This Thing of Darkness

by Barbara Fradkin

  The final bedroom was set apart at the end of the hall. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling over the double entry doors which were ajar, revealing a Persian carpet also strewn with clothes. In the gloom of the shuttered windows, only the foot of the massive, frilly bed was visible. At the last second, he hesitated before pushing open the door. This is how cops got shot, by blundering into an unknown situation unprepared. All his instincts screamed danger, yet could they afford to wait? He signalled to the constable, and placed his hand on the door. Inched it open. From within, nothing but silence. Stillness. A familiar smell wafted through the gap. His gut tightened as he steeled himself for the sight.

  The woman was lying on the floor by the bed, half underneath as if she’d been trying to get away. Her head was thrown back in a paroxysm of horror, her lips curled back over her teeth and her eyes, already clouding over, bulged. Her chest was a mass of blood that had pooled beneath her and spread red through the brilliant jewel tones of the Persian carpet.

  Green raced over to check the woman and sagged against the bed in shock. Not what he was expecting, but no less a tragedy. In their brutal quest to silence Caitlin O’Malley, the Lowertown Crips had murdered her mother. A woman with long brown hair and a delicate, heart-shaped face, who looked young enough in a poor light, or a fuzzy photo, to pass for her daughter.

  Twenty-Six

  Within an hour, every available police officer had been recalled to duty. The com centre crackled with activity as search teams were dispatched to comb every inch of terrain between Lowertown and Rothwell Heights. Omar, Nadif and all the members of the Lowertown Crips were in their sights. Informants were squeezed, gang associates questioned and all affiliated gang hideouts were raided. In Rothwell Heights, officers canvassed every neighbour within blocks. The media dogged their every move in what had become an international crime drama.

  Throughout it all, Green worried most about what had become of Patrick and Caitlin O’Malley. Had they witnessed the mother’s murder and somehow escaped with their lives? Surely if Patrick O’Malley were alive, he would contact the police. The longer the silence, the greater Green’s sense of foreboding. Nonetheless he tried to maintain his optimism as he raced to keep up with the reports flying in from all quarters. Lou Paquette and his Ident team had sealed off the entire O’Malley house, and Green had set up a temporary command post in the neighbour’s house while he waited for the official white truck. Levesque had been treated at the scene but had refused the paramedics’ recommendation of a check-up at the hospital. Instead she sat in the neighbour’s kitchen with a huge white bandage around her head.

  The break came at 4:17 p.m. in the form of a triumphant call from a patrol officer in Vanier that five young black males had been spotted washing themselves in the Rideau River. At the cruiser’s approach, the group had scattered along the bike path, but after radioing for back-up the officer had kept one of them in her sights with the help of local dog walkers.

  Nadif was finally cornered by three uniformed teams converging on the park from opposite directions. He had contemplated his only means of escape, the shallow, fast-moving river, and had surrendered without a fight. Two of his accomplices were apprehended a few minutes later running through a back street of Vanier. Green ordered them all stripped and every scrap of clothing handed over to Ident, then had them all placed in different interview rooms to wait for him. Under other circumstances, he would have preferred to let them stew in the cell block for awhile, perhaps even overnight, to give Ident time to provide some ammunition for the interrogation. But today there was not that luxury. Not with Patrick O’Malley and his daughter missing and Omar still on the loose.

  On the way back to the station, Green drove while Levesque furtively massaged her temples. “I want you checked out at the hospital,” Green said.

  She closed her eyes. “I’m fine! Do you think I would miss this moment, when we finally crack this case wide open, just because of a little headache?”

  “All the same, Marie Claire,” he said gently, “you’re in no shape to conduct an interrogation.”

  “I just want to be there, okay? You can do the questioning, but I want to sit in. It’s my first case, sir! And if I hadn’t removed the surveillance—” She broke off.

  He glanced across at her. Her eyes were glassy and her cheeks flushed, whether from pain, shock or self-recrimination, he didn’t know. But he understood what this apprehension meant to her.

