Stranglehold

by Rotenberg, Robert

  “Two years ago, Jennifer even left the marriage. She moved out on her own for a few months. These things happen, we all know that. But then Jennie, as Howard and all her high-school friends called her, went back home.”

  She intentionally referred to Darnell and Raglan by their first names. Plain small-town folks. A good marriage, with a few little rocky parts. All destroyed by this murder.

  Back at the lectern, she flipped the page in her binder. She’d typed out this part in a large font size to make it easy to read.

  It was crucial that the jury believe one hundred percent that Greene had been present at the scene of the crime. She still hadn’t decided whether to put his father on the witness stand to prove this. Probably not. She’d subpoenaed him, and he was sitting in a waiting room outside.

  In case she didn’t call him, and in case Greene never testified, she needed the jury to fill in the blanks.

  “For six weeks in August and September, Jennifer lied to Howard,” she said, half reading, half talking to the jury. “She had become interested in long-distance running, and for six consecutive Monday mornings she’d told him she was going for a training run. She’d told her colleagues that she couldn’t come in those mornings as well. But it was a lie. Instead, she would jog from her home in the Beach, and go to a different motel room along Kingston Road. She wore a disguise when she arrived. Paid cash. Brought with her music to play and candles to burn.”

  All of these were facts Kreitinger was going to prove by calling the motel owners as witnesses, playing the video from the Coffee Time, showing the photos of the motel room. Here is where it got tricky.

  “On those same six Monday mornings, the accused, who for years came to work bright and early every day, didn’t show up until one o’clock in the afternoon.”

  To prove this she had Francine Hughes and the meticulous attendance records she kept for the homicide squad.

  “Monday, September tenth, was the last day that the two of them were going to meet this way. Why? Because she was scheduled to start a three-month fraud trial on the next Monday, right in this courthouse.”

  A few jurors sneaked looks again at Greene, then snapped their eyes back to her. The arts administrator didn’t bother. She was listening to every word.

  “Her six-week tryst was about to finish. Some men could have understood that. Why a married woman with three children would end things. But not the accused. Because on that Monday morning, less than three months ago, he murdered her.”

  Although in law, the Crown was not required to prove motive, Kreitinger had learned from years of prosecuting people that for juries, motive was everything. It was important that they understand the how and the when and where of a serious crime. But, to get them to convict, you had to convince them of the why.

  She flipped a page over in her binder, making a loud snapping sound, telegraphing to the jury that she was going to say no more on the subject. That she didn’t have to. That they got the message.

  “Sadly, as part of this prosecution, I’m going to be forced to show you some very disturbing photographs.” She wasn’t using her notes anymore. And she had chosen the word “sadly” very deliberately to make it sound as if it were all Greene’s fault they were even having a trial. A real man would take his licks and plead guilty, wouldn’t he?

  “You will see that Jennifer was killed in a most vicious and angry way. Not by a gun at some distance. Not by a knife that did the dirty work. She was strangled to death. Her killer had his hands on her throat. Stared into her eyes. Squeezed the life out of her. It’s terrible to even say these words. Never mind contemplate the act. The pain. The sheer horror. But yes, that’s what the accused did. He strangled her. First-degree murder.”

  At last she turned toward Greene and glared at him. Some Crowns liked to point at an accused, but it wasn’t necessary.

  Greene was experienced enough to know not to look away. He took a deep breath, then broke eye contact and looked straight ahead.

  She spun back to the jury. “He killed Jennifer with his own hands, before she had the chance to go back home to her family.”

  The last line had only come to her this morning on her third cup of coffee. As soon as she heard it in her head, she knew it was a zinger. The stunning silence in court told her she’d hit her mark.

  Bull’s-eye.

  64

  GREENE FELT A GENTLE TAP ON HIS THIGH. HE LOOKED DOWN. IT TOOK HIM A MOMENT TO realize that DiPaulo was passing him a note.

  He bought it up to the table on the side farthest from the jury and read it.

