This Thing of Darkness (18 page)

The laptop was gone, but Mike's notes were still on the desk. She rose guiltily and went over to glance at his progress.

The typed list of names was scribbled over with question marks, comments and addresses in Mike's handwriting. She knew she shouldn't look and was just trying to tear herself away when a name stopped her cold. She frowned. What on earth could it mean? Could there be a connection? As she deciphered Green's pencilled notes, her confusion grew. She knew of a way to get the answers, but the question was...

Even if she did know, what could she do?

Green was elbow deep in neglected paperwork when the phone rang at his side. Gratefully he pounced on it. A girl's breathy, singsong voice came through.

“Hi. Um...is Inspector Green there?”

Green tried to place the voice but failed. He identified himself.

“This is Lindsay Corsin? You gave me your card? I rent an apartment above Dr. Rosenthal?”

Green readjusted his focus with surprise. “Yes, Lindsay. How can I help you?”

“I don't know if it's important? I mean, like if he's allowed? I watch
Law and Order,
and... Anyway, I thought I should call. Let you know, in case.”

“Know what?”

“There's someone in Dr. Rosenthal's apartment. A man. He's got a van, and he's taking paintings and stuff out.”

Possibilities raced through Green's mind. The apartment had never been a crime scene, at least as part of the murder investigation, so technically this didn't constitute tampering with a crime scene. Yet the only person with legal access to the place was dead, and it had been the scene of an earlier break and enter.

“What does he look like?”

“He's very tall, looks fit—at least for a guy his age.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, I'm not so good with that. Over forty? His hair is going grey. He's got one of those old-fashioned beards that makes him look like a professor?”

“Clothes?” He was already grabbing his jacket, keys and gun, but paused to jot down her reply. “I'm sending a patrol car, and I'm on my way myself. Wait for me.”

“But—”

“Stay out of sight and wait.”

He'd barely disconnected when he phoned dispatch and ordered a cruiser to check out an intruder at the Nelson Street address. He rattled off the description Lindsay had given. The man didn't sound like your standard B&E specialist, but Green had been surprised too many times to rush to judgment.

Sandy Hill was an exasperating maze of one-way streets and road construction that left him cursing by the time he finally rounded the corner onto Nelson Street. A cruiser was parked at the curb, and the officers were chatting with Lindsay on the front walk. A nondescript white panel van sat at the curb behind the cruiser. Lindsay looked frailer than ever, her pale skin almost translucent and her large eyes circled by blue. She hugged her frilly purple jacket around her thin frame, but it was scant protection against the bracing autumn wind that swept down the street in a swirl of dead leaves.

She looked guilty when she saw Green. “He left before they got here,” she said. “I thought of stopping him, but I was too scared. He looked so angry.”

He put his hand on her arm and felt her bones through the thin fabric. “You did the right thing. Which way did he go?”

She nodded up the street towards Rideau, barely a block away although a road barrier blocked the path. “That way. He was walking. That's his van there.”

Green walked over to the van, noting the Ontario license plate and the discount rental sticker. He jotted down the number and handed it to one of the unformed officers. “Phone the rental company and ask who rented it. If they give you grief, tell them it's involved in a burglary.”

The uniformed officer trotted up to her cruiser. Green circled the van, peering into windows. In the dark interior he could just make out some boxes stacked against one side and a collection of paintings leaning against the other. On the passenger seat was an open map, a well-worn suede jacket, and a crumpled bag from Starbucks.

The officer returned from her car. “The company rented it out yesterday to a company called Vivotech.”

“Name?”

“That's all they had, sir. The man paid for a week with a wad of cash to cover the security deposit, and they didn't get a name.” The uniformed officer grinned. “They're eager to cooperate, sir. The manager said he looked like a fine, upstanding citizen. How were they to know?”

Green nodded. Of course they were eager to cooperate, after violating just about every rental rule in the book. Lindsay was still standing on the walk, shivering. For the first time he noticed her frayed cuffs and the holes in her sneakers. He signalled to the uniformed officer and handed her his card.

“I want you to pull around the corner and set up surveillance on the house and the van. I have to leave for a bit, but if our man shows up, give me a call on my cell. Don't approach him unless he tries to leave again.”

The officer bounded off again, her eyes shining. Probably the most excitement she's had all week, Green thought. He took Lindsay's elbow and felt the girl shrink back. Did she distrust all men, or just cops? Releasing her, he gestured to his car. “Let's wait in my car. It will be warmer.”

She hesitated then picked up her bag in acquiescence. Inside, he turned the heater up, but she sat stiffly with her backpack on her lap like a shield. She had a single silver stud in her left nostril but otherwise she wore no jewellery or make-up. The backpack bulged with the weight of her books, and one of the zippers was broken.

“Do you have time for lunch?” he asked, trying to ease into the suggestion. “I haven't eaten yet.”

The girl didn't answer, but her mouth worked convulsively as if already savouring the food.

“My treat,” he added as he started the car.

“Why?”

He drove the circuitous route down to Rideau Street and pulled into the parking lot at Harvey's. Only then, with the smells of charbroiled hamburgers and fresh fries drifting in through the window, did he answer her. “Because I think you can help. You notice things. People. Maybe even more than you realize.”

Once they were settled into a booth by the window, Green watched her devour the hamburger and wondered what else she was sacrificing to attend university. “Where are you from?”

Her head shot up, mouth full of fries. “Why?”