  “Afterwards,” he said, “I’m driving you to emerg personally.”

  “Afterwards you can buy me a stiff drink.”

  He laughed, the first moment of levity since the horrific discovery of Annabeth O’Malley’s body. Marie Claire wasn’t the only one wrestling with regrets. Green’s gut was tight with a dread he barely dared to acknowledge. A dread that had been lurking since his first glimpse of the blood on the stairs.

  What if Levesque was right? What if Omar was the killer, and he had released a killer back onto the streets? Had Green misread the man so badly that it had cost at least one woman, perhaps more, her life?

  At the station he shoved the doubts from his mind and assigned teams to interview the two accomplices while he prepared to face down Nadif himself. As he gathered his props for the interview, he gave Levesque time to change her blood-stained jacket and wash up. The second floor was abuzz with officers and civilian employees hunched over phones and computers, tracking the investigation.

  Even dressed in cellblock-issue white scrubs with paper slippers on his feet, Nadif still presented a handsome figure.

  His eyes were dark with apprehension, but he kept his flawless features expressionless as he watched Green and Levesque sit down. Green dictated the preliminaries for the tape and embarked on the requisite caution. Before he was even halfway through it, Nadif interrupted.

  “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

  Without a word, Green handed him the phone. Not surprisingly, the young man dialled the number from memory, then rolled his eyes while it rang. Green heard the voicemail kick in and Nadif cursed. He left a terse message asking the man to come to the station, then hung up.

  Green smiled at him sympathetically. “Sunday afternoon. Bad time for lawyers. You could be waiting a long time.”

  Nadif shrugged. “I got time.”

  “True. Or...” Green laid his file folder on the table. “We could clear up a few things while we’re waiting. You see, two of your buddies are down the hall talking to my colleagues. You might want to get your story in before they pin it all on you. Things won’t look so rosy when you’re staring down twenty-five years to life.”

  “No crime in playing in the river.”

  “Mrs. O’Malley’s murder was a messy one. You know what that means? Lots of interesting bits of evidence for our Ident team to discover. And believe me, they will. They’ll be there for days going over every carpet fibre and speck of blood. And what do you think they’ll find on your clothes? On the soles of your shoes? I heard you running through their house. One fibre from their carpet in the treads of your sneakers, and you’re toast, Nadif.”

  “I don’t even know who this Mrs. O’Malley is. I was in the park with my friends.”

  “The mother of the prostitute you guys assaulted last weekend. You killed the wrong person, buddy.”

  A spasm of surprise crossed Nadif’s face, but he said nothing.

  “You’re piling them up, Nadif.” Green took out a sheaf of photos and laid the one of Caitlin on the table. “Sexual assault of Caitlin O’Malley...” He laid three photos of Sam Rosenthal’s bloodied body alongside it, including a close-up of his battered head. “Murder of the old man who came to her aid. Murder committed in the course of a criminal act is an automatic first degree. Assaulting a police officer, breaking and entering...” He laid down two photos of Annabeth O’Malley’s body. “Another first degree murder charge.”

  “You got nothing on me, or you’d be charging me.”

  “Patience, Nadif. Forensics t
akes time. Let’s start with the original murder. We just got the results back today on the old man’s cane. We have blood on the tip and fingerprints on the shaft.” He added Ident’s enlarged photos of the cane to the line-up. “But we know you didn’t act alone. We know your friends Yusuf and Omar were involved. With your previous record and your age, you’re facing the most serious prison time, but if you cooperate—”

  “I’m not ratting!”

  “If you cooperate first, that’s going to show the judge you’re remorseful. I know this didn’t start off as a murder, Nadif. I know you just wanted to get laid, but she turned you down. Who knows why, that’s what she was there for, right? Maybe it was because she didn’t want a foursome, or because you were black. Whatever, she told you to get lost, and things got ugly. When the old man Rosenthal showed up, they got out of control. He was fighting you, you grabbed his cane to stop him, you hit him back...”

