This Thing of Darkness

by Barbara Fradkin

  “How did the blood get on your hoodie?”

  “Like I said, I fell. Gave myself a nosebleed.”

  Levesque pressed a button, and the image changed to the sneakers. An even brighter blue lit up the screen. “These are your sneakers. See there is blood on the bottom of them. How would you get blood on the bottom from a nosebleed?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I stepped in it afterwards.”

  “You stepped in it all right, after Dr. Rosenthal was bleeding all over the pavement.”

  “No! I never saw him!”

  “The RCMP lab is already doing DNA tests on the blood, Omar. You know about DNA?”

  He nodded, again apparently robbed of voice.

  “That will tie you to Dr. Rosenthal’s body.” She shifted subtly, leaned forward and deepened her voice. Not threatening, more companionable. “But we know you didn’t act alone. Maybe it wasn’t even your idea, you just found yourself caught up in someone else’s mess. It was all Nadif’s idea, wasn’t it?”

  Omar didn’t reply, merely stared at his brand-new sneakers on the table, less in reproach than in bewilderment.

  “We want the real bad guy to get his proper punishment, not you. You’ve never even been in trouble with the law, Omar. Why ruin your life for a man who doesn’t deserve it?”

  “Nadif didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “With what?”

  “With Saturday night. With...with my fall.”

  “He’s on the video.”

  “He went home early.”

  “He had the shoes, Omar. He ratted you out. What kind of friend is that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything about shoes, an old man, anything!”

  Green could see that the young man was backing himself up against the wall, shutting down and clinging to the story he had first offered. He looked bewildered but immovable. Green searched his face and his body language for signs of capitulation, a tacit admission of guilt or defeat. There was none. He didn’t even object to giving a DNA sample when Levesque asked.

  Levesque pressed on, reworking the ground, ticking off all the bits of evidence in rapid succession, hammering away at his resistance. Tears glistened in his eyes, his chin quivered, but still he stuck to his story. For the next two hours she worked away, until his lawyer, hastily called up by his father, arrived to demand an end.

  As Omar was being led away, he passed by Green in the hallway. For an instant, he raised his large, limpid eyes to Green’s. He looked haunted, cornered. In his gaze, however, was a question. A hint of doubt. Or guilt.

  In that moment, it was Green’s turn to feel confused.

  Ten

  Green was still puzzling over that look when he returned to the squad room, too late to catch even the tail end of his committee meeting. Waiting at his office door was the Major Crimes clerk with a business card in her hand. She handed it to him and told him the gentleman was waiting downstairs for him in the lobby.

  Green glanced at the card, which was plain white but slightly grimy at the edges, as though it had been used many times. G.R. Verne LLB, barrister and solicitor, in simple black letters with an address off Montreal Road in the crime-ridden heart of Vanier. Yet Green had never heard of him. Either he was straight out of law school, or he’d never graced the criminal court.

  The latter, Green decided when the clerk showed Verne into his office. The lawyer looked as if he’d been before the bar for fifty years, each one weighing more heavily than the last. His back was bowed by the weight of a hundred extra pounds, which hung on his frame in billowing folds. His frayed brown suit shone at the elbows and collar, and an odour of sweat and mothballs wafted around him. He wheezed as he wedged himself into Green’s tiny guest chair, set his briefcase on the floor and propped his cane against the desk. He contemplated the room but didn’t speak while he caught his breath.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Verne?”

  Verne leaned over to unsnap his briefcase and extracted a sheaf of legal documents. “I expected to hear from you before this,” he said, his lips forming a loose pout. “But since I didn’t, I decided I’d better... I am the executor of Samuel Rosenthal’s estate.”

  Green masked his surprise. Verne was not the lawyer named in the will they had found in the dead man’s apartment, nor did he look as if he’d ever handled an estate worth millions in his life. Green wondered whether Levesque had even followed up. “I’m glad you came in, Mr. Verne. We’ve been having trouble locating Dr. Rosenthal’s son, or any other relatives.”

