02 - The Guilty Plea Read online

  THE GUILTY PLEA

  ROBERT ROTENBERG

  www.johnmurray.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Also by Robert Rotenberg

  Epigraph

  Part One: August

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Two: September

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Part Three: November

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Part Four: January

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Part Five: April

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Acknowledgments

  About the author

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by John Murray (Publishers)

  An Hachette UK Company

  © Robert Rotenberg 2011

  The right of Robert Rotenberg to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-84854-348-5

  John Murray (Publishers)

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.johnmurray.co.uk

  For my parents

  Gertrude Rotenberg, December 21, 1921–October 19, 1999

  Dr. Cyril Rotenberg, March 9, 1920–April 10, 2009

  who always believed in me

  ALSO BY ROBERT ROTENBERG

  Old City Hall

  Despite all the rules and objections and soft illusion of decorum, a trial was after all a savage and primitive battle for survival itself.

  —Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder

  PART ONE

  AUGUST

  1

  Even for Arceli Ocaya, it was too hot to sleep. The heat wave had gripped the city for days and by six in the morning her tiny apartment was already steaming. Back home in Manila, her husband and their five children would never believe it could be so warm in Canada. By next summer when she brought them over, Ocaya planned to have a bigger place, and she knew they would never understand what it had been like—all these years alone with the summer heat, the winter cold, and the eternal loneliness.

  It was good that she was up early. Her employer, Mr. Terrance Wyler, would need all the help she could give him this morning. Poor man. Even though he was rich.

  The bus she took every day to the subway arrived on time, but there was a delay on Eglinton Avenue where a film crew was making a movie. This happened so many times in Toronto. The trailers parked on the side of the road funneled the traffic. Ocaya saw a stone building with a new sign that said CIRCUIT COURT—BALTIMORE and police cars with the words BALTIMORE CITY POLICE on the side.

  Unfortunately, most people on the subway were reading the transit newspaper, which had a picture of Mr. Wyler right on the front page with his arm around his famous American girlfriend, the actress April Goodling. The headline read divorce from hell trial starts today. Why do they write such terrible things? Ocaya wondered. Her employer was the nicest person she’d worked for since leaving the Philippines.

  At her last subway stop, Bayview Avenue, she rushed up the escalator. Oh, no, she thought when she got to street level and saw the back of the bus pull away, its tailpipe spitting out sooty black smoke. She decided to walk the six blocks to his house.

  Marching up Hillside Drive, Ocaya couldn’t stop thinking about that foolish headline. “Divorce from Hell.” Try being separated from your family for six years and only getting to go home to see them once. That was hell. This divorce was silliness. Mr. Wyler was an excellent father and those accusations his wife, Samantha, made against him last year were nonsense.

  After three blocks she felt the sweat collect on the back of her neck. The lawns of all the expensive houses were turning brown at the edges from the long dry spell and most of the driveways were empty. For the next three blocks the street climbed at a steeper grade, but she refused to slacken her pace.

  Ocaya had learned that in Toronto during the month of August many people were on holiday, especially the wealthy ones. They called it “going up north.” When Mr. Wyler’s son, Simon, was just a baby—and Mr. Wyler and Samantha were still married—the family went up north to a cottage and Ocaya went with them. Why they would leave their air-conditioned home to spend a week in a woodshed with an old refrigerator, a place with bugs and snakes outside, was a mystery to her. Strangest of all, one afternoon they caught seven fish and insisted on throwing them all back in the lake.

  She arrived every day by seven-thirty. Mr. Wyler was always up, his stereo on loud, prancing around the kitchen, chopping up fresh fruit. Sometimes he played his piano. On the weeks he had Simon, he would make breakfast while listening to a man named Billy Joel. Apparently Mr. Joel played piano too. Her employer even named his dog Billy.

  Simon had just turned four years old and was already learning to read. Short words, but Mr. Wyler was so proud. A few weeks earlier he bought some colorful magnetic letters and put them on the front of his refrigerator. Each night he spelled a short word and when Simon came down for breakfast the boy would read it. First D-O-G, then C-A-T, then H-O-U-S-E, then T-R-A-I-N.

  As she climbed the stone steps to the front door, Ocaya was surprised to see that the newspaper was still there. Usually Mr. Wyler had read it by the time she arrived, and he often showed her an article he thought would interest her. This morning, with so much on his mind, he probably didn’t have time. She scooped the paper up and put her key in the door. It was unlocked. Mr. Wyler
had probably been outside earlier, before the paper came, and forgotten.

