Stranglehold

by Rotenberg, Robert

  “They’re not going to be too impressed that she was having this sleazy affair with Greene behind her husband’s back.”

  “No, they’re not,” Kreitinger said. She smacked the marker into her palm again. “Here’s an even tougher question. What will they think of Greene?”

  “That he was a cold-blooded killer, I hope.”

  “Don’t hope. Answer the question. What are they going to think of accused murderer, homicide detective Ari Greene?” She pointed the marker at the new number three on the chart: What proof do we have of Greene’s motive? “Especially if his father testifies, or Greene himself takes the stand, and tells the jury Raglan was already dead when he got to room 8 in the Maple Leaf Motel, and that he didn’t tell anyone right away because he was in shock and grief. And most of all, that he loved Jennifer so damn much that he was willing to risk everything to find the real killer.”

  Summers slapped the table. “Come on. You don’t think the jury will believe that fairy tale, do you?”

  She sounded defensive. Angry. This was good, Kreitinger thought. She was showing some emotion.

  “I don’t know what the jury will believe,” she said. “That’s the whole point. We have to be sure there is absolutely no doubt in their mind that all of us on the prosecution team are one hundred percent convinced Ari Greene is the killer.”

  “But we are convinced,” Summers protested. “Totally.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Kreitinger asked.

  “You and me, of course.”

  “Exactly.” Kreitinger uncapped the marker and wrote “1” beside Daniel Kennicott. She capped the marker and tossed it into the holding tray. “He’s the officer in charge of this case. You saw him at the bail hearing. We both know he’s not sure that Greene is guilty. And trust me, one thing I know about juries. They can smell doubt a million miles away.”

  Summers’s eyes widened. “I know. It was obvious.”

  Kreitinger opened the top box on her cart and passed some stapled papers over to Summers.

  “What’s this?” Summers asked.

  “Yesterday, Kennicott did some more investigating. Remember Hilda Reynolds?”

  “The prostitute at the motel who wouldn’t talk.”

  “Very good. Kennicott interviewed her. It’s a bunch of crap about cops and hookers. These people are all the same. I’m sure she read about all this stuff in the papers, and I’ll bet she smelled a great lawsuit. I’ve already couriered a copy over to the defence counsel.”

  Summers was reading fast. “She says a van drove into the courtyard.”

  Kreitinger threw up her hands in frustration. “Exactly my point. It’s a total red herring and gift from heaven for the other side. I’m sure DiPaulo is salivating reading this nonsense and dreaming up alternative-suspect theories.”

  “What’s this going to do to our case?” Summers asked.

  “Confuse the hell out of it if we’re not careful. We have to think this through. No way I’m putting this hooker on the stand. And now I can’t put Kennicott up there either.”

  “But if you don’t call Daniel as a witness, how do we get in the evidence of how Greene misled him?”

  He’s still “Daniel” to you, Kreitinger thought.

  “It’s what I said at the very beginning. We need to get Greene into the box. If I call Kennicott, on cross-examination the defence will get all this crap about there being a mysterious van that went into the courtyard and claim there’s another suspect running around out there that we somehow missed. This kind of smoke screen could fuck up our whole case.”

  She underlined the word “Kennicott” in red. “I’m telling you,” she said. “Our own OIC is our number one problem.”

  “Shit,” Summers said, throwing the papers on the table. “You’re right.”

  60

  “WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO YOUR FATHER’S SANKA,” LINDSMORE SAID TO GREENE AS HE walked up to the front door of Greene’s father’s house, “I went to Timmies and bought my own double-double.”

  Lindsmore was in uniform. A thin briefcase, with Toronto Police Service stencilled on the side, was tucked under one of his thick arms. In his other hand he held a large cup of coffee and a Tim Hortons paper bag. Greene knew the bag would contain at least one doughnut.

  “My dad won’t mind. No one has drunk his coffee since my mother died. Even his new girlfriends can’t stand it,” Greene said, giving the screen door an extra shove to get it open.

  “Besides,” Lindsmore said, “it’s Roll Up The Rim.”

