“That’s a pretty stupid thing to do.”
“Yeah. But you’d be surprised at how much you can hurt a person by insulting someone they care about.”
“Can you remember anyone in particular that the Juicer may have teased in this way?”
Johnny laughed “Shit, there have been so many that I can’t remember anyone exactly.”
I changed the subject. “Johnny, now that you’re running things here, do you ever have to deal with homeless tickets or summonses? Do you ever have any trouble from City Hall?
He smiled. He had quite a few teeth missing. I imagined that that might soon change considering that he now had a salary—provided by the taxpayers of course.
“Trouble from City Hall? Absolutely not. I’m their sweetheart. I’m their bad guy turned good. They love me. They even had me talk in front of the whole council as a speaker to tell them how I ‘turned around.’
“You should try it sometime,” he added with a smirk. “You know, a little speech about how you were a judge, then a bum, then a lawyer, then a judge and now an old guy who goes around bothering people at work because he’s too old to have a job himself.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or to punch his self-righteous, mocking face.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Mulling all this over, I came to the conclusion that though Matt West might think there was no problem with a cop being interested in real estate investment in his spare time, I wasn’t so sure. I could think of a number of ways in which conflicts of interest could occur. Specifically, I could see how harassing the inhabitants of the village could lead to media attention. And that might result in a call to get us out of the valley. Since our land was privately owned, developers could acquire it directly. And if they managed to depreciate the value of the site beforehand by treating the village as a slum, they would find themselves in a very favorable position.
That might account for Ted’s being down there. As for Al, aside from plain belligerence and the new notion that seemed to be creeping into the force that a good cop was a bald guy who knew how to push people around, I had no idea what motive he would have for involving himself in my affairs.
While I was pondering these facts, I got a call from Aliana. She hadn’t called in a while and I had to admit that I was surprised to be happy to hear from her.
“Ellis,” she said, drawing a breath and speaking faster than she usually did, “I know you as much as told me that you don’t need me anymore, but I can’t let a story just fizzle.”
“It hasn’t fizzled, as you put it, I’ve…”
“I know. You’ve been asking around. So have I. Let me fill you in.”
It was more of a command than an offer. “Okay, Aliana. What have you learned?”
“I’ve been active on two fronts, so to speak.” She hesitated, “But hey, rather than talking on the phone, why don’t we meet for a coffee?”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?” I answered.
It was meant as a joke but I was embarrassed that the minute the words were out of my mouth, a double meaning popped into my head.
“Yeah, well, I haven’t been shot at lately. Have you?” she teased.
“To tell the truth, Aliana, I can’t quite get that incident out of my mind, can’t convince myself that it was just some sort of accident.”
“Well then let’s try someplace different…”
I agreed to meet her at a Country Style doughnut shop midway between my place and hers.
I had discovered a secret cache of clothing in my size at the back of the closet in the bedroom I’d shared with Queenie. I was shocked at first. Then I remembered that Queenie was the kind of person who liked to do her Christmas shopping bit by bit all year long.
It broke my heart to look at these things, to imagine the way that Queenie would have watched my face as I opened each package, a mixture of apprehension and pleasure in her smiling eyes.
When I had first come upon the items, my impulse was to leave them in their bags and boxes and to take them down to the Salvation Army depot.
But I couldn’t bear to. So I had left them pretty much as I had found them.
But now, I decided that it would be a waste to discard these loving gifts.
So I chose a dark red sweater and a gray shirt with red detailing and wore them to my meeting. And when Aliana saw them and commented that I looked great, I only felt a jolt of guilt and sorrow for an instant.
“I’ve been digging into the background of the Juicer. I know you’re on top of this, and everybody knows how hard Queenie worked to help the guy, but the more I learn about him, the uglier it gets.”
“What? What have you found out?”
“Do you remember that protest a couple of years ago when the cops more or less corralled a bunch of citizens on Spadina Avenue on a Sunday afternoon?”
I thought for a minute. “You mean the last time the city hosted a big-deal conference like the one that’s going on right now?”
“Yeah. That’s the one. What happened was that a few renegade cops—probably not Toronto police but guys from other jurisdictions called in to help—anyway, they went wild one afternoon and just rounded up anybody within blocks of the conference site. They wouldn’t let anybody leave the scene. It started to rain, but they still made innocent people, whom they had no reason to believe were even demonstrating, wait for four hours before they released a few of them and took the rest down to the detention center that had been especially set up for the conference.”
“And there they held them for many more hours….” I recalled.
“No washrooms nearby. No medication for diabetics and others desperate for them. No lawyers.”
“And nobody charged for this mistreatment of the innocent members of the public.”
