Honour Among Men (2 page)

She made her tea, opened her package of half-priced cinnamon buns, and paged through the paper in search of her horoscope. She didn't know why she bothered. It was all lies too. Lies and contradictions. Yet for one brief moment, facing a brand new day, sometimes it gave her hope.

A moment later she stopped, her eyes riveted to
page 10
. She read, reread, until deep inside a flicker of triumph began to grow. Maybe this time her luck was about to change, she thought, as she shoved aside the paper and headed for her closet.

It was past midnight when Twiggy squeezed her bulk through the gap in the bushes and slithered down the slope towards the darkened gully, guided more by feel than by sight. Three days' worth of old newspapers were tucked under one pudgy arm, and a battered garbage bag dragged along behind her. She held her bottle tight in her hand, but most of the rum was already singing through her veins. The soggy ground was slippery, but at least the ice had melted, and below her she saw the black water glisten in the aqueduct as it drifted slowly towards the old pumphouse.

Twiggy felt laughter bubble up inside her. April was her favourite time of year, when the squirrels and the leaf buds began to appear again. When the sun warmed the frozen ground and beat down on her secret hideout. After six years on the streets of Ottawa, she knew all the best spots — the ledges under the bridges, the back doors and vents of the indoor parking garages, the window wells of old office buildings. And best of all, this hidden sliver of trees and water running through the city core almost within sight of Parliament Hill. Cars whizzed by on the roads up above, but only a few regulars knew the old aqueduct existed beneath the canopy of trees. Twiggy had hoped it would stay that way, but every year the bulldozers and backhoes ripping up the Lebreton Flats rumbled ever closer to this little corner of history.

She'd had enough of her fellow man after a winter of stinky, crowded shelters, noisy drunks, paranoid psychos and ridiculous rules. She'd been waiting all month for the moment when she could finally return to her cubbyhole near the water's edge, spread out her belongings in the shelter of the graffiti wall and settle in for the summer. Her living room, she called it, complete with wall paintings from the most renowned street artists.

During the summer months, she had her regular panhandling spot next to the Tim Hortons on Bank Street, just a few blocks away. She had a special deal going with the day manager, who gave her day-old doughnuts and newspapers at the end of each day in return for her not crowding the door and for being polite and respectful to his customers. He said he'd rather have a friendly, middle-aged woman sitting quietly against the wall than a surly, in-your-face punk with piercings and tattoos all over the place. She usually made a pretty good haul during the tourist season.

Earlier that evening, she'd got a full meal at the Shepherds of Good Hope before linking up with a couple of friends to pool their take and party a little. She'd even had a little snooze in the side doorway of a hotel before some security guard kicked her out. So she was really groggy when she finally stumbled down the ravine toward her favourite spot in the shelter of the graffiti wall. The moon was high, and the looming silhouette of a steam shovel shimmered in her vision like a massive insect ready to scoop up her private paradise. So close now! Above the gurgle of the water, there was no sound. No giggles of stoned teenagers, no grunts of hurried sex or wails of homesick drunks.

Twiggy wavered dreamily along the stone embankment until her foot hit something solid, pitching her forward onto
her face. Her fingers encountered hair. Masses of long, tangled curls and cool, doughy flesh. She jerked back in panic and groped the length of the body, feeling high boots and denim stretched tight over a boney ass.

Some little whore had passed out cold, half dangling in the water.

“Lucky the little bitch didn't fall in,” Twiggy muttered, staggering to her hands and knees. She tried to drag the girl farther from the water, but in the end could only budge her a few inches. In disgust, she hauled her garbage bag up to the shelter of the wall, shoved the wad of newspapers under her and collapsed with a grunt to fall asleep.

The cold woke her just after dawn. Pale sunlight speckled the ravine, and the morning rush hour was just revving up. Frost had settled onto the ground, and her breath swirled white around her. She curled herself stiffly into a ball, trying to warm up as she gathered her rum-soaked thoughts.

Jesus, was her first thought. She'd jumped the gun. It was still too fucking cold to be sleeping outdoors. Tonight she'd have to grit her teeth and go back to the women's shelter. No one in their right mind was out here this early in the spring. No one except . . .

A vague recollection fluttered down, like a forgotten leaf from a barren tree. She rolled over and lifted her head to peer at the body by the water. Saw in the daylight that the woman was still there. Blonde and long-legged, but scrawny as a chicken and wearing a man's old jacket. She was curled on her side with one hand flung out and her face tilted towards the sky. A fine layer of frost had settled on her cheeks and eyelashes, and not even the faintest puff of white mist drifted between her parted lips.

Inspector Michael Green eased the clutch out and inched his car eastward in the bumper to bumper morning traffic along Albert Street. Up ahead, the light at Booth Street turned red yet again. A long line of buses snaked along the transitway, waiting to turn left onto Albert Street. Green craned his neck to search for any signs of obstruction and spotted flashing red lights through the brush on the north side of the street.

As he drew closer, he saw a uniformed police officer directing traffic and a police vehicle blocking access to the municipal parking lots on the north side, throwing hundreds of downtown commuters into confusion. Lined up on the back street behind the parking lots were four squad cars, two unmarked Malibus, an Ident van, and a black coroner's van. Just beyond the official vehicles, the land fell away to a scruffy mix of trees, construction fencing and neglected scrubland that surrounded the city's old aqueduct. The entire parking lot, scrubland and aqueduct were cordoned off with yellow police tape.

