I had found the secret of staying thin. All it took was a poor diet, high anxiety and lots of cigarettes. My own ass had gotten so skinny that I had a hard time keeping up some of my pants. After my ordeal last summer, I’d tried to change myself completely, become a new person. I’d cut my hair short and dyed it a ridiculous shade of red. For the first time in my life, I made a point of painting my fingernails and toenails, usually black. I’d even gotten a small tattoo inside my left wrist. It was MCMK in a looping script, the initials of my dead family. When people asked me about it, I said it was just a design. From a distance, I probably looked shiny and new. I wondered if I had fooled anyone. Certainly not myself.
Just as Gail began to rummage in her purse for a second cigarette, I approached her, pulled out my own pack of Belmonts and said, “Smoke?”
Gail looked me over cautiously, knowing that I was familiar but not yet remembering who I was, exactly. Then I could see the light of connection in her eyes. “You’re that columnist from the Citizen, right?”
“Yes. Kris Redner.”
“I’m not going to talk about the trial.”
“Of course not.”
Gail had accepted the cigarette, though, and I lit it for her. Then I lit one, too, telling myself I was only doing it because it would seem odd to offer Gail a cigarette without smoking one myself. I could always quit again tomorrow.
“I hope you’re not here to form some sort of girl-to-girl bond,” Gail said.
“Well, I can certainly empathize with you.”
“Oh please. Don’t pretend you care.”
“All right. I won’t, but your situation interests me.”
Gail didn’t respond, looking down at her cigarette instead. She had rings on every finger and both thumbs. They were gold, ornate, almost certainly custom designed, and worth more than I earned in a year. The jeweller must have been disappointed when Gail ran out of digits.
“I will be watching to see what you say in your column,” Gail said. “You’re not a big fan of Ben, are you?”
I quickly weighed which way to play it. It was true, I had been critical of Bernstein at other trials, but he was hardly at the top of my hit list. I was surprised that Gail would know what I had said. It was even more surprising that she was talking about the defence lawyer, not her husband. Maybe not being a fan of Sonny Sandhu was just a given. If Gail wasn’t a big fan of Ben either, it could be a connection, but she’d called him Ben, not Bernstein.
‘If I were in your husband’s situation, he’s the guy I’d want to defend me,” I said.
‘Yes, Ben is very smart, but they’ve stacked the deck against him.”
“In what way?”
“You’ll see. There are witnesses coming who are going to say what they’ve been told to say.”
“Really? By whom?”
“I’m not going there. Just watch for it when it happens.”
“All right,” I said, trying to appear grateful for this vague piece of paranoia. “At some point, I’d like to do a piece on you and what you’ve been through, maybe after the trial is complete and before the verdict.”
“My life is private.”
‘I’m sorry, but it isn’t any more. I can tell you that everyone else will be going after the same angle. This could be a chance to shape your story, tell it the way you want to.”
Wooing a source was a delicate task. You usually had to appeal to their egos, show them that there was something in it for them. I saw it as salesmanship, not lying. An exclusive interview would give Gail a chance to tell her side, but through my filter.
Gail tossed what was left of her cigarette on the pavement and let it smoulder. “Ben says I’m not to talk to the media at all. I shouldn’t even have said what I did.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to use anything you said. We were just chatting, and I doubt you let Ben Bernstein tell you what to do.”
Gail smiled. It was the first time I had seen it. It was the sort of smile that reflected a sardonic amusement at life. Maybe we did have something in common.
“You’ve got that right,” she said. “Look, if you want a better story, check out what Luc Champagne has been up to.”
Unfortunately, I knew little about the cabinet minister and what he might have been up to, not being part of the little village of politicians and media on Parliament Hill.
“What’s the connection?”
“You’re the reporter. You figure it out.”
Was Champagne the guy behind the Sandhu charges? If so, I had just taken a big step towards getting the real story.
FIVE
I gave my column one last look while ignoring my phone. I knew it would be Peterson from the city desk, bugging me to file. In the digital world of journalism, there were no more deadlines. The desk wanted everything right now, or better yet, five minutes ago. I was sure the world could wait another few minutes to learn what I had to say about today’s chapter of the Sonny Sandhu story.
There had been a bit of a twist at the end. When court returned, Sharon Faulkner said her witness, Vikram Gill, wasn’t able to testify because of a sudden illness. Pre-lying jitters, I expected. Even veteran liars could find a courtroom intimidating. The judge had suggested that Faulkner bring on her next witness, but he wasn’t expected to testify and wasn’t even in Ottawa. Presumably this would be the other partner, Fung. The judge gave Faulkner a stern warning about wasting the valuable time of the court, ordered her to be prepared when the trial resumed Monday, then called it a day. He was flying in from Toronto for the trial, and I imagined that he wasn’t totally heartbroken about getting out of town early.
