Читать книгу Do or Die - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 4

Later, Carrie MacDonald wondered why she had heard nothing, but in the bustle just before closing, she had been too busy to pay much attention. Photocopiers whirred, pages crackled and students hustled past. She heard the hollow ping of the elevator bell and the rattle as the door slid closed, but she did not look up from her stacking. The library closed in ten minutes and she knew that unless she got all the books back onto the shelves, she would face Margot’s wrath in the morning. The wizened prune wielded her puny power with the zeal of an SS officer, always after Carrie for sketching when she should be working. As if that were all she was good for.

A big lout in a studded leather jacket and cowboy boots shoved past her and lumbered to the elevator without so much as a glance in her direction. He jingled change in his pocket, wheezing as he waited for the next elevator. I’m invisible, she thought. Just hired help, only useful when you have no quarters, or the photocopier has run out of paper. She wanted to shout “I’m a student too, you know. I’m one of you. I sit in classes and take copious notes and think great thoughts, just as lofty as yours. But unlike you, I don’t get an allowance from Daddy, and I have a ten-year old to support.”

When the elevator door slid open, the fat man barrelled in and punched the button. At the last minute, a girl shoved past Carrie, frizzy hair flying. She paused at the entrance to the elevator for one last anxious look behind her, then flung herself through the closing doors.

Everyone was gone abruptly in a final flurry of excitement before the late-night hush settled in. Carrie went back to her books, placing the last of them on the cart in proper sequence by call number. Wheeling the cart, she set off down the nearest aisle.

She knew the entire library by heart—the busy sections with the well-worn titles in English literature and social science as well as the remote corners whose riches hadn’t been explored in years. The blonde had come from the education section, the lout probably from the literature section. Although he didn’t exactly look the sonnet-spouting type.

The first four books on her cart were from the law section. After disposing of them, she wheeled the cart past obscure shelves bearing esoteric titles she barely understood, all long undisturbed and thick with dust. She was scanning the titles as she walked, relishing the impossibly long words, when a misplaced book leaped out at her well-trained eye. It was stuffed into a gap, askew and half hidden in the dark. She stopped, grumbling to herself. This was how books were lost, misplaced by some careless student and not found again for months. This book was on the wrong floor miles from home, a book on neuropsychology in a section on Victorian novels.

She placed it in her cart and was about to move on when she heard a moan. On second hearing, more a gasp than a moan. Abandoning her cart, she followed the sound around the corner to the next aisle. The sight stopped her short.

A young man lay curled on the floor, his arms clutching his stomach. His sleeves, his chest, the once-grey carpet were all soaked in blood. She recognized his face immediately. Just the week before, she had sneaked a sketch of him hunched over a stack of books, staring into space. She was always on the lookout for special faces, and his look of bewildered sadness had captured her. He had looked like a young man with a burden far too great for his years.

Now his face was drawn tight in a grimace, his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth gaping in a silent scream. He was deathly pale, and this, even more than the blood, galvanized her to action.

Shouting for help, she dashed across the library to the emergency phone to call security. As she returned, she caught sight of a red plaid jacket, dark hair and widened eyes by the elevator.

“There’s a man hurt up here! Go meet the ambulance guys downstairs. Fast!”

Barely had she turned in the aisle when the fire alarm began to clamour.

“No! Not the fire—” She spun around just in time to see the red plaid shirt disappearing into the elevator. Cursing, she ran on.

By the time she reached the young man again, he was unconscious and lay inert in his pool of blood. As she flung her sweater over him in a vain attempt to combat the shock, he stopped breathing.

“No!” she cried and flipped him onto his back to begin CPR. It was only then, as she applied her fists to his chest, that she saw the wound.

*

At six-twenty the next morning, Inspector Michael Green lay sprawled across his bed with his pillow over his head. Heat glued the sodden sheet to his back. The baby was crying, and his wife clattered irritably around the kitchen preparing a bottle. In between howls, the baby kicked his overhead toy with his feet, causing the bell to clang and the crib to thump against the wall. In their tiny apartment, it sounded like World War III.

