Stranglehold

by Rotenberg, Robert

  “Don’t want to, but I might need to,” DiPaulo said.

  “Started a while ago, when she left her husband. Then she went back to him and it stopped.”

  “But then it started again,” DiPaulo said. “You better hope they find Howard and that he confesses real fast. Then they probably won’t care who she was sleeping with. When are you meeting Kennicott?”

  “After this. At five.”

  “Okay, but when you meet him you’re going to tell him everything, right?”

  Greene stood up. He was restless. “I’ve thought about it more. From everything she’s ever told me about her husband, he doesn’t sound like the type to flip out and kill her like this. And the murder scene looked too, I don’t know, staged.”

  DiPaulo took out a pad of paper and grabbed a pen, his irrepressible nervous energy returning like it was coming out of a deep freeze. “Leaving the scene is very bad. Is there any other reason you can give me for doing that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Greene said. “Somewhere along the line I realized that Howard might not be the killer. And if I told Kennicott I’d been there in that motel room, then I’d be a witness.”

  DiPaulo nodded. “And then you’d be off the case.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ari Greene,” DiPaulo said. “Always the homicide detective. Even when you are the one in the crosshairs.” He reached for the bill and waved it at Greene. “You retained me because, if you don’t tell Kennicott anything and you get charged one day, you could waive solicitor–client privilege and testify that you told me about this. That you thought there was more to this murder than met the eye, and that in fact you were being set up. So, smart detective that you are, you decided to keep your role secret until you could solve the crime yourself. That sound about right?”

  “And one other reason,” Greene said, reaching over to shake his old friend’s hand. “I needed to tell someone.”

  15

  THE COFFEE WAS HOT. IT STUNG KENNICOTT. BUT IT DIDN’T BURN HIM. HE WAS DETERMINED to keep his eyes on Howard Darnell, who looked devastated by the news he’d just heard about his wife.

  If he was the killer, he’s a great actor, was Kennicott’s first thought.

  “What happened?” Darnell sputtered. He didn’t even notice the coffee he’d sprayed all over Kennicott.

  “This morning.” Kennicott righted the overturned mug and wiped the table with a napkin.

  “She was jogging,” Darnell said. “What? A car hit her? I always worry about that. I keep telling her to wear a reflective vest.”

  The shock in Darnell’s eyes was mixing with denial. His brain not believing the news. Or was it a magnificent performance? All of Kennicott’s years of training, first as a lawyer, then as a cop, had conditioned him to be skeptical. “Never be impressed by first impressions,” Ari Greene had told him, over and over again. “Don’t let your heart overwhelm your head.”

  “Why do you think she was jogging?” Kennicott asked. He wondered if Darnell would try hide the fact of the texts he’d exchanged with his wife that morning. They clearly showed he had opportunity to kill her. And if he found out she was cheating on him, that gave him motive.

  “She’s training to run the half marathon here in October,” Darnell said. His voice sounded defeated. “Where is she? What happened?”

  “Are you sure that’s what she was doing this morning?” Kennicott was determined to hold back what he knew about the murder as long as possible, see if he could catch Darnell mentioning something that only the killer would know.

  Darnell put his hand down to his side and Kennicott heard something go click. He wasn’t sure what it was until Darnell’s hand emerged with a cell phone in it. He’d obviously unhooked it from his belt. Was he a nerdy mathematician who wore his phone on a clip, or a cold-blooded murderer?

  He tossed the phone on the table. “Jennie and I talked. Well, I mean we texted this morning. I was hoping to have a cup of coffee with her. Here, take a look. Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”

  Kennicott took the phone in his hand, pretending he was surprised that there were relevant texts to read.

  Darnell pointed to the screen. “Touch the text-message icon.”

  Kennicott read the texts, acting as if he hadn’t seen them before.

  Darnell put his head in his hands. “That was the whole thing,” he said. “I was fired in July and didn’t have the nerve to tell her. Jennie’s mom died in February and our oldest son is having problems and . . . ” He started to cry.

  Kennicott froze. Don’t say anything, he told himself. Watch.

