01 - Old City Hall

by Robert Rotenberg

  It sure made it easy to get a free parking spot at night, Greene thought as he pulled his Olds into a vacant Goodwill lot. Whistling softly to himself, he hefted his guitar out of the backseat, locked up the car, and walked a short block north to the Salvation Army hostel.

  “Good evening, Detective,” a young man said as Greene opened the security door. “We’re just setting up.”

  “Great,” Greene said as he headed up the back stairs, taking them two at a time. He strolled into a dimly lit second-floor lounge. There was a small stage at the far end of the room, where a tall black man was plugging his guitar into an amplifier.

  “Just in time, buddy,” the man called out to Greene.

  Greene made his way across the room, dodging plywood tables populated by vacant-looking residents. Each table had a paper plate on it filled with popcorn and chips.

  “Folks, this is Detective Greene,” the man said as Greene climbed up next to him. “He comes by a few times a year to play on our openmike nights, so please give him a hand.”

  There was a smattering of halfhearted applause. Greene smiled as he took a seat on the stage and looked out over the room. There were about twenty men and a few women, seated at the tables or slouched on a broken-down sofa at the back.

  Greene unpacked his guitar and quickly tuned up. “Devon, how about this?” he said as he strummed a few bar chords.

  Devon nodded. “I got it,” he said as he started strumming, joining in with the song. Back in the corner of the stage a drummer began to keep the beat. An old lady wandered up from the audience and sat at the piano by the side of the stage. Much to Greene’s surprise, she picked up the tune.

  Greene started to sing:

  “I went down to the crossroads

  Fell down on my knees . . .”

  As he hit the second verse of the old blues tune, Greene looked around the room of blank faces. It’s as quiet as a courtroom during a jury address, he thought as he finished up the song to a round of faint applause.

  Next they played an old Lennon and McCartney song, one by Creedence Clearwater, and an early Dylan tune. Then Devon took the mike.

  “Anyone want to come up and play?” he asked.

  A doughy white guy, probably in his late thirties, put up his hand, as timid as a first grader.

  “Tommy, come on up,” Devon said.

  “Yeah, play something, Tommy,” someone called out from the sofa.

  Tommy sauntered up to the piano. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “Well, I kind of wrote this,” he said as he began to play a basic blues chord progression—G7, C7, G7, D7—and repeated it three times.

  Greene gave Devon a wink. He improvised a simple melody over the top of the tune. Devon picked it up, and the drummer kicked in. They kept the song rolling for a few minutes.

  “Thanks a lot, Tommy,” Devon said, taking the mike again. A remarkably thin woman came up and sang an old English dance-hall number. A fat East Indian guy sang “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay.”

  “Anyone else?” Devon asked when the Otis Redding song was done. Greene saw a head bobbing at the back of the room. “How about you, sir?” he called out.

  The man stood up. He had a clownlike appearance. Bald on top, his hair too long about the sides, he wore a multicolored jacket made of an eclectic blend of cloth patches. Greene knew most of the faces in the room, from either the streets, the courts, or the times he’d come to play here, but this guy was new. Greene put him in his early fifties, but then reconsidered. He was probably younger. The street ages people fast, he thought as the man ambled awkwardly over to the piano.

  “I play a little,” the man said. He kept his head down, not making any eye contact. “I like to play this in G, but I’ll transpose it down to C sharp.” He settled onto the piano bench, rubbed his hands on his face and then put them on the keys. His wrists were high, his fingers curled in perfect position. His whole body seemed to relax.

  “Why not?” Greene gripped the neck of his guitar. “What’re we playing?”

  “You know the ‘Walking Blues’?” the man asked.

  Greene moved his fingers to a minor chord and smiled. “Let’s roll.”

  Greene and Devon played the standard blues intro. The man hit the piano keys, and a shudder went through the somnolent room.

  Devon looked at Greene and nodded. “Wow,” he whooped. “We got a player!”

  They rolled through the “Walking Blues,” then three other standard blues numbers.