“One guy,” Aliana corrected. “One cop was charged. Even though dozens took part in the incidents surrounding the mistreating not only of innocent people caught up in the crowd, but even mistreatment of the actual demonstrators, some of who were violent professional rabble-rousers, but many of whom were ordinary citizens just offering their opinion in a public way.”
“What does all this have to do with the Juicer?”
“A lot. The fact of the matter is that he was well known to the police. I checked the records. There’s every reason to believe he was a vicious, often out-of-control individual. Most recently, I mean less than a year before his death, he had done a significant amount of time in remand if not in jail.”
“What for?”
“He was charged with aggravated sexual assault, but pleaded down.”
“Why? I had to ask. Why would Queenie want to help somebody like that?” I suddenly realized something I should have thought of a long time before. That there were aspects of her work that Queenie had never shared with me. And that one of them was the physical danger that she must have been in a good deal of the time. I wondered if she had kept things from me because she’d been fearful that I would have expressed a desire that she give up the work she so clearly loved. I wouldn’t have. I never would have. But now, now that she was gone, I was devastated to think about the risks she must have taken. She had once said that if you don’t help the worst, who will?
“Ellis,” Aliana said softly, reaching toward my hand as it lay on the table, but not actually touching my fingers. “Are you okay with all of this? We can leave it for another time if you want.”
“No,” I said. “No, go on. What else?”
“During that demonstration I just mentioned, the Juicer was part of the crowd that was detained.”
“How ridiculous. How completely insane to think that a guy like him would be part of a political protest!”
“Right,” Aliana said. “That’s the point. He was one of the ones detained just for being on the wrong corner at the wrong time. He was swept up with everybody else and taken off to the holding facility. There was no way he could even really find out what was going on. The longer his detention w
ent on, the more frantic and uncontrollable he became. Until he finally freaked altogether and attacked another detainee—a young man whom he accused of sexually assaulting him when the kid got too close and accidentally touched him. He then proceeded to harass the boy, accusing him of a homosexual offence, for several hours in the confined presence of many other detainees.
“The cops caught the whole thing on video. Apparently, the charges against him that resulted from that incident were still pending at the time of his death, but the fate of the young man he had attacked was sealed far sooner. He committed suicide the next day. His father, who happened to be a Toronto police officer, later swore that he would get justice for his son. That he trusted in the courts to bring the matter of what he called bullying and rape to a just conclusion, but that if they failed to do so, he wouldn’t hesitate to take matters into his own hands.”
“And did he?”
“I don’t know. It was later learned that it would have been a difficult court case because despite the huge number of witnesses, the detention center was so crowded that it wasn’t clear from the video who could really have seen what. Plus, in the melee of arresting people during the demonstration, a number of important documents, including any record of the arrest of The Juicer and his victim, had been lost, if they had ever existed. Some people said that nobody even knew for sure what the boy’s name was until his father spoke out.”
“Do you know the father’s name?”
She hesitated before answering. Then she said, “Yes, Yes, I do. Ted Downs.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Everything changed then. In that moment. Because now I did have a case. Now I had a motive. It didn’t occur to me for one second to question the accuracy of anything that Aliana had just told me. I was beginning to see that she had, indeed, always been my friend, not just in the times of my greatest trouble, but right now.
“Aliana, I don’t know what I’m going to have to do about this, but…”
“Ellis, I’m not finished. As I said, there were two things I had to talk to you about today. It’s Kezia.”
“Kezia?” It took me a minute to remember who she was talking about. It had only been days since we’d seen the girl but so much had intervened that I had as much as forgotten her. Besides, she was a distraction, a small problem taking time and attention from one that was much larger.
“Yes. A couple of days ago I got a mysterious phone message that it took me a few hours to realize could only have come from her. I tried calling her back, but of course, there was no answer. So I took a chance and went over there. I thought about waiting until somebody came along and opened the lobby door, but I ended up waiting such a long time that I just decided to buzz, figuring that she wouldn’t answer or wouldn’t let me in.”
Aliana was so intense that I had no trouble focusing on what she was saying, despite the fact that my head was spinning because of what I’d just heard about Ted Downs.
“So what happened?”
“The second the buzzer rang, she answered. When I told her who it was, she actually sounded relieved. She told me just to stay there until she could come down. So I did. I only waited a couple of minutes. She didn’t even take the elevator, she just ran down the stairs.”
“Why? Why was she in such a hurry?”
“She seemed so glad to see me that I figured we could have a good talk. So I offered to take her downtown for a snack and a chat. But instead of responding to my offer, she just broke down completely—crying and shaking. She even let me put my arm around her. She was gasping so hard I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
“After a few seconds, I managed to lead her over to the ledge formed by the radiator in front of the lobby window.”