  DiPaulo had written: Great fucking opening.

  Well, that sure makes me feel better, Greene thought. He picked up his pen and wrote, But what do you really think? and passed it back.

  DiPaulo glanced down at it and smirked.

  Greene took the note back and wrote: I thought she’d make a big deal about how I “deceived” Kennicott.

  DiPaulo shook his head and wrote quickly. She’s afraid to call Kennicott because then I’ll cross-examine him on the new alternative-suspect evidence of the prostitute. She’s betting I’ll put you on the stand, then she can hammer you on cross.

  Greene folded the paper over and steadied his hands on the table. He felt something touch his left fingers. Nancy Parish’s skin was soft. She mouthed the words: Hang in.

  Judge Norville smiled at Kreitinger. “Thank you, Madam Crown.” She looked at the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, the defence has the option of making an opening address to you now, or later in the proceedings, or even, if it chooses, not at all. Mr. Greene’s lawyer, Mr. DiPaulo, has informed me that he will not make an opening statement at this time.”

  Last night, when they were doing their final preparations for today, Greene and DiPaulo had spent a lot of time debating this. With so much up in the air with witnesses, they’d agreed it was best to wait. It kept their options open, which could be crucial later in the trial. But the price they paid for their silence was that initially the jury would hear only the worst version of everything.

  Norville turned back to Kreitinger. “Madam Crown, your first witness, please.”

  This is it, Greene thought.

  For the last week, Kreitinger and DiPaulo had been playing a cat-and-mouse game about which witnesses would testify. She had provided him with a long list of names, but refused to say which ones she would call or in what order.

  “Kreitinger is playing hardball,” DiPaulo had explained to Greene. “Unless I tell her whether or not you are going to testify, she’s going to keep us in the dark about who she’s going to call and when.”

  “What did you tell her?” Greene had asked.

  “No deal.”

  Greene watched Kreitinger bend down and talk to Jo Summers, her junior lawyer on the case. They both nodded. She straightened back up.

  “The Crown calls as its first witness,” she said, “Officer Brygida Zeilinski.”

  Parish squeezed Greene’s hand.

  DiPaulo looked at him. “Be warned,” he whispered, “when the jury sees those photographs, they are going to hate you.”

  65

  THERE WERE THREE SEATS AT THE CROWN’S TABLE. AS THE LEAD COUNSEL, KREITINGER SAT closest to the jury. Jo Summers was in the middle, and Daniel Kennicott was farthest away from the jurors and closest to the defence.

  Since their fight at the Ping-Pong place in September, Kennicott and Summers had been cold and clinical with each other. They made a point of never being alone. When they worked together, they talked only about the case. She avoided making eye contact with him.

  He had tried to convince himself that he was too busy to care because as the officer in charge of the case he had a full plate. The OIC had to make certain the witnesses were in court, to arrange all the exhibits in order, to have at his fingertips any statements, reports, or other pieces of evidence the Crown attorneys might need, and to ensure that the defence was given copies of everything.

  What was even tougher was having
to sit in court and watch the proceedings unfold. He kept going over and over in his mind every detail of the case. He was still trying to sort out his feelings of betrayal by Greene, and then there was the aching question he couldn’t answer: Was Greene guilty or innocent?

  The ident officer, Zeilinski, walked up to the witness stand, carrying a large briefcase. She perched it on the wood railing by her side as she was sworn in. Then she reached in, removed a pair of reading glasses on a chain that she strung around her neck, a green police notebook, and a thick white binder. She placed the glasses on her nose, put the briefcase on the floor, and smiled at Kreitinger.

  “Yes, am ready now,” she said in her charming Polish accent.

  She was like an experienced civil servant taking her place at her desk and setting up for a day’s work, Kennicott thought. He glanced at the jurors and saw a few of them were smiling at her.

  Kreitinger moved back to the lectern while Zeilinski was sworn as a witness.