  “We only got time for one more,” Devon said. “It’s lights-out in twenty minutes. You got one last request?” he asked the piano player.

  “Let’s try ‘Crossroads’ again,” he whispered.

  The man started to play, and for the first time, he sang. He ended with the lyrics

  “I’m standing at the crossroads

  I believe I’m sinking down . . .”

  The audience was listening, transfixed.

  “Where’d you learn to play like that?” Greene asked the man a few minutes later as he packed up his guitar. The room was emptying out fast.

  “I just picked it up,” the man said, still averting his eyes.

  “Studied music, didn’t you?” Greene said.

  The man finally looked up. His eyes were a remarkably light blue. Almost translucent. Greene tried to imagine him as a young boy, curly blond hair, fine white skin, gleaming eyes.

  The man looked down again. “For a few years.” His voice was weak.

  “Let me guess—piano, grade eight, Royal Conservatory?”

  The man gave a sheepish grin. “Went further, actually. Got a teacher’s certificate.”

  He didn’t say another word, and Greene let the silence sit. He knew it was best to leave the man’s story untold. How he’d ended up on this sad path.

  “I’m Detective Ari Greene, from Homicide,” Greene said at last, extending his hand.

  “Fraser Dent,” the man said, giving Greene a weak handshake. “Strange way for a cop to spend his free time.”

  Greene shrugged. “I’ve been doing it for years.”

  “Nice of you,” Dent said.

  “It’s also good police work. Every once in a while I find someone who can help me out. Then I can do them a favor or two.”

  Dent looked over his shoulder to check that no one was around. The room was empty. He looked back at Greene.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Dent,” Greene said. “I’m very careful.”

  Dent nodded. Rubbed his hands over his face again. “What kind of favors?”

  “A few more questions first. You play bridge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good at it?”

  Dent paused for a moment. “Not bad.”

  “Let me guess—you got a university degree or two?”

  “Two or three,” Dent said.

  Greene laughed. The door at the far end of the room clicked open, and Devon ducked his head back inside. Greene gave him a nod and turned back to Dent. “How bad’s your record?” he asked Dent quietly.

  Dent narrowed his eyes. “I’ve done some time.”

  Devon slipped back out, closing the door behind him.

  “Good,” Greene said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Walk? It’s curfew, man.”

  “Curfew,” Greene said, hoisting his guitar on his shoulders, “won’t be a problem.”

  15

  It was a small room, with sickeningly beige walls, a pine desk, a black chair, a television and DVD/VCR player, and a few cardboard boxes stacked neatly in the corner. No windows. No molding. No art on the walls.

  That meant no distractions, a good thing when you are doing this kind of important but boring work, Daniel Kennicott thought as he looked at the chart he’d compiled over the last twelve hours. The only problem was, at four in the morning it was a struggle to keep awake. Especially when he’d been in the same room for so long and hadn’t slept for days. But it had been his choice to take the assignment, and he wasn’t about to complai
n. Even to himself.

  It was Detective Greene’s idea. Late on Monday morning, after Kennicott spotted the knife on their walk-through of Kevin Brace’s apartment, Greene brought him back to the homicide bureau and set him up in this office. His job: systematically go through the minutiae of Katherine Torn and Kevin Brace’s life, using every piece of relevant evidence Detective Ho could find.

  He’d spent the first few hours watching videotapes taken in the lobby of the Market Place Tower. The cameras covered most of the ground floor. Each time Torn or Brace appeared, Kennicott carefully noted their movements on a color-coded chart. He also had a column for Mr. Singh, the newspaper deliveryman; Rasheed, the concierge; and Ms. Wingate, the neighbor down the hall. Greene had told him to pay particular attention to the morning of the murder.

  There was only one thing. At 2:01 yesterday morning the lobby video showed Rasheed getting up from his desk, going over to the elevator, and pushing the button. Then he went back to his desk and called someone. Kennicott checked the video of the parking lot and saw that Katherine Torn’s car had driven in at 1:59. Obviously the concierge was sending the elevator down for her and calling upstairs to let Brace know that his wife was home.

