Stranglehold (31 page)

“There’s something I’d like to chat with you about privately,” Amankwah said. “I have a hunch you have a pretty good idea what I’m interested in.”

Fernandez looked around the near-empty lot. “We both know that the ministry advises us to not talk to the media.”

“I’m only looking for background. You have my word, I’d never quote you without your express permission.”

Fernandez checked his watch. He bit his lip.

Amankwah could read the emotions on his face. Fernandez was a good lawyer and played by the rules. If he found out about some rogue cops, he wouldn’t turn a blind eye. On the other hand, ever since Charlton had made a show of calling for an investigation into allegations of police corruption, all the Crowns were under a strict gag order.

“I appreciate your being discreet,” Fernandez said. “But this isn’t a good time – or place, for that matter.”

Amankwah handed him the sealed envelope. “I did a spreadsheet of all the charges involving prostitutes that have been withdrawn in the last three years. The rest of this is the court papers that I used for my research. One group of officers stands out like a sore thumb.”

Fernandez stared at the envelope, not moving to take it.

They locked eyes.

“Trio,” Amankwah said.

Fernandez’s face flushed and his arm twitched. He wouldn’t make a good poker player, Amankwah thought.

“Take it, Albert,” Amankwah said.

Fernandez grabbed the envelope and slipped it into his briefcase.

“I need to know where to look next,” Amankwah said.

Fernandez’s eyes travelled around the parking lot. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Now, before other Crowns arrive.”

Traffic in the city was starting to pick up. Fernandez led him quickly up Centre Street for two blocks and down an alley beside the University of Toronto Dentistry Faculty building. Behind a big tree, there was an old wood bench that faced north, tucked out of view of the street. Fernandez opened the envelope and took a fast look at Amankwah’s chart. Then he scanned the court papers.

“You can check all the court documents,” Amankwah said, “but I know I got it right.”

Fernandez ignored him. There were sixty-eight sets of charges, and he kept flipping back and forth through them. Obviously he was looking for something specific.

“I don’t want to keep this,” he said at last, putting the papers back in the envelope and handing it to Amankwah.

“Didn’t you understand the chart?” Amankwah asked. “This Trio unit kept arresting people and almost all the charges were thrown out.”

“I’m well aware of this,” Fernandez said.

“You are?”

“Yes.”

Amankwah smacked the envelope on his knee. “Then the only reasonable explanation has to be that they were shaking prostitutes and johns down. Arresting them then getting payoffs or favours to yank the charges. Don’t you see that?”

“You know I’m limited in what I can tell you,” Fernandez said.

“Okay,” Amankwah said. “Explain this, then. How could this go on without anyone in the Crown’s office being aware of it?”

Fernandez stood up. “I’ve got to get to the office,” he said. “They made me the temporary head Crown.”

“I heard. Congratulations,” Amankwah said, standing up with him. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“I understood it. The answer’s right in your hand,” Fernandez said. “You were only looking at the cops involved. Why don’t you go back and see who the Crown was who was pulling all these charges.”

“The Crown?”

“It’s all in the documents,” Fernandez said. He walked off before Amankwah could say another word.

Amankwah sat back down on the bench and pulled out the papers. Fernandez was right. He had been focusing on the arresting officers. It had never occurred to him to check which Crown attorney was in court each time. He flipped to the first case. Then the second, the third. He stared at the pages in disbelief. But he kept going through all sixty-eight of them.

There it was. Every charge had been withdrawn by Jennifer Raglan.

AT PRECISELY 7:30 A.M. KREITINGER HEARD A KNOCK ON HER OFFICE DOOR. “COME IN,” SHE
said.

“Morning,” Jo Summer said.

Kreitinger had told her she wanted to start early and so here was Little Miss Keener, right on time.

“I’m not sucking up or anything,” Summers said, “but I brought you a Starbucks coffee. Albert said you take it black.”

Kreitinger reached for the cup. It was steaming hot. “Sounds like sucking up to me,” she said.

“Yeah. Okay. Guilty as charged.” Summers smiled. “I’ve got my top three problems for our case. It was hard to narrow it down to three.”

“It should be.” Kreitinger pulled out the little green stick that covered the opening in the lid. The coffee smelled very good. “Let’s go to our war room and see what you’ve got,” she said, jamming the stick back in place.

