01 - Old City Hall

by Robert Rotenberg

“Every month, you get a cash injection of two thousand dollars. Seems to be keeping you going.”

  McGill twirled the cigarette in her hand.

  “And I’ve got your husband’s bank statement,” Greene said, deliberately choosing the word “husband.” “For the last year, two thousand dollars in cash has come out of his account at the beginning of each month.” Keeping his hand on the unopened file, he met her eyes. “As you told me, the mail takes only two days to get up to Haliburton. In a homicide investigation, sometimes it’s the most obvious things you overlook. Yesterday it all fell into place for me. You came down to Toronto the night before Katherine Torn was killed. The concierge, Rasheed, told me that Kevin had asked him to put a brick in the basement door on Sunday. You came in unnoticed. Never caught on video.”

  McGill began to twist the handkerchief. She didn’t speak.

  “Your truck, which still had snow on it from the drive down, got the parking ticket because you got delayed, didn’t you?”

  The silence in the room was palpable. All eyes were on McGill.

  “I was in 12A that night, Detective,” McGill said at last.

  “And that morning too,” Greene said. “When Mr. Singh came, you were right behind the front door.”

  Like hikers cresting a high ridge, they’d just crossed over into new territory. And they both knew it.

  55

  Fernandez checked his watch as he pulled open the gray steel door of Vesta Lunch. It was 1:59 a.m. Stacks of freshly printed newspapers blared out headlines declaring THE LEAFS WIN THE CUP, LORD STANLEY IS OURS, and LEAF NATION CELEBRATES. The counter was packed with customers, most of them wearing blue-and-white Leafs hockey shirts. The big stand-up fridge behind the counter was plastered with GO LEAFS GO bumper stickers, and blue-and-white flags sprouted on all sides of the old-fashioned cash register. Even the picture of Mother Teresa above the door was adorned with the team’s flags.

  The Vesta Lunch had been a low-rent Toronto tradition since it opened in 1955. Serving breakfast twenty-four hours a day—and preparing take-out meals for the prisoners housed at nearby 14 Division, often with a little bonus for the police officers who picked up the brown bags—the diner was a natural late-night hangout for prostitutes between gigs, students wired on coffee, and the assorted detritus of the city’s midnight hours.

  Fernandez had driven by the place many times and never thought to go inside. But earlier that evening, as he was crossing Queen Street, Phil Cutter, the loudmouthed Crown Attorney, had come up behind him.

  “Fernandez, I need to talk to you,” Cutter said, getting close, so that his booming voice sounded all the louder.

  Fernandez looked to his left and saw a streetcar coming toward them. He quickened his pace. Cutter followed in step.

  “You know the Vesta Lunch? An all-night diner at Bathurst and Dupont?”

  “I’ve seen it,” Fernandez said as he reached the far curb. As usual, the sidewalk was packed with people.

  “Good. Meet us there at two a.m. sharp,” Cutter said.

  “Two a.m.?”

  “Two a.m. Don’t be late.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Just be there. The Vesta.” Cutter turned and vanished into the crowded sidewalk traffic. That was it. Nothing in writing. No cell phone calls. No e-mail.

  Fernandez looked around the diner. The window side had a number of booths with high-backed bench chairs. Phil Cutter, Barb Gild, and the chief of police, Hap Charlton, were in the last one. There was a space open for Fernandez beside Charlton.

  Fernandez took the empty seat. In his hand he had a folded notebook and a new, thick pen that he put in front of him on the table.

  “Coffee?” Charlton asked. He was as affable as ever. There was a steaming mug in front of each of the other three.

  “No, I’m fine,” Fernandez said.

  “Our distinguished colleague doesn’t deign to drink watery Canadian coffee,” Cutter said. Even when he tried to whisper, his voice was a growling bark. There was a napkin on the table, and he was flipping it over and over. A substitute for not being able to pace back and forth, Fernandez thought.

  Charlton chuckled. “This stuff is pretty darn watery,” he said. “Drank it for decades. Night shift—Vesta Lunch—one and the same for a copper. Getting spoiled by the fancy lattes at headquarters.”