  After he finished with the tapes, Kennicott spent an hour poring over the concierge’s logbook, adding each relevant entry to his chart. Throughout the night, officers delivered copies of witness statements they’d taken from the residents. Almost everyone said they didn’t know much about Brace and Torn, except that the couple always seemed to be holding hands when they were together.

  About midnight he started going through Brace and Torn’s property. There wasn’t much from Brace. The guy didn’t have a diary or a cell phone or an address book. There was a box of papers taken from his desk, and Kennicott spent an hour reading through them. Half of them were notes about playing bridge.

  He went through Torn’s laptop, her Palm Pilot, her handwritten diary, her cell phone records, her Visa receipts, and every other scrap of paper, including notes stuck to the fridge, her mail, and the trash, each of which Ho had meticulously collected and cataloged.

  Kennicott’s chart grew, and a picture of their life emerged. It was remarkably patterned. Every weekday started at precisely 5:05, when Mr. Singh could be seen on the video arriving at the Market Place Tower. In his statement Singh said that at 5:29 he’d meet Brace in the doorway of 12A. Brace always left the door halfway open and always came to meet Singh with his mug in hand. Torn was never up at that time.

  Brace called the radio station every day at 5:45 to confirm that he was awake and to talk to the show producer about any breaking stories. At 6:15 the lobby camera caught Brace walking out the front door. He arrived at the studio by 6:30 and was on the air by 8:00. The show finished at 10:00, and Brace would spend an hour in story meetings for the next day’s show. He could be seen walking back into the lobby at the Market Place Tower every day at about 12:30.

  Torn’s mornings were equally predictable. The underground video showed her getting into her car on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays just after 10:00. On Thursdays she left at eight. Her diary showed that she had an 11:30 or 12:30 riding lesson most days at King City Stables, which would be just under an hour’s drive. At about 2:00 she came back to the apartment. The lobby video showed her leaving again, by foot, every day at about 2:30, always casually dressed. Her Visa receipts showed her shopping at various neighborhood clothing boutiques or houseware stores. Her library card showed her going there twice in the final week of her life. She returned through the lobby daily between 5:00 and 6:00.

  Brace must have slept in the afternoon, because he wouldn’t leave again until about eight at night, when he and Torn would walk through the lobby hand in hand. It was the first time all day that they were on video together. They would come back at about ten. Kennicott cross-referenced Torn’s Visa accounts and traced their dining habits—always at one of the local restaurants, always someplace that was moderately priced. They were certainly not living the high life.

  There was only one day of the week where the pattern was broken. Mondays. Torn wasn’t seen leaving the building in the morning, and she came home about four o’clock in the afternoon. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why.

  Kennicott’s partner, Nora Bering, had interviewed Torn’s riding instructor. He read the statement of Gwen Harden, the owner of King City Stables:

  Kate was a very good student, a natural rider. Great balance. Tremendous competitor. Kevin was very supportive. Loved to watch her ride. Never missed once when she was in competition. She rode every day except Saturday. Sundays she’d do an all-day cross-country ride and stay up with her parents. They live just down the road. Mondays she’d take a double class. When she didn’t show up this morning, I was surprised. It wasn’t like her not to call in if she was going to miss a class.

  This was the last thing Bering would do on the case. She had a six-month leave coming, and she was going back home to the Yukon to visit her dad. “Only me,” she’d joke with him, “taking my holidays in the Arctic in the winter.”

  The only exception to this pattern Kennicott could find for the whole month was the Wednesday before, December 12. Torn appeared on the video that day at 1:15, in the lobby, not the parking garage. She was dressed in a business suit and high heels, and she carried a long envelope in her hand. She spoke briefly to Rasheed and then waited for about five minutes in one of the overstuffed lobby chairs, looking out the front window. When something caught her eye, she jumped up and rushed outside. Rasheed went out with her, as if, Kennicott thought, he was putting her in a taxi. Kennicott checked the logbook and read the entry: “Taxi for Mrs. Brace, 1:20, Rasheed.”

