Stray Bullets

by Rotenberg, Robert

  “Hi,” was all she said.

  “Long time no talk,” he said.

  “Ari, I need to see you today.”

  Raglan was married, with three kids. A year before she’d separated from her husband and soon after that started seeing Greene. She was a Crown Attorney, he was a cop, so they’d made sure to keep their affair secret. Things lasted a few months until she’d cut it off and gone back home.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Better if we talk.”

  “Let’s have a coffee,” he said. “How about the city hall cafeteria? I’m in court until four thirty. Meet me at about ten to five.”

  Lots of lawyers, cops, and judges met up in the cafeteria at the end of the day and since Raglan and Greene had done a number of cases together, meeting there would seem normal. Besides, Greene didn’t like fancy restaurants. Best to hide in plain sight.

  He arrived at quarter to five, and the place was busy. He got a tea and found a booth in the corner that would offer them a modicum of privacy.

  “Nice to see you, detective,” Raglan said a few minutes later when she walked over to him. She had hot coffee in one hand and extended the other toward him.

  He stood and shook it. She held on for a few extra seconds.

  “Nice to see you too.” He felt like an actor on the first day of rehearsal of a new play, reciting lines he didn’t have a handle on yet.

  “How’s work?” she asked as they sat across from each other.

  He pulled the special-issue beeper off his belt, the one used exclusively for emergency homicide calls, and plopped it on the Formica table. “I’m back on the top of the batting order,” he said.

  “Never ends, does it?” She blew steam off the top of her mug in his direction.

  “Keeps us both employed.” He took a sip of his tea, which had cooled down. “How’re the kids?”

  She filled him in on family matters. Her oldest son had quit hockey and was spending most of his time in his room playing bass guitar and doing God knows what else. The middle boy had been picked to be the team goalie, and the equipment cost a fortune. Her daughter wanted to go to camp again next summer. That would mean another three thousand dollars.

  “How’s your dad?” she asked.

  “Dating.” Greene’s mother had died two years earlier, after a seven-year fight with Alzheimer’s, and his eighty-six-year-old father was making the most of his remaining time. “No Jewish woman over the age of seventy-five who lives within a mile of Bathurst Street is safe.”

  She laughed. A real laugh, one that he liked a lot.

  “I’d love to meet him one day.” She stared right at him. Raglan always said her eyes were nothing special. Called them “boring brown.” He didn’t think they were boring at all.

  “He’d like you,” Greene said.

  She blushed. Neither of them spoke. She’d called the meeting, and he was a good enough detective to wait her out.

  Raglan reached out her hand, the one closest to the wall, and touched his arm. “My mother’s sick,” she said.

  He knew that her mom had been a widow for many years. She lived in the house where Raglan was born in Welland, a small town about two hours away. Raglan, like Greene, was an only child.

  He intertwined his fingers in hers. “How serious is it?”

  “Very. Throat cancer. She never smoked a day in her life.”

  “Damn. When did you find out?”

  “Four and a half weeks ago, the day after her birthday. She waited to tell me. She’s only sixty-seven.”

  He looked back at Raglan’s brown eyes. She was tough. This was the first time he’d ever seen her tear up.

  “Ari, I keep trying not to call you. Not to see you.” She tightened her grip on his fingers. “But it’s just so …”

  The beeper started to buzz. A loud, distinctive yelp. It bounced on the table like a Mexican jumping bean.

  Their fingers flew apart.

  He clapped his other hand on the beeper. Didn’t move to look down at it.

  She covered his hand with the beeper in it. “You have to answer it,” she said.

  “We have to talk,” he said back.

  The beeper was shrieking.

  “Ari.” She pushed his hand toward him.

  “I know.” He tore his eyes from her and read the urgent message in his hand.

  3

  “All available officers in Quadrant D. Sound of gunshots in the area of Elm Street and University Avenue, at or near the Tim Hortons on Elm.”

