Читать книгу Dream Chasers - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 7

At six thirty the next morning, Ruth Mendelsohn left her house in Old Ottawa South with her Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever. She crossed Billings Bridge, which spanned the Rideau River about four kilometres north of Hog’s Back Falls. By the time the river reached the bridge, it slowed to a languid pace as it meandered through marshy bays along the shore. From the bridge, Ruth spotted an official-looking Zodiac in the middle of the main channel. Not giving it much thought, she walked her dog up the bike path beside the river, relishing her early morning coffee and the chirping of the songbirds in the trees. This was her favourite time of day, before the roar of cars blocked out the birds and the breakneck blur of commuter cyclists transformed the bike path into a Tour de France circuit. Once they were far enough from the traffic, she glanced around and surreptitiously slipped off her dog’s leash. He bounded off across the grass towards the shore. Ducks quacked and flapped angrily out of reach, but for once Digby had no interest in them. Instead, after snuffling excitedly along the shore for a moment, he disappeared behind an overgrown alder and began to bark furiously. Ruth recognized his high-alert, alien-invasion bark.

Shouting at him in vain, Ruth hurried towards the shore, swearing as the coffee sloshed out of her cup and spilled down her shorts. When she rounded the bush, she saw him in the shallow water at the river’s edge, barking at the police team out on the river. Ruth’s first reaction was guilt, for dogs were not allowed off-lead in this park, let alone in the water. She tried to grab his collar, but he danced further out of reach. Her sandals sank into the wet mud.

Her second reaction, once she’d absorbed the diving gear and the waterproof yellow clothes, was that this was about the missing girl. They were dragging the river for her body. Although they hadn’t acknowledged Digby’s presence, the earsplitting barking could hardly be improving their focus.

Digby, however, was not to be reassured, forcing her to wade ankle deep in muck to secure his collar. As she leaned forward to snap on his leash, trying not to think about the turtles and mud-dwelling creatures that might be tempted by her toes, she caught sight of a yellow and black object coiled around a reed. At first she thought it was some exotic snake, and she recoiled with a small shriek. On closer inspection, she realized it was cloth, and when she fished it out of the water, she saw it was the skimpiest bikini bottom she’d ever seen. She pictured it stretched over her own expansive tush, and the unflattering image made her chuckle.

Don’t suppose anyone even missed this, she thought. Then she raised her head to consider the men combing the river bottom just off shore. What were the odds, she wondered? The bikini wasn’t remotely like the description of the girl’s clothes reported in the media, yet it looked almost brand new and showed no signs of fading or rot from being in the water for long.

“Hey!” she shouted to the men in the water, brandishing the sodden bikini. “This was in the water. Could it be important?”

The driver of the boat looked over at her with an annoyed frown that vanished the instant he saw her find. He got on the radio, and within seconds he gestured to her urgently. “Stay in the water exactly where you found it, ma’am, and wait there. An officer will be right there.”

Ruth stared at the slip of clothing in dismay. The police reaction told it all. They believed the girl had drowned wearing this bikini. Only now, when they found her body, the poor girl would be nearly naked.

The police responded very efficiently from that point, taking her statement and her contact information before sending her firmly on her way. Police in dark coveralls swarmed the marshy area by the alders, and others fanned out along the water’s edge up towards Hog’s Back. She could see similar activity on the north bank of the river, and she shuddered. She’d lived in her old brick house by the Rideau River almost thirty years. It was a tame river, at least within the city, since its force had been blunted by dams and canals. Small children frolicked in its waters, along with the frogs and ducks. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had drowned in the Rideau, unlike its larger and wilder sisters, the Ottawa and the Gatineau. It seemed impossible that a girl in her prime, especially a strong swimmer as the papers reported, could have died here.

* * *

Sullivan phoned Green with the news at seven thirty. Green had managed a fitful night’s sleep and had been up since dawn, preparing to do battle once again with Hannah’s school. The news hit him like a sledgehammer in the chest.

“We’ve set up a command post in the parking lot by Billings Bridge,” Sullivan said, “and the dive team are now concentrating their search on the stretch of the river downstream of the falls. We’ve got a local expert on the topography and currents of the river coming to meet with us at the CP. MacPhail’s also coming to check water temperature and perform his magic calculations on the buoyancy of the body...stuff like that.”

