Raw Bone (35 page)

“Since I came to Mercy. Why?”

“I’m just tying loose ends together. Did your dad ever mention the coach prior to your going to Mercy?”

“No, I don’t think so …”

“How would you describe their relationship before your dad became an assistant coach?”

“To be honest, my dad wasn’t much of a coach. He didn’t know anything about the game when he began, and some of the guys made fun of that.”

“Have you ever asked Coach Knox about why he agreed to let your dad help?”

“No …”

“Sorry to bother you, Dylan. I’ll let you get to your pizza. Say hello to Tom for me.”

“Yessir, I will.”

MacNeice swung away from the desk to see Aziz looking his way. “I know … I’m walking a fine line.”

“Yes, you are. Do you think he’ll mention your interest to Knox?”

“I hope so.”

MacNeice studied the photographs some more. Maybe Knox had recognized Dylan’s potential and wanted to nurture him, even if that meant accepting his father as an assistant coach in a sport he knew nothing about. But that wasn’t something a dominant person focused on perfection would normally do.

Perhaps Nicholson brought something extra, a special skill that would contribute to the Panthers’ success—but that seemed highly unlikely. So maybe Knox owed Nicholson, or Nicholson knew something about Knox that became leverage for whatever he wanted.

Ryan swivelled around in his chair. “Sir, those photos of Dylan are in the folder on your desk.”

He opened the file. Of the yearbook photos, one was blurred, showing Dylan with Tom outside the gym; the other was his Most Outstanding Player portrait. Tousled hair spilled over his forehead and, though he was working hard to look serious, his smile gave the impression that he’d been holding his breath. In
The Standard
photograph, he was sweating, his shoulders glistening, hair stuck to his forehead. It was from an interview following the Panthers’ city championship victory. He seemed deliriously happy.

MacNeice realized then that Nicholson’s coaching wasn’t about basketball—it was a struggle between two men for the control of a teenager.

“Ryan, find Zeno Trakas for me.”

“Yessir,” Ryan said, and turned to his computer, his fingers hammering in the speedy rhythms MacNeice found musical.

MacNeice took the staff photo of Knox and moved it next to David Nicholson’s face on the whiteboard. According to Nicholson’s diary of his wife’s imprisonment, it appeared “S” had had an affair with Jennifer. Had that knowledge been enough to blackmail Knox for a job as assistant coach? On the other hand, was the fact that Nicholson knew about the affair enough for Knox to want to blow Nicholson up?

He tapped the photos several times and started over: S has an affair with Jennifer and Nicholson finds out. Nicholson wants more than revenge; he wants pain and suffering—“Well that fits,” Jennifer would say if she could. But how do you inflict pain on a man who’s bigger, fitter and very physical? Psychological pain wasn’t good enough.

Jennifer Grant didn’t stand a chance—a free spirit stuck between two control freaks. Knox is a natural head-game player
.

Perhaps Nicholson wouldn’t have known that off the top, but he’d have found out fast. Whatever he had on Knox had to be head-game proof. MacNeice took the red marker and dropped an arrow below Knox’s portrait. Below it, he wrote, “Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” without knowing why.

“Boss, Trakas on three.”

MacNeice went back to his desk, noticed Aziz watching him, and said, “Fasten your seat belt.”

Trakas was somewhere in traffic. “This better be good. I don’t take fucking phone calls from you, understood?”

“Very clear. You’re not going to like my request, so I’ll make it clear for you: I am the Detective Superintendent of Homicide, Detective Trakas, and I want to speak to Luther Tirelle. Understood?”

He could hear cars streaming by and the Doppler effect of a semi’s horn arcing and fading. Trakas was standing on the side of a highway. “Non-negotiable even if you were Wallace.”

“We may get to Wallace, but I’d like to avoid that for your sake. He is in a cutback frame of mind and we’ve had two retirements in Records, which he wants to fill with one man.”

He let that hang in the air for a moment. “I don’t need to know what line Tirelle is on or where in the world he picks up the phone. But I need five minutes of his time, and I need it now.”

“I’ll call you back.” The line went dead.

MacNeice put the phone down.

“Sorry for the language, sir, but that was frickin’ A cool,” Ryan said.

“Byrne’s in a holding cell,” Williams announced as he rounded the corner of the cubicle. Vertesi was behind him; both men were carrying legal boxes, which they deposited on their desks. “What was frickin’ A cool?”

