Tumblin' Dice

by John McFetridge

  Price said, “Find out and call Translation Services, get someone over here,” and Costa said, “Here, or meet us at Twenty-Two?”

  “Here, we need statements from all these people and we can’t take them all to the station house.”

  Costa said, “They’ve been talking a lot in whatever language it is — lots of time to get their stories straight.”

  Price said, yeah, “But you never know what we’ll get with statements. Everybody has to make one.”

  Costa nodded and went back into the bedroom, and Price looked at Mueller and said, “Let’s see the basement,” and she led the way.

  The finished part of the basement was divided up into a couple rooms, and then past that was the unfinished furnace room that also had a washer and a dryer. No one was in the basement.

  Mueller led the way through the big room, which had a couple of Ikea chairs and a couch and a big flat-screen TV, Price thinking it could use a makeover from the Man Caves guys on TV but it wasn’t bad. Then they went through a doorway to a bedroom that was barely big enough for the bed and a dresser. The room was a mess, clothes on the floor, jeans and t-shirts, a black hoodie, and some bright-coloured scarves.

  Mueller said, “She was in here, on the bed.”

  Price said, “He strangled her? Was there a scarf around her neck?”

  “Not when we got here.”

  McKeon said, “There’s no door.”

  Price was looking around the room at the clothes on the floor and he said, what? McKeon said, “There’s no door; there aren’t even any hinges,” and when Price didn’t get it McKeon said, “You can see this whole room from out there.”

  “Yeah?”

  McKeon looked at Mueller and said, “How old is she?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Around?”

  Mueller shrugged, “Sixteen?”

  “And she couldn’t come into her room,” McKeon said, “slam the door, and be alone.”

  Price said, “Yeah, I see what you mean,” then he looked at the bed and said, “This blood here?” and Mueller said, “The girl was bleeding. It was coming out of her nose.”

  McKeon said it was hard to tell if there had been much of a struggle, and Price looked at Mueller and said, “How big is the girl? Do you think this guy could have held her down himself?”

  Mueller said, “She’s not tall but she’s probably 120. She’s not anorexic, that’s for sure.”

  Price said okay, and then looked at Mueller and said, “Wait here for SOCO.”

  When they got back upstairs Price looked around at all the people looking at him and McKeon: mom standing in the kitchen, grandma and a couple of guys, probably brothers of mom or dad, sitting at the dining room table, a few more people in the living room — all adults and none of them looking like they were going to say anything.

  Price walked down the hall to the bedroom and opened the door.

  Costa, on his cell phone, looked like he was caught at something and said, “Translation Services — I’m on hold,” and Price said, yeah, okay, and waited a minute, and Costa said, “It’s Pashto; Translation Services is sending someone,” and Price looked at the dad and said, “Yeah, but you speak English,” and the dad shrugged, doing a bad job of pretending he didn’t understand, but he wasn’t going to say anything in English.

  Price said, okay, “Keep him in here,” and left the room.

  In the living room the SOCO, two uniformed Scene of Crime Officers, were heading down into the basement with their equipment and McKeon said she’d go with them.

  Price waited by the door. Once in a while one of the older guys would say something in Pashto and Price would look at him but the grandmother would’ve already given him the evil eye and shut him up. Twenty minutes later when Translation Services arrived, a woman in her late twenties wearing jeans and a black jacket with a Blue Jays logo on the front, the first thing she said was “Wow, I didn’t know there’d be so many people here.”

  Price pulled her down the hall a little and spoke quietly, saying, “What’s your name?” and she said, “Nahla Odeh,” and Price said, okay, “The father called it in, said he killed his daughter but that was more than half an hour ago and he’s not saying anything now, pretending he can’t really speak English, so I’m going to go over everything with him again and you’re going to translate. Then we’re going to have to talk to everybody in this house, one at a time, and get complete statements from all of them.”

  Nahla said, “How long is all this going to take?” and Price said, “As long as it takes.”

