This Thing of Darkness

by Barbara Fradkin

  “There probably is no connection between the break-in and the attack,” Green said. “But I think Levesque should send someone around to reexamine the apartment and reinterview neighbours. The guy made enemies, or at least pissed people off with his manner, and in today’s hopped-up, macho drug culture, that can be enough.”

  Sullivan’s expression turned smug.“Already done. She’s got Jones working on a search warrant for his place right now. We still need to confirm the ID, so she’ll be looking for the usual— dentist’s name, personal papers, date book, and next of kin.”

  “Any luck tracking down the son?”

  “Not yet, but Levesque assigned it to Gibbsie. He’s checking public records. So far there’s no record of a birth, so it must have been out of province.”

  “Maybe even out of the country,” Green said, remembering Rosenthal’s roundabout academic journey from South Africa through the UK. “But if he’s in a system anywhere, Gibbs will find him.” Green wondered how the son would react. Losing a family member to murder was a horrifying shock, no matter how estranged the family was. “MacPhail doing the autopsy this morning?”

  Sullivan nodded. “But it will be weeks before we get any DNA results back from the lab. There is a hell of a backlog, even when we mark top priority on it. I still think those surveillance tapes and forensics are our best bet. We’re also talking to Lowell from the Guns and Gangs Unit and getting the names of all the known members operating in the neighbourhood, and all the wannabes—”

  “That’s just about everybody!” The Byward Market was one of the central clearing houses for the drug trade. Hardcore addicts and weekend partygoers alike headed down to its narrow, jumbled streets to make a score.

  “These men are black—possibly Somali or Ethiopian from what we can tell from the piece of crap tape—so we’ll concentrate on those groups first. We also think Rosenthal inflicted some damage. There’s tissue under his fingernails, which he kept well manicured, by the way—the guy was a class act—and some blood and hair on the rubber tip of his cane. Our punks may have some visible war wounds, so we want to get a look at all possible suspects ASAP.”

  “Sounds good. Keep me posted, especially if you locate the son. Meanwhile I’ll poke around into this guy’s background using the connections I have. If I turn up anything, I’ll pass it on.”

  Sullivan lifted his feet off the desk and took a deep breath as if gathering his forces for the day ahead. “Sure, Mike. Whatever makes you happy.”

  Green laughed and waved towards the door. “What can I say? Most times the hoofbeats are horses, but you got to keep an eye out for zebras. Now get out of here. I’ve got some pointless action proposal to prepare for Superintendent Devine. She’s revving up her campaign for Deputy Chief into high gear, so I have to solve the spike in domestics by five o’clock today.”

  Omar twitched aside the curtain and peered down the street. The cop car was still there, parked in front of Nadif ’s house. Omar hadn’t seen them go in, but they’d been in there an awful long time. Omar itched to phone Nadif to find out what was up, but he didn’t dare. For one thing, his fucking father would probably hear the phone click and pick up in the middle. For another, Nadif wouldn’t be able to tell him a thing with the cops standing two feet away.

  He paced back into the bathroom to stare at himself in the mirror. He’d cleaned up the snot and blood the best he could and spent most of Sunday in bed, but he still looked like he’d hit a brick wall. There were scrapes on his arms, his nose was swollen, and one eye was half shut. He’d thought of washing his hoodie and jeans in the bathtub, but he was afraid his father would freak out at the mess. Instead he’d bundled them in a ball and shoved them in the back of his closet to deal with when he could sneak out to the garbage bin in the alley behind. His father had slapped him under house arrest for a month, and even now he was downstairs keeping an eagle eye out.

  Omar wished he knew what story Yusuf and Nadif were telling the cops. Maybe they’d all settled on a story Saturday night, but he couldn’t remember. Just like he couldn’t remember what the hell they’d done after they left the park or how the hell he’d gotten blood all over himself. His stomach still felt like the bottom of a sewer, but at least his headache was gone and his brains were back in place. If the cops came, he’d have to wing his version, admit to all the stuff he could remember that was legal—probably even cop to the joints, no big deal—then say he went straight home. Tripped on the curb and fell down on the way. He’d stick to that, say it was all he could remember. Nadif always said if you’re going to lie, best to stick as close to the truth as possible.

