Читать книгу Charlie McKelvey Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - C.B. Forrest - Страница 16

June 23, Sector West, Croatia.

Dear Kit... Only eight days till my UN leave and I can’t wait to see you, hang out at the farm, watch TV , go to a movie. Man, just to take a walk down the lane without checking for mines! It’s been boring here, sitting at the hot dog stand all day. The rules have changed, which is frustrating. We’re not supposed to confiscate weapons any more, we’re supposed to ask the belligerents nicely if they’d like to give them up. Like that’s going to happen!

So the other day a bunch of Serbs walked in and took all their rifles and grenades out of the cache we had them in, and we couldn’t do a fucking thing. I thought the Hammer was going to have a stroke. He’s on the radio screaming to the OC , but that’s the orders from the new Sector West commander. Jordanian guy. I don’t know about this multi-national idea, seems like the Canadians are the only ones who know what we’re doing. So of course the Croats start screaming favouritism and they haul out their guns too. And all our hard work getting the place calmed down so you could walk around without shells flying over your heads, that’s all going to be down the tubes.

On the bright side, our section beat 3 Section at soccer yesterday. Afterwards at the mess, Sarge did a little dance on the table again. From a strict religious Prairie boy, he’s getting to be the life of the party. And another good thing, Fundy has made a real difference to the mines. She finds them better than the engineers, and she gets such a kick out of it. Big smile on her face and her tongue hanging out as she waits for her treat. Yesterday she was tagging along with Mahir and she spotted one buried right on the path he uses every day to get home.

* * *

Sue Peters was being airlifted to the Ottawa Hospital on advanced life support. By the time the helicopter was scheduled to touch down at seven-fifteen, Green had already been on the phone with the military police, the Petawawa OPP and the Pembroke Hospital. He’d spoken to everyone from the first officer on the scene to the doctors who had tried to patch her together. He’d briefed Barbara Devine and prepared a short statement for the press.

He knew everything that had happened from the moment Peters’ battered body had been discovered inside an abandoned railway warehouse, but not a damn thing about how she got there. Constable Weiss had been nearly incoherent when questioned by the local police, and doctors had stuffed him full of tranquillizers before packing him into the back of an OPP cruiser and shipping him off to Ottawa.

By seven o’clock, Elgin Street Headquarters was teeming with people. Off-duty officers, on hearing the news, had reported in to learn the latest details, to volunteer for extra duty, or simply to be among their own. Coordination between the various police services involved had now gone up the chain of command to Barbara Devine, but when she phoned down to demand that Green come upstairs to a meeting with herself and the local brass from the military and provincial police services, he refused.

“I’ve got a critically injured officer landing at the Civic Campus in less than fifteen minutes. That’s where I’m needed, Barbara. You guys decide how this is going to be run.” He paused as he caught sight of Bob Gibbs pacing back and forth across the squad room, talking to a rapt group of detectives. It looked as if the whole Major Crimes Unit, and quite a few of the other units, had come to commiserate. Nothing was worse than an officer down. These guys needed to be involved. “Just make sure you put me on any joint task force you create.”

To her credit, Devine did not protest. It seemed even she understood this was one time when bureaucracy took a back seat. Green hung up, grabbed his jacket and headed out into the squad room to round up Gibbs. Throughout the entire car ride from Elgin Street to the Civic Hospital, the young detective talked non-stop, reviewing over and over the details of the investigation to date. His speculations made no sense, but Green let him talk. Exhaustion and self-recrimination would take over soon enough.

The helicopter was just flying into view when they drove up to the landing site, which sat at the edge of a field across Carling Avenue from the hospital. In the darkness, lights and vehicles appeared to be everywhere. A circle of lights marked the landing pad, and a ground ambulance sat by the tarmac, lights flashing and stretcher ready. Green had the ridiculous thought that it would probably be faster to wheel the stretcher across Carling Avenue to the hospital on foot.

At the entrance to the landing field, a burly ground crew worker flagged him to a stop, ignored Green’s badge and waved them over to the parking lot of the hospital emergency department across the street. “You’ll have to check in at Admissions, sir,” he shouted over the deafening roar of the helicopter. Dust and wind swirled in the air. “They’ll want some information.”

Green parked in a restricted area closest to the door, slapped a police sticker on the dash and led Gibbs inside to the Admissions Desk in Emergency, which was right next to the ambulance bay. Heavy metal swing doors separated the admissions area from the unloading area, however, so they only caught a fleeting glimpse of Peters’ still form as the stretcher whisked by. White coats swirled around her, and a man’s voice snapped out her vital signs. The flurry of activity was over as quickly as it blew up, leaving no one left to ask.

