This Thing of Darkness (34 page)

Farahani looked pleased with himself, like he was acting as guide to a dangerous but titillating world. Gibbs could sense Sue Peters grinning. Time to bring the man back to earth. “Did this woman phone for a cab?”

“No, no, I see her. She is walking along Montreal Road, holding herself like this.” He jumped up and gripped his stomach as he hobbled across the room. “Like she was hurt. It is dangerous that time in the night.”

“What time was this?”

“3:20 a.m., sir. I check my log today.”

“And what direction was she walking?”

“East, to St. Laurent Boulevard.”

And ultimately towards Rothwell Heights, Gibbs thought, although it would be a really long walk. “What did you do?”

“I stop. First I slow down. I was worried. A young woman alone on the street at that hour and dressed in nothing, only a black bra and jeans. I asked her where is she going, and she said she is walking home. I offered her a lift.” Farahani paused. He looked nervous. “I have two daughters, younger, but I hope if ever they are in trouble...”

“And she accepted the lift?”

“When she got in the back, I see she is very upset, making no sense, and her jeans are...” He makes a gesture towards his crotch. “I see some blood there. I asked what happened, but she only shakes her head. I want to take her to hospital, but she says no, just take me home.”

“What address did she give you?”

Farahani looked at his notes. “1714 Montreal Road. Near Blair Road in Beacon Hill. Much too far walking.” He waved his hands to signal distance. “She has no money, but I say it doesn't matter. I get her home safe.”

Gibbs recorded the address then carefully closed his notebook. All the time he was thanking the man and escorting him back downstairs, he was thinking ahead. Caitlin had been captured on video on Rideau Street an hour earlier, at 2:10 a.m. What had happened during that hour, and why had the woman walked over a kilometre from the site of the murder? Had she been sexually assaulted, and even if she had, what did it have to do with the murder of Sam Rosenthal?

The minute he was back in the squad room, he picked up the telephone. Inspector Green needed to know this.

Green propped his notebook against his steering wheel and jotted notes as Gibbs reported his interview with the cabbie. He frowned as he wrote down the address. “That's not Patrick O'Malley's address.”

“No, sir. It's a townhouse unit in a large, low-rent complex. Sue Peters is looking it up now to see who owns it. But I think it's a red herring, sir.”

“How so?”

“It's just across the street from the back of the neighbourhood where her father lives. I think she didn't want the cabbie to know where she lived, so she had him drop her on a main street nearby. Maybe she didn't want to draw attention to herself by pulling up outside her father's place in a cab at three thirty in the morning either.”

Green pictured the quiet street, at that hour almost certainly asleep. Nonetheless, there might be some nosy insomniac peeking out the curtains to see what shenanigans the O'Malley family was up to at that hour. Given Caitlin's erratic history and her mother's drinking, he imagined the gossip had been fairly fierce over the years.

“What about the nurses, Bob? Did you get the father's photo over to the hospital?”

There was a pause. “Oh, yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir. I—I reported in to Sergeant Levesque. She s-said she would tell you.”

Green squinted through the windshield as he wrestled his temper under control. This was not Gibbs' battle.

“I'm sure she'll call,” Gibbs rushed on to fill the silence. “She was at home, sounded like she just woke up. Or something.”

Despite his annoyance, Green had to smile. He could almost hear the young detective's embarrassment through the phone line. From the sound of it, Levesque had managed a successful dinner date after all.

His annoyance dissipated entirely as Gibbs' described his visit to the hospital. With his gentle manner, the kid was developing quite a talent for drawing people out. But in the midst of all the concern about Caitlin's fragile mental health, no one had asked the very crucial question—why now? Why had Patrick O'Malley suddenly shown up at the hospital that afternoon and insisted on taking his daughter home? Insisted to the point of interrupting her psychiatrist in the middle of his weekend off. What had sent him into a panic? The photo of his daughter released to the media that afternoon?

“The nurses were pretty surprised she'd been discharged,” Gibbs was saying. “She's still very ill, they said, and they asked if we could hold off interviewing her for awhile.”

Green peered at his watch. It was edging towards midday. Sharon was going to sue for divorce, if she didn't murder him outright. He'd promised to take Tony and his new kindergarten buddy bicycling on their brand new two-wheelers today. And to tackle the yard. There were two massive maples and an oak in the backyard, and if he ignored nature much longer, the house might totally disappear under their leaves.

“Not possible. But it's Patrick O'Malley I really want to talk to right now. As soon as Sergeant Levesque shows up at the station, have her give me a call.”

Twenty-Four

G
reen leaned on his rake and stared at the back yard with dismay. After an hour, six bags brimming with leaves were already lined up at the curb, but the yard looked untouched. The task was not helped, of course, by the enthusiastic contribution of Tony, his friend, and Modo, who were making a game of jumping in the leaf pile. It was amazing what havoc two little boys and one huge dog could create.

From inside the house, he heard the distant ringing of the phone. A moment later, Sharon emerged, pouting darkly. She surveyed the leaf-strewn chaos wordlessly before she handed him the phone. About time, he thought, tossing the rake aside. No one should get to spend the whole day in bed.