  “There are none. Besides the son, that is. Here’s his address.” Verne produced another sheet of paper and handed it across the desk. An address in Palo Alto, California, different from the Baltimore address the FBI had. Another of his six houses, perhaps?

  “What can you tell me about the son?” Green asked.

  “A spoiled, hothouse only child who turned into an ambitious, self-centred man. Intellectually brilliant but socially bankrupt. Everyone who doesn’t worship at the temple of David’s self-importance is cast aside. His father, three wives, and I don’t know how many employers.”

  Green couldn’t resist a smile. “You’re quite a fan.”

  Verne laughed, a wheezy rumble that ended in a cough. “Neither was Sam. He recognized the mistake he’d made with his son. Hence the new will.” Verne tapped the papers.

  Green perked up. “He didn’t leave half his estate to his son?”

  “Not a penny. He felt his money would be better spent on charities and on other worthy causes that really needed it. Perhaps as penance for inflicting his son on the world.”

  Maybe a bit of spite too, Green thought. In his experience, wealthy people who left all their money to charities had revenge as well as philanthropy on their minds. He wondered if vengeance ran in the family. “Did they ever see each other?”

  “David couldn’t make time in his busy schedule. No, I stand corrected. He made two days for his mother, after she died. Never mind that she took two years to die.”

  “Did David know his father had disinherited him? Would he be the type to hold a grudge?”

  Verne’s eyebrows shot up, becoming lost in the web of wrinkles on his brow. “My goodness, is that what you think?”

  “Obvious question. His son was a chief beneficiary of the earlier will, but cut out of this later one.”

  Verne relaxed and emitted another phlegmy chuckle. “Sam wasn’t even on David’s radar. David has his own biomedical engineering company now. He’s a millionaire many times over, even has contracts with the U.S. military.”

  Sometimes it’s not about the money, Green thought, especially when family feuds are involved. He thought of the empty file marked “will” in Rosenthal’s apartment. Had someone tried to get rid of the newer will?

  “Were you close to Sam?”

  Verne’s levity vanished, and his baggy eyes grew sad. “Not really, but perhaps as close as anyone gets. Sam was a private man.”

  “Always, or since his wife died?”

  “Always. I suspect Evelyn was the only person who ever got inside. Not that he was mean. He was always a gentleman, polite and friendly, but...simply self-contained. I think losing Evelyn cut him adrift.”

  It occurred to Green that he should contact Levesque to give her the son’s address and to invite her in on the interview. But just as quickly, he squelched the idea. She’s busy, he thought, polishing up the murder charge against Omar Adams. He leaned back in his chair and nodded at the document which Verne had placed on the desk. “When was this will made?”

  “Just this past spring.”

  Green tried to remember the details of the previous will, which had been drafted just after his wife’s death. “Why change his will now? His son has been out of his life for years.”

  Verne hesitated, his lips working. “To understand that, you have to understand Sam’s change of heart. He didn’t so much want to cut his son out as he wanted to compensate some people.”

&nb
sp; “Compensate who?”

  “The beneficiaries named in the will.”

  “I thought you said he left it all to charities. Worthy causes.”

  “Worthy causes, yes. But some of those were people.”

  Green sat forward with a thud. “Who?”

  Verne reached into his briefcase and withdrew a single sheet of paper. He studied it for a moment before handing it over to Green. It was a photocopy of a single page of the will, listing six names. None of them were familiar, but that was hardly surprising. Most of them would have dated from ten years ago. Three were female, three male, and the surnames ran the gamut from French Canadian to Arabic.

  “Who are these people?”

  “Patients of his.”

  Green remembered what Sharon had speculated. “Wasn’t he retired?”

  Verne hesitated, then raised his pudgy hand in an equivocating gesture. “He still dabbled. But most of these were former patients. From years ago.”

