Honour Among Men (16 page)

The airport was full of stranded passengers, but the pace of activity was leisurely. Who was going anywhere? He checked in and cleared security without difficulty. By ten o'clock he was settled at his departure gate with a coffee, trying to read the Halifax
Chronicle-Herald
. But thoughts of Kate McGrath kept drifting uninvited through his mind, crowding out the latest headlines. Her long legs, her smile that quivered ever so slightly at the edges when she'd said goodbye . . .

He pulled out his cellphone and called Sharon. She had the day off and sounded sleepy as she greeted him.

“Your son and I were sleeping in,” she said.

He glanced at his watch and did a quick calculation. Nine fifteen in Ottawa. “Sorry, honey, did I wake you?”

“Not really. I was just lying in bed thinking I should get up. I think the entire household is camped outside our bedroom door waiting for breakfast.” Her chuckle dissolved into a yawn. He pictured her in bed, her black curls tumbling in her eyes and her nightgown rumpled up around her thighs. He needed to get home.

“I don't suppose you could hold that picture till I get home?”

“Which one? Me in bed, or the kids and the dog outside the door?” She chuckled again, this time with no trace of
sleepiness. “You'd better hurry, baby. Neither one will keep.”

Mentally he checked off the “to-do” list ahead of him before he could cash in on the promise in her tone, but then he remembered it was Friday. “Damn, it's Shabbat,” he said. He would have to pick up his father at his retirement home and bring him home again after dinner.

“Well, you know what the rabbis say. Even a quickie on the Sabbath is a mitzvah.”

“A quickie wasn't what I had in mind,” he replied.

“Nor was a good deed, I bet.”

He was still laughing when he hung up. Their daily life was so hectic and their schedules so erratic that he sometimes feared their lives barely touched any more. The banter reminded him of old times, and even the long, tedious wait for his flight could not dampen his hopes. His father was elderly and frail and could usually manage no more than an hour's visit for Friday dinner. The night would still be young once Green returned from driving him home.

The plane finally took off at one p.m. and touched down in Ottawa just after two in the afternoon local time. He phoned Gibbs on his way in from the airport, and by the time he arrived, the detective was waiting outside his office with his notebook and a sheaf of reports in his hands. He looked surprisingly calm and in command. This responsibility has been good for him, Green decided. That, and perhaps—amazingly—Detective Sue Peters.

“Any crises, Bob?” he asked as he dumped his suitcase in the corner of his office and looked at his desk in dismay. It was covered with memos and pink telephone slips, which would only tell a quarter of the story. The rest would be lurking in the furiously blinking telephone voicemail box and crowding the inbox of his computer.

“No, sir. Staff Sergeant Larocque reviewed the case with me this morning and made a couple of suggestions.”

“Oh good,” Green said, hoping it was. The Byward Market circus must have wound down enough to give Larocque time to do the rest of his job. He nodded to the papers in Gibbs's hands. “So, can you give me the highlights?”

“Not much new from forensics yet, sir. We're still waiting on the results of the toxicology. Fingerprinting of the victim's hotel room confirmed she was there, but that's no surprise. There were lots of other prints—Lou Paquette said the room probably hadn't been thoroughly cleaned in a year—but he's got no hits on
AFIS
.”

“Doesn't mean anything,” Green said. “Our man's not your ordinary bad guy who's going to be in the system.”

“We've been canvassing restaurants, bars and pubs in the vicinity of her hotel in Vanier and the Byward Market to find a witness who saw her drinking with anyone the evening she died.”

“Good thinking.”

“It was Detective Peters' idea.” Gibbs blushed and cleared his throat. “So far no luck, but there are a lot of bars to cover.”

“You've assigned some uniforms?”

“Yessir. And we've also got the regular neighbourhood officers checking the bars on their beat.”

“You may need to expand the canvass to include the centretown area too. Any place that's along the route from her hotel to the aqueduct. The pathologist thought it was good quality scotch—and he's the expert—so we may be looking for an upscale bar like the Chateau Laurier or one of the downtown hotels.”