  She was nervous and she said, “Is it just me?” and Price said, yeah, and she said, “We’re not supposed to put in for overtime — it’s a budget thing, I think,” and Price said, “Don’t worry about that — this is homicide.”

  Nahla said, “You can approve it?” and Price said, “Yeah.”

  Then she said, “I’m not usually the first for Pashto. It’s usually Vincent, but he wasn’t available. I’m usually Urdu.” Price said, “That’s okay, do the best you can.”

  Then he led the way into the bedroom and the dad said, “I’m not answering any more questions.”

  Price said, “Okay, that’s fine, Constable Costa will take you to Twenty-Two Division. You can call a lawyer and we’ll talk there.”

  The dad stood up and started towards the door and Price said, “Cuff him.”

  And then the dad looked surprised and pissed off and said something in Pashto to Nahla and Price said, “Don’t translate that,” and motioned to Costa, who already had his cuffs out and was pulling the dad’s hands behind his back. The dad said something else as Costa pushed him past Price and Nahla out the door and down the hall, and when they were in the living room by the front door the mom came out of the kitchen and said something and the dad said something and then they yelled at each other while Costa pulled the dad outside.

  When the door closed it was quiet in the house, the mom and everybody else staring at Price who was standing by the door with Nahla. He said, “Tell them we’re going to take them one at a time into the bedroom and get statements.”

  Nahla said something in Pashto, and then looked at Price and said, “Who goes first?”

  Price said, “The mom,” and Nahla looked at her and even before she said anything the mom was walking down the hall to the bedroom.

  Nahla held Price back as they followed, and when they were alone in the hall, she spoke quietly and said, “He said she brought shame to the family.”

  “The daughter?”

  “Yes, said he had no choice.”

  “The mom agree?”

  “She said, ‘What am I going to do now?’ and he told her not to say anything.”

  Price said, yeah, okay, “I don’t even know if we’re going to be able to use anything from her until we find out how old the daughter is. If she’s under fourteen we can use the mother’s testimony, but if she’s older than that then there’s spousal privilege. Anyway, let’s see what we can get first and worry about that later.”

  Nahla said okay, and they went into the bedroom where the mom was already sitting on the bed in the same place her husband had been.

  Price walked into the bedroom and Nahla followed behind, looking nervous. Price motioned for her to shut the door and she did.

  The mom stared straight ahead not looking at Price or Nahla. Price waited a minute and then he said, “I’m very sorry for your trouble,” and the mom nodded but still didn’t look at him, and then he said, “This won’t take long, and then you can go to the hospital and see your daughter.”

  The mom turned her head and looked like she was going to say something but she stopped, and Price motioned to Nahla to translate, but the mom didn’t say anything.

  Then Price led them through some basic questions — who lived in the house, who was home this morning, wha
t happened before the “altercation” as he called it — and Nahla stumbled in her translation looking for just the right word. The mom answered all the questions with as few words as she could, and Price asked a few more. Nahla fell into a nice back and forth rhythm and didn’t even blink when Price said, “Did you know your husband was going to kill her?”

  The mom turned and looked at Price and said, in English, “No, no, I don’t know. Not to kill her, just break her arms, her legs.”

  “Because,” Price said, “she brought shame to the family?”

  The mom didn’t say anything so Nahla translated and then the mom went back to speaking Pashto, speaking softer and softer, and Nahla had to hold the voice recorder closer.

  Then Nahla stood up and said to Price, “She said that she begged Amaal, the daughter, to listen to her father, to do what she was told. She said everybody begged her but she wouldn’t listen, she ran away — everyone knew what she was doing.”

  As Nahla was talking the mom started crying softly. She had her hands clenched tightly together in her lap and she was rocking back and forth on the bed a little and crying.

  Price watched her for a minute and then said, “Did your husband say he was going to kill her?”

  Nahla translated and the mom nodded yes and Price said, “Get her to say it out loud,” and Nahla said something in Pashto and the mom just kept nodding, her eyes closed with tears squeezing out, and then finally looked at Nahla and said a few words.

