Читать книгу Beautiful Lie the Dead - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 11

SIX

He moved between sleep and wakefulness, drifting up and down as if billowing on a soft, fluffy cloud. He felt no pain or anguish, drugged by the Valium he’d taken at two in the morning. After two sleepless nights, he’d finally acknowledged he needed chemical help. He could barely think straight. On his latest shift, he had misread a consultant’s order and forgotten to sign a patient’s chart, and yet he’d lain awake at the end of it, exhausted but staring at the ceiling, unable to escape his thoughts. Meredith needed him. What help would he be to her, what guidance could he offer the police if he collapsed? If he could just get some rest, maybe everything would be clearer and calmer when he woke up.

But the Valium didn’t quite pull him under. He could still hear voices. The radio news droning on, the commercials blaring. Time stretched. Slipped away. More voices, different now. His mother on the phone. Endless people calling. How many friends did she have? He knew some of the calls were probably for him. Friends and colleagues wanting to help, the Addis Ababa people wanting to know if he was still a go. Curiosity seekers, psychics and other disaster junkies salivating for their next fix.

Meredith, what have you done? The cry welled from deep within him, jerking him above the surface. He wondered if he had spoken it aloud, and he clamped his hand over his mouth. He’d better be more vigilant. Valium was dangerous stuff, lowering his guard and loosening his tongue when he could least afford it. His mother had already warned him about that.

“Of course you’re angry!” she’d said at two in the morning when she found him pacing the kitchen. “No matter what happened, no matter who’s to blame, she’s gone. But you mustn’t show it. Anger loses public sympathy, no matter how justified it is. People don’t like anger; it scares them, offends them and raises their suspicions. You’re the victim here, Brandon. Fear and grief are acceptable; they arouse sympathy and understanding. The police expect you to be panic-stricken and distraught.”

“Mom, I don’t give a fuck what the police think!”

“But you must,” she’d countered. “They are studying every inch of your life and your demeanour, looking for cracks, inconsistencies, and yes, emotions that don’t ring true.”

He’d fought his outrage. He was not some damn client of hers being prepped for the witness stand, undoubtedly guilty but trying every legal manoeuvre to stay out of jail. She might mean well and she certainly knew far more about the police than he did, but what the hell was she saying? That he had something to hide?

“You talk as if I’m guilty!”

She barely batted an eyelash. The queen of the courtroom stage, trained to make every muscle obey her purpose. “Of course not, honey. But to take liberties with the old legal adage, one must not only be innocent but appear to be innocent as well.”

He’d hoped the Valium would give his battered mind the strength to protect itself, but as he lay on his bed with the duvet pulled up to his chin and the curtains drawn against the pallid winter sun, he felt his mind teeter instead on the brink of disintegration. Despite the prescriptions he routinely wrote for others, he almost never put drugs into his own system. Even during the exhausting years of med school, he’d avoided the uppers and downers that others used to cope. He’d hoped a small dose of Valium would do no harm, but obviously even that was too strong for his unaccustomed brain.

Now he gripped his head in his hands, hoping the sheer physical force would stifle the scream welling inside him and still the urge to run blindly from the house.

How could he control how he acted, let alone what he said, in this disintegrating world?

“He mustn’t know!” His mother’s voice shafted through the fog of his mind. “I don’t care what you do, he mustn’t find out.”

He bolted up in bed, his ears straining. Her voice dropped to an indecipherable murmur. The room spun as he struggled to regain his equilibrium. Scraps floated up from downstairs. Was she on the phone in the kitchen?

“Hundred thousand dollars,” she said. Then “Never...that woman...not that way...search warrants... I’ll meet you.” Silence, followed by a muffled voice he didn’t recognize. Not a phone call then, but a visitor. His mother moved towards the front hall and opened the front door. She sounded calmer as she said goodbye, as if she had resolved something, but before he could mobilize himself to demand an explanation, he heard the distant rumble of her car as she accelerated down the drive.

He could hardly breathe. Who was she talking to and what the hell did all that mean? Who mustn’t find out? Who was “that woman’”? What was his mother trying to hide, and the most dreaded question of all, what did it have to do with Meredith’s disappearance?

His head pounded with the effort needed to focus. His mother was a highly respected lawyer with a string of high profile wins and an unassailable reputation. She held herself and all around her to a high ethical standard. She had always taught him that right must prevail and that the moral high ground would be rewarded in the end. It seemed impossible that he was harbouring the fears he was, impossible that she could have strayed so far off course.

* * *

Green had called a briefing for noon that Thursday, anxious to follow up on leads and put the pieces together as quickly as possible. In the crowded incident room, the smell of stale coffee and the sound of murmuring voices and rustling papers filled the air. As police officers filtered in from the field, they draped their bulky parkas over their chair backs and rubbed their chilled hands to restore circulation. Once Gibbs had activated the smart board and pulled up the list of assignments, the search coordinator summarized the progress of the ground search.

It was a brief report. Zero. The neighbourhood around her house had been gridded and searched, as had the blocks on either side of the bus routes she typically used. Meredith was nowhere around her usual haunts.

