Downfall

by Robert Rotenberg

  “Nothing!” they shouted back.

  “Do the police care?”

  “No.”

  “What do we want?”

  “Action!”

  She slipped the card into her pocket and looked up at Police Headquarters, where, she knew, her father was probably looking down from his fifth-floor office.

  9

  By any measure, the provincial courthouse called 1000 Finch West was a disgrace. Built as a “temporary” facility back in the 1980s, it was located in a rundown strip mall miles from any decent public transportation routes. Outside its front door, across the cracked-concrete parking lot, sat a massive used-car shop plastered with cheesy advertising signs—“Need immediate dough? And have nowhere to go?” “Need a Car Loan? Captain Car Loan Approves Everyone!” And signs for paralegals—“Need to get a criminal pardon? See if you qualify?”

  If a Hollywood producer were searching for a location to film a scene in a decaying courthouse in the middle of nowhere, this would be perfect.

  The inside of the courthouse was no better than its exterior. It was a windowless cavern. The washrooms were dirty, the downstairs prison cells decrepit. There wasn’t a comfortable place for people to sit, only a few hard wooden benches under cold fluorescent lights. Nor was there anywhere to get food or even a vending machine for drinks or coffee. Young children, dragged to court by their poor parents, had nowhere to play.

  The only saving grace was the second-floor Crown Attorney’s office that, unlike every other Crown’s office in the province, was not barricaded with bulletproof glass. Many years ago, the popular head Crown who ran the office had insisted on an open-door policy, welcoming defence lawyers and making every effort to work with them to resolve all but the most contentious cases. Although he had passed away decades earlier, his legacy remained and after all this time nothing had changed.

  That was why, despite the horrid facilities, the boondoggle traffic jams to get here, and the wasteland of strip malls and fast-food joints surrounding the courthouse, the best and the brightest Crowns all wanted to work here.

  This was good news for Parish, who walked in to meet with Crown Albert Fernandez. It was nine thirty, the witching hour for prosecutors, when the pressure of the ten o’clock court start time was kicking in.

  Fernandez was alone in an office he shared with two other prosecutors. Three desks were crammed into the small room, all facing blank walls. The tops of two of them were filled with messy combinations of law books, court files, pads of paper, black binders, and scattered pens, pencils, and coloured markers. Fernandez’s desk was spotless except for one binder with a label that said R. v. COPELAND, MELISSA.

  He saw Parish and smiled as she plopped a cup of coffee down in front of him.

  “Albert, a real latte from a real downtown coffee shop,” she said.

  Fernandez, who was born in Chile, and who Parish knew was a coffee connoisseur, grinned.

  “I double-cupped it for you to try to keep it warm,” she said.

  He took a long sip. Closed his eyes, savouring it like a wine connoisseur. “Mmm. Downtown. Civilization.”

  “Don’t think I’m trying to buy you off.”

  “Ah, but we both know you are.” He picked up his binder and opened it. “Unfortunately, Ms. Parish, if your client goes through with the trial this time, I will have no choice but to ask for her to be incarcerated. We’ve got Judge Tator. You know she loves to convict, and she loves to sentence even more.”

  “Look. We’d both like to settle this. But I’m stuck. Melissa wants a trial.”

  It was a stratagem that her senior partner Ted DiPaulo had taught her when she first joined his firm. Never, ever, refer to your client as “the defendant,” “the accused,” or “my client,” or even by their last name, but use only their first name when you talk to the Crown, the judge, even the jail guards.

  Fernandez pulled a typewritten page from the inside sleeve of his binder. The heading read: “AGREED STATEMENT OF FACTS.”

  “It’s her choice. She’s going to piss off the judge. I have four civilian witnesses subpoenaed to be here today,” he said, handing the pages to her. “One’s a teacher who has a special needs class waiting for her, one’s a lawyer who is supposed to be in the Court of Appeal this morning, one’s a surgeon who will have to cancel her surgery if you make her stay and testify, and one’s a stay-at-home dad who is missing his spin class for this. If we can agree on these facts, then I can send them all on their way.”