  Nahla turned to Price and said, “She said yes. He said it was his insult, she was making him naked — everyone would know he couldn’t control his daughter.”

  Price said, okay, and then he said, “Give her a minute and then bring her back out,” and he walked out of the bedroom.

  McKeon was in the living room, her cell phone to her ear, and Price waited until she ended the call and then said, “Okay, she said he told her he was going to do it,” and McKeon said, “Well, ‘it’s’ now officially murder. Amaal died five minutes ago.”

  “All right,” Price said, “we’ll bring the mom and go charge him. Looks like the most clear-cut case of first degree we’ll ever have.” McKeon said, yeah, “There’s no way anything will screw this up.”

  Price looked at her and didn’t say anything, knowing it was far from over, and McKeon would be on it to the very end. Whatever that was.

  • • •

  Detective Sandra Bolduc laid five pictures on the desk and said, “Was one of these guys in the car?” and Angie didn’t even look at them, she just kept staring at the cop, this red-haired woman looking a little bored, and she said, “I told you, I didn’t see anyone.”

  “They were driving in as you were driving out. You passed right by them.”

  Angie kept staring and now she was thinking that the bored look was an act, or maybe a habit she’d used so many times she didn’t even notice it herself anymore, years of waiting out dumb criminals until they talked. But Angie wasn’t a dumb criminal and she sure didn’t want to get any more in the middle of this so she said, again, “I didn’t see anyone.”

  Detective Bolduc said, “You haven’t really looked at the pictures,” so Angie did, finally, looked at the five pictures and before she could say she didn’t recognize any of them, Detective Bolduc said, “See, you do know one of them.”

  Angie said, “Maybe I’ve seen him around the casino — we have a lot of people through here, you know.”

  “Sure, maybe he even caused some trouble. Your security team has an awful lot of files on people, don’t they?”

  “You’d have to talk to them.”

  Detective Bolduc said, “But you have seen this guy at the casino,” tapping one of the pictures, and Angie looked at it again and said, “I don’t know, maybe.”

  Bolduc picked up the picture and looked at it, still with that slightly bored expression, Angie thinking, trying to make it look like she did this every day, like she investigated murders, shootings, every day.

  Then Bolduc said, “Okay, now, tell me, Angie, was he driving the car or in the passenger seat?”

  Angie said, “Passenger seat,” and right away knew she shouldn’t have.

  They were in Angie’s office, just the two of them. Bolduc had called her and asked if they could have a chat, and Angie said sure, thinking she’d just keep putting it off, never work it into her schedule, but Bolduc had been right outside the door on her cell. She came right in and started their chat by saying how she knew Angie had been pulling out of the parking lot when the shooter had pulled in and she just wanted to show her some pictures, and Angie had said okay, thinking she just wouldn’t admit to recognizing any of them, but now that she’d done that she didn’t want to go any further.

  Bolduc was saying, “And the driver, he wasn’t any of these other guys,” and Angie looked at the pictures again and said, “They all kind of look the same, don’t they?” and Bolduc laughed a little — the first time she didn’t look bored — and said, yeah, “I guess they do, kind of like Basic Biker: long hair, beards, t-shirts, leather jackets,” and Angie said yeah.

  Then Bolduc said, “You have many of them at the casino?” and Angie said, “Lately, yeah,” and right away felt like she shouldn’t have said that, either.

  Bolduc didn’t say anything right away, she kind of nodded and then said, “Things are changing around here, aren’t they?” and Angie said, “Things are always changing.”

  “Sure,” Bolduc said, “but now things are changing fast.”

  Angie said, yeah, I guess, trying to make it sound like no big deal, happens all the time, that kind of thing, and Bolduc nodded along and then said, “Okay, well, I appreciate you talking to me. This is going to help.”