Green introduced himself to the admissions clerk and told her he’d like to speak to the doctor in charge as soon as he or she was available. The clerk gave him a brief, distracted nod before returning to her forms. The emergency room was filled with people slumped in chairs along the walls, talking in hushed whispers, reading, or simply staring into space. Several watched Green and Gibbs with idle curiosity.

They never did see an ER physician, but about fifteen minutes later, the air ambulance crew emerged from behind the steel doors and stopped by to give them a report on their way back out to the helicopter. They looked grim.

“She’s going straight up to surgery, sir,” said the senior paramedic. “The OR was all set up and waiting for her. But I don’t want to sugarcoat it. We got her here in very good time, and she had a carotid pulse when the surgical team took her up to the OR , and those are both positives. But she’s lost a lot of blood, and she sustained fairly extensive injuries to the head. Some bastard beat her up pretty bad.”

Green listened with grim calm. He had already heard about the beating from the Petawawa OPP, but Gibbs’s reaction stopped him from asking further details. The young man suddenly swayed on his feet, and Green and the paramedic dived to catch his arms before he slumped to the ground. With practised calm, the paramedic helped him to a chair, forced his head between his knees and ordered Green to get some water.

When Green returned with the water, Gibbs was hunched forward, clutching his head in his hands and rocking from side to side. “I should never have sent her alone. What was I thinking? I should never have sent her alone.”

Oh, shit, Green thought, the self-recrimination has started already. “And maybe I should never have gone to Halifax,” he interrupted. “But Bob—”

“You should never have put me in charge.”

Probably not, once I saw how ruthless the killer was, Green thought, but he forced his own self-doubts out of mind. He dragged out the only platitudes he could think of. Platitudes that had been fed to him six years earlier, and rang as true and as hollow now as they had then. “Bob, these things happen. We’re out there in danger every day. We make judgment calls on a wing and a prayer, and sometimes we’re wrong.”

“But I knew she was inexperienced. I-I just didn’t have the balls to tell her no. She wanted it so bad.”

“You followed proper procedure; you sent someone with her.”

“Another mistake. Where the f-fuck was Weiss when this happened to her?”

Where the fuck indeed, Green thought grimly. The man didn’t need to be a major crimes detective to know the basic premise of policing. Officer safety first. Never leave your partner’s back exposed. Constable Weiss had a hell of a lot to answer for when he finally made it back to Ottawa, no matter what his mental state.

For now it was a waiting game. The hospital directed them to a more private room up on the surgical floor, and officers drifted in and out in search of news and moral support. As the evening dragged on, one of Gibbs’s friends took him down to the cafeteria for some food and Green used the opportunity to duck outside and update Sharon.

The sky was clear, and a hint of frost clouded his breath, but he was glad of the fresh air. He shivered as he sat on the stone curb and filled her in. True to form, Sharon listened and said exactly what he needed to hear. Which was why he loved her, why he had fallen in love with her the first time he’d met her six years earlier, when she’d offered a listening ear to an overworked and overwhelmed sergeant dealing with the worst killing he’d ever encountered.

“The fact she’s still in the OR is a good sign, honey,” she said now. “It means she’s hanging in, and they’re stitching her back together bit by bit.”

Sucking in the cold, crisp night air, he managed a feeble laugh. “Let’s hope they find enough of the parts.”

“You always said she was one tough, tenacious broad.”

“But so young. So...blind.”

“This is not your fault, honey. You can’t control every single minute of every single case.”

“But the important ones, Sharon. The ones that could get my officers killed. I should control those.”

“So you’ve taken up clairvoyance now, besides trying to control everyone’s life?” Her soft chuckle sounded through the phone, but when she resumed, her voice was gentler. “I could come down there and bring you a cup of tea. Give you a hug. Out of view of the troops, of course. On a dark street corner somewhere.”

“A cup of tea and a hug would be wonderful. But I can’t leave here yet. Things have got to start happening soon.” He leaned back against the brick wall, picturing her tender chocolate eyes. “Sorry I missed Shabbat dinner. Did you pick up Dad?”

“Yes. He missed you, but you know how much he adores Hannah. He’d pinched her cheeks raw by the end of the night.”

“He’s the only one who could get away with that.” He felt a bittersweet pang. Hannah had been enchanted by her grandfather from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, but then her grandfather hadn’t deserted her sixteen years ago. He banished the twinge of envy; their domestic struggles seemed so inconsequential while Peters lay inside, dancing with death.