The hallways were empty. They passed a few Crown attorneys in their offices, heads down in final preparations for the day’s battle in court.

“Here are my choices,” Summers said, when they entered Fernandez’s former office. On the flip chart she’d already written out her three points.

1. Can we prove Greene was in room 8 without calling his father as a witness?

2. What proof do we have of Greene’s motive?

3. If Greene testifies that Jennifer was dead when he arrived, how do we counter that?

Kreitinger put her coffee down and rummaged through the markers, found a red one, crossed out number three, and said, “That’s not something tangible we can deal with right now.”

“Okay, I see that.” Summers nodded, her bound-up blond hair bouncing above her head.

Kreitinger renumbered “1” as “2” and “2” as “3” and drew a line from the top of the page to the blank space below and wrote a big “1?” She capped the marker and reached for her coffee, pulled out the stick, tossed it in the garbage, and took a generous sip.

“A trial is not only about facts,” she said. “It’s about perception, nuance, emotion, theatre. You missed our biggest problem. And it has nothing to do with the facts.”

“I don’t get it,” Summer said, looking perplexed.

Kreitinger smacked the marker into her open palm. “What’s the jury going to think of your friend Jennifer Raglan?”

“I think they’ll respect all the work she did as a Crown. Feel terrible for her children. And feel sorry for her husband.”

“What else?”

“They’re not going to be too impressed that she was having this sleazy affair with Greene behind her husband’s back.”

“No, they’re not,” Kreitinger said. She smacked the marker into her palm again. “Here’s an even tougher question. What will they think of Greene?”

“That he was a cold-blooded killer, I hope.”

“Don’t hope. Answer the question. What are they going to think of accused murderer, homicide detective Ari Greene?” She pointed the marker at the new number three on the chart:
What proof do we have of Greene’s motive?
“Especially if his father testifies, or Greene himself takes the stand, and tells the jury Raglan was already dead when he got to room 8 in the Maple Leaf Motel, and that he didn’t tell anyone right away because he was in shock and grief. And most of all, that he loved Jennifer so damn much that he was willing to risk everything to find the real killer.”

Summers slapped the table. “Come on. You don’t think the jury will believe that fairy tale, do you?”

She sounded defensive. Angry. This was good, Kreitinger thought. She was showing some emotion.

“I don’t know what the jury will believe,” she said. “That’s the whole point. We have to be sure there is absolutely no doubt in their mind that all of us on the prosecution team are one hundred percent convinced Ari Greene is the killer.”

“But we are convinced,” Summers protested. “Totally.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Kreitinger asked.

“You and me, of course.”

“Exactly.” Kreitinger uncapped the marker and wrote “1” beside
Daniel Kennicott
. She capped the marker and tossed it into the holding tray. “He’s the officer in charge of this case. You saw him at the bail hearing. We both know he’s not sure that Greene is guilty. And trust me, one thing I know about juries. They can smell doubt a million miles away.”

Summers’s eyes widened. “I know. It was obvious.”

Kreitinger opened the top box on her cart and passed some stapled papers over to Summers.

“What’s this?” Summers asked.

“Yesterday, Kennicott did some more investigating. Remember Hilda Reynolds?”

“The prostitute at the motel who wouldn’t talk.”

“Very good. Kennicott interviewed her. It’s a bunch of crap about cops and hookers. These people are all the same. I’m sure she read about all this stuff in the papers, and I’ll bet she smelled a great lawsuit. I’ve already couriered a copy over to the defence counsel.”

Summers was reading fast. “She says a van drove into the courtyard.”

Kreitinger threw up her hands in frustration. “Exactly my point. It’s a total red herring and gift from heaven for the other side. I’m sure DiPaulo is salivating reading this nonsense and dreaming up alternative-suspect theories.”

“What’s this going to do to our case?” Summers asked.

“Confuse the hell out of it if we’re not careful. We have to think this through. No way I’m putting this hooker on the stand. And now I can’t put Kennicott up there either.”

“But if you don’t call Daniel as a witness, how do we get in the evidence of how Greene misled him?”

He’s still “Daniel” to you, Kreitinger thought.

“It’s what I said at the very beginning. We need to get Greene into the box. If I call Kennicott, on cross-examination the defence will get all this crap about there being a mysterious van that went into the courtyard and claim there’s another suspect running around out there that we somehow missed. This kind of smoke screen could fuck up our whole case.”