  Then she was picking up the photos, the five bikers, and Angie started to wonder how this cop had known she’d been leaving the parking lot when this guy was driving in.

  Bolduc said, “I’m going to have to take a statement from you, type it up, and you can sign it. Do you want to come in to the station, or should I bring it here?”

  Angie said, “I have to sign it?”

  “Yeah, look, we know this guy is the shooter — we have a lot of circumstantial evidence that puts him at the scene around the time — but your testimony will really help.”

  “My testimony,” Angie said, “I don’t know, you mean in court?”

  Bolduc was all packed up, the photos back in her pocket, and she was already walking towards the door saying, “I doubt this’ll go to court — lawyers will probably make a deal. I’ll keep you posted if you like?”

  Angie said she would like that, and Bolduc said, okay then, and walked out of the office.

  Angie felt sick to her stomach. Here she was so worried about Frank getting himself in the middle of this . . . whatever the hell it was, and now she’s the one talking to cops identifying murderers.

  And then she realized the only person who knew when she left the parking lot was Ritchie.

  Shit.

  • • •

  Felice was in the shower, a glass box big enough for two or three people, shaving her puss when she heard what she thought was the hotel room door open. She finished shaving, thinking it was the maid, this weird hotel in the middle of the woods the only one she’d ever been in where the maids were white girls, country chicks who grew up nearby, and so many of her customers were Chinese and Pakis, this whole place upside down.

  She turned off the shower and wrapped up in a big white towel and looked out the bathroom door into the room but she didn’t see the maid’s cart so she figured she hadn’t really heard anything. She dropped the towel and wrapped a smaller one around her hair and stepped out into the room and saw the guy standing by the bed.

  He said, “You not supposed to work this hotel,” and Felice said, “You’re not supposed to come up to the room; you’re supposed to talk to somebody in the bar first,�
�� and the guy stepped up to her fast and punched her in the face, knocking her on her ass, and she grabbed her mouth, blood pouring out, and said, “What the fuck?” and he lifted a leg like he was going to kick her and she pulled up into a ball and said, “No!”

  The guy said, “You not supposed to work this hotel,” and Felice said, “I am, they brought me up here,” and the guy said, “No, they can’t do that.”

  Then he said, “Stand up,” and Felice looked at him and didn’t move, and he said it again, “Stand up,” so she did, slowly getting to her feet and standing naked in front of the guy and then she could see he was older than she thought, as old as that guy Frank who brought her up to this fucking casino.

  The guy said, “I’m supposed to bang up your face, make you ugly so you can’t work.”

  Felice said, “Don’t, I’ll suck your cock, I suck good,” but the guy waved her off and said, “No.”

  She closed her eyes and waited but the guy didn’t hit her again. He said, “It’s not your fault, you just do what they say,” and she said, yeah, that’s right, and the guy said, I know, and then he said, “You call your people, tell them you don’t work this hotel,” and he turned and walked out.

  When the door closed Felice realized she was shaking, she was so scared but she was also pissed off. She felt her lip with her tongue, blood still coming out, and she horked up as much as she could, spit the blood on the painting hanging on the wall beside the bed, the Indian-looking thing that was a real painting and not just a print, now a real painting with a big gob of blood dripping off it.

  Then she picked up her phone and called Stancie, saying as soon as she answered, “These fucking idiots don’t know what they’re doing,” and when Stancie told her to calm down she said, “I will not fucking calm down — some fucking asshole walks right into my room, punches me in the face, tells me I can’t work this hotel,” and Stancie said, that’s crazy, and Felice said, “Fuck you.”

  Then Stancie said she’d look into it, it was a misunderstanding, and Felice said, “A misunderstanding with my blood pouring out of it,” and Stancie said, “Okay, just stay where you are,” and Felice said, “Fuck that, I’m going home,” and Stancie said, “No, you stay there,” and Felice said, “Fuck that, you send a fucking driver,” and she flipped her phone shut and realized she was still standing there naked, so she grabbed some clothes and put them on.