  Earlier that morning, Brace had left the condominium at the regular time. The people at the radio station said he followed his usual routine. But that afternoon he didn’t come back home.

  Just before five o’clock Brace and Torn walked back into the lobby. Clearly they’d met up somewhere. Kennicott ran the tape back and confirmed that Brace was wearing the same clothes he had on earlier, when he’d left for work. Neither Torn’s diary nor her Palm Pilot had anything listed for that afternoon. That night the couple didn’t go out. Where, Kennicott wondered, had they gone?

  It was about four in the morning when Kennicott got to Katherine Torn’s wallet. He’d intentionally left it to the end. The wallet would be more meaningful if he knew as much as possible about her life before he looked at it.

  This wasn’t the first time he had examined the wallet of a dead person. Four and a half years ago he’d pulled apart his brother Michael’s wallet and every other possession he could find. Credit card receipts, phone bills, bank records, electronic calendar, computer hard drive, desk drawers, and even Mike’s garbage. It was amazing how much you could learn about a dead person—and disturbingly intrusive. He’d found a plane ticket to Florence, a car-rental receipt, hotel reservations, and a raft of brochures about an Italian hill town named Gubbio. There was an annual summer crossbow contest scheduled for the following week. He still hadn’t figured out why his brother was going there.

  Poor Katherine Torn. Clearly she was a very private person. Now she lay dead on a slab in the morgue, a complete stranger wearing surgical gloves combing through her life. Kennicott had asked forensics to copy all of the wallet’s contents and to put each item back exactly as they’d found them. It wasn’t just what was in a wallet that was important, but how the things were arranged. The location, the order, the feel.

  He began at the change purse. He counted out $2.23 in change, three subway tokens, and a laundry pickup slip for three men’s shirts. The first compartment held forty-five dollars in bills and six different coupons for things like breakfast cereal, laundry soap, and kitchen cleaner. There was a dog-eared frequent-user’s card from the Lettieri Espresso Bar and Café on Front Street. Three of the ten squares were stamped.

  Looks like she was a penny-pincher, Kennicott thought as he opened the next compartment. It was f
illed with plastic cards. She had a Visa and a MasterCard, a library card, a Royal Ontario Museum card, and cards from five different department stores. The store cards struck him right away. Department stores were notorious for charging outrageously high interest rates, usually preying upon the poor and, in Toronto, the teeming immigrant population. Kennicott had seen this when he was a lawyer. Clients who appeared to be wealthy, but in fact were desperately trying to keep up with their monthly payments. They’d spread their debt around like this, digging deeper and deeper holes for themselves.

  The third compartment held a fistful of receipts and Torn’s checkbook. Kennicott worked his way through each item. She had carefully recorded the date and spending category on each slip of paper: household, entertainment, personal. Her handwriting was jagged, forced. He looked through her check stubs. Mostly small purchases. Her only extravagance seemed to be personal-care items from a very chic store in Yorkville, the city’s upscale boutique area. Kennicott had been there too many times. When his ex-girlfriend Andrea got into modeling, she had become a regular customer, and like Torn, she’d bought a seemingly endless supply of products: sponges, herbal shampoos, organic soaps, body lotions, hand-ground makeup, imported facial masks, specialty eye creams, and moisturizers.

  Andrea liked to drag Kennicott to the shop. He found the place overwhelmingly boring. “Oh, stop complaining, Daniel,” she’d say. “You like beautiful women, and it’s a lot of work staying gorgeous.”

  There was only one item in the last compartment—a finely printed and embossed business card. Kennicott examined it carefully: HOWARD PEEL, PRESIDENT, PARALLEL BROADCASTING.

  Kennicott paused. He went back to his long list of all the items they’d found in the apartment. The connection was easy to make. In the top drawer of Kevin Brace’s desk they’d found an unsigned contract between Brace and Parallel Broadcasting. Kennicott fished out the contract and read through it.