Heart of the City

by Robert Rotenberg

  32

  Greene drove along College Street and glanced over at the Kensington Gate building site. As he’d hoped, there wasn’t a heavy police presence at the scene.

  To be sure, he drove down Spadina to Oxford and circled back up Augusta. He’d walked up and down this street on his way to and from work all week and hadn’t once noticed any signs of life in the house just south of the construction site. He drove past it now and glanced down the alley. A police officer was stationed at the back gate. Another was strolling along the sidewalk. Good, Greene thought.

  He kept his speed constant, crossed over College, and parked on a side street. He had a shopping bag filled with vegetables and another with a tall roll of toilet paper sitting on the passenger seat. He carried them with him as he walked back along the route that he’d just driven, down Spadina, along Oxford, and up Augusta. It was Saturday, and the market was packed with shoppers. This made it easy for him to break away from the crowd and, when the officer patrolling Augusta turned in the other direction, to slip along the path beside the house. If anyone saw him, they’d assume he was on his way home from the grocery store.

  The backyard was overgrown and deserted. He put the shopping bags down on an outdoor table by the back window, slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and tried the door. To his surprise it was unlocked. He opened it slowly and stepped inside.

  He found himself in an old kitchen. No one was there. He closed the door silently behind him and didn’t move. He knew that if you are patient and listen hard, you could hear a house. He heard nothing other than the low buzz of traffic on the street. He made his way through the empty downstairs and up the stairs. On the second floor he checked out the empty rooms, including the one in front that overlooked the street.

  The room he most wanted to look at was on the north side. The door to it was closed. He knocked on it lightly, like a boat driver tapping on a gas can to be sure it was empty. The only sound coming back to him was the hollow echo of a vacant room.

  Inside, the room was dark. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. A thick curtain covered the one window. There was no furniture except a metal chair beside the curtain.

  He studied the chair. It was unexceptional. It could have been a year old, or ten. He pulled back the curtain just enough so he could look outside. From his viewpoint, Greene had a clear view of the work shed where he’d discovered Fox’s body. Its window was now covered with brown paper. But it didn’t matter. The photo of Fox’s corpse hadn’t been taken on a selfie stick by someone in the alley. Whoever took it had been standing right here.

  He slid the curtain back into place and thought about the chair beside the window. Had the person who took that picture, or someone else, used this location to look into the work shed? Spy on the construction site? Follow Fox’s movements?

  He retraced his steps. He opened the closets in each of the upstairs rooms. Nothing. Same with the living room and dining room on the first floor. In the kitchen he opened up the upper cabinets. They were all empty too.

  This was the house that Fox had paid $30,000 to the owners because of the shadow cast by the building crane, and it was totally deserted. The back door wasn’t even locked. He had to find out who owned this house and when they’d bought it.

  Even though he was sure it would be a waste of time, he started going through the cabinet doors below the kitchen counter. As he expected, there was nothing there. He got to the last one, under the sink, and opened it.

  Inside was a yellow backpack.

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  33

  “How did Mr. Fox seem after his lunch with his father?” Kennicott asked Sherani when he was back in the passenger seat of the Rolls-Royce.

  She hesitated. “It was always the same. He was angry.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He said they always fought about the same thing. Money.”

  Where there’s money there’s heat, Kennicott’s father used to say. He’d been a judge and had seen plenty of family squabbles over money first-hand.

  “Was there anything about Mr. Fox yesterday that seemed unusual?”

  “No. Except for talking to his father, he seemed very happy. His fiancée was coming home from Japan, and he told me he couldn’t wait to see her.”

  “There’s nothing else listed on his schedule. Where did you go after lunch?”

  “I’m heading there now.”

  She drove without saying anything. She was someone who was comfortable with silence.

  He looked out the window and watched the city roll by. People were stopping to look at the car. Fox must have loved the attention, he thought. Or did he?

  Sherani pulled into a deserted service-vehicle parking lot behind Lord Landsdowne Public School on Spadina Crescent. They were about half a block north of College Street.

  “Here?” Kennicott asked.

  “Yes. I let him out right at this spot.”

  “What time was that?”

  She checked her logbook. “Two-fifteen.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  She shrugged with practiced indifference. “I have no idea. I drove away.”

  “Was this unusual? I mean, Mr. Fox getting out of the car in a parking lot and asking you to leave him here.”

  “He’s done this for the last four Fridays. Right here.”

  “Did you tell anyone about this?”

  “Of course not. Mr. Fox was very private.”

  “I hate to ask you this, but have you seen the photo of his body that’s online?”

  “I wish I hadn’t. It was awful.”

  “He wasn’t wearing the suit he wore when he was at Omni. He had on a T-shirt and shorts. Did he change his clothes after he left the restaurant?”

  She shook her head and pointed over her shoulder. “There’s a compartment in back that was designed for picnic baskets. Mr. Fox kept his gym bag and a portable cooler there for his water bottles. Yesterday, when he got out of the vehicle he was still wearing his suit. He took one of the bags that holds his water bottles and his gym bag with him.”

  “What kind of bag was it?”

