Heart of the City

by Robert Rotenberg

  “Why the change in location for this last meeting?” Kennicott asked.

  Smart, Greene thought. Don’t get sucked in to answering her question.

  “It was his idea. I got the sense he suspected that someone had found out about our meetings at the restaurant.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “The last time we met at the Huibing, he kept asking me if I’d told anyone about meeting with him or his new plan for K2. Then on Friday he was different.”

  Greene was watching Amberlight closely on the monitor. Her tone had changed. She’d stopped lecturing and putting on a show. She seemed to be genuinely recalling the moment, going back in time in her memory.

  “I can’t point to anything specific. But he was quiet, slow, not his usual hyperfocused self. He said he was dehydrated from this heat and kept drinking from one of his water bottles. He was such a neat freak, but at one point he dropped a pencil on the floor and I bent down to pick it up and he told me not to bother. I know it sounds trivial, but it was out of character.”

  Greene remembered seeing the pencil on the floor of the shed. He looked at Kennicott. Was he skeptical? Convinced?

  “How did you get into the construction site?”

  “He told me he’d leave the back gate open. I walked up the alleyway and went right in. I felt as if I was entering enemy territory.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  She threw up her hands. “That was the whole point. The meeting had to be secret.”

  “Is that a no? You didn’t see anyone?”

  Greene had heard that Kennicott had been an excellent young lawyer, but this was the first time he’d seen him in action. He wasn’t letting Amberlight get the upper hand, no easy task.

  “No. I didn’t see anyone. And no one saw me.”

  DiPaulo was frowning. He must be imagining Amberlight on the witness stand, where her theatrics would make her seem defensive and unlikeable.

  “Do you know what time you arrived at the shed?”

  “I know the exact time.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, defiant, like an angry teenager. Greene saw DiPaulo’s frown deepen. No matter how hard you tried to prepare a witness, their true colours always shone through when they were questioned by a skilled cross-examiner.

  Greene looked over at Fernandez. “We can’t choose our clients or our witnesses, can we?” he said.

  “That’s what makes our jobs interesting.”

  They both turned back to the monitor. Kennicott kept his cool. “What was the exact time you got there?”

  “Two-thirty. He was totally rigid about time. Obsessed.”

  “And what did you talk about?”

  “He’d added a greenhouse to the design. He wanted to give residents a place to grow vegetables and flowers. I remember exactly what he said. ‘Just because people are poor, that doesn’t mean they should live in an ugly place or eat unhealthy food.’ ”

  “You thought he was being sincere?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you argue with him?”

  So that was Kennicott’s working theory. It was a good one. With Amberlight’s criminal record for assaults and her extreme personality, it wasn’t too hard to imagine that her mood could turn on a dime.

  Amberlight thrust her face closer to Kennicott. “Believe it or not, once in a while I actually get along with people.”

  Kennicott grinned.

  “She might not be such a bad witness,” Greene said.

  “Possibly,” Fernandez said.

  Something in his voice gave Greene pause. Did he know more about Amberlight than he was letting on?

  “When did you leave the shed?” Kennicott asked her.

  For the first time in the interview, Amberlight hesitated. She sat back, shook her head. “I don’t know exactly.”

  “We’ve learned that Mr. Fox set the alarm on his phone before every meeting, and that he kept them to either fifteen or thirty minutes.”

  Amberlight stared at Kennicott with what appeared to be an honest look of recognition. “That’s right. We always met for half an hour. When I got there I asked him if he’d set the alarm, and he said he was too tired to bother. I didn’t think of it until now, but it was strange.”

  “When you left the shed, did you leave the door open?”

  “I don’t remember. I think it was on a spring, and it shut on its own.”

  She was right about that, Greene thought.

  “Which way did you go from there?”

  She gave him a withering frown.

  “What do you think, Detective? I went back the same way I came in. I wasn’t going to parade myself through the construction site.”

  Here it comes, Greene thought, the key question. Did she shut the back gate? He sat forward, tensed up. This was hard to watch from the sidelines.

  “Did you go through the gate by the shed?” Kennicott asked.

  Amberlight waved a hand casually, completely unaware of how important her answer would be.

  “Of course I did. I closed it behind me,” she said. “Fox asked me to.”

  50

  Kennicott clicked his pen a few times. Her answer about the gate seemed genuine.

  Seemed. That was the operative word. Some people could convince themselves that they were telling the truth even when they were lying. That’s why lie-detector tests couldn’t catch pathological liars. Is that what Amberlight was?

  “After you walked through the gate, where did you go?”

  “I walked home the same way I came.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No. Everyone was at the demonstration. I went up to my apartment and lay down.”

  “Do you live with anyone?”

  She gave a hearty laugh. “Detective Kennicott, I’m sure you’ve looked into my personal history. Two divorces, seven kids, and none of them want anything to do with me. My vagabond lifestyle. As you can see, I’m impossible to live with.”

  Instead of giving a straight answer, she thought she could charm her way out of it.

  “I take it that’s a no. You don’t live with anyone.”