Oh God, Green thought, the start of another day. A day in the life of middle management in the new bigger, better, amalgamated police force, a day now spent sitting in boring committee meetings, drafting service models and pushing papers around his desk. Murders were up in Ottawa, thanks to government cutbacks to social services and health, which drove people to increasingly desperate solutions. But it was all routine stuff, easily handled by the regular field detectives of the Major Crimes Squad. Not a serial killer or a mystery assassin in sight. Nothing that required his deductive powers or intuitive ingenuity, only his woefully inadequate supervisory skills. Not that he wished for a real murder to sink his teeth into, exactly, merely some new spark in his life. What the hell had possessed him to become an inspector anyway?

Clamping his pillow more firmly over his ears, he burrowed further under the sheets until the baby was reduced to a distant whine. He did not even hear the phone ring; Sharon yanked the pillow off and shoved the cordless phone in his face.

“Sounds like Jules.”

Shaking sleep from his head, Green took the phone. The Chief of Detectives’ dry voice crackled through the wires, unusually urgent.

“Michael, something important has come up. Be in my office for a briefing in half an hour. Oh—and Michael, wear a decent suit.”

Green stared at the phone. Jules had hung up before he could even rally a protest. Decent! In the old days, Jules had never told him what to wear. Hinted, sometimes, when the media were going to be around, but never ordered.

“I don’t even have a decent suit,” he muttered to Sharon when he emerged from the shower five minutes later. “Both my court suits are at the cleaners.”

“Three nice suits wouldn’t exactly kill you,” she retorted without looking up. She was slumped on the bed, dark eyes haggard, giving Tony his bottle. “By forty most men own a few decent suits.”

No support from that end, he thought with more sympathy than annoyance. She’s all tapped out. In their early years, she’d found his fashion ineptitude endearing and would have been ready with a wise-crack retort, but now she couldn’t even muster a smile. A good jolt of Starbucks French Roast might help, but he didn’t have time to make it for either of them.

Instead he appeased her with a brief kiss on the head before turning his attention to his cramped corner of the closet. He did in fact have a few proper suits, the most promising being a mud-brown, double-breasted tweed that had served him well at funerals and weddings over the years. The cuffs were faded and the pants seat shone, but it still fit, if he could survive tweed in a June heat wave. He didn’t notice the odour of sweat until he had climbed into his car and headed across the canal to the station. Serves Jules right, expecting a decent suit on half an hour’s notice.

Jules’ clerk leaped to her feet as Green burst into the office. Despite the obvious gravity of the summons, she couldn’t suppress a smile but quickly wrestled it under control as she ushered him into Jules’ office.

To Green’s surprise, the Chief of Detectives was not alone. Seated with him at the small round conference table was a familiar, bull-necked figure in a too-tight suit. Jules rose to greet him, but Deputy Police Chief Doug Lynch did not.

Adam Jules was a tall, reed-thin, silver-haired man in a crisp cotton suit. His eyes flickered briefly, and his nostrils flared, but otherwise he betrayed no hint of reaction to his subordinate’s attire. He extended a manicured hand.

“Michael, thank you for joining us.”

Playing along with the formality, Green returned the handshake and then took the only remaining chair at the table. His pulse quickened. Something big was in the air. Maybe the answer to his prayers…

Belatedly Lynch shoved out a broad, callused hand. “Mike, good to see you.”

I’ll bet, Green thought to himself. I’m about as welcome a sight as a cockroach in the vichyssoise. Unless you want something from me.

And sure enough… “We’re hoping you’ll be able to help us with a very difficult case.”

Us? Green thought ironically. As in the force, or you and your buddy the Police Chief, who’s wily enough to let you play frontman for him? If you think that will get you into his shoes someday, you’re deluding yourself. There are no letters after your name, no useful friends in the wings. You’re his pit bull, nothing more.