She underlined the word “Kennicott” in red. “I’m telling you,” she said. “Our own OIC is our number one problem.”

“Shit,” Summers said, throwing the papers on the table. “You’re right.”

“WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO YOUR FATHER’S SANKA,” LINDSMORE SAID TO GREENE AS HE
walked up to the front door of Greene’s father’s house, “I went to Timmies and bought my own double-double.”

Lindsmore was in uniform. A thin briefcase, with
Toronto Police Service
stencilled on the side, was tucked under one of his thick arms. In his other hand he held a large cup of coffee and a Tim Hortons paper bag. Greene knew the bag would contain at least one doughnut.

“My dad won’t mind. No one has drunk his coffee since my mother died. Even his new girlfriends can’t stand it,” Greene said, giving the screen door an extra shove to get it open.

“Besides,” Lindsmore said, “it’s Roll Up The Rim.”

Roll Up The Rim was a hugely popular contest run by the ubiquitous coffee-and-doughnut-shop chain, in which potential prizes could be found under the rims on their decorated paper cups.

“Maybe you won a car,” Greene said.

“No, that would be my ex-wife,” Lindsmore said. “With my luck, I’d be happy with a free coffee.”

“My father’s still asleep,” Greene said. “Let’s go downstairs.”

The basement had hardly changed since he was a teenager. In one corner an old sofa and two chairs faced a television. In the middle of the room a large table was stacked with boxes. Greene’s father had taken a keen interest in the still-unsolved murder of Daniel Kennicott’s brother, and Ari had made him a copy of everything in the file. Usually the table was strewn with open papers, but over the weekend Greene had made his father clean it up.

In the far corner was a plastic bridge table flanked by two stacking chairs. On top sat a tabletop hockey game, which had been in this same spot since Greene got it as a Chanukah present when he was eleven years old.

Lindsmore sat at the big table, took his paper coffee cup, pulled off the plastic
lid, took a sip, and bit into the lip of the cup with his bottom teeth. He took a second sip and rolled up the edge of the rim higher with his thick thumbs.

“ ‘Sorry, try again,’ ” he said, reading the contest message underneath. He laughed. “Story of my life.”

Greene laughed too. “At least you’re persistent.”

Lindsmore put his briefcase on the table.

Greene looked it. “You find anything?” he asked.

“We have a lot to talk about.”

The previous Friday, when Lindsmore had come over to the house for the first time and offered his assistance, Greene had been wary. “Why did Kennicott send you?” he’d asked when they’d sat down in the living room.

“I think young Daniel is torn, so I’m his insurance policy,” Lindsmore had said. “He figures if you and me come up with the killer, he’s done his job. And if we can’t, he’ll see you in court.”

Lindsmore opened the paper bag. “First things first. Honey glazed or maple?” He brought out two doughnuts and napkins.

“Honey glazed,” Greene said.

“Good,” Lindsmore said. “Me, I like maple.”

Greene broke his doughnut down the middle and ate half. The other half he left on the napkin.

Lindsmore was a slow eater. After a final bite and a last sip of his coffee, he unzipped his briefcase and brought out some papers.

“I looked up Raglan’s son on CPIC like you asked me to.” Lindsmore shook his head as he passed a copy of the same papers to Greene. “And did some asking around. Kid’s a piece of work.”

It was a three-page printout of Aaron Darnell’s criminal record.

“Starts when he’s fifteen years old, for God’s sake,” Lindsmore said. “Graffiti. He’s charged three times in eighteen months.”

Greene was scanning through the pages with a practised eye. This must have driven Jennifer crazy, he thought. “Look at these fines he’s paying. Two thousand dollars’ restitution. Four thousand, then this last one, eight. A ton of money.”

“Kept him out of jail,” Lindsmore said.

“Seems like a lot for some spray painting.”

Lindsmore snorted. “You’ve been in Homicide too long. Charlton is right about this graffiti problem. That’s why it’s working in his election campaign. You don’t see it so much downtown, but in the suburbs,
whew
. Last few years it has
gotten totally out of hand. It’s not only defacing garage doors or the bottoms of bridges and tunnels, but the whole sides of privately owned buildings.”