Читать книгу Dream Chasers - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 4

Jenna Zukowski thought she’d made very good time, but when she arrived at Pleasant Park High School, she found the parking lot almost full and police everywhere. The media vans and cameras were being held at bay across the street by a cordon of determined police officers. One, a hulking bruiser with a Hitler mustache, stood at the entrance to the lot, snapping out orders to his minions. He stopped her as she tried to turn into the drive and leaned in her window, his eyes flicking over the car’s interior. She felt her face burn with embarrassment at the jumble of fast food wrappers and coffee cups scattered everywhere, but beneath the peak of his black cap, the cop’s face remained expressionless.

“I’m Sergeant Gates. What’s your business here, ma’am?”

Jenna felt the familiar flush spread further up her cheeks. Her body’s betrayal added fuel to her indignation. What were all these police doing here, intimidating innocent people, when they should be out looking for the monster who preyed on women in the streets? For she had no doubt Lea Kovacev was dead. The police were lying to the public in order to prevent panic, and probably to cover up their own incompetence, because they would never have called in this three-ringed circus if they thought Lea was a simple runaway. God knows, Jenna had never been able to get them interested in any of the cases she’d dealt with.

“I’m the school board social worker assigned to this school,” she replied stiffly. “The principal called me early this morning and requested my help with the students.”

The police officer’s eyes remained expressionless. “What kind of help?”

The flush deepened, and she clutched the steering wheel to hide her shaking. “Supportive counselling, answering questions the students might have. When an event like this occurs, the whole student body tends to get upset, particularly those who knew the girl well.”

“Our own officers will be conducting interviews throughout the day, ma’am. I advise you not to discuss any particulars with the students that might influence their statements, and if any of them have information pertinent to the case, no matter how trivial it appears, please direct them to one of our officers.”

She inclined her head slightly, not trusting herself to speak through her outrage. Who’s going to speak to me at all if they know I’m going to turn them over to the cops, she thought as he waved her through. Ever hear of client confidentiality, officer?

Inside the school, the secretary directed her to the staff room, where the principal, Mr. Prusec, had called a meeting. When Jenna entered, she was greeted by a sea of tense faces. She saw her own pessimism reflected in them.

“Above all,” the principal was saying in his nasal singsong, “the schedule for classes and exams should carry on. The students need routine and a sense of normalcy, and even if they’re upset, their exams will distract them and give them something to focus on other than their worries.”

This announcement drew grim nods from some teachers and exclamations of disbelief from others. “What if they can’t concentrate!” a young woman said. “It won’t be fair to them.”

“Then we’ll take that into account when assigning their marks. And anyone too visibly upset to work should be quietly sent to the guidance office. We’ll have all our guidance staff,” Mr. Prusec paused to gesture offhandedly at Jenna, “plus our board social worker here, available to provide assistance. But we don’t want a stampede.”

“There are media and cops all over the place,” said another teacher, whom Jenna recognized as Mrs. Lucas. Jenna had never dealt with her directly before, but she had a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense veteran. One of those fossils who’d been teaching since before Jenna was born. “The kids will have questions.”

“I’ll make a short announcement over the PA just before classes start, telling them what we know, which is essentially nothing at this point—” he stared hard at them in warning, “and informing them that if they have relevant information, they should let their teacher know, so that an interview can be scheduled with the police.”

Jenna pictured the chaos that would ensue from that request. Breathless with apprehension, she jumped in. “I think teachers should just steer everyone to the guidance office and let us decide if the police should be brought in. Otherwise, if students have to approach the teacher in front of their peers, there will be all kinds of rumours, questions and pressure.”

Mrs. Lucas fixed her with a withering stare. “I think we know how to speak to a student privately.”

Jenna felt another flush building and fought it in vain. It was her Achilles’ heel, betraying her self-doubt and undermining her attempts at professionalism at the very worst times. She was twenty years younger than most of the teachers in the room, and despite her MSW and her clinical training, few of them thought she knew a damn thing about human nature.

To add to her humiliation, it was the principal who rescued her. The perfect incarnation of white, male, middle-class domination. “Jenna has a good point. Direct all students with any kind of involvement to the guidance office. The police will be starting with routine interviews of all the students in Lea’s classes, so exams in those classes will have to be postponed. Assign the students a study period.” He paused. “And for the love of Pete, don’t let them start talking about it!”