  It was a “hot shot.” An extra-loud emergency call that blasted through Officer Daniel Kennicott’s police radio, overriding everything else. It meant a major crime was in progress: drop everything and go.

  Kennicott started running full out. He unclipped the radio from his hip.

  “PC Kennicott. Badge 8064, D Post,” he shouted. “Corner of University and Armoury, heading north. About thirty seconds away.”

  “You’ll be first officer on scene,” the dispatcher said. “Be careful.”

  University Avenue was a European-style boulevard, the widest street in the downtown core. On a Monday night, the sidewalk was packed with office workers streaming to the subway. A cold wind was blowing through the city, bringing with it the first snow of the season and covering the rain-soaked sidewalks with a sleek layer of ice. He bobbed and weaved through the crowd, careful of his footing, like a halfback racing toward the goal line.

  “Child hit by bullet,” the dispatcher said. Her dispassionate voice was a strange counterpoint to the terrible news. “One suspect seen fleeing on foot. Backup and ambulance on the way.”

  Kennicott got to Elm Street and cut to his left. “Almost there,” he said.

  “Second suspect not accounted for,” the dispatcher said.

  “Ten-four.” He unhooked the top of his leather gun holster. His feet slapped against the pavement, making a loud pounding sound. He could feel his heartbeat accelerate. Despite the descending darkness, his vision seemed almost supernaturally clear. A few more strides and the doughnut shop came into view.

  In his four years on the force, he had got two other hot shots. Both had been relatively static domestic situations—a wife stabbed to death in a bathtub, a husband dead on his kitchen floor. But this was gunplay right in the middle of the city. People all around. The shooters on the loose.

  He was a good runner. It came from years of competing in marathons while he was at law school, bored to tears by the endless books. That was one of the things he liked about being a cop. The job could throw anything at you at any time. He pulled out his gun.

  Then he slipped on the ice, tumbled to the ground. Shit, he thought, yanking himself back up. Thank God I still have the safety on. He rushed down the sidewalk.

  The Tim Hortons was located on a long rectangular lot, tucked in between two tall office towers. The front half was a parking lot, which extended all the way to the back on the right-hand side. The doughnut shop was located in the back left corner, the light pouring out into the darkness from its glass-fronted windows.

  He tried to take in the scene all at once. People were rushing out, dispersing into the night. A few stood outside near the doorway, screaming at 911 on their cell phones. On the ground in front of them, a large man was bent over a young boy. Somewhere over the din he heard a siren. Then another. Please, let one of them be an ambulance.

  He stopped running and made himself walk toward the child. The wind was fierce. His gun felt hard and cold. He held it in front of him, pointed downward. His head swiveled back and forth, looking for signs of danger. The missing second suspect.

  “Sir, Toronto police,” he said when he got to the man beside the child.

  “My son is hardly breathing,” the man said.

  He holstered his gun and knelt down. “Ambulance is on the way.” He felt the side of the little boy’s neck. The pulse was faint. He searched the body for an entry wound where he could apply pressure to stanch the bleeding.

  �
��It’s his head,” the father said.

  In the light from the doughnut shop he saw a tiny red mark behind the left ear. My God, he thought.

  He listened for the sirens. Willing them to get louder. Closer.

  There was something in the child’s hand. A toy cell phone, still in its plastic wrapper.

  At last the sirens were behind him. He turned. The low revolving lights of the ambulance shrieked down Elm Street. Right behind raced two television news trucks, their huge antennae rising in the air as they pulled up.

  A crush of people had started to gather around. Reporters appeared out of nowhere and started taking pictures. Crowding in.

  He jumped up, grabbed the flashlight off his belt, and waved it at them like a madman. “Toronto police! Toronto police! Everyone out of the way!” he hollered at the top of his lungs. “Everyone out of the way!”

  It took a few more seconds for the ambulance to pull in. The whoop, whoop of its siren bounced off the office buildings on both sides of the lot, the echoing making the sound louder, more urgent. Two attendants got out. Shut their doors. Looked around. It seemed to take forever for them to start walking toward the boy. Why the hell didn’t ambulance drivers ever run? It felt like hours.