“Well, give her forty years, and you’ll have earned the right too,” she said.

He laughed as he hung up, his spirits lifted. Next he put in a call to update Barbara Devine and Gaetan Larocque, both of whom were still tied up in the meeting with the senior brass. When he returned to the waiting room, there was still no sign of the doctor, but there were half a dozen familiar faces. Gibbs was back, looking slightly less fragile. Perhaps some anger was beginning to take hold, for he marched straight over to Green. His jaw was tight.

“Weiss is here. Asked how she was, then walked off. Not a word of explanation. Not even an apology.”

“Did you ask him?”

“I can b-barely talk to the guy.”

“Where is he now?”

Gibbs nodded to a cluster of chairs at the far end of the room. Green turned to see a man leaning against the wall in the corner. His arms were crossed and his chin thrust out, as if in defiance. Green squared his shoulders and was just preparing to do battle when the swinging doors opened and two doctors emerged. They were dressed in stained hospital scrubs, and exhaustion was etched in their faces. The older, a man in his fifties with a polished bald pate and cadaverous cheekbones, introduced himself as Doctor Vargas and asked if the next of kin was present. To Green’s surprise, a young man rose from the corner. He was a male clone of Sue Peters, down to the frizzy red hair and the riot of freckles across his cheeks. Beneath the freckles, he was the colour of bleached flour as he approached the doctors.

“I’m her brother, Mark Peters. How is she?”

Vargas inclined his head noncommittally. “She’s a strong, healthy woman, and that’s got her this far. But her condition is still critical, and it will be touch and go for the next fortyeight hours. There are a few things we won’t know until she regains consciousness. If she does.”

“If?”

“She’s suffered significant trauma to the brain, and with brain injuries of this type, it can be weeks, even months, before we see the extent of the damage.”

A collective groan rose from the officers who had clustered around to hear.

“So you’re saying she could be...a vegetable?” Mark managed. His voice quavered.

“Let’s get her through the next forty-eight hours before we worry about that.”

Dr.Vargas went on to detail all the test results and surgical procedures they had performed, but after a while, Green’s mind glazed over. It really did sound as if they’d had to stitch her back together bit by bit.

After the doctor’s departure, friends and colleagues gathered in clumps to talk in hushed tones, and Green noticed that Weiss was no longer there. Curious, he set off in search, starting with the corridor next to where the man had been standing. That corridor ended in a bank of doors, all of which were locked.

He retraced his steps and tried another corridor, peeking into rooms along the way. Linen supplies, bathrooms, offices and more doors marked “authorized personnel only”. The corridor jogged and twisted at unexpected points, following the shape of the aging, multi-winged building. It came to an abrupt halt at a heavy steel door marked “exit”.

Green yanked open the door and peered down a flight of iron stairs into the semi-gloom. There, sitting in the middle of the bottom stair, was Constable Weiss, hunched over, staring at his shoes. He didn’t stir when Green clanged down the stairs, didn’t even raise his head, but Green saw that his whole body was vibrating. Green’s anger softened a touch.

“Jeff? What’s going on?”

“Needed some air.”

“I’m Mike Green, by the way.”

Weiss gave a strangled grunt. “I know who you are. Come to tell me I’m a fuck-up, a moron, a disgrace to the uniform?”

“What happened?”

“I told all that to the cops up in Petawawa.”

Green’s anger crashed back. He grabbed the man’s chin and jerked his head up to face him. “Listen, asshole, I don’t give a shit who else you told. I’m her superior officer, and you’re damn well going to tell me how you almost got her killed.”

To his surprise, Weiss’s eyes flooded with tears. He twisted his head away and dashed his knuckles across his cheeks. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Talk to me!”

“I can’t.” Weiss sucked in his breath and wrestled for control. “I don’t know what to say! I should have known it was a crazy idea, but she was the boss. No, that’s no excuse. I should have stopped her.”

“You should have backed her up!” Green thundered.

“It was a routine canvass. I thought she had everything under control.”

“Canvass of what?”

“Bars, restaurants... I took half, she took half.”

“Bars! Why the hell were you canvassing in bars?”

“We were trying to track the dead woman’s movements. Find out what she was after.”

“So you left Peters alone in bars?”

“It was three o’clock in the fucking afternoon!” Weiss shot back. “In a two-bit little town, not New York City.”

“A two-bit town that might just harbour our murderer.”

“Well, I—we—didn’t think of that.”

“You goddamn well should have!”

