This Thing of Darkness (12 page)

Not Rosenthal.

Eight

L
ook, Daddy! I tied my new shoes all by myself!” Green bolted awake just in time to intercept his son, who was making a flying leap into the middle of his parents' bed. Grey daylight was barely peeking around the edges of the blinds, and Green shivered as he groped his way to peer out the window. Wednesday morning looked blustery and raw, an early hint of the winter to come. Charcoal storm clouds were billowing in from the west, scattering dry leaves along the street. Overhead a horde of Canada geese honked southward.

Sharon was still fast asleep, and with her stretch of evening shifts, he knew she needed all the sleep she could manage. In the background, he could hear the sound of the shower running. Miraculously, Hannah was up.

Tony talked in dramatic stage whispers as Green led him back into his own room and helped him select some of his brand new X-Games clothes for school. The choice proved so difficult that they had no time for breakfast, and Green ended up piling Tony into the car with only a bagel and juice box. His protest was loud enough to wake the neighbourhood until Green threw in a bribe of two Oreo cookies for snack. Sharon would not be impressed. It was Green's turn to do the school car pool, and by the time he had delivered all three chattering five-year-olds to the school yard, his head felt as if it had been jackhammered.

As abruptly as the chaos had begun, it was quiet again. Heading in to work, Green slipped in a Sarah Slean CD and balanced his bagel on the steering wheel as he savoured his coffee with his free hand. Thank God for solitude, he thought, letting the gentle lyrics wash over him.

He was anxious to get to the station before Brian Sullivan did his morning parade. Whenever there was a major new homicide investigation, Green liked to attend the briefings. However, by the time he'd delivered the children to school and fought his way past all the downtown construction, the preliminaries were over and Sergeant Levesque was just getting up to summarize the Rosenthal case to date. She used the most modern computer software and entered the updates on a smart board as they came along.

“The dentist has confirmed our
ID
of the victim. And we have identified two of the four men on the pawn shop video. One's a frequent flyer—our good buddy Nadif Hassan, currently out on bail in the Rideau Centre assault, and the second is a YO named Yusuf Abdi. Both of these men had preliminary interviews on Monday as part of our canvass of known gang members in the area. Nadif Hassan claimed he was home all Saturday night, and his mother corroborated that.”

Eyes rolled. Mothers and their little darlings. Levesque smiled and flicked her ponytail to show she wasn't duped. “Since there are eight children in that household, I'm not sure she'd even notice. We will interview him again.”

“This morning?” Sullivan asked.

She shook her head. “I want to get some leverage on him first, so I asked Detective Jones to get warrants for a wiretap and a search of his residence. We're looking for a bat or some other long, round weapon, bloodstained clothes, plus the items stolen from the victim—his shoes, watch, rings.” She nodded towards the unit's warrant drafting wizard, who had just rushed into the room clutching some papers. “Any luck, Detective?”

Jones waved the papers, grinning. “I got Judge Olds. I knew he'd just bought a retirement condo for himself and his wife in that upscale new high-rise in the Byward Market.”

Appreciative laughter rippled through the room. While Levesque lined up the logistics and personnel for the search, Green leaned in close to Sullivan. “Who's feeding the media, by the way?”

Levesque swung around from the smart board screen on which she'd been writing assignments. It was her first notice of him, and she didn't miss a beat. “I am, Inspector Green. I wanted to shake the gangs up, see who panics.”

After yesterday's headlines, the mayor and city council are the most likely to panic, he thought, but he said nothing. From Levesque's point of view, it was the right thing to do, and it might even net them more resources for the fight against street gangs. She clicked, and a mug shot flashed up on the screen. The man had skin as smooth as polished ebony and large eyes fringed by long, almost delicate lashes, but those eyes were cold as they stared at the camera. Marie Claire Levesque tapped the screen.

“Nadif Hassan is our number one guy right now. He lives and operates in the area, and he does not hesitate to use violence. So I also want a canvass of the whole neighbourhood. Find someone he bragged to, find some place he tried to fence the proceeds.”

Green could stand it no longer. “Hassan is a businessman. He commits crimes to settle a score or send a message. He doesn't beat an old man twelve times with a baseball bat, adding one for good luck at the back of the neck, just to make sure he's dead.”

She was ready even for that. “He's also a hothead, and he's under a lot of pressure right now. The old man fought back, maybe challenged him to the very end. And Hassan knows any more felonies while he's on trial for the Rideau Centre knifing will make things much worse for him. He probably realized the old man could identify him, so what started as a mugging finished with this. Twelve hits with a baseball bat. And...” Levesque glanced at him with the merest hint of a smile, “there is also the anti-Zionist feelings. Hassan is a Muslim, Rosenthal was a Jew. A supporter of Israel. The destruction of the Star of David suggests that Hassan was angry at that.”

Green nodded. She hadn't thrown out his wild speculation. Sullivan was right; she was good. Nadif Hassan was not going to know what happened to him once Marie Claire Levesque got him by the balls. Nonetheless, Green didn't expect the house search to bear much fruit. At twenty-three, Nadif was a wily veteran of numerous police raids, which began with schoolyard assaults at age ten, and he would have learned to keep his premises clean.

Green had barely worked his way through his morning's emails, however, when his phone rang.

Sullivan was chuckling. “Never underestimate the stupidity—or greed—of your average bad guy.”

