Читать книгу Beautiful Lie the Dead - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 7
ОглавлениеThe sound of doors slamming and voices in the street penetrated Brandon’s sleep. He bolted awake, disoriented and full of hope. Stumbling to the window, he peered down to see a CTV media van parked in the street and two crew members lugging a shoulder camera through the snow to the front door.
The blizzard had spent itself, leaving sculpted swirls of snow across the front yard. Winter dawn washed the snow in a rosy glitter. For once, he was unmoved. Awash in fatigue and despair, he peered at his bedside clock.
Seven fucking o’clock, and the vultures were already out.
He’d managed two hours’ sleep after spending most of the night on the internet and on the phone, pacing the kitchen and speaking in low, urgent tones to avoid waking his mother. They had barely talked when he’d returned from his evening shift, but he’d felt her gaze upon him. There was doubt in it, but also pity. He kept his distance, not trusting himself to be civil should she reach out. Not trusting himself not to blurt out: “She didn’t leave me! You never did like her, and you know it. You made her feel common, unworthy, tolerated only because I insisted.”
Part of him knew that was immature and unfair, a deflection of blame to avoid looking at his own failings. At his own small niggle of doubt, which didn’t bear thinking about.
His mother was up now, and he heard her hurrying towards the front door to intercept the crew before they rang the bell. Reluctantly he headed down the hall. On two hours sleep, he didn’t feel up to facing the media, so he hung back in the stairwell as his mother opened the front door. A microphone was thrust in her face. If anyone understood the media, it was his mother. She understood the drama—had used it often enough herself—but how would she choose to play this scene? On Meredith’s side, or against her?
With the camera rolling, the media were the essence of respect. The young female reporter whom Brandon recognized from the local news introduced herself as Natasha, confirmed his mother’s identity and asked if they could do an interview inside. Their breath billowed white around them, and his mother hugged her velvet robe tightly around her.
“Certainly,” she said but without moving. “As long as I will do. My son has only just gone to bed after working and staying up all night tracking down leads—”
“That’s fine,” Natasha interrupted hastily.
His mother led them inside and left them to set up while she disappeared. In her absence, the cameraman positioned his tripod in the bay window and trained his lens on the loveseat opposite. Brandon knew his mother would be pleased with the choice. It captured the gentility of the room—carved mahogany frame, rose floral brocade, delicate antique lace pillows—and it went well with her royal blue dressing gown.
When she re-entered the room carrying a tea tray, Brandon felt a flash of frustration. Tea before Meredith—how like Elena Longstreet. To her credit, Natasha ignored the tea and ploughed straight into the questions with no chit-chat or preamble.
“I understand your son and Meredith Kennedy are engaged.
When is the wedding?”
“New Year’s Eve. A choice they may later consider unwise, but at the time it seemed romantic.”
“When was the last time you or your son had contact with Meredith?”
“I haven’t seen her in nearly a month, although she’s due to come to my annual eggnog party on Christmas Eve. She’s been extraordinarily busy—”
“But your son?”
“He had dinner with her Sunday evening, I believe.”
“How did she seem?”
“As far as I know, she was fine. She’s a bride, so she has a lot on her mind. She may have been a little anxious recently, but certainly nothing to worry about.”
“Any particular things she was anxious about?”
“Oh, the usual. One of her bridesmaids has withdrawn, and her family wants some young cousin to be a ring bearer, but he’s only two and naturally there are concerns—”
“Any disagreements with your son?”
Brandon saw his mother lift her chin to face the interviewer squarely. He knew the fluff she’d supplied so far would not survive the cutting room, but this question was the heart of the interview. The clip that would be replayed throughout the day and possibly across the country. The clip that would be dissected by the police. He found himself holding his breath.
“They are blissfully happy. They have both waited a long time to find each other, and I truly believe that their love is far more important to them than any disputes over menu or wedding procession. They always find a middle ground.”
“What do you think has happened to her?”
Elena hesitated, and Brandon wondered how she would answer. This too might play across the nation. To his relief, she settled on a message of hope. “I hope she simply wanted a day or two of solitude to regroup. We invest so much emotion in our wedding, as a highlight of our lives and expression of our hope for a perfect future. Yet the reality of planning it—balancing out the guest list, finding the right shoes for the dress, choosing between pecan-crusted salmon and Cornish game hen—robs the event of its romantic sheen. Brides in particular struggle with that. She did seem distracted of late, as if her mind were elsewhere.”
“Distracted by what?”
“Possibly the move. They were going to Ethiopia after the honeymoon for a two-year posting with Doctors Without Borders. Meredith worked in Haiti for a brief stint, but neither of them have ever been to Africa. Perhaps she was apprehensive. Natural enough.”
“Are she and her family close?”
