LARCH PARKED HIS BLACK CADILLAC SRX across the street from a five-storey apartment building that looked clean and modern, but also like it wanted to proclaim something grander than it was. Gratings in front of each window simulated balconies that the residents no doubt wished they had. The lobby sprouted a waterfall along the right wall, but it wasn’t working. Through the ground floor window, a basement gym sat with two unused treadmills and a set of weights that probably had yet to feel any real sweat.
Surrounded by a gaggle of cloned buildings, it was a modest place to live. Car traffic was light, but the sidewalks were packed with students. A couple in their early twenties walked toward the building. The man was tall, moustached, with dark tousled hair, wearing jeans and a jean jacket, heaving a case of Alexander Keith’s. She was a foot shorter, brunette, in a black sweater and black jeans. They giggled as they opened the door and continued to the elevator.
They weren’t who he was waiting for.
Larch was a patient hunter. He had already heard the consequences of the first part of his plan from the park a few blocks away, with police converging to deal with trouble at the pro-No rally. His client would be pleased with the headlines sure to appear. His left hand dangled out the window. He held a Marlboro, which leaked a thin stream of smoke. Two empty Coke cans lay sideways at his feet, a scrunched Subway wrapper sat on the empty passenger seat. He looked through a pair of Celestron 7x50 binoculars at the second window from the left on the fourth floor. He didn’t react as a solo police car drove by. He knew that Ritter was on his way home from campus. The cellphone sniffer, locked onto Daniel’s number, remained silent on the passenger seat; he had made only one call so far today.
Birch had supplied him with a few details about the target’s life. But it wasn’t much. The absence of info was something that gnawed at Larch. Ritter had been a professor for only a few months, according to Birch. But what did he do before? There was little trace of him. A Google search revealed only that he had worked for a business-consulting firm in Montreal. He found a short newspaper clip that mentioned someone with at least the same first and last name involved in a minor traffic accident. In Hong Kong. What did Mr. Ritter do then? Why hide it?
Larch would have liked to have had answers to these questions, but he didn’t need them. What he needed to do was focus on the present, on getting the job done. Now was all that mattered.
He was expecting to see Ritter walk up to the building, since his source had told him that the professor usually walked between his home and the university; however, today his target didn’t. He arrived in a police cruiser.
The cop got out first to check out the scene. Then, Ritter appeared and ran a few steps along the far sidewalk, collar up on his winter jacket, and chin tucked in against the cold. He carried a plastic bag in one hand, a dark backpack in the other. The policeman followed closely. A minute later, Larch saw the light flick on inside Ritter’s apartment. The cop soon returned to his cruiser and waited there, about thirty metres from the main entrance to the building.
The fact that Ritter now had police protection meant that it was going to be more difficult to deal with him. It was time to tie up this loose end fast.
He slipped out of the car, backpack in hand, and walked directly across the street, a block behind the cruiser. He pivoted on the sidewalk and approached slowly, trying to appear as casual as possible. Two young women walked into the lobby just before him. One of the women, the taller blond one, apologized for not holding the door open for him. He muttered something meant to be unremarkable. He waited until the shorter woman with a black toque pushed 4. He pushed the floor above.
In the awkward silence between floors, one woman’s cellphone chirped. She didn’t answer it. After he got out on the fifth floor, he took the stairs back to the fourth and slowly opened the door into the hallway. It was empty. He walked along the corridor, noticing which doors had light leaking from under them and which did not.
Light spilled along the floor from room 409. He banged on the door twice. No answer from 409. He must be in there, he thought.
Ritter’s door didn’t open, but then a man appeared behind him, holding a pizza in one hand.