by Peggy Blair
Ellis averted his eyes.
“We found these under your mattress, Señor Ellis. Take a look. You can see what they reveal. A boy being raped. The boy was Arturo Montenegro.”
“What? Those aren’t mine.” Ellis slammed his hand on the table.
Ramirez pressed harder. “We also found a pair of men’s briefs with blood on them in your room. The blood came from the boy.”
Ramirez pulled a document from his jacket. A lab report, typed on a manual typewriter. He threw it on the table in front of Ellis, certain Ellis couldn’t read Spanish.
“What? Then someone put them there. I didn’t do anything to that boy. You have to believe me.” Ellis put a hand over his chest, breathing heavily.
Ramirez needed him even more frightened, more vulnerable. He needed Ellis trapped, so he could offer him a way out.
Ramirez leaned all the way over the table. He put his face directly in front of the Canadian’s. “The semen in your sheets, Señor Ellis, is the same as semen our pathologist found in the boy’s rectum. I have more than enough evidence to arrest you right now. A confession is the only way to save your life.”
“I didn’t do this, I tell you!” Ellis pounded his fist on the table. He jumped to his feet and threw his chair aside. He kicked it across the room. The dead man leaped out of the way. Ellis bent over and took several deep breaths.
The tiny motor of the tape recorder whirred in the silence while Ellis fought to stop shaking. He slowly righted himself, then his chair. His hands were trembling.
You finally understand your life is on the line, don’t you? thought Ramirez. You should have taken the añejo when I offered it.
“Inspector Ramirez, you have to believe me,” Ellis gasped, his arms gripping the back of the plastic chair. “I’ve been framed.”
“Framed by who, Señor Ellis? Who do you think would frame you for such a thing?” Somehow Ramirez managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Who had access to your room other than your wife? Would your own wife frame you for such a crime? Perhaps the maids?”
“I don’t know. The woman from the bar. She must have come back to my room with me last night.”
The dead man put his hat back on and nodded at Ramirez, as if to signal that the interview was over. Not quite, thought Ramirez. But close. He’s baited. Not yet hooked.
NINETEEN
Hector Apiro and Detective Sanchez sipped coffee as they watched Inspector Ramirez. Apiro enjoyed seeing Ramirez question suspects. It was good sport, like seeing a man wrestle a swordfish into a small boat, but using words instead of brute strength.
“The woman from the bar.” Inspector Ramirez sat back, smiling slightly. “Now you say you came back to the hotel with a woman you met in the bar. An alibi you failed to mention previously, even after I reminded you of its importance. And why did you not mention this before?”
“I told you how drunk I was. I can barely remember what happened last night,” Señor Ellis said weakly. “But if there was any evidence found in my room, she must have put it there. She’s the only one who could have.”
“Miguel Artez, the doorman at your hotel, says you came back last night by yourself. He signed a statement to that effect.”
Very good, Ricardo, thought Apiro. The doorman had no reason to lie. The dénouement, as the French would say. Michael Ellis sat down, hard. He looked defeated.
“Señor Ellis, I am trying to save your life,” Ramirez said kindly. “Tell me who held the camera when these pictures were taken. Trust me, it is your only chance.”
Ramirez waited patiently. He let his lie float in the air like the smoke above their heads. Apiro knew a confession would change nothing. In a case like this, the state would insist on execution. But Ramirez always liked to be certain.
“Where is the weapon? Did you throw it in the ocean?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
Apiro saw the small twitch, the vein that pulsed in the suspect’s forehead. The Canadian was lying about something; Apiro was sure of it.
“You are a very angry man, Señor Ellis. Easily provoked. You are a violent man at times, aren’t you?”
Ellis said nothing, as if he couldn’t answer that question honestly. But then, Apiro thought, who could?
“I can understand how things escalated. How you didn’t mean them to. You were enraged yesterday when your wife left you. Understandable. What did she say to upset you so much? Something cruel? Did she say you weren’t man enough for her anymore?” Ramirez was probably inventing, but he seemed to hit some kind of nerve. Ellis flinched.