I was alone in the tiny, narrow room the courts liked to call a media office. It had the size of a broom closet, but not the ambience. The dominant features were dirty white walls and a litter of documents, old newspapers and discarded pizza boxes. The other reporters were all up on the third floor, enjoying the relative space of the temporary media room provided for the Sandhu trial. I knew they would be chatting and cross-pollinating their ideas. I wasn’t into that.
There was a knock at the door, but I ignored it. If it were someone who had a right to enter, he would. If not, he could piss off.
The door swung open and there was Staff Sgt. Mike Reilly. Not the first guy I expected to see. Before Reilly could speak, I held up a finger, then pointed at one of the two empty chairs and said, “Sit. Five minutes.”
I could tell by the look on Reilly’s face that he didn’t appreciate being talked to like it was dog obedience school, but he did sit. One learned to be patient working homicide. Reilly straightened the crease in the pants of his navy suit, then glanced around the little room, his square-jawed Irish face starting to show that he was in his 50s. His brushy moustache and curly black hair seemed to have just a bit more grey every time I saw him. It was his eyes that looked most tired, showing the strain of a long career and a lack of promotion.
I was sure his breakup with my colleague Suzy Morin hadn’t done much for his disposition either. The two of them had been together for years. How a police reporter and a homicide investigator worked out their boundaries was beyond me, but somehow they had made it last, until it didn’t.
I turned my attention back to my laptop, giving the column one last look. There was a vast gap between Bernstein’s version of reality and the Crown’s, but I was taking a skeptical view and shading to Bernstein, for now. Maybe the Crown’s witnesses would be better than I imagined, but their self-interest was glaring. Of course, that didn’t mean they were not telling something close to the truth. Just because they were crooks didn’t mean that Sandhu wasn’t.
As much as I enjoyed keeping Reilly waiting, I was curious to know why he was here. No doubt it was about the jumper, but I would have expected a constable to handle the interview. What had caught Reilly’s attention?
I e-mailed the column to Peterson and said, “So Reilly, what brings you here?”
He scratched the side of his face, then spoke in
the distinctive baritone voice that lent authority to everything he had to say. “Maybe you don’t remember, but earlier in the day there was a woman who fell to her death from the roof of your building. Landed on the fence in front in kind of a nasty way.”
I looked away, the experience of the morning still raw in my mind. I had been surprised by how much emotion the young woman’s death had triggered, but I wasn’t going to share that with Reilly. Veteran cops and veteran crime writers both used distance and black humour to keep themselves from being swallowed up by the horrors they saw on the job. I liked Reilly and he was a good source, but I didn’t expect him to play Dr. Phil.
“She sure did,” I said. “Hell of a way to start a day. I’m just surprised that you’re spending time on a suicide. Murder business slow?”
“Steady. I’m sure a woman of your experience knows that we treat every suspicious death as a homicide until we have reason to believe otherwise.”
“And do you?”
Reilly shrugged. “There are a few complications.”
“Such as?”
“Such as things I’m not going to tell you about right now. What I do need to know is what you saw, exactly.”
“You should read the Citizen online, Mike. Everything I saw was in the story I filed.”
Reilly paused, creating an awkward silence to see if I would fill it with information. It was a trick I used too, and I wasn’t going to play. Finally, Reilly said, “That must have been rough, seeing a young woman like that die right in front of you. It was a pretty gruesome scene.”
Ah, I thought, the empathy tactic. As much as it would be good to unburden with someone, it wasn’t going to happen.
“OK, humour me here,” he said. “Tell me about it again. You were on the patio, what, looking at your laptop, checking out the surrounding scenery?”
“No, I had just sat down on my balcony to have a cup of coffee when I looked up and saw the body heading straight down. Then I leaned over the railing, and saw that she was on the fence.”
“And what did you think then?”
“I thought I was looking at a jumper falling from the roof. That’s obvious, right?”
“So the woman comes flying through the air and ends up skewered on the fence. Bad luck or good luck, depending on how you look at it. What did you do next?”
“I raced down to the patio.”
“To help?”
“No, because it was a story.”
“But you did try to help?”
I hoped that he wouldn’t have uncovered that fact, but I should have known better. There were lots of witnesses. “I did. She cried out ‘help me.’ I couldn’t just stand there.”
I expected Reilly to give me shit for interfering with a possible crime scene, but he nodded sympathetically and said, “And you had some pictures, too.”
“I did. And they’re all online.”
That wasn’t true, but I had no reason to turn all my cards up for Reilly, especially if he wasn’t willing to offer information in exchange.
“Really?”
“What did you think, I was going to hang around and do a photo shoot? I took a few quick images, then I headed down to court.”
“Right. Anything that shows the street scene, who was around, that kind of thing? Could be useful to our investigation.”
“Maybe so, but I can’t help you.”
“I could get a warrant.”
“Go for it. Come on, Reilly. You know it’s not my job to collect evidence for you. The stuff online is going to have to do. Besides, you must have lots of other witnesses. The place was packed with people. Dozens would have seen what I saw. Obviously you have been talking to some of them.”