  I’ll bet the poor man couldn’t sleep, she thought. His parents and two older brothers had been at the house last night for Sunday-night dinner, and Ocaya had been there to help out. The family had fought about their business. That, on top of the trial starting today, must have upset him.

  It was quiet inside the house. There was no music playing. No clatter of dishes in the kitchen. No patter of Simon’s little feet. And where was Billy? Every morning when the dog heard Ocaya come in, he would bark with happiness, stand up on his back legs to greet her.

  The house was hot. Mr. Wyler often forgot to put on the air-conditioning before he went to sleep, especially lately when he was so upset. She took off her backpack and slid it under the front hall desk. At last she heard the click of dog tags on Billy’s collar. He poked his head around the corner of the living room.

  “Billy, my favorite little doggie.” She clapped her hands together. “Where’s Simon?”

  Saying “Simon” always brought an instant response from the dog, but Billy seemed uninterested. He lowered his head. Must be the heat, Ocaya thought.

  “I better get you some water.” She swung open the kitchen door but the dog was reluctant to follow.

  The first thing that hit her was the smell. Something strong. Horrible.

  She saw the blood. A dark red splotch on the clean white tile floor. She would use one of the rags under the sink to wipe it up, she thought.

  Then she saw Mr. Wyler.

  He was lying on the floor near the refrigerator. His eyes were open. Vacant. She ran to him. “Did you fall, sir?”

  There were cuts across his white shirt, the one she’d ironed for him on Friday. So many cuts. On his neck too. And the blood. All the blood.

  Her heart was pounding. She was having trouble breathing. Thinking.

  Wait, she thought, hearing the silence of the house.

  “Simon,” she shrieked, louder than she thought she knew how to yell. And raced to the stairs.

  2

  For some reason known only to him, every summer Homicide Detective Ari Greene’s father insisted on repainting the railing on the front steps of his house. One of these years I’m going to scrape the damn things down, Greene thought as he grabbed two thin vertical bars and yanked them back and forth to make sure they were secure. The railing wobbled a bit. He’d need to fill in the cement too.

  Even this early in the morning it was hot and the heat accumulated on the concrete steps. His dad had made Greene a fresh pot of tea and was drinking his usual instant coffee from an old Toronto Maple Leafs mug.

  Greene laid out the morning’s newspaper under the railing and opened a can of black paint with a screwdriver. The can had lasted two summers already. “I think there’s enough for one more year,” he said.

  His father reached in with a long stir stick. “Let’s hope.”

  Greene had just picked up a brush when the emergency beeper on his hip went off. He hadn’t expected a call today, because he was number four on the handwritten list posted in the bureau of who was in line for the next murder. He picked up his cell phone and called in.

  “Toronto’s turning into Murder City,” the dispatcher said. Her name was Denise, a tough old battle-ax Greene had known for years. “This is the fourth of the night.”

  “Must be the heat,” Greene said.

  “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Denise couldn’t wait to fill him in on the details of the three other homicides. In the Jane-Finch corridor, shots were fired and a seven-year-old girl at a backyard birthday party was hit by a stray bullet. Downtown in the entertainment district, a med student up from Buffalo got stabbed when he jumped in to break up a fight. And a home invader out in Etobicoke beat a babysitter to death when she wouldn’t open the family safe.

  “What’ve I got?” Greene asked Denise.

  His father took the paint can lid and tapped it back into place with the back of his brush. Greene had been on the homicide squad for five years and they both knew the drill. When a murder call came in, he dropped everything else in his life.

  “You heard of Terrance Wyler, from the Wyler Foods grocery store?” Denise asked. “The guy who’s going out with April Goodling, the Hollywood star. She goes through men like water. Wyler’s divorce trial was supposed to start today.”

  Greene read the front page of the newspaper on the porch. “Divorce from Hell trial,” he said.

  His father picked up the paintbrushes and the stir stick.

  “Lover Boy’s dead. This morning the Filipino nanny found him stabbed in his kitchen.” Denise sounded excited to deliver the bad news. “His four-year-old boy was asleep upstairs. Doesn’t know what happened yet.”

  “On my way,” Greene said after she gave him the address.

  “I’ll clean up,” his father said.

  “Call you tonight.” Greene bent down and kissed his dad on his forehead, then jumped into his car and slapped the emergency light on the roof.