  But it was enough time for him to catch his breath and think. He was the first cop on the scene. Step one: save life. He’d done all he could on that score. Step two: capture any suspects. Nothing more he could do about that right now. Step three: preserve the evidence.

  He knew that months from now, in a staid downtown courtroom, everything he did in these first crucial seconds would be subject to microscopic examination. Critiqued down to the last detail.

  Behind him, a little boy was fighting for his life. In front, people were drifting away in all directions. Trampling on evidence. Disappearing as witnesses. He was alone, and the tide was rushing out. He started to move.

  4

  “I’ll call you when I can,” was all Ari Greene had time to say to Jennifer Raglan before he jumped out of his seat at the city hall cafeteria and headed outside into the freshly falling snow. He thought about rushing over to his car but decided it was faster on foot.

  Homicide detectives often bragged about how they always walked, never ran. But, despite the slippery sidewalks that had turned to sheer ice as the temperature dropped, he ran. Across the plaza in front of the new city hall, under the arch at the side of the high court—where this case was sure to end up—through the rush-hour traffic on University Avenue, and down Elm Street to the Tim Hortons.

  Three squad cars were there already. Two constables were stringing up police tape across the front of the parking lot. Other officers were talking to witnesses. Four television trucks had pulled up, their long antennae high in the darkening sky, like metallic giraffes looking down on the chaotic scene. Hordes of people were farther back on the street, keen for a view, talking on their cell phones.

  Greene flashed his badge at the officers with the police tape.

  “String it wider, much wider, I want an outer perimeter,” he said. “Cover the whole street and buildings on both sides. I want everyone and everything moved back. Police cruisers, TV trucks. Now.”

  “Yes, sir,” both the cops said in unison.

  Greene ducked under the tape. He’d spotted a cop he knew, Daniel Kennicott, who looked as if he was in charge.

  “Hi, detective,” Kennicott said as Greene approached him.

  “When did you get here?”

  “I was the first officer on scene,” Kennicott said. “The ambulance left about two minutes ago with his father. They’re going to Mount Sinai up the street. Mother is there, having complications with her pregnancy.”

  “The boy?”

  “I got a faint pulse. He’s four years old.”

  “You find the entry wound?”

  Kennicott pointed just behind his left ear. Didn’t say anything.

  “You get the boy’s name?” Greene asked.

  “Kyle. Kyle Wilkinson. Father’s name is Cedric. He says the family just moved up to Canada a few months ago from California. I’ve detailed all the officers here to round up every possible witness. More squad cars are on the way.”

  The snow was coming down, thick and heavy. Greene felt the cold for the first time. “Good. We’ll need to get a mobile police unit here fast so we can interview people.”

  “I ordered it. Should be here in ten.”

  “What about protection for the family at the hospital?”

  “I’ve got two officers there already. I used my cell when I called it in to the dispatcher so the press wouldn’t pick it up on the police radio.”

  “Okay. Make sure the cops there understand that no one gets in but me.”

  “Will do.”

  “What about the forensic officers?”

  Kennicott pointed back to the street, where the two cops with the tape were moving people and cars back. “Look who just arrived.”

  Greene saw a tall Asian man in jeans and running shoes, with two backpacks slung over his right shoulder, approach the tape. The man looked like a cross between a street person and a graduate student. When the cops tried to stop him, he flashed his wallet at them. One of them lifted the tape and he marched right up to Greene and Kennicott, his hand extended for a handshake.

  Officer Harry Ho was smart, thorough, and dedicated. For Greene, there was only one drawback to working with him. Ho was a nonstop talker, eager to impress everyone with the breadth of his arcane knowledge and the wryness of his dark humor.

  They’d worked together on cases for more than a decade, but Greene had never seen an expression on Ho’s face like the one he saw now. Lips pulled tight. Body stiff. All color drained from face. His quick eyes scanned everywhere.