  Parish took her time reading through the agreed statement of facts. It was well written, concise, and reasonable. She handed it back to him.

  “Sorry. No can do. You need to call them.”

  “All four? Even the surgeon?”

  She shrugged. “Call her first and she can get out of here.”

  Parish had done trials with Fernandez for years. He rarely got angry or flustered. But now he looked upset.

  He flipped through his well-organized binder and stopped at a tab labelled “DR. ENNIS,” clicked open the binder, pulled out a three-hole-punched set of pages stapled cleanly in the top left-hand corner and showed it to her, keeping it in his hand. He’d used a yellow marker to highlight the key points of the doctor’s testimony. The guy was a good lawyer.

  “Look, right here on page two.” He flipped to the page and read out loud: “ ‘I’ve lived on Park Road for fifteen years and I knew Ms. Melissa Copeland when she lived four blocks away on Bedrock Drive. We used to carpool our daughters to Gymboree classes. The police have informed me that her current bail conditions prevent Melissa from walking on my street. During the week of August fifteenth, I saw Melissa walk across my lawn directly in front of the kitchen window three days in a row while I was preparing dinner for my family. Although each time she was wearing different clothing, I clearly recognized that it was her.’ ”

  Fernandez threaded the pages back into his binder and closed it with a loud snap. He threw his hands up in frustration. “Come on. What else do you want?”

  “What I want,” she said, “is for you to call the doctor and the other three civilian witnesses. Those are my instructions from my client. Don’t worry, I’ll be nice to them.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I’ll see you in court at ten.”

  She stood up to go.

  “Wait,” Fernandez said. “Shut the door.”

  She shut it and looked back at him. “What’s up?”

  He pulled out a chair for her, and she sat.

  “Lydia came to talk to me yesterday.”

  Fernandez knew this file so well that he was on a first-name basis with all of the players. He knew the whole story of Melissa and Lydia and Karl and Britt.

  Parish looked at him but didn’t say anything.

  “She started crying. She doesn’t want Melissa to go to jail.”

  Stay silent. Let him talk, Parish told herself.

  “She wants this nonsense to stop.”

  “But she keeps charging Melissa.”

  “Because Melissa won’t stay away.”

  “Because her former husband and her former best friend won’t let her see her only child.”

  He shook his head. “This is the fourth time she’s breached her conditions.”

  “And you’ve been incredibly tolerant and sympathetic. I totally appreciate it.”

  He sighed. “Nancy, you’re in the middle of this. These women are your two best friends.”

  He just called me Nancy, she thought. Fernandez wasn’t usually this informal. He must know the first-name stratagem too.

  “Lydia told me that they’re having a party tonight at their golf club for their daughter,” he said.

  “She’s Melissa’s daughter and her name is Britt. She won the trophy as the top-ranked female golfer in Ontario under age thirteen. I’m her godmother, and I’m going to be there too.”

  “Lydia said they’re terrified Melissa will show up and cause a scene. She said if Melissa will agree to not come
to the party tonight, she’ll allow her supervised access with Britt again. I’ll find some excuse to adjourn this trial and get you away from Judge Tator. And if things settle down, we won’t even have to proceed.”

  Parish stood. “I’ll ask her. But Albert, be prepared. I know Melissa better than anyone. She won’t go for it.”

  Fernandez stood, cutting her off from the door. This was totally out of character for him.

  “Tator will convict Melissa and toss her in jail without a second’s hesitation, even if I don’t ask for jail time. This morning I tried to trade courts with other Crowns, but we’re stuck.”

  “Albert, if only every Crown Attorney and judge were as fair-minded as you are. Sometimes we’re just stuck in our roles. If Melissa wants it, we have to have a trial.”

  He moved aside. “I tried,” he said, frowning.

