The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  “Was there Rohypnol in the package?”

  “Yes, there was,” the woman said, worried. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

  “Not at all. I just need to find out if any of it went missing.”

  “It’s interesting that you ask, because apparently there was a problem this time. And you’re right, it was the Rohypnol. I think they use it on the animals to get them ready for surgery. Anyway, it wasn’t in the box.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “The clinic called me the next day to ask about it. I told them I gave them everything I had. They asked if I could double-check with the folks in Toronto to see whether it was in the original package or not.”

  “Were you able to find out?” Jones asked.

  “Not yet, because of the holidays. I left a message on their answering machine. I think the staff at the Viñales clinic were worried it went missing on their end. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was stolen. I’ve had coffee and rum taken from my luggage at the airport. Even tampons, believe it or not.”

  “I guess it would be awkward to run out.” Jones cringed at the notion.

  “Run out? They haven’t had any for years. It’s easy to understand why people steal things once you’ve spent some time here. I usually bring extras of stuff like that to give away. People will follow you for miles asking for hand soap or pencils. It’s hard to believe the things people will beg for. I guess you can’t know how important something is to you until you’ve lost it. Or think you will.”

  Jones glanced at her pencil. She thought about how casually she had waved it around in front of Inspector Ramirez. “Was the package sealed when you took it to Viñales?”

  “The Customs officers here opened it to check the contents at the airport. They closed it up after that.”

  “Do you have anything that lists the contents?”

  “Yes. There’s a manifest that travels with the package. I have to produce it at Customs. They stamp it. I imagine they keep a copy. I don’t keep the stamped copy; that goes to the clinic. But I always make a few copies of the original in case I have any difficulties at Customs here. Usually, people are just grateful I’m trying to help.”

  Olefson walked over to the desk and reached for a stack of papers. She shuffled through them until she found the one she was looking for. “Here.”

  Jones scanned the list quickly. Penicillin, gauze, sutures, Bactrim, Polysporin, and Rohypnol. The quantities were listed as well.

  “Terrific, thanks. Did anyone else have access to the package before you turned it over to the clinic? I know I’m sounding a bit like one of those check-in attendants at the airport, but did you leave your bags with anyone, unattended? Even for a moment?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Olefson paused. “Now wait a minute. Come to think of it, I did ask Nasim to hold it for a minute when I took photographs.”

  “Nasim?”

  “A guy I met on the tour to Viñales on Tuesday. A Brit.”

  “Do you know his last name?”

  “You know, I don’t. I wish I did. But I have a picture of him on my laptop, if that helps. I used to have it on my digital camera, but he took off with my camera on Christmas Eve and I never saw him again. Thank God I had already downloaded most of my photographs; I need them for details when I’m writing. Let me see if I can find it for you.” She sat down at the desk and opened a file on her computer.

  “He stole your camera?”

  “We had arranged to have a drink here on Saturday on the rooftop terrace, to celebrate Christmas Eve,” Olefson said. “I asked him if he could go through my photographs with me to see if there was anything he thought I should put in my book. He asked me about one of them, and then he literally ran off. He still had my camera in his hand. I called after him, but he kept right on going. Even stiffed me for the drinks.”

  “Did you call the police to report the theft?” If she had, there might be some follow-up: a name, birthdate, something to identify this Nasim person further.

  “No, I kept hoping I’d run into him or that he’d bring it back. I assumed he was staying here, at the hotel, but the receptionist couldn’t find anyone registered with that name.” Olefson scrolled through her files until she found the picture. A small dark man in a navy shirt, wearing white sandals and a straw hat. He smiled for the camera.

  “Can I get a copy of this?”

  “Sure,” Olefson said. “I can loan you a memory stick if you promise to return it.”

  “I have my laptop with me, thanks. Do you remember which photograph it was that interested him so much?”

  “I do, actually. I took it on the Malecón. It was a picture of a couple of tourists with one of those young boys that hustle tourists for money. It looked like a Diane Arbus photograph. You know, where everyone’s pretending to smile but you can cut the tension in the air with a knife.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “No, I took it on my way back to meet him at the hotel. My only copy was on the camera.”

  “What time did you take it?”

  Olefson thought. “I was meeting Nasim at six, so I dunno. Maybe five? Five-thirty?”

  “And that was on Christmas Eve?”

  The woman nodded.

  “Can you remember anything else about the people in the picture? It could be important.”

  “Really? Well, the woman had her head turned, so I couldn’t see her very well, but she was gorgeous, I could tell. The man was bending over the boy. I was across the street, but even then I could see there was something wrong with his face. The man’s, I mean.”

  Too bad Olefson didn’t have a copy. Jones wondered why a British tourist so badly wanted a picture of Hillary and Mike Ellis that he stole a stranger’s camera. Or was it the boy that caught his eye?

  “Can I ask why you’re so interested in Nasim? And the veterinary supplies?” said Olefson.

  “I can’t tell you much, Candice. I’m just fishing around for information for now.” Jones smiled reassuringly. “But I really appreciate all your help.”