He shrugged easily. “Just remembering my own university years. I had my parents to live with and a full-time job as a rookie patrolman, but I still had trouble paying for it all.”

She managed a thin smile. “
OSAP
. I'll be paying the government back until I'm ninety.”

“It's not enough to live on, is it?”

She shook her head. “I had a job in an art store till they tore it down to build a condo. Dr. Rosenthal was pretty good about the rent, even when I missed a month.” She hung her head and fiddled with the zipper of her bag. Took a deep, wistful breath. “I'm from Timmins. Never thought I'd miss it...”

Green waited.

“Here, you don't know anybody. You don't know who to trust. Truth is, I wasn't exactly telling the whole truth when I said I never talked to Dr. Rosenthal. He tried to talk to me lots of times.” She paused to push all the crumbs into a pile in the middle of the plate then picked them up with a wet finger. Green pushed his plate of half-finished fries towards her, but she shook her head.

“I didn't know he was a psychiatrist. I thought he was coming on to me. He asked if I was eating all right, and he told me I should never skip breakfast. He even bought me groceries once. Fruits and yogurt and oatmeal and stuff. He came into my room to put them in my cupboards, and he checked in my fridge.” She squirmed. “He told me he never had a daughter. No grandchildren either, so he had nobody to worry about. I thought it was creepy. Because of...” She stopped and reached over to take the smallest fry from his plate.

“Because of?”

“Well, there were other girls, you see. At least one that I saw. And they were, you know...hookers. Sometimes he'd bring them home from his walks. Other times they'd come to visit him on their own. This one girl came every week, and she looked young enough to be his granddaughter. I even wondered how many times can an old guy get it up, you know. But she kept coming over.”

Green had been listening casually as she filled in the lonely details of the victim, but now he grew alert. “When did you first see her?”

She shrugged. Picked up another fry. “I went home to Timmins for the summer, so I don't know about then, but for sure she was there last spring when I was pulling all-nighters to finish papers and exams. I could hear them talking, sometimes half the night.”

“You said she was young but looked like a prostitute. Can you remember what she looked like?”

“Tall, skinny, long messy brown hair. She seemed jumpy, like she was scared of something. Whenever she visited, she checked all around, even inside the garbage bins, before she went inside. She might have been a street person, but she had some nice things. Better than I can afford. A fur jacket, nice leather boots. I figured he was buying stuff for her. He fed her too. I could hear the kettle whistle like he was making her tea. That's why I figured he was coming on to me.”

“Did you see her last Saturday night? The night he died?”

She froze, another fry halfway to her open mouth. She laid it down and thrust back from the table. “She wasn't a killer! She was a scared kid, not much older than me.”

He held up a soothing hand. “I'm not saying she was. But she may be able to help us. If she was with him, she may have seen something.”

She shook her head. “No. Anyway, she wasn't with him. I didn't see her. He went out for his long walk by himself.”

“What time was that?”

“Late. Way after midnight. I think it was because he couldn't sleep.”

Maybe, he thought. But maybe it was because he had gone looking for the mystery girl.

Twelve

S
taff Sergeant Brian Sullivan was swallowing his third Rolaids when his cellphone rang. He was sitting at his desk with his feet up, reviewing Levesque's case to date against Omar Adams. She wanted to pick him up and lay formal first degree murder charges as soon as possible, so she was hounding Ident and the
RCMP
lab to speed up their analyses.

Even without the final forensics, the case against Omar was impressive. Sullivan could see this was not the blind miscarriage of justice that Green feared, but a carefully reasoned conclusion from the facts. All that was missing was a bloody baseball bat with Omar's prints on it. Even the Somali community was not protesting his innocence. Green suspected they were so tired of their own unruly youth tarring their reputations as new Canadians that they were reserving their outrage for members they believed to be unfairly targeted. Clearly Omar did not fit the bill.

Granted, his father was white, which made the boy an anomaly in the conservative Muslim community. But so far, his father had not screamed racial profiling but instead had quietly hired the best Jewish defence lawyer in the city, as if he knew the boy needed every advantage he could muster. The lawyer had a reputation for finding the tiniest crack in the Crown's case and driving an eighteen-wheeler through it with reasonable doubt. Sullivan wanted to make sure the case was crack-proof.

He debated letting his voicemail pick up until he saw the name on the call display. He glanced at his watch. Two p.m. This better be quick. “Yeah, Mike. What's up?”

“I've got a witness who says Rosenthal got together with a prostitute most Saturday nights—”

Sullivan suppressed the urge to say “Good for him!” He wondered if he'd be up for that when he was seventy-five years old. Recently he'd sometimes found it a struggle at forty-six. He held his breath as he waited for the heartburn medication to do its work.

“You there?”

“Yeah,” he managed. Over the phone he could hear the background sounds of people chatting and voices calling. What the hell was Green up to? “What about it? So he was out on the street hoping to score?”

“There was a sex trade worker caught on the pawn shop surveillance tape. Levesque has a picture of her. Not a very good one, but it might be enough for this witness to
ID
her.”

Sullivan thought fast. The hooker might have seen something. This might be the extra nail Levesque needed to crack-proof her case. “I'll pass this tip on to Levesque and see if she's had any luck
ID
'ing the woman on the tape. If not, we'll send someone else out to ask around tonight. If she's a regular, we might even spot her.”

“Screech recognized her, I'm positive, but he didn't want to rat on her. He watches out for most of the girls, especially the young ones.”