Gibbs jotted a few notes in his book then flipped back, scanning as if to make sure he'd forgotten nothing. “I just called Frank Corelli from the
Sun
for an update before you
arrived, sir. He hasn't heard a word from his witness. I think it was just a crank.”

Green frowned. He was less convinced, but Gibbs already had enough leads to pursue without worrying about cagey media-seekers. “I'll handle Frank. What have you got from the military?”

Gibbs paged through his notes again. “Some good, some bad. Captain Ulrich was not very forthcoming. He kept talking about fishing expeditions and protecting the privacy and safety of armed forces personnel. I asked for a list of soldiers in MacDonald's and Oliver's unit, and he stalled. That's hundreds, he said, could take weeks to compile.”

Green snorted. “Their computers all broken suddenly?”

“I wasn't sure how broad a net you wanted to cast, sir. Ian MacDonald and Daniel Oliver were both in the same section, which normally has around ten men in it, led by a sergeant. So I said I wanted contact info on all those men. But there are three or four sections in a platoon, and according to Ulrich, usually a platoon works as a unit performing particular duties, say guarding a checkpoint. That makes it thirty to forty men, led by a lieutenant or captain. So then I asked for the names of the platoon members and then everyone in the chain of command. He said it would take a long time, and he'd have to check with his superior, and . . .”

“Someone's warned them we're sniffing around,” Green grumbled. His thoughts were racing. Who? One of the bartenders in Halifax with close ties to the military? Inspector Norrich? Or the killer himself, who was well enough connected to the military to be able to pull some strings?

On the other hand, maybe the military was just being its usual paranoid self, and at the first hint of outside interference, it had thrown up the walls of secrecy. That was
an equally plausible explanation.

“I did get a few bits of news out of them though, sir.” Gibbs was smiling now, no longer glued to his notes. “You asked about two specific men—Sawranchuk and Hamm? Gary Sawranchuk is no longer in the service; he got out in December 1995. It was a medical discharge, but Ulrich refused to provide details. Confidentiality. The man's last posting was a training unit in Gagetown, New Brunswick. Ulrich wouldn't give me his current address, but he's originally from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, so he may have moved back there.”

“Or he may have stayed in the Maritimes,” Green said. “Close enough to drop in to a Halifax bar for a drink now and then. Did you get a photograph of him?”

“Ulrich has to check that with his superiors as well, sir.”

Green sighed. “I may have to have a little chat with his superiors myself.” Or perhaps drag out our own big guns. Barbara Devine. He almost laughed aloud at the prospect of Devine nose to nose with some ass-covering military mandarin. “What about the platoon commander, Hamm?”

“That's the one piece of good news, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Hamm he is now, and he's on the staff of the general in command of the Royal Canadians. Posted . . . and this is the exciting thing . . .”

Green waited. He knew the answer, because he knew where the Royal Canadian Regiment was based, but this time he didn't want to deprive Gibbs of his grand moment.

Gibbs stabbed his notebook. “In Petawawa.”

Bingo, Green thought. The web of clues was closing. He wasn't sure who would ultimately be trapped inside, but the excitement of the chase gripped him. He glanced at his watch. It was almost four o'clock.

“Okay!” he exclaimed, flicking on his computer. “Now get
out of here and let me clear up some of my paperwork. Because tomorrow morning, you and I are going to Petawawa.”

Gibbs's face fell. “Oh. Well, I—I . . .”

“It's the obvious next step, Bob. Don't worry, it's your case. It's just that I know the questions to ask this guy.”

“That's not it, sir. It—it's just . . . Sue's already gone. I sent her up there this morning, on Staff Sergeant Larocque's recommendation.”

Instinctively, Green recoiled in horror. He took a deep breath to quell it. Sue Peters may be blunt with no feeling for diplomacy or subtext, but she had proved herself to be bright and creative, and much of the progress in the investigation to date had been due to her. Green was always lecturing his men on using lateral thinking skills rather than doggedly tracking one lead after another. Whatever Peters lacked in subtlety, she sure as hell knew how to think.

Yet no amount of creative thinking would keep an inexperienced, over-enthusiastic rookie from blundering into trouble in the minefield of military culture. He allowed his dismay to focus on that.

