Downfall

by Robert Rotenberg

  58

  “Dad,” Alison said, as she sat down to eat with her father and Grandpa Y at the little table in the kitchen. “You must be exhausted. I heard you leave early this morning.”

  “I’m fine. The first days of an investigation are non-stop, and I had to go to a funeral,” he said. “Grandpa Y made your breakfast, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. It’s called shakshuka. His new Israeli girlfriend taught him.”

  “Baked tomatoes and poached eggs,” Grandpa Y said, bringing out the serving dish. “We saved you some.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Ari said, and dug into the food.

  This was the first time the three of them had been together in days. Her father looked tired. She’d been holding off talking to him about her new relationship with Dr. Burns. She felt guilty bringing it up and bothering him when he was so preoccupied with his cases. But she also felt guilty keeping it from him.

  She knew it was time to do it. Before she could say a word, he turned to her.

  “I’m sure you’ll be covering the demonstration when it ‘pops up,’ ” he said. “Wherever that turns out to be.”

  “Full network coverage. There’ll be a lot of police there, won’t there?”

  “It looks as if the mayor and maybe even the premier are going to show up. We’ll have tons of security.”

  He finished his food. “Thanks, Dad,” he said. “Better than what your Russian girlfriend had you cooking.”

  They all laughed. Grandpa Y had found a website for older Jewish men and women, and he seemed to have a new girlfriend every few months.

  “I’ve got to get rolling,” Ari said, about to get up.

  “Dad.” Alison grabbed his arm.

  “Yes,” he said, surprised. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  He looked at her, smiling.

  She let go of his arm. “Well, you know, I mean you’ve always been respectful of my privacy. And I really appreciate it.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” He looked confused. He traded glances with Grandpa Y.

  Alison looked at Grandpa Y too. He tilted his head so her dad couldn’t see and winked at her.

  She looked right at her dad. “I’ve started seeing someone.”

  “Great.”

  “It’s kind of complicated.”

  “In my experience relationships are always complicated. Congratulations.” He started to get up again.

  “Dad,” she said, grabbing his arm a second time. “It’s Dr. Burns.”

  “A doctor?”

  “Burns.”

  “Am I supposed to know him?”

  “He’s the man leading all these demonstrations. The one who had the crowd screaming the cops don’t care outside your office.”

  She tensed. He was sure to be angry when he found out that she was attracted to someone who had made him a target.

  “Oh,” he said. “The guy on TV with the bicycle.”

  Since Alison’s initial report, Burns had been doing the rounds of interviews. Reporters loved the image of a bicycle-riding physician who was so committed to the homeless.

  “Yes, Dad. The guy on TV.”

  He shrugged. One of his dad shrugs, as she liked to call them. She was sure he’d inherited them from Grandpa Y.

  “So it was his bike that I saw locked up outside your door when I left early this morning?”

  Grandpa Y laughed. “Alison, your father is a detective! He doesn’t miss a thing.”

  She smiled. “Yes, it was Arnold’s bike. He rides it all year long.”

  “Good,” he said. “He seems really committed to his cause.”

  “He is.”

  “I thought so too,” Grandpa Y chimed in.

  Her father wasn’t upset. She was gobsmacked.

  “Aren’t you angry at me for seeing him?”

  “Why would I be upset?”

  “He’s saying all these terrible things about the police.”

  “Seems to me he’s doing a good job. Look at the hornet’s nest he’s stirred up. This protest is getting publicity for homelessness right across the country and beyond.”

  She shook her head. This was exactly the argument she had planned to make in Arnold’s favour to fight with her dad.

  “You finished?” he asked her, picking up his plate and kissing her on the top of her head. “I’ve got to hit the road.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” She’d never called him Daddy, but for the first time that word almost popped out of her mouth.

  He rinsed his dishes and was gone. She looked over to Grandpa Y.

  He was laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” she said.

  “Life,” he said. “And the pursuit of happiness.”

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

  59

  Over the years Kennicott had learned that Greene had different places scattered throughout the city where he liked to meet when he wanted to get out of Police Headquarters and have a conversation off the grid. One of his favourites was Caldense, a Portuguese bakery near Greene’s home. They’d met there many times, usually early in the morning when construction workers gathered to get their first daily shots of espresso, eat a croissant, and catch up on the latest scores of their favourite soccer teams on the TV on the back wall that was constantly blasting out game highlights.

  Today the midday crowd was mainly older men, sitting in small groups, talking away. When Kennicott arrived, Greene was already sitting at his regular table by the window. The corner TV was filled with news from the Portuguese parliament. Mostly what appeared to be politicians gesticulating with their hands and shouting at each other.

  Kennicott sat across from Greene. As usual with Greene, when he wanted to talk like this off the grid, Kennicott had no idea what the meeting was about.

  “I ordered you a double espresso,” Greene said. “And only one croissant for each of us.”

  They had a running joke about how the small croissants served here were too hard. Greene hated them but could never let on to Miguel Caldas, the owner, who treated Greene like a king.

  “Nice of you,” Kennicott said, taking a large sip of the cup of coffee.

