Читать книгу Dream Chasers - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 5

Two o’clock that afternoon found Green inside the car again, hunched over the radio. The news on the missing girl was brief. Dozens of officers and volunteers had been dispatched to search the wooded areas along Ottawa’s waterways, and a photo of the girl had been released to the public with an appeal for anyone with any information to contact the police. Superintendent Barbara Devine, the head of CID, had even secured a ten-second sound bite which she used to assure the public, with a ferocity and confidence she couldn’t possibly feel, that the police had made the girl’s safe return their number one priority. No expenses spared, no resources untapped.

Quite the attitude reversal for Devine, for whom purse strings, bottom lines and promotional prospects were usually the top priorities, Green thought. She must have been pressured by the higher-ups in the food chain, who were ever mindful of public image and positive press. After all, beautiful, blonde, innocent schoolgirls should be safe in their own communities.

All schoolgirls should be safe in their own communities, even blue-haired ones, Green thought as he dialled home once more. Still no answer. He was just leaving another message on Hannah’s cell when Sharon opened the car door and slipped in beside him. This time she looked neither annoyed nor reproachful. Her gentle fingers caressed his arm.

“Why don’t you drive into the city and check on her?”

He looked at her in surprise. Was she as worried as he? Was she saying his anxiety was more than the paranoia of a police officer who’d seen too much of the depraved side of human nature?

“It’s only an hour and a half drive,” she added. “You can be back before suppertime.”

“But this was supposed to be our family time.”

“I know.” She flashed him a wry smile. “But Tony’s having a nap, and he’ll hardly notice you’re gone. And Hannah is family too. You have to take care of this.”

He hugged her, buried his face in her dark curls. “Thank you.”

She held him. “Bring her back with you, okay? Kicking and screaming, if need be.”

Taking nothing but his wallet, keys and cell phone, Green drove at breakneck speed up the busy, twisting Highway 15, grateful that his little Subaru had all-wheel-drive, but wishing it was equipped with lights and siren too. Eighty-six minutes later, he was weaving through the narrow, leafy streets of his west end neighbourhood. The house looked empty and undisturbed. Today’s Ottawa Citizen still sat in the middle of the front porch where the delivery boy had tossed it, and the mail bulged from the box.

Green unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall. It echoed eerily, as if it had been abandoned for a week instead of a mere day. A shout to Hannah elicited no response, and a rapid search of the premises yielded no trace of her. He tried not to panic. This was the same girl who had climbed onto a plane in Vancouver on a whim when she was barely sixteen years old and had flown east to visit the father she had never known. The same girl who, upon arrival, had hung out on the streets of Ottawa for days without a word to either parent before fate had delivered her into Green’s hands. She was no stranger to the grand gesture of liberation. But she was still an innocent girl, albeit blue-haired instead of blonde, and now finishing her first year at an alternative high school, a far cry from your model student.

He debated phoning his father, who lived in a small senior’s residence in Sandy Hill. Hannah had adored her gentle, oldworld grandfather ever since their first meeting, and she showed him a sensitivity and affection she never shared with her father. But Sid Green was eighty-five, frail and partially deaf. Scars from the Holocaust had left him with a weak heart and a penchant for paranoia that no amount of security on Canadian soil could ever quite counter. Even a casual question about Hannah’s whereabouts would send him spinning into panic. Until Green had exhausted all other avenues, he would not put his father through that.

He stood in the middle of her bedroom, looking for clues. Its severe black decor—Sharon called it eggplant, but it looked black to him—reflected a goth influence but she had recently added some brightly coloured posters of music groups other than Three Inches of Blood and Avenged Sevenfold. The clothing strewn across the floor was red, turquoise and even pink. Progress.

He looked for her school bag. It wasn’t there. Nor was her cell phone or her school agenda book, despite a detailed search under the piles of books and papers that littered every surface. He did, however, turn up her little black purse and her wallet, complete with credit card, bus pass and student ID . Also in the wallet, he noted with resignation, was a fake ID with her photo and name, but a date of birth four years earlier that her real one. It bore a Vancouver address, leading him to wonder how long she’d owned it.

