02 - The Guilty Plea

by Robert Rotenberg

  “This is our son Jason.” Mrs. Wyler was watching him.

  “Hello, Detective.” His voice was deep, but it was an effort for him to talk. He slipped one cane under his arm and gave a surprisingly firm handshake. Although his legs were weak and withered, his shoulders and arms were strong. “We were all at Terry’s for Sunday-night dinner.”

  “I understand you’re a close family,” Greene said.

  “Very.” It was Nathan Wyler talking. He was still standing beside Greene.

  “We put together a great meal,” Jason said.

  “My boys all like to cook,” Mrs. Wyler said.

  “I made a vichyssoise,” Jason said. “Nathan brought these amazing organic peppers.”

  “We do everything together, even argue,” Nathan said. He turned to his brother, who was teetering on his canes. “Jason, sit down.” He looked at Greene. “What can you tell us?”

  They all sat down. The worst part of these initial meetings was how little you could say at a time when the families were desperate for information. Greene always spoke directly. No cop lingo. He knelt down so he was at eye level with Mrs. Wyler. “We’ve worked around the clock since your son’s murder.” Greene didn’t sugarcoat anything. People always respected that. “Let me tell you everything I can.”

  For the next ten minutes he laid out some of the details: that Terrance had been found by the nanny on the kitchen floor, stabbed many times—he didn’t say how many—that an autopsy had been performed and the cause of death was loss of blood. He made no mention of the Sunday-night e-mails between Samantha and Terrance, or Samantha’s being in Simon’s room, or of the bloody knife.

  “Simon was asleep when Arceli arrived,” Greene said. “We got your grandson out of the house before the press showed up.”

  “Thank you for that,” Mrs. Wyler said. “He’s in the basement with the nanny. Nathan told him the news last night and all he wants to do is play with his trains.” She looked at her disabled son. “Jason drove to Terrance’s house, and one of your young officers brought out the train set for him.”

  Nathan cast his arms in a wide circle. He was still standing beside Greene. “What about Samantha? We all know she was threatening him.”

  “When are you going to arrest her?” It was Mr. Wyler. His lips were upturned into an angry snarl.

  “I don’t want that woman anywhere near my grandson,” Mrs. Wyler said. “Ever.”

  Greene had expected an outburst like this. The key was to stay calm. He was determined to interview everyone he could before making an arrest.

  “The hardest part right now is that you’re going to have to be patient,” he said.

  “We’re not a patient family,” Mr. Wyler said, those cold eyes of his challenging.

  “That’s why Officer Kennicott and I are here. To move things along as fast as we can. We need to speak to everyone individually. It’ll probably take all day.”

  Greene met the man’s angry eyes and stared at him until William Wyler looked away.

  21

  “You awake?”

  Daniel Kennicott’s eyes were half closed. He always slept with the window and the blinds open, and it was still dark outside. When the cell phone woke him up, he’d hoped it was Jo Summers. He’d left her a message on her voice mail the day before, but she hadn’t called back. The ring tone told him it was Detective Greene.

  “Getting there,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “The timeline. You update it last night?” Greene asked.

  Kennicott snapped on the night-light by his bed. It was a quarter to five. Didn’t Greene ever sleep? The timeline was the chronology the police assembled as an investigation moved forward. After each witness was interviewed, the information was added to the list, which Kennicott kept in a separate notebook.

  “Yeah.” Kennicott rubbed a hand over his face. In his days as a young lawyer, when he was on an important case, Lloyd Granwell, the senior partner who’d recruited him to the firm, was like Greene. Pushing him day and night. “You have the spark, Daniel,” Granwell once told him. “You see things most people don’t even think about.”

  “Good.” Greene sounded wide awake. Granwell was like this too. Indefatigable. “Meet me in half an hour at the Caldense Bakery in Little Portugal, on Dundas West. Opens at five.”

  “I know the place.” Kennicott resisted the urge to ask, “Why not meet at police headquarters?” Greene always met with him in some restaurant or café, never the same place twice. And he always knew the owner, even had a few words to say in what ever language they spoke.