  She stepped past him. “See you in court,” she said. It was curious. He seemed to be even more upset about this than she was.

  10

  Ari Greene took off his jacket, draped it over the back of his chair, and sauntered over to the window of his corner office on the fifth floor of the Toronto Police Headquarters and looked down at the small but rowdy crowd of protesters on the street below. Four TV news trucks were up on the sidewalk, their antennae reaching high into the sky. Cameramen were busy setting up their tripods, and well-dressed reporters were straightening their clothes and fixing their hair, waiting to go on air. He spotted his daughter. Unlike the other reporters standing on the periphery of the demonstration, she’d wormed her way right into the middle of it, pulling a cameraman in along with her.

  That’s my Allie, he thought, right in there ahead of the competition.

  The protesters carried handmade signs turned up toward the building: “Stop Killing the Homeless” one read. “Cops Don’t Care” read another.

  He looked back at the large computer screen on his desk. In the last ten minutes, forty-three new emails had come in from reporters and news outlets asking Greene to comment on the latest murder in the Humber Valley.

  There was a loud knock on his open door and the chief of police, Nora Bering, strode into his office. They’d joined the police force at the same time decades earlier and had quickly become fast friends. As their careers progressed, they’d worked together off and on for years. The upshot was that they spoke in the kind of shorthand that only so many years of mutual respect and experience could foster.

  “You’ll hate this,” she said, putting a sheet of paper on his desk.

  Greene came back from the window and looked at it. “Press Release” was typed in bold letters below the Toronto Police Service logo. He gave Bering a wary look before he picked it up and began to read aloud.

  “ ‘Toronto Police Service have responded immediately to the latest apparent homicide in the city. Every effort will be made to…’ ” He stopped reading, scanned the rest of the page and put it back down. Shook his head.

  “They pay someone a lot of money to write these,” he said.

  “Good work if you can get it,” Bering said. She motioned out the window to the demonstration on the street below. “Welcome to being the Big Cheese.”

  “The protesters don’t waste any time, do they?”

  “The modern age. Everyone knows everything right away.”

  “And everyone has an opinion,” Greene said.

  “You going to go down there?”

  “Absolutely. It never pays to hide.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  He shook his head. “I can tell you what I’m not going to say.” He picked up the paper again and read aloud: “ ‘Toronto remains one the safest cities in Canada, with by far the lowest homicide rate per capita of any large city in North America.’ ” He crumpled the page into a ball and tossed it to Bering.

  She caught it. “This murder? Same MO? Same golf ball in the victim’s mouth? Same initials on the ball?”

  He nodded then motioned toward the window. “The media will have a field day when they find that out.”

  “Who knows about it?”

  “You, me, Kennicott, and Ho, the forensic officer. Tight circle.”

  “Then there will be the pathologist who does the autopsy and the staff at the morgue. And the ambulance attendants. And the funeral home, with the press circling like sharks,” she said. “I give you three or four days until this leaks out. Max.”

  “That’s encouraging,” he said. There was someone else who knew, but as much as he trusted Bering, he wasn’t going to tell her who it was. Old instincts die hard. He always protected his sources.

  Greene watched Bering walk over to the window and look down. “All the usual suspects down there,” she said.

  She turned back to him. “A female victim ramps up this whole thing. Even before they find out about the golf balls stuffed in the victims’ mouths, how long until the press starts speculating there’s a serial killer on the loose.”

  “Probably a matter of minutes not hours,” he said.

  She tossed the paper ball up in the air, caught it, tossed it up, and caught it again. “We can’t win. If we say there’s a serial killer out there and we don’t make a fast arrest, then we’re incompetent and uncaring. If we don’t tell the public there’s a serial killer and someone else gets murdered—”

  “Then we’re incompetent and uncaring,” Greene said.

  She threw the ball up, caught it for a third time, and then squeezed it tight. “The mayor’s already called me.”