  Darnell lifted his eyes. “She thought I had a weekly meeting in Boston. This morning I was finally going to tell her.”

  Kennicott looked hard at the man in front of him.

  Darnell looked bereft. His reactions seemed normal. Shock. Disbelief. He hadn’t lied about his fake job or tried to hide his texts with his wife.

  Suddenly Darnell inhaled deeply. For a moment Kennicott thought he was going to faint. His eyes expanded in fear. “The kids,” he said, almost shouting. “Do they know?” He was hyperventilating.

  “No.” Kennicott softened his grip. “Not yet.”

  “Oh God.” Darnell nodded slowly. Then shook his head. His breathing was still laboured. “I don’t understand. What happened?”

  Kennicott pulled his arm back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She didn’t die while she was running. She was murdered.”

  “Murdered? Jennie?”

  Kennicott could only nod.

  “But . . . ” He stabbed at his phone. “She texted me . . . ” He started to cry. “Who did this?”

  Kennicott shrugged. “We don’t know yet.”

  If Darnell didn’t know that his wife was having an affair, then he had no motive to kill her. Kennicott could tell it hadn’t occurred to him yet that he was a suspect.

  Darnell rubbed his fingers through his hair. “Jennie’s a tough Crown,” he said. “She puts a lot of people in jail.”

  He’s still speaking of his wife in the present tense, Kennicott thought. Her killer might inadvertently speak of her in the past.

  “Last week that asshole Wainwright threatened her in court,” Darnell said. “I told her she should get police protection. She laughed it off.”

  It was a logical connection for the spouse of a Crown attorney to make. A top prosecutor such as Raglan would have sent many nasty criminals away for a long time. Or maybe, Kennicott thought, Wainwright’s threat to his wife was a perfect cover for Darnell to commit this murder. And he’d heard that Wainwright didn’t show up in court today. Nobody knew where he was. Had this meek-looking man sitting across from him killed Wainwright too?

  “If you didn’t go to Boston, what did you do today?” Kennicott asked. This was the crucial question. If Darnell gave Kennicott a false alibi, he’d be suspect number one.

  “What I’ve done every Monday since I lost my job. I left the house at eight pretending to be on my way to the island airport to catch the Porter flight to Boston. I took the 501 streetcar downtown. Today I got on the Yonge subway south, rode it around to Eglinton West. I’ve got a Metropass, and every day I go somewhere different.”

  There were cameras in every subway station and every subway car, Kennicott thought. This would be easy to check. “Then what did you do?”

  “I’d never been to that part of the city before. I walked all the way over to Rogers Road. People were so friendly.”

  “Did you stop anywhere?”

  He looked at Kennicott and almost smiled. “There’s a patty shop, I don’t remember the name, on the south side. I was the only white person there, that’s for sure. This woman who served me kept calling me ‘dear.’ I ordered a vegetable patty and she said I should try the beef ones too. I told her it was too early to eat meat, but she insisted. It was spicy, but delicious.”

  “What did you do next?” Kennicott was amazed at how calm Darnell had become. As if he were in a trance.


  “I took the bus south to St. Clair and that new dedicated streetcar line back to Yonge. There’s a quiet library there, and I read the Economist for about an hour.” He looked squarely at Kennicott for the first time. “I didn’t kill my wife, Detective, I loved her. Please tell me what happened.”

  The transition had been swift. Somewhere in the telling of his activities during day, the penny had dropped and Darnell realized he was being questioned. The man was no fool. He knew Kennicott would check out his story, and with so much detail it was almost certainly true. He had a solid alibi.

  But that didn’t confirm his innocence. Perhaps the exact opposite.

  Was the Howard Darnell sitting in front of him the slightly nerdy husband and good father he appeared to be? Or was he an angry, failed actuary? A man lost in his life who had crafted a conspicuous alibi while he had a surrogate murder his wife?

  Everything Darnell said or did could be interpreted either way.

  “I understand you and Jennie were separated for a while a year or two ago,” Kennicott said.

