This Thing of Darkness. Barbara Fradkin

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      By noon the rumour mill on the third floor was going full tilt, and snippets of gossip were seeping down to the Major Crimes Unit on the second. The first round of interviews for the Deputy Chief ’s job had been going on all morning, and the faces of candidates parading in and out of the Chief ’s private conference room were being minutely analyzed for signs of hope and defeat. Green heard that Barbara Devine had swept into the interview wearing her most conservative navy suit and practical pumps, with neutral polish on her nails and only the subtlest hint of red on her lips. He had to smile, thinking the Chief would have to have been blind not to notice the woman’s penchant for scarlet and stilettos in the past three years.

      She had emerged from the interview an hour later—the longest among the candidates so far—and had flashed a discreet victory sign at her secretary. Victory was far from assured, everyone knew, but the prospect of a new boss to fill her shoes left Green feeling ambivalent. A Chief of Detectives who actually knew something about major crimes would be nice, but on the other hand, Devine’s ignorance, together with her blatant self-absorption, left him with a free rein to run his section as he chose. A new boss might be a pain in the ass.

      Green was preparing for an afternoon meeting with his NCOs when his telephone buzzed. “A Mr. Fine on the line, sir. He said he left three messages.” The major crimes clerk sounded dubious. Green wondered if Fine had asked for “Mr. Yiddish Policeman”.

      Green pounced on the phone. Fine’s singsong voice came through. “So, you don’t have private secretaries any more? A bigshot like you?”

      “What can I say? Voicemail, automated menus... Thanks for calling. You got something for me?”

      “Nothing that will do you much good, but yeah, I looked into your piece.”

      “And?”

      “It comes from Russia, like I thought. I’d estimate turn of twentieth century. Czarist Russia.”

      “You can tell that from the gold?” Green asked, impressed. He knew metallurgists could work wonders these days. Microscopic impurities and variations in colour and content could be traced to specific locations or processing methods.

      Fine chuckled. “I can tell it’s good quality gold, yes, and the workmanship suggests old-style hand-tooling. But no, I can tell that from the lettering on the back of the piece. It’s an inscription, roughly translates as To life and hope, my darling. It uses some old Cyrillic letters and spelling which the Revolution tried to eliminate when they standardized things in 1918. Not everyone gave up the old ways, so it’s not absolutely certain that it’s Czarist, but I’m guessing there wasn’t much call for these religious baubles after the proletariat took over. Jews, you know—always at the forefront of new ideas. Always hoping this one will be better.”

      Green didn’t see how all this shed much light on Rosenthal’s past. The Star of David had been made before the old man was even born. “So it’s probably an heirloom passed down from immigrants who sneaked it out of the old country with them when they came.”

      “Yeah. Or not so romantic, he could have bought it in any antique Judaica shop. It makes a nice gift. The chain isn’t old, by the way. Your standard gold chain you can pick up anywhere. It’s a woman’s Star of David. For one thing, the ‘darling’ is feminine, and for another, it’s more delicate than most men would wear.”

      “It was worn by the victim.”

      “What can I say? Some men...”

      “He had a wife. At least, did have.”

      “Then maybe it’s hers.”

      Green turned the idea over in his mind. It made sense. Even the inscription To life and hope, my darling could have had special meaning to them as his wife struggled with cancer, and when she died—the love of his life in whose memory he had endowed an entire cancer research chair—he had taken to wearing it himself. Just as he continued to wear his wedding ring despite the passage of years.

      “I wonder why the killer didn’t steal it too,” Green said. “He took the poor man’s shoes, watch, and wedding ring.”

      “Maybe he didn’t see it. These are normally worn inside the shirt.”

      “No, it was lying on the sidewalk beside his body.”

      “Ah, that explains it.”

      “What?”

      “It was damaged. The chain was broken, and it takes more force than you think to break those things, like it was ripped from his neck. Plus the surface was bent and scratched. I found tiny particles of sand embedded in the gold.”

      Green tried to picture the chain on the ground. “Maybe it got stepped on in the struggle.”

      “Possibly, but the amount of scratching and the way the sand was embedded, it was almost like someone ground it in with their shoe. A pretty violent act, yanking it from the guy’s neck and grinding it into the pavement.”