Honour Among Men (19 page)

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 forty-eight 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.