  Surprise and fear flitted across Nadif’s face as the scenario unfolded. Finally he burst in to stop the barrage. “Like I said, it wasn’t me. You got me mixed up with some other black dude.”

  Green shrugged. “And like I said, I’m just giving you the first chance to cooperate, because you’re in the deepest. Do you think your buddies down the hall will keep you out of it? Or Yusuf? How about Omar Adams? Omar’s scared to death, you know he’s never been in trouble before. How long before he cracks and tells us the whole story? Only he’s going to paint himself in the best light. He’s going to say it was your idea to proposition the hooker, you who got mad and grabbed her—”

  “We didn’t proposition no hooker! We didn’t lay a finger on her!”

  “But you saw her. You talked to her.”

  Nadif whipped his head back and forth.

  “We have a witness who heard her telling you to leave her alone.”

  The young man was staring at the bloody photo of Rosenthal as if mesmerized. “This is fucked.”

  “What’s fucked?”

  “It didn’t go down like that.”

  “Then how did it go down?”

  Resolutely, Nadif said nothing.

  Green shuffled the photos. “This is your chance, Nadif. Because the others are going to say it was you who grabbed the old man’s cane, you who smashed him over the head—”

  “That wasn’t me, that was fucking Omar!”

  The words reverberated around the room. Nadif froze. Green leaned and tapped the close-up of Rosenthal’s head. “Omar did this?”

  A convulsive swallow. “He went berserk! He smashed the guy till he went down.”

  “And what did the rest of you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The man’s head was a pulp, Nadif. A cane can’t do that.”

  “We didn’t do nothing! Maybe Yusuf landed a couple of kicks, I don’t remember. But we didn’t kill him. He didn’t—” Nadif stabbed at the close-up, his lips trembling, “he didn’t look like that.”

  “So when did you steal his stuff? Before or after you kicked his head in?”

  Nadif said nothing. His eyes were wide as he stared at the close-up.

  “Come on, you took his shoes.”

  “Omar took his watch!”

  “We found no watch in our search of his house.”

  “Then he got rid of it. But he yanked it off his wrist. The dude was batshit crazy, I tell you!”

  “But after Rosenthal was down on the ground, you took off his shoes and his rings. Stole the sleeping bag off a homeless man—”

  Nadif jerked back as if slapped. “What?”

  “He was wrapped in a sleeping bag.”

  “We didn’t do that!” The young man whipped his head back and forth. “Something’s fucked here. That picture ain’t right. He must have crawled over there, because we didn’t leave him there.”

  “But you did beat him up, steal his shoes, watch, rings, and the chain around his neck.”

  “Omar ripped that off. Called the guy a fucking Jew.” Nadif held up his hand. “I got nothing against Jews, but like I said, Omar was apeshit. Started whacking away at the guy. Freaked himself right out and took off like a cannonball after that.” Too late, Nadif froze.

  The words hung in the air. Green leaned in. “Let me get this straight. Omar took off before the rest of you did?”

  Nadif shrugged, as if it were a minor detail.

  “What was the woman doing all this time?”

  “Nothing. I think she took off. She got us into this fucking mess, and then she takes off.”

  “But you knew she was a witness. You knew she could finger you. That’s why you went to her house.”

  “Like I said, I think she ran off when the trouble started.”

  “But you had to be sure, so you went looking for her.”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Come on, Nadif, things are closing in on you. The hooker has been identified, and you knew it was a matter of time before Omar cracked. That’s why you went looking for him this morning.”

  “He’s my friend!”

  “And when he ran away, you chased him.”

  “He’s my friend,” Nadif repeated. “I just wanted to talk to him.”

  “Uh-huh. To make sure he kept his mouth shut about the hooker.”

  Nadif shrugged. He was sitting with his arms crossed, half turned from the table as if avoiding the sight of the photos laid out on it.

