“She's bleeding from the head, but responsive and coherent.”
“I'm fine!” Levesque snapped. “A little hit on the head, that's all.”
“Green!” bellowed the deep, throaty voice of the duty inspector over the phone. “What the fuck's going on!”
“We arrived at the home of that potential witness and surprised an intruder. Perhaps more than one...” Green's voice trailed off as he stared through the open door into the quiet house. Even the dog had fallen silent. His heart rose in his throat. What had happened to the O'Malleys?
“Armed?” Doyle snapped.
Green wrenched his gaze from the interior and repeated the question to Levesque. She nodded. “He hit me with a pistol butt.”
Green felt a wave of nausea. How close he had come to losing an officer yet again, all because of his impatience! Doyle was talking again, peppering him with questions about the neighbourhood and the suspects. In the distance, sirens began to wail. Still no sound emerged from the house.
“Listen, Doyle,” he said. “Dispatch another ambulance to the house. I don't know what's happened yet, but I'm getting a bad feeling.”
He heard a siren shriek down the street and come to a stop. Squeezing Levesque's hand, he rushed around to intercept the responders, two young constables in a cruiser. Leading them to the back of the house, he found Levesque struggling to her feet, propping herself unsteadily against the wall. He ordered her to sit down again and motioned to one of the constables to stay with her.
Gesturing to the other to follow him, he withdrew his Glock again and pointed through the French doors into the house. Levesque's eyes widened. “Sir!” she whispered hoarsely. “It's too dangerous. Someone may still be hiding inside.”
“Possibly. But there may be injured parties in there as well. As soon as back-up comes, send them in. But we can't wait.”
With a bravado he didn't feel, he stepped inside. The room was designed for comfort, with thick broadloom and huge, overstuffed recliners grouped around a sleek black fireplace. A high definition
TV
covered almost half the opposite wall, and bookshelves lined the other three walls. The room was empty. He and the constable hurried across, their footsteps muffled by the deep pile. On one side of the entertainment room was a study lined with leatherbound legal volumes, and on the other a granite and stainless steel kitchen. The kitchen was cluttered with pots on the stove and plates of salad on the counter, as if the family had been surprised in the middle of lunch.
Green felt goosebumps down his arms. He stood in the hallway trying to listen. The dog had resumed its frantic barking from somewhere upstairs. The intruders must have locked it up, Green realized, which showed a modicum of restraint. Some gangsters would simply have shot it dead.
Through the kitchen window, he saw the paramedics arrive, and soon two more constables joined the search of the house. Green directed the newcomers into the basement while he and the first constable continued on the main floor. Living room, dining room, both glossy hardwood and sleek leather. Both empty. There were cushions on the floor, and newspapers scattered casually on the tables, but no signs of struggle. Oil paintings hung undisturbed on the walls and the fine china and silverware in the glass cabinets had not been touched. The hall closets bulged with fur and leather coats.
Whatever the intruders were after, they had paid no attention to the commercial riches at their fingertips.
On the carpet at the base of the spiral staircase, Green detected the first real sign of troubleâa small, reddish brown smear clinging to the rich cream fibres. Green sucked in his breath. He pulled some neoprene gloves from his pocket and gestured to the constable to follow suit as they crept up the stairs. More stains at the top and a long smear along the wall, barely visible against the antique plum paint.
On the landing at the top of the stairs, they confronted the entrances to four bedrooms and a closed door, behind which the dog was scratching and whining. Green left the dog where it was as they rapidly checked each room. The first was a neat bedroom all sunny yellow, the second an all-purpose room in complete disarray. A sewing table, an artist's easel, open jars of paint and scraps of fabric all over the floor.
The third bedroom was also in chaos. Painted soft pink, it was almost entirely papered in photos from magazines, many curled and yellowed with age. Not the posters of rock stars and punk heroes that decorated Hannah's room, but photos of planets, moon phases and stellar constellations. The bed was unmade and strewn with papers. Clothes, shoes and books littered the hardwood floor. The closet door gaped open, revealing more boxes of files half emptied on the floor. Was the occupant simply messy, or had someone been searching for something?
