Free Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg

counter. It was hard to see inside the shadowed space, so he waited for his eyes to adjust to the light.
    Then he saw it. He froze.
    Until now the object had been camouflaged on the dark floor. He looked back at the table to the spot where he’d first seen Brace.
    “Kennicott?” Greene asked, sensing something in his stillness.
    “I think you should come here,” Kennicott said, folding his arms in front of him.
    “Hey, what’s up?” Ho asked.
    Kennicott focused on the narrow gap, the object becoming clearer as he stared at it. Greene stood by him, shoulder to shoulder, following his gaze to the spot on the floor.
    It took a few seconds, and then Greene let out a low whistle.
    “I’m not going to touch it, are you?” Greene asked, folding his arms as well.
    “Absolutely not,” Kennicott said, allowing himself a half smile.
    “Detective Ho, keep your gloves on,” Greene said.
    “Hey,” Ho said as he rushed over, “what’ve you got?”
    “Good work, Kennicott,” Greene said under his breath.
    Kennicott nodded. I should say “Thanks, Detective,” he thought, but instead he just kept staring back and forth, from Brace’s mug on the breakfast table to the space between the gap, where he’d spotted the black handle of a knife.

12
    A lbert Fernandez cleared the last piece of paper from his desk. He put the little plastic box where he held his handwritten cue cards back in its hiding place in the bottom drawer. He checked his watch. It was 4:25. Detective Greene had left a message that they’d be there at 4:30.
    Fernandez looked around his tidy 125-square-foot office. He knew it was 125 feet, because government regulations stated that an assistant Crown Attorney’s office could not be one inch larger. There was enough room for a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet, and a few piles of evidence boxes. The door swung in, taking up about a fifth of the space.
    The unwritten rule of the downtown Crown law office was that you worked with your door open. Prosecutors liked to drift into one another’s offices at the end of the day and swap war stories about grumpy judges, sneaky defense lawyers, and difficult witnesses.
    Fernandez hated all the chitchat, and his colleagues knew it. His first-year review stated that he was a good Crown but a poor team player. His peer job review suggested that Fernandez leave his door open more often and get a gumball machine to make his office a friendlier place for his colleagues to drop in.
    The unspoken message was clear: Look, Albert, you’re a bit of an odd duck around here, with your fancy clothes, your fastidious manners,and, well, your Spanishness. To get ahead, you’re going to have to fit in . . .
    The next day, Fernandez wasted his lunch hour at the Eaton Center and returned with a bubble-gum machine under his arm. Like bees to honey, Crowns sensed his new open-door policy. Soon after court, precious minutes, even hours, were wasted with useless banter as his colleagues, craving late-day sugar, quickly ate their way through the gum.
    One day a senior Crown asked him about cross-examining a witness on an unsigned statement to a police officer. Fernandez knew of a recent case in point, and for the next half hour he educated his older colleague. Soon others stopped in not just for bitching and bubble gum, but to get Fernandez’s opinion about complex legal issues. The door stayed open, the bubble-gum dispenser kept getting replenished, and Fernandez’s star in the office rose.
    Still, he resented wasting the precious time. As the years went by, he shut the door more often. One day the bubble-gum machine ran out and he didn’t bother to refill it. Eventually he moved it behind the door, where it sat in a strange purgatory. Fernandez was unable to throw it out but unwilling to refill it. More often than not, it doubled as a coat hanger.
    There was a knock on the door. Fernandez popped to his feet. Detective Ari Greene and Officer Daniel Kennicott stood side by side, more