  “Officer Zeilinski,” Kreitinger said, “you have been a member of the Toronto Police Service for twenty-one years and a forensic officer for the last seven. Correct?”

  “Yes, is correct,” Zeilinski said.

  Kreitinger looked down at her notes, and Kennicott saw Zeilinski glance over at Greene and smile. A few of the jurors also noticed.

  “To begin,” Kreitinger said, looking up, “you know the accused.”

  “Yes. Of course. Detective Greene. Many, many years. We do many, many cases together.”

  “But the accused didn’t work on this case with you.”

  “On this case, no.”

  “And did the fact that you knew the accused, that you had worked with him, did that in any way affect your investigation?”

  “No. I treat Detective Greene case like every other one.”

  Zeilinski’s binder was filled with photographs from the crime scene. All morning Kreitinger had her patiently explain each picture, passing them one at a time to the jurors, then to the defence, who had a binder of the same photos open on their table, and finally to Mr. Singh, who marked each one as an exhibit before he passed them to the judge.

  Kennicott knew that the most effective thing he could do during the trial was to keep his head down and make meticulous notes. The jury would see the OIC hard at work and dispassionate. It was boring and in many ways useless work. After all, every word was being taken down by the court reporter and would be available in transcript.

  Still, it kept him grounded. He wrote page after page of Zeilinki’s testimony. Can you identify this photograph? Is exhibit number 1G, is showing candles on dresser. Six, all blown out. This photograph? Is exhibit number 1M, is showing clothes of deceased found under bed. Is exhibit number 1PP, is showing face of deceased. Is exhibit number 1QQ, is showing bruises on neck.

  The pictures became increasingly graphic. Zeilinski narrated, and Kreitinger paraded them around the court in a ceaseless carousel.

  “And finally,” Kreitinger said, spying the courtroom clock. It was almost 11:30. “This last photograph. Can you identify it?”

  “Yes. Is exhibit number 1WW. Is boot mark on door of bathroom.”

  Kreitinger took the picture and did her tour of the jury, defence, and the registrar, then returned to her lectern.

  “For the record, Officer Zeilinski, where is this boot mark in relation to the door handle?”

  Zeilinski looked a bit taken aback at being asked a question that wasn’t “Can you identify this photograph?” After a moment she replied: “Is below door handle.”

  “You were a police officer on general patrol for fourteen years before becoming an identification officer.”

  “Yes, is true.”

  “And one of the things you learned to do was to kick in doors. Correct?”

  “Is correct.”

  The jurors, and even Judge Norville, who’d been numbed by the relentless rounds of photographs, were all now paying close attention.

  “And in your experience and training as a police officer, where is the best place to kick a door if one wants to open it quickly?”

  Zeilinski, who had never hesitated in her testimony all through the morning, faltered. Kennicott saw her steal another glance at Greene.

  “Is in same spot as exhibit 1WW,” she said, at last.

  “Under the door handle?”

  “Yes, under handle.”

  “And why is that, Officer Zeilinski?”

  Kennicott looked over his last page of notes. Kreitinger had kept referring to Zeilinski as “Officer,” driving home the fact that she, like Greene, was a cop.

  “Because, is close to lock. Break lock, door open fast.”

  Kreitinger gave her a subtle smile. “Thank you, Officer. Those are my questions.”

  Norville looked at the clock then at Kreitinger with an inquisitive look.

  “Your Honour, I see that it’s eleven-thirty,” Kreitinger said. “Perhaps this is the appropriate time for the morning coffee break.”

  Norville broke out into a big smile. “Excellent suggestion,” she said.

  66

  “THE CROWN CALLS DETECTIVE RAYMOND ALPINE,” KREITINGER SAID FROM HER PLACE AT THE lectern when everyone was back in court after the break.

  Greene watched Alpine walk to the witness box, his back straight. He was the kind of confident, no-nonsense police witness Crowns and juries loved.

