01 - Old City Hall

by Robert Rotenberg

  Where’s the hole? Come on, Nancy, quit being distracted by this nice-guy detective in the fancy suit. Think.

  Then it came to her. Don’t overplay it, she told herself. She waited until Greene turned back toward the elevator. “One quick question, Detective.”

  “Of course, Ms. Parish.” Greene pivoted precisely, like a skater doing a tight turn, the smile still on his face.

  “A murder weapon. Did you find one?”

  For just an instant Greene’s smile slipped.

  “Not yet, Ms. Parish,” he said. “A few hours from now, when the forensic officers are ready to release the scene, I’ll head back to the condominium for my final walk-through. Tell you what. I’ll keep my eyes open for it.”

  That smile again. The detective was nothing if not charming. He turned around and waved with his back to her.

  Parish looked at the closed door. She took a deep breath and opened it.

  Kevin Brace, perhaps the best-known broadcaster in the country, who often joked that he was the most famous face on radio, sat in the far corner of an empty, large white-walled room. The only furniture was two wooden chairs. Brace sat on the far chair, huddled up, turned into himself, an old man returning to the fetal position.

  Parish closed the door quickly. “Mr. Brace,” she said, putting her hands out straight in front of her, “listen and do not say a word.”

  He looked up. She got to the empty chair fast and pulled it close. “Mr. Brace, this room is not monitored for sound, but there’s a camera keeping constant video surveillance on you.” She turned and pointed to the camera mounted conspicuously on the far wall. “I’d prefer you say nothing right now in case someone decides to lip-read the tape one day. Or—well, you never know.”

  Brace looked slowly up at the video camera, then back at her.

  “Can you just shake or nod your head?”

  Brace nodded his head.

  “Do you need anything? Water? The washroom?”

  He shook his head.

  “You know you’ve been charged with first-degree murder?”

  He looked her straight in the eye. For a moment she thought he was going to say something. But he stiffened his back and nodded again.

  “This is very awkward,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight in the jail, and we can talk.”

  Again he nodded.

  “The police will try to get you to talk. I prefer that my clients say absolutely nothing. That way no words can get put into your mouth. You okay with that?”

  He let his eyes rest on her for quite a while. She remembered those deep, comfortable brown eyes from the time he’d interviewed her on the radio. Eyes that just made you trust him. Made you want to cuddle up and be his best friend.

  Then Brace broke into a smile.

  “Good,” she said, reaching for her binder. She turned to a fresh piece of paper and narrated as she wrote.

  My name is Mr. Kevin Brace. I understand that I have been charged with first-degree murder. I also understand that I have the right to remain silent. I wish to assert that right and do not wish to say anything at this time. Dated at Toronto this Monday, the 17th day of December.

  She drew a line below the text. Under the line she wrote his name in capital letters.

  “Here,” she said, turning the binder toward him. “Sign this and keep it with you at all times. Just show it to the police when anyone tries to ask you anything. Good idea to do the same thing at the jail until I get there to see you tonight.”

  Brace reached out and examined her pen. It was a cheap Bic. Thankfully, it was only slightly chewed. She’d long ago given up on buying pricey pens with her name engraved on the side, which, like leather winter gloves, prescription sunglasses, and expensive lipstick, she inevitably lost within a week.

  He signed his name with a flowing, neat script. Then, without waiting, he opened the rings of the binder and removed the piece of paper. He took it out and folded it neatly in half, then half again.

  He gave her a sly grin.

  Parish was impressed. Despite all that had happened to him in the last few hours, he seemed unfazed. Perhaps it was all those years of living on deadline, but clearly Kevin Brace was cool under pressure.

  11

  It took Daniel Kennicott a long time to drive back downtown, battling traffic. There was nowhere to park on Front Street, but he got lucky and found a spot on the side street where Greene’s car had been parked originally. He stifled a yawn as he walked down the hallway to 12A. This will be it for me on this case, he thought. They called it the “first cop in, first cop out,” rule, and he’d learned it last year.

