This Thing of Darkness by Barbara Fradkin

kin.”
    â€œAny luck tracking down the son?”
    â€œNot yet, but Levesque assigned it to Gibbsie. He’s checking public records. So far there’s no record of a birth, so it must have been out of province.”
    â€œMaybe even out of the country,” Green said, remembering Rosenthal’s roundabout academic journey from South Africa through the UK. “But if he’s in a system anywhere, Gibbs will find him.” Green wondered how the son would react. Losing a family member to murder was a horrifying shock, no matter how estranged the family was. “MacPhail doing the autopsy this morning?”
    Sullivan nodded. “But it will be weeks before we get any DNA results back from the lab. There is a hell of a backlog, even when we mark top priority on it. I still think those surveillance tapes and forensics are our best bet. We’re also talking to Lowell from the Guns and Gangs Unit and getting the names of all the known members operating in the neighbourhood, and all the wannabes—”
    â€œThat’s just about everybody!” The Byward Market was one of the central clearing houses for the drug trade. Hardcore addicts and weekend partygoers alike headed down to its narrow, jumbled streets to make a score.
    â€œThese men are black—possibly Somali or Ethiopian from what we can tell from the piece of crap tape—so we’ll concentrate on those groups first. We also think Rosenthal inflicted some damage. There’s tissue under his fingernails, which he kept well manicured, by the way—the guy was a class act—and some blood and hair on the rubber tip of his cane. Our punks may have some visible war wounds, so we want to get a look at all possible suspects ASAP .”
    â€œSounds good. Keep me posted, especially if you locate the son. Meanwhile I’ll poke around into this guy’s background using the connections I have. If I turn up anything, I’ll pass it on.”
    Sullivan lifted his feet off the desk and took a deep breath as if gathering his forces for the day ahead. “Sure, Mike. Whatever makes you happy.”
    Green laughed and waved towards the door. “What can I say? Most times the hoofbeats are horses, but you got to keep an eye out for zebras. Now get out of here. I’ve got some pointless action proposal to prepare for Superintendent Devine. She’s revving up her campaign for Deputy Chief into high gear, so I have to solve the spike in domestics by five o’clock today.”

    Omar twitched aside the curtain and peered down the street. The cop car was still there, parked in front of Nadif ’s house. Omar hadn’t seen them go in, but they’d been in there an awful long time. Omar itched to phone Nadif to find out what was up, but he didn’t dare. For one thing, his fucking father would probably hear the phone click and pick up in the middle. For another, Nadif wouldn’t be able to tell him a thing with the cops standing two feet away.
    He paced back into the bathroom to stare at himself in the mirror. He’d cleaned up the snot and blood the best he could and spent most of Sunday in bed, but he still looked like he’d hit a brick wall. There were scrapes on his arms, his nose was swollen, and one eye was half shut. He’d thought of washing his hoodie and jeans in the bathtub, but he was afraid his father would freak out at the mess. Instead he’d bundled them in a ball and shoved them in the back of his closet to deal with when he could sneak out to the garbage bin in the alley behind. His father had slapped him under house arrest for a month, and even now he was downstairs keeping an eagle eye out.
    Omar wished he knew what story Yusuf and Nadif were telling the cops. Maybe they’d all settled on a story Saturday night, but he couldn’t remember. Just like he couldn’t remember what the hell they’d done after they left the park or how the hell he’d gotten