  “No cats, no dogs, no people. And no, no one saw me go into my apartment.”

  She was getting nervous and trying hard to hide it. The key was not to get taken in by all her drama. “What did you do at home?” he asked.

  “I was tired. I guess it was this terrible heat. I took a short nap. Then I got up, picked up my megaphone, went down the awful stairs that I fell on this morning, and walked over to Augusta Avenue.”

  “How long did all of this take?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Bingo, Kennicott thought. When witnesses told you how honest they were, it was often a sign they were lying.

  “You are very active on social media. Did you email or text anyone in this time period, post anything on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram?”

  Darvesh had checked all of this, and Kennicott knew the answer.

  “No, no, no, no, and no,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “My whole life I’ve been a rebel, an outsider. It’s cost me a great deal, personally, financially, emotionally. Really, in every way. But that’s who I am. And now I was going to join the other side. I was afraid people would think I was a sellout.”

  “Why, if you believed that Fox had genuinely changed?”

  She shook her head and heaved a sigh.

  “It was more than that. Fox wanted to hire me as a full-time consultant and I’d have a job and a salary, benefits and paid vacations for the first time in my life. And—this is something that was supposed to be kept secret—he was going to give me an apartment in the new building for one dollar a year. It meant no more worrying every month if I could make the rent. And no more living in that shabby apartment with those terrifying stairs. I’ve never lived in a place with an elevator, and I’m sixty-seven years old.”

  She sat back in her chair and covered her face with her hand
s. The room fell silent, the only sound was the low hum of the air conditioner. After what seemed like a long time, Amberlight let out a deep, lonely moan.

  She seemed broken.

  Seemed.

  51

  Greene watched Amberlight on the monitor. Transfixed. Whatever opinions people had of her, you had to admire the woman for the strength of her convictions. But he could see that despite the brave face she always presented to the world, she’d become trapped in her public persona, and that beneath all her bravado she was alone and vulnerable.

  She lowered her hands from her face. For the next few minutes she talked about how she’d joined the demonstration, heard the news about Fox, called DiPaulo, and gone to his place with Ari Greene to talk before falling asleep in DiPaulo’s spare room.

  Kennicott was listening intently, nodding, taking notes, encouraging her to talk. It was Witness Examination 101. Get people talking. The more details the better, because the more information she gave him now, the greater the chance she’d contradict herself at a later date.

  “And what did you do yesterday?”

  Greene knew Kennicott very well. He was trying too hard to seem uninterested.

  “I stayed at Ted’s all day.”

  “Last night too?”

  “No, I wanted to get home and Ari drove me back.”

  “I see,” Kennicott said. He unclicked his pen and clipped it to the back page of his notebook, sending a signal to Amberlight that the interview was almost over. But his manner was too casual. Kennicott knew something about Amberlight that he wasn’t letting on. Greene could feel it.

  She hesitated. “Last night?” Her voice was weak. She was stalling, answering a question with a question.

  DiPaulo, who had been diligently keeping notes, looked up for the first time. Greene could see he’d caught it too. Something had changed in the interview.

  Greene glanced at Fernandez, who was glued to the monitor. “What do you guys have on her?”

  Fernandez’s face was a mask. “Let’s see how your client answers the next set of questions.”

  Greene looked back at the monitor. Kennicott clasped his hands on top of his notebook, as cool as a cucumber. “After Detective Greene dropped you off at home, what did you do?”

  “To tell you the honest truth, I was exhausted,” Amberlight said.

  Uh-oh, Greene thought.

  Kennicott said nothing, using silence to force her to speak.

  “I fell asleep,” Amberlight said.

  “And after that?”

  “I woke up.”

  Amberlight was trying too hard. Overthinking. She sounded like a comedian whose jokes were flat. Greene remembered how she’d insisted on going back to her apartment last night, despite his advice to remain at DiPaulo’s place. What foolish thing had she done after he dropped her off at her home?

  “About what time did you wake up?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look at the time,” she said.

  Greene felt helpless and he could see DiPaulo did as well. In his gut he could feel that Amberlight was about to make a drastic mistake. And Kennicott had set this up perfectly.

  52

  Kennicott’s heart was racing. Breathe, he told himself. Take your time. He’d manoeuvred Amberlight into a corner. Now was the time to move in for the kill.

  He picked up his notebook and tapped it on the edge of the table. “What did you do after you woke up?” He didn’t dare look at Amberlight. Instead he examined his fingernails, trying his very best to act bored.

  Amberlight cleared her throat.

  A stall. She was weighing her options: tell the truth or hope that the police had no idea about her midnight run.

  “Well, I went down to Jimmy’s and got two coffees. One for me and one for Detective Greene. He was coming to pick me up at ten.”

  He almost had her. Now he had to sink the hook before he yanked hard and reeled her in.

  “That’s it? You didn’t do anything else last night?”

  “That’s it,” she said.

  He smacked his notebook on the desk. It rang out like a cracked whip.

  Amberlight’s body jerked.

  He stood up abruptly and motioned to Darvesh.