Green raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Perhaps sensing trouble, Jules moved in. He took a thin file from his desk and held it out. “A student was stabbed in the University of Ottawa library last night. Young man by the name of Jonathan Blair.”

After fourteen years in Criminal Investigations, very little surprised Green any more, but murder in a university library was a first. The second eyebrow shot up before he could stop himself.

“Marianne Blair’s son,” Lynch cut in. “Name ring any bells?” Obviously it was supposed to, but it didn’t. And it was really too early in the morning to play one-upmanship with a pit bull. Especially before even one cup of coffee. Without much hope, Green glanced around Jules’ office. As usual, not a pencil out of place, not a hint of human habitation. And of course, no coffee.

“Should it?” he grumbled.

Lynch smirked, but Jules was faster. “Marianne Blair is the head of the Lindmar Foundation, a major funding organization that underwrites charities, research, the arts.”

Ah! Suddenly the fog began to lift. One of Chief Shea’s famous “connections”. The Police Chief had come to power the new, corporate way, attending management courses and cultivating connections that could serve him well on the way up. Now, at the apex of his career, he had a fair network of expectant friends. Among them, no doubt, the rich and generous Marianne Blair.

“Mrs. Blair is understandably very upset,” Jules was continuing in his dry monotone. “When she called this morning, I told her we would be assigning our best men.”

Green eyed Lynch warily. “Is there anything I should know?” Lynch held his gaze a moment then broke into a smile and leaned back in his chair, hitching his pants up. “I’m just an observer in this, Mike. This is Adam’s and your show. You know my policy on non-interference. But I just wanted to let you know who we’re dealing with here. This is a high profile case. The spotlight will be on the department. If we don’t deliver, Marianne Blair will make enough noise to be heard at City Hall, and I’m sure none of us wants that. I want you to know I have every confidence in you—that’s what we made you an inspector for, isn’t it? To handle tough cases. Hell, it’s the only thing you’re good at. I know you won’t let us down. And it goes without saying that you’ll have the full cooperation of the force. Anything you need, you let me know.”

Green fingered the file before him, trying to figure out the hidden agenda. He hated politics and had no talent for it, preferring to plough straight ahead like a bloodhound on the scent. Yet now he had the sense of waiting for some other shoe to drop. Lynch could have applied his pressure without having to meet him personally. Jules knew—in fact all the brass knew—that Green loved the thrill of the hunt. Unlike most managers, he preferred the trenches and when he took over a case, he drove himself and everyone else on the case to exhaustion till it was solved. This little pep talk wasn’t necessary. There must be something more at stake.

He sent out a feeler. “What does it look like so far?” “No idea,” Jules replied. “There were no eyewitnesses, no murder weapon, no known motive. The victim was twenty-four years old, single, lived with his mother. Just a hardworking graduate student, according to her.”

Lynch waved a casual hand as if to dismiss all other speculation. “My guess is it was some undesirable who went to the library to meet someone else, and the Blair kid was unlucky enough to get in the way. That’s where I’d start looking, Mike. And I’d cooperate with university security on this. They know the territory. I wouldn’t bother too much with the university staff.”

Green raised his head in surprise. “But I certainly have to—”

“Check it out, sure. I’m just saying be careful with the university types. Remember, this isn’t a back alley someplace. These are educated, liberal-minded people who know their rights. And their lawyers.”

Green chilled. “I’ll handle it the way I handle all cases. I’ll ask the questions that need to be asked.”

Lynch raised a soothing hand. “Of course you will. But I know your reputation for thoroughness, Mike. Some might say bull-headedness. Ask your questions. Just don’t ask questions you don’t need to ask. Don’t ruffle more feathers than you need to.”

Finally, Green thought he heard the echo of the other shoe. He feigned confusion. “You don’t want me asking too many questions of people at the university?”

The pit bull stiffened slightly. Beside him, Jules had turned a faint shade of fuchsia. “I didn’t say that. I just want you to remember they’re on the same side as us. Everyone wants to find the killer. Just you focus on that, and don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. The sooner this is cleaned up the better, so let Adam know what you need to do the job.”

