“I can see that.”
“None of the cops will talk to me.”
“Not yet.”
His speech was taciturn, even by her father’s sparse standards. She tried to imagine who was standing near him. Other homicide detectives, maybe the chief of police, would be gathered at Police Headquarters to figure out how to deal with this.
“You’re not alone, are you?”
“Right.”
“You can’t talk.”
“True.”
“But I can ask you questions.”
“Go ahead.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have called. Was he angry? Was she putting him in an impossible position? She knew he’d want to help her, but could talking to his daughter the reporter this way jeopardize his investigation? She didn’t want to do that, but he’d said go ahead.
“Is there a connection between this murder and the murdered homeless man found here two days ago?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Do the police think there’s a serial killer at work?”
“That’s part of the problem.”
Part of the problem? What was the other part?
“Do you know the identity of the man who was killed this morning?”
“Not exactly.”
Not exactly? What was her father hinting at? They would either know or not know.
“Was he one of the homeless men living in the tent city near the golf club?” she asked.
“No, he wasn’t.”
The inflection was slight. She caught it because she knew her father well enough to hear the change of tone in his voice. No, he wasn’t. Emphasis on he.
What did her father mean by that? Could it be—? “Are you saying the dead person found this morning was a woman?”
“Yes, that makes sense. Got to run.” Then in a whisper. “Love you.”
He hung up before she could say her usual “Love you” back. But he’d delivered the message.
What a scoop. She called her boss, Sheena Persaud, and told her that she’d learned from “a confidential source” that the dead homeless person was a woman.
“Amazing,” Persaud said. “We’re on commercial break for two minutes. Set up, and we’ll go live.” She hung up before Alison could tell her she had ducked away from the crowd and didn’t know where Krevolin was.
Alison ran back to the street, her coat flapping in the wind, her hair askew. There were people everywhere. But where was Krevolin? She couldn’t see him in the crush of the crowd. Maybe he’d gone back to the van. She checked it, but he wasn’t there. She looked at her watch. Sixty-five seconds to go. Darn it.
She yanked open the door of the van and stood on the step to see over people.
There he was, off by the trees filming, getting cutaway shots that they could use later. Smart move, but she needed him now. She charged into the crowd. A group of teenagers were huddled together directly in her way. As she pushed through them, she smelled a wave of marijuana smoke.
“Hey lady,” one of them yelled at her. “Where’s the fire?”
The rest of them laughed.
Her phone rang again. It was Persaud. “We’re ready in about forty-five.”
“Ready,” she said, trying to keep her voice level.
She got to Krevolin and tugged on his arm.
He pulled his camera from his eye and whirled around.
“Quick,” she said. “We’re going live in less than thirty. We have to find a spot away from the crowd where none of the other reporters can hear me.”
“Behind there,” he said, pointing to a nearby hedge while he clipped on his earpiece so he could also hear the producer back at the studio to get his cue.
They both ran.
“Twenty seconds,” he said, handing her the mic.
She stood still, straightened her coat, undid the top two buttons, and stared at the red light on the top of his camera.
“Ten, nine, eight,” he said.
She took a deep breath. Exhaled. Then another one. She lifted the mic. This was a big scoop. And it was hers.
“Three, two, and one,” Krevolin said.
The light switched from red to green.
“Reporting live, this is Alison Greene with an exclusive update on this breaking story.”
5
Daniel Kennicott reached across the bed for his girlfriend, Angela Breaker. They’d started living together three months earlier, and after many years of living alone, he was still getting used to waking up beside her every morning. He stretched out his fingers, but his hand landed on the mattress.
He couldn’t see a thing because Angela insisted on sleeping in total darkness. She’d grown up in one of Toronto’s crime-infested subsidized housing complexes, and her mother had insisted that they sleep with the blinds down and all the lights off because it was safer that way.
He couldn’t hear her breathe. Nor could he feel the heat of her body. “Angela,” he whispered.
No response. He turned back to his side of the bed, reached down to the floor, and groped for his cell phone, which he always left screen-side down. He flipped it over. The time was 7:05. Angela, a dedicated jogger, would have been on the road for more than an hour, starting at six sharp.
He lay back, closed his eyes, and smiled. Late last night he’d tiptoed into the bedroom thinking she was asleep. Feeling his way in the darkness, he’d slid into his side of the bed. As soon as his head had hit the pillow, he’d felt her hand on his chest.
“How bad was the autopsy?” she’d asked.
He put his hand over hers and stroked the back of her wrist.
“The man’s name was Dr. Rene LeBlanc. He’d been living on the street for more than a decade. Successful pediatrician, wife an engineer, two kids, nice home in the suburbs. Then he got sued for malpractice when a baby under his care died. Couldn’t take the pressure and started drinking straight vodka and doing coke. Two years later he was homeless.”
“Can happen to anyone, can’t it?” she said.
“For the last year he’s been part of a group of homeless people who’ve camped out in the Humber River Valley. The pathologist said he had almost no liver left and that his platelet level was so low he could have bled to death if he cut himself shaving.”