So she had taken her cell phone and her school bag, but not her credit card, bus pass or IDs, fake or otherwise. He tried not to imagine the worst. Perhaps she had just gone to stay at a nearby friend’s house, where she would not need money or ID. Perhaps they were using a friend’s car. He realized with a pang how little he knew of her social circle. She rarely brought friends home, and when she did, it was only a quick stop between one party and another. Introductions, if they were given at all, were a perfunctory flick of her hand in his direction.

“Deedee, this is Mike,” she’d mutter. Not father, not Dad. Even after a full year, he had not yet earned that privilege.

Hannah was an extrovert who ranged far afield in her pursuit of new thrills. The names and numbers of her many friends would be on her cell phone or in her agenda, both of which were nowhere to be found. But her high school was as good a place as any to start his search.

Norman Bethune Alternate School was a rambling Victorian brick blockhouse on a side street in Old Ottawa South. There was very little about the ivy-covered exterior to suggest that it was a school, which was probably intentional, and Green had to bang on the dark, heavy door several times before a woman opened it a crack to peer out at him. She looked like an aging hippie, with her grey hair tucked into a frizzy braid and ropes of beads cascading over her braless chest.

He introduced himself and held up his badge for good measure. She frowned and did not budge to open the door. “All the students are gone, Mr. Green. I’m just locking up.”

Green stood on the doorstep feeling like a supplicant as he explained his inability to contact Hannah and his concerns in light of the missing girl. The woman looked unmoved.

“I’m sure she’s just taking advantage of your absence to stay with friends,” she replied, edging out the door. “Students here are quite independent, and we find it works best to allow them freedom of choice.”

He wanted to strangle her with the beads that drooped over her scrawny chest, but he behaved himself. Politely he asked her name and made a point of jotting it down. Eleanor Hicks, guidance counsellor.

“Can you at least tell me if she came to school today?”

“She did not.”

The woman spoke without a hint of concern, and Green forced himself to remain polite. “Is that usual for her?”

“For Hannah, yes.” Hicks pulled the door firmly shut behind her and headed down the front walk. “You have to understand, Independent Learning Credits are just that, Mr. Green. Hannah directs her own pace and quantity, and she gains credit as she fulfills the assignments. I can tell you she’s doing very well with that freedom. Independence suits her.”

With Hannah, there is no other choice, he thought to himself. “I know that, believe me. I was like that too,” he added, hoping to breach the barricade of her mistrust. Why do people always equate police with authoritarian control? “I’m not going to force her into anything, but I do want to know she’s safe. I’m scared. Surely you can understand that.”

“I’m sure she’s safe. She has a good head on her shoulders.”

“No one said Lea Kovacev didn’t,” he countered. She had reached her bicycle and was fastening her helmet. “Please tell me the name and address of at least one of her friends.”

Her lips drew tight. “Student records are confidential.”

“One friend. Off the record. I won’t say where it came from.” Perhaps the anxiety in his tone finally touched her, for her disapproving scowl softened.

“I can’t give it to you, but I will speak to some of her classmates tomorrow when I see them—”

“Tomorrow! That leaves a whole night when she could be in trouble!”

She sighed. “All right, give me your phone number. I’ll speak to one or two of the girls tonight when I get home and tell them you’re worried. It will be up to them to call you if they want.”

Green bit back his frustration and scribbled his cell number on his card. The wait was going to drive him crazy, but it was probably the best he could hope for without dragging in subpoenas, justices of the peace and the rest of the heavy artillery of the state, for which he had not a whit of justification.

* * *

By five o’clock in the afternoon, the Ottawa Police headquarters on Elgin Street was normally winding down, the day shift and administrative staff heading home and the evening shift already out on the streets. Today, however, as Green came off the elevator from the parking garage, a crackling energy gripped the second floor, where the major crimes squad was housed. Every desk was occupied, and several detectives were clustered around the corner conference table, hunched over their laptops. They looked up as he passed by, but no one registered surprise at his presence there during his supposed holiday. After almost fifteen years in CID , I guess I’m a fixture, he thought. For the fifth time since leaving Hannah’s school, he checked his cell phone for messages, on the remote chance he had failed to hear its ring through the rush hour noise. Nothing.

