The Guilty Plea (9 page)

“Back door.” Zeilinski paraded them through the house. “Is sticky.” She grasped the handle and demonstrated how the painted wood door needed a shove to open and a yank to close it. There were no forced entry signs here either.

At the bottom of the door was another labeled tape measure. Greene couldn’t see any blood.

“Bend down,” Zeilinski told them.

They followed her instructions. There was a scuff mark, like something from the sole of a shoe. It was thick on the bottom and thinned as it expanded up, like the Nike swoosh. A wisp of red was just below it.

“Is blood,” Zeilinski said. “Twenty-five point four centimeters. Ten inches from floor.”

Follow the blood, it will tell the story, Greene thought. The killer knew the layout of the house, went upstairs to Simon’s room, and then left by the front door. Simon said his mother came in last night when he was in bed and told him she wouldn’t see him for a long time. Everything fit, except this last small bloodstain.

Zeilinski read his thoughts. “Blood can last long time.”

“I know,” Greene said.

“Is not usually last long time in doorway. Especially in such clean house.”

Greene looked at her and then at Kennicott. They were all thinking the same thing. Had there been a second person in the house, who’d left by the back door?

Jennifer Raglan sprinted up to the crowd of parents waiting calmly in the northwest corner of the suburban parking lot. It was after 12:35, and the heat was radiating up from the black asphalt. A wave of sweat wrapped its way around her body.

She’d spent the last half hour in her old Saturn, running yellow traffic lights and the occasional near-red one to get here on time. Driving through the city like a maniac wasn’t a great thing for a Crown Attorney to do, but being late for her daughter was a worse option.

“Don’t worry, the buses are never on time,” a woman with flabby arms, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, said to Raglan. She was sitting in a folding chair with a cup holder, sipping on a frothy-looking iced drink.

Raglan surveyed the other parents awaiting the buses. The women, with their stylish sunglasses and Capri pants or workout outfits, bespoke summer days lounging on a dock by the still waters of a northern lake. The men, laconic in their button-down shirts, speaking into their cell phones or scrolling through their BlackBerrys, were in no hurry at all. Didn’t any of these people work?

She’d dug deep into her personal savings to send Dana away—in part to fulfill her daughter’s long-standing wish to go to sleepover camp, in part to buy some time alone with her husband. For ten kid-free days they drove down through Vermont and Massachusetts to Cape Cod and doubled back through upstate New York. They even visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Gordon’s long-standing wish.

As Raglan looked over the huge SUVs and snazzy imported convertibles parked nearby, she heard snippets of conversation: “So frustrating. We have to wait another week to get the indoor motor repaired” …
“The screens on the porch were ripped to shreds by that windstorm” … “Do you know someone who’s good with wells?”

The travails of the rich, Raglan thought as the heat bore down on her. Last week when they were in Provincetown she’d bought a straw hat and wondered if she’d left it in the car. She was about to go back to look when a cheer went up from the parents. Three bulky buses came into view at the far edge of the lot.

Everyone started waving madly. Even the men put away their cell phones. Raglan stole a look at her watch. It was 12:45. She turned her BlackBerry to vibrate and slid it into her back pocket.

The BlackBerry was the thing her children hated the most. When she’d returned home, Raglan had sat down with all three of them. “I’m not the head Crown anymore,” she said, putting her hand on a mock Bible, like a witness at one of her trials. “I solemnly swear, I’ll turn the BlackBerry off the moment I walk in the door.”

The buses pulled up, the doors swung open, and controlled chaos ensued as girl after girl after girl bounded down three sets of stairs. There was no indication which bus held which kids, but the other parents somehow knew where to position themselves. Raglan was left at the back of the crowd. From her vantage point the children all looked the same. For a strange and terrible moment she thought, What if I don’t recognize my own daughter?

After what seemed a long time, she felt a tug at her sleeve. Leave me alone, was her first thought. There was another tug. She looked down and saw Dana. Impossibly, her daughter was so much taller after three weeks. She wore a scrunched-down white hat and a filthy T-shirt. Her arms were ringed with handmade bracelets.

“My baby,” Raglan heard herself scream. She scooped up her youngest child. “I missed you so much.”

“Where’s Daddy?” Dana narrowed her eyes at her mother.