“Without you?”

“No, sir. I mean yes, sir. I thought I should stay at the office to . . .” Gibbs paused as if to regroup. “I mean, to stay on top of Ulrich and to coordinate the other avenues of inquiry. That's what the Staff Sergeant said. But Sue really wanted to go. She'd uncovered the lead about the bus trip, and she thought she should follow through right away.”

“But Bob—by herself?” he said incredulously. The more he thought about the fiasco, the angrier he became. Peters was going to interview Hamm without half the background she needed to uncover his involvement, and they were only going to get one clear shot at the man. Once Hamm realized what they were
probing for, the barriers would go up so high he'd be invisible.

“N-no, sir. I sent Constable Weiss from General Assignment with her.”

A beginner, Green thought.
Noch besser
. Even better. “Who the hell is Constable Weiss?”

“Jeff Weiss. H . . . he's been with the case from the beginning, sir. He asked his sergeant to be assigned. I think he's keen to job shadow Major Crimes.”

The name rang a faint, unpleasant bell. “Have I met this Constable Weiss before?”

“Yes. Well—maybe. He was down at the aqueduct the first morning, helping with the search of the area, sir. Tall guy, blue eyes and blond hair? Works out.”

Green's mind rifled through his memory until it came to rest with a jolt on a face he'd barely registered at the time. It was the blue eyes he remembered. Intelligent, focussed, but cocky as hell. Fuck, he thought, just what we need, a zealous, blundering rookie detective, paired up with an entry-level officer with zero investigative skills but an ego the size of Lake Superior.

Gibbs was tugging at his tie as if in a vain effort to get more air. He cast Green a pleading look. “His sergeant says he was an experienced and level-headed street cop, sir.”

Gibbs was saved from further wrath by the sharp buzzing of Green's phone. “Constable Weiss calling for Detective Gibbs,” the clerk said. “He says it's urgent.”

Green flipped on the speaker phone and told her to put him through. Constable Weiss's voice, when it filled the tiny alcove office, sounded neither experienced nor level-headed.

“Sir, it's Sue. Detective Peters. Something terrible's happened!”

Sue Peters had been awake half the night planning her trip to Petawawa. She knew the army type inside out—she'd grown up with them—and she planned to walk a very finely balanced tightrope between backslapping like one of the boys and allowing a peek at the merchandise. She knew she had to put in an official appearance with the local Ontario Provincial Police detachment and even with the military police on the base, but she didn't expect to learn a thing about Patricia Ross's adventures from them. She doubted the woman would even have attempted to go through official channels.

She intended to hit the bars in the cheapest part of town—if there was such a thing in a town as small as Petawawa—where the boys from the base would go for their entertainment. Where they would feel most free to talk. And where she was sure Patricia, being no stranger to the rougher side of life, would have gone to ask her questions. Even if she hadn't, her arrival in town should have sparked the rumour mill. This was a small military town; drop a blonde under fifty into the mix, and surely the bars would be humming.

She had to admit that she was really looking forward to the assignment. Then in the morning Gibbsie had ratcheted up the excitement by telling her that one of her interview targets was a hotshot lieutenant colonel named Richard Hamm—Dick in the officer's mess, no doubt, and Dickie in bed—who
had been Oliver's platoon commander back in Yugoslavia. She was supposed to find out if Patricia had been to see him, and if so, why. Now she was doubly glad she'd decided to show a little cleavage beneath her hot pink suit.

But then Gibbsie and the Staff Sergeant had assigned Mr. Steroids himself to be her bodyguard. A cocky prick who thought he was God's gift, and who would scare off every red-blooded soldier she tried to cosy up to. At least he had the sense not to wear his body armour and police belt, which would be guaranteed to shut the gossip line down. He was wearing instead a grey sports jacket over a conservative blue shirt, but he tucked his tie into his pocket the minute they left the staff sergeant's office. Without it, even she had to admit he made a nice package, and by the time they reached the parking lot, she had thought of a use for him. Two could play the bar flirtation game, for twice the info.