Tumblin' Dice (17 page)

“These bikers?”

Barry said, “Who gives a fuck, Cliff? Look, Frank has our money, and he's going to give it to us. Who gives a fuck what else is going on here?”

Cliff said, yeah, okay that sounds good, and Barry said, you know it does.

Then Cliff said, yeah, “So we squeeze Frank again,” and Barry looked at him, seeing the guy change from a soft real estate agent into a gangster as easily as he changed from a rock star to a real estate agent, and Barry was thinking maybe that was Cliff's problem — he could never stick with anything.

Then he was thinking, oh well, whatever it was it wouldn't be his problem much longer.

Price was sitting at his desk in the homicide office when he took the call from dispatch. He wrote down the details and the address and hung up, then looked at McKeon, who was on the phone, and right away he knew this one was going to be hard on her — this was going to be one of those that would be impossible to leave at work.

McKeon hung up saying, that was Sandra Bolduc — she's going to talk to her witness and might get lucky. “Brent MacMillan did use a credit card at Huron Woods and also at the Adderly Hotel just down the road and a gas station on the 400,” and Price said, “Who?”

“Boner.”

“Oh right, good. That's good.”

McKeon said, “What?” and Price said, “We got a call,” and McKeon said, okay, let's go, and stood up.

Price said, “It's bad.”

McKeon looked at him and said, “They're all bad, Andre.”

He said, yeah, but this one, “Guy called 911, said he killed his daughter.”

“Called it in himself?”

“Yeah.”

McKeon said, “Okay, well, by the time we get there he'll of had some time to think about it, come up with his story. He'll say it was an accident, it was her fault, he was trying to help her — some bullshit like that, you know it.”

Price said yeah, and stood up, and they walked to the elevator.

They got to the house, a cheap twenty-year-old bungalow out past the airport, just as the ambulance was pulling away, and McKeon said, “Lot of cars in the driveway,” and Price said yeah. Besides the two police cars there was ten-year-old Dodge Caravan, a four-door Corolla, and a new Hyundai compact.

“And,” Price said, “some of those on the street could be here, too.”

Inside the house was crowded, and Price felt right away it was always crowded. There were grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles and kids and Price knew, today at least, none of them would speak any English. Just the father.

A young uniformed cop with blond hair in a ponytail and a notebook in her hand and a serious look on her face, Mueller, was waiting for them by the door. McKeon asked about the scene and Mueller said, “
EMT
took the victim to Etobicoke General.”

“
VSA
?”

Mueller took a second and then said, “Vital Signs Absent, no, Detective, but very faint.
EMT
said there's very little chance.”

McKeon looked around and said, “Who went with her?” and Mueller said, “No one.”

McKeon looked at Price and he nodded, not saying anything, then he looked around the living room at all the other faces in the house, all brown, not nearly as dark as he was, and he didn't see anybody likely to do any talking.

Then Mueller was saying they took the father into a bedroom. He was still in there with her partner, Costa, and Price said, “Okay, let's go.”

They walked down a hall past a couple of bedrooms to the one at the end and opened the door.

Costa was standing by the door and a guy sitting on the edge of the bed looked up and said, “A tragedy, a terrible accident,” and McKeon said, yeah, “Of course it was.”

The guy said, “She was out of control, crazy — I try to help her,” and McKeon said, “Sure you did.”

Price pulled McKeon by the arm, gently, back out into the hall and motioned for Costa to follow.

The four cops were crowded in the hall then, and Price said, “What did he say, the first thing, when you got here?”

“Nothing.”

“Not a word?”

Mueller said, “I was the first one at the door, and he was waiting, opened it and then just walked to the basement and we followed him.”

“All these people in the house?”

Mueller looked at Costa and then said, “There were a lot of people, but I'm not sure if it's the exact same ones — maybe some left.”

“I went into the basement, too,” Costa said, “I'm sorry.”

Price said, no, that's okay, “Anybody say anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Not even in . . .” Price looked down the hall and said, “What language do they speak in the house?”