  “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Amberlight looked astonished.

  “As soon as we leave this room we’ll turn the video camera off so as not to intrude on your solicitor–client discussions.” He opened his notebook, took out two folded pieces of paper and slid them in front of her. “You might want to discuss the ticket you got at 3:51 a.m. last night in Oshawa for driving with a broken tail light, and the report from American Customs at the Thousand Islands Bridge when they turned you back at 6:05 a.m. after you attempted to cross the border and flee.”

  Now Amberlight looked terrified.

  Kennicott joined Darvesh at the door and turned back to her. “I suggest you talk to Mr. DiPaulo, who I assume knew nothing about this,” he said.

  She looked as if she was about to collapse.

  He walked out the door and made a point of slamming it behind him. To put an exclamation mark on it.

  53

  The last image Greene saw on the screen before it went blank was Amberlight’s face, her expression void of all emotion.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He should have seen this coming. The piece of paper that Amberlight had reached for on the staircase that made her fall was a traffic violation ticket for a broken tail light. She hadn’t wanted him see it because she didn’t want him to know she had tried to cross the border in the middle of the night.

  “Besides not having an alibi for her whereabouts between three and four on Friday afternoon,” Fernandez said, “your client has a small problem with telling the truth.”

  “Is Kennicott going to arrest her?”

  “Come on, Detective. Wouldn’t you?”

  Greene had to admit that all the evidence against Amberlight now fit. She had been shown to be a persistent liar, incapable of facing her shortcomings, constantly trying to hide the truth. And the truth was ugly: she had a terrible temper and a criminal record that included violence. She was financially, professionally, and personally at the end of her rope. If Fox really had planned to reinvent the K2 condo project and guarantee her an apartment in it, he could see how she would have grabbed it as a life raft. Then, if he’d tried to back out of the deal or they’d fought about the details at their Friday afternoon meeting, she could have been angry enough to kill him.

  DiPaulo must be livid. Greene could imagine the wrath he was raining down on Amberlight right now. Despite Greene’s warning that it was crucial that she not lie to the police or hide anything from them, she’d done just that.

  Greene stroked his cheek, which was still tender from where her coffee had hit him when she’d fallen on the stairs. That fit too. She’d fallen because she was worn out from driving all the way to the border and back in the middle of the night.

  The door to the video-link room opened, and Kennicott and Darvesh walked in. Kennicott’s face was solemn. He was classy enough not to gloat.

  “I assume you and Ted had no idea about Ms. Amberlight’s late-night adventure,” he said.

  “You know I can’t answer that,” Greene said.

  “I don’t think you have to,” Kennicott said. “Terribly bad luck for your client. With the rise in petty crime these days in Kensington, sounds as if someone kicked in one of her back lights. She told the officer who stopped her she had no idea it was out.”

  Kennicott was keeping a straight face. But they both knew what he was saying. This time he’d outsmarted Greene. Probably had an undercover officer kick in the tail light and then Kennicott notified the OPP to stop her.

  “Must have been a very vigilant cop to stop someone on the highway in the middle of the night for such a minor infraction,” Greene said.

  “I guess we just got lucky.”

  Kennicott pulled out a chair and sat down across from G
reene.

  “I’m sure the Fox family would appreciate it if Ms. Amberlight could tell us where she put Livingston’s plans for the K2 condo that she took after . . .”

  He didn’t need to spell out after what.

  “Don’t beat yourself up for bringing her in for this interview, Ari. We would have arrested her anyway, even if she hadn’t tried to do a runner. Now that we have her on tape, under oath, caught in a bald-faced lie, this is her one-time chance to make a deal. She can make a quick guilty plea and put everyone out of their misery. It’s not hard to imagine that at the last minute she and Fox had a disagreement about their deal and she lost it. We could put together a joint statement of facts and agree that there was no planning or deliberation on her part. She acted in rage and now she deeply regrets it. She came here today to police headquarters to confess and get it off her chest. We’ll both propose a sentence of, say, eight years, she’d be out in a third of that time, easy.”

  Kennicott was holding out the carrot. Now here comes the stick, Greene thought.

  “But if we don’t get a confession today, all bets are off. She’ll be charged with first-degree murder. Given her propensity to lie about everything, including telling us she closed the gate when she knew she’d left it open; it’s transparent that she was trying to make it look as if someone else came in to kill Fox after she’d left. This is a brutal murder. My bet is the jury would convict her and she’d be looking at twenty-five years, minimum.”

  Greene waited. He knew these three men very well, and right now they were all staring at him.

  “She’s sixty-seven years old, Daniel,” he whispered at last.

  “I know,” Kennicott said. “That’s why we’re offering her this.”

  “Shouldn’t you be having this discussion with her lawyer?” Greene asked.

  “Normally yes, but in this case I think it’s better coming from you.”

  Greene got up slowly. He walked to the door and paused.

  “What, Ari?” Kennicott asked. “Do you still have your doubts? She lied to you and Ted. She lied under oath. She had motive. She has no alibi. She tried to flee.”