“Levesque found something on the warrant?”

“Not much. Our boy Nadif thought he'd covered his tracks. Not a trace of bloody clothes or sneakers, not even in the trash out back. No weapon longer than a six-inch paring knife.”

That's because his father had confiscated all the knives after the stabbing incident, Green recalled. As if that would somehow keep his son in check. Green remembered the tall, slender, dignified man who rarely spoke above a soft murmur. He drove a taxi and was an elder in the Somali Community Association, helping his fellow immigrants adjust to Canadian life. He had been ashamed of his own son's behaviour and made constant attempts to steer the boy back on the right path. The efforts had merely driven the young punk deeper underground. He became more adept at lying, crying racism and mistranslating official documents brought to his parents' attention.

“To judge from the sports equipment in the basement,” Sullivan was saying, “the kid's never heard of baseball. Just basketball. His room was clean—too clean if you ask me— and he's got no visible scratches or bruises.”

Green had been waiting impatiently for the “but”. Finally he supplied it himself.

“There were fresh ashes in the fireplace,” Sullivan replied.

Green perked up. In September, when the city had been enjoying glorious, sunny summer weather, people were putting on shorts and sandals, not lighting fireplaces. “Any trace evidence?”

“Nothing visible to the naked eye, but Ident has swept it clean and taken every last ash for analysis. We may get lucky.”

“Fireplaces aren't great for burning clothes,” Green observed. Or anything else, he thought, remembering his dismal efforts to start or sustain a decent fire in his own living room. Of course, what did he know from fires, Sharon would say, laughing from the sidelines. He refocused. “Not unless the guy got it burning full tilt. And that presumably would attract his parents' attention.”

“Doesn't really matter,” Sullivan said. “He doesn't have to know what we managed to find in the ashes.”

“No, could be the thin edge we need.”

“It could.” Now Green could hear the merriment in Sullivan's voice. “But we've got something even better. Down in the basement, hidden in a box behind the furnace in among the spider webs, where he thought we wouldn't find them, was a nice shiny pair of black Gucci dress shoes. Now, if we can tie them to Rosenthal, I'd say the little prick is toast.”

Levesque did not bring Nadif in for questioning right away. She knew there was not enough to tie him to the murder itself—no blood on his clothes, no murder weapon—and that even a semi-competent newbie legal aid lawyer could walk right through the holes in the police case. Instead she let him stew while she waited for the preliminary results from Ident.

The scales tipped in her favour late that afternoon. Sullivan was in the field checking out a call, and Green was just returning from a meeting with the
RCMP
. He spotted Levesque on the phone and could tell from the glow in her eyes that something had broken. After she hung up, she pumped the air with her fist. At the sight of him, she cut the celebration short.

He grinned. “News, Sergeant?”

She didn't hesitate. No suspicion of his motive, no jealous guarding of her turf. “The shoes, sir. The bastard tried to clean them up, but he couldn't get into the cracks and the stitching around the sole. Ident found traces of blood. It still has to be analyzed at the lab, but—”

“Our suspect doesn't have to know that. The fact we can
ID
it as blood should be enough to rattle him. What about the ash?”

Her face clouded. “No luck. Just paper of some sort, too burned to read any of the text.” She thrust back her shoulders and flicked her blonde ponytail irritably. “But we have the shoes. That's leverage. I'm going to pick him up.” She reached for the phone.

“It's not enough for a charge.”

“No,” she said, “but I can also threaten him with breach of his bail conditions. Maybe I can shake some other names out of him. Or a confession.”

No way was Nadif going to confess to murder unless it was nailed down. The way he was fighting the Rideau Centre assault charge, despite the testimony of the victim and an eye witness, was proof of that. And with all the hype about the newly minted anti-gang laws, he'd know he was facing life inside. “This is premature. Have you made inquiries on the street? Anyone see him Saturday night? Any corroboration from the wiretap yet?”

She shook her head. “This is the first step. I want to keep at him, wear him down. Each time I'll have a little more evidence he has to explain, until he's so tangled up in lies he can't think straight.” She punched in Dispatch's number and ordered a police cruiser to pick up Nadif Hassan.

“Staff Sergeant Sullivan is on a call,” Green said. “But he'll need to be informed.”

“I'll do that,” she said. “But at this moment I have to set up the video room.” She paused and looked at him darkly. “You're welcome to watch yourself. But it will be pretty late.”

Green had been heading for a record—three consecutive evenings home for dinner with his children, if not his wife, who was still on the evening shift. But he couldn't resist the challenge Levesque had tossed at him. Confident and cocky, she thought she knew what she was doing, just as he had thumbed his nose at the stuffy caution of his own superiors in his early days. And indeed, hers was a time-honoured police tactic—wear the subject down with endless interviews and repetition until he was caught in a lie he couldn't escape. But Green preferred a more subtle approach: gather evidence and build a web of facts that traps the suspect inside before he sees the trap. Slam every door closed as he rushes towards it. He suspected Nadif still had plenty of escape hatches and might lead them a merry chase.

While elsewhere on the streets, there was evidence waiting to be found. And a prodigal son who, despite his assistant's assurances, had so far made no attempt to contact them about the murder of his father. That, even more than his apparent disinterest in his two million-dollar inheritance, cried out for follow-up.