  “And what was Rosenthal compensating them for?”

  “For what he had come to see as his professional mistakes.”

  It felt like grappling with riddles. As if something important was dancing just out of reach. “What professional mistakes?”

  Verne pursed his lips. “In the interests of maintaining their privacy, I’d rather not say.”

  “There’s no attorney-client privilege here. These people aren’t your clients.”

  “No, but their private health information is confidential.”

  Green quelled his frustration. The old lawyer was far too wily to be bullied, so he tried another tack. “What’s Rosenthal’s estate worth?”

  Verne danced around that question too. “Well, he owns several properties, and I’d have to look at his current investment portfolio...”

  “Ballpark?”

  “Six million and change.”

  “Of which these people get how much?”

  “He still left half that amount to endow the cancer research chair and a few other charities, but the remainder is divided equally among these six. Which means...” Verne paused as if to calculate, although Green suspected he already knew to the penny how much each stood to inherit. “Almost $500,000.”

  Green leaned in, trying to hide his excitement. “Do these individuals know they’re being compensated to the tune of half a million dollars each?”

  “I didn’t tell them, although of course I will now.” He paused thoughtfully. “And I doubt Sam would have. He wanted this kept very quiet.”

  “To maintain their privacy?”

  A rueful smile played across Verne’s thick lips. “To avoid lawsuits.”

  Green studied the list, wondering whether Verne knew something he was unwilling to share directly. He phrased his next question carefully. “Do you know if any of these individuals had a criminal past? Or a potential for violence?”

  Verne splayed his hands in a gesture of ignorance. “I have nothing more than their names and dates of birth. Not even their addresses, although I’ve set my secretary to work on that. But...” his lips worked as if he were mentally chewing over an idea, “That’s why I brought the list to your attention. They are vulnerable people who have been wronged. And even if they weren’t psychiatric patients, half a million can be a hell of a motive.”

  Levesque barely seemed to be listening as Green filled her and Sullivan in on his meeting with Verne. She was too polite and savvy to defy him openly, but when she filed the list of former patients in with her case notes and assured him she would do background checks, Green sensed no urgency in her tone. She was triumphantly putting the finishing touches on her case against Omar, and the new will had no place in it at all.

  Green dismissed her irritably but beckoned Sullivan to stay. “What’s Gibbs working on?” he asked. He had spotted the tech wizard bent over his computer.

  Sullivan sank into the guest chair with a weary sigh. “He’s working up a case for court.”

  “If anyone can dig up info on these people, it’s him.”

  “You’re not convinced it’s the Somalis? Pretty strong case.”

  “I know, and maybe it is them. But all our high-profile miscarriages of justice have occurred because the police jumped to conclusions too early. Dr. Rosenthal treated all these people and may in fact have been treating them at the time of his murder. It has to be investigated.”

  “It will be, Mike.”

  “But now Levesque wants to prove she’s right, and it makes her blind. Don’t give her enough rope to hang the wrong person, Brian.”

  Sullivan’s face flushed red as he hauled himself to his feet. More than one person’s ego is involved here, Green thought. He watched Sullivan stop by Gibbs’s desk to speak to him briefly and to hand him a copy of the list. Gibbs glanced at it, set it aside, and continued with his work. When Green looked out at the end of the day, Gibbs had gone home, and the list was still sitting at the edge of his desk. Annoyed, Green snatched it up on his way to the elevator.

  He spent the evening playing endless games of Snakes and Ladders with his son, who never liked to lose. It took three bedtime stories to mellow him sufficiently to coax him into bed. Hannah by some miracle was doing homework, and Sharon was not yet back from work. A perfect time to have a peek at the list.

  When he and Sharon had been allotting rooms in the rambling old house they’d bought, there had been only two possible places for a home office. One, a damp, windowless room in the basement and the other a minuscule sunroom which the previous owner had tacked onto the back of the house. It barely accommodated a desk, a chair and a filing cabinet, but cheerful sun blazed in for most of the day. It had won hands down.

