Cold City Streets (20 page)

“Like, a criminal case? Like on TV?”

“Sure, yeah. This dude got shot on the north side, cops grabbed the wrong guy.”

“No shit.”

“Yeah. You surprised?”

Fuck you, buddy,
Mariner thought. “Not really,” he said. “What’d they do this time?”

“Ahhh, they grabbed this dealer because he picked a gun up off of the street. Turns out the dude wasn’t even shot there.”

“No shit. So what happened? They let him go?”

“Nah, not yet. Look, I probably shouldn’t be talking about this stuff…”

Mariner held up both palms. “Hey, I get it. Privacy shit, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

The detective sipped his beer quietly and said nothing else. He knew human nature well enough to know the silence would feel awkward if he left it long enough; he’d bought the man a beer, after all; he’d feel obligated to at least be friendly.

“What about you…?” Cobi asked, “…you work in the patch?”

“Nah. I keep busy. Nothing interesting like your job though. So you got any idea who actually… you know, shot the dude?”

They didn’t, but Cobi didn’t want to admit it. “Getting there. Slowly but surely.”

That was a no, Mariner decided. But the theory about the body felt sound, like maybe Bernie LeVasseur’s original concerns had been correct. That meant keeping a close eye on Mr. Cobi Tate. He drained the bottom of his glass. “Well… that’s my break. Good meeting you…” he extended a hand.

“It’s Cobi, Cobi Tate.”

Mariner pointed at him quickly. “I knew that I knew you! I’m Jon.”

“Good to meet you.”

Mariner rose and headed towards the nearby door. “Oh, I figure we’ll run into each other again.”

Det. Ev Gushenko was nervous for a guy who hadn’t yet had his first morning coffee. It was early, just after eight, and this was the first time he’d ever been deposed by a lawyer.

The young Ident Team member possessed a “tell,” Cobi noticed. Every time Jessie asked him a difficult question, he rubbed his left thigh slightly under the table. He wondered if she noticed.

Probably. She doesn’t miss much.
He watched them through the side window of Jessie’s office, where Gushenko gave his deposition – a statement she could use in court rather than necessarily having him testify. A dour-faced man in an expensive suit  resided in the corner of the office, a legal representative of the police association.

“Detective, you’ve just finished your apprenticeship as a CSI, is that correct? I seem to remember seeing that in the Crown’s file.” Jessie kept her voice level and matter-of-fact throughout, though the truth was she loved depositions. It amounted to ammunition if even the slightest error in process was confirmed.

“That’s correct,” said the policeman.

“And now you’re a full-time unit member, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“But this was your first time at a homicide scene, is that correct?”

“Well, technically… but I had a good teacher.”

“The Ident Team has a sterling reputation,” Jessie commented.

“Absolutely. We like to think it’s earned.”

“For sure… still, it’s not like you get a free pass for it, or something. Other cops don’t elevate you guys or anything.”

Gushenko frowned, obviously wondering what she was up to. “Sure. I mean, some do and some don’t, I guess.

“I’m not sure I see how that’s relevant to the Sidney case,” the man in the corner ventured.

“So you didn’t feel any pressure at the scene?” Jessie ignored the by-stander. “No one suggested to you it was better not to mention the body perhaps being moved in your report?”

“Absolutely not,” Gushenko said. He rubbed this left thigh absently.

“Then why didn’t you?” Jessie asked.

“Because we were unsure of it.” On this thigh, his hand kept a slow, gentle rubbing motion.

“But you suspected it. Why not mention it?”

“We had a suspect found carrying the murder weapon a hundred yards away, ma’am,” the young officer said. Hand off the thigh, confident.

“Oh, I understand that,” Jessie agreed. “But… Det. Gushenko, you take a course in blood spatter analysis as part of your Ident Team training, am I right?”

“Sure.”

“And you didn’t see anything wrong with the blood spatter at this scene?”

Gushenko went silent for a moment, his jaw tight, chin raised with a slight air of pride. “I did mention that the snow obscured things somewhat but that it was possible he’d been moved, both from the volume of blood and the lack of spatter pattern detectable in the immediate vicinity.”

“But that was ignored?”