  At first Kennicott couldn’t figure this out. But now, four years in as a cop, he saw how Greene had his own personal map of Toronto, to which he was always adding details, filling in gaps.

  Half an hour later Kennicott walked into the Caldense, a place that was much more than just a bakery. There were a dozen square tables on a blue, yellow, and white floor, and a TV in the corner, the volume up too high, broadcasting a Portuguese station—right now a couple wearing black were doing the tango. A long glass counter displayed fresh baked goods, sweet pastries, desserts, meat and cheese for slicing into sandwiches, and aged sausages. A separate glassed-in cabinet featured birthday and wedding cakes.

  Greene was seated by the window, laughing with a bald man whose jet-black mustache matched the black vest he wore over an equally black shirt. A lineup of men in sweatshirts with LABOURERS—LOCAL 183 logos on the back were ordering coffee at the front counter. They wore work boots, the top laces undone. Everyone spoke Portuguese. A crooked clock on the wall said it was exactly 5:15.

  “Officer Daniel Kennicott, meet Miguel Oliviera, proprietor extraordinaire,” Greene said.

  “My pleasure,” Oliviera said to Kennicott. He had a firm handshake and a musical accent.

  “Have some of my croissant.” Greene pointed to a round white plate where a flat croissant was cut in half. “It’s fresh.”

  “Cappuccino?” Oliviera asked.

  Kennicott sat down. “Please,” he said.

  “Tea for the detective, of course,” Oliviera said. “I buy one box for him, lasts me a year.”

  “Obrigado,” Greene said. He waited until the proprietor moved out of earshot before he said to Kennicott, “Here’s my question on the time-line. When does the family leave Terrance’s house on the Sunday night?”

  “Dinner lasted until about eleven o’clock—”

  “After they’d used the knives to chop up all those fresh Wyler vegetables for the vichyssoise,” Greene said.

  Kennicott looked at the TV. A musical group was playing the song “I Gotta Feeling” in Portuguese. Despite himself, Kennicott started humming “tonight’s gonna be a good night, tonight’s gonna be a good, good night” in his mind.

  “What happens next?” Greene asked.

  “When the family leaves, Terrance e-mails his lawyer. Confirms he’s not taking Samantha’s deal. Then at twelve thirty-five he sends Samantha an e-mail saying he’s going to accept her offer after all and invites her over. She e-mails back that she’ll be there in half an hour. I walked from her apartment to Terrance’s house. Took fifteen minutes.”

  “Good.” Greene ate part of his croissant. “Here, share some more of this with me. They’re way too heavy and sweet.”

  Kennicott took a bite. Greene was right. The croissant tasted like sugary dough.

  Greene put up his hand to caution Kennicott as Oliviera approached the table with a tray in hand. “Here you go, gentlemen,” he said. “One herbal tea.” He squinted his nose up in mock horror as he put a thin metal teapot in front of Greene. “One lovely cappuccino.” Kennicott’s drink had a white, foamy top, liberally sprinkled with chocolate bits that spilled over onto the white saucer.

  Kennicott took a sip. It was sweet and watery. When they were alone, he continued. “At twelve thirty-seven Terrance e-mails Starr and tells her he’s taking the deal and that Samantha’s coming over to his house. That’s the final e-mail. Starr didn’t se
e it until the morning.”

  “Didn’t the nanny say the family had a fight on Sunday night?” Greene asked.

  Kennicott flipped back a few pages. “Nathan said their billboard ad campaign, which was Terrance’s idea, was expensive. Terrance wanted them to sponsor a reception at the upcoming film festival. They did it last year and that’s where he met April Goodling. Everyone else was against it.”

  Greene poured some tea into a white cup. “These damn things always leak,” he said at the moment when the teapot did just that. He mopped up the mess with a napkin and braved another bite of the croissant. Kennicott had a funny thought: Maybe Greene got me down here just to help him with the Portuguese pastry.