Brian Sullivan was not at his desk, but Green spotted Bob Gibbs in the corner. The lanky young detective sat with his phone jammed between his ear and his shoulder, while his slender fingers raced over his keyboard. His fine brown hair stood in harried tufts, and his eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue. Gibbs was a committed, meticulous detective who would sleep at his computer if it helped solve the case faster. If anyone besides Sullivan knew the latest details about the missing girl, he would.

Green was just heading over towards him when the door to the stairwell flew open and Superintendent Barbara Devine swept in. She was dressed today in a surprisingly conservative navy suit, her flair for drama limited to a red silk scarf at her throat to match her crimson nails. Her eyes raked the squad room like a hawk searching for prey until they lit on Green. She skewered the air with a manicured nail.

“Mike! Just the man I need!” A muffled snigger drifted across the room from an unknown source. Green turned toward her in dismay.

“I’m just in here checking...” He hesitated. Devine didn’t need to know about his domestic tribulations. As her subordinate, he operated on the principle that the less she knew, the better. “Something in my office, Barbara. I’m on vacation, remember?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “This will only take half an hour. Mrs. Kovacev is camped outside my office, demanding an update on her daughter’s case. I don’t have time. I’m late for an appointment already.” She glanced at the elegant gold watch on her wrist as if to drive home the point, then her eyes took in his jeans and rumpled Bagelshop golf shirt. Her arched eyebrows shot higher. “Good God, Mike. I need a senior officer, but what kind of impression—”

“I’m on vacation,” he repeated. “Besides, I don’t know the case. Staff Sergeant Sullivan is the man to see.”

She barely glanced around. “But he’s not here, is he?”

“Then Detective Gibbs—”

“Gibbs!” She snorted. “I don’t have to tell you the media is >all over this case, Mike. We need a respectable profile. We can’t have Mrs. Kovacev and all the other tearful mothers of teenage darlings filling up airtime on the six o’clock news. Which I guarantee will happen if she walks out of this station dissatisfied. You don’t have to actually know anything, Mike. Just hold her hand awhile. You’ve done that so often, you can do it in your sleep.”

Green ignored the hidden innuendo, choosing to assume she meant his kindness and not his seductive prowess. Even so, practice hardly made perfect when it came to his handholding skills. Faced with the tears and anguish of relatives, he always felt clumsy and inadequate. There was nothing he could do to ease their pain, except go out and catch the perpetrator responsible.

But before he could rally further protest, Devine pivoted on her stiletto heel and stalked back down the hall. “Get a tie on and wait by the elevator. I’ll send her down.”

Green did keep a tangle of well-worn ties in his desk drawer for surprises like this, but even a tie wouldn’t salvage the golf shirt. Besides, he had more important worries at the moment. He dashed over to Gibbs, who’d witnessed the exchange, along with half the squad. Gibbs’s lips twitched in a faint smile, which he quickly brought under control.

“Any breaks in the Kovacev case?” Green demanded urgently.

Gibbs shook his head. “Neighbours saw her leave the house around four in the afternoon, and a bus driver on the #149 bus recalls picking her up at the corner of Pleasant Park and Haig. According to the bus schedule, that would have been 4:15. He thinks she got off at St. Laurent and Walkley, probably to transfer buses, but we have no further sightings of her. We checked—”

Hearing the hum of the elevator, Green jumped in. “How many officers do we have on the case?”

“Between Uniform, General Assignment and our squad, thirty. Plus volunteers. The whole neighbourhood and several schools in the area are pitching in. If she’s still in the city, we’ll find her.”

The door to the elevator slid open, and Green hurried over to greet the frantic mother. Whatever picture of grief and desperation he was expecting, his first reaction was one of surprise. Lea Kovacev’s mother stepped off the elevator with her broad shoulders squared and her blue eyes clear. Even before he could speak, she extended her hand. “Inspector Green? I’m Marija Kovacev.”

She was a tall, regal woman with silvery blonde hair swept into a bun at the nape of her neck and high, sculpted cheekbones that hinted at Slavic blood. Even devoid of make-up, her skin was porcelain-smooth, and only a faint charcoal bruising beneath her eyes betrayed her recent ordeal. If the daughter had inherited even half her mother’s looks, Green thought, she’d arouse the fantasies of just about every red-blooded male who crossed her path. Under the circumstances, not a comforting thought.