I need the freedom to operate, Green wanted to shout at him. I need to know what the fuck is going on. A major homicide case has just been handed to me. New, hot, begging to be pursued. And here I am, playing twenty questions with you.

But for the sake of his wife and new baby, he counted to ten and slowly raised his eyes.

“Ten men, for starters.” “You can have thirty.”

Green shook his head. “If I need gofers, I’ll let Superintendent Jules know. But for now I’ll take ten good detectives from the Major Crimes Squad, including Sergeant Sullivan and Detective Gibbs.”

The Deputy Chief nodded. “Sergeant Sullivan is already on the case. He took the initial call. Anything else you want?”

“The rest of the details I can work out with Superintendent Jules.” Green picked up the file and pushed his chair back. “Now, if there’s nothing else, sir, I should get started.”

*

Green had barely begun the file when Jules walked into his office five minutes later, flicking lint from his jacket as if to cleanse himself.

“Thank you, Michael—” he began but got no further. Green thrust the file aside.

“Adam, I can’t work like this! I’m not allowed to ask too many questions, I’m supposed to defer to university security! Since when! How the fuck am I supposed to solve the crime?”

“Don’t worry. The Deputy Chief just has to keep an eye on City Hall.”

“You mean on the Chief’s pals! In case I probe too deeply into their love lives or their bank accounts. Either he trusts me and lets me do my job, or he lets the staff sergeant handle it just like any other case. I won’t have him second-guessing me at every turn!”

Jules drew his lips in a thin line. “Michael, Lynch would never obstruct a criminal investigation. He may be more…pragmatic than you or I, but he’s not unethical. He’s seen the preliminary reports. The crime needs you and he knows it. Forget about him. Just proceed as you usually do.” He hesitated and gave his dry approximation of a smile. “Well, try to follow procedure a little more often. He’ll be watching.”

Green was silent. Adam Jules had always been his greatest ally, encouraging him up the promotional ladder so that he would have the freedom to set his own course and running interference for him when his quest took him outside the bureaucratic box. But the name “Jules” no longer commanded the same respect and influence in the bigger pond of the new force, and Green could see defeat and disillusionment creeping into the man’s eyes.

“I’ll do my best, Adam,” he replied. “Kick me if you see steam starting to come out my ears.”

Jules’ smile faded. “For all the good that’s ever done. Just solve the case for me, Michael. Brian is waiting for you outside.”

*

Sergeant Brian Sullivan was a former high school linebacker who took up most of the free space in Green’s little office, particularly when he paced. His blonde hair stood in tufts, and his square jaw was set.

“What a fuck-up!” he exclaimed as soon as he shut the door. “Everything that can go wrong in a homicide case went wrong in this one, and who does it turn out to be? Some friend of the goddamn Police Chief!” His expression changed abruptly as he registered Green’s suit, and he burst out laughing. “You look like a bargain basement shoe salesman!”

“Don’t start.” Green grinned as he stuffed the reports back in the file and pocketed his keys. “Let’s go over to the crime scene. You can fill me in on this stuff as you drive.”

Outside, they found themselves in the crush of the morning rush hour. The June sun glared off chrome and glass, making Sullivan squint as he bulldozed the unmarked blue Taurus into the traffic. In front of them, traffic oozed along the elevated Queensway which bisected the city. Exhaust fumes shimmered in the rising heat. Another scorcher, Green thought, wondering how the city’s tempers, frayed by unemployment and government cutbacks, would handle yet another stress. He glanced at Sullivan, who was fuming at a red light.

“So tell me about the fuck-up.”

