This Thing of Darkness (15 page)

“How much?”

He looked relieved. “Some vodka, some beers... I lost count. Over the evening, you know?”

“Any drugs?”

The young man seemed to deliberate, a dead give-away. “A joint or two, yeah. One of the guys brought it. Not me.”

“What time did you get home?”

“I didn't check. I was...pretty wasted.”

“Midnight? One? Two? Three o'clock?”

Green watched Omar shaking his head, sheepish and relieved that she had moved on. He nodded at three o'clock.

“Please take off your shirt.”

The young man looked confused. He plucked at his shirt as if trying to remember if he had anything to hide. He seemed to think a token objection was required, because he tugged his shirt down tight. “No way!”

“Have you got something to hide?”

“No, it's just...you can't make me do that. It's a violation, like.”

Levesque regarded him gravely. Finally she nodded. “I understand. I'll leave the room, and you can show Constable Murphy here.”

Before he had a chance to counter her offer, she scooped up her clipboard and left the room. Murphy, recovering from his own surprise, left the corner and loomed over the table. At nearly six-foot six, he cast quite a shadow. Omar flinched.

“Why did she ask me that?” he whined.

“Make it easy on yourself,” Murphy said. “She could book you and strip-search you if she wanted.”

“She's got nothing on me!” But he began to roll up his
T
-shirt, revealing first his torso and then his hairless, concave chest. Green winced at what a military doctor's verdict would be. Murphy prowled around to see all the angles. Omar stopped as the
T
-shirt reached his armpits.

“All the way off.”

Omar's eyes flashed with anger, and in one swift yank, he pulled the shirt over his head. The bones on his thin shoulders protruded.

Murphy gazed at his back. “Stand up and turn around.”

Chin shoved out, Omar obeyed, exposing his back to the camera. The skin was stretched tight across the shoulder blades, chocolate brown but crisscrossed with long jagged ridges. Green sucked in his breath. Scar tissue from long ago. Inflicted by whom, he wondered. By his father? Or by some sadistic thug in the refugee camp where he'd begun his life?

No wonder the man had not wanted to undress.

Sullivan nudged his elbow. “Look at his left upper arm.”

Green shifted his attention and saw what had Sullivan and Levesque so excited. Three much more recent scars— purplish, weltlike and barely healed. Like the marks of fingernails dragged over flesh.

Levesque waited until Omar had his shirt back on before reentering the room. “How did you get those injuries on your arm?”

Omar shrugged. “I don't know. When I fell, I guess.”

“You fell on your arm?”

“Like I said, I don't remember. I must have. Unless—” He broke off, eyes shuttered.

“Unless what?”

“Nothing.”

Levesque waited a moment, but he had retreated behind his immobility. She removed the shoes from the table, and in their place she laid the evidence bin with Omar's clothes and sneakers. It seemed to Green that Omar ceased to breathe as he stared at them, like a man caught in a cobra's stare.

“Do you know what luminol is?”

The young man said nothing.

“It's a chemical that when you spray it on something and shine a
UV
light, any trace of blood shows up. Here's your freshly washed hoodie. Looks not bad, eh? A little stained, maybe, but who'd know?” She flipped open her laptop and slipped in Ident's
CD
. In no time, the luminol photo of the shirt filled the screen. She swivelled it so that he could see. “Here's what your shirt looks like under luminol.”

The screen was black except for luminescent blotches of blue. In the centre, three bright patches an inch or two in diameter, and on the edges a series of paler smears. Levesque let Omar contemplate the image in silence. He ran his tongue around his lips and swallowed, seeming unable to moisten his mouth enough to talk.

“How did the blood get on your hoodie?”

“Like I said, I fell. Gave myself a nosebleed.”

Levesque pressed a button, and the image changed to the sneakers. An even brighter blue lit up the screen. “These are your sneakers. See there is blood on the bottom of them. How would you get blood on the bottom from a nosebleed?”