“I admit, I was upset.”
Ramirez spoke to the man even more gently. “Is it not possible, then, that you took your anger out on the boy? That you saw him after your wife left, in the market, or perhaps on your way back to the hotel? Blamed him for the argument with your wife? You were very drunk. You didn’t mean to strike him so hard. Not intentional at all, was it? Just a terrible accident.”
Ellis said nothing. He looked like a man trying to choose the path that would decide his future. If he still had one.
“Say it,” Ramirez shouted, and slapped his hand on the table.
“Do not insult my intelligence, Señor Ellis. Did you see the boy later that night or not? Yes or no?”
Ellis shook his head. “No.”
“Was he bleeding when you saw him earlier that day? When your wife was with you?”
With that question, Apiro realized the Canadian was trapped. If Ellis said yes, Ramirez could prove he was lying; the witnesses who saw the boy with Ellis in the afternoon had said the boy was uninjured. Yet the boy’s blood was on his underwear. It got there somehow. If Ellis said no, he had to admit he was with the boy later that evening. Either way, the swordfish was now thrashing around inside the boat.
“No,” said Ellis, looking wildly around the room.
“Then there’s only one explanation, isn’t there? You must have seen him again later that night.”
“I must have,” Ellis whispered, and for a moment Apiro almost felt sorry for him. “But I could have sworn I didn’t.” Meaning he could not swear to it anymore. Ramirez had just placed the Canadian with the boy not just in the afternoon but later that same day.
“He’s very good, isn’t he?” Apiro said to Sanchez.
Sanchez, who rarely showed emotion, formed the closest thing to a smile Apiro had ever seen him produce. “Inspector Ramirez? He’s the best.”
TWENTY
“Let me summarize what I understand,” said Inspector Ramirez sympathetically. “You admit you drank a lot of añejo last night. You were extremely drunk. You blacked out. You remember very little. This is what you have told us so far, yes?”
“Yes,” Ellis said. “Yes, I blacked out.”
“Then you can’t be sure you didn’t kill him, can you?”
Ramirez took his silence as an answer.
Ellis knew that the failure to deny an accusation was as good as an admission. He just couldn’t think of what else to say. The boy’s blood was on his clothes and he couldn’t remember, had no idea how it got there. Christ, Ellis thought, is it even remotely possible I did kill the boy? But how could I? I went right back to my hotel room after I left the bar. With the woman. Maybe.
“Are you willing to provide us with a DNA sample?”
Ellis shook his head. How could he if he might be guilty? He might as well hand the firing squad the bullets.
Ramirez glanced at his watch and stood up.
“I thought not. Señor Ellis, I am arresting you for the rape of Arturo Montenegro. You will most likely be arrested for murder once we complete our investigation. We have until two o’clock on Wednesday to file the materials necessary to proceed by indictment. You will be kept in the holding cells here for the moment. Our prisons are full with political dissidents so there is no room elsewhere, although perhaps that is fortunate, given the nature of your crimes. I want you to survive until your trial, believe it or not. But once indicted, you
will be transferred to a prison to await your trial. Do you understand?”
Ellis’s legs began to shake. He knew what happened to sex offenders in jail, what would happen to a police officer once the other prisoners found out he was one. It wouldn’t matter to them whether he was Canadian or not.
“You have to believe me. Someone put that evidence in my room. If you won’t let me speak to a lawyer, then please, let me speak to someone in my embassy.”
Ramirez thought for a moment, then nodded. He was careful to speak into the small recorder. “Of course, Señor Ellis. We will make arrangements for you to contact your embassy as soon as possible. However, it is closed today, perhaps tomorrow as well, because of the Christmas holidays. Is there someone else you would like to call?”
Ellis hesitated, then he leaned forward so that he spoke directly into the tiny tape recorder as well. He cleared his throat. “Yes. I want to speak to Chief Miles O’Malley of the Rideau Regional Police in Ottawa. As soon as possible.”
TWENTY - ONE
Inspector Ramirez walked out of the interrogation room and entered the small room where Detective Sanchez waited.