  “She left me. It was really hard on the kids, especially our oldest son, Aaron. Then she came back. We’re both from a small town. Welland. We met in high school.”

  If Darnell was innocent, then Kennicott was about to give him the second piece of very bad news. If he was guilty, it wouldn’t be news to him at all. “From what little we know,” Kennicott said, “it appears she was having an affair.”

  Darnell closed his eyes. “What does it matter?” he said. “Don’t you understand I love her? Please, tell me what happened. Take me to see my children.”

  Kennicott was fighting hard to remain skeptical, but right now his brain and his heart were screaming: This man is innocent.

  He put his hand back on Darnell’s shoulder. Softly this time. “Of course,” he said.

  16

  IN HIGH SCHOOL, ARI GREENE HAD BEEN A BETTER-THAN-AVERAGE BASKETBALL PLAYER. NOT the best shooter, but he’d been good at passing. Because he was big for his age and strong and determined, he could always make space for himself at the top of the key, or under the net, and dish the ball off. His favourite target was Brian Silver, a beanpole-tall redhead with unnaturally long arms and a nose for the basket.

  They became fast friends. The Silvers owned a bakery downtown that had been in the family for three generations, and on weekends the two of them would work the Sunday-morning shift, starting at five. They’d end at noon and gorge themselves on dim sum at one of the nearby Chinese restaurants on Baldwin Street.

  After high school, Silver spent a few unenthusiastic years at university before he started working full-time at the bakery. Within a decade he and his younger brother, Abe, were running the place. Years of working from before sunrise until late in the evening had thinned his still-red hair and bulked out his once-thin frame but had not taken anything away from his rough sense of humour. It was on full display when he and Greene greeted Daniel Kennicott at the bottom of the concrete steps inside the bakery just after five o’clock.

  “You ever play trivia with this guy?” he asked Kennicott after introductions were made.

  “No, I haven’t,” Kennicott said.

  “Don’t,” Silver said as he led them past rows of steel trays piled high with loaves ready to ship. “Mr. Smarty Brain. You know he used to always carry a book with him in his gym bag. One time we’re playing Mackenzie, and they’re killing us. Coach looks at the end of the bench, and there’s Ari reading Catch-22.”

  Silver had a deep laugh, and he cackled to himself as he walked them into the main baking room. Loaves, fresh out of the oven, descended on a circular, two-story-high wire drying rack that made a staccato, rattling sound. The floor shook, the way it had shaken so many years ago when Greene first walked into the place.

  “Watch this,” Silver said to Kennicott, before he turned to Greene. “Last month we got this new driver, an old Somali history professor from Mogadishu, or something. He’s doing the run down on College, and my customers are so happy because Mohammed talks to them in their own language. Guess which language?”

  “Italian,” Greene said. “Somalia used to be an Italian colony.”

  Silver raised his eyebrows at Kennicott. “See.”

  He led them up a narrow staircase, his laugher echoing off the thin walls. His office was a small, windowless room. An ancient wood desk took up most of the space, its surface cluttered with purchase orders, a stack of six-cup coffee holders, two huge balls of elastic bands, and an unsteady-looking column of Sports Illustrated magazines. A faded photo of Cheryl Tiegs in a fishnet bathing suit was taped to the wall above it. There was one chair, and both its arms were broken.

  “Welcome to the executive suite. Only the best for Metro’s finest.” Silver looked at Kennicott. “Did you know Somalis spoke Italian?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Kennicott said.

  “No white person in Toronto did, except this guy.” He smacked Greene on the chest. “Stay as long as you like, gents.” He closed the door behind him on his way out.

  “This factory is like a little Ellis Island.” Greene put his back against the wall when they were alone. The rat-tat-tat of the drying rack downstairs could still be heard coming through the floor. “The Silver family has employed people from every immigrant group you can imagine as they come to the city.”

  Kennicott looked tired, the way homicide detectives always look after the first long day of a murder investigation.

  Greene had gone back to the homicide bureau after he’d met with DiPaulo, and the receptionist, Francine Hughes, had filled him in on Kennicott’s meeting with Howard Darnell and the man’s intricate alibi. Greene couldn’t wait to learn more.