  “A plain black one. Mr. Fox didn’t like labels.”

  “That was at two-fifteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have no idea where he changed clothes?”

  “None.”

  “Did he say anything else to you before you left?”

  She started to shake her head, then stopped. “I don’t know if this is important.”

  “Everything is important.” At last she wanted to talk, which was always a good thing.

  “He said he’d worked out hard at the gym in the morning. It was as hot yesterday as it is today, and he was tired because of the heat. He said he hadn’t hydrated enough.”

  At least Sherani had opened up, Kennicott thought, even if the information didn’t lead anywhere.

  He got out of the car door on his own. She frowned.

  “Where did you go after you dropped him off?” he asked.

  “I drove back to the office, parked the car, and covered it as I do every day.”

  “And after that?” He realized that it hadn’t occurred to Sherani that she might have been the last known person to see Fox alive, that she was a possible suspect, and that Kennicott would want to know if she had an alibi.

  Her eyes narrowed in anger. Now she understood what he was questioning her about.

  “I went to visit my mother. She’s in intensive care at Scarborough General Hospital. I’ve gone there every day for the last month. Go ahead and check with any of the nurses. Ever since she got sick, Mr. Fox never made me work past four.”

  “I’m sorry. I had to ask.”

  “You should know that I loved Mr. Fox. I’ll do anything to help catch his killer. Why do you think I offered to drive you around today?”

  34

  Alison saw the subway train approaching the station before she heard it. She walked quickly over to
Persad, who lowered her magazine.

  “Did you download the footage?” Alison asked.

  Persad pulled out a plastic bag with the flash drive inside. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  Alison stuffed it in her front pocket.

  “Thanks for trusting me,” she said, and stepped into the train. “I’ll be in touch. Very soon.”

  She took a seat near the back and pulled her laptop and a pair of headphones from her backpack. The subway car was as good a place as any to view the footage. It was heading north, away from downtown. She plugged in the flash drive.

  The video loaded quickly. A timer in the corner showed it started at 3:28 p.m. Alison hadn’t left the Chinese restaurant until 3:50. She was tempted to skip ahead but made herself watch from the start.

  The first images were of the crowd gathering and milling about. Then came Persad, doing practice takes, setting herself up to go live on camera. After that there were shots of babies and dogs and protest signs and the drummer. Alison knew these were cutaways that an editor could splice in later.

  The train stopped and started but no one came near her.

  She paused the video at 3:50, just before she’d arrived at the demonstration, and hunched closer to the screen. Please, she thought, don’t let me be on this tape. She hit play.

  Persad was doing a stand-up, taking up most of the screen. This was followed by a panning shot of the protesters. Alison spotted a Blue Jays hat and watched herself weaving through the crowd. She could make out her sunglasses and a flash of the yellow backpack. Bloody hell.

  Please, she kept thinking, let me get out of the picture frame. Instead, the camera followed her.

  She watched herself break out of the crowd and go up to the TV van. Her backpack stood out like a beacon. The camera caught her walking along the sidewalk toward the house on Augusta and disappearing down the path, before it turned back to film the protesters marching by.

  Thank God her hat and sunglasses had hidden her face. But still, this was not good, especially since she’d left the stupid backpack in the house.

  She took the video back to the point where the camera had first picked her up and watched it again. She was only on the screen for just one minute and twelve seconds and the whole tape was two hours and twenty minutes long. That was good, wasn’t it? What were the chances of someone noticing her?

  She closed the computer. She hadn’t been paying any attention to what was going on around her but was vaguely aware that as the train went north, the stations were farther and farther apart.

  The train was coming to a stop at a suburban station she’d never seen before. The doors slid open and a horde of teenagers rushed in, laughing and joking with each other. Happy. Not a care. Probably none of them had ever seen the body of a murder victim, never mind been foolish enough to photograph it and post it online. They could go on with their lives. But where was her life going?

  The train started again. She put her head back and closed her eyes as it entered a long dark tunnel.

  35

  Kennicott called Darvesh from the parking lot of the public school and told him where he was.

  “Get a team of officers over here right away to scour the area, knock on doors, check every back alley and garbage can.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Fox’s dress clothes. They might be in a black gym bag. When Fox’s chauffeur dropped him off here yesterday, he was wearing a suit. He took the bag with him. Then get hold of Adam Lewis at Omni Jewelcrafters on Bathurst Street. He’ll send you a picture of Fox in the outfit we’re looking for and give you the contact information of everyone at the Friday morning meeting there. Follow up on their alibis.”

  He hung up. Why had Fox changed out of his suit? Because he wanted to blend in, not stand out. And which way had he gone from here to the back alley? He wouldn’t have walked down Augusta, not with the demonstration getting started there. He must have gone down Spadina and cut over somehow.

  Kennicott walked to the front of the school and looked across the road. On the other side an old university building was being renovated. A line of trucks was moving construction waste out.

  That’s probably what he did, Kennicott thought. Changed quickly in an unseen corner of the service parking lot and tossed the bag into one of the bins.