To his surprise, the dessicated voice of Lyle Cunningham came through the phone. “Gibbs said I should call you. He thought you'd want to know right away that we've got two interesting results back about Rosenthal's cane. First, the tissue and blood on the tip of it. Levesque wanted me to expedite that analysis, so I rode the
RCMP
lab hard. They can't give me
DNA
yet—that'll be another few weeks—but they did do some tissue typing for starters, so we could focus our inquiries. The good news—the blood is Type B negative.”

Green's excitement jumped. Type B negative was rare and could go a long way to eliminating suspects quickly.

“The bad news,” Cunningham continued before Green could muster a comment, “is that none of your four suspects, including Omar Adams and Nadif Hassan, are Type B. However, your victim is.”

“So he was hit with his own cane?” Green pictured the blows to the head, which according to MacPhail were caused by a long cylindrical instrument. “Could it have been the murder weapon?”

“I highly doubt it. You could hit someone hard enough to stun them or knock them down, especially a frail old man, but I can't see the cane having the strength to break the skull without snapping in two itself.”

Green agreed. “But let's run it by Dr. MacPhail for confirmation.”

“I will tomorrow. Especially in light of my other finding.” Even the normally deadpan Cunningham sounded excited. “When I realized someone else had wielded the cane to strike Dr. Rosenthal, I took another very careful look at the handle and the shaft. I had checked it for prints before, but I should have been more thorough. My mistake.”

Green struggled to hear over Modo's barking and Tony's shrieks of glee. He edged into the house, bringing a cascade of leaves with him. “What? You found a print?”

“The cane is covered in latents, mostly unusable. But I did find a partial on the shaft under the handle. Right index finger. If you're gripping the cane in your right hand in order to swing it, your right index finger would press pretty hard on the wood in exactly that spot.”

Green's disappointment vanished. “A partial? Enough for a match?”

“Yes, indeed.” Cunningham chuckled. “A gift-wrapped present for the lovely Sergeant Levesque. Omar Adams.”

Omar Adams was sitting on the floor of the bathroom, propped against the bathtub. The morning's
Ottawa Citizen
was spread out on the tiles in front of him. Since the police had searched the house and pulled him in for interrogation, his father had been buying every newspaper in the city, including the French
Le Droit
and tuning into the radio news every hour. Omar found the reporting terrifying. The newspapers invented what they didn't know and created ridiculous stories out of the tiniest coincidences. He tried not to read them.

This morning's paper, however, caught his attention from the first page. “Police seek woman as possible witness to slaying”. The name Caitlin O'Malley meant nothing to him, but the photo jolted him. He snatched the paper from the kitchen table where his father had left it and raced upstairs with it. He chose the bathroom as the only place where he could lock the door and read in peace without the eagle eye of the old man and the peppering questions of his brothers.

He read the article for the third time. The woman was supposed to be in hiding from known gang members. Did Nadif know anything about her? What the hell could she possibly have seen? He stared a long time at the fuzzy photo.

He knew this woman.

Slowly a memory drifted into focus of the woman leaning against a brick wall in the shadows off the main street. She was tall, her head bent forward talking to someone, her hair tumbling down. She wore white jeans and a fur jacket that hung open at the front. Underneath, nothing but a black lace bra.

His heart pounded with fear. He shut his eyes, half trying to remember, half to forget. Nadif had spotted her from down the block. He'd boasted to them, his tongue flicking. As they got closer, Omar remembered shouting. Swearing. High-pitched and frightened. Nadif shouting too.

There was someone else too. The old drunk? Someone yelling at him to stop and grabbing his arm. Stinging pain on his arms and back. Pain like he hadn't felt in years. He remembered grabbing something smooth and round, swinging it. Flailing, tearing at flesh. Then steel flashing in the shadows. A knife?

That's when he'd turned around to run.

In the bathroom, he scrambled up and flung himself over the toilet bowl just in time. Heaved until his gut ached and tears ran down his cheeks. Fuck! Had they done it? Had he been part of that? He remembered the feel of the slippery round shaft in his hand, the swoosh of it rushing through the air. He clutched his head and started to cry. Was he going to rot in jail for the rest of his life? Was he going to be raped and beaten and used like a woman in the jungle of the prison yard? He'd done nothing but defend himself. But Nadif, that murderous bastard, must have had his fucking knife.

He stumbled to his feet, doused his face with cold water and dried his tears. Stared at himself in the mirror. I ran away, he told himself. I ran away because I'm a chicken shit coward that freaks at the sight of blood. I didn't beat the old man's head to a pulp.

He opened the bathroom door and peered out. The hall was quiet. No one had heard a thing. His brothers were excitedly playing their video game and from downstairs came the drone of his parents talking. Omar slipped down the stairs and stopped in the front hall, hardly daring to breathe. His parents were in the kitchen arguing in Somali about money. He knew it was because of him. Because of the high-priced Jew lawyer his father had hired. He'd been against it, but his father said it was the smartest move. Besides them being the sharpest lawyers, it was like hiring a woman to defend you on a rape.

He pulled on his sneakers, snatched his jacket and slipped out the front door, trying to shut it as silently as he could. He was still grounded, and his father would kill him if he caught him. Dead eyes for a week.