  Roll Up The Rim was a hugely popular contest run by the ubiquitous coffee-and-doughnut-shop chain, in which potential prizes could be found under the rims on their decorated paper cups.

  “Maybe you won a car,” Greene said.

  “No, that would be my ex-wife,” Lindsmore said. “With my luck, I’d be happy with a free coffee.”

  “My father’s still asleep,” Greene said. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  The basement had hardly changed since he was a teenager. In one corner an old sofa and two chairs faced a television. In the middle of the room a large table was stacked with boxes. Greene’s father had taken a keen interest in the still-unsolved murder of Daniel Kennicott’s brother, and Ari had made him a copy of everything in the file. Usually the table was strewn with open papers, but over the weekend Greene had made his father clean it up.

  In the far corner was a plastic bridge table flanked by two stacking chairs. On top sat a tabletop hockey game, which had been in this same spot since Greene got it as a Chanukah present when he was eleven years old.

  Lindsmore sat at the big table, took his paper coffee cup, pulled off the plastic lid, took a sip, and bit into the lip of the cup with his bottom teeth. He took a second sip and rolled up the edge of the rim higher with his thick thumbs.

  “ ‘Sorry, try again,’ ” he said, reading the contest message underneath. He laughed. “Story of my life.”

  Greene laughed too. “At least you’re persistent.”

  Lindsmore put his briefcase on the table.

  Greene looked it. “You find anything?” he asked.

  “We have a lot to talk about.”

  The previous Friday, when Lindsmore had come over to the house for the first time and offered his assistance, Greene had been wary. “Why did Kennicott send you?” he’d asked when they’d sat down in the living room.

  “I think young Daniel is torn, so I’m his insurance policy,” Lindsmore had said. “He figures if you and me come up with the killer, he’s done his job. And if we can’t, he’ll see you in court.”

  Lindsmore opened the paper bag. “First things first. Honey glazed or maple?” He brought out two doughnuts and napkins.

  “Honey glazed,” Greene said.

  “Good,” Lindsmore said. “Me, I like maple.”

  Greene broke his doughnut down the middle and ate half. The other half he left on the napkin.

  Lindsmore was a slow eater. After a final bite and a last sip of his coffee, he unzipped his briefcase and brought out some papers.

  “I looked up Raglan’s son on CPIC like you asked me to.” Lindsmore shook his head as he passed a copy of the same papers to Greene. “And did some asking around. Kid’s a piece of work.”

  It was a three-page printout of Aaron Darnell’s criminal record.

  “Starts when he’s fifteen years old, for God’s sake,” Lindsmore said. “Graffiti. He’s charged three times in eighteen months.”

  Greene was scanning through the pages with a practised eye. This must have driven Jennifer crazy, he thought. “Look at these fines he’s paying. Two thousand dollars’ restitution. Four thousand, then this last one, eight. A ton of money.”

  “Kept him out of jail,” Lindsmore said.

  “Seems like a lot for some spray painting.”

  Lindsmore snorted. “You’ve been in Homicide too long. Charlton is right about this graffiti problem. That’s why it’s working in his election campaign. You don’t see it so much downtow
n, but in the suburbs, whew. Last few years it has gotten totally out of hand. It’s not only defacing garage doors or the bottoms of bridges and tunnels, but the whole sides of privately owned buildings.”

  “Aaron 8,” Greene said.

  “What?”

  “I heard that was his tag. His signature.”

  Lindsmore gave him a sideways look. “That’s right. What else do you know about this kid?”

  “He was into drugs, pretty big-time.”

  “Turn over the page, you’ll see all the drug stuff. Probably where he got the money to pay for the fines. I talked to some of the cops in 43 Division. They said he looks about fourteen. Rides around everywhere on a bike he built himself. Real smart. Parents kept putting him in gifted classes, then private schools, and he kept getting booted out.”

  “And now?”

  “They say he’s disappeared. No one knows where he is,” Lindsmore said. “You going to eat the other half of that doughnut?”

  “It’s all yours.”