  In December, he and his partner, Nora Bering, had received a domestic call from a big house in Rosedale. They were the first officers on scene. In a fit of pre-Christmas rage, Mrs. Frances Boudreau, soon to be labeled by the press as “the not-so-sober socialite,” had flung a laptop at her wayward husband. It clipped him on the temple, and he bled to death under the family Christmas tree. Kennicott and Bering were forced to arrest her right in front of her twin boys and the Filipino nanny.

  Once backup arrived and the scene was under control, everything changed. Two lordly homicide detectives—perfectly dressed, with their hand-stitched suits, initialed French-cuffed shirts, and highly buffed shoes—ambled in, writing in their special-issue notebooks with their expensive handcrafted pens. On their way out the door they had a terse interview with Kennicott and Bering and dismissed them from the investigation—first cop in, first cop out—without so much as a word of thanks.

  Now, inside apartment 12A, the daylight was streaming in the big windows, and Kennicott put his hand over his eyes for a moment as he walked carefully across the tiled kitchen floor. Detective Greene was huddled over the kitchen counter with a tall man. Kennicott recognized him from behind. As always, an old briefcase and a tattered canvas backpack were at the man’s feet.

  “Hey, Officer Kennicott, I’d say you made pretty good time,” Detective Wayne Ho said as he turned toward Kennicott, his big hand outstretched in an enthusiastic greeting. Ho, the forensic identification officer responsible for securing the scene and collecting evidence, was an unusually tall Chinese man, at least six feet five. Though probably in his late fifties, Ho was as fit as a new recruit, with energy to spare. His high-pitched voice was a jarring counterpoint to his massive presence.

  “Good deal, isn’t it, being the Voice of Canada?” Ho said, his keen eyes boring in on Kennicott. “Just roll out of bed every morning and talk on the radio for a few hours. Imagine that, getting paid to talk. Maybe Brace can broadcast from jail. They get them up early in the joint, just like the British Army. Fight in the morning.”

  Kennicott laughed. Ho had been the forensic officer on his brother’s case, and since Kennicott had joined the force, they’d worked together many times. Ho’s motormouth was like a kid’s windup toy on a gigantic spring, and nothing was going to stop it. There was no point in trying to join the conversation, at least not yet.

  “Hey. You see this? Poor man’s a Maple Leafs fan,” Ho said, pointing with his metal pencil at the row of various blue-and-white mugs and glasses on the windowsill. He tapped them one by one, getting a different note with each. “Tragic, really. They’ll never win the Stanley Cup. I blame the media. So much darn coverage, the players are nervous all the time. Look at how they win more games on the road than at home.”

  Kennicott looked at Greene, who gave him a bemused smile. “You going to print all those glasses?” Kennicott asked, finally getting into the conversation.

  “No point,” Ho said. “Prints on glass can last for months, years, unless”—with great drama he tapped his pencil against the dishwasher four times, singing a Beethoven-like “Ba ba ba ba”—“they are washed here. Dishwashers are evidence killers. Run it once, and every scrap of fingerprint and DNA, poof. Gone forever.”

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Greene said, looking up briefly from his notebook. Kennicott walked toward the big windows and looked
out onto the lake. The inner harbor was already dotted with slabs of bobbing ice. In the summer three bulky white ferries brought overheated city residents across to the bucolic parkland and beaches there. But in the winter, service shrank to just one boat to handle the clutch of year-round residents who lived in a small community of renovated cottages.

  Kennicott watched the big boat churn through the cold waters. The rest of the surface of the harbor remained spookily still. Beyond the islands, the open lake was wavy, turbulent, making it look even colder. On the horizon the sun was low in its brief mid-December arc in the sky. He moved closer to the window to feel the light.

  “How did it go?” Greene asked, coming up beside him, his hand reaching for his car keys.

  Kennicott shrugged. It was the universal shrug of police officers tasked to do a difficult job. He turned to leave. It would feel good to get home, take a shower, and sleep.

  “Everyone at Homicide is out Christmas shopping,” Greene said. “I need someone to do Detective Ho’s walk-through with me. You in?”

  “Sure,” Kennicott said, his fatigue suddenly gone.