“I… don’t recall whether I mentioned it to the investigating officers on scene or not, ma’am. I believe that by the time we had a chance to go over the scene findings they already had a suspect, a murder weapon and a pile of money that may have belonged to the victim.”

“Can you tell me why none of you followed basic procedure and pulled fibers from the body and scene?”

Gushenko began to look annoyed. “As I said, ma’am, they already had a suspect with the murder weapon literally on his person. And it was snowing.”

“And it was snowing,” Jessie repeated, trying to foster just the right hint of sarcasm. Gushenko was young, easily shaken. She had to meet with the Crown after the deposition, and Jessie knew things wouldn’t go so easily.

Ray Strong chewed on the arm of his eyeglasses, one leg crossed over the other as he sat behind his desk at the Brownlee Building and considered his options. He had something Jessie Harper thought she needed, in the form of the cell phone records. And she had something he wanted, which was to go to trial quickly.

He scratched absent-mindedly at his wispy red-brown beard and tried to decide upon the right course of action. He could blackmail her with the cell file into a trial within a month or two; it wasn’t actual evidence in the case, just a fishing trip; he didn’t have to give it to her. He could force her to do an Access to Information search with the police, try to get it from them.
Good luck with that one.

Or he could consider what she proposed, that evidence mounted showing Brian Featherstone had been involved in something bad, and just give her the paper. Maybe she and the new investigator could shake something loose and resolve the whole matter before it even when to trial.

Strong leaned back in his chair. “Now, Jessica…” he said as she sat anxiously across from him. “I find myself in something of a quandary with respect to…”

Jessie cut him off. “Ray, cut the shit, okay? I know you don’t have to give me those records if you don’t want to.”

“That is, in fact, the case.”

“And you know there’s something wrong with this arrest. You’re a veteran, Ray, an old hand. You can smell it. I know you can, sure as I can smell that lousy musk or cologne, or whatever it is you’re wearing.”

“You know, my job is to convict the people who—”

“Your job is to administer justice fairly.”

“Your client was caught with the gun…”

“And we have evidence the body was moved; the tech on the scene said he was surprised by the low volume of blood and the lack of spatter.”

“I’m sure there are other explanations.”

“There are, Ray, but they all require turning off your brain to believe.”

Strong didn’t like the tone. Compared to him, Jessica Harper was a relative newcomer on the local legal scene. Still… she had a certain confidence and style.

“Make us look good and the records are yours,” he offered. “If you find anything that’s going to exonerate your boy, you let us know before you publicize it, so we can withdraw charges without looking like total assholes.”

Jessie held her tongue. Sort of. “So, what you’re saying is, you don’t want any of the heat for having stuck my client in Remand for months. In fact, if we go your route, you look sort of good.”

Strong smiled. Now she was beginning to get it. “It’s nothing personal, Jess; I’m not trying to steal your thunder. But I have people to answer to, and if I can do that in a way that makes everyone happy in the end, I’m going to grab it. And I have one other little request.”

“Okay.”

“No lawsuits. You can think what you want about the guys who worked on this one, but I know these guys. And whether they took the easy route on this or not, they were doing what they thought was right.”

“I can’t promise that. I can promise that I won’t represent anyone in a civil suit that names you. I wouldn’t anyway, as it’s not part of the clinic’s mandate. But that’s about the best I can do.”

Strong held the folder in his right hand, hovering slightly above the desk top with it as if undecided.

“Ray…”

“I know, I know, for Chrissake. Here, take the damn thing.” He thrust it across the desk to her. “I’m trusting you on this, Ms. Harper.”

“Thank you, Ray. You’re a good man,” said Jess.

“You better believe it,” he agreed.

“More paper?”

Cobi was only half-joking, as Jessie hung her coat up on the old-fashioned rack in her office. The prospect of another five hundred pages to find one morsel wasn’t exactly exciting.

“Cell phone records,” Jessie said. “About thirty pages or so, nothing huge.” Her eyes scanned the lines. “In the days leading up to his death, Featherstone got a half-dozen calls from this number…” She pointed out the line to Cobi. “I tried it already; it’s a cell phone, out of service.”