She turned her hand and intertwined their fingers.
“How was your night?” he asked her.
“Another boring board meeting.” Angela was an executive in a non-profit housing advocacy group. “What happened to the former doctor’s family?”
“They moved to Florida. I phoned the ex-wife to inform her.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said, and I quote, ‘Oh. What am I supposed to do now? Care or something? Don’t call again.’ Then she hung up.”
Angela lay quietly beside him. With her thumb she massaged the back of his hand. He closed his eyes.
“Any leads?” she asked in a whisper.
“I’ve spent hours down there trying to get people to talk to me. I told them I didn’t care if there was a warrant out for them, or if they were breaching their bail. I even said they didn’t have to give me their names, just let me know if they saw or heard anything.”
“Let me guess. No one would talk.”
“Nada.”
“They’re suspicious of authority. That’s why most of them live on the street.”
“I know sometimes you run down there by the river,” he said, shaking his head, “but it’s another world when you get off the path. People in makeshift shelters made of plastic sheeting, scraps of plywood, or even cardboard. Some sleep right out in the open. It’s third world right in the middle of the city.”
She slid her hand up his arm, her fingers rubbing it.
“We found a smashed vodka bottle on the rocks beside the body,” he said. “It looks as if two drunks were fighting over some booze.”
He hadn’t told her about the thing that had been jammed down the man’s throat, which suggested something more sinist
er. He was holding this information back, even from her. It was one of the many mottos his mentor, Ari Greene, had drilled into him since he’d become a homicide detective: Always know more than you tell.
There was one more thing he hadn’t told Angela. The true cause of death.
The pathologist, Dr. Ramos, was new. She had a lovely Spanish-sounding accent and a charming, formal way of speaking. “If you please,” she’d told him, “do take a close look at the back of the victim’s head.”
He saw there was a hole, too wide and too deep to be caused by a glass bottle.
“Blunt force trauma?” he asked her.
“Most certainly.”
“Could it have been caused by the victim falling on the rock?”
“Almost certainly not.”
“Some kind of weapon. Any idea what it might have been?”
“Impossible to ascertain at the moment. One can deduce that the object was small and heavy. I shall do further investigation.”
Beside him in bed, Angela had uncoupled her fingers from his hand and wrapped her arm across his chest.
“What will you do now?” she asked.
“Work the case, the same way we’d do if the guy was a millionaire.”
She had pulled him gently toward her. He felt her skin, then her lips on his, her hands around his waist now, her arms, her feet, every piece of her intertwining with him.
“That’s what I love about you, Daniel,” she had whispered.
Being this close to death had made him crave life, need the warmth, the touch. She understood, he’d thought last night before he’d drifted off to sleep.
He heard the front door of the flat open. He put the phone back beside the bed, lighted-side down. There were soft footsteps in the hallway and then Angela was at the door, a beam of light flooding in behind her, silhouetting her fit body.
“Good run?” he asked.
“I was trying to be quiet. I thought you’d still be asleep.”
“I woke up a few minutes ago. You must have been cold.”
“It’s fine once you get going. You must be tired.”
Before he could answer her, his cell phone rang. It was the special ring tone that meant the call was from Greene, the new head of the homicide squad. Kennicott looked at Angela. She’d learned what Greene’s ring tone sounded like and knew what it meant.
“Ari?” he said answering the phone. “What have we got?”
“Another homeless person murdered in the Humber Valley.”
“Same MO?”
“Looks like it.”
“I’ll be out in five.” He hung up and looked at Angela. “I’ve got to go.”
“I know. But first, Daniel,” she said, holding his face in her hands, “a kiss.”
6
Only for Melissa would she come in to the office at this ungodly hour, Parish thought as she unlocked the front door of her office. Melissa always insisted that they meet early in the morning on the days of her trials, and inevitably she arrived armed with an avalanche of new ideas for her defence. Most of them were ridiculous, but as with most brilliant people, she usually had some out-of-the-box, original angle that just might work.
Parish tossed a bag of clean clothes on one of the two client chairs that faced her desk. She never knew which version of Melissa was going to show up: Would it be the ragged homeless person or the sophisticated Bay Street lawyer? She hadn’t been in Melissa’s office for months and had no idea if any of her clothes were still there, so as a precautionary measure she’d packed up some things for Melissa to wear in court: a navy-blue wool A-line dress, a grey tweed jacket, and suede pumps. And she’d brought a makeup kit and a hairbrush.
She was expecting the worst. For the last hour, Melissa had been sending her a stream of texts about a serial killer on the loose and an international drug conspiracy behind the deaths of the homeless, and claiming she’d come up with a new idea that was somehow going to magically win her trial.
Parish booted up her computer and checked the news. There was a breaking story about a second murder of a homeless person in the Humber Valley. This time it was a woman. Maybe Melissa wasn’t crazy after all.