  Fernandez gave Charlton a forced grin. Everyone grew quiet. It was time to end the chitchat.

  “So,” Fernandez said, opening the notebook and picking up his pen, “what’ve you got?”

  “Put down your fancy pen, Albert,” Cutter said. He kept flipping his napkin back and forth, faster now.

  Fernandez looked him in the eye as he slowly closed his notebook and put his pen on top. He looked around, unsure who was going to speak.

  “Brace wants to plead guilty.” To Fernandez’s surprise, it was Barb Gild who was talking.

  Fernandez gave her a slight nod and waited for an explanation. No one said anything.

  It took a few moments until it sank in. So this is how they want to play it, he thought. They’re going to tell me only what they think I need to know. If I want more information, I have to ask for it.

  “What’s he want to plead guilty to?” Fernandez asked.

  “First,” Gild said.

  Fernandez felt a spasm in his stomach. “When?”

  “This morning.”

  His stomach started to churn. “Who told you this?” he asked Gild. He could think of only one thing. The pages Marissa had found in the photocopier outside her office.

  “Do you really need to know?” It was Cutter speaking. For once, his voice actually was quiet, and he’d even stopped playing with his napkin. He looked at Gild, then at Charlton, and flipped his napkin very slowly.

  “Do I?” Fernandez asked.

  “Look,” Cutter said. Remarkably, he was still keeping his voice down. “This plea needs to go through without a hitch. Got it?”

  “Well, I’m not going to stand in the way of his pleading.”

  “Yeah, but Summers might.”

  “Summers? Why?” Fernandez asked.

  Cutter gave his colleagues another look. “There might be complications.”

  “Such as?” Fernandez looked around. Silence. “Do I have to keep guessing?”

  Charlton finally spoke. “Such as Brace’s lawyer.”

  “Parish?” Fernandez had not expected this. “She’ll be upset, sure. She’s worked her tail off, and she’s got a good shot at beating the first degree at least. How’s that a complication?”

  Again he looked around. No one moved. He’d never seen Cutter so still.

  Then he saw it all. So clearly.

  “Wait,” he said. “How do you know what he’s told his lawyer? That’s solicitor-client privilege.”

  Silence again.

  “No judge in this province would authorize a wiretap on her phone.”

  “True,” Charlton said. “No judge would authorize it.”

  Again the silence. Fernandez understood. They were telling him that just because it wasn’t authorized doesn’t mean they’d never do it. No one would ever know. The image flashed through his mind of a bunch of police officers sitting in a room listening in on Nancy Parish’s personal phone calls. The ache in his stomach seemed to rise in his gut. He thought of the photocopied pages again. About Brace’s silence; his writing out of instructions.

  “But I thought Brace wasn’t talking,” Fernandez said.

  Cutter leaned in real close, his voice as near to a whisper as he could get it, but still loud enough to hear clearly. “We got the information from the best possible source. Brace’s own handwriting.” Then he began to laugh—that piercing, annoying laugh, which seemed even more sinister at half volume.

  Thank you, Cutter, Fernandez said to himself, moving his pen a bit farther toward the other side of the table. “You had someone in the jail looking at that notebook Brace carried everywhere with him?”

  Cutter could bare
ly contain his glee. “Most people forget, but I started out as a defense lawyer. Long time ago. Let’s just say that I’m still on good terms with an unnamed veteran guard at the Don.”

  Fernandez nodded his head slowly. “And that’s why Detective Greene isn’t here,” he said.

  “Listen, Fernandez,” Cutter said. He was playing with the napkin again. “This city is going to rat shit. You know that. We see it every day in court. All the guns. The gangbangers. You want to prosecute homicides? This is what you’re going to be up against. Don’t give me any of your Boy Scout bullshit: ‘Crowns don’t care about winning or losing.’ Up here in homicide prosecutions, we play to win. Besides, don’t worry about your pal Nancy Parish. Brace never calls her. Period.”

  “Okay,” Fernandez said. “What do you want me to do?”

  Cutter started to laugh. “Easy. Win the case. If Brace tries to fire Parish, object. Parish tries to get off the case, object. Don’t give Summers any wiggle room.”