  “Tell her not to worry. Kennicott’s on the case. You know Daniel better than anyone.”

  When Kennicott joined the force, it had been a big news story because he was the first lawyer in Toronto to become a cop. The press loved the drama of his personal story. Kennicott’s older brother, Michael, was a successful businessman who was murdered in broad daylight on an outdoor patio in Yorkville, one of the city’s trendiest neighbourhoods.

  Greene was assigned to the case and, after a year of his getting nowhere, in frustration Kennicott quit his job as an up-and-coming Bay Street lawyer at one of the city’s largest firms and joined the force. Bering was a veteran cop then and was his first partner. Under her tutelage he made homicide in record time and began to work with Greene. They were very successful. But when Greene’s lover was strangled to death in a cheap motel where she was supposed to rendezvous with Greene, it was Kennicott who arrested Greene for murder. Now Greene was his boss, and Kennicott’s brother’s murder still remained unsolved.

  “Two murders, looks as if by the same killer,” Bering said, glancing out the window. “This little demonstration is nothing. We’ve already heard that coalitions of protest groups are planning a massive pop-up demonstration in a few days to tie up traffic. It could be anywhere in the city. The mayor wants another detective to work with Daniel on this.”

  She tossed the paper ball to Greene.

  He caught it.

  Her message was clear.

  He looked down at his computer screen. Another twelve emails had come in.

  “Tell the mayor I’ll be the lead detective.”

  “That’s what she wanted to hear.” Bering pointed to the window. “What are you going to say to the rabble out there?”

  He rolled the ball between his two hands to tighten it even more, turned, and threw it at the window. It made a tiny poof sound when it hit the glass and fell silently to the floor. He reached behind him for his jacket and pulled it off the back of his chair.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said, putting his arms through the sleeves and shrugging the jacket over his shoulders, “I haven’t got a clue.”

  11

  One of the joys for Kennicott of being a homicide detective was that he could recruit younger officers who had made a good impression on him. Last year, he’d met Constable Sadie Sheppard and sensed a determined confidence in her. It was impossible to quantify but one of those things that you knew when you saw it.

  He’d had to speed t
o the scene of the murder of a well-known condominium developer. It was rush hour. Sheppard was in the nearest patrol car and got the call. She’d picked him up and the first words she said to him were, “I love to drive, buckle up.” He’d barely got his seat belt on when she took off like a rocket, flew through traffic, executed a perfect U-turn, and delivered him in record time. He kept her for the whole investigation, and she performed like a pro.

  This morning she was driving him to the housing complex where Jember Roshan, the golf club security guard who’d been knocked off his bike and tossed down into the Humber Valley, lived. He’d been checked out of the hospital and sent home.

  “Don’t speed around here,” Kennicott said to Sheppard.

  “Never. Kids at play,” she said. “I appreciate you letting me work on this case with you. Is there anything you want me to do when we interview Mr. Roshan?”

  Sheppard was a self-starter. She’d already read everything about both murders in the case notes.

  “Just watch and take your own set of notes,” Kennicott told her. “He’s probably still in shock. You have to handle a witness such as this gently and make this family feel comfortable with us being there. His recollection will most likely improve in time.”

  They parked in the big lot in the centre of the complex and took the three flights of stairs up to the Roshans’ apartment. Kennicott had asked Sheppard to call ahead to tell them they were coming, and he had her knock on the door. A woman with a baby in her arms answered.

  “Hello,” Sheppard said, smiling. “You must be Babita. I’m Officer Sheppard. This is Detective Kennicott. Your baby is beautiful, which one of the twins is she?”

  Babita had a shy, warm smile. She held out her hand to Sheppard. “This is Obax. Her sister, Sagal, is sleeping. Please come in.”

  She opened the door to a modest apartment with minimal furniture. Kennicott noticed a sewing machine on a table in the corner.

  “Detective Kennicott,” she said turning to him. “Thank you for coming. My husband is in the bedroom resting.”