“Dr. Apiro left,” Sanchez said. “He is getting things ready for the autopsy.”
“Good.” Ramirez turned the tape over to Sanchez for initialling. “Have transcripts prepared, will you, Rodriguez? Both tapes, please.”
Ramirez wanted to make sure the juridical panel knew the extent to which he had accommodated the prisoner’s request. Señor Ellis had no rights in Cuba. Fidel Castro had never signed the Vienna Convention. If he were American instead of Canadian, Ellis might have remembered Guantánamo Bay.
“Right away. Well done, Inspector Ramirez,” Sanchez said. He applauded softly. “That was as close to a confession as you can get from a man so highly trained.”
The dead man sat at Ramirez’s desk. He tipped the brim of his hat, evidently equally impressed.
“Thank you, Rodriguez. Personally, I keep thinking it’s a stupid man who would call the police to report a wallet stolen by a boy he had just killed. Although it may have seemed like the smart thing to do,” said Ramirez. “Hard for him to claim innocence otherwise. He must not have realized his wallet was missing until after he disposed of the body.”
“So the boy was a pickpocket. After all, he kept the badge. Only a child would do that.”
Any other Cuban would have kept the money and discarded everything else.
“It certainly helped us. Without the wallet, there would have been nothing to connect the foreigner to this murder.”
“The anonymous complaint — don’t you think that would have been enough?” asked Sanchez.
“Enough to watch him, perhaps, no more than that. We could never have conducted a search based on that information alone.”
“Probably not,” Sanchez admitted. But Ramirez knew Sanchez would have searched the room in a heartbeat if he had been alone.
“What about the drug capsule? Why not remove that evidence from his room?” asked Sanchez.
The dead man stood behind Sanchez. He pulled the pockets in his own pants inside out, both empty. It made Ramirez think about a dirty joke they used to tell as boys, where the punch line was an elephant. If it was a joke, his subconscious mind’s attempt at humour escaped him, and if it was some sort of clue, Ramirez wasn’t sure what it meant. The elephant in the room?
“An oversight, most likely. The doorman confirmed how drunk Señor Ellis was last night. Besides, the maids would have cleaned his room before lunch today. He had no reason to think we would search it. All the evidence would have been vacuumed away, his sheets and dirty clothing laundered. He probably thought the boy’s body would wash out to sea and take any remaining evidence with it. But something bothers me, Rodriguez. This man could not have taken that body all the way to the Malecón without some kind of vehicle. Where did he get one?”
“There is nothing to suggest he rented a car or a truck,” Sanchez conceded.
“We need to find out. I doubt he could have carried a body to the ocean, even such a small one, without drawing attention to himself. He is a foreigner and recognizable, with all those scars.”
“True,” Sanchez agreed. “And the Malecón is busy at night.”
“There must have been a vehicle, then, a car, maybe a cart. You realize this means we can’t rule out an accomplice.”
Sanchez nodded slowly. “It didn’t occur to me to think about how the body was moved. I thought the strength of the other evidence was enough. As always, Inspector, you are one step ahead of me. Perhaps the wife?”
“We’ll see what Apiro has to say about timelines. She may have already left Cuba by then. See if Señor Ellis took a taxi that night or if either of them rented a car. Natasha can help you.”
“I’ll start working on it. By the way, Dr. Apiro asked where you got the lab report you showed the suspect, since his isn’t finished yet.”
“I used one from another case.”
Ramirez thought it gave him more authority to enter an interview with an official-looking piece of paper, as if he had strong evidence already, even if the document had no relevance. He had walked into one interrogation with a recipe. He always put the purported report on the table and pointed to it as if it were important. That was usually enough to convince the unsuspecting suspect to talk, but it only worked with turistas who spoke no Spanish.
Ramirez explained Apiro’s early findings to his young colleague, which reminded him to check his watch. Two-twenty. Just enough time to get to the morgue. “Can you arrange for the Canadian to make a long-distance call?”
Sanchez raised his eyebrows, but nodded.