  Maybe Nadif wouldn’t squeal on him. Maybe the cops just wanted to talk to him about his court case, or check if he was following his bail conditions. Jeez, Omar you little dick, that’s probably it. Nothing to do with you and the blood and the hole in your memory.

  But then he saw Nadif ’s door open, and two cops came out. Plain clothes, not uniforms. Shit, what did that mean? He watched as they stood on the sidewalk looking up and down the street, before one of them pointed straight at Omar’s house, and they started this way.

  The asshole had ratted him out after all.

  Omar dropped the curtain and pressed himself against his bedroom wall, hoping to be invisible. Maybe he could hide and pretend he wasn’t there. But he had three stupid little brothers downstairs who’d be happy to show the cops the way, and a hardass father who always believed in paying the price for all the bad you’d done and then some. His father had seen the blood. Knew he’d come home at three a.m., drunk, wasted and puking his guts out. His father had barely said a word to him all weekend; the cold shoulder was his favourite father-son thing, and he’d forbidden Omar’s mother to talk to him either. Not that she did much anyway. But the old man would turn him in over a fucking marijuana joint, for chrissakes.

  He was beginning to feel that slow burn that happened every time he thought about his father, and just then the doorbell rang. Squeals of excitement from his moron brothers, a yell for silence from his father, then nothing but voices in the hall, too quiet for him to hear. Footsteps scrambling on the stairs, the bedroom door bursting open, two brothers bouncing up and down, excited because the cops were here. They were asking for him. Dad was talking to them.

  Omar clamped his hands over his brothers’ mouths. “Just wait!” he whispered. “Don’t make the cops’ job easier. Let’s see what Dad’s going to do.”

  He signalled his brothers to stay put, and he sneaked out of the room onto the landing, then edged down the first few steps of the narrow staircase. He stopped just above the stair that creaked. The voices in the hall were clear. His father didn’t yell, but his voice could crack stone it was so cold.

  “Sorry, gentlemen,” he was saying.“I wish I could help you. I’ve raised my boys to respect the police, although Lord knows that’s hard around here sometimes. Lots of temptations and problem kids to lead a boy astray. But Omar’s not here at the moment. I sent him on an errand to the store. Lentils. My wife’s making lunch, and suddenly there are no lentils.”

  Omar heard the easy humour in his father’s voice, like one guy talking to another about the whims of women. But the cop that answered had no humour in his voice.“When will he be back?”

  “Well, my wife likes a particular kind of lentils, so he may have to go all the way to Vanier. On his bicycle. I told him not to come back without the lentils, so it may be an hour. What’s this about?”

  “Can you tell us where he was Saturday night?”

  “Right here, in his room.”

  “He didn’t go out any time between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.?”

  “He was here doing homework, and I saw to it personally. Twenty years old and still in adult high school because he thought he’d take the scenic route through his education. I want to make sure he crosses the finish line. That’s the least a father should do.”

  “So he was here all night? You’re sure of that?”

  “Absolu
tely.”

  Omar heard that dangerous little edge creeping into his father’s voice, but the cops wouldn’t recognize it. There was silence in the hall. Omar realized his heart was almost breaking his ribs. What the hell was this about? Dad, who hammered them on the head about honour and honesty— Dad was lying? Bold-faced, calm, friendly. Lying, like it was natural as day.

  “We would still like to question him about an incident his friends were involved in,” the officer said. “Here’s my card. Have him give us a call as soon as he gets back.”

  “Absolutely, officers. I’ll pass it on. What incident is this?”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Adams. Have him give us a call.” The door squeaked open and closed again. Omar found he was holding his breath. Waiting for his father’s next move.