  Gild jumped in. “The law is clear. Absent evidence of mental incapacity, which she doesn’t have, Parish has no right to prevent her client from pleading guilty. Worst-case scenario, she steps down as counsel, Brace enters his plea. He should be off doing twenty-five years by ten thirty this morning.”

  “And, Albert,” Cutter said, “you’ll be undefeated in your murder prosecutions. Perfect start to your new career.” Cutter had never called Fernandez by his first name before. “We’re thin on talent at the top, buddy. There’s going to be a lot of work for you.”

  Fernandez nodded. Then he smiled. The tension in their little booth seemed to ease. Cutter ripped up his napkin.

  “I assume this meeting never happened,” Fernandez said.

  Charlton gave a big laugh. “We’re paying cash. Nick behind the counter there, he’s known me since I was a beat cop. We’d come here on slow nights and drink coffee for a few hours, and every fifteen minutes one of us would go outside and report in a new position. Nick never said a word. Anyone comes snooping, he’ll tell them he hasn’t seen me in months.”

  Fernandez looked back at the counter. A tall man with a graying mustache was wiping it down with long, relaxed strokes. His white uniform and apron had a night’s worth of stains on them. The black-and-white clock on the wall said it was 2:30.

  “Looks like I’ve got an interesting day ahead of me,” Fernandez said, picking up his notebook and pen. “I’ll see all of you in court.”

  And Marissa, I’ll be home early for a change, he thought. It should be a very nice evening. With something special to celebrate.

  56

  We lose ten, sometimes fifteen pieces of cutlery a month, mostly knives,” Sarah McGill said, raising the plastic bag with the spoon in it and waving it accusingly at Ari Greene. “It adds up.”

  “I’m sure it does,” he said.

  Greene had seen this over and over again with witnesses. And it never ceased to amaze him. Faced with the biggest crisis of their lives, people would focus on alarmingly trivial matters. Losing everything else, they grasped at the small things they could control. And clung to them hard.

  During the last murder trial he worked on, the prisoner was more concerned about what he got for lunch than the evidence that kept piling up around him. The worse the case got, the louder his mealtime complaints became.

  Still holding the bag in front of her, McGill began to worry the edges of the plastic, like a little girl holding the corner of her favorite blanket.

  “I won’t go to court,” she said at last.

  Greene had expected this. He tapped the inside of his jacket pocket. “I have a subpoena for you right here,” he said. “I’d hate to force you to go, but your husband is looking at a possible twenty-five-year sentence. Clearly you have material evidence.”

  “Children’s Aid will be there.”

  Greene hadn’t expected this. Never underestimate the deep currents that run through people’s lives, or their unseen motivations, he thought. “Ms. McGill, this is a murder trial. I can’t imagine Children’s Aid would have any interest in it.”

  McGill brought her fist down on the table. Bang. She hit it with such force that he was afraid the glass would break. “Can’t imagine. No, you can’t imagine, can you?”

  Greene met her eyes squarely without saying a word.

  “These people just don’t give up,” she said. “Never. If they hear I was in the apartment when Katherine died, they’ll never let me see my children again.”

  “But, Ms. McGill, your daughters are grown,” he said. Greene glanced at Kennicott. He seemed equally bewildered. “The Children’s Aid Society has nothing to do with them anymore.”

  McGill tightened her lips in anger. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  Suddenly he understood. Despite all her appearance of well-adjusted normalcy, McGill was paranoid beyond reach. And with just cause. Like his parents and all their survivor friends. He, of all people, should have seen this coming.

  “Your grandchildren,” he whispered.

  McGill stared straight ahead. No eye contact. She was shutting down.

  “Those bastards,” McGill said at last. “I’m not going to let them keep me from my babies again.” She shook her head hard, in a way that said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “We know that Katherine had problems with alcohol,” Greene said. Using “we” made it seem more authoritative, and more comforting. He needed to kick-start the conversation. Get her talking. “Officer Kennicott here has spoken to a number of people about Ms. Torn. The people she injured.”

  McGill nodded. That was a start.