“Damn,” he snarled. “All that for a dead end.”

“Not so fast. He also got three calls from a pay phone. Want to guess where it is?”

“
Thrifty Mike’s
?”

“Exactly.”

Cobi leaned over the printout to get a closer look. “This say how long they talked?”

“Yeah… why?”

“Short call is a deal of some sort, or a confirmation, or touching base. Long call is personal, someone he’s friends with…”

“Or involved with.”

“And when was the last time you heard of someone spending…” Cobi’s finger traced a line across the page, “…eight minutes on a payphone call?”

“The mystery woman?”

“I guess so.”

“So we need someone down there who can identify her,” Jessie said. “Someone who sees everything coming and going on the avenue.”

“Yeah. You got any friends in that neck of the woods?”

“Not really,” Jessie sighed. “But I know someone who does.”

She pulled out her phone and called her father. It rang three times before he answered.

“You’ve got Cliff,” he answered.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Jessica! Little Rabbit!”

“Uh huh.”

“What’s it been, like, two, three weeks?”

“Four months, Dad. I thought you were going to come up…”

“Yeah… well, you know how things get. It’s busy trying to make a buck on the road.”

“Uh huh.”

“You know I love you, Little Rabbit. I just get busy, is all.”

“It’s for Nan Nan…”

“Oh, don’t you get started on me too for that!” he sounded annoyed. “For Pete’s sake, you’d think cleaning the old bat’s tombstone would bring her back from the dead or something, the way you all behave.”

“Dad…”

“It’s not like we ever liked each other anyway. She never liked me, I never liked her.”

“Please, Dad…”

“I told you what she said when we were nominated for the Aboriginal Music Award for best blues recording? ‘If you cared about my daughter, you’d get a real job’. Even when she was dying, she acted like being a musician was some sort of insult.”

“She was fiercely protective of Mom.”

“She was a bigot,” Cliff said. “She liked me until she found out I’m Ojibwe. Then it was one long bitchfest about how her daughter should never marry the like of me.”

“She was older, Dad. She was just set in her ways, that’s all.”

“And she was stubborn as a mule. It’s easy to write off people’s stubborn behavior as ‘their generation’ or some shit like that. Meanwhile, here in the real world, the rest of us get judged every time we take a step backwards.”

In the background behind him, Jessie could hear people talking and laughing.
Probably the band, already tying one on. “
Yeah, I can just imagine how that must have been,” she said as dryly as possible.

“Hmmph,” mumbled her father. “Don’t you start. Besides, I’m guessing you didn’t call just to complain about your nan’s anniversary.”

“Yeah… I’m trying to get information on something that might have gone down on One-eighteenth, in the Hundred and Twenty-fourth Street area.”

“Huh… something on the avenue. Risky business, Little Rabbit?”

“Something like that.”

“Hmm… any money in it? Anything going down a guy might want a small piece of?”

“Yeah, we’re knocking over a Brinks truck and then flying to Italy with the gold.”

“Smartass.”

“It’s just another client. You have a contact down there?”

“What does that mean?”

“Well… you know. It’s the avenue. Where the real people live.”

“Uh huh. Real people.”

“Yeah.”

“And what do I get back for helping you out? Man has a right to make a living off his ‘areas of expertise,’ as you might say.”

Jessie shook her head. He couldn’t just play it straight, even with his own daughter.

“You get my gratitude and a reason for me to defend you when Mom reminds everyone what an immense asshole you can be.”

He sniffed a little, thinking of a response. “Don’t hold back or anything.”

“None of us is fooling ourselves, Dad.”

“At least you still call me ‘Dad.’ Remember that ‘Cliff and Rhonda’ period you had in your late teens…?”

“Dad…”

“I miss those days sometimes, you know…”

“Dad…”

The line went silent for a moment as he considered the weight of the years, the passage of memories. “There’s a guy who used to be all over the avenue, at least in terms of having inside info on everything going on. That’s if he’s still there. Name’s Warren, but he goes by Rastabone.”

“Jamaican?”

Cliff chuckled a little. “His last name is Bazoosky, or something. Let me put it this way: he’s only fooling himself.”

“What does that mean, exactly?

“You’ll see.”