The phone rang again; Ryan picked it up, turned and nodded to MacNeice, and put the phone on speaker.

Trakas said, “MacNeice, you are going to pretend you don’t know anything about the guy you’re going to speak to, just that you know he knows where the grenades went and why. What else do you need from him?”

“I want to know what his buyer—I believe his name is Knox—was into that was serious enough to want to blow someone up.”

“Okay, you’re someone I owe who knows … Who’s Knox?”

“Tirelle’s basketball coach.”

“Jesus. Okay, so you want to know who had what on him that he needed to buy a couple of grenades—that about it, detective superintendent?”

“That captures it.”

Trakas took MacNeice’s cellphone number, confirming first that it didn’t have a message on it. “As far as Tirelle is concerned, you don’t have a name, so don’t use one. Stay by the phone—understood?”

“Understood.”

Vertesi looked about after Ryan hung up. “What’s going on?”

Aziz tried to explain the call, the trip to Dundas, sitting outside the school and staring up at Knox’s office, and finally the conversation with Dylan. “Shakespeare, fair and foul, chaos, harmony, discord, climax—now you understand as much as I do.”

“Wanna hear what we did today, Mommy?” Williams lifted the top off the banker’s box.

MacNeice’s cellphone rang, and everyone shut up. “Hello,” MacNeice said.

The combined three-cell conference call came with an echo, as a male voice asked in a thick Jamaican accent, “Oom I speakin’ wit, mon?”

MacNeice didn’t answer.

Trakas’s voice: “No names, we agreed.”

The Jamaican made a hissing sound, sucking air through his teeth. “Then wot you want?”

“Two grenades came to Dundurn,” Trakas said. “A guy used one on another guy. Do you know why the bomber decided to scatter him?”

MacNeice could hear the sound of several voices over the line and wasn’t sure whose phone they were coming from. He assumed Tirelle’s. A dog barked.

“Mon, ’e say … Knox, thas ’is name, was a client … and ’is sport coach … Huh?” The man paused as he got some clarification from a voice in the background. “ ‘is basketball coach.”

More talk in the background, another dog barking somewhere, and the sound of Trakas coughing. MacNeice waited.

“Mon caught Mr. T in a toilet wit Coach Knox an’ ’e treaten ’im wit it.”

“What are you saying, exactly?” Trakas asked.

More voices, this time laughing or hooting. When the voice came back on the phone, it was all the speaker could do to control his laughter.

“Other mon—Nicholson—’e say ’e caught the coach ’aving sex wit’ Mr. T, but …” He started laughing again, as did everyone in the background. “It was ganja, mon, not sex ’e was afta … ’i-grade semi sensi …” The speaker was listening again. “Weed … big quality too, ’e say.” He added matter-of-factly, “Dis nex one be the las’ question, ’cause ‘e don’ like … Whass?” Everyone started laughing again. “ ‘E don’ like dis pop quiz.” More laughter.

When it subsided, MacNeice asked, “How long had he been supplying Knox with weed, and did he ever ask for anything heavier?”

There was a long pause, and then a new voice came on, with a Canadian accent. “That’s two questions.” Behind him someone applauded. “But all right. First things first. Knox and I, we
thought Nicholson was a joke, him assuming I was giving head when I was dealing some serious shit to my best customer. Straight through high school, it was ganja and hash. Second question: he didn’t go harder, not because he wouldn’t have—that dude’s wound pretty tight—but I wouldn’t sell him any. For my own sake and his, I kept him functional. Okay, this conversation’s over.” The line went dead.

A moment later, Trakas called back. “That better be it, pal, because that right there is some scary fuckin’ shit. From now on, you don’t know me. Oh, and start dicking around targeting me for cutbacks, and I’ll jump ship to work for the other side, where they know the meaning of loyalty. So chew on that, DS MacNeice.” He hung up.

Williams waited a moment before speaking, waving a hand over his head to dispatch imaginary cologne. “We’ve hauled all the cattle into the barn, boss. What’s next?”

“Bring Robert Grant in for an interview,” MacNeice said, and he went over to the whiteboard. He took down the staff photos of Jennifer Grant, David Nicholson and Alexander Knox and carried them back to his desk. He put Dylan’s basketball photos in a row above the others, retrieved a magnifying glass from the drawer and started scanning the faces.

