This Thing of Darkness (9 page)

“It would take a strong person to hit hard enough to break his skull like that,” he said.

“Strong or enraged.” Sullivan paused. “Some of the blows were post-mortem. The one that likely killed him was to the base of his neck, delivered when he was already lying down. Snapped his neck.”

Green tasted bile. “Coward. Attacking an old man in the first place, then hitting him when he's down. This wasn't a simple mugging, Brian. This was an assassination.”

Sullivan ran his broad hand through his bristly hair, frowning dubiously.“Well, it might have started as a mugging, but when Rosenthal resisted, the killer lost it. Maybe Rosenthal got a good hit in, and the attacker saw red.”

Green was silent. He knew Sullivan was right. They'd both seen enough bloody destruction to appreciate the power of flash rage. But to keep hitting once the old man was already down, already dead, suggested a dangerously unstable man. Green finally broke into their grim thoughts. “What's his calculation on time of death?”

“More or less what we figured. Sometime between midnight and four a.m. Sunday morning.”

“Anything else of note?”

“We got the dental records, and we've couriered everything over to the forensic odontologist. Probably have a confirmed
ID
by Wednesday. MacPhail says Rosenthal had an iron constitution and kept himself well. Even got regular pedicures. Heart, liver and arteries all in excellent shape, would have lived another ten years. Even had all his own teeth. ‘A lifetime of clean living, the silly bugger' is what the old Scot announced when he was finished.”

Both men laughed, grateful for the lighter mood. MacPhail would see that as a lifetime of wasted opportunities. But in Green's mind, it all fit with the image that was beginning to form, of a thoughtful, philosophical man who had few vices and took meticulous care of himself.

None of which explained what he was doing walking along Rideau Street during the most dangerous small hours of the night.

Six

S
top the Carnage!” The Tuesday morning headline stopped Omar cold. He was just heading to the cash with the bottle of laundry detergent his mother had asked him to buy and the jumbo bag of chips that was his reward. She wouldn't know about the pack of DuMauriers he'd pick up too. Using his own money, so what business was it of hers? What other twenty-year-old man was grounded to the house for a month anyway?

It had been less than three days, but he was already going insane. He'd practically begged his mother to let him go to the store for her. She was as scared of his father as he was, so it had taken some persuading, but when the old man went off to work that morning, she'd slipped Omar some house money and sent him up to Rideau Street.

His mother didn't read English, and his father said the newspapers were all lies, so there weren't any in the house. Since part of his punishment was no
TV
, he hadn't heard any news either. That headline was the first he'd learned of the old man's death on Saturday night. That fucking black-hole Saturday night.

The
Ottawa Sun
screamed the headline in its usual half-page type, followed up with more hype. “Roaming gangs to blame in senior's death.” Beside that, there was a photo of a building with a body sprawled against it. Details were fuzzy so it took Omar a moment to recognize Rideau Street, but then fear shot through him. He pretended to be cool as he bent to look at the more conservative
Ottawa Citizen
on the rack below. No headlines about gangs, but a recap of the progress the police were making into the brutal beating. “We are looking at video footage and at known gang members operating in the vicinity,” some cop was quoted as saying.

Video footage. Fuck! Omar nearly bolted from the store. He snatched up the paper, and it took all his willpower to put his stuff down at the cash and wait for his change. He completely forgot about the cigarettes.

Back at the house, he shut himself in his room and read the story five times, his brain refusing to take it all in. This was bad. The guy had been beaten with a bat over a dozen times, even after he was dead. His body was pulverized, then robbed. An innocent old guy out for a walk, just minding his own business. Omar felt a dumb surge of anger. Well, that was the old man's first mistake. What the hell was he thinking, going out for a walk on Rideau Street in the middle of the fucking night?

Then he felt guilty for the anger. The old man's actions may not have been too smart, but no way he deserved to get beaten to death. This wasn't Somalia, where his father said your life was in your hands every second, where just to show your face in the wrong place to the wrong person could mean a machete or a strafe of bullets. Which was why his mother never complained about his father, no matter what he did, because he'd rescued her from that. Picked her from all the village girls in the camp, brought her back here when he transferred back to Canada. Omar had already been born by then, but not too many soldiers married the village women they'd fooled around with.

His father said it was a matter of honour after the things the military had done in Somalia, and maybe that was true. His father still sent half his money over there for a village school. But Omar knew it wasn't that simple. His dad liked to be king of the heap, and he knew he had them all by the short and curlies.

He raised his head from the newspaper. How many times had he asked himself if they'd have been better off if the old man had left them in Somalia? He knew the answer, but it was a game he played whenever the bastard tightened the screws. Martial law, that's what this was. Once a soldier, always a soldier, and his father had been with the worst. The government hadn't disbanded the Airborne Regiment after Somalia because the guys had handed out lollipops. They knew all about beating. And killing.