Mueller shrugged and looked at Costa and he shrugged, too, and said, “They're Pakistani, I think, so Urdu? Pashto?”

Price said, “Find out and call Translation Services, get someone over here,” and Costa said, “Here, or meet us at Twenty-Two?”

“Here, we need statements from all these people and we can't take them all to the station house.”

Costa said, “They've been talking a lot in whatever language it is — lots of time to get their stories straight.”

Price said, yeah, “But you never know what we'll get with statements. Everybody has to make one.”

Costa nodded and went back into the bedroom, and Price looked at Mueller and said, “Let's see the basement,” and she led the way.

The finished part of the basement was divided up into a couple rooms, and then past that was the unfinished furnace room that also had a washer and a dryer. No one was in the basement.

Mueller led the way through the big room, which had a couple of Ikea chairs and a couch and a big flat-screen
TV
, Price thinking it could use a makeover from the
Man Caves
guys on
TV
but it wasn't bad. Then they went through a doorway to a bedroom that was barely big enough for the bed and a dresser. The room was a mess, clothes on the floor, jeans and t-shirts, a black hoodie, and some bright-coloured scarves.

Mueller said, “She was in here, on the bed.”

Price said, “He strangled her? Was there a scarf around her neck?”

“Not when we got here.”

McKeon said, “There's no door.”

Price was looking around the room at the clothes on the floor and he said, what? McKeon said, “There's no door; there aren't even any hinges,” and when Price didn't get it McKeon said, “You can see this whole room from out there.”

“Yeah?”

McKeon looked at Mueller and said, “How old is she?”

“We don't know yet.”

“Around?”

Mueller shrugged, “Sixteen?”

“And she couldn't come into her room,” McKeon said, “slam the door, and be alone.”

Price said, “Yeah, I see what you mean,” then he looked at the bed and said, “This blood here?” and Mueller said, “The girl was bleeding. It was coming out of her nose.”

McKeon said it was hard to tell if there had been much of a struggle, and Price looked at Mueller and said, “How big is the girl? Do you think this guy could have held her down himself?”

Mueller said, “She's not tall but she's probably 120. She's not anorexic, that's for sure.”

Price said okay, and then looked at Mueller and said, “Wait here for
SOCO
.”

When they got back upstairs Price looked around at all the people looking at him and McKeon: mom standing in the kitchen, grandma and a couple of guys, probably brothers of mom or dad, sitting at the dining room table, a few more people in the living room — all adults and none of them looking like they were going to say anything.

Price walked down the hall to the bedroom and opened the door.

Costa, on his cell phone, looked like he was caught at something and said, “Translation Services — I'm on hold,” and Price said, yeah, okay, and waited a minute, and Costa said, “It's Pashto; Translation Services is sending someone,” and Price looked at the dad and said, “Yeah, but you speak English,” and the dad shrugged, doing a bad job of pretending he didn't understand, but he wasn't going to say anything in English.

Price said, okay, “Keep him in here,” and left the room.

In the living room the
SOCO
, two uniformed Scene of Crime Officers, were heading down into the basement with their equipment and McKeon said she'd go with them.

Price waited by the door. Once in a while one of the older guys would say something in Pashto and Price would look at him but the grandmother would've already given him the evil eye and shut him up. Twenty minutes later when Translation Services arrived, a woman in her late twenties wearing jeans and a black jacket with a Blue Jays logo on the front, the first thing she said was “Wow, I didn't know there'd be so many people here.”

Price pulled her down the hall a little and spoke quietly, saying, “What's your name?” and she said, “Nahla Odeh,” and Price said, okay, “The father called it in, said he killed his daughter but that was more than half an hour ago and he's not saying anything now, pretending he can't really speak English, so I'm going to go over everything with him again and you're going to translate. Then we're going to have to talk to everybody in this house, one at a time, and get complete statements from all of them.”

Nahla said, “How long is all this going to take?” and Price said, “As long as it takes.”

She was nervous and she said, “Is it just me?” and Price said, yeah, and she said, “We're not supposed to put in for overtime — it's a budget thing, I think,” and Price said, “Don't worry about that — this is homicide.”