  It wasn’t long in coming. Omar had barely made it back to his room when his father was on him, hauling him by the ear into the bathroom. “You little turd,” he hissed. “You’re going to scrub this room until every speck of dirt and whatever else you brought home Saturday night is gone. Then you’re going to scrub it again. You’re a disgrace, and if you bring trouble to your mother and brothers, I’ll cut you off like you never existed. Don’t think you’ll ever see us or a single dime of support ever again. You were here all Saturday night studying for that math credit you’ve been working on. And if your worthless gangsta friends say different, they’re lying. Got that? Lying. That’s your story, or you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  I already wish that, Omar thought through the pain ricocheting through his head. I’ve wished that ever since I was old enough to wish.

  Five

  Sergeant Levesque was a good actress. She stood in the middle of Sam Rosenthal’s living room, surrounded by stacks of files and textbooks, her hands on her hips and her head cocked. Her lips smiled, but her eyes smouldered, midnight blue and threatening. Like a distant thunderstorm, Green thought, chuckling at the image that had leaped to his mind.

  “Inspector Green,” she said. “Not much to report yet. We just got the search warrant, and we’ve been here only a half hour.”

  “I know,” he replied blithely. “I’m just visiting on my lunch hour.” He looked around at the work already done—drawers opened, filing cabinets emptied and cushions overturned— and felt a twinge of frustration. He remembered when he searched a victim’s home, back in the days when he didn’t sit on committees or jump to fulfill every whim from the brass above, but instead spent his shift on the road, running his own cases and calling his own shots.

  Back then he would have spent half an hour just studying the apartment, getting a sense of the occupant, sketching and absorbing impressions before he disturbed a single thing. Sullivan used to call it “communing with the dead”, and he wasn’t far off. The victim told him a lot in those thirty minutes, from what pictures he chose to hang where and what books he had on display to what kitchen utensils were near at hand.

  In most homicide cases, the victim’s identity was key to his death. In this one, Sergeant Levesque thought it irrelevant. She might be right, but it disturbed Green’s sense of due respect. He began his own walkabout, trying to picture the room as Rosenthal would have left it. Everything had an old, slightly-scuffed appearance, but the man had clearly once had money as well as taste. A dining room set of mahogany and velvet was shoehorned into the small nook allotted to it off the living room. An antique roll-top desk with leaded glass bookshelves and cubbyholes for stationery and supplies sat beside the bay window, and matching wing chairs bracketed the cavernous Victorian fireplace. A Persian rug in faded blue and red tones covered the scuffed oak floor.

  The man had chosen a soft blue paint throughout the apartment to complement the many paintings that hung in every space. Green was no expert in art but recognized an eclectic mix of styles and subjects. Some were from Israel— a soft watercolour of the Jerusalem skyline, a vibrant acrylic of Jews dancing at the Western Wall. Some were rugged Canadian landscapes of pine trees and lakes. But the most striking were the portraits. Not happy or posed but raw and real. People lost in thought, lonely, isolated and in pain.

  Rosenthal had spent his whole career dealing with human pain, yet he had not created an oasis in his own home. His home reflected his experience with life. Raw, lost, lonely. None of the artists were recognizable names, at least to Green, but he suspected Rosenthal had not bought the paintings for their investment value but for the feelings they evoked. Love of his spiritual homeland, awe of the Canadian wilderness, and above all, compassion for human pain.

  In contrast to the living area, which was stuffed with treasures, the bedroom was stark, as if it were not a place he enjoyed. Tiny and utilitarian, it held only a single bed against one wall covered with a frayed blue duvet, an antique dresser with a sculpted mirror, and an entire wall of shabby bookshelves stuffed with books. Medical and scientific tomes shared space with philosophy, mysticism and provocative works like The Mindful Brain, An Unquiet Mind and The Doctor and the Soul by Victor Frankl. Green picked the latter up idly. He was familiar with the Viennese psychiatrist who had found a path to spiritual meaning amid the horrors of the Nazi death camps. Perhaps Rosenthal had a more profound grasp of human health and illness than his detractors understood, Green thought, replacing the book reluctantly before resuming his search.

  Neatly arrayed on top of the dresser were a hairbrush, comb, shoe horn, some pill bottles and a small leather box, which the detectives had already opened. It contained cufflinks, tie clips, a gold watch with a broken face and a man’s opal ring with an engraving inside the band. “To my darling, June 16, 1980”. A birthday or anniversary present from his wife?