“I don't know. Maybe I stepped in it afterwards.”

“You stepped in it all right, after Dr. Rosenthal was bleeding all over the pavement.”

“No! I never saw him!”

“The
RCMP
lab is already doing
DNA
tests on the blood, Omar. You know about
DNA
?”

He nodded, again apparently robbed of voice.

“That will tie you to Dr. Rosenthal's body.” She shifted subtly, leaned forward and deepened her voice. Not threatening, more companionable. “But we know you didn't act alone. Maybe it wasn't even your idea, you just found yourself caught up in someone else's mess. It was all Nadif's idea, wasn't it?”

Omar didn't reply, merely stared at his brand-new sneakers on the table, less in reproach than in bewilderment.

“We want the real bad guy to get his proper punishment, not you. You've never even been in trouble with the law, Omar. Why ruin your life for a man who doesn't deserve it?”

“Nadif didn't have anything to do with it.”

“With what?”

“With Saturday night. With...with my fall.”

“He's on the video.”

“He went home early.”

“He had the shoes, Omar. He ratted you out. What kind of friend is that?”

“I don't know. I don't remember anything about shoes, an old man, anything!”

Green could see that the young man was backing himself up against the wall, shutting down and clinging to the story he had first offered. He looked bewildered but immovable. Green searched his face and his body language for signs of capitulation, a tacit admission of guilt or defeat. There was none. He didn't even object to giving a
DNA
sample when Levesque asked.

Levesque pressed on, reworking the ground, ticking off all the bits of evidence in rapid succession, hammering away at his resistance. Tears glistened in his eyes, his chin quivered, but still he stuck to his story. For the next two hours she worked away, until his lawyer, hastily called up by his father, arrived to demand an end.

As Omar was being led away, he passed by Green in the hallway. For an instant, he raised his large, limpid eyes to Green's. He looked haunted, cornered. In his gaze, however, was a question. A hint of doubt. Or guilt.

In that moment, it was Green's turn to feel confused.

Ten

G
reen was still puzzling over that look when he returned to the squad room, too late to catch even the tail end of his committee meeting. Waiting at his office door was the Major Crimes clerk with a business card in her hand. She handed it to him and told him the gentleman was waiting downstairs for him in the lobby.

Green glanced at the card, which was plain white but slightly grimy at the edges, as though it had been used many times. G.R. Verne LLB, barrister and solicitor, in simple black letters with an address off Montreal Road in the crime-ridden heart of Vanier. Yet Green had never heard of him. Either he was straight out of law school, or he'd never graced the criminal court.

The latter, Green decided when the clerk showed Verne into his office. The lawyer looked as if he'd been before the bar for fifty years, each one weighing more heavily than the last. His back was bowed by the weight of a hundred extra pounds, which hung on his frame in billowing folds. His frayed brown suit shone at the elbows and collar, and an odour of sweat and mothballs wafted around him. He wheezed as he wedged himself into Green's tiny guest chair, set his briefcase on the floor and propped his cane against the desk. He contemplated the room but didn't speak while he caught his breath.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Verne?”

Verne leaned over to unsnap his briefcase and extracted a sheaf of legal documents. “I expected to hear from you before this,” he said, his lips forming a loose pout. “But since I didn't, I decided I'd better... I am the executor of Samuel Rosenthal's estate.”

Green masked his surprise. Verne was not the lawyer named in the will they had found in the dead man's apartment, nor did he look as if he'd ever handled an estate worth millions in his life. Green wondered whether Levesque had even followed up. “I'm glad you came in, Mr. Verne. We've been having trouble locating Dr. Rosenthal's son, or any other relatives.”

“There are none. Besides the son, that is. Here's his address.” Verne produced another sheet of paper and handed it across the desk. An address in Palo Alto, California, different from the Baltimore address the
FBI
had. Another of his six houses, perhaps?

“What can you tell me about the son?” Green asked.