Sullivan rubbed his face wearily. “First of all, some moron sounded the fire alarm, so when the fire trucks arrived, there was near-panic on the main floor. Firemen rushing in, students trying to get out. Any hope our suspect was still in the building went up in smoke. Then the security guard who called in the 911 only asked for an ambulance, said someone was hurt. Didn’t say stabbed. Didn’t know, apparently. So the dispatcher sent a routine patrol unit along with the fire ambulance. One constable—a rookie who hardly even remembered the procedure book. He tried his best. I mean, the victim was still alive, so I know his first concern had to be…anyway, he got there about two minutes after the firemen, who were giving CPR, so he rushed in to help them. But meanwhile, they trample all over the scene, they move the victim. Nobody takes pictures, nobody secures the scene, a whole bunch of other people—firemen, rubberneckers, university security—come up in the elevators and get in the way.”

The light turned green. Sullivan squealed the tires, accelerating around the corner, only to stop short at the next light. He sighed.

“Finally one of the firemen takes charge and, thank God, he has a brain. He asks the rookie if Ident’s been called, and the kid says Jeez, I forgot, and he starts remembering his guide book. So he calls for back-up. I get a call and so does Ident. Lou Paquette was on—one lucky break. There were a dozen cops on the scene when I got there, but the paramedics took off to the General with only one patrol officer. Nobody thinks to take fingernail scrapings or bag the hands. Nobody thinks to stop the emerg doctors from tossing all his clothes into a bag. We got them back, but, oh Jesus, Mike, they’ve got to be contaminated as hell.”

Green had listened to this rambling tirade without interruption, but now he looked across at his colleague, who had stopped for air. In the silence, their police radios chattered in mindless bursts which they no longer heard. Brian Sullivan looked beyond tired. His normally ruddy Irish farm boy face was white with fatigue, and new lines were beginning to pull at the corners of his eyes. It seems like yesterday we were rookies together, Green thought, but look how this job has battered him.

Green’s first wife had stomped off in disgust with their baby in tow after only three years of marriage, leaving him without ties or obligations for nearly ten years, but Sullivan had married his first love, had three children in rapid succession, and now struggled to keep his life compartmentalized. He was too much of a professional to bring his home worries onto the job, but sometimes, as now, the stress seeped through. As they inched over the Pretoria Bridge across the Rideau Canal, stuck behind a line of cars doing an illegal left turn onto Colonel By Drive, he drummed his fingers and cursed. Green wondered what else was eating at him.

“Does it get any worse?” he asked gently.

“Can it get worse?” Sullivan countered. “Put it this way. It doesn’t get better. I leave Lou Paquette and his Ident team to get what they can from the mess in the library, and I rush off to the hospital, but the victim’s in surgery. No instructions to anybody to listen for dying declarations. And worse, the guy has no ID on him. Not even a library card!”

“His wallet was probably lifted.”

“I figured that.” Sullivan broke off long enough to accelerate around a red Honda waiting to turn left. The car beside him blasted its horn, and he raised his middle finger. “Unless of course it fell out while the guys were moving him. Anything is possible in this fiasco. But as a result, we didn’t know who the John Doe was. I ran a description through missing persons and checked recent reports, but it was only a bit past midnight by then, and who the hell reports a fully grown man missing at that hour? Probably not even at four a.m. Anyway, the victim comes out of surgery and into recovery, but he hasn’t regained consciousness and it doesn’t look like he will in a hurry, so I post a uniform by his bed and I go back to the scene. No—first I checked his clothes. Expensive, so I know the guy’s not starving. Conservative, so I figure he’s not a punk, but that’s no surprise. He was stabbed in the Shakespeare section of the university library. Not your average street punk’s stomping ground. That’s why dispatch screwed up so badly on the 911 call, by the way. Sergeant Jones says ‘Who the hell expects a stabbing in a library, for God’s sake! If the call had come from a parking lot in the Byward Market, we’d have sent four experienced teams down there right away. Not one poor rookie.’ And it’s not the kid’s fault, after all. There was a lot of blood around, and he just wanted to save the boy’s life. I’d have forgotten all the procedural shit myself fifteen years ago.”