  Green peered at the labels on the pill bottles. Advil, multivitamins, Allegra, Tums and an herbal medicine that claimed to guarantee sleep. He jotted down the name. Not surprisingly considering his recent concern with over-medication, Rosenthal did not appear to be taking a single drug prescribed by a doctor, which was unusual among today’s elderly. At last count, Green’s father took eight pills a day.

  Beside the bed was a night table on which sat a glass of water, a pair of reading glasses and a teetering stack of novels, one of which lay open face down, By the Time You Read This, by Giles Blunt. Green glanced at the back cover. A Canadian mystery set in a northern town and featuring an apparent suicide. So the man didn’t shy away from the anguish of his profession even in his minutes before sleep. Also in the stack of novels were other Canadian literary titles, along with classics from Dickens and Dostoevsky. Just like his art, his reading tastes were eclectic and sophisticated, yet a touch sad.

  The dresser drawers had already been opened to reveal a jumble of underwear and socks, all either black or white. Green was mildly surprised that the clothes were not folded, since he had formed a picture of a solitary, fastidious man with set routines and perhaps too much time on his hands. Lower drawers contained sweaters, cotton slacks and golf shirts, in blacks, blues and beiges. Not a man inclined to flamboyance, certainly. There were no jeans or T-shirts in the mix, suggesting a degree of formality in the appearance he presented. Fits with the three-piece suit, Green thought.

  Green glanced in the closet, under the bed, and in the bathroom, but none held any surprises. Except one. He returned to the living room.

  “There’s no sign of a computer. I know he’s over seventy, but he’s educated and worldly. Seems unlikely.”

  Sergeant Levesque looked up from the stack of correspondence she was sorting. “A laptop was on the list of things he reported stolen.”

  Green felt a flash of annoyance. A laptop was an obvious target for thieves, but nonetheless one that might contain crucial information. He should have been informed. “What else was on the list?”

  “Some jewellery—his late wife’s diamond necklace and ring—a box of silverware and some papers from his filing cabinet. Typical stuff.”

  Green frowned at her dismissive assessment. To his mind, it was not typical at all. The paintings had
not been taken, which suggested the thief was not an art connoisseur, but papers would be of little value to a thief. “What kind of papers?”

  She shrugged.“He wasn’t sure. When he came home, there were papers from the filing cabinet all over the floor. Most of that stuff he had not looked at since he retired. There were professional articles, patient files, workshop notes.”

  The filing cabinet had now been emptied into piles on the floor, and Sergeant Levesque’s partner was sifting through them. Bafflement and frustration showed in his face. “He doesn’t seem to have bothered sorting them out when he put them back after the break-in,” the young constable said. “Just stuffed them all back in. I’m looking for personal papers like his will and insurance policies, but so far all I’ve found is this.” He held up an empty file folder. “It’s labelled ‘will’, but there’s nothing in it.”

  Levesque let out a low whistle and brandished a paper she’d picked up. “Well, somebody might want to find the will. He owned this house completely—and in this neighbourhood that’s probably worth over a million—and this investment statement says he’s got almost three and a half million in an account. His son is going to have a nice surprise.”

  “How’s the search for him coming?” Green asked.

  Suspicion flashed across Levesque’s face, and for an instant she even hesitated to answer. “Nothing yet. Gibbs is still trying to find out his name.”

  “Likely David or John. I’d concentrate on the States somewhere.”

  Levesque swung around on her junior partner, her ponytail snapping. She gestured to the papers strewn on the floor. “There should be a name somewhere in there.”

  “Find any kind of legal document, and that’ll give you his lawyer’s name,” Green said. “The lawyer will have his will on file and probably the son’s coordinates as well.”

  The junior detective began pawing through papers, obviously eager to impress. “I found his income tax records for the last few years. They show lots of donations to charity —United Way, Canadian Mental Health Association, United Jewish Appeal and a bunch of charities in Israel. No lawyer’s name, but I found a dental bill.”