Her handshake was firm and her stride unfaltering as she accompanied him back to his little alcove office. He unlocked the door, trying to remember how clean he had left it. Inside, his phone message light was blinking furiously, and a dozen memos spilled over his desk. Only two days away, he noted wryly, and already a week’s worth of paperwork had piled up. He swept the memos into a stack and gestured her to the small chair that was squeezed between his desk and the door. She perched on the edge and propped her purse on her knees as if preparing to do battle.

“Mrs. Kovacev, I can imagine how worried—”

“My daughter Lea is a good girl.” The woman had a soft, lilting, Eastern European accent that reminded him of his own parents. He nodded.

“I know. I want to assure you we’re doing everything we can—”

“You asked if she took drugs, or if she has a boyfriend. You think she ran off with him because I am too strict. This is impossible.”

He wondered how blunt Ron Leclair had been. It was the obvious theory for police to operate under, and more often than not, it would be true. But Marija Kovacev was in no mood to hear it, so he held up a soothing hand. “We don’t know anything, Mrs. Kovacev. I know how scary this is, but when a teenager goes missing, we look at all possible explanations. It doesn’t mean we believe them, but we don’t want to rule out anything that might help us find her. We have dozens of officers out looking for her. We’ve been tracing the bus route she took, tracking down her friends—”

“I left Bosnia so that she would be safe. I have a degree in mathematics from the University of Sarajevo, but I work in a home for old people, and I clean bedpans so my daughter will be safe. If you don’t find her...” her voice faded, and for the first time emotion quivered on her lips, “my life will be nothing.”

“We will find her,” he replied, feeling hollow. “I know it’s hard to be patient, but in almost all cases, missing teenagers turn up safe and sound by the end of the week. We don’t have any reason to think that anything bad has happened to her. No witnesses have reported trouble, no evidence has been found...”

She raised her eyes to his. Now, looking into their depths, he saw the panic she strove so hard to keep at bay. “Do you have a daughter, Inspector Green?”

He nodded, his answer stuck in his throat. “And if a policeman told you about all the statistics and all the police who work on the case, would you be patient?”

He thought of the silent cell phone in his pocket, of his own desperate plea to the guidance counsellor at Hannah’s school. “No.”

A grim flicker of triumph lit her eyes. “Good. You are a better man than Sergeant Leclair. Because you know that when it’s your daughter, and you have not heard from her since two days, and you know what I know about the savage nature of men, to be patient, to trust...this is impossible.”

He had no answers for her, no hope beyond platitudes, but he handed her his card as a gesture of understanding, and Marija Kovacev left his office seemingly lighter of heart for having shared her burden with him. Green, however, felt profoundly shaken, as if the enormity of her fear had only just hit home. He returned to the squad room to find it suddenly crackling with tension. Brian Sullivan was bent over his desk, talking on his cell phone and jotting in his notebook. His massive linebacker frame was rigid, and a deep frown furrowed his brow. The other detectives had stopped what they were doing, and all eyes were fixed on him expectantly.

After a brief conversation, Sullivan signed off, flipped his notebook shut and looked at the others. His face was grim.

“They found her backpack.”

“Where?” a half dozen detectives asked in unison.

“Shoved under a park bench at Hog’s Back Falls.”

Green froze in the doorway. “Anything else?”

Sullivan shook his head. “One of the high school students found it. We’ve secured the scene, Ident’s been called, and Uniform is focussing its search on the vicinity. I’m on my way out there.” He looked around at the tense faces.

“It could be good news, I suppose. The terrain is rough and isolated around there. She could have fallen, gotten hurt.” He grabbed his jacket. “At least we know where to look.”

Green stepped forward to intercept him. “I’m coming with you.” Sullivan frowned, as if surprised to see him. Green tried for a casual shrug. “To see what develops. I’ve been talking to the mother, and I promised to keep her informed.”

Sullivan’s eyes narrowed, and a slight smile crept across his face. “Enjoying your vacation in the country, Mike?”