Sullivan pulled the Taurus to a halt behind a police van near the entrance to the library, and the two jumped out. A police officer was posted at the entrance to the library and another at the elevators. One elevator had been commandeered for use in the investigation, and the fourth floor button had been taped on the other elevators. Students gathered in whispering clumps, gawking curiously.

Sullivan led Green into the elevator and punched four. “Looks great now, doesn’t it? Everything according to procedure, every ‘t’ crossed. The Ident team has cordoned off the entire fourth floor, and they’re probably still there.”

The elevator door slid open, revealing yellow plastic tape across the exit. They logged in with the uniform on guard, and ducked under the tape. Ahead of them, half a dozen men were crawling around on the floor with magnifying glasses.

“Yes, they’re still here.”

“And we’ll probably be here till Christmas,” came a gravelly voice from behind a bookcase. An instant later the senior Identification Officer, Sergeant Lou Paquette, emerged around the corner, red-faced from crawling. “We haven’t found a damn thing yet.” He peeled off his latex glove and held out his hand to Green. “Glad to see you, Mike.”

“You’ve got nothing?” Green echoed in dismay.

“Oh, we’ve got tons of shit. Fingerprints, hair, fibres, bloodstains. There’s blood all over the place. The witnesses tracked it around, the paramedics tracked it around. The only thing I can’t tell is if the killer tracked it around. And this is a public place. There could be fingerprints and fibres from half the city of Ottawa here. The half that doesn’t have prints on file downtown.” Paquette grinned at his own attempt at humour. His mustache quivered. “I’ve sent a guy to collect the shoes from every fireman and paramedic who was at the scene. That’ll be fun.”

Green took out his notebook. “Can you tell us anything?”

Paquette sighed and grew sober. “As far as I can tell, there was no struggle. No books were pulled down, nothing kicked out of place. It’s a narrow space. It would be hard to fight without knocking the bookshelves.”

“And the young woman who found the victim heard no sound of an argument, no screams,” Sullivan added. “Libraries are pretty quiet. She would have heard a violent scuffle.”

“Did she see anything unusual that evening? Anyone suspicious or out of place?”

“Nothing that she remembered, but she was pretty shaken up. She got covered in blood, and all she could think about was getting cleaned up. After the preliminaries, I let her go home.”

Green nodded. “We’ll get to her later.”

They had walked to the far end of the library along the path Ident had laid out and now stood in front of the large, browning pool of blood where the body had been.

“The victim was stabbed once in the abdomen,” Sullivan said. “According to the emergency room surgeon, the weapon pierced the stomach and lacerated the liver, nicking an artery as it went by. It sounds like a horizontal thrust directly forward, made by a knife held at waist level.”

“I suppose nobody took photographs of the wound before they sutured it all up?”

Sullivan grinned. “You got it.”

Green looked up from his notes with a snort. “Jesus. Jules said the case needed me, but what it really needs is a goddamn miracle.”

*

The two detectives stayed at the scene another fifteen minutes reviewing the meagre forensic harvest. No murder weapon, no signs of disturbance or misplaced property, hundreds of latent fingerprints which would take days to analyze and could not be tied definitively to the murder anyway. Blood had been tracked up and down the aisle leading to the elevator as well as the two aisles on either side, but the traces were consistent with bloodstained shoes rather than with drops of falling blood. The only spilt blood was the large pool where the body had been and a fine spray of arterial blood on the bookshelf nearby.

“The perpetrator would have got blood on himself, without a doubt,” Paquette said. “On his hand and sleeve, probably also on his shirt, pants and shoes. The body fell forward. The perpetrator would have had trouble jumping out of the way in time, especially since he was trying to pull out his knife. Some of these bloody footprints may be his, once I eliminate all the other assholes who were on the scene.”

Green sketched the scene, noting the rows of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves which effectively blocked any overview of the area. Jonathan Blair’s killer had trapped him in a remote corner, where the chances of anyone witnessing the crime were even fewer. By luck or design?

Green glanced at his watch. “Brian, I want to meet with the mother before she calls the Chief again, and I need you to tell me what else you’ve got. Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee. I missed having mine this morning.”