As the teachers filed out of the room, Jenna fell in step beside one of the guidance counsellors, an attractive young man with a goatee and a single piercing on his left ear. She knew he was married, with a baby adopted from China, but that didn’t stop the tingle of pleasure she felt at his closeness. Of all the staff, she felt he understood the world as she did. No macho posturing there.

“It’s difficult to operate in the dark,” she murmured. “Do you know anything about Lea Kovacev?”

The man chuckled. “Well, you know how it is, we seldom see the well-adjusted ones. I think she worked with the newcomers’ club in school.”

“What does that do?”

“It’s mostly for new immigrants, although kids new to the city can go there too. Basically it’s to help kids make friends.”

“Have the police condescended to tell us anything, even off the record?”

“Not much. They spent most of yesterday talking to her friends and trying to track her movements. So far we just know she went home after school and then went out again around four in the afternoon, with her backpack, a cell phone and a beach towel—”

“Beach towel! That’s a clue, surely!”

The guidance counsellor paused in his doorway with an indulgent smile. “I’m sure they’re following up on it. But there are a lot of beaches and pools in the city, and maybe she just planned to sunbathe in the park.”

Jenna considered the implications. It was true that in the affluent neighbourhood of Alta Vista alone, there were probably dozens of backyard pools, but if Lea had gone instead to a public park or one of the city’s beaches, there were always perverts lurking around hoping to satisfy their sick fantasies with the unsuspecting young girls who played there. A shiver passed through her. Girls had so little knowledge of—or control over—what they stirred up.

* * *

Green managed to wait until ten a.m. before he finally caved. Even in the likely event that Hannah was still asleep, ten o’clock was a perfectly reasonable hour for a parental phone call. There had been no further news releases about the missing girl, but Sullivan had assured him he’d call if anything developed. No phone call meant they were still slogging along, tracking down everyone Lea had ever talked to, following every lead and probably combing every public park within a five kilometre radius of her home. A huge task, but as time passed, hope was surely dimming among all concerned.

To his surprise, Hannah didn’t even answer the phone. When the answering machine kicked in, he dialled again, thinking she might have been slow to wake up. Still no answer. He dialled her cell phone. Voice mail announced the caller was unavailable. He scowled. Hannah carried the phone around on her belt as if it were a lifeline and never turned it off.

He debated whether to leave a message. He and Hannah had been virtual strangers a year ago when, in a fit of pique at her mother, she’d come to live with him. Every seemingly simple decision took on layers of unspoken meaning in the complex dance of feelings between them. Accusations of interference and mistrust would fly, and the closer he inched to intimacy, the more prickly she became.

“Oh, just leave a message!” Sharon exclaimed in exasperation after fifteen minutes of listening to him dither. “Whether she gives you hell or not, she’s going to know you care.”

So in the end he left her a chatty message about their arrival and the news of the missing girl, signing off with a casual request that she give him a ring just to let him know everything was okay.

He took his phone with him down to the dock, where Sharon, in a valiant attempt to make a swimming area for Tony, was clearing weeds from the patch of muddy shoreline that had been billed as a beach. For two hours, he forced himself to build a sandcastle with his son, complete with moat and coloured stones to reinforce the walls. It was a hot, sunny day, and the lake was filled with the roar of speedboats and the high-pitched squeal of small children towed behind on tubes. So much for peace and quiet.

By noon, Tony’s enthusiasm for coloured stones had waned, and a temper tantrum was brewing over the sandcastle that refused to stay standing. What do I know about sandcastles, Green thought irritably as the walls caved into the moat yet again. His parents had come from a small village in Poland, and from their limited immigrant perspective, beaches and water were dangers to be avoided. They had confined family holidays to picnics on the Rideau River in Strathcona Park, where they had all watched the ducks from the safe embrace of a distant shade tree.

With a cheerful announcement about lunch, Sharon scooped Tony into her arms and headed up to the cottage. Green picked up his phone and checked its battery, which was still fine. He dialled home. Voice mail. Hannah’s cell phone. Voice mail. Finally he gave up and phoned Sullivan. To his credit, the man didn’t utter a single gripe about interference.

“No breakthrough yet,” he said, “but we’re narrowing our search down to the most likely spots. Lea works at McDonald’s, and she told a co-worker on Monday that she hoped the weather would stay warm, because she was planning to go to the beach. So we’re focussing on area beaches.”