  “Hey, perfect,” Ho said as he led the way up the wide hallway to the front door, clipboard in hand. “Hey, the doorframe’s intact. The door is solid steel, no signs of forced entry, peephole. There’s a two-lock system, no signs of stress to either one. I’ve photographed and videotaped everything.”

  For the next twenty minutes Detective Ho led them through the whole apartment. Starting at the front door, they then went into the hall bathroom, the living room, the master bedroom and bathroom, the study. Ho kept up his running narrative, sometimes making astute observations—“Brace has more books on playing bridge than any other topic”—sometimes ridiculous ones: “Would you look at that? A penthouse suite, and the hall bathroom doesn’t even have a soap dish.”

  At last they arrived back in the kitchen-dining area. Some clouds had moved in across the sun, darkening the room. Ho flicked on the overhead lights and worked his way around, narrating as he went.

  Kennicott stopped at the table where he’d first seen Brace and Singh. He looked at the honey jar, the clay mugs, and the porcelain teapot. Nothing. He looked behind the table at the stove and kitchen counters. What was he looking for?

  He scanned the dark tile floor. There was a narrow gap between the stove and the counter. It was hard to see inside the shadowed space, so he waited for his eyes to adjust to the light.

  Then he saw it. He froze.

  Until now the object had been camouflaged on the dark floor. He looked back at the table to the spot where he’d first seen Brace.

  “Kennicott?” Greene asked, sensing something in his stillness.

  “I think you should come here,” Kennicott said, folding his arms in front of him.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Ho asked.

  Kennicott focused on the narrow gap, the object becoming clearer as he stared at it. Greene stood by him, shoulder to shoulder, following his gaze to the spot on the floor.

  It took a few seconds, and then Greene let out a low whistle.

  “I’m not going to touch it, are you?” Greene asked, folding his arms as well.

  “Absolutely not,” Kennicott said, allowing himself a half smile.

  “Detective Ho, keep your gloves on,” Greene said.

  “Hey,” Ho said as he rushed over, “what’ve you got?”

  “Good work, Kennicott,” Greene said under his breath.

  Kennicott nodded. I should say “Thanks, Detective,” he thought, but instead he just kept staring back and forth, from Brace’s mug on the breakfast table to the space between the gap, where he’d spotted the black handle of a knife.

  12

  Albert Fernandez cleared the last piece of paper from his desk. He put the little plastic box where he held his handwritten cue cards back in its hiding place in the bottom drawer. He checked his watch. It was 4:25. Detective Greene had left a message that they’d be there at 4:30.

  Fernandez looked around his tidy 125-square-foot office. He knew it was 125 feet, because government regulations stated that an assistant Crown Attorney’s office could not be one inch larger. There was enough room for a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet, and a few piles of evidence boxes. The door swung in, taking up about a fifth of the space.

  The unwritten rule of the downtown Crown law office was that you worked with your door open. Prosecutors liked to drift into one another’s offices at the end of the day and swap war stories about grumpy judges, sneaky defense lawyers, and difficult witnesses.

  Fernandez hated all the chitchat, and his colleagues knew it. His first-year review stated that he was a good Crown but a poor team player. His peer job review suggested that Fernandez leave his door open more often and get a gumball machine to make his office a friendlier place for his colleagues to drop in.

  The unspoken message was clear: Look, Albert, you’re a bit of an odd duck around here, with your fancy clothes, your fastidious manners, and, well, your Spanishness. To get ahead, you’re going to have to fit in . . .

  The next day, Fernandez wasted his lunch hour at the Eaton Center and returned with a bubble-gum machine under his arm. Like bees to honey, Crowns sensed his new open-door policy. Soon after court, precious minutes, even hours, were wasted with useless banter as his colleagues, craving late-day sugar, quickly ate their way through the gum.

  One day a senior Crown asked him about cross-examining a witness on an unsigned statement to a police officer. Fernandez knew of a recent case in point, and for the next half hour he educated his older colleague. Soon others stopped in not just for bitching and bubble gum, but to get Fernandez’s opinion about complex legal issues. The door stayed open, the bubble-gum dispenser kept getting replenished, and Fernandez’s star in the office rose.