Parish pulled her trial binder out of her briefcase. Still, how an international drug conspiracy and a serial killer on the loose in the city could help as a defence against the charge of failure to comply with her bail conditions was something only Melissa could have dreamed up.
Don’t get distracted by her bluster, Parish told herself as she read through the evidence for what had to be the twentieth time, hoping beyond hope that she’d find a ray of light in this dark forest of bad news. What was the use?
“Knock, knock,” a voice in the hallway said, laughing, “knock, knock, knock.”
Parish couldn’t help but smile. This was the lost, happy voice of her old friend. Today she’d be the “good” Melissa.
“I’m here,” she called back.
“Give me five,” Melissa responded in a singsong voice, and Parish heard her open then close the door to her office.
Parish kept reading through the file. The case was a clear-cut loser. Melissa’s bail conditions explicitly stated that she could not be on the four streets that surrounded her ex-husband’s house. Yet she’d been seen, and photographed, by neighbours, walking on the lawns of houses on all four streets three days in a row. The neighbours were worn out by Melissa’s shenanigans and would be unassailable witnesses against her.
Parish heard Melissa’s door open and close, and then Melissa ask, “Are you ready for this?” from the hallway.
“Can’t wait,” Parish said, putting down her binder.
“Ta-dah!” Melissa jumped into the doorway, wearing a black Prada suit with gold buttons, a camel-coloured silk top self-tying at the neck, an Hermès belt, and Chanel ballet flats. Her hair was pulled back to the nape of her neck. Her skin, the one thing about her that never seemed to age, looked bright and fresh. She was carrying a Louis Vuitton leather briefcase in one hand and a large tote bag in the other. She looked wonderful.
“See,” she said smiling, “once a fashion plate, always a fashion plate.” She put down the briefcase and tote bag. Parish stood and embraced her. Melissa held on tight and started to shake. “Oh, Nance,” she whispered, “it’s horrible. You can’t imagine.”
“It’s okay, Mel,” Parish whispered back, holding her close until she stopped shivering.
Melissa loosened her grip.
Parish picked up the bag of clothes she’d brought for Melissa off the chair and tossed it in the corner. She laughed. “Look, I packed you a fresh outfit just in case.”
“Nance, you’re such a goody two-shoes,” Melissa said, laughing too. She grabbed her tote bag and threw it on top of the other bag, where it landed with a thud. “Keep my stuff for safekeeping. You never know when it might come in handy.”
They sat facing each other in the client chairs in front of Parish’s desk. She pulled over her trial binder so they could look through it together. Here we go, she thought. She couldn’t meet her old friend’s eyes. She started flipping through the pages.
“Melissa, please listen. This time we have to make a deal or for sure you are going to end up in jail.”
“Why? We have a perfectly good defence.”
Wonderful. Knowing Melissa, she’d found a case in some obscure New Zealand law journal, or some such, that she’d convinced herself had a winning legal argument.
“I’ve scoured the case law,” Parish said, “and—”
“That’s your first mistake. It’s never about the case. But the facts.” Melissa pulled out her own binder from her briefcase and flipped to the page with the bail conditions. “Look at the word I’ve underlined.”
Parish grabbed Melissa’s binder and stared at the page. She shook her head. “Come on, this is the most technical defence I’ve ever seen. Even from you. No way it will fly, especially with Judge Tator.”
“Nance. You remember the most important thing that we lear
ned about litigation when we were summer students. ‘Make the judge love your client and—’ ”
“Let the judge worry about the law,” Parish said. They finished the sentence in unison. Laughing.
Melissa jumped to her feet. “Get up,” she said, opening both hands and putting them in front of her.
Parish hesitated.
“Come on.”
Parish knew what Melissa wanted to do.
One Friday night that first year when she’d met Melissa and Lydia and they were working late at the law firm, Parish had gone into the women’s washroom and seen the two in the corner. They didn’t notice her. She thought they were fighting but quickly realized they were playing a game.
They were slapping each other’s hands, then the top of their own chests, then their knees while they sang a song in perfect rhythm:
I am a pretty little Dutch girl
As pretty as pretty can be
And all the boys around my block
Go crazy over me!
Parish watched entranced as they kept going, faster and faster.
I had a boyfriend, Patty
Who comes from Cincinnati
With forty-eight toes and a pickle on his nose
And this is the way my story goes…
They paused. Inhaled. Like a tennis player about to hit her final serve. Then faster and louder and slapping each other and themselves harder they finished.
One day when I was walkin’
I heard my boyfriend talkin’
To a pretty little girl with strawberry curls
And this is what he said to her:
I L-O-V-E, love you
To K-I-S-S, kiss you
Yes K-I-S-S, kiss you in
The D-A-R-K dark boom boom!
They’d fallen into each other’s arms laughing. Parish felt as if she’d walked in on a private party and wished she could slip away unnoticed. But she was frozen. If she moved they’d notice her. And a second later, Melissa did.
“Nancy!” she howled, still laughing. “Now you know our little secret. We’ve played this game since kindergarten.”
“Best way ever to relieve the tension,” Lydia said.
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