  “Nora is coming to join us in a few minutes.”

  The fact that they were meeting here, with the chief, and not at Police Headquarters told Kennicott that something was afoot that Greene wanted to keep very close to the vest.

  “Why are we meeting her?” Kennicott asked.

  “To give her an update. She wants to know if we have a suspect. And we are going to tell her that we do not.”

  “But we don’t have a suspect, do we?”

  Greene fixed him with his eyes. “We are going to tell her that we don’t have anyone.”

  Kennicott understood. Greene was working on something.

  “Who?” he whispered.

  Greene pointed to the door. “Here she is. I’ll tell you later.”

  Kennicott looked out the window and saw Bering striding purposefully down the sidewalk toward the restaurant. In the distance he could see the limousine that must have driven her over to this side of town.

  Kennicott and Greene stood as she entered the café. Bering’s eyes lit up when she saw Kennicott.

  “Daniel,” she said.

  Although their paths had crossed less and less often over the years as they’d both climbed through the ranks, they were always glad to see each other.

  Kennicott smiled back and gave her a hug.

  She looked around the little café. “Man, oh man, it’s great to be out of the Pink Palace and back on the street,” she said.

  Caldas, a short man wearing his usual white shirt, black tie, and black vest, scampered over to greet them.

  “Chief Nora, such a pleasure!” he said with genuine excitement. “You and Detective Greene, now in charge of the whole city. Such an honour.”

  Bering put her arm around Caldas’s shoulder. Bering was tall, and she towered above him. “You took care of us when we were two y
oung pups.”

  “I knew you were both special ones.” He looked up at Bering. “Single shot latte, one sugar coming up.”

  “You remember,” she said, delighted.

  “How could I forget?”

  “Make it a double shot today,” she said.

  “With pleasure,” he said, and hustled off.

  They all sat. Bering’s face turned grim. “I know this is the last thing you two need right now,” she said. “The mayor’s chomping at the bit. She wants a report. She’s holding a press conference in an hour.”

  Greene shrugged, the way Kennicott knew he did when he was thinking of what to say. Or when he had nothing to say.

  “This is getting real political, real fast,” Bering said. “Homeless advocates are coming in from across the country for this pop-up rally of theirs. We have no idea where it’s going to be yet. All we know is they plan to disrupt the afternoon rush hour. I’m cancelling holiday leaves and bringing in an extra two hundred officers.”

  Greene pointed across the table at Kennicott. “Daniel, give Nora an update?”

  “We interviewed Hodgson this morning,” he said.

  “Already?” Bering asked, looking hopeful.

  “He came in on his own, with his lawyer, Cutter.”

  Bering grimaced. There wasn’t a cop in the city who liked Cutter. “Make my day. Please tell me Hodgson confessed.”

  “Only to his love for his ex-wife,” Greene said, joining back in on the conversation. “And to a traffic violation.”

  “He was the driver of the SUV who knocked Jember Roshan off his bicycle,” Kennicott said.

  “That puts him in the vicinity of the second murder early Monday morning,” she said.

  “There’s something else, but you can’t breathe a word of this to the mayor,” Greene said. “The autopsy on Copeland was done top priority. Hodgson’s fingerprints were on her neck, and we’re pretty sure she had his DNA under her fingernails.”

  “Phew,” she whistled.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Greene said. “Hodgson will say he was driving in to the course on his way to play his usual early-morning round, and he gave us an exculpatory explanation for the DNA that we’re pretty certain will hold up.”

  Kennicott saw that Greene didn’t mention the golf balls with Hodgson’s initials on them. This was his way, always keeping something back, even from the chief.

  Bering looked back and forth between Kennicott and Greene. She was dying of curiosity to find out more. But she was too much of a pro to ask. Now that she was the chief, Bering had to tread the fine line of keeping the politicians—and the public—happy, while not stepping on the toes of her detectives and hampering their investigations. Kennicott knew that when push came to shove, she’d come down on the side of her own people.

  “If this gets out, it could be a disaster for our investigation,” Kennicott said.

  “I see that,” Bering said. “And it would look as if the mayor leaked this and was using this crisis for political gain against Hodgson.”

  “That’s why,” Greene said, “it’s better that she not know.”

  Caldas appeared with Bering’s coffee and a croissant and disappeared again. If the chief of police was here, there had to be some very private conversations going on, and he knew when to get out of the way.

  Bering bit into one of the croissants. “They’re harder than ever,” she said in a stage whisper.

  They all smiled.

  “Ari, in all my years on the force, I’ve never seen anything like this. We’re getting media requests from CNN, BBC, and a bunch of European stations. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Homelessness is an international crisis, and thanks to this, right now we’re the poster child for the problem.”

  “Toronto wants to be a world-class city,” Greene said, with a sly grin. “Now we’ve got a world-class murder story.”

  “ ‘Serial Killer Targets Homeless Women,’ that’s the headline. The mayor is desperate for something to say. Are there any other suspects?”