Green absorbed the news about the forensic pathologist’s involvement grimly. “Has anything been released to the media?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Hold off until we have something.” Green didn’t bother with the qualifier “if ”. Lea Kovacev was at the bottom of the river, and it was a matter of time before the divers found her, or her body bloated enough to float to the surface. “I need to inform the mother, so make sure nothing leaks.”

“Nothing will, unless the woman who found the bikini talks. But the press are circling like vultures.”

After he hung up, Green glanced at his watch. Hannah’s school started at nine o’clock. He still had an hour in which to check out the latest news from the search scene and speak to Lea’s mother before he could intercept his daughter at school. Fortunately, her school was located in Old Ottawa South, a mere five minutes drive from Billings Bridge.

Although the challenge of coordinating the different teams on the case—the Ident unit, the ground and water search teams, K-9—fell to the duty inspector, the investigative aspects were still technically in the hands of the lead investigator, Ron Leclair. The case would not officially become a major crimes case until a body was found and the coroner ruled death to be suspicious. But Leclair was astute enough to recognize the potential for disaster in any misstep on his part and seemed genuinely grateful when Green turned up to check out the situation.

Green realized why once he’d waded through all the media trucks in the Billings Bridge parking lot and caught sight of not only Superintendent Barbara Devine, decked out in a photogenic lime green pantsuit, but also the police chief himself in full dress uniform. They stood before a phalanx of reporters. Lea Kovacev’s plight had caught the imagination of the city. Green swore under his breath. Not only would every Tom, Dick, and Harry flock to the river’s edge in the hope of finding the next clue—the bikini top, perhaps—but Marija Kovacev was going to learn the worst possible news as a chatty, late-breaking news byte on some local TV morning show.

He barely had time to check out the specialty teams and confer with the duty inspector before his fears were confirmed. A cab pulled into the parking lot, and Marija Kovacev leaped out, hurling some money in her wake. She raced wide-eyed through the crowd, accosting everyone in uniform before her eyes settled on Green. He drew her hastily out of earshot of the media.

“We haven’t found her,” he said before she could draw breath. “There’s still hope, but I think you should be prepared.”

She tore free of his grasp. “No! She’s a good swimmer! That bathing suit—it falls off at the first jump.”

“We’re looking everywhere, and we have an ambulance standing by if we need it. But meanwhile, is there someone I can call for you? A family member?”

She was shaking her head vigorously. “No family.”

“A friend then? I know how hard it is to be alone, just waiting for the word.”

“I am not waiting. I look all night. I phone every person who is her friend, I went to her work and I walk on all the streets. Today I will go to her school. I will look through her locker—”

“The police did that.” “But they don’t know what they look for. Names, pictures, poems. Lea’s mind is always going. Imagining, creating. She write little poems—just pretty words about her thoughts— but I know somewhere in them are some...” Marija waved her hand impatiently. “What is the word? Clues? Where she would go, if she has a secret boyfriend...” Her chin quivered. “Maybe your Sergeant Leclair is right. I pray to God that he is right. I was too strict, I keep her too close to me, and she can’t tell me about her new boy. I pray she is away with him.”

Green vaguely registered her new-found conversion to hope and recognized the desperate denial that fuelled it. His mind was caught up in her earlier words about Lea’s creative bent. Of all the school books Lea could have taken to her romantic tryst, she had taken her English notebook, complete with doodles, notes on Shakespeare and poems. That notebook was now awaiting forensic examination by Lyle Cunningham. Lyle would be looking for fingerprints and bodily fluids. It would never in a million years cross his meticulous mind to look for hidden clues in a verse of poetry. Clues to her dreams and plans.

Clues to a secret lover, perhaps?