Aziz was writing up their first interview with Robert Grant. Several minutes passed before curiosity got the better of her and she stopped to watch MacNeice, head close to the desk as he studied each photo, humming something to himself. She thought she would wait for him to surface before asking what he was doing, but she couldn’t.

“What’s that?”

Without looking up, he said, “ ‘My Funny Valentine.’ ”

Aziz crossed her eyes at him, but he was so engrossed, he didn’t notice. She decided to wait him out.

Next, MacNeice took a pair of scissors to a sheet of department stationery and cut it into two-inch strips. He laid a couple of the strips over Dylan’s
Standard
interview photo, isolating the eyes and another couple over someone else’s face—she couldn’t see whose—also isolating their eyes. Carefully, he lifted that photo with the strips in place and put it directly below Dylan’s. He sat up, stopped humming and looked again at the images through the magnifying glass. Then he turned and smiled at Aziz.

“What have you found?” She slid her chair next to his.

He handed her the magnifying glass. “See for yourself.”

“The soft curves of Dylan’s face, his nose, cheekbones and hair all come from his mother. But his eyes are interesting,” she said.

“You wouldn’t notice it if he wasn’t smiling or if his hair was in the way, yet his eyes are neither his mother’s nor Nicholson’s.”

Aziz took the strips of paper off the second photo, revealing Alexander Knox. “My God.” She put a hand to her mouth.

Then she studied all the photos for evidence that might prove him wrong, but she couldn’t find any. Jennifer’s eyes were wide and the orbital bones around them were shallow, making her face appear open and sunny. David Nicholson’s orbitals were more rectangular, which made his eyes also seem somewhat rectangular, or at least less teardrop-shaped. Knox’s smile in his staff photo lifted his cheeks, emphasizing his hooded eyes. There was no mistaking the similarity between Dylan’s eyes and Knox’s when both were smiling.

MacNeice constructed another theory: S has an affair with Jennifer just before or after her marriage to Nicholson. Does Nicholson discover it when Jennifer announces she’s pregnant, or is he convinced the child is his? Does Jennifer tell S she’s pregnant by him? It would be years
before Nicholson caught Knox in the toilet with Luther Tirelle; if Nicholson knew that Dylan wasn’t his son, he’d have caught Knox in a perfect trifecta of shame—drugs, sex with a student, and impregnating a colleague’s wife. Knox would be powerless. What would a man driven by a need to dominate do when he realized he was forced to submit to any request from a man he actively hated?

If he denied having sex in the toilet with Tirelle and told the truth about buying marijuana from him, there’d be no upside—he’d be driven out and ostracized—with people suspecting he was engaged in both. If it came to light that he’d had an affair with Jennifer Grant on or around the eve of her marriage to Nicholson, he’d be considered a scoundrel.

Pure speculation
, MacNeice thought,
but pure nonetheless
. Nicholson would have a hold over Knox and his ransom was Dylan. To drive the point home, after Dylan made the team, Nicholson demanded to be an assistant coach, knowing that his lack of knowledge or interest in the game would show his contempt for Knox, and also how close he’d stick to his son—even if Dylan wasn’t actually his. Aziz put the magnifying glass down. “Do we order a DNA test?”

“Not yet … It’s just a theory,” MacNeice said.

Williams and Aziz conducted the session with Robert Grant, asking many of the same questions that she and MacNeice had asked him before. No longer the gentleman grocer, Grant was angry about being hauled into the station and he showed it.

“Tell us, Mr. Grant, about your days playing basketball with Al Knox,” Aziz said.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I mean, we get together for Glory Days, an annual reunion of the team.”

“That’s progress,” Aziz said. “We’ve gone from you not knowing Alexander Knox to your knowing him in high school but not seeing him since to now annual get-togethers.” She looked up at him. “Is it becoming clear to you why you’re here?”

Grant shook his head. “No. Nor do I understand why you’re so interested in Knox.”

“Why do you think David Nicholson was asked to be assistant coach when it appears he knew nothing about basketball?” Williams asked.

“Was he asked?”

“Good question … Was he?”

“I don’t think so. Given how seriously Al takes the game, I doubt it.”

Aziz cut in. “Did Knox ever discuss his affair with Jennifer just before she married David Nicholson?”

Grant shot out of his seat. Williams told him to sit down and answer the question. He did sit, showing his discomfort by folding and unfolding his arms. At last he said, “I don’t know anything about that … It was none of my business what Al or Jenn did.”