Nahla said, “You can approve it?” and Price said, “Yeah.”

Then she said, “I'm not usually the first for Pashto. It's usually Vincent, but he wasn't available. I'm usually Urdu.” Price said, “That's okay, do the best you can.”

Then he led the way into the bedroom and the dad said, “I'm not answering any more questions.”

Price said, “Okay, that's fine, Constable Costa will take you to Twenty-Two Division. You can call a lawyer and we'll talk there.”

The dad stood up and started towards the door and Price said, “Cuff him.”

And then the dad looked surprised and pissed off and said something in Pashto to Nahla and Price said, “Don't translate that,” and motioned to Costa, who already had his cuffs out and was pulling the dad's hands behind his back. The dad said something else as Costa pushed him past Price and Nahla out the door and down the hall, and when they were in the living room by the front door the mom came out of the kitchen and said something and the dad said something and then they yelled at each other while Costa pulled the dad outside.

When the door closed it was quiet in the house, the mom and everybody else staring at Price who was standing by the door with Nahla. He said, “Tell them we're going to take them one at a time into the bedroom and get statements.”

Nahla said something in Pashto, and then looked at Price and said, “Who goes first?”

Price said, “The mom,” and Nahla looked at her and even before she said anything the mom was walking down the hall to the bedroom.

Nahla held Price back as they followed, and when they were alone in the hall, she spoke quietly and said, “He said she brought shame to the family.”

“The daughter?”

“Yes, said he had no choice.”

“The mom agree?”

“She said, ‘What am I going to do now?' and he told her not to say anything.”

Price said, yeah, okay, “I don't even know if we're going to be able to use anything from her until we find out how old the daughter is. If she's under fourteen we can use the mother's testimony, but if she's older than that then there's spousal privilege. Anyway, let's see what we can get first and worry about that later.”

Nahla said okay, and they went into the bedroom where the mom was already sitting on the bed in the same place her husband had been.

Price walked into the bedroom and Nahla followed behind, looking nervous. Price motioned for her to shut the door and she did.

The mom stared straight ahead not looking at Price or Nahla. Price waited a minute and then he said, “I'm very sorry for your trouble,” and the mom nodded but still didn't look at him, and then he said, “This won't take long, and then you can go to the hospital and see your daughter.”

The mom turned her head and looked like she was going to say something but she stopped, and Price motioned to Nahla to translate, but the mom didn't say anything.

Then Price led them through some basic questions — who lived in the house, who was home this morning, what happened before the “altercation” as he called it — and Nahla stumbled in her translation looking for just the right word. The mom answered all the questions with as few words as she could, and Price asked a few more. Nahla fell into a nice back and forth rhythm and didn't even blink when Price said, “Did you know your husband was going to kill her?”

The mom turned and looked at Price and said, in English, “No, no, I don't know. Not to kill her, just break her arms, her legs.”

“Because,” Price said, “she brought shame to the family?”

The mom didn't say anything so Nahla translated and then the mom went back to speaking Pashto, speaking softer and softer, and Nahla had to hold the voice recorder closer.

Then Nahla stood up and said to Price, “She said that she begged Amaal, the daughter, to listen to her father, to do what she was told. She said everybody begged her but she wouldn't listen, she ran away — everyone knew what she was doing.”

As Nahla was talking the mom started crying softly. She had her hands clenched tightly together in her lap and she was rocking back and forth on the bed a little and crying.

Price watched her for a minute and then said, “Did your husband say he was going to kill her?”

Nahla translated and the mom nodded yes and Price said, “Get her to say it out loud,” and Nahla said something in Pashto and the mom just kept nodding, her eyes closed with tears squeezing out, and then finally looked at Nahla and said a few words.

Nahla turned to Price and said, “She said yes. He said it was his insult, she was making him naked — everyone would know he couldn't control his daughter.”

Price said, okay, and then he said, “Give her a minute and then bring her back out,” and he walked out of the bedroom.