* * *

Jenna Zukowski drained the dregs of her Tim Hortons doubledouble and tossed the cup onto the back seat just as she turned into the Pleasant Park parking lot. She was still only half awake, seven thirty being an insanely early hour to be arriving at work, but she wanted to catch the school athletic practices to see if there were any likely candidates for her suspects list. Sports had never been her forte; beyond the obligatory high school gym classes and a woman’s self-defence course at university, she’d always given physical exertion a wide berth. She could not grasp the appeal of whacking some stupid ball around a court or field, and the thought of sitting through several hours watching someone else do it held even less appeal. Yet to judge from the hockey madness that had gripped the whole city in the last month of the Stanley Cup playoffs, perfectly reasonable people went nuts over it, and a talented sports superstar could make more in a season than she could ever hope to make in a lifetime of humanitarian service.

She parked the car and headed towards the sports field, where she could see a clump of boys running around the track. They wore thin nylon shorts and sleeveless shirts and kept up a long, steady stride. Even at a distance she could see the sweat soaking through their shirts. Already at this hour, the sun packed some punch, threatening another humid day.

She veered over towards two middle-aged men who were sitting in the bleachers, baseball caps pulled low over their eyes against the sun. One was watching through binoculars and yelling at someone in the group to “pick up your fucking feet!” The other had a clipboard in his hand and a whistle dangling from his mouth. The official coach, she decided. His gaze remained on the track as she approached, but the other man lowered his binoculars and swivelled to watch her. She could see his eyes travel the length of her body before settling on her chest. She felt her cheeks burn. “Moron,” she muttered, instinctively tensing up.

She had formulated an admittedly lame opening question about how the sports students were coping, but the more the man leered, the more tangled her tongue became. When she began climbing the bleacher stairs, the lecher punched the coach lightly on the arm and smiled broadly, showing a crooked row of nicotine-stained teeth.

“Hey Ken, this may be your lucky day.” The coach pulled his eyes from the track and turned to her with a distracted frown. On closer inspection, she saw that he was not much older than she was, perhaps thirty at the most, but years of overeating and inaction had given his flesh a doughy look. In contrast, the older man’s stubby body rippled with muscles, each one proudly defined by the soft lines of his black silk shirt. A bodybuilder, she thought with disgust. The guy gets better all the time.

The coach removed his whistle from his lips. “Can I help you?”

“And if he can’t, maybe I can,” black shirt said.

“Put a sock in it, Vic.” The coach rolled his eyes. “Don’t mind him.”

“I’m looking for the gym teacher,” Jenna said, suddenly hoping neither of them fit the bill.

“Your lucky day too, sweetheart,” Vic said. “You found him.”

“One of them, at least,” the coach amended. “I’m Ken Taylor.”

Jenna introduced herself, and before she could get out the first word of her speech, Vic folded her hand into a hearty grip. His thumb stroked her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Jenna Zukowski. Social worker, eh? Don’t mind me saying so, but you hardly look old enough to be out of high school.”

She felt the red extend from her toes to the roots of her hair. She yanked her hand free. Ken smiled at her sympathetically. “Ignore him. You have something to discuss with me?”

“Yes, but...well...” She struggled to untangle her tongue. “It’s about Lea Kovacev.”

“Oh, is there news?”

“No. At least not that I know of. But I’m concerned about her friends and how they’re coping, whether they need support...” She trailed off.

“As far as I know, all her friends have been taken care of. Guidance made a big push yesterday to touch base with them.”

“Yes, I was helping with that. But it struck me that it was mostly girls who came down to see us. Girls have an easier time talking about things, expressing feelings, asking for help.”

Ken smiled drily. “Whereas boys go out and punch someone? That’s what you mean?”

“Well, no. I mean, not punch someone, but bottle it up. Pretend everything’s cool and under control.” Vic muttered something under his breath. Sensing a hint of mockery, she turned to glare at him. “Suicide statistics among young men back me up on that.”

“You’re right, you’re absolutely right,” Ken interjected. “But I’ve been monitoring the boys in my classes to make sure that if I see any hint of trouble, I speak to them. They may not go down to Guidance, but they talk to me privately.”

“And were there any? I mean, boys that you were worried about?” Ken frowned at her thoughtfully for a moment.

“Not unduly,” he said eventually. Then he glanced at his watch in dismay and shoved his whistle in his mouth. Waving his arms, he blew three blasts that left Jenna’s ears ringing. Through gritted teeth, she persevered with her script.