“He’s gone to work. We had a great vacation in Cape Cod. Went to see a Red Sox game.” Raglan felt the BlackBerry buzz in her back pocket. Must be Ralph Armitage yet again, she thought. “Where’s your bag?”

“I want you to meet my counselor.” Dana pulled her sideways into the crowd.

Raglan smiled when they found a tall young woman with a deep tan.

“Hi, I’m Marcia.” She put her hand easily on Dana’s head. “Your daughter’s terrific. No one could beat her in an argument.”

“That’s my girl.” The BlackBerry in her pocket buzzed again. Raglan ignored it.

“She’s really proud of you, I’ll tell you that,” the counselor said.

“I’m proud of her,” Raglan said. She was trying to remember the counselor’s name. Was it Marsha or Marlene? The phone buzzed a third time. What the hell was going on? Armitage must really be panicking about something.

“Says you’re the most important lawyer in the city.”

Didn’t say anything about what kind of mother I am, Raglan thought. “Her letters were all about you and the cabin. I know she’ll want to go back.”

“For sure,” Dana said.

It was worth all that money, Raglan thought as she located her daughter’s bag and hoisted it over her shoulder. Please don’t buzz again, she prayed silently to the phone in her pocket.

“Time to get you in the bath,” she said as they tromped across the parking lot. A layer of sweat was covering her back.

“Mom, aren’t you going to work?”

“No.” Raglan tried not to sound too proud of herself. She opened the trunk and threw the bag in. It felt good to get the weight off her shoulders. “I bought some fresh corn for lunch.”

“Hey, what’s this?” Dana said, slipping into the backseat and spying a baseball cap on the middle armrest. “The Red Sox.”

“I got it for you at Fenway.” Raglan started the car. The air-conditioning needed to be fixed, but it would cost two thousand dollars. Instead, she rolled down the windows. The phone buzzed again in her back pocket. “I bought some wild blueberries and fresh peaches.” She put the car in gear.

“Thanks,” Dana said, taking her camp hat off and twirling it in one hand. “And Mommy …”

“What, sweetie?”

“I don’t mind.” Dana plopped the Red Sox hat on her head backward. “You can answer your BlackBerry.”

Dealing with the press was Ari Greene’s least favorite part of the job, but on a case like this it came with the territory. This morning, after getting Simon out of the house, he’d been able to avoid the media. But this afternoon, when he’d come back to the Wyler house with Kennicott to do the walk-through with Zeilinski, they’d had to run the gauntlet of the reporters and television crews teeming up against the police tape.

Greene promised to make a statement when he came out. It was a good idea to say something to the press rather than remain silent and let them speculate.

“Stand beside me,” Greene muttered to Kennicott as they exited Wyler’s front door. “Looks better if there’s more than one cop at the scene.” This summer, when gun violence in the city ramped up, the force had sent all the homicide detectives to media training. Most of it was common sense: look straight at the reporters when you answer their questions, be factual when you can, keep it short.

“Detective Greene! Detective Greene!” reporters were shouting. He approached the yellow tape, in no particular hurry.

“I’ll take questions now.” He held his hands up like a ringmaster at a circus quieting down a bunch of overexcited schoolchildren.

After the media training session, Chief Charlton had taken Greene aside. “Forget all that crap. Reporters love two things—call them by their first name, and call them professionals. Tell them how much you’d love to talk, but you have a case to solve. Blah, blah, blah.”

“Kirt?” Greene said. Kirt Bishop was a smart reporter from
The Globe and Mail
.

“Who’s your prime suspect?” Bishop asked, pen and pad in hand.

Greene smiled. “Kirt, at the risk of using the oldest cliché in the book: the investigation’s ongoing.”

Everyone chuckled. “Zac?” Greene pointed to Zachery Stone, a short, aggressive reporter from the
Toronto Sun
.

“Where’s Wyler’s wife?”

“Hey, you’re all professionals.” Greene grinned even more widely. “Zac, cliché number two: I can’t discuss the details of the case at this time.”

Now everyone laughed.

“Awotwe?” Awotwe Amankwah, a tough reporter from the
Toronto Star
, was the only black face in the crowd.

“Four more people killed last night makes sixty-four so far this year. Twenty in the last two months. People are calling this the Summer of the Gun. What’s going on?”