Green turned to the computer specialist, who had just started on Meredith’s laptop and was working on accessing Facebook. He launched into an explanation of passwords and security settings, and Green’s mind was just beginning to glaze when Whelan came limping into the room. He was red-faced and breathless. Frost still clung to the scarf around his neck.

“Sorry I’m late, sir,” he began, looking more triumphant than sorry as he slapped a file down on the conference table. “We’re on the wrong track.”

All heads turned, and Green abandoned the password conundrum in a flash. “Something to report, Whelan?”

“I’ve been checking bank records. On Monday, our subject bought a return bus ticket to Montreal, leaving on the 10 a.m. bus and returning at 8:00 p.m.”

All murmuring stopped. “She’s been confirmed on the bus?” Green asked.

“Not yet. The bus company has to check the ticket stubs with the drivers of those buses. One is due in from Montreal at noon and the other at two.”

Green riffled through his memory of the case but could turn up no connection to Montreal. “Anyone know any reason why our subject would make a day trip to Montreal?”

“Fashion centre of Canada?” the computer tech said with a grin. “The girl was getting married.”

Green poked the idea for holes. “Possibly, but why wouldn’t the family or friends mention it to us?”

“It could be a surprise. A special wedding dress or a gift for her bridesmaids.”

“Good point.” He signalled to Gibbs. “Follow up with the family, see if she hinted at anything like that.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of checkered fuchsia as Sue Peters leaned forward in her chair. He felt a surge of delight at the garish outfit. Bit by bit, the old Sue was coming back to them. In her eyes too was a glint of the old excitement.

“I don’t know if this is important, sir,” she said, “but there is a bit of a mystery about the death of Brandon Longstreet’s father.

He was a prominent lawyer and he was found hanging in his Montreal apartment, supposedly a suicide—”

Green perked up. “When was this?”

“Thirty years ago, but the whole thing was hushed up. It looks like the investigation was just stopped.”

“Thirty years is a long time ago,” Green said doubtfully. “Suicide was much more of a stigma in those days.”

“I know,” Peters said, undeterred. “But maybe Meredith wanted to know more about him and the family secret before she got more involved with them. A day trip suggests she wasn’t going to visit family or go out for an evening on the town with a friend. She just zipped in and out for a few hours, long enough to check something out.”

“Or to pick up a wedding dress,” the computer tech said.

Green saw a scowl gathering on Peters’ face. “First things first. Whelan, confirm that she took the trip and came back. It may in fact be irrelevant, but if she went to Montreal, that’s the last thing she did before she disappeared. People do not disappear over a wedding dress, even the worst tailoring job in the world. But a discovery about the family might make her drop out of sight, at least for a day or two, to think things through.” This trip to Montreal was a ray of hope in an investigation that turned gloomier with the passing of each frigid day. The longer they could all hang on to hope, the better.

Whelan leaned on the table, propping his head in his hands, but at Green’s last words, he lifted his head and blinked in surprise. “There’s more, sir. It looks like she may have been alive on Tuesday morning.” As he explained about the ATM withdrawal, everyone held their breath and even Bob Gibbs stopped typing.

“Someone could have been using her card,” Peters said.

Whelan reached into his pocket and pulled out a computer memory stick. “That’s why I brought the video from the ATM camera for that day.”

“Have you looked at it?”

“No sir, I only just pried it loose from the bank.”

Jesus! Green looked at the man in astonishment. For ten minutes he had sat there listening to them discussing wedding dresses and family secrets, while all the time he was sitting on a piece of evidence that could potentially throw the whole basis of the investigation out the window. Whelan’s eyes drooped and his fingers fumbled as he groped through his file. He would probably fall asleep within two minutes of starting to watch.

Green instructed Gibbs to load the stick into the computer, and the entire table watched in silence as the distorted, fish-eye view of the small ATM booth came up on the screen. In the bottom right corner, the seconds ticked by on the date recorder.

“Do we have the time of this transaction?” Green asked, trying not to sound impatient. Whelan consulted the accounts print-out. 10:38 a.m. Gibbs flashed ahead to 10:35. A hazy figure was standing at the machine, back to the camera. Gibbs backed it up a couple of minutes and caught the figure pulling open the glass door and entering the booth. It looked like a woman, but she was wearing not only a scarf wrapped around her neck and chin but a coat with a fur-trimmed hood pulled up over her head. Large sunglasses completed the camouflage.

“Jesus, that could be anybody,” Peters muttered.

Gibbs zoomed in on key parts of the figure, trying to pick out distinguishing features. The person wore gloves throughout the transaction, so that it was impossible to identify rings. She worked quickly without consulting any notes, more like someone familiar with the PIN number and the transaction process than someone trying to remember, read or guess an unfamiliar PIN or trying to choose between unfamiliar accounts. She kept her head bowed as she punched the keys, never giving the camera a chance to capture her full face.