  “I had my friend Hamdi at my old law firm do a title search on Nathan’s house,” Kennicott said. “Place’s mortgaged to the hilt.”

  “Guy’s on his third marriage,” Greene said.

  “Sounds like Wyler Foods is in trouble too.”

  “From the mansion to the millhouse in three generations,” Greene said.

  “That’s a good way to put it.”

  “Not my phrase,” Greene said. “Happens all the time. The grandfather starts a business, the father builds it, and the son squanders it all away. Nathan’s broke and his little brother’s on a spending spree.”

  “Nathan e-mailed Terrance at five ten on Monday morning saying good luck today in court. ‘Even though we fight, I still love you’ was the last line.

  “Could be a self-serving e-mail. The guy has a temper.” Greene motioned to the croissant in front of Kennicott. “Eat up.”

  Kennicott forced down a hunk of the doughy bread and washed it down with the watery coffee. Now on the TV there were highlights of various soccer matches, each goal accompanied by wild cheering by the fans and players.

  Greene took out his notebook and wrote. “We have about a four-and-a-half-hour gap.”

  Kennicott swallowed more of the croissant. “From twelve forty to five ten. Between Terrance’s last e-mail to his lawyer and Nathan’s e-mail to him, which is never answered. What does the coroner say about the time of death?”

  “Don’t believe what you see on TV,” Greene said. “They can never pinpoint it. The body was cold. Food in the stomach. Could have been dead two, three, four hours. No way to know.”

  “Where does it leave us?”

  “With a big black hole.” Greene went back through the pages of his notebook. “Nathan Wyler—what time did he say he got to work?”

  Kennicott turned back in his notebook too. “About three o’clock.”

  “You remember that Wyler Foods truck we saw in their driveway?” Greene asked.

  “WFRESH 4. I saw it at the food terminal two days ago, when I notified him that his brother had been murdered.” Was it only two days ago? Less than forty-eight hours. Kennicott felt as if he’d been living in this case and Terrance Wyler’s life for weeks.

  “Perfect.” Greene picked up his cell phone and pushed a preset number. “It’s Greene. Who’s in charge of toll road records?” He kept the cell in his ear but turned the microphone away from his mouth. “Nathan’s vehicle was the only one with a transponder, so we know he takes the 407. I want to find out what time he hit the highway and when he got off.”

  “You think he was angry at his brother because of all the money he was spending—”

  Greene put up his hand to stop Kennicott and swung the phone back in place. “I have a license number I need you to trace on the 407. Rush job. Thanks.”

  It was amazing how wide-awake Greene was, Kennicott thought as he looked around the bakery. A cooking segment had come on the TV and the chef was making an egg-based tart. Among the continual lineup of men buying coffee at the counter, he saw the first female customer of the morning. An older woman who purchased three loaves of white bread.

  Greene turned the phone away from his mouth again. “They photograph every license plate on the 407, whether the car has a transponder or not,” he said to Kennicott. “Means we can trace when and where any vehicle got on and off that highway.”

  He put his finger back up in the air, turned the phone back to his mouth, and wrote some notes. “Good, okay, thanks,” he said and hung up.

  Kennicott tried to read upside down what he’d written. It was a collection of numbers and times.

  Greene looked at Kennicott, his eyes sparkling: “Wyler got on the 407 at one fifteen, going east. Remember, the non-toll highways were all cut off because of all the other murders that night. But he didn’t get off at Highway 427, which you’d expect him to do if he was going down to the food terminal. He went all the way east to Yonge Street. Exited there at one forty-two.”

  “Yonge Street,” Kennicott said. “Near Terrance’s house.”

  “Right,” Greene said. “But even closer to Samantha’s place.”

  Kennicott felt a hit of adrenaline spike through his system. This is what it takes, he thought, to make homicide. On the TV now, politicians were standing in the Portuguese parliament making impassioned speeches with exaggerated hand gestures. Greene tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Kennicott got up. But Greene pointed back to the table. “Finish your croissant.” A chunk was on the plate. By the time Kennicott tossed it into his mouth, Greene was already out the door.