Abruptly Weiss sagged back against the step. Tears brimmed in his eyes again as he nodded his head up and down. “You’re right, you’re right. God, what a mess.” He plunged his face into his hands and began to rock.

Green watched him in silence for a few minutes. Weiss’s reactions puzzled him. Not the grief itself, not the guilt, not even the flashes of defensive anger. But the extremes of them all, and the erratic swings from one to another like a man ricocheting free fall from one violent feeling to the next. Was the man unstable? Or was he faking it?

Green squatted in front of him, willing him to return to the real world. He spoke grimly. “Jeff, tell me what you do know.”

Weiss stopped rocking but didn’t raise his head. Green waited, feeling the seconds tick by in the dank, ill-lit stairwell. Finally, Weiss heaved a deep, shuddering sigh and spoke through his hands.

“She dropped me at this bar and told me to meet her at the car by the hotel where the bus station was. There were only twelve places to canvass—the hotel, three shitty restaurants, a fast food joint, a convenience store, a couple of offices and banks. I was done my six in about half an hour, so I found the car and waited outside it for her to show up.”

“Why didn’t you go look for her?”

He scrubbed his face and lifted his head. His voice grew stronger. “She didn’t want me to blow her cover.”

“Her cover?”

“Yeah, we were supposed to be looking for a lost friend. In my case my girlfriend, in hers just an old friend.”

“You mean you didn’t identify yourselves as police officers?”

“No.”

“Jesus Christ,” Green muttered.

“Yeah.” Weiss pressed his eyes closed. “God, am I fucked.”

“You’re fucked? Sue Peters may be dead!”

“I know, and believe me, if I could trade places with her, I would.”

“Too easy, Weiss. Go on. You were waiting at the car, and...?”

“When over an hour passed, I started to get worried. So I went to look for her, and she wasn’t in any of the places. But the bartender in the first place said her partner had called to meet her outside, so she’d left.”

“The bartender said her partner called? So he knew she was a cop?”

“Yeah, apparently. Anyway—”

“Did you tell the Petawawa police about that supposed phone call? They can check it out.”

He hesitated. “I don’t remember. I think I told them pretty well what I’ve told you. Anyway, I went back to the car and that’s when I noticed the smell of pepper spray. I followed it till I found her in the warehouse about a hundred feet from the car.”

The OPP had already reported finding an empty cannister of pepper spray near Peters’ body, but no other weapons. Her Glock had been found stashed in her car. Green pictured the young woman fending off her attacker with the only weapon at her disposal. At least the silly fool had had that; otherwise she’d be dead.

“Did you see anyone else in the vicinity? Or leaving the area?”

Weiss shook his head. “The whole place was dead. And to be honest, once I found Sue, all I could think of was the 911 call. And afterwards, how she was lying there bleeding all that time I was waiting at the car. Christ, I’m such a moron.”

Green already knew that the OPP ’s preliminary street canvass of the area around the hotel had yielded nothing. Ridiculous, Green thought, that a woman could be assaulted at three o’clock on a workday afternoon, near the central crossroads of the town, and no one heard or saw a thing.

“We’ll send our own guys up there tomorrow,” Green said, then glanced at his watch. Two a.m. “Well, at first light. We’ll be working closely with the local OPP , and you can rest assured we’ll comb every inch of the area and interview everyone who passes through that part of town.”

Privately, Green doubted the attacker had been careless enough to leave them much to go on. He didn’t for one minute believe this was an opportunistic assault with a sexual intent. This was Patricia’s killer; a smart, calculating man who had planned his attack with care. He had deliberately targeted an investigating cop. Either he had phoned the bartender once he knew Sue Peters was in the bar, or the bartender had phoned him with the tip. But there were two nagging questions about the whole scenario. One, was Jeff Weiss telling the truth?

And two, if he was, why hadn’t the killer targeted him too?

* * *

When Green arrived back at the waiting room, most of the police officers had finally drifted away to work or to sleep. A couple had stayed to keep Mark Peters company during his vigil, and one detective sat beside Gibbs, who was dozing. He signalled Green to one side and asked if it was true that Ottawa was to have no part in the investigation. Appalled, Green managed a hasty assurance to the contrary before ducking outside to put in a call to the station.

Gaetan Larocque’s voice gave him away before he’d even said two words. He cleared his throat anxiously. “The agreement we have is that the OPP handles the case up there, sir. It’s their jurisdiction.”