  “I appreciate you meeting me like this,” Kennicott said. He leaned against the desk.

  “You wanted a private place,” Greene said, sweeping his arms in front of him. “Can’t do any better than this.”

  “It’s perfect,” Kennicott said. “Look, I know what you wanted to tell me this morning.”

  “You do?” So he does know about Jennifer and me, Greene thought. Probably knows I was in the motel room this morning too. Greene was relieved. It saved him from having to break the news.

  “This isn’t just any old murder, and I knew you’d want to be involved,” Kennicott said. “Let me update you right away. I’m sure you think the husband is the obvious suspect.”

  “Oh,” Greene said, thinking his voice sounded foolish. He realized Kennicott had no idea about him and Jennifer.

  “His name is Howard Darnell. You heard I found him this afternoon. He walked into the local coffee shop down the street from their house. He didn’t have a mark on him. And he has a perfect alibi. Turns out he was fired a couple of months ago and hadn’t told his wife, so he was pretending to go to work every day. We’ve got him on TTC cameras over on the west side of the city all morning. He couldn’t possibly have killed her. When I told him the news, I thought he was in genuine shock. And once that wore off, all he worried about was the safety of his kids.”

  “Okay,” Greene said. “But –”

  “I know,” Kennicott said. “You’re always saying, don’t be too impressed by first impressions, but I have to tell you I can’t see it with this guy. Even when I told him it looked like Jennifer was having an affair with someone, he didn’t flinch.”

  Greene swallowed hard. “What did he say about that?”

  “He said it didn’t matter. That they’d been married for a long time and that the only thing that mattered was that he loved her. He kept talking about her in the present tense. Does that sound like a guy who strangled his wife?”

  Greene’s head was spinning. Kennicott hadn’t connected him with Raglan, and if her husband hadn’t killed her, then who had? Who was outside the door of the motel? Who had he been chasing? Who called 911?

  “I expect you’re going to say, ‘What do we do if his alibi checks out?’ ” Kennicott said. “He could have hired someone to do the hit.”
r />   Greene nodded, still trying to take this all in.

  “That’s what Alpine said. He’s the division detective.”

  “Alpine’s a good cop,” Greene said, finally finding his voice.

  “I’m not saying Darnell isn’t still a suspect. I’ve got him under twenty-four-hour surveillance, and we got in and miked his house. But I’ve got no grounds to arrest him. She was strangled. Not the kind of thing a hired gun would do. Too close. Too intimate.”

  Greene nodded. Kennicott was right. Every cop knew it was hard to strangle someone to death. You had to look them right in the eye. If Howard had hired a killer, you’d expect her to have been stabbed or shot. Choking homicides were textbook murders motivated by jealousy or anger. Personal rage.

  “What other suspects do you have?” Greene asked.

  Kennicott shrugged. “Some of the bad apples she prosecuted perhaps. We’re checking up on all her major cases for the last five years. Looks like most of them are still in jail.”

  “Who else? I read in the papers last week that Wainwright, the movie guy, threatened her outside of court,” Greene said. He and Jennifer had talked all about it last Monday morning. Courtroom pillow talk, she’d called it. She’d been smoking mad. Guy was an asshole, but would he go so far as murdering a Crown attorney?”

  “Wainwright didn’t show up in court today,” Kennicott said. “Judge Norville issued a bench warrant this afternoon and we’re looking for him everywhere.”

  Greene thought of seeing Raglan, neatly tucked into her bed. Her bruised neck evidence of an angry, intimate killing. But the candle left burning by her bed? Was it supposed to look like a movie set? It seemed a stretch.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’ve been looking into Raglan’s family and background. Her oldest son, Aaron Darnell, just turned nineteen and he’s still in high school. Kid’s got a bad record. He’s been in and out of trouble since he was thirteen. I checked with the cops at 55 Division. Apparently Aaron Darnell is a bit of a legend there. They said that he looks like a fourteen-year-old choirboy but don’t be fooled. Lately he’s got into some very serious stuff.”