“Funny how that goes. The first thing anyone saw was the body on the fence, then most of them screamed and ran like hell. About what you’d expect. The only odd thing they remembered was you getting some young guy to help you get the woman off the fence, then sitting there beside the body, using your phone. Writing your story, I guess.”
“I’ve seen lots of dead bodies. When something like that happens, I have a job to do. Just like you.”
“I hear you were pretty cool about it.”
I had been far from cool, but I said, “What did you think I was going to do, shriek like a B movie actress?”
Reilly laughed. “Not bloody likely, but I’d have paid admission to see it.” Then he turned more serious, leaning forward like he was going to share a confidence. “The thing that surprised me wasn’t that you were cool at the scene, but that you got that girl off the fence and tried to save her life.”
He had a point. Journalists were professional spectators, always where the action was, never part of it. “Well, it seemed like the human thing to do. Too bad it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, it was. I hate suicides, especially someone so young. They don’t even know what life’s all about yet and they’re already pulling the plug.”
For just a second, I considered telling him how I really felt. Good cops were good listeners, and Reilly was among the best. I didn’t let others into my head easily, though. Instead, I said, “So you’re taking quite an interest in this. Do you think it was murder? She didn’t jump?”
“Oh, she probably did jump,” Reilly said, sounding a little too casual. “We just need to find out why to wrap it up.”
“You even know who she is?”
“We’re working on that.”
“How hard can it be? Surely she must have lived in the building?’
“Seems like she didn’t. All the tenants are accounted for.”
“So what was she doing on the roof, then?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Are you going to let me know when you get the answer?”
Reilly shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “Sure. I doubt there will be a story in it.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I said, “You’re probably right, but it does make me curious. What sent her flying off the building?”
“You’re always curious.”
“It’s what they pay me for.”
I closed my laptop and began to zipper the case, giving Reilly the hint that we were done. Then he surprised me by saying, “You’ve got a whole new look.”
His comment was carefully neutral. I didn’t imagine that my short red hair and black fingernails would be exactly Reilly’s style. If Suzy Morin was any indication, he favoured women who were more on the babe end of the scale.
“It was time to shake things up,” I said. “You reach a certain stage in your life, you know?”
“Right, right,” Reilly nodded, seeming to have found something interesting to examine on the floor. Still looking down, he said, “Sometimes those stages sneak up on you. Take me and Suzy for example.”
When I didn’t speak, he said, “So how is Suzy?”
Now I saw why he had run this information gathering errand personally. Surely Reilly wasn’t still hung up on Suzy Morin? The Citizen police reporter was as slim and blond as a woman could be, I had to admit, but she wasn’t exactly deep. It was easy to see why Suzy would have been attracted to Reilly. He had a faded Celtic charm and an encyclopedic knowledge of crime in Ottawa. Pretty handy for a police reporter. I hadn’t understood the reverse attraction, beyond the obvious, but who was I to second-guess other people’s relationships? I had made a mess of all of my own.
“You know I don’t see her much,” I said. “We do overlap on some stories. You might have guessed this, but I’m not really the type of girl who inspires others to share their woes.”
Reilly smiled. “I had guessed,” he said. “But how does she seem? Happy?”
I wasn’t sure whether the best answer was yes, or no. Either would be bad news for Reilly. Either he’d be encouraged to carry on his obsession or depressed that she had moved on. Besides, I really didn’t know. Suzy Morin always had the same vaguely excited and pleased-with-herself expression regardless of what was going on. It was a miracle that th
e woman hadn’t gone into television.
I knew that it wasn’t really my job to scoop Suzy on police stories, but I still enjoyed it every time it happened, and it had happened more often since the breakup with Reilly.
Thinking about that, I said, “I think she does miss you in some way.”
“Good, that’s good,” Reilly said, nodding.
The guy actually looked happy at the news. Was it because of the false hope my comment might have created or because he liked the idea of her suffering? Probably the former. When it came to women, most men were about as sophisticated as high school kids, no matter how old they actually were.
“Look,” Reilly said. “I’m wrapped up for the day. Do you want to go for a drink? You could fill me in on the Sandhu trial. That’s an interesting mess.”
A drink with Reilly would mean only one of two things. Either he’d sit around moaning about Suzy and getting more morose with every pint, or he’d hit on me. Either way, I could do without it.
“Maybe another time, Mike. I’m busy tonight.”
It was a convenient social lie when the words formed in my mind, but as soon as I said them, I realized it was true. I’d forgotten that Colin was coming over and bringing Indian food. All I really wanted was an evening of peace and quiet, but I couldn’t say no to Colin. I owed him too much.
SIX
“Where do you want me to put the takeaway?” Colin said, surveying the mass of confusion that was my kitchen counter. It was covered with old newspapers, withering apples, blackened bananas, two empty tin cans and what was once the carcass of a barbecued chicken, thankfully contained under its plastic dome.
“Anywhere you can find a spot,” I said.
He surveyed the mess while holding the white plastic bag that I knew would contain butter chicken, rice, naan and samosas. Colin was predictable in most things.
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