“Do you know if any of the boys were especially close to her? Boyfriends or ex-boyfriends? Those will be the ones in the most distress.”

Ken continued to wave as he started down the stairs. “I don’t pay attention to that.”

Jenna followed him, aware of Vic uncomfortably close behind her. “She must have had boyfriends. She was a pretty girl.”

Ken stopped abruptly and swung on her. “Was? Are you suggesting she’s dead?”

“No, no! Of course not! But I mean, it’s worrisome, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think anything,” Ken retorted. “And don’t you go putting that kind of thought into the kids’ minds either!”

“Whoa Kenny, easy now,” Vic said. “I think Jenna’s just saying what we’re all thinking. Right? Just preparing ourselves. In case. In the sports business, it’s always good to be prepared. Anticipate that bodycheck before it slams you into the boards.”

“Oh, fuck off, Vic,” Ken said as he strode off across the field.

* * *

By nine o’clock in the morning, the heat had already draped a soggy blanket over the streets. Behind the smoggy haze, the sun shone blurry white in the eastern sky, and not the slightest puff of breeze stirred the leaves in the wilting trees. As Green approached Norman Bethune Alternate School, he saw a group of students clustered in the shade of a massive old tree, fanning themselves with notebooks as they bent over their work. Green scanned the crowd anxiously for a familiar blue head, but to no avail.

He approached the group. It was like looking at a dozen Hannahs. Shredded clothes, body piercings and tattoos were everywhere, and hair styles ranged from tiger-striped mohawks to gothic black sheets. The students eyed him with suspicion, no doubt bemused by his Bagelshop T-shirt and jeans, but their eyes grew dark when he introduced himself. A lanky, skeletal girl in a long, multicoloured kaftan wagged her head back and forth. Her every move seemed to be in slow motion.

“Hannah never told us you were a cop.”

I’m sure she didn’t, he thought. He doubted Hannah even wasted breath on her boring old dad. “Do you know where she is? She’s not answering her cell.”

“Well, that’s Hannah. She comes and goes. Smart though. When she’s here, she gets more work done in half a day than the rest of us do in three.”

“So it’s normal for her not to be at school?”

“Oh, yeah. Especially now. It’s so nice out, we’d all be at the beach if we didn’t have stuff to finish up.”

“Do you know where she’d hang out?”

The lanky girl’s eyes shuttered. She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Hannah never likes the same thing twice. Drugs, boys, hang-outs, it’s always got to be something new.”

Green’s heart chilled at the mention of drugs. He’d been in Major Crimes too long to be cavalier about it. Drugs meant dealers, and dealers meant trouble. “Any guesses?”

“Well—” The younger girl in the striped hair began, but the lanky girl shot her a scowl that silenced her in mid-word. Green wanted to throttle her but forced himself to be nonchalant. Throttling never worked with Hannah either. Instead, he dredged up a rueful smile.

“Look, I’m a dad. I worry. And because I’m a cop, I worry even more. Like right now, with this teenage girl missing, I’m imagining all sorts of crazy things. So please, if you know anything, tell me.”

“We don’t know anything,” the tiger-haired girl said. “Not really.”

“Can you at least tell me if she’s all right?”

“I’m sure.” The lanky girl bobbed her head. Her black hair swung in ropes. “The guy—the people—she’s with are cool.”

Green gritted his teeth to keep from screaming at her. “If you can reach her, or you hear from her, tell her to call me. Please!” They exchanged glances, and to a person twitched their shoulders in a doubtful shrug. It was not a comforting response, but there was nothing more he could do beyond attaching electrodes to unspeakable parts. He headed back to the car, seriously debating the wisdom of filing a missing persons report. Hannah might never forgive him if he did, but if something was really wrong, or something had happened to her, he would never forgive himself if he didn’t.

As he was nosing his way into the impossible traffic on Bank Street en route to the Elgin Street Police Headquarters, a police cruiser streaked by towards Billings Bridge, its lights flashing and siren blaring. Green’s blood ran cold. At that very moment his phone rang, and he grabbed it, praying it was Hannah.

It was Brian Sullivan.