if he has an ulterior motive for wanting to be on the outside.”
    “He’s under very tight supervision. I’ll keep an extra eye on him, but right now he just seems like a lonely parolee trying to find his way forward in a strange city with no family that cares to connect. I’m trying to encourage socializing. He has no one except —”
    Before he could change course, Green pounced. “Except what?”
    “Except nothing.” Archie heaved a sigh of resignation. “I got an email from his daughter. She’s concerned about medical implications.” He filled Green in his phone conversation with Paige. “But I have a suspicion there’s more to her request. I won’t tell James about it yet, because I don’t want to stir up old feelings or get his hopes up. But I will follow up with the daughter. See if I can soften her up a bit, maybe build some bridges so he at least has that connection in his life.”
    “Jesus, Archie. Go easy on that. That was a very traumatized, betrayed wife and mother twenty years ago. God knows what kind of scars Rosten has left them with.”
    “You know me, Mike. If there’s a bridge to be built, I’m going to get out the hammer and saw. In the end, that’s the biggest healer there is. Next to … you know.”
    The real estate office was a tall, old-fashioned house with white clapboard siding and a wide front porch. Red and yellow tulips were massed in beds below the porch and a shiny black pickup truck sat in the drive.
    The sign on the screen door of Navan’s only real estate agent said, P LEASE C OME I N .
    Sue Peters and Bob Gibbs did just that. In their nine-month quest for the perfect marital home, they had been through half a dozen real estate agents, ranging from eager twenty-somethings wearing power suits and stilettos to grizzled boomers on their second careers. Sue thought the new truck and the manicured garden sent the right message of prosperity and competence, so she was taken aback by the man who emerged from the back in response to the tinkling bell over the door.
    He was well over six feet, with a country plaid shirt hung on his reedy frame and steel-toed boots on his size-thirteen feet. He had a sunken chest and a little potbelly that suggested a fondness for beer. Brushing crumbs from his belly, he blinked at them in surprise, as if they were the first customers to walk through the door in a week.
    “Hi there!” he exclaimed, recovering enough to thrust out his hand. Sue winced at the grease and crumbs still clinging to it. The man’s grip was bone-crushing.
    “Paul Harris,” he said, his name matching the sign outside. “Welcome to Navan. You two interested in a property around here?”
    Sue glanced around the room. Photos and flyers of properties plastered the walls, and large binders cluttered the desk in the corner, nearly burying the computer. The photos depicted everything from waterfront shacks to mansions. None of them, she noticed, had Paul Harris listed as agent.
    “We’re looking all over,” she said cautiously. “We like the country feel of Navan.”
    “Well, you’ve come to the right place. I know every property listed within a 10k radius and quite a few that aren’t listed. Yet.” He flashed a grin, exposing a perfect white smile. Dentures? Sue wondered. She put Harris’s age at around forty-five, which was rather young for dentures, but faint scars on his eye and lip