  Lindsmore didn’t hesitate to grab it.

  “Cops said Aaron was always very polite. Never let on that his mother was a Crown. But he was a big-time dealer. Trouble was, he wasn’t keeping up with his payments to his main supplier. Some bad actor from Scarborough.”

  “Not good.”

  “Gets worse. The week before Jennifer was murdered, someone took a shot at him. Missed. Must’ve been just a warning. People saw the shooter run, a witness put Aaron as the target, but he clammed right up, of course. Serious shit. Cops told me that any day now they’re expecting to find his body in a Dumpster.”

  Greene could see it. Aaron, the brilliant, out-of-control older son. He understood why Jennifer and Howard were desperate to get him out of the country and into rehab.

  I had to save my son.

  “Why do I have this feeling, Ari, that you know where this kid is?”

  Greene smiled. “He’s down in the American Southwest, in one of those remote rehab places in the middle of nowhere.”

  “At least he’s alive,” Lindsmore said. “I found your street guy in the clown suit.”

  This had been the second thing Greene had asked Lindsmore to do. “Fraser Dent?”

  Lindsmore nodded.

  “What did he say?”

  “That’s he’s got something for you.”

  “What?” Greene asked, a little too quickly.

  “He wouldn’t tell me what. He wants to see you in person.” Lindsmore looked Greene straight in the eye. “Ari, he can’t come here.”

  “Of course not. When does he want to meet me?”

  “He said midnight tonight.” Lindsmore stood up. “Look, I can’t know anything about this.”

  “Understood.” Greene stood up with him.

  “You screw up your bail, you’re totally fucked.”

  “I know,” Greene said.

  Lindsmore reached out and shook Greene’s hand. “He said meet him at midnight in the usual spot across from Popeye’s. But, Ari, be fucking careful.”

  61

  DANIEL KENNICOTT WALKED DOWN THE ALLEY SOUTH FROM KING STREET WEST, LOOKING for the place where Jo Summers had told him to meet her to talk about the case. The sides of the buildings on both sides were covered with graffiti art, much of it very beautiful. He was almost at Wellington Street when he saw the sandwich-board sign for Spin Toronto. Descending into the basement, he walked up to the steel reception desk.

  “Hi there,” said a young woman wearing a Spin Toronto T-shirt that featured a pair of crossed Ping-Pong racquets. “You here to play?”

  “Yes.” He looked beyond her and saw a huge room filled with Ping-Pong tables and players volleying back and forth. “I’m here to see a friend, Jo Summers.”

  “Oh, Jo,” the woman said. “She mentioned someone was coming. She reserved a private table in the Beijing Room. Turn left and keep going past the bar, you can’t miss it.

  Although it was in a basement, the place was high ceilinged and well lit. Music boomed from every corner, punctuated by the pop, pop, pop of Ping-Pong balls being hit back and forth across the tables.

  A young man with big circle earrings in his earlobes, also wearing a Spin Toronto T-shirt, was skirting around with a large net, scooping up balls from the floor and depositing them into baskets by the players’ sides.

  Ping-Pong heaven, Kennicott thought. He’d grown up playing with his brother, Michael, in the basement of their summer cottage, where they spent at least half the time retrieving errant balls.

  At the doorway of the Beijing Room he stopped. Summers’s back was to him. Her long hair was tied up in her usual wooden clip. She held the racquet with the handle between her thumb and forefinger, the way they did in China and was volleying with a rail-thin young Asian woman who was focused on the ball. They grunted as they played, trading slam for slam.

  At last Summers put away a soft spin shot. Her opponent smiled. They both bowed and said some words in Chinese.

  Kennicott remembered that Summers had told him she spoke fluent Chinese. Her father, a successful lawyer before he became judge, had insisted she and her brother grow up downtown, and she’d been the only non-Chinese girl in her kindergarten class.

  Her opponent spotted Kennicott at the door and nodded toward him. Summers turned.

  “Oh, hi, Daniel. You’re a bit early. Lin and I are finishing up.”

  “Don’t let me interfere.”