  Insulation had not been a priority with the do-it-yourself builder, however, so at ten o’clock on a bracing September evening, Green could almost see his breath as he booted up his laptop. He plugged in the baseboard heater, zippered his fleece up to his neck and studied the names, debating where to start. He was no Bob Gibbs, the virtual world still being something of an alien landscape to him, but he finally settled on a quick search of 411 listings in the Ottawa area to see who among the six was still living there.

  After fifteen minutes on the computer and the phone, he had found no trace of two. Four others had Ottawa-area addresses. Two of these were not definitive because the initials were too common, but it was a start. He launched a Google search of the first of the Ottawa residents, Caitlin O’Malley. Google identified dozens of Caitlin O’Malleys, among them a magician and a bride, but all lived in the United States, Ireland or New Zealand. The only promising hit was a Caitlin O’Malley who had co-authored a mathematics paper at the University of Ottawa. Hardly murderous stuff. In contrast, “Victor Ikes” yielded over a thousand hits, including a Wikipedia entry for an actor who’d been in a few B-grade independent films and one short-lived TV series before apparently vanishing from public view a few years ago.

  Green browsed a few other fan-based entertainment sites for more information on Ikes, uncovering rumours of drug addiction, rehab, wild parties, flashes of brilliance and long black bouts of depression. There were no reports of violence, but the internet was hardly an exhaustive or even accurate source. At least this Victor Ikes had some psychiatric issues, and even more to the point, he currently lived in Ottawa.

  On a hunch, Green phoned Dispatch to check the Ottawa Police internal database. If any of the six had had contact with police, even as a witness or victim, that report would be on the Records Management System. Three of the six names produced hits. A Caitlin O’Malley had been picked up once in a sweep of squeegee kids but released without charge and more recently for creating a disturbance. The responding officers had taken her to the Ottawa Hospital ER for a psychiatric assessment. Certainly a more promising possibility than the math whiz.

  Victor Ikes’ results were even more promising; the database yielded sixteen hits covering nine separate incidents. The dispatcher rhymed them off rapidly. Victor had been the perpetrator in eight incidents
and the victim in one. Green jotted down the offences—driving while impaired, creating a disturbance, uttering threats against his neighbour, assault in a bar fight... a list of petty offences that suggested a life of drugs and instability. Charges had been laid three times, resulting in guilty pleas twice, for which he’d been handed discharges conditional on seeking treatment for his problems. Perhaps the presiding judge had been a fan of B-movies.

  The one victim report was a 911 call reporting a suicide attempt. Victor Ikes had been found unresponsive in his bedroom by his mother and had been transported to the Ottawa Hospital. Green put a star beside Ikes’ name. With his history of psychiatric problems and penchant for aggressive outbursts, the man certainly belonged on any credible list of suspects.

  In the distance he heard the front door open and close. Modo, who’d been snoozing on top of Green’s feet, struggled to attention and lumbered out of the room. The mistress was home, relegating Green instantly to second fiddle. He listened as keys clinked in the dish on the hall table, shoes thudded against the back of the closet and the fridge door opened. He made some final notes, thanked the dispatcher and hung up just as Sharon appeared behind him with an open container of peach yogurt in her hand.

  She kissed the top of his head. “Everything under control here?”

  “Mmm. We had a marathon of Snakes and Ladders. Our son doesn’t handle losing well.”

  “Really. I wonder where he got that from.” She peered over his shoulder at his laptop. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing, now that you’re here.” He closed the laptop.

  She chuckled. “You back meddling in the trenches?”

  “No. Well... Just trying to speed things up. Sam Rosenthal’s murder has taken an unusual turn. It appears he left millions of dollars to former patients.”

  “That was nice of him. Why?”

  “Guilt, his lawyer says. He obviously thought they deserved it more than his selfish son.”