Omar wrenched his thoughts back to Saturday night. He raked his memory. He remembered something metal, something shiny like a knife. But not a baseball bat. Who the hell had been carrying a baseball bat? A knife could be concealed, but a bat was pretty fucking long to hide under your shirt. Not to mention uncomfortable when you're sitting down. He tried to picture the four of them sprawled on the grass in Macdonald Gardens, smoking weed and talking about getting laid. He remembered jokes about the size of their hard-ons, about how far up a girl they could go. If anyone had had a baseball bat, it would have come out then.

Omar shook his head, feeling a bit better. It was possible one of them had picked up a baseball bat later during their walk, but not likely. Not too many baseball bats lying around in alleyways around here, especially when it wasn't even garbage day.

He heard his mother's soft bare feet on the stairs. Quickly he folded up the newspaper and stuffed it under his mattress. He pulled his math textbook out of his bag and had just flipped it open when there was a light tap on his door. As always, his mother waited silently outside his door until he opened it. She was tall, and even after four kids—plus two who died in the refugee camp, but no one ever talked about them—she didn't have an ounce of fat on her.

Even inside the house, she kept herself wrapped head to toe in browns and blacks. His father sometimes bought her bright scarves and pretty clothes, but they sat in her closet. She looked at Omar now with her huge, sad eyes.

“You have laundry?” she asked in English.

He glanced around his room. His brothers had left their own clothes strewn around, but Omar's own corner was army shipshape. Just one more sign of his father's double standard. He handed her his bag of laundry, then remembered the clothes from Saturday night, still in a ball at the back of his closet. He said nothing.

She peered into the small bag and frowned. “Your jeans?”

Panic shot through him. “I'll check if they're dirty, I'll bring them down to you.”

She went out and he closed the door. He ran to the closet and fished out the clothes. They were stiff with dried blood now and gave off a sickening smell. They were probably a write-off, except his father would ask him where they'd gone. He could make some excuse, but he'd never hear the end of it. The jeans had cost good money and were nearly new. He shook them out and peered at them in the light from the window. Against the dark blue fabric, it was hard to tell the stains were blood. They could have been...

He shook his head. His mother wasn't born yesterday, she knew blood when she saw it. She'd figure he was into something hot and heavy. But she wouldn't say a word to his father. She'd wash the stuff and never ask. It didn't pay to ask.

He began to empty the pockets to make sure there was no weed or folded bills that could get ruined in the wash. In the third pocket, his hand closed around something heavy and cold. He pulled it out. He stared at it a moment then yanked his hand away like the object was hot. It clattered to the floor.

Heart pounding, he picked it up again. Stretched the gold band, cradled the heavy disk. It was still ticking, the hands on the gold face keeping perfect time.

Which was no surprise, because below the dial, in sleek, classy letters, was the word
Rolex.

He was on the phone before he'd even thought it through. “Nadif! What the fuck happened Saturday night!”

“Sh-h!” Nadif hissed and slammed the phone down without saying a word. Omar raced down the stairs, stopped for a moment to listen for his mother, who was busy with the laundry in the basement. He ran out the front door. Only when his bare feet hit the cold pavement did he realize he'd forgotten his shoes.

Ignoring the cold, he headed diagonally across the street and had almost reached Nadif 's townhouse when he saw the curtains twitch in the upstairs room. A few seconds later Nadif came barrelling out his front door and ran at him, grabbing his arm and dragging him behind a van parked in the laneway beside the house.

“Fuck, man! You want to get us arrested? The cops are everywhere!”

“Sorry,” Omar said. Sorry was always the first word out of his mouth when trouble started, but now he took a few seconds to process what Nadif had said. His mouth went dry. “You think my phone's tapped?”

“I don't know about yours, but you can sure as hell bet mine is. The cops were all over me about that old man's death on Saturday night.”

Omar grabbed his arm. “What the fuck happened? What was in that weed! I don't remember a thing.”

“Nothing happened. Got nothing to do with us.”

“But I got blood all over me. All over my clothes!”

“You fell off the sidewalk. So wasted you didn't even see it coming. Fell flat on your face.”

Omar was silent a moment, testing this theory against his memory. Didn't ring any bells. “But what about the knife?”

Nadif 's face hardened. “What knife?”

Omar felt panic rising. “I remember a knife. I remember blood.”

Nadif gripped him by both arms and dug his fingers in. “Listen to me. Nothing. Happened. Nothing. We were out partying, we came home, you tripped and fell, end of story.”

To his shame, Omar felt hot tears gathering behind his eyes. “But I have a Rolex watch in my pocket. I don't know where it came from.”

Nadif released him and stepped back from him almost like he was pushing him away. “I don't know nothing about a Rolex watch. I don't know where you got that. But my advice? Get rid of it. Now. Throw it down the sewer, chuck it in the river. Just get rid of it. And don't ever, ever talk about this again.”

The phone was ringing on Green's desk when he reached his office that Tuesday morning. Fearing it was Devine with another last minute demand before her job interview, he debated letting it go to voicemail, but after a long, stuffy meeting with the Provincial Crowns, any diversion was welcome.

A dulcet Southern drawl greeted him. “Inspector Green? Agent Jim Benoit of the
FBI
here.”

The name rang no bells. “Yes, sir. How can I help you?”