This Thing of Darkness by Barbara Fradkin Page B

route through his education. I want to make sure he crosses the finish line. That’s the least a father should do.”
    â€œSo he was here all night? You’re sure of that?”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    Omar heard that dangerous little edge creeping into his father’s voice, but the cops wouldn’t recognize it. There was silence in the hall. Omar realized his heart was almost breaking his ribs. What the hell was this about? Dad, who hammered them on the head about honour and honesty— Dad was lying? Bold-faced, calm, friendly. Lying, like it was natural as day.
    â€œWe would still like to question him about an incident his friends were involved in,” the officer said. “Here’s my card. Have him give us a call as soon as he gets back.”
    â€œAbsolutely, officers. I’ll pass it on. What incident is this?”
    â€œThank you for your time, Mr. Adams. Have him give us a call.” The door squeaked open and closed again. Omar found he was holding his breath. Waiting for his father’s next move.
    It wasn’t long in coming. Omar had barely made it back to his room when his father was on him, hauling him by the ear into the bathroom. “You little turd,” he hissed. “You’re going to scrub this room until every speck of dirt and whatever else you brought home Saturday night is gone. Then you’re going to scrub it again. You’re a disgrace, and if you bring trouble to your mother and brothers, I’ll cut you off like you never existed. Don’t think you’ll ever see us or a single dime of support ever again. You were here all Saturday night studying for that math credit you’ve been working on. And if your worthless gangsta friends say different, they’re lying. Got that? Lying. That’s your story, or you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
    I already wish that, Omar thought through the pain ricocheting through his head. I’ve wished that ever since I was old enough to wish.

Five
    S ergeant Levesque was a good actress. She stood in the middle of Sam Rosenthal’s living room, surrounded by stacks of files and textbooks, her hands on her hips and her head cocked. Her lips smiled, but her eyes smouldered, midnight blue and threatening. Like a distant thunderstorm, Green thought, chuckling at the image that had leaped to his mind.
    â€œInspector Green,” she said. “Not much to report yet. We just got the search warrant, and we’ve been here only a half hour.”
    â€œI know,” he replied blithely. “I’m just visiting on my lunch hour.” He looked around at the work already done—drawers opened, filing cabinets emptied and cushions overturned— and felt a twinge of frustration. He remembered when he searched a victim’s home, back in the days when he didn’t sit on committees or jump to fulfill every whim from the brass above, but instead spent his shift on the road, running his own cases and calling his own shots.
    Back then he would have spent half an hour just studying the apartment, getting a sense of the occupant, sketching and absorbing impressions before he disturbed a single thing. Sullivan used to call it “communing with the dead”, and he wasn’t far off. The victim told him a lot in those thirty minutes, from what pictures he chose to hang where and what books he had on display to what kitchen utensils were near at hand.
    In most homicide cases, the victim’s identity was key to his death. In this one, Sergeant Levesque thought it irrelevant. She might be right, but it disturbed Green’s sense of due respect. He began his own walkabout, trying to picture the room as Rosenthal would have left it. Everything had an old, slightly-scuffed appearance, but the man had clearly once had money as well as taste. A dining room set of mahogany and velvet was shoehorned into the small nook allotted to it off the living room. An antique roll-top