  After he was sworn, Alpine adjusted his seat, placed his police notebook on the front ledge of the witness stand, and smiled at the jury. Taking his time, he looked over at Kreitinger as casually as a company president sitting down in a boardroom for his weekly staff meeting.

  Greene had known Alpine in the casual way senior officers got to know each other in a police force as large as Toronto’s. A decade earlier they’d worked out of the same division downtown for a year or two. Alpine had never made it all the way to Homicide, and Greene’s sense of the man was that it didn’t matter to him.

  After having Alpine run through his impressive work history as a cop, Kreitinger got down to business.

  “Detective, before I ask you about the events of September tenth, what, if anything, did you discover about the movements of the victim, Ms. Raglan, on the five Monday mornings before that date?”

  “We interviewed the owners of all of the motels along Kingston Road and discovered that, on those five Mondays, Ms. Raglan had rented rooms at five different motels,” he said. “Each time she reserved room 8. Each time she paid cash. Each time she wore the wig and sunglasses that we found under her bed at the Maple Leaf Motel.”

  “Didn’t she have to work those days?” Kreitinger asked.

  “No, she had specifically requested to have those Monday mornings off. She’d told the people at work and her family that she was preparing to run in a marathon and needed the time for training.”

  “And the accused?” Kreitinger pointed at Greene.

  She’s not at all shy about it, he thought, feeling the eyes of the jury following her finger.

  “Did you discover anything about his work schedule during the same time period?”

  “I did. For the last five years, he’s always arrived at work early on Monday mornings. The only exception was those six weeks.”

  “When did he show up on those Mondays?”

  “At one o’clock in the afternoon, including on September tenth.”

  DiPaulo had been right. Even though Greene had read the disclosure many times, hearing it out loud in court made it sound much worse.

  Alpine described the 911 call, received at 10:39, how he had rushed to the scene, entered room 8, saw the dead woman, and deployed his men to search for suspects and witnesses.

  Kreitinger walked up to Mr. Singh and had him take two pictures out of Officer Zeilinski’s photo binder.

  “Detective, I’m showing to you Exhibits 1N and 1XX. Do you recognize these pictures?” she asked.

  “I do,” he said. “Exhibit 1N is a photo of the boot mark found on the door to the bath
room in room 8. And Exhibit 1XX is a photo of the treads of a boot found in the accused’s home.”

  “I understand this boot was seized temporarily as a result of a search warrant,” she said. “And that this was done before his arrest and without his knowledge.”

  “Yes. I had the identification officer prepare a comparison chart of the two exhibits.”

  Kreitinger went back to the Crown’s table and Summers passed up a board to her. “This it?” she asked him.

  Two photographs were mounted side by side on the board, showing both sets of tread marks. The jurors craned their necks to look.

  “It is,” he said. “The mark on the door is on the left, the actual boot print is on the right.”

  “We’ll call a footwear expert later for his professional opinion on how similar these are,” Kreitinger said as she slowly paraded the photos in front of the jury box. “But right now I want to show these to the jurors.”

  Greene knew this was pure theatre. Even though the expert would say only that the treads were “probably” the same, Kreitinger was driving home to the jury a none-too-subtle message: Use your common sense, you can see for yourself that it’s obvious Greene had been in the room.

  Kreitinger returned again to the Crown table and Summers handed her a large paper bag. She took it to Alpine and opened it for him to look inside.

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said, pulling out a black, right-foot boot. “This is the boot we seized from the accused’s home after his arrest. We used it to make the impression seen in the second photograph on the board you just showed me.”

  “I see,” Kreitinger said as she walked the boot in front of the jury. “And, Detective, did you recognize this type of boot?”

  “I did. It’s the standard uniform boot issued to every member of the Toronto Police Service.”

  She took the boot and the bag over to the registrar, had them mark it as another exhibit, and retreated behind the lectern.

  Well done, Angie, Greene thought. In a circumstantial case, any piece of physical evidence bolstered the case. Helped fill in the gaps.