Brandon moved down the stairs. So far, his mother had said all the right things, but he knew she was playing to the jury. He wasn’t sure he trusted her to keep her views of Meredith’s family quite so benign.
She must have heard his footsteps, for she raised her voice.
Warning him, he wondered? “Very. She comes from a lovely family.” She rose to her feet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear—”
“There is no trouble,” Brandon said, striding into the room. He knew he was a sight, still dressed in yesterday’s rumpled hospital garb and sporting a day’s growth. His blue eyes were probably bloodshot and his thick hair plastered in unruly spikes. When the camera swung to him, he faced it square on. A spectacle for sure, but also raw truth.
“You need to get that message across,” he said. “Meredith was not an overwrought bride who got cold feet. She was excited about the wedding and looking forward to working overseas. She has not run off. Something has happened to her. An accident, a slip on the ice that knocked her out. She could be out there somewhere. Buried. In this weather, hypothermia could set in in minutes...” He broke off, quivering.
Elena moved to his side, deftly shielding him from the camera.
“The police are taking this very seriously,” she said. “I believe they have patrol cars on the look-out and are going to search her home for clues.” She glanced outside and allowed herself a small shiver. “We ask for everyone’s help. Check your driveways and the walks in front of your houses. If anyone saw her or has a clue where she might have gone, please call the police. The more eyes we have looking, the sooner we’ll find her.”
* * *
Once again, Green glanced at his phone. Almost eleven a.m. and Sergeant Li from Missing Persons still had not returned his call. He didn’t want to phone again, concerned that his impatience might arouse suspicions. A routine inquiry, that’s all it was supposed to be.
Green loved being interrupted by a real life enigma. By Wednesday, the desk in his little office was awash in memos, updates, reports, and his computer inbox was stuffed with more of the same. As the city dug out from its first major snowstorm of the season, the second floor of Elgin Street Headquarters was eerily calm. Criminals too had been deterred by the weather. It was tricky robbing a bank when the getaway car might get stuck in a snowbank, and sexual assault was much more of a challenge in bone-chilling cold and knee-deep drifts. Only the serious and the desperate were out on the street looking for trouble on days like this.
In the Major Crimes Unit, detectives were using the lull to catch up on paperwork or follow up on existing cases. They hunched over computers or talked on the phone, jotting notes. Green could see Detectives Bob Gibbs and Sue Peters at their adjacent desks, unconsciously leaning towards each other as they worked.
On his desk in front of him, Green had assembled the stack of performance appraisals prepared by his NCOs, and he was trying to make decisions he hated. Who to transfer out, who to keep. Organizational policy required police officers to move at least every five years. He knew all the bureaucratic reasons. In theory, it was to ensure a well-rounded, experienced police service, to allow for fresh perspectives and enthusiasm, and to avoid burn-out in the high stress jobs. In practice, it usually meant that just as an officer became really good at the job and developed a network on the street, he or she was moved out, leaving the supervisors with a continual pool of inexperienced, uncertain staff.
Bob Gibbs was one of the officers he’d been trying to shelter for months. The young detective had always been the most valuable geek in the unit, roaming the vast world of cyberspace with ease to track down bad guys and ferret out information. Now, however, he was finally beginning to gain some confidence and skill as an interviewer. He was a far better detective than he would ever be a front line officer, a paradox Green could relate to. If he himself hadn’t had Jules to rescue him from the uniform division, he likely would have been turfed out of the force within a year. Or quit in a fit of righteous pique.
Yet Superintendent Devine, herself the master of job hopping her way up the ladder without staying long enough in any job to get really good at it, had issued Green an ultimatum after yesterday’s meeting. She had her quota of underlings to move as well and had hinted that Green’s own name could be on the list if he didn’t play the game. He knew that he was well past due for a transfer and stayed at the helm of Major Case Investigations only because she’d decided no newbie inspector would make her look as good. It was a dubious vote of confidence that could be rescinded on a whim. Barbara Devine was famous for whims.
Devine argued that more experience in other areas, particularly in Patrol, was just what Gibbs needed to put the necessary swagger in his step and teach him to make decisions in the span of two seconds. “Not just high-pressure decisions, Mike, any decisions,” she’d said. Green wasn’t so sure. It might make him, but it might also break him.
Mercifully, the phone rang before he had to decide. He pounced on the distraction, expecting the MisPers sergeant, only to hear a slight pause followed by a breathy, little-girl voice from long ago.
“I want her home for Christmas, Mike.”
He felt his jaw clench. How his first wife still had the power to do that was a mystery. She’d walked out on him eighteen years ago, putting a bitter, moribund marriage out of its misery. His second wife, Sharon, had brought him infinitely more joy in the years since then, along with a son who had the dark, curly hair and laughing brown eyes of his mother, but whose stubbornness and intensity was all Green.