Green did a quick mental inventory. Ottawa was located at the convergence of three large rivers, all of which had swimming areas. As well, the wilderness playground of Gatineau Park, with beaches on its three lakes, was only a short drive across the Ottawa River into Quebec. He visualized the city map. Alta Vista was bordered on the west by the Rideau River, with its magnificent beach at Mooney’s Bay. He pointed that out to Sullivan.

“Yeah, and Mooney’s Bay has the most parkland, so it’s the best for parties. We’re concentrating there, but according to her friends, she didn’t like the crowds and noise there, so she preferred to go somewhere more private.”

“Like where?”

“Anywhere in the park, as long as it was by the water.”

Which doesn’t narrow it down much, thought Green. Almost all the waterfront in Ottawa was parkland. “Did she have access to a vehicle?”

“Her mother doesn’t own a car, so that leaves out the beaches in the Gatineau Park.”

“Unless someone else had a car. If she has a secret boyfriend, they may have been looking for privacy.”

Sullivan paused. “I’ll ask Ron Leclair to alert the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP , since strictly speaking, Gatineau Park is in the RCMP ’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, we’ve got guys combing the beaches at Britannia and Westboro for her too. We’ve also got officers at her school trying to shake loose a clue about a possible secret boyfriend, but you know how teenagers are. Misplaced loyalties and all that.”

Despite the blazing noon sun, Green felt a chill as he hung up. Misplaced loyalties, conspiracies of silence, a pack mentality of us against them. How little he knew about Hannah’s friends and the places she hung out. But he did know that, coming from Vancouver, she loved beach parties, and Westboro beach on the Ottawa River was a mere stone’s throw from their house in Highland Park.

It seemed irrational to fear that there was a connection, but why the hell wasn’t she answering her phone?

* * *

Jenna accompanied the anxious student from her office and glanced out into the main guidance room. Students, mostly girls, still filled every seat in the waiting area, and the guidance secretary was busy on the phone, fielding calls from parents. Despite the admonition not to talk to each other, the girls were excitedly sharing the rumours they’d heard and the tidbits of knowledge they possessed about Lea’s life. None of them looked too stressed, she noted with relief, but then teenagers could hide a mountain of feelings beneath a flighty façade.

One girl sat apart, staring at her hands and twisting her many rings round and round her fingers. She looked harder than the others, her skin disfigured by acne despite a heavy layer of makeup, and her body stuffed into the trashy clothes that young girls thought they had to wear to gain the attention of boys. The school dress code had been circumvented by a loose-fitting, virtually transparent white overshirt, beneath which was visible a lacy tank top stretched over size D breasts and an expanse of tanned stomach accented by a silver ring through her belly button. Her blonde hair escaped her ponytail in a cascade of ringlets that framed her face. She’d be a very pretty girl if not for the acne, the ton of smoky eye make-up she didn’t need, and the sulky frown.

Jenna walked over to introduce herself.

“Crystal Adams,” the girl responded, accepting Jenna’s hand in her moist, limp grip. Jenna ushered her into the little office the school had provided her. The door had a glass insert which prevented privacy, and the space inside was overtaken by a desk and computer, but she squeezed Crystal into the guest chair and contrived to look as welcoming as she could.

Crystal twisted her rings. Seven, Jenna noted with interest. Some were discreet bands of silver, others gaudy clusters of cheap stones.

“What brings you here, Crystal?” Jenna prompted eventually.

Crystal shrugged. “Have they found her? Do they know what happened?”

Jenna shook her head. “Did you know her?”

“Oh, yeah, we were friends. Kind of.”

Jenna waited, not sure what to ask. Then she remembered her Rogerian training: when in doubt, reflect. “Kind of?”

“No, we were. But like, we weren’t in classes together or anything, but we sometimes hung out. Like at parties and stuff.”

“Are you worried about her?”

“Well...I guess.”

“Any reason in particular?

“Well, you know, just that she’s missing, and that she...” Crystal trailed off and twisted her ring savagely. “I’m wondering if I should go to the police. I mean, I don’t want to get people in trouble.”

“Do you know something about what’s happened to her?”

In answer, Crystal sneaked a glance through the glass panel in the door and slouched lower in her chair, as if to hide herself from the students outside. “This is confidential, right? You can’t tell anybody...?”

Jenna nodded and was just trying to formulate the limits of confidentiality when Crystal leaned forward. “I think she was going to meet someone. I mean, not that I’m saying it was him! He’d never do anything like that. But I think she might have thought there was more going on with him than there was. She was—like—obsessed with him.”