The final bedroom was set apart at the end of the hall. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling over the double entry doors which were ajar, revealing a Persian carpet also strewn with clothes. In the gloom of the shuttered windows, only the foot of the massive, frilly bed was visible. At the last second, he hesitated before pushing open the door. This is how cops got shot, by blundering into an unknown situation unprepared. All his instincts screamed danger, yet could they afford to wait? He signalled to the constable, and placed his hand on the door. Inched it open. From within, nothing but silence. Stillness. A familiar smell wafted through the gap. His gut tightened as he steeled himself for the sight.
The woman was lying on the floor by the bed, half underneath as if she'd been trying to get away. Her head was thrown back in a paroxysm of horror, her lips curled back over her teeth and her eyes, already clouding over, bulged. Her chest was a mass of blood that had pooled beneath her and spread red through the brilliant jewel tones of the Persian carpet.
Green raced over to check the woman and sagged against the bed in shock. Not what he was expecting, but no less a tragedy. In their brutal quest to silence Caitlin O'Malley, the Lowertown Crips had murdered her mother. A woman with long brown hair and a delicate, heart-shaped face, who looked young enough in a poor light, or a fuzzy photo, to pass for her daughter.
W
ithin an hour, every available police officer had been recalled to duty. The com centre crackled with activity as search teams were dispatched to comb every inch of terrain between Lowertown and Rothwell Heights. Omar, Nadif and all the members of the Lowertown Crips were in their sights. Informants were squeezed, gang associates questioned and all affiliated gang hideouts were raided. In Rothwell Heights, officers canvassed every neighbour within blocks. The media dogged their every move in what had become an international crime drama.
Throughout it all, Green worried most about what had become of Patrick and Caitlin O'Malley. Had they witnessed the mother's murder and somehow escaped with their lives? Surely if Patrick O'Malley were alive, he would contact the police. The longer the silence, the greater Green's sense of foreboding. Nonetheless he tried to maintain his optimism as he raced to keep up with the reports flying in from all quarters. Lou Paquette and his Ident team had sealed off the entire O'Malley house, and Green had set up a temporary command post in the neighbour's house while he waited for the official white truck. Levesque had been treated at the scene but had refused the paramedics' recommendation of a check-up at the hospital. Instead she sat in the neighbour's kitchen with a huge white bandage around her head.
The break came at 4:17 p.m. in the form of a triumphant call from a patrol officer in Vanier that five young black males had been spotted washing themselves in the Rideau River. At the cruiser's approach, the group had scattered along the bike path, but after radioing for back-up the officer had kept one of them in her sights with the help of local dog walkers.
Nadif was finally cornered by three uniformed teams converging on the park from opposite directions. He had contemplated his only means of escape, the shallow, fast-moving river, and had surrendered without a fight. Two of his accomplices were apprehended a few minutes later running through a back street of Vanier. Green ordered them all stripped and every scrap of clothing handed over to Ident, then had them all placed in different interview rooms to wait for him. Under other circumstances, he would have preferred to let them stew in the cell block for awhile, perhaps even overnight, to give Ident time to provide some ammunition for the interrogation. But today there was not that luxury. Not with Patrick O'Malley and his daughter missing and Omar still on the loose.
On the way back to the station, Green drove while Levesque furtively massaged her temples. “I want you checked out at the hospital,” Green said.
She closed her eyes. “I'm fine! Do you think I would miss this moment, when we finally crack this case wide open, just because of a little headache?”
“All the same, Marie Claire,” he said gently, “you're in no shape to conduct an interrogation.”
“I just want to be there, okay? You can do the questioning, but I want to sit in. It's my first case, sir! And if I hadn't removed the surveillanceâ” She broke off.
He glanced across at her. Her eyes were glassy and her cheeks flushed, whether from pain, shock or self-recrimination, he didn't know. But he understood what this apprehension meant to her.