  “It’s okay,” Lin said. She spoke without a trace of an accent. She gave him her racquet on the way out the door. “Jo’s dished out enough punishment for me today. I haven’t beaten her since grade five. Good luck.”

  “Looks like you’re a regular here,” Kennicott said. He went to the other side of the table, took a ball, and hit it over the net.

  “I come to blow off stream. You play?” She hit him a low ball back.

  “Not since my brother and I were kids.” He returned it, but he knew it was way too high. He took a step back, expecting a slam.

  “It will come back to you.” She undercut the ball softly and it barely made it over the net, the spin turning it hard to his left.

  “We’ll see.” He lunged and just got his racquet under the ball, sending it even higher.

  Instead of slamming it, she tapped it sideways. It hit and bounced off the far edge of the table.

  He looked up from his compromised position. “Your point,” he said.

  She laughed, then hit him another ball. “Let’s rally to warm you up,” she said.

  “Fine by me,” he said, hitting the ball back into the middle of her side. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

  “You,” she said.

  “Me?” They were up to six rallies.

  “You and Greene.”

  They were up to ten rallies, the ball flying faster and faster.

  “What about me and Greene?”

  “He’s playing you,” she said. “Don’t you see it?”

  “Give me a break.” He hit the ball as hard as he could.

  “No, you give me a break.” She returned it with a backhand slam. “You looked like you were part of the defence team when you testified at the bail hearing.”

  He got to the ball at the last possible moment and hit it high up in the air again.

  This time she showed no mercy and hit a vicious forehand slam that he had no chance of returning.

  He threw his racquet on the table.

  “You made your point, so to speak,” he said. “You happy?”

  “No.” She aimed her racquet at him. “I think you should get off the case.”

  “What?”

  “How can you be part of the prosecution if you have doubts that Greene is guilty?”

  Kennicott heard a pop as he came around the table. He looked down. “Fuck,” he said. He’d stepped on a ball. He kicked it under the table. “Who the hell do you think you are? You just got on this case. I’m the one who figured this out and made the arrest.”

  “Well, whoopee. Y
ou take the stand and a jury is going to see in a second that you are all tangled up about this. I know he was your mentor, Daniel, but he strangled Jennifer to death. He broke up her family. He lied to you too. Don’t you see it?”

  “What I see is that we have a strong case. In my world, I let the jury decide on guilt or innocence.”

  “Strong? Well then, why are you deliberately trying to weaken it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The hooker you interviewed. Of course she’s going to say that some cop was her trick when this happened. How convenient for her. Next thing you know, her lawyer will be signing up with Carmichael and all those other defence lawyers whining about police brutality.” She raised her voice. “You watch. Any day now she’ll be on the front page of the Star with her half-a-million-dollar lawsuit.”

  “I’m a cop, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he growled. “I investigate. Collect evidence. That’s my job.”

  “No.” Her white skin was turning red with anger. “You still think you’re a lawyer. And all you’re doing is muddying the waters.”

  He felt his face flush. Suddenly the room was too hot. He started to walk past her to the door.

  “Where you going?” She moved in front of him and shut the door.

  “Back to the office to get some work done. Move out of the way,” he said.

  “We need to talk things out.”

  “There’s nothing else to say.”

  “Greene’s a cold-blooded killer,” she said. “He strangled Jennifer with his hands.”

  “Oh, really. How can you be so convinced?”

  “I can see it in his eyes.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulder and made her look at him. “Jo, I can’t believe you just said that. What’s happened to you? Two days working with Angela Kreitinger and you’ve become Attila the Prosecutor.”

  She jutted out her jaw. “Get your hands off me,” she hissed.

  He released her. They glared at each other. “What’s really going on here?” he asked. “Is this somehow about us?”

  “Us?” she exclaimed. “Us? There’s no fucking ‘us,’ unless you include your international model girlfriend.”

  A torrent of anger rolled through him. He felt blood surge through to his fingertips. “How about all the unmarried lawyers in your old Bay Street law firm you’re dating.”