  Greene kept going. “We know that Katherine was a penny-pincher. Officer Kennicott found a whole stack of food coupons in her wallet. Her Visa bill shows very modest spending. How did she feel about Kevin giving you two thousand a month?”

  McGill flashed a look at Wingate, then turned back to Greene. She didn’t say a word, but at least she wasn’t refusing to talk.

  Greene jumped into the silence. “Did she know about the money?”

  “She found out.”

  Good, Greene thought, relieved to hear McGill’s voice again.

  “I imagine she wasn’t very happy,” he said.

  “Nothing made Katherine very happy, Detective. Not having my husband, not having my girls, the apartment, the travel, the media attention. None of it. She was angry from the day she found out about her father.”

  Greene glanced over at Kennicott, then back at McGill. “You mean Dr. Torn?”

  McGill snorted loudly. “You don’t know, Detective?”

  Greene shook his head.

  “I mean her real father. Some horseback rider down in California her mother hooked up with on one of her riding competitions. Katherine found out when she was thirteen. Never got over it.”

  Greene nodded at Kennicott. So that explained Dr. Torn, he thought. “Kate was her only child,” Dr. Torn had told Greene and Fernandez when they first met at Old City Hall.

  “Why were you in your husband’s apartment the morning Katherine died?” he asked, echoing her phrase “Katherine died”—not “Katherine was killed.”

  “I needed more money. The highway construction. They said it would take nine months. It’s killing the café. Even two thousand wasn’t enough.”

  “So you came early in the morning?”

  McGill didn’t say a word.

  “And your husband was awake.”

  “My husband never slept much. Katherine, she slept all the time.”

  “Except that morning.”

  “I thought she’d be asleep. It was five in the morning.”

  “But you were wrong, she was in the bath.”

  “Katherine? You must be kidding.” McGill started to laugh. It was her loud, real laugh. “You think Katherine Torn would ever take a bath in the hallway tub instead of in her five-thousand-dollar Jacuzzi?”

  Greene remembered all the receipts Kennicott had found in Torn’s wallet for expensive toi
letries. And Detective Ho remarking that the hallway bathtub didn’t even have a soap dish. He thought of his house. How he preferred his own bathroom, the one where Raglan had joined him to soap his back, instead of the ratty one in the basement. And he knew that Sarah McGill was telling the truth.

  “My husband’s a creature of habit. He’s taken a cold bath every morning of his life. When I got there, he was still in his bathrobe. He’d only just filled the tub.”

  “Then how did Katherine end up in the bathtub, Ms. McGill? The one in the hallway.”

  “Kevin put her there,” she said, as calmly as if she were telling a customer about the restaurant’s daily specials. “After she died.”

  “Died” again. Not “was killed” or “was murdered,” but “died.” As if death were something that just happened to Katherine Torn, like night sweats or a migraine headache.

  “And how did that happen? Katherine dying?”

  McGill picked up the plastic bag with the spoon and rubbed it. “It’s amazing how fleeting life is. But I guess you know that from your job. My husband and I were in the kitchen, whispering like two teenagers who think their parents are asleep. He was just cutting up his morning oranges. Suddenly Katherine was standing behind us. Stone naked. I don’t know what woke her up. She grabbed Kevin by the neck. It happened so fast. She started yelling, ‘Bastard, bastard . . . you’ll never be on the radio again.’ Don’t feel bad for Katherine, Detective. She got everything she wanted out of this.”

  No one in the room seemed to move or even breathe. Greene scanned back in his mind through all he knew about the case: Brace cutting up his oranges every morning; his hoarse, barely audible voice the one time he talked to Dent in his cell; the scratch marks Torn had inflicted with her bare hands on the two men who had tried to help her, Howard Peel, her AA sponsor, and Donald Dundas, her radio teacher; the unsigned million-dollar contract; Torn and Brace not holding hands when they came back through the lobby after their meeting with Peel.

  McGill’s eyes had lost focus. “It took forever to pry her hands off him.” She was looking vaguely over Greene’s shoulder. He could tell she was no longer seeing the apartment. She was staring into the past.