“Our subject does have a winter coat with a hood,” Whelan said, still awake. “The family could probably tell if this was it. Also the purse. Women’s purses are pretty individual.”

Green’s thoughts were way ahead. He was beginning to get a queasy feeling about this whole business. The person at the ATM had been very clever, using posture and clothing that seemed very normal and yet completely concealed their identity. If Meredith had come to deliberate harm, the person responsible would have easy access to the clothes and purse needed to impersonate her at the bank machine. And to throw the investigation completely off track.

But Whelan was right. Follow-up with the family was the next logical step, but Whelan would probably wrap his car around a lamp post before he got there. Green sent the exhausted man home and had Gibbs print out stills from the video. He checked his watch.

“Bob, get over to the bus station and grab those drivers before they go off again. After that you can follow up with the families.”

Sue Peters was hovering behind Gibbs’s shoulder, and finally she broke in. “Sir, can I help Bob with the follow-up? Maybe check out the Harvey Longstreet suicide angle?”

Green eyed her carefully. She looked wide-eyed and bursting to go, almost her old self. He suspected the true intent behind her carefully vague request. The old Sue Peters let loose on Elena Longstreet was not a pretty sight, but on the other hand, she now knew the case as well as anybody.

“Let’s get confirmation that she went to Montreal first, before we do any kind of follow-up. Once Gibbs has that, we can discuss it.”

Peters grinned widely but Green thought he detected a flicker of alarm on Gibbs’s face. This office romance could get tricky, he thought.

Barely thirty minutes passed before Gibbs phoned in his report. The bus driver doing the morning route to Montreal last Monday remembered the missing woman well, and he’d been wondering whether to call the police. She hadn’t done anything wrong, in fact she had not been acting strangely at all, but he had later wondered whether the police were looking in all the wrong places. Maybe she’d dropped out of sight in Montreal, he said to Gibbs. She didn’t look like a bride excited about her wedding. She looked worried, as if she had something big on her mind, and she’d sat curled up in her seat by the window, staring out and ignoring the young guy who tried to pick her up.

Did she speak to anyone, Gibbs wanted to know. Or speak on her phone? Text or email?

She was writing notes, the driver said, and she checked her cellphone often as if she was expecting something. But then kids these days checked their cell phones sometimes fifty times an hour.

Did she have any luggage, Gibbs asked. Nothing big, maybe a daypack, the driver said, scrunching up his face as he tried to remember. An experienced guy, Gibbs said to Green. Fluent in both languages and been doing the routes around Quebec and Ontario for ten years. If Meredith hadn’t looked worried, he would barely have noticed her. He’d pegged her for a student going home for the holidays, maybe worried about the exams or term papers she still had to face.

The bus driver doing the afternoon route back to Ottawa had had little time to think of anything but the road. The bus was packed with students travelling home to Ottawa or to the small towns in the Ottawa Valley. At six o’clock it was already dark, and the snow had begun blowing in thick, horizontal gusts that formed icy sheets on the road and swirled into drifts at each curve. The four-lane divided highway between Montreal and Ottawa was bleak at the best of times, passing through acres of desolate bush and farmland. In a blizzard, it could be lethal. The bus driver counted himself lucky to have stayed on the road while smaller cars and less experienced drivers spun out into the ditches.

All the passengers on the bus seemed to sense the danger, he said, because there was none of the laughter and rowdiness of most holiday season buses. They had stayed pretty quiet as if afraid to distract him, but no one had slept. Everyone watched the road and the pinpricks of red light from the cars up ahead.

The driver stared at Meredith’s picture for a long time as though he were trying to place her in the bus. “She was in a window seat about halfway back,” he said finally. “I remember because she was upset about something. She had this clipboard and she was always scribbling on it and flipping through pages to look at things. I caught a quick look at them while she was looking for her ticket, and it looked like pages of death announcements, like from the paper? I thought maybe someone had died in her family.”

“Did she use her cellphone?”

The driver looked blank. “Like I said, once we were rolling, I hardly took my eyes off the road.”

“Did she talk to anyone on the bus?”

“Not that I saw, but I couldn’t see much.” he shrugged, his long, jowly face sad. He looked like a man who was ready to retire, weary of the long hours on the road and longing for more time in his armchair with his favourite sports show.

“Well done,” Green said once Gibbs concluded his report.

He felt his excitement mount. “This puts a whole new spin on things. We need to find out why she went to Montreal and what she was so upset about.”

“I thought of that, s-sir,” Gibbs said with a hint of pride in his voice. “I got the passenger manifest and put out a media call asking anyone who spoke to Meredith on either leg of her trip to phone us. Maybe she told someone where she was going. Or maybe her seatmate was able to see more of what was on her clipboard.”

“Good thinking. Bring the manifest to the station for Sue to work on while you follow up with the families.” Green glanced into the main room, where Peters had been working at her computer. Her desk was vacant and her winter jacket gone from its peg. He felt a flash of consternation. Had she grown fed up with playing back-up and gone off herself, ready to confront the family with only half the facts?

Good God, was the old Sue Peters truly back?