  Ten minutes later he pulled his ’88 Oldsmobile behind a police cruiser in front of 221 Hillside Drive and stepped out into the morning sunlight. Taking his time, he looked up at the house, which was elevated well above the street.

  “Hello, Detective,” a young policewoman at the front door said when he got to the top of the stairs. She was a thin East Indian woman with a slender nose. “P. C. Mudhar. I’m the first officer on scene.”

  “Detective Greene.” He shook her hand. It was sweaty. “Your first homicide call?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where’s the little boy?”

  “Upstairs with the nanny.” Her voice was thin. “I told her to keep him in the room.”

  “You see him?”

  “For a second. He was waking up. The nanny says she found Mr. Wyler in the kitchen when she came to work this morning.” Mudhar had a palm-size police notebook, and she flipped it open. “She said that was about seven-thirty. I checked the body. There are no vital signs.”

  “You call for backup to cordon off the street?”

  Mudhar shook her head. “Not yet, sir.”

  “Don’t worry,” Greene said. “I called it when I was driving over. Cars will be here any minute. Send someone to Tim Hortons to get a chocolate milk and a doughnut with sprinkles.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I told dispatch to hold off the ambulance until we get the boy out of here. Anyone else in the house?”

  “No, sir. I checked. It’s clear.”

  “Good work.”

  Mudhar smiled and closed her notebook.

  “What’s the nanny’s name?” he asked.

  She opened her notebook again. “Arceli Ocaya. Says the boy’s mother has been acting strange the last few weeks.”

  As he’d driven to the house, Denise the dispatcher had briefed Greene on the recent police occurrences involving the wife. Samantha Wyler had been harassing her soon-to-be ex-husband with nasty voice messages and angry e-mails that were close to the line, but not actual threats. A pair of rookie police constables had warned her to stop. The usual stuff.

  With four murders on the go, there’d be a scramble among the homicide detectives to grab good officers to work their cases. Greene called Daniel Kennicott, a smart young cop who’d worked with him on his last murder. Kennicott had his cell phone set so if Greene called it had a special ring tone.

  “Detective Greene?” Kennicott said.

  “Where are you?” Greene asked.

  “On patrol. Started my shift about half an hour ago.” Kennicott sounded sleepy. “First day back. What’s up?”

  The two men had a complicated relationship. Kennicott’s older brother, Michael, was murdered five years earlier. At the time Kennicott was a lawyer at one of the top downtown firms. Twelve months later when the investigation stalled, Kennicott quit his law job and joined the force, determined to make the homicide squad in record time. It was Greene’s only unsolved case.

 
“A new murder.” Greene gave him the address. He was going to start Kennicott off with the toughest assignment of the day: informing the family of the murder.

  “Be there in ten minutes,” Kennicott said.

  Greene turned to Mudhar. “What’s the name of the boy upstairs?” Beads of perspiration pooled on the side of the young policewoman’s face. The reality of homicide work was that usually it was the greenest of the green cops who were the first to arrive.

  This time Mudhar didn’t need her notebook. “Simon.” Her bottom lip began to quiver. “It’s gruesome.”

  Greene put his hand on her shoulder. “Stay here and cover the door.” He looked at the cloudless sky. There was a smell of mint in the air. He must have crushed some coming up the steps.

  “Yes, sir.” The wash of relief across Mudhar’s face was palpable.

  Greene walked through the front hall and opened the kitchen door with his elbow. Already knowing what he’d see inside didn’t make it any less disturbing. Wyler’s fit, trim body was splayed out on the tile floor, arms flung to the sides, apparently helpless in the face of a knife attack that had lacerated his chest, the top of his shoulders, and his neck.

  Greene bent close to the body without touching it. There were no obvious cuts to Wyler’s fingers or forearms. Forensics would look for skin or DNA under his fingernails, but at first blush there were no defensive wounds. The smell in the hot room was overpowering.

  Scanning the kitchen, Greene saw a half cantaloupe on the counter, fruit flies swarming all around it. The rest of the room was as spotless as the hallway had been. All the cupboard doors were closed. Greene put his hand inches from the dishwasher. It was cool. Same with the stove, where he noticed three dish towels draped over the handle. The first was red and white, and the second was green and white. There was a gap the width of a towel and then another green one. A wooden block near the sink held a number of black-handled knives. The widest groove was empty. No sign of a knife on the floor or the counter.

  There was nothing else Greene could do here until the forensic officer arrived. He had a sudden urge to be out of this room of death. He had to go upstairs to talk to a boy who no longer had a father.