“Afterwards,” he said, “I'm driving you to emerg personally.”
“Afterwards you can buy me a stiff drink.”
He laughed, the first moment of levity since the horrific discovery of Annabeth O'Malley's body. Marie Claire wasn't the only one wrestling with regrets. Green's gut was tight with a dread he barely dared to acknowledge. A dread that had been lurking since his first glimpse of the blood on the stairs.
What if Levesque was right? What if Omar was the killer, and he had released a killer back onto the streets? Had Green misread the man so badly that it had cost at least one woman, perhaps more, her life?
At the station he shoved the doubts from his mind and assigned teams to interview the two accomplices while he prepared to face down Nadif himself. As he gathered his props for the interview, he gave Levesque time to change her blood-stained jacket and wash up. The second floor was abuzz with officers and civilian employees hunched over phones and computers, tracking the investigation.
Even dressed in cellblock-issue white scrubs with paper slippers on his feet, Nadif still presented a handsome figure.
His eyes were dark with apprehension, but he kept his flawless features expressionless as he watched Green and Levesque sit down. Green dictated the preliminaries for the tape and embarked on the requisite caution. Before he was even halfway through it, Nadif interrupted.
“I want to talk to my lawyer.”
Without a word, Green handed him the phone. Not surprisingly, the young man dialled the number from memory, then rolled his eyes while it rang. Green heard the voicemail kick in and Nadif cursed. He left a terse message asking the man to come to the station, then hung up.
Green smiled at him sympathetically. “Sunday afternoon. Bad time for lawyers. You could be waiting a long time.”
Nadif shrugged. “I got time.”
“True. Or...” Green laid his file folder on the table. “We could clear up a few things while we're waiting. You see, two of your buddies are down the hall talking to my colleagues. You might want to get your story in before they pin it all on you. Things won't look so rosy when you're staring down twenty-five years to life.”
“No crime in playing in the river.”
“Mrs. O'Malley's murder was a messy one. You know what that means? Lots of interesting bits of evidence for our Ident team to discover. And believe me, they will. They'll be there for days going over every carpet fibre and speck of blood. And what do you think they'll find on your clothes? On the soles of your shoes? I heard you running through their house. One fibre from their carpet in the treads of your sneakers, and you're toast, Nadif.”
“I don't even know who this Mrs. O'Malley is. I was in the park with my friends.”
“The mother of the prostitute you guys assaulted last weekend. You killed the wrong person, buddy.”
A spasm of surprise crossed Nadif's face, but he said nothing.
“You're piling them up, Nadif.” Green took out a sheaf of photos and laid the one of Caitlin on the table. “Sexual assault of Caitlin O'Malley...” He laid three photos of Sam Rosenthal's bloodied body alongside it, including a close-up of his battered head. “Murder of the old man who came to her aid. Murder committed in the course of a criminal act is an automatic first degree. Assaulting a police officer, breaking and entering...” He laid down two photos of Annabeth O'Malley's body. “Another first degree murder charge.”
“You got nothing on me, or you'd be charging me.”
“Patience, Nadif. Forensics takes time. Let's start with the original murder. We just got the results back today on the old man's cane. We have blood on the tip and fingerprints on the shaft.” He added Ident's enlarged photos of the cane to the line-up. “But we know you didn't act alone. We know your friends Yusuf and Omar were involved. With your previous record and your age, you're facing the most serious prison time, but if you cooperateâ”
“I'm not ratting!”
“If you cooperate first, that's going to show the judge you're remorseful. I know this didn't start off as a murder, Nadif. I know you just wanted to get laid, but she turned you down. Who knows why, that's what she was there for, right? Maybe it was because she didn't want a foursome, or because you were black. Whatever, she told you to get lost, and things got ugly. When the old man Rosenthal showed up, they got out of control. He was fighting you, you grabbed his cane to stop him, you hit him back...”
Surprise and fear flitted across Nadif's face as the scenario unfolded. Finally he burst in to stop the barrage. “Like I said, it wasn't me. You got me mixed up with some other black dude.”