Green glanced at his watch. Barely eleven o’clock in the morning, eight o’clock in Vancouver. The crack of dawn for Ashley. She must have been stewing all night.
“Good morning to you too, Ashley.”
“It’s time this nonsense ended. I want to see her. It’s the least you can do, Mike. You don’t even celebrate Christmas!”
“She’s eighteen. I’m not stopping her. She makes her own decisions.”
“She’s done that since she was two years old,” Ashley retorted. “But you could encourage her. Tell her it’s time to mend fences. You have Tony too, but Hannah’s all I’ve got.”
Green heard the catch of well-rehearsed tears in her voice. He could have argued the point. Children were not interchangeable or replaceable, and Ashley had had Hannah all to herself for the first fifteen years of her life. But he knew she was right. For her own sake, Hannah needed to reconnect with her mother. She was no longer the defiant, resentful teenager who had landed on his doorstep nearly three years earlier. She was on track to graduate from high school with full honours this spring, an edgy, thoughtful young woman who could run rings around her empty-headed mother.
In the silence, as Green struggled with his own reluctance, Ashley pressed her case. “I’m not going to force her, Mike. Fred and I have done a lot of talking, and I know that doesn’t work. But she’ll listen to you. She’s just like you. Tell her I’ll promise not to fight with her.”
A promise that will last precisely half an hour, Green thought.
In a tight spot, fighting was still Hannah’s preferred mode of expression. It was all she’d known when she’d arrived in Green’s life. Fortunately, however, conflict resolution between mother and daughter was not his responsibility. He only had to get Hannah on the plane, and the rest was up to Ashley and Fred. Disguising a tightness in his chest, he agreed to try.
No sooner had he hung up than there was a soft knock at his door, and the Missing Persons sergeant poked his head in.
A twenty-four year veteran of Patrol, Li had been on modified duties for nearly a year while he awaited hip surgery. Most of the time, Missing Persons was a clerical job of filling in forms, making internet and phone inquiries, and liaising with other units and agencies. Every few months a genuine mystery came along that the missing persons team could sink its investigative teeth into. Li looked as if he was long overdue.
Green beckoned him in and watched as Li eased himself into the plastic guest chair wedged in the narrow space between the desk and the door. He had packed an extra fifty pounds onto his mid-size frame since being parked behind a desk, and his bad hip obviously complained at each new move.
“I’m guessing this is about the missing girl,” Li said before Green could even form his question.
Green masked his surprise. “What’s the story?”
“So far, it’s not clear. Her name’s Meredith Kennedy, thirty-two years old, good family, no known criminal ties. Fiancé called it in last night.”
Green’s thoughts were already racing ahead, wondering about Jules’s connection to a thirty-two-year-old from a “good family”. Jules was a lifelong bachelor at least twenty-five years her senior. “Any leads yet?”
“Dead ends. We did the usual checks—hospitals, ambulance, accident reports—with no results. By all accounts the young woman has fallen off the face of the earth. Family hasn’t heard from her for two days. She was set to get married soon, and her fiancé and friends say she was looking forward to the big day.”
“Banking and cellphone enquiries in the works?”
Li nodded. “We should have that info by tomorrow.”
“What’s the last known contact?”
Li flipped through the file. “That’s the really interesting part. Jessica Ward, a close friend, spoke to her at 5:45 Monday evening. Our girl sounded upset, said she really had to talk to her, and could they meet somewhere for coffee. Jessica couldn’t because she was working an evening shift, so they arranged to get together the next day after Meredith’s work.”
“That would be Tuesday? Yesterday?”
“Yes. She never showed up, never phoned to cancel, didn’t show up for work either.”
“Any prior history of similar behaviour? Or mental health issues?”
Li shook his head. “Everyone says she’s pretty solid.”
“What’s Jessica’s theory on the disappearance?”
“She’s scared. Thinks something has happened to her.”
“What kind of work does the missing girl do?”
“Contract work for the government. Citizenship and Immigration.” “Immigration?” Green let his imagination roam. “Could there be anything there? Sensitive file?”
Li chuckled. “No. She was in Haiti last winter after the earthquake, helping to sort through immigration red tape, but back in Ottawa she mostly drafts policy positions for someone else’s signature. I talked to her boss, who said she does a good job but really wants to get back overseas. That’s their plan after the wedding. He was going to work for Doctors Without Borders in Ethiopia and she was going to teach school.”
Green was still searching for a connection to Jules. “What’s the fiancé’s name?”
“Dr. Brandon Longstreet.”
Green’s interest spiked again. “Related to Elena Longstreet?”
Li looked alarmed. “Who’s Elena Longstreet?”