  22

  In his early twenties Ari Greene spent a summer in Israel. He visited with some of his mother’s distant relatives and worked for a few weeks on a kibbutz in the Negev desert. That’s where he met Natalya, a waif of a young woman who’d left in the first wave of Jewish exodus from the Soviet Union. Beautiful and secretive, she was perhaps the most manipulative person he’d ever met in his whole life. They had a lot of fun together. Six months after Greene got home, she showed up one day on the concrete doorsteps of his parents’ house. Natalya wanted Greene to marry her so she could get into the country. When he refused, they had an enormous fight. She disappeared, only to pop up again in his life when he’d least expect it.

  He’d never forget the first time he took her to a Canadian grocery store. It was the only occasion when she was totally unable to control her emotions. All the food. Fresh. Bountiful. The endless aisles of it. She started running back and forth to assure herself that all this really existed. She’d grabbed Greene and cried. All those gray years of deprivation, and here was a world full of everything.

  He thought of Natalya as he walked into the sprawling Ontario Food Terminal. The produce, the smells, the color. This was the daily challenge of human existence: to get food from the ground to people’s mouths.

  Inside Wyler Foods, Nathan Wyler stood behind a long table, sorting through crates of fresh fruits and vegetables his uniformed employees brought up to him in waves. Greene stood back to watch him work.

  Wyler’s fingers flew over every tray of fresh goods like a concert pianist. He shouted out a cacophony of criticism of almost everything he saw, laced with profanities.

  A buxom redhead who’d been at the cash register at the front approached Greene. The Wyler Foods uniform was tight on her. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Wyler.”

  “Detective Greene, what are you doing back there?” Wyler shouted. “Paulette, bring him up here.”

  Greene held out his hand as he approached the table and Wyler shook it.

  “Angelo, take over for a while,” Wyler said to one of his many assistants. “Detective Greene’s in charge of Terry’s case. We need to go for a walk.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d be at work today,” Greene said.

  “It’s the food business,” Wyler said, leading Greene out of the shop. “Never stops. This is how we were raised.”

  “A hard way to live.”

  “Only thing I know,” Wyler said. “I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.”

  “No one likes funerals,” Greene said.

  “Maybe it will hit me at the graveyard. But I can’t believe my baby brother’s dead.”
<
br />   Greene walked with him, not saying anything. A cart zipped around the corner and honked at the last minute. They jumped to get out of its way.

  Wyler pulled out a cigarette pack before they got to the exit door. “You smoke?”

  “I quit in grade ten,” Greene said.

  Wyler snorted out a laugh. “That was smart.” Outdoors, he took another look at Greene before he lit up. “Where’d you go to school?”

  Greene was wearing a light Windbreaker. He stuffed his hands into the side pockets before he answered. “Marlee High.”

  Wyler took a long drag. “Greene with an e on the end. Right?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I bet you recognized me right away,” Wyler said.

  “Remembering faces is a good thing if you’re a detective.”

  Wyler took another puff. “You had a good punch.”

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever hit in my life.”

  Wyler laughed. “Hope you enjoyed it.”

  “You know something?” Greene laughed as well. “I did.” He took his hands out of his pockets.

  “Any news?” Wyler asked.

  “Not yet. I wanted to ask about your business.”

  “It’s a dogfight,” Wyler said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  He led Greene back inside to a greasy spoon tucked away in a corner. The old couple who worked there looked like they’d run the place for a few centuries. Wyler ordered bacon and eggs, and Greene got a muffin.

  “Food business is going down the crapper.” Wyler dug into his meal the moment his plate came. “Everyone’s stealing from everyone else. The big chains are selling gas and books and housewares. The department stores, the gas stations, the bookstores, even the drugstores, for fuck’s sake, are all selling food. No one’s making any money.”

  “Your store appeals to a higher-end market, doesn’t it?”

  “There’s no brand loyalty anymore. Everyone wants a deal.”