  Kennicott was standing beside a huge oblong rock. He’d driven by it hundreds of times but had never stopped to see what it was. A green plaque was attached to its front.

  THIS BASIC IGNEOUS BOULDER WAS FOUND AT A DEPTH OF 12 FEET DURING THE COURSE OF THE EXCAVATION FOR THIS SCHOOL. THE COMPOSITION IS A VERY RARE TYPE AND IS ASSUMED TO HAVE BEEN CARRIED HERE FROM CARIBOU LAKE, NORTH OF PARRY SOUND, BY A GLACIER DURING THE GREAT ICE AGE APPROXIMATELY 12,000 YEARS AGO.

  He put his hand on the rock. The surface was worn down but rough. What a long journey it had made. So many things buried so deep.

  He walked around the crescent and past a gruff-looking group of men smoking cigarettes outside a Scott’s Mission homeless shelter; the Waverly, a beat-up old hotel; and the Silver Dollar, a rundown bar. Both buildings had been there for decades. James Earl Ray, the man who killed Martin Luther King, had supposedly stayed at the hotel after he fled to Canada.

  When he was a university student, Kennicott had gone to the Silver Dollar on many a drunken Saturday night. He’d heard that a developer wanted to demolish the buildings and put up a high-rise for student housing. This being Toronto, inevitably some local residents had protested and right now the project was stalled. Story of the city.

  He crossed College and continued down Spadina, counting his strides as he passed a bank, a bar, a board-game cafe, an art supply store, and a souvenir flag shop. He stopped at forty paces, the distance he estimated would put him parallel with the place where the alleyway behind Kensington Gate turned south, then again after another 120 paces, which by his rough estimate lined up with the end of it. He was standing in front of a Chinese restaurant called Huibing. He went in.

  A few people were eating at linoleum-topped tables. He sat down and a young Asian woman came over with a plastic menu under her arm, carrying a white teapot and a small white teacup.

  “The lunch specials are on the back,” she said, passing him the menu. “We only take cash.”

  “Thanks.”

  She turned and went behind the counter, picked up her phone, and started tapping away.

  He glanced through the menu and then motioned to her.

  She returned with a small pad of paper in her hand.

  “I’ll have the hot and sour soup, and number six, the shrimp,” he said. “Where’s the washroom?”

  She pointed behind her. “Back there.”

  He waited until she picked up her phone again before he went down the hallway. The door to the washroom was open. He opened and shut it without going in, then walked past it. A bead curtain hung in a doorway near the end of the hall. He glanced back to be sure that no one was looking and went through the beads into a small empty room with a table and two chairs. Back in the hall, he took a few steps to the back door, which was propped open by a red milk crate.

  He stepped outside. He was at the end of the alleyway, by the fence with a hole in it. This was the route that he assumed Amberlight had taken.

  He slipped back into the restaurant, opened and shut the bathroom door again, and returned to his table. A bowl of soup was there, and he dug in. It wasn’t long until the waitress came with his plate of food.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” he said before she could get back to her phone.

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you work here yesterday?”

  She frowned. “I work here every day. It’s my uncle’s restaurant.”

  “Did you see this man?”

  He had a newspaper clipping of Fox’s photo in his pocket. He unfolded it. She nodded without hesitation.

  “The guy who was killed yesterday. Yeah. He was here.”

  Ke
nnicott took out his badge. “I’m a homicide detective investigating the case.”

  “Oh,” she said, unimpressed. She pointed at the photo. “He comes on Friday afternoons.”

  “Every Friday?”

  “For the last month or so. He doesn’t eat here in the restaurant. There’s a backroom, and it’s reserved for him. Except yesterday. He didn’t come.”

  “Did he usually meet with someone back there?”

  She gave him a dull look. “I don’t know. My uncle says we aren’t allowed to go back there. I’d take in a teapot and two cups before he got here, and he’d come out every half hour for a fresh pot, bring two used cups and get two clean ones. He always gave me a fifty-dollar tip.”

  “And yesterday?”

  “I told you, he didn’t come. I wasn’t sure what to do, and after a while I went back.”

  “What time?”

  She shrugged. “Probably a few minutes after three-thirty. A woman was there.”

  Stay calm, Kennicott told himself. Don’t ask her any leading questions.

  “What did she look like?”

  “White. Skinny. She was wearing a Blue Jays cap and sunglasses, which was kind of weird.”

  “About how old do you think she was?”

  She shrugged twice this time. “I don’t know. I couldn’t really tell. But young, like those rich kids who don’t work and hang out in the Market.”

  The woman wasn’t Cassandra Amberlight. Kennicott had a photo of her. “Do you recognize this person?”

  “Her, the protest lady. She used to come in here for lunch. She was real loud and rude. She only tipped ten percent. Sometimes less.”

  “When was the last time she was here?”

  “At least a month ago.”

  Who was the young woman who’d been waiting for Fox? “Anything else you remember about this woman who was here yesterday? The colour of her eyes, her hair?”

  “Just that she was wearing a Blue Jays hat and sunglasses.”

  “Her clothes?”

  “I don’t know. I think she had on, like, a black T-shirt.”