  Olefson downloaded the photograph for her and Jones headed back to her hotel, trying to piece things together. Alex could solve this puzzle, she thought. It’s not like there aren’t enough clues. But Alex wasn’t here. She wasn’t as quick as he was, as agile in connecting dots. That’s why she worked in pencil.

  She stopped at the reception desk when she got back to the hotel, but there were no messages. By the time she got back to her room, it was noon. There was no blinking light on her phone to indicate any voice mail messages: Alex must still be in surgery.

  Jones called the police station and left a message for Mike to call her, then sat on the bed and waited. She checked the time nervously. Two more hours.

  FORTY - SEVEN

  The guard took Mike Ellis to the phone to speak to his lawyer for what Ellis guessed was the last time.

  “Do you know someone named Nasim?” Celia Jones asked immediately.

  “No,” he said, but he heard a change in the tone of her voice. She hadn’t even said hello.

  Jones filled him in on what she’d discovered. “I have red flags going up all over the place.”

  “No kidding. Do you think this Nasim guy is involved in this?”

  “It’s worth checking out. I’m going to call the clinic myself and follow this up a bit more before I accuse a British citizen of anything — the chief made me promise to avoid any international scandals — but it’s a pretty good lead. I also found out quite a bit about Rohypnol online, Mike. It’s easily slipped into someone’s drink. Completely tasteless. It causes dizziness, hot flashes, and amnesia. Within minutes. All the symptoms you experienced.”

  “So you were right. I was drugged.”

  “I think so. And by that hooker, most likely. I just missed her at El Bar last night.”

  “Too bad,” Ellis said, disappointed. They needed that woman. Even so, Celia had accomplished a lot in little more than one day.

  “I’ve
been doing some thinking,” she said. “That boy’s body had to be covered up or wrapped up in something to disguise it before it was thrown in the water. I walked to where the body was found. It’s a very busy spot. So it’s not just a weapon they’re missing, but a weapon and a vehicle and a tarp or a sheet of some type.”

  The only sheets missing from Ellis’s room were the ones the technicians seized for forensic testing. Another crack in the wall of Ramirez’s case.

  “Those photographs under the mattress are a problem. Do you know if the maids check under the mattresses when they change the linens?”

  “I doubt it.” Then he understood why she’d asked. “You think those photographs were there before.”

  “That’s crossed my mind. In which case you might not have been framed at all. Whoever stayed in that room before you did might be someone the police should look at.”

  “Celia, that could be our best argument.” Ellis’s mind raced through the facts. “The pathologist said that boy was abused once before, right? I was with Hillary every minute from when we arrived in Havana right up until she flew out. She can confirm that. That proves someone else raped that boy. Maybe we can argue that all those photographs are connected to that person, that it only makes sense that whoever abused the boy the first time, raped and killed him on Christmas Eve. Similar fact.”

  In Canada, similar fact evidence created an inference of guilt, even in the absence of other evidence. If the modus operandi in two crimes was similar enough, the legal inference was that the person who committed one crime committed the other.

  “I agree, Mike. But there’s just over an hour left. I don’t have enough time to stop Inspector Ramirez from filing his evidence today. I’ll have to get Hillary to swear an affidavit in Canada and get it here somehow. That could take days. I’m going to talk to O’Malley and see if I can stay here a while longer. We’re on to something; I just need more time to follow up on it, to file a proper set of objections. I have to make sure I can pull things together in a way that’s persuasive. We only have one shot at this.”

  Ellis felt his hopes sink like a lead lure. “They’re going to transfer me to a prison in a couple of hours. You know what my chances are there, Celia. I’ll be dead within a week.”

  FORTY - EIGHT

  Celia Jones hung up, frustrated. Mike was right. Guilty or not, he wasn’t likely to survive the Cuban prison system long enough for it to make a difference. And so far, she hadn’t found anything concrete enough to seriously challenge Inspector Ramirez’s case. Just speculation so far; no hard evidence. But her instincts told her that the police were wrong.

  Then she remembered the other reports she had printed in Blind Alley that morning. She’d forgotten all about them. They could have Mike’s blood work in them. If his blood type is different from the forensic evidence, she thought, I may still have time to get him out of there.

  She yanked the papers out of her briefcase, scattering them on the bed, and quickly searched in her purse for her reading glasses. She rifled through the pages, looking for a medical report.

  Thank God. There was a lab report in the file. She scanned through it. Mike was Type A blood group. She began rooting around in her papers for the laboratory reports that Ramirez had copied. What blood type were the stains on the sheets? Type A or AB?

  She finally found Dr. Apiro’s report, glanced quickly at her watch. Less than an hour now. Shit. The samples he’d taken were Type A, too. That just made Ramirez’s case stronger.

  She sat down heavily on the soft bed, heard the springs creak. Maybe she’d been right in the first place and Mike was guilty after all. Her instincts had been wrong before. Too bad; she was starting to like him. But if he raped and killed that little boy, he deserved whatever he got.

  She looked at her watch again. There was really nothing else she could do with the small amount of time she had left. Ramirez was probably already on his way to the prosecutor’s office, or would be shortly.

  She picked up the other unread documents and began to pore through them. Mike Ellis’s service record was on the top of the pile.