“And who the fuck agreed—” Green stopped himself as the answer came to him. Barbara Devine, of course, the queen of org charts and rules. Of form over substance every time. He forced himself to sound reasonable. “Okay, I’ll fix that in the morning. Meanwhile you can start freeing up some officers—”

“We don’t have the experienced manpower available right now, sir. Not to do a really thorough job. That’s what Superintendent Devine explained.”

We don’t have the manpower available to investigate an assault on one of our own officers? Green thought, barely believing what he was hearing. He wanted to throttle the woman. How could she even think that, let alone justify it! Never mind that it was true, that the squad was stretched beyond reason by the three murders already on its plate. When it came to one of their own, everybody would do double duty without complaint.

But this was his problem, not Larocque’s, so Green held his tongue until he could get rid of the man. Marshalling his arguments, he punched in Devine’s extension and listened as it rang through the empty room. With each ring, his outrage mounted, so that by the time her voice mail kicked in, he nearly hurled his cellphone against the wall.

“Barbara,” he said tersely. “No way we’re staying out of the Petawawa investigation, even if I go up there myself on my own time!”

Shoving his cellphone into his pocket, he went back inside the hospital. Constable Weiss had not returned to the waiting room, but Bob Gibbs was awake. He rose and lurched towards Green at a clumsy shuffle, as if the effort to coordinate his gangly limbs was now beyond him.

“Any news about catching the bastard? Sir?”

Green tried to sound encouraging. “Everyone’s working on it. It’s early yet. Any news here?”

“Ident was in to take samples from under her fingernails. They were pretty clean, Sergeant Paquette said, but we need only one hair or a few skin cells to get DNA. And the ggynaecologist was in to check for sexual...” Gibbs broke off, his composure cracking at the thought. He struggled on. “Whoever assaulted her didn’t... There were no signs of...” Speech deserted him again, and he gulped for breath.

“That’s good,” Green interjected, hoping to forestall a complete collapse. “This had nothing to do with sexual assault.”

Wordlessly, Gibbs bobbed his head up and down. Then his gaze shifted behind Green, and his face lit with relief. Green turned to see Brian Sullivan framed in the doorway. The big detective was bleary-eyed and dressed in a rumpled suit as if he’d come straight off a twelve-hour shift. His gaze was fixed on Gibbs, and his expression was grave. Gibbs walked straight to him, and without a word, Sullivan engulfed him in a powerful embrace. Over Gibbs’s shoulder, his eyes met Green’s.

“Is she dead?” he mouthed. Green shook his head, and Sullivan tightened his grip.

“She’ll make it, Bob. Giving up is not in Peters’ repertoire, you know that.”

Gibbs drew back, his eyes red. When he raised his fist to dry them surreptitiously, Sullivan pretended not to notice. He clapped his broad hand on Green’s shoulder. “Good to see you, Mike.”

“I’m glad you came.” Green fought an unexpected lump in his own throat. As always, his old friend filled the room with hope and confidence. God, he’d missed the man!

“How is she?”

Green glanced at Gibbs, who had slumped back into his chair. He looked drained. Beyond talk. “I could use a coffee. Let’s go downstairs.”

Taking a corner table in the completely deserted hospital cafeteria, Green gave Sullivan the highlights of Peters’ case. The big man stretched his long legs out and listened without interruption, his eyes fixed on a distant point in space. It felt just like old times when they were partners in Major Crimes. In the face of Sullivan’s calm pragmatism, Green felt the ropes of tension in his gut slowly loosen, releasing feelings he had kept under tight lock. He twirled his coffee cup restlessly.

“The worst part of it is that I never really liked the kid.”

“She was a royal pain in the ass,” Sullivan replied.

“Yeah. But maybe I didn’t protect her enough, didn’t consider her safety enough, because I didn’t like her.”

“That’s bullshit, Mike. You weren’t even in town when she took off to Petawawa.”

“But maybe I should have been. Bottom line, the kid’s hanging by a thread, and we’re stretched so thin that Devine has relinquished the whole investigation up there to the OPP . I told her I’d go up and do the damn case myself.”

A slow smile twitched across Sullivan’s lips. “I might have an offer neither she nor the Chief can refuse.”

Green cocked his head. After twenty years on the streets together, he knew Sullivan inside out. Knew what that smile meant, yet he barely let himself hope.

“I’m going crazy in Strategic Planning, Mike. I could ask my Inspector for a temporary assignment back to Major Crimes, just to plug your holes in manpower and provide some experience on the ground. Under the circumstances, the brass would be crazy to refuse.” His blue eyes twinkled. “That is, if you’d like some company working the streets of Petawawa.”