  “Hi, Harry,” Greene said, shaking hands.

  Ho grasped his hand hard. Did the same with Kennicott. He didn’t say a word.

  In the five years Greene had been a homicide detective and the twenty he’d been a cop, he’d never worked on a child murder. His colleagues had warned him that there was nothing like it. That the cases always ripped a piece out of you. That it was one of those things in life you just had to live through. Or try to live through.

  “The ambulance just left,” he said. “Kennicott was the first officer on scene. The boy had a faint pulse.”

  Ho was staring at the ground. Examining every inch of concrete. He got down on his knees to get a closer look. “I heard,” he said.

  Some light was coming from inside the doughnut shop and the outdoor parking lot lights were on. But it wasn’t bright enough. There were still too many dark corners. “We need more lights,” Greene said.

  Ho snapped his head up. “Get everyone and everything out of here as fast as you can. I need ten, no, twenty portable klieg lights. Canopies to keep this snow out.”

  “Done.” Greene looked at Kennicott, who nodded.

  “My team is going to scour every inch of this scene on our hands and knees,” Ho said. “Every damn inch.”

  Yes, Greene thought. Every damn inch.

  5

  “… is known to police and considered armed and dangerous. The four-year-old boy was downtown with his father, walking into a Tim Hortons to get a doughnut when gunshots erupted …”

  Click.

  “Fuck that noise.”

  Nancy Parish snapped off the clock radio by her bedside and lay back on a pile of feather pillows. She turned to the other side of her queen-size bed. The empty side. This talking to herself was a habit she had to break, she thought, running a hand through her thick brown hair. She yawned. Then she smiled. Tomorrow morning she wouldn’t wake up alone. At last, after three months, there’d be a man in her bed. Not a moment too soon.

  She threw back the covers. Fresh clothes hung on the exercise bike she’d bought four years before, the day her divorce settlement came through. It now had a permanent home in the bay window, where most days she used it to dry off her bras and panties. She hadn’t pedaled the stupid t
hing for two years. On the floor beside it, a black wallet with her airplane ticket and passport was stacked atop of a pile of New Yorker magazines. Beside them was a sketch pad and a plastic pencil case, with an old color photo of Niagara Falls on the cover. She’d had it since grade six.

  Parish reached for her BlackBerry. There were nine calls from the same number starting at four in the morning. In the cab on the way to the airport she’d call her partner, Ted DiPaulo, and he’d deal with them. Thank God for Ted. It was almost impossible for a criminal lawyer to get away. The phone calls and e-mails, faxes and letters never stopped. But to hell with it, seven days on the beach in Mexico with Karl, the guy from Cleveland she met three months before in the Dominican Republic. Boy oh boy.

  Downstairs on the kitchen counter, the message button on the phone said six calls had come in overnight. She’d told her best friend, Zelda, who usually phoned about five times a day, not to call on pain of death. It must be a client.

  “Not my problem,” she said, filling the kettle with hot water from the tap. Zelda always bugged her to use cold water to make coffee, but who had the time? “I’m off duty.”

  Late last night when she’d left the office, DiPaulo had made her swear she wouldn’t answer the phone or check her voice mail. It felt great to watch that light blink, on and off, on and off, and ignore it. As a backup, they’d set up an emergency system. If DiPaulo really needed to get hold of her, he’d call her cell. It had a special ring tone—the Mexican hat dance—just for him.

  “Da da, da da, la da da, la da da. Da da da, la da da, la da da,” she sang to herself as she danced around the kitchen and yanked open the fridge. The kettle began to churn, adding a backbeat to her singing.

  “Mex … i … co, here I come.” She pranced to the front door. There was just a hint of light in the dark morning sky. The first snow of the season had blown in last night, leaving a white layer on everything except the newspaper perched on the front steps of her semidetached house. It was wrapped in a blue plastic bag. She slid it under her arm, waltzed back to the kitchen, and tossed a handful of coffee beans into the grinder.