I remembered that all the furniture in the lobby had been removed for one nefarious reason or another.
“We sat and she managed to calm down enough to tell me what was wrong. She said she couldn’t go out and she couldn’t stay away from the apartment for long because she and her good brother were guarding it against her bad brothers. She said her brothers had warned them that they were on the way over and that they intended to set fire to all their books and notes and what she called their “writings.” They told her that they knew that there was a computer hidden in the apartment and that they were going to find it and throw it off the balcony.”
“The bastards.”
“Kezia even mentioned her book again—the one about snow. She was hysterical. She kept saying ‘It’s almost done. I can’t lose it now.’”
“What did you say?”
“I offered to keep her papers and books at my apartment, but this made her even more nervous. She says her brothers will follow her if they find out she’s going to somebody else’s place.”
Aliana paused and looked out the window. We were in a neighborhood of well-kept old homes intersected by a major north-south street lined with small businesses. It would be hard to find a less dangerous-looking location. But I knew she was thinking what I was thinking. People had been shot dead in neighborhoods like this.
“I don’t really get this,” I said. “Why do a couple of gangsters care about a pair of kids who are studying and writing? Is it just harassment or is there more to it?”
“I asked her. I told her I couldn’t understand why her brothers were so concerned about her writing. At first she clammed right up. Just sat there, silent. And then she started looking around frantically as if she thought they were somewhere near. I was beginning to think I should get help. Call social services or the Youth Bureau. But I just waited, sitting quietly beside her, and after a little while, I got it out of her that the brothers were so stupid that they thought Kezia was writing about their involvement in the cocaine trade because one day she made the mistake of telling them that the book was about snow.”
“Surely they were pulling her leg!”
“I told her that, of course. But she remained unconvinced. And she kept saying, “I have to go upstairs. I have to go upstairs… I managed to keep her beside me for a few more minutes. I told her I could help her get back to school. That it would be safe and that I’d make sure she had somebody to help her at once if she felt in any danger.
“What did she say?”
“She said something that really frightened me. She said she didn’t have time for school because she was still researching her book down by the river. She said she sometimes takes the subway and goes into the valley by herself. When I told her that this was dangerous—at any time but especially now when there’s likely to be ice and snow down there—she said that she knew that but that if she could talk to that old judge guy, he could tell her anything she needed to know.”
I didn’t know whether to be flattered or alarmed. “The old judge guy being me, I suppose?”
Aliana smiled. The first smile I’d seen since this intense conversation had begun.
“That would be the old judge guy in question,” she said.
“If she wants to talk, I’m completely available—as long as you can come along, too.”
Aliana looked surprised for a split second. Then she realized what I was saying.
“Of course. But I don’t think that’ll happen. She said her brother told her that if she wants to avoid trouble, she has to ‘keep things in the family’.”
I got up and got us a couple more coffees. Aliana thanked me. Apparently she intended for our conversation to go on a little longer. Which was fine, except I couldn’t really see where all this information about the girl was leading.
“There was one more thing,” Aliana said. She took a sip of her coffee, but it was very hot and I could see that she was trying hard to control her reaction to it. I wondered whether appearing to remain in control at all times was a trick that reporters practiced in order not to lose the upper hand in interviews. I also wondered why she thought she needed the upper hand with me.
“What? What other thing?”
“She said she’d been down in the valley a lot.
She mentioned that she didn’t care about winter starting and that she liked the river when the ice began to form. She said that she was down there one day and that she saw somebody she knew but that she didn’t talk to him because she didn’t think it was safe to talk to men down there even if you knew them.”
“She shouldn’t have been down there at all. Did she say who the man was?”
Aliana looked me in the eye. Maybe that was another reporter trick. I didn’t look away. “Yes,” she said. “It was the man that Kezia calls ‘that nice cop.’”
“Hopequist.”
“Right.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Aliana,” I finally said. “I know I said that I don’t need your help anymore, but I see now that I was wrong.”
She looked at me as if I were speaking a language she didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the time has come to solve this crime. Hopequist is not somebody we have to worry about. I can see now that I’ve fooled around long enough. There’s only one person in this whole scenario who has the least motive for doing harm to the victim and that person is Ted Downs. The time has come to go after him, and I can’t do it alone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We found out where Ted Downs lived and we did surveillance on his house. I’m ashamed to admit we did this, especially since we had no experience and therefore no skill at it. But we did discover a few things about the man. We followed him a couple times when he left home. He was always alone. He dressed nicely, like a businessman at his leisure. He carried books sometimes, as though he were studying something or for something. Nobody came to his house except people that we could see were his neighbors and people we were pretty sure were other cops.
Ted Downs had no wife and no kids that we ever saw, which confirmed what we had learned before.
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