Seated over two mugs of scalding coffee at Harvey’s, Green mustered a smile for his weary colleague. There was no one he respected more. The two had been friends since they started together on the streets twenty years earlier, and although Green had risen further through the ranks, placing strain on the friendship in sensitive moments, he secretly considered Sullivan the better cop. The Deputy Chief was right. He, Green, was only good at detective work. Sullivan was good at everything, paperwork and organization as well as handling people and crises. And in the middle of a case, you couldn’t ask for a more careful, thorough investigator.

“How did you finally identify him, by the way? You didn’t get that far in your depressing tale of professional incompetence.”

“His mother called in, finally. Actually, her personal assistant called in, guy by the name of Peter Weiss. Apparently the victim was the quiet type, no wild parties, no late nights, a bookworm. Never stayed out all night. Maybe he’d have one drink with friends after the library closed, but he was usually home by midnight. Certainly by two. So when his mother woke up at five in the morning—she’s some kind of early morning freak—and saw he never came home, she heard on the early morning radio about a stabbing in the library, and she got worried. So Weiss called the station. By then Blair was dead. He died at three fifty-six a.m. without regaining consciousness. When the assistant called I was just trying to wake MacPhail and get him down to the hospital to take over the body. I let him have all the beauty sleep I could spare, but I didn’t want the ordinary doctors screwing up the evidence any more than it already had been.”

Sullivan took a sip of coffee and cradled his chin in his massive hand. Some life suffused his reddened eyes as he grinned. “That old Scot is a bugger to wake up. I always have to hold the phone two feet from my ear when I call at night. But he came through for us. He got to the hospital in half an hour, reeking of whiskey but at full steam. He ranted up and down about the suturing, but after he’d examined the body and looked at the medical records, he came out with his theory. Sharp, smooth-edged knife, at least six-inch blade, he guessed about an inch to an inch and a half wide. He’ll know more after the autopsy. One smooth horizontal stroke in and out.”

Green whistled. “Neat job.”

“Yup. And into the middle of all this, without any warning, just as MacPhail is loading the body bag into the elevator to go down to the morgue, along comes the little rookie again wanting us to unbag the body so mummy’s assistant can have a look.”

“In the middle of the hospital hallway?”

Sullivan laughed. “That was my reaction. I was tired and I was mad about all the mistakes people had made, especially him. So I told him to follow proper procedure and take the assistant down to meet us at the morgue.”

“Nothing wrong with that, Brian. Rigid, maybe, but by the book. No one can fault you for that.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, the Deputy Chief did. Showed up twenty minutes later with this Weiss guy in tow, ripping a strip off me for caring more about procedure than about the decent citizens of Ottawa. I saw my whole career flashing before my eyes. My mortgage, my three kids, tuition for college—all bye-bye.”

“Ach! Political grandstanding to impress the Chief, that’s all. You’ve done the right things, Brian. You were the first person to act like a professional in this whole mess.”

“Yeah. We’ll know soon, won’t we? When I’ve been assigned to permanent traffic detail.”

Green grinned. “You’ve been assigned to me. So let’s get on it. Did you have time to find witnesses or interview anyone?”

Sullivan rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Besides the young woman who found him? Are you kidding? I was so busy chasing the body and mopping up everyone else’s mess, I had no time to investigate! We don’t have one lead, we don’t have shit, but every ‘t’ has been crossed.”

Green felt the caffeine from his second cup beginning to spread through his system, bringing with it a return of optimism. He glanced at his watch. Nine oh-five. “Right now I’m heading over to interview the mother. That’s going to be a tough one, so I’ll be turning off my radio, but you can reach me by cell if you have to. Arrange a briefing for ten-thirty with all the men Jules gave me.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “We’ll find a trail, Brian, once we start talking to Jonathan Blair’s friends and family. A nice kid who studies Shakespeare and lives with Mummy can’t have too many enemies.”