  Still, he resented wasting the precious time. As the years went by, he shut the door more often. One day the bubble-gum machine ran out and he didn’t bother to refill it. Eventually he moved it behind the door, where it sat in a strange purgatory. Fernandez was unable to throw it out but unwilling to refill it. More often than not, it doubled as a coat hanger.

  There was a knock on the door. Fernandez popped to his feet. Detective Ari Greene and Officer Daniel Kennicott stood side by side, more than filling the meager doorframe. Greene had an envelope in his hand.

  “Come in,” Fernandez said. “Sorry there’s only one chair.”

  Both men looked at each other. Neither wanted to sit. “We’ll stand,” Greene said after they all shook hands.

  There was another knock on the door, and Jennifer Raglan, the head Crown, walked in.

  “Hi, everyone,” she said, crossing her hands in front of her. She stood beside Greene. Clearly, she wasn’t sitting down either.

  Fernandez went back behind his desk. As he sat, the old chair squeaked.

  “Before we listen to the CD,” Greene said, lifting the package, “I’ll want to go through my TTBD list.” Everyone else nodded. Fernandez stared at Greene, trying not to look confused.

  Greene caught Fernandez’s eye and smiled. “Things-to-be-done list,” he said, opening his leather-bound maroon notebook.

  “Start with Katherine Torn. Age forty-seven. Lived with Brace common-law for fifteen years. No criminal record, no previous police contacts. Only child. Seems to have spent most of her free time horseback riding. Grew up in King City, where her family still lives. Father’s a World War II vet and retired doctor. Mother’s a housewife who was a big-time rider in her day. Kevin Brace, as you know, is the famous radio broadcaster. He’s sixty-three. No record. No police contacts.”

  Fernandez was writing swiftly on his clean notepad.

  “Officer Kennicott informed the family this morning, and they seemed to take it quite well. You never know. I’ve put the Torns in touch with Victim Services and will try to get them down to see you, maybe even tomorrow.” Even though he had his notebook open, Greene didn’t bother to look at it. “Tonight Kennicott will go through all t
he tapes from the lobby of the condo, Torn’s and Brace’s diaries, et cetera. He’ll chart their movements for the last week. I’ve got a team going door-to-door through the apartment building and the surrounding stores and restaurants. Kennicott’s partner, Nora Bering, will interview Torn’s riding instructor. Tomorrow we’re talking to the employees at the radio station.”

  Fernandez nodded. So this is what it’s like when you work a homicide, he thought. A detective who’s a real pro. “Talk to anyone else on the twelfth floor?” he asked.

  Greene flipped back a few pages. “The only other unit on the floor is suite 12B. Resident Edna Wingate, British war bride. Eighty-three years old. Widowed three times. Came to Canada back in 1946. Parents were killed in the Blitz. I caught her in the lobby on her way out to an early-morning yoga class. She didn’t notice anything unusual last night. I’m going to see her tomorrow morning.”

  Fernandez nodded. He looked at Greene and Kennicott. They were just twelve hours into this, and sleep was nowhere on their agenda. Both were calm. Around the eyes they looked tired but refusing to show it. “Let’s hear the disc from the jail,” he said.

  The CD was marked DON JAIL, KEVIN BRACE, PRISONER PHONE CALLS DEC. 17, 13:00–17:00 HOURS. Fernandez was always amazed at how even the most experienced criminals talked when they were first incarcerated. They would quickly shut up, so you had to get them while they were in the shock-and-anger stage.

  Brace’s lawyer, Nancy Parish, had gotten there quickly and completely shut him up. Fernandez was hoping he would say something on the phone that would help at the trial and maybe even at the bail hearing.

  Fernandez slipped the disc into his computer. The tinny voice of a Bell operator came on: “You have a collect call from . . . Kevin Brace. Press one if you accept, two to . . .”

  There was a hard beep sound.

  “Hello,” a male voice said.

  “Daddy? Is that you?” a woman’s voice asked. She sounded fairly young. Her voice deep, throaty. Near panicked.