“And he didn’t feel that way about her?”

“It was just a fling to him, you know. That’s the way him and his friends are. She’s pretty, and she’s sexy, and what guy wouldn’t go for her? But he could have any girl he wanted, and he wasn’t going to drop his whole life for her, you know what I mean?”

Jenna knew only too well. How many men had drooled over her own size D breasts and promised the moon just for a chance to get their hands on them? But women were just objects to them, one well-shaped body as good as the next. She’d told them all to go to hell.

“So what do you think happened?” she asked the girl.

“I don’t know what happened. I phoned her cell a bunch of times the day she disappeared, because I wanted to tell her not to push it. But she never answered. Never returned my calls either.” Crystal looked up, squinting through her eyeliner. “Do you think I should tell the police that?”

Jenna weighed the information the girl had provided. Beyond her speculation, she had very few facts. “Do you know the boy’s name?”

Crystal stiffened. “It wasn’t him. He had nothing to do with it.”

“But then...”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. If she didn’t get her way with him, she’d have freaked out. She thought she could get any guy she wanted—she usually did—but this one was different. That’s the point I’m not sure of. I don’t know what she’d do if she got upset.”

Jenna tried to make sense of her. “Then you’re worried she’s done something bad? What?”

“I don’t know!” Crystal burst out. “You’re the social worker. Run away? Killed herself?”

“Wait a minute. You think Lea might have killed herself?”

“Well, tried, you know? Taken a bunch of pills just to get his attention.” Crystal squinted at her again. “It happens, right? I mean, my mother once—”

“Has Lea ever talked about killing herself?”

“No, but then she thought this guy was over the moon for her. Romeo and Juliet, she said they were. And those two killed themselves, right? I saw the movie.”

Jenna sat forward in her chair, preparing to rise. “Crystal, I think you probably should talk to the police about this.”

“But I don’t really know anything.”

“Maybe not, but if it helps find Lea...”

“They’ll want to know the boyfriend’s name, right? He’s got a great future ahead of him. He doesn’t need his name dragged in just because she’s a drama queen.” She shoved her chair back and groped for the doorknob. “I feel better. I don’t think she’d kill herself. She’s too full of herself for that. Even if she swallowed a bunch of pills, she’d be sure to end up on his front doorstep so he’d know what he’d done to her.”

She yanked open the door. “Wait!” Jenna dived to intercept her and laid a restraining hand on her arm.

“She’s going to turn up all innocent surprise once she gives him a good scare. You wait and see,” Crystal said.

With that, she tore herself loose and flounced out the door.

* * *

Jenna spent the rest of the morning calming the fears of Lea’s friends and classmates, but she found her mind wandering back to what Crystal had said. Not about Lea’s tendency to play drama queen nor her possible histrionic suicide attempt, but about the boy she’d been involved with. A boy who had a great future ahead of him, who could have any girl he wanted, and who might view Lea’s demands as a mere inconvenience. Perhaps even more, as an obstacle to his pursuit of utter sexual abandon. The more she thought about it, the more she worried.

At noon, she headed down to the staff room to join the clusters of teachers opening their Tupperware lunches. Lea’s disappearance and the heavy-footed presence of the police were the talk of the room. She joined a table of three, including the scary Mrs. Lucas. No one paid her any attention, as a young man, clearly shaken, was voicing his outrage.

“The cops interviewed me three times. Three times! Once yesterday and twice today, the last time calling me out of the room in front of my entire class! That’s how rumours start, I tell you. I just teach the girl. I hardly know a thing about her, but because I’m a man—”

“And cute,” interjected a very pregnant, thirty-something woman. “Let’s face it, Nigel, half the girls are in love with you.”

“That’s hardly my fault,” Nigel exclaimed. “But apparently Lea told some of her friends she had a crush on me, and they told the cops. I’m telling you, I don’t even dare smile at a girl.”

Jenna rolled her eyes but kept her impatience to herself. Men always thought they had it so tough. Instead, she steered the conversation to her own concerns. “Does anyone know if she has a boyfriend?”

“Lea’s had lots of boyfriends,” Mrs. Lucas said. “She’s a pretty girl, but it hasn’t gone to her head. She still takes the time to be nice to everyone.”

“That’s refreshing,” the younger teacher said. “So many girls won’t give each other the time of day once they figure out the pecking order.”