  Greene picked up the menu on the table, cleared his throat, and—mocking himself reading from prepared notes at a press conference—said, “The Toronto Police Force is presently working full out on this investigation. Every available resource is being used to maintain the safety of our citizens and bring whoever is responsible for these heinous crimes to justice.”

  Bering grinned. “What about, ‘We will leave no stone unturned’?”

  “That stone has been turned over so many times that it’s got an even tan,” Greene said.

  Bering started to chuckle.

  They trusted each other to the core. They could laugh about almost anything.

  “We’re giving this one hundred ten per cent,” Kennicott chimed in.

  Bering shook her head. Amused. “In other words, you have nothing.”

  “Nada y pues nada,” Greene said.

  “Or to be precise, nothing you’re going to tell me about at this time.”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” Greene said.

  Bering took a long sip of her double-shot latte. “Mmm,” she said. “This place hasn’t changed a bit, has it? I sure miss it.”

  “It’s lonely at the top,” Greene said, grinning.

  “I’ve seen your daughter on TV,” Bering said with a Cheshire cat grin. Kennicott recognized this as her way of trying to charm information out of someone. “Congratulations. She’s a good young reporter.”

  “Thanks. She works hard at it.”

  “Strange, isn’t it,” Bering said, “that with all the media coverage, she seems to be the one getting all the scoops?”

  Kennicott had been thinking the same thing about Greene and his daughter. What was Greene up to? Helping his daughter with her career? Or using her to control the story in the press? Or, as Kennicott suspected, both?

  Years ago when he was new to the force, Greene and Bering had shown Kennicott that sometimes it was necessary to deliberately mislead the media to send a false message to a suspect. In one of their most celebrated cases, a young girl who lived downtown disappeared while walking to school. People were terrified, and the pressure on the police to find the child and solve the case was extreme. An all-out search came up with nothing. The girl’s distraught mother was headline news for days.

  Then, horribly, parts of the young girl’s body were found in a ravine. She had been brutally raped and mutilated. People were in an uproar. The press demanded the police be open with the public and provide some answers. Parents were keeping their children home from school, and the city was gripped with fear.

  What no one knew was that the pathologist had discovered a green rug fibre in the girl’s clothes. Greene and Bering were determined to jealously guard this clue. Secretly, they sent out an army of trusted street cops to knock on doors in the little girl’s neighbourhood and look for a place with a green carpet. Kennicott was one of the cops.

  On the third night he rang the bell on the door of a bachelor apartment. A man opened it partway. He looked nervous. Kennicott managed to worm his way in far enough to peer inside and spot a green carpet on the floor.

  The next day, Greene and Bering held a major press conference. The media was there in force expecting breakthrough news. Instead, Bering and Greene wore deep frowns. Kennicott still remembered exactly what Greene said.

  “Despite the hundreds of hours the dedicated men and women of our force have worked on this case, we’ve hit a wall. Right now, we have no leads. Once again we are appealing to the public to come forward if you have any information that can assist in this investigation. And keep your children close.”

  The hardest part was the girl’s distressed mother. Greene warned her in advance of the negative message he was about to tell the press. But he couldn’t reveal that, in fact, they now had twenty-four-hour surveillance on the man in the bachelor apartment. It was better for his ploy that she tell the media how hurt and disappointed she was.

  For two days the man didn
’t leave his apartment. Newspaper commentators and radio talk show hosts were vitriolic in their criticism of the incompetent Toronto cops.

  On the third day he emerged with a pack on his back. He took the ferry over to the Toronto Islands, and when he tried to dump the rest of the girl’s remains into Lake Ontario, Greene and Bering were there to arrest him.

  Bering downed the rest of her latte. “The coffee here is so good. Ari, you don’t know what you’re missing only drinking your tea.”

  “Maybe I’ll try it one day.”

  “So no suspects. No leads. That’s the message you want me to give the mayor and for her to tell the press.”

  “No. Tell the mayor to hold off and that we’ll talk to the media instead.”

  Kennicott watched transfixed as their eyes met. So much meaning conveyed. All unspoken.

  “The mayor won’t be happy,” Bering said at last.

  Greene didn’t move.

  “Ari, you got a green fibre?”

  Greene just kept staring at her.

  Bering nodded. Took another sip of her latte.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Good,” Greene said, taking a bite out of his croissant. “Now listen, this is how we’re going to do the press conference.”

  60

  Greene sat with Kennicott and Bering to wait until the media gallery on the second floor of Police Headquarters was filled with reporters before they walked in. All three of them were dressed in full uniform.

  “How do I look?” Kennicott asked Bering.

  She smiled at Greene. “Ari, remember how green Daniel was when he started? Now he looks like a real cop, doesn’t he?”

  They all laughed.

  “Thanks to you two,” Kennicott said.

  “No, Daniel,” Bering said, “you put in the work. You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “You, Ari?” she asked.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They walked out and the room filled with noisy reporters fell silent. Kennicott and Greene sat on either side of Bering, glum looks on their faces.

  Bering introduced them, then picked up a piece of paper and started reading from a prepared statement. “Toronto remains one of the safest cities in Canada, with by far the lowest homicide rate per capita of any large city in North America.”