This Thing of Darkness. Barbara Fradkin

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      “Strong or enraged.” Sullivan paused. “Some of the blows were post-mortem. The one that likely killed him was to the base of his neck, delivered when he was already lying down. Snapped his neck.”

      Green tasted bile. “Coward. Attacking an old man in the first place, then hitting him when he’s down. This wasn’t a simple mugging, Brian. This was an assassination.”

      Sullivan ran his broad hand through his bristly hair, frowning dubiously.“Well, it might have started as a mugging, but when Rosenthal resisted, the killer lost it. Maybe Rosenthal got a good hit in, and the attacker saw red.”

      Green was silent. He knew Sullivan was right. They’d both seen enough bloody destruction to appreciate the power of flash rage. But to keep hitting once the old man was already down, already dead, suggested a dangerously unstable man. Green finally broke into their grim thoughts. “What’s his calculation on time of death?”

      “More or less what we figured. Sometime between midnight and four a.m. Sunday morning.”

      “Anything else of note?”

      “We got the dental records, and we’ve couriered everything over to the forensic odontologist. Probably have a confirmed ID by Wednesday. MacPhail says Rosenthal had an iron constitution and kept himself well. Even got regular pedicures. Heart, liver and arteries all in excellent shape, would have lived another ten years. Even had all his own teeth. ‘A lifetime of clean living, the silly bugger’ is what the old Scot announced when he was finished.”

      Both men laughed, grateful for the lighter mood. MacPhail would see that as a lifetime of wasted opportunities. But in Green’s mind, it all fit with the image that was beginning to form, of a thoughtful, philosophical man who had few vices and took meticulous care of himself.

      None of which explained what he was doing walking along Rideau Street during the most dangerous small hours of the night.

Six

      Stop the Carnage!” The Tuesday morning headline stopped Omar cold. He was just heading to the cash with the bottle of laundry detergent his mother had asked him to buy and the jumbo bag of chips that was his reward. She wouldn’t know about the pack of DuMauriers he’d pick up too. Using his own money, so what business was it of hers? What other twenty-year-old man was grounded to the house for a month anyway?

      It had been less than three days, but he was already going insane. He’d practically begged his mother to let him go to the store for her. She was as scared of his father as he was, so it had taken some persuading, but when the old man went off to work that morning, she’d slipped Omar some house money and sent him up to Rideau Street.

      His mother didn’t read English, and his father said the newspapers were all lies, so there weren’t any in the house. Since part of his punishment was no TV, he hadn’t heard any news either. That headline was the first he’d learned of the old man’s death on Saturday night. That fucking black-hole Saturday night.

      The Ottawa Sun screamed the headline in its usual half-page type, followed up with more hype. “Roaming gangs to blame in senior’s death.” Beside that, there was a photo of a building with a body sprawled against it. Details were fuzzy so it took Omar a moment to recognize Rideau Street, but then fear shot through him. He pretended to be cool as he bent to look at the more conservative Ottawa Citizen on the rack below. No headlines about gangs, but a recap of the progress the police were making into the brutal beating. “We are looking at video footage and at known gang members operating in the vicinity,” some cop was quoted as saying.

      Video footage. Fuck! Omar nearly bolted from the store. He snatched up the paper, and it took all his willpower to put his stuff down at the cash and wait for his change. He completely forgot about the cigarettes.

      Back at the house, he shut himself in his room and read the story five times, his brain refusing to take it all in. This was bad. The guy had been beaten with a bat over a dozen times, even after he was dead. His body was pulverized, then robbed. An innocent old guy out for a walk, just minding his own business. Omar felt a dumb surge of anger. Well, that was the old man’s first mistake. What the hell was he thinking, going out for a walk on Rideau Street in the middle of the fucking night?

      Then he felt guilty for the anger. The old man’s actions may not have been too smart, but no way he deserved to get beaten to death. This wasn’t Somalia, where his father said your life was in your hands every second, where just to show your face in the wrong place to the wrong person could mean a machete or a strafe of bullets. Which was why his mother never complained about his father, no matter what he did, because he’d rescued her from that. Picked her from all the village girls in the camp, brought her back here when he transferred back to Canada. Omar had already been born by then, but not too many soldiers married the village women they’d fooled around with.

      His father said it was a matter of honour after the things the military had done in Somalia, and maybe that was true. His father still sent half his money over there for a village school. But Omar knew it wasn’t that simple. His dad liked to be king of the heap, and he knew he had them all by the short and curlies.

      He raised his head from the newspaper. How many times had he asked himself if they’d have been better off if the old man had left them in Somalia? He knew the answer, but it was a game he played whenever the bastard tightened the screws. Martial law, that’s what this was. Once a soldier, always a soldier, and his father had been with the worst. The government hadn’t disbanded the Airborne Regiment after Somalia because the guys had handed out lollipops. They knew all about beating. And killing.

      Omar wrenched his thoughts back to Saturday night. He raked his memory. He remembered something metal, something shiny like a knife. But not a baseball bat. Who the hell had been carrying a baseball bat? A knife could be concealed, but a bat was pretty fucking long to hide under your shirt. Not to mention uncomfortable when you’re sitting down. He tried to picture the four of them sprawled on the grass in Macdonald Gardens, smoking weed and talking about getting laid. He remembered jokes about the size of their hard-ons, about how far up a girl they could go. If anyone had had a baseball bat, it would have come out then.

      Omar shook his head, feeling a bit better. It was possible one of them had picked up a baseball bat later during their walk, but not likely. Not too many baseball bats lying around in alleyways around here, especially when it wasn’t even garbage day.

      He heard his mother’s soft bare feet on the stairs. Quickly he folded up the newspaper and stuffed it under his mattress. He pulled his math textbook out of his bag and had just flipped it open when there was a light tap on his door. As always, his mother waited silently outside his door until he opened it. She was tall, and even after four kids—plus two who died in the refugee camp, but no one ever talked about them—she didn’t have an ounce of fat on her.

      Even inside the house, she kept herself wrapped head to toe in browns and blacks. His father sometimes bought her bright scarves and pretty clothes, but they sat in her closet. She looked at Omar now with her huge, sad eyes.

      “You have laundry?” she asked in English.

      He glanced around his room. His brothers had left their own clothes strewn around, but Omar’s own corner was army shipshape. Just one more sign of his father’s double standard. He handed her his bag of laundry, then remembered the clothes from Saturday night, still in a ball at the back of his closet. He said nothing.

      She peered into the small bag and frowned. “Your jeans?”

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