  He was thirty-eight, six years younger than she was. He joined the force at twenty-six, spent the next twelve years on Patrol. No disciplinary charges. Quite a few commendations.

  Almost six months ago, on June 2, 2006, he had been dispatched to a “trouble with man” call with Steve Sloan. The call came from a rough part of Ottawa. Something went wrong when they got there. According to the report prepared later by the Special Investigations Unit, the suspect had a knife. He slashed Mike in the face before he could unholster his gun. Sloan had his gun drawn but there was a scuffle and it discharged. The bullet hit Sloan. He died at the scene. Despite his injuries, Mike managed to pull out his own gun and kill the suspect. He was in line for a medal of bravery.

  It happened. Civilians were surprised when someone armed with a knife managed to hurt or kill a policeman with a gun, but it was like rock, paper, scissors. Sometimes paper won.

  Mike went on medical leave while he recovered, then disability leave after he developed recurring anxiety attacks. He returned to the job in November, but was taken off Patrol and promoted to the rank of detective in the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Unit.

  O’Malley must have wanted to put him somewhere where he wasn’t likely to be threatened by men with knives or guns, Jones thought. Mike was a hero. O’Malley wanted to give him a chance to recover. Some recovery. Locked in a Cuban prison, slowly starving to death.

  After a shooting, members were required to take counselling. Jones skimmed through the stack of papers, looking for the psych report. Good. O’Malley had sent the doctor’s interview notes as well. Mike met with the departmental psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Mann, on six separate occasions. Hillary attended the third session with him, at Dr. Mann’s request. Mann diagnosed Mike with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, because of his chronic depression, anxiety, flashbacks.

  Mike told the psychiatrist about his trouble sleeping after the incident. He talked about his overriding sense of guilt at Steve Sloan’s death.

  “How do you feel about the fact you killed a man?” the doctor had asked, according to his notes. Mike’s answer was, “It should have been me instead of Steve.”

  Before the shooting, Hillary wanted her husband tested to find out why she couldn’t get pregnant, but he was reluctant. It seemed to be a source of strife between them. Then Steve Sloan died, only a day after Hillary announced her unexpected pregnancy. She miscarried the following week.

  The psychiatrist noted how devastated Mike was by the baby’s loss, that whatever ambivalence he’d felt about fatherhood had disappeared. “He displays a range of contradictory emotions with respect to his wife’s pregnancy. His ambivalence is not fully conscious but presents in an extreme form.”

  Meaning what? That Mike didn’t want to have children until he lost one? Whereas Hillary seemed to lose her enthusiasm for motherhood altogether, according to Apiro’s detailed report of the contents of Room 612. A woman who wants children doesn’t usually take birth control pills, thought Jones. There was a backstory to that relationship, for sure.

  She read the rest of the psychiatric report, but nothing in it helped. Too late anyway. Less than thirty minutes left.

  She flipped idly through laboratory and medical results that Dr. Mann asked Mike to provide. She stopped when some baseline tests for Mike’s medications caught her eye. She read the tests again more carefully, then reread Mann’s notes and the lab report with Mike’s blood type. Then she read all of them together once more, to make sure she fully understood what they said.

  Heart pounding, Celia Jones raced out the door to the hallway and ran down the stairs to the lobby, holding a single piece of paper.

  She prayed the hotel had a working fax machine, that Ramirez hadn’t left the building, that she could get to him in time, before he indicted an innocent man.

  FORTY - NINE

  The prosecutor’s office was a
cross the street from the police station. Inspector Ramirez was on his way down the stairs, exhibit binder and case file in hand, when an officer called him back.

  “The Canadian lawyer is on the phone. She says she needs to speak to you urgently.”

  Ramirez contemplated telling the officer to take a message, but decided fairness compelled him to accept the call. He would have to make it short. He jogged back up the stairs and strode down the hall to his office. He pushed down the flashing button, and picked up the phone.

  “I have a deadline, Señora Jones,” Ramirez said curtly, looking at his watch. “I am truly sorry, but I have to go. I need to get this information to the Attorney General’s Office in less than half an hour.”

  “Please. I have a medical report that proves my client didn’t rape the boy, he couldn’t have. Your forensic evidence points to someone else. Please look at what I’ve found before you do this. I’m in the business centre at my hotel. As soon as I hang up, I’ll fax you the report. It’s only one page. I’m begging you. Please.”

  Ramirez hesitated a moment. “I can wait for a few minutes, no more.”

  He gave her the fax number and hung up the phone, irritated. If this was a delaying tactic, he would have her arrested. He walked over to the unit’s fax machine, but kept his eye on the clock.

  The fax rang within seconds and a page curled through. He pulled it off, scanned its contents. A blood test. Michael Ellis had Type A blood. Why was this woman so insistent that he read information that actually strengthened his case?

  Annoyed, Ramirez made a quick call to Apiro, but the doctor was out. He left a message on the doctor’s answering machine to say he was heading over to the Attorney General’s Office with his case file but would leave a report on the desk in his office for Apiro to examine. The Canadian lawyer seemed to think it was important. It could be added to the other reports and statements later. But Ramirez confirmed he was leaving to file materials for the indictment now.