“A spoiled, hothouse only child who turned into an ambitious, self-centred man. Intellectually brilliant but socially bankrupt. Everyone who doesn't worship at the temple of David's self-importance is cast aside. His father, three wives, and I don't know how many employers.”

Green couldn't resist a smile. “You're quite a fan.”

Verne laughed, a wheezy rumble that ended in a cough. “Neither was Sam. He recognized the mistake he'd made with his son. Hence the new will.” Verne tapped the papers.

Green perked up. “He didn't leave half his estate to his son?”

“Not a penny. He felt his money would be better spent on charities and on other worthy causes that really needed it. Perhaps as penance for inflicting his son on the world.”

Maybe a bit of spite too, Green thought. In his experience, wealthy people who left all their money to charities had revenge as well as philanthropy on their minds. He wondered if vengeance ran in the family. “Did they ever see each other?”

“David couldn't make time in his busy schedule. No, I stand corrected. He made two days for his mother, after she died. Never mind that she took two years to die.”

“Did David know his father had disinherited him? Would he be the type to hold a grudge?”

Verne's eyebrows shot up, becoming lost in the web of wrinkles on his brow. “My goodness, is that what you think?”

“Obvious question. His son was a chief beneficiary of the earlier will, but cut out of this later one.”

Verne relaxed and emitted another phlegmy chuckle. “Sam wasn't even on David's radar. David has his own biomedical engineering company now. He's a millionaire many times over, even has contracts with the U.S. military.”

Sometimes it's not about the money, Green thought, especially when family feuds are involved. He thought of the empty file marked “will” in Rosenthal's apartment. Had someone tried to get rid of the newer will?

“Were you close to Sam?”

Verne's levity vanished, and his baggy eyes grew sad. “Not really, but perhaps as close as anyone gets. Sam was a private man.”

“Always, or since his wife died?”

“Always. I suspect Evelyn was the only person who ever got inside. Not that he was mean. He was always a gentleman, polite and friendly, but...simply self-contained. I think losing Evelyn cut him adrift.”

It occurred to Green that he should contact Levesque to give her the son's address and to invite her in on the interview. But just as quickly, he squelched the idea. She's busy, he thought, polishing up the murder charge against Omar Adams. He leaned back in his chair and nodded at the document which Verne had placed on the desk. “When was this will made?”

“Just this past spring.”

Green tried to remember the details of the previous will, which had been drafted just after his wife's death. “Why change his will now? His son has been out of his life for years.”

Verne hesitated, his lips working. “To understand that, you have to understand Sam's change of heart. He didn't so much want to cut his son out as he wanted to compensate some people.”

“Compensate who?”

“The beneficiaries named in the will.”

“I thought you said he left it all to charities. Worthy causes.”

“Worthy causes, yes. But some of those were people.”

Green sat forward with a thud. “Who?”

Verne reached into his briefcase and withdrew a single sheet of paper. He studied it for a moment before handing it over to Green. It was a photocopy of a single page of the will, listing six names. None of them were familiar, but that was hardly surprising. Most of them would have dated from ten years ago. Three were female, three male, and the surnames ran the gamut from French Canadian to Arabic.

“Who are these people?”

“Patients of his.”

Green remembered what Sharon had speculated. “Wasn't he retired?”

Verne hesitated, then raised his pudgy hand in an equivocating gesture. “He still dabbled. But most of these were former patients. From years ago.”

“And what was Rosenthal compensating them for?”

“For what he had come to see as his professional mistakes.”

It felt like grappling with riddles. As if something important was dancing just out of reach. “What professional mistakes?”

Verne pursed his lips. “In the interests of maintaining their privacy, I'd rather not say.”

“There's no attorney-client privilege here. These people aren't your clients.”

“No, but their private health information is confidential.”

Green quelled his frustration. The old lawyer was far too wily to be bullied, so he tried another tack. “What's Rosenthal's estate worth?”