“Big name attorney in town. Years ago she used to do criminal cases, but now it’s mostly complex appeals. Charter challenges are her big thing. She also teaches criminal law at the University of Ottawa.” Green searched his memory for long-forgotten details. Only two stood out. Elena Longstreet was as much a master of courtroom drama as of the law. Her regal elegance and sleek black hair captured centre stage whenever she was in the room. As well, she’d been a ferocious critic of the police for lazy and incompetent case preparation. If the police had fouled up a single step of an investigation, Elena would find it and demolish the case. Even experienced officers had been known to quail under her cross-examination.
Being her daughter-in-law would be no walk in the park. But surely not enough to drop out of sight.
Green pondered the other revelations in the case. “So we have a bright, optimistic young woman on the brink of an exciting new adventure, who becomes upset about something she doesn’t tell her fiancé and then disappears in the middle of a Canadian winter.”
Li grimaced. “Gives me a bad feeling.”
Privately Green agreed with him. Teenagers went missing on a whim, but seemingly happy, well-adjusted women did not. He couldn’t ignore the darker side of love, which slipped so easily into the toxic swamp of obsession, betrayal and murder. Dr. Brandon Longstreet would have to be investigated.
“Expedite those enquiries,” he said. “And take a close look at the fiancé. Anger issues, jealousy, previous girlfriends. Also previous men in her life. Have you asked Inspector Hopewell for extra manpower?” Green had learned the hard way not to step on other people’s turf. Luckily Li had not asked him the reason for his sudden interest in the case.
Li nodded. “She asked if you could give us someone to search Meredith Kennedy’s living quarters. She’s living with her parents at the moment.”
That in itself sets the girl apart, Green thought. He was mentally running through the list of general assignment detectives when a raucous laugh burst out. It sounded familiar, but it was a long time since he’d heard it. He rose and peered through the door into the Major Crimes room. Detectives were unhurried, coasting towards the holiday season when loneliness, alcohol and too much family togetherness would give them plenty of work.
A familiar fuchsia jacket caught his eye. It was a long time since he’d seen that either. Sue Peters was sprawled in her chair like old times, legs outstretched and head tossed back. Bob Gibbs had evidently told a good joke, for she was still laughing. The affection between them was palpable.
A plan began to take shape. Green turned it over in his mind, weighing its wisdom. Missing Persons did not fall under his command and rarely would a Major Crimes detective be tied up in a MisPers investigation unless something sinister was suspected. But all was quiet on the second floor, and this case felt wrong. Staff Sergeant Brian Sullivan, head of Major Crimes, was out on indefinite sick leave and his acting replacement, seconded from Patrol, was over his head trying to keep track of the dozens of active cases currently on the books, let alone managing to give the detectives any useful advice.
Detective Sue Peters was currently relegated to entering data in online tracking forms, a mandatory but tedious clerical job that would not provide her with the confidence and skill to return to full duties. She had come a long way physically in her recovery from a near-fatal beating two years earlier, but the fuchsia jacket and the hearty laugh were the first signs that her spirit was returning as well. She was not yet well enough to pass her Use of Force test that would allow her back on full active duty, but a simple, behind-the-scenes assignment supporting Bob Gibbs might be the perfect nudge.
He called them both into his office, watching her try to conceal her stiffness as she hovered in the doorway. Li struggled to rise and offer her the only chair, but she dismissed the offer and stood warily just inside the door. Green had not missed the spasm of alarm that crossed Gibbs’s face as well, and realized its source. Everyone was afraid of being transferred out.
He held up a reassuring hand and explained the case. “Bob, I’d like you to search the missing woman’s room for clues to her whereabouts and explanations for her disappearance. While you’re there, re-interview her parents. Sue can follow up the leads you uncover.”
Peters flashed a grin, lopsided now due to her injuries. “I get to go out on the call, sir?” she asked as if not quite believing her luck.
He looked at her in silence and saw her smile slowly fade. To his surprise, she didn’t argue. “There will be plenty of leads to follow up on the phone,” he said. “Interviews with friends, old boyfriends…”
Despite her obvious disappointment, Green knew even this was a huge step for her. He was aware of the anxiety she was trying to hide. Peters had been alone when she was attacked, making inquiries in a rough bar while her partner was elsewhere on the strip. To ask her to make cold calls to potentially violent men was a risk, but he knew the challenge was crucial for her. The old Sue Peters would have bulldozed forward without a backward glance.
“Sergeant Li is running the case,” he added. “He’ll fill you two in on everything you need to know.”
“She was about to get married, wasn’t she, sir?” Peters asked.
Green and Li nodded in unison. “Reason enough to disappear,” she said with another hearty laugh. This time Green sensed it was forced, and she cast a small, uncertain glance in Gibbs’s direction as she did so.