Jenna tried to picture pretty, outgoing Lea in the middle of a group. Would people look up to her or ridicule her for talking to so-called losers? The distant pain of her own high school tinged her thoughts. Along with another memory of a boy even more inept than she was, who had followed her around like a lovesick puppy because she had been nice to him. He had turned up at the end of her laneway, outside her window in the dead of night, and finally on the shortcut through the woods from school to her house.

Her pulse quickened. “Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who adore from a distance that are the most dangerous.”

Heads swivelled towards her around the table. Eyes narrowed. “You’re talking as if something bad has happened to her,” Nigel said.

“Well, aren’t we all?” Mrs. Lucas countered. “I know Lea. I’ve taught her English for two years. She’d never leave her mother without a word. They were extremely close. She wrote me a journal piece once about how they escaped from Bosnia together on foot through the mountains after her father was killed by the Serbs. Lea felt a huge obligation to her mother, for all that she’d lost and given up so that Lea could be safe. She’d never cut off ties of her own free will. I agree with Jenna, she’s been abducted...or worse.”

That silenced the threesome for a moment. As the unspoken words “by whom?” hung in the air, Jenna’s thoughts returned to the boyfriend Crystal had described. The police should be looking for this boy. They should be dragging him down to the station— preferably over hot coals, she thought, indulging a private fantasy about all the sleazeballs she’d known—and they should be forcing him to confess to the part he’d played in her disappearance.

“Does anyone know who she’s going out with right now?” she asked.

Mrs. Lucas grunted. “I gave up trying to keep up with today’s kids long ago. They seem to hang out in groups and try each other out as casually as I change clothes.”

The pregnant teacher laughed. “That’s not saying much, Pat! How many outfits do you have? A sweat suit for winter and a white T -shirt for summer?”

But Mrs. Lucas merely shrugged and brushed imaginary lint from her white T -shirt. “But you know what I mean? Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re dating or just friends.”

“And sometimes it’s not, the way they hang on each other,” the pregnant one said. “I remember hearing she was dating one of the theatre students. But then again, actors and relationships...here today, gone tomorrow.”

“But seriously,” Jenna said, “if we could figure out who her boyfriend is—”

Mrs. Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You seem awfully focussed on a boyfriend. Do you know something we don’t?”

Jenna felt her face burn. Damn! Just when she was beginning to feel more confident with the woman, her stare reduced Jenna to a small child again. “No, no! I just think...you know how boyfriends can be. Jealous, possessive. He could be the culprit.”

Looking unconvinced, Mrs. Lucas snapped her tupperware shut and carried her coffee mug to the sink. “Well, it’s a stretch. Much more likely that some pervert got her. The jail sentences they get, and the way these girls dress, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

The bell rang, and a collective groan rose from the tables as teachers pushed back their chairs, picked up their papers and filed out the door as if heading out to battle. Jenna sat alone with her thoughts. Mrs. Lucas could be right. Certainly there were enough perverts on the prowl for vulnerable prey. But if Crystal was right, Lea had been going to meet her boyfriend, who did not share her passion for the relationship. He was a successful boy with a great future ahead of him that was not to be derailed by the demands of a clingy, overly possessive girl. Within this school alone, how many boys would fit that bill?

Pleasant Park High School was a large, prestigious school with special programs for the artistically gifted, and among its students were the future authors, musicians, painters and actors of the country. Some never pursued their talents beyond high school, but others went on to headline on Broadway or write a Governor General’s Award winning novel. Talent, promise—and massive egos—abounded at Pleasant Park. What if Lea’s boyfriend had been among that elite crowd? She had been dating an actor who would certainly fit the bill.

Jenna lingered in the now empty staff room. It was really up to the police to track down Lea’s boyfriend, but they were probably narrow-minded jerks with no imagination to see beyond the obvious. No kid would confide in them in a million years. But if she told them what she knew, they would demand to know her source, and her social work standards of practice were clear. Client confidentiality could not be broken just to spread a vague rumour. In fact, she could not even mention Crystal’s name. But that wouldn’t stop them from bullying her to get it out of her. Cops didn’t give a damn about sensitivities or confidentiality, only about results.

She needed an outside source. If she could discover the name of Lea’s boyfriend on her own, she could hand him over to the police without having to mention Crystal’s name. Crystal would be protected, the boyfriend exposed, and perhaps, just perhaps, Lea would be rescued before he could do her any serious harm.

A woman had to do something, Jenna thought as she marched off in the direction of the drama room.