“We need to keep things in perspective.” Statistics were the other part of Greene’s media training. Every week he was peppered with memos on how to talk down the latest body count. “According to Statistics Canada, Toronto’s the tenth most dangerous city in the country. Our homicide rate is half that of Winnipeg, which is the worst in Canada.”

There were a few reporters in the crowd he didn’t recognize. Greene turned to address them. “To the American journalists who are here, Toronto’s twenty-eighth of all major North American cities in homicides, and we’re the fifth biggest urban area after New York, L.A., Chicago, and Mexico City.”

An Asian woman who’d elbowed her way to the front caught his eye. “Yes?” he said.

“Margaret Kwon,
Faces
magazine.” She had a strong New York accent. “April Goodling—have you seen her?”

“I have,” Greene said.

“Where?” Kwon asked. She held up a slim digital recorder.

“On the cover of almost every magazine on the newsstand,” Greene said. That received the loudest laugh yet.

“Do you know where she was last night?” Kwon asked. Something about the question made Greene think this reporter already knew the answer.

He made a show of looking at his watch. “Folks, we’ve got a long day ahead of us. I’ll update you when we have more news.”

People dispersed, anxious to meet their deadlines. The television crews were happy because they’d gotten the shot of Greene and Kennicott coming out of the house. It didn’t really matter what he’d said. Radio and print people had a few quotes. Greene watched Kwon, the American reporter on the other side of the police tape. She was in no hurry to leave. He nodded at her. She picked up the signal and lingered, writing in her notepad.

“Detective Ari Greene,” he said a few minutes later, when everyone else had gone. He reached out to shake hands.

She gave him an uncomfortable handshake, as if she were performing some outlandish ritual. Her hair was a deep black, her face rounded and her skin smooth. She wore a pair of narrow glasses that accentuated her piercing black eyes. It was difficult to guess her age. Greene put her in her early forties, though she could pass for about ten years younger. “I come here every year for the film festival and I always have to get used to you Canadians being so polite.”

“Tough adjustment,” Greene said. “You on the April Goodling story?”

She let go of his hand slowly. “Twenty-four seven.”

He took her recorder and turned it off. “Why do I have the feeling you know where she was last night?”

“Why do I have the feeling that you’re a smart cop?” Kwon asked back. She hadn’t resisted when he’d turned off her recorder.

“What can you tell the lead detective on the ‘Divorce from the North’ case?”

“Divorce from the North” was the title of one of the articles Greene had read about Goodling. He’d asked Kennicott to grab him some celebrity magazines, and he remembered Kwon’s name on the byline.

Her dark eyes lit up. “You read my story.” She put her hand out, and they shook again. “If I did have some information, what’s in it for me?”

“How about exclusive access to the officer in charge of this case?”

“Deal.” She gave him a hard shake. “Let’s do this over dinner. Where can we go to escape the heat?”

Greene let go of her hand and gave Kwon back her recorder. “I know a few interesting places,” he said.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” she said.

There was the familiar smell of jasmine tea in the air when Jennifer Raglan walked into the Thai restaurant on the south side of Dundas Street. She spotted the owner, a slight man who always wore khaki pants and a starch-white shirt. He bowed and pointed to her usual table, the one farthest from the window.

This all began a few hours ago when Raglan answered her cell phone, sitting in her steaming hot car in the Yorkdale parking lot. Dana sat in the backseat twirling her new Red Sox hat on her fingers.

“It’s me. I’m sorry to keep calling,” a woman said without identifying herself. She knew Raglan would recognize her voice. “There’s something I really need to talk to you about.”

“I just picked up Dana from camp,” Raglan said.

“I know you’re on holiday, but it’s urgent. Can we meet when I get out of court?”

The fact that Jo Summers, a young and talented assistant Crown Attorney, wasn’t identifying herself on the phone—or sending her an e-mail or a text—told Raglan this was something very confidential.

“Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

“I wish it could,” Summers said.

“Okay. The usual place at five.”

Last May, when Raglan was still running the downtown Crown office, Summers had helped her ferret out two renegade prosecutors, Phil Cutter and Barb Gild. Raglan had taken extra precautions to ensure that no one knew Summers was involved. When they needed to talk, instead of meeting for coffee at the Starbucks or the Timothy’s franchises down on Queen Street, they’d slip out to this cozy Thai restaurant.