Ramirez would not normally allow such access, but there was no reason to create a political controversy by denying the Canadian a call to his employer. Particularly when he worked for a police department in a country with which Cuba had good relations.
The Cuban National Revolutionary Police might need to work with the Canadian police on a future case someday. It was always best to have reciprocity, now that crime had become so global.
TWENTY - TWO
Detective Sanchez took Mike Ellis downstairs to Booking and photographed him. He told Ellis to take off all his clothes and jewellery, then handed him a pair of orange prison overalls. Ellis stripped naked, removed his watch and wedding ring, and handed them to a guard.
After Sanchez itemized and bagged Ellis’s clothes, he put metal handcuffs on his wrists. The guard put thick steel manacles around his ankles and chained his feet together. All Ellis had left were his shoes; even his socks were taken away.
Ellis understood, for the first time, how the people he arrested must have felt. Shock mixed with humiliation, anger, a sense of unfairness. Guilt had nothing to do with it.
Sanchez walked him, hobbled, down the hall from the holding cells to a small room with a metal table, a phone, and one wooden chair. He told Ellis to sit down and removed the handcuffs from his right wrist so he could hold the receiver more easily.
Ellis was surprised Sanchez hadn’t beaten him or anything. The police back home would have already turned the hoses on. “Washing the cells down,” they would say later in response to a complaint. “Didn’t realize there was someone there.” Sanchez acted instead as if he felt sorry for him, which made Ellis even more afraid of what awaited.
“There will be a short delay while we find an English-speaking operator who can locate your police chief’s home phone number.”
Ellis prayed silently that O’Malley wasn’t off vacationing somewhere exotic himself.
Sanchez dialled the operator and said the call was to be placed person-to-person, collect. He left the room and locked Ellis in.
Ellis waited on the line, fidgeting, while the Cuban operator made the necessary connections with a Canadian operator, who confirmed she had a listing for a Miles O’Malley. The phone rang at least a dozen times before Chief O’Malley finally answered. A tidal wave of relief washed through Ellis as he re
cognized his Irish brogue. O’Malley had a strong accent, although he had lived in Canada for more than thirty years.
The Cuban operator spoke first: “This is a collect call from Señor Michael Ellis — will you accept the charges?”
Ellis had been afraid that O’Malley might be out; now he had a momentary fragment of fear that he might not accept the charges. But of course O’Malley did. “Michael, my boy!”
“I’m sorry to have to call you at home on Christmas, Chief,” Ellis said, trying to keep his voice strong, “but I’m in trouble.”
“Michael, my lad, I can’t hear you very well. Party going on here. Merry Christmas, son. Where are you?” Ellis could hear people laughing, glasses clinking. Christmas music played in the background. “My wife’s family is over for the turkey. I thought you were on holidays somewhere with that beautiful wife of yours.”
“I’m in Cuba.”
“Well, that’s grand, Mikey. So why are you calling me? What can I do for you?”
“Chief, I need your help. I’m at the Havana police station. In custody.”
“Custody — under arrest for what? Too much to drink? Speak up, lad.” Ellis pictured O’Malley pressing the phone closer to his ear, trying to catch every word over the noise in his living room.
“Be quiet, for a moment, people,” the police chief called out, and the chatter subsided. “One of my men is on the phone, in a spot of trouble.” He lowered his voice so that the others couldn’t hear. “What’s going on down there, Michael?”
“I’m under arrest for sexually assaulting a child, Chief. And maybe for murder.”
A moment’s silence, then O’Malley’s outrage. “Murder? What the hell is going on down there? What kind of sexual assault?”
Ellis took a deep breath and described the nightmare he was trapped in. “I’m being held by the Cuban police. There was a young boy who was raped and killed last night. They said I could be charged with murder. Chief, I’ve been framed. I don’t know by who. The police found the body this morning. I lost my wallet last night; they found it in his clothing. He was drugged with some kind of date-rape drug. They found the same drug in my hotel room along with some photographs. Child porn. I didn’t put them there and they aren’t mine. But it looks pretty bad.”