  “And when you couldn’t get to him, you went after her.” He laid out some preliminary photos that Ident had taken of fibres, fingerprints and blood stains in the O’Malley house, including one on the frame of the French patio door. “Forensics is going to place you at the scene, Nadif. The poor woman was killed in her own bedroom.”

  “I didn’t do that. Maybe we did beat the old guy up a bit, defending ourselves, but—” He pointed to the old man’s battered body. “I didn’t do that either.” He sat back, his eyes shut and his arms falling limp at his sides. Green recognized defeat. He leaned in.

  “If you didn’t, then save yourself. Tell me what did happen with the old man.”

  Nadif sighed. He wagged his head slowly. When he finally spoke, his voice was a monotone. “He had it coming. He was the one hassling that bitch. We just went in to help, and he turned on us. When he went down, we stole a couple of things off him, and we took off. He was alive. Moaning, even. But who was going to believe us, eh? Four black homeys up against some fancy old Jewish doctor with a cane? Who’s going to believe he’d go after a whore? I knew we didn’t kill him, but you guys were busy stacking the deck, so I figured we had to find her. See if she knew what happened. That’s why we were at her house. We went in the back way, because who’s gonna let four black dudes in if we ring the bell all polite like. We thought there was nobody home, but the dog was going ballistic, and we were afraid it might bite us. Lucky it was stuck in the bathroom. We were checking out the place—”

  “Lots of nice stuff to steal?”

  He flicked his gaze at Green but didn’t deny it. Instead he gripped the table as if to steady himself. “We were just looking around, to make sure she wasn’t asleep, like, and we opened the door and went in the bedroom. She was already there, on the floor.” He stabbed his finger on the photograph. “Just like that.”

  “Already dead?”

  He shook his head sharply. “Don’t know. Just then the doorbell rang, and one of the guys said ‘Cops’, and we knew we had to get out of there. I mean...” He opened his large, dark eyes wide and stared at Green. “Were you going to believe us? That we walked in and the lady’s already dead, and some other killer is walking around out there holding all the cards?”

  Green held his gaze for a good ten seconds. Was this a premiere performance, or the truth?

  “Who, Nadif?”

  Nadif shrugged. “If I knew, I’d be giving him to you, wrapped up in a bow.”

  “The night you beat up Rosenthal, did you see anyone else around?”

  “Just an old drunk down the street, but h
e was passed out cold.”

  “What about today, when you arrived at the O’Malley house? Did you see anyone around?”

  “We came in the back, over the fence. The place was dead.” Nadif ’s jaw twitched in a grimace. “Quiet.”

  “Any vehicles?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know, man! Maybe Omar came back to finish him off. Like I said, I saw a whole new side of him last Saturday night. Who knows what he’d do?”

  Levesque had lost much of her colour by the time they had wrapped up Nadif ’s interview and returned him to the cellblock. While Green remained at the interview table, sorting through impressions, she leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  “Do you believe him, sir?”

  Green turned the question over in his mind. Nadif was a self-serving liar, manipulator and thug. There was no reason to believe him other than a niggle of doubt in Green’s gut. If Nadif had really wanted to put police off his scent and lend substance to his lie, he would have invented a mystery third suspect—someone hanging around in the shadows while Rosenthal was being attacked, or some indefinable vehicle cruising slowly past the scene.

  But if not Nadif, then who? Green’s thoughts roamed afield to other plausible suspects. Omar, who had Nadif ’s vote, was certainly high on the list, but even Nadif had let slip that he fled before the rest of them. According to Omar’s father, he was still running when he reached home that night. Furthermore, he was so impaired that he was barely upright.

  Green returned to the few inconsistencies that had surfaced in Nadif ’s testimony. If he was to be believed, after the initial assault, someone else had taken the time to beat Rosenthal as he lay moaning and drag him into the lee of a building to conceal him from the street. That person also had the presence of mind to steal Screech’s sleeping bag and wrap the body to further delay its discovery.