Green hesitated. This was obviously a major incident. The coroner's van meant there was a body, and the sheer number of officers suggested the cause of death was far from clear. All crimes against persons fell under Green's command, and even though he had a team of major crimes detectives to handle the frontline fieldwork, he could never quite trust they actually knew what they were doing. Especially since Brian Sullivan, his oldest friend and the backbone of the Major Crimes Squad, was off playing Acting Staff Sergeant in strategic planning, and
CID
's new superintendent Barbara Devine was trying to control every dime and man-hour expended, so that her stats would look good in the annual report.

At this very moment, in fact, Barbara Devine was probably
pacing her colour-coordinated office, tapping her red fingernails on folded arms as she waited for him to show up for his weekly report. That image alone began to shift the scales in favour of checking out the scene. Then he spotted a young woman with a cloud of frizzy red hair and a hideous black and white checked suit clumping down towards the water's edge.

The sight of Detective Sue Peters was the final straw.

He pulled out into the opposing lane and jumped his car up onto the curb, ignoring the outraged looks of the other drivers and thankful for the Subaru's all wheel drive. He drove along the grassy verge until he reached the parking lot, then clambered out of the car. Logging in with the startled officer guarding the scene, he ducked under the cordon and slithered down the frost-slicked slope. Sue Peters swung on him in surprise. Her green eyes danced irrepressibly.

“Good morning, sir!”

He nodded to the group clustered by the water. “What do we have, Peters?”

“A body, sir. Looks like a working girl stayed out too late.”

Green shot her a scowl, bristling at the flippancy in her tone and the haste of her conclusions. The body wasn't even out of the scene. He prayed someone other than Peters was in charge. “Who's lead?”

The dancing eyes faded slightly. She nodded toward the parking lot. “Bob Gibbs. He's up at the car.”

“Do we have an
ID
?”

“She had no wallet or purse on her, sir. But Gibbsie's running her specs through the system, and maybe Missing Persons will come up with a match.”

Green raised his head to scan the scene. As he'd expected, there was no sign of any of the
NCO
s from Major Crimes. A brawl in one of the Byward Market clubs two nights ago had
resulted in the stabbing of two college students in a room full of underage witnesses, who had scattered before the police arrived, tying up a dozen detectives in the search to track them down and leaving enough prints and blood spatters to keep the entire Ident unit poring over their microscopes for a month. There were precious few resources left over for this luckless Jane Doe, and with Barbara Devine clutching the purse strings, Green feared there was little chance of more.

The one positive was the presence of Sergeant Lou Paquette, an Ident officer who drank too much and whined too much, but who'd lived and breathed forensics for over twenty years. He was crouched by the stone bank, snapping photographs. When he moved aside, Green glimpsed a lanky figure on his knees beside the victim, his wild white mane of hair tumbling into his eyes. Green's pulse quickened. Dr. Alexander MacPhail was the region's senior forensic pathologist. What had prompted Gibbs to call in the big guns?

Green took a quick breath to steel himself before heading over for a closer look. He loved the thrill of the hunt, but quailed at the gut-churning stench and gore of death. Images of splattered brains and amputated body parts crowded his subconscious, clamouring for memory whenever he approached another death. Three years behind a desk had not improved his defences either.

To his relief, the victim looked almost peaceful curled up on her side on the cold stone bank. Her eyes were half shut, and she had no apparent marks on her. A working girl, Peters had concluded, but at first glance Green didn't think so. She looked thin and sick, as if she'd taken a beating from life, but her clothing had been chosen for warmth rather than titillation, and her porcelain-white face had not a trace of make-up. Crow's feet were beginning to tug at the corners of
her eyes and her matted blonde hair was shot with grey.

MacPhail was bent over her, inspecting her face with a powerful flashlight.

Green crouched as close as he dared. “What can you tell me?”

MacPhail cast him only the briefest glance of surprise. “This is an interesting one, laddie,” he announced in his customary Scottish boom. Green had never known the man to whisper, even in the presence of the most heart-wrenching death. MacPhail waved his beam. “See the colouring on this side of her face?”

Green forced himself to study the woman's face carefully. Where the frost had melted, beads of moisture clung to her lashes and to the down on her cheeks. But beneath the waxy pallor of death, he saw what MacPhail meant. Faint red blotches discoloured one side of her face.

“She's been moved some time after death,” he said.

“Aye. Now the lass who found her . . .” MacPhail cocked a brow towards a group of people clustered at the base of the graffiti wall. In the middle sat a familiar figure with a mop of stringy grey hair and a paramedic's blanket draped around her massive frame. Calling her a lass seemed a stretch. Nonetheless, MacPhail continued with no trace of irony. “She says she tripped on her last night in the dark.”

“That would be enough to dislodge her, certainly.” Considering the weight differential, Green thought.

“Aye.” The pathologist's blue eyes twinkled briefly. “But not to roll her over. I'll know more when I can check the lividity in the rest of the body. However, my considered opinion, based on having seen a few corpses in my day, is that she was dumped.”

Green glanced at MacPhail sharply. The pathologist made
no attempt to suppress the broad smile that cracked his features. So that was why Bob Gibbs had called in the big guns. Sharp boy, Green thought with a twinge of pride. “So we're talking what?” he said. “Murder?”

“Or a simple cover-up. She could have
OD
'd, and her friends didn't want the police snooping around their hang-out, so they brought her out here. Pretty isolated this time of year.”

Green glanced around at the surroundings. MacPhail had a point. Lebreton Flats had boasted a colourful history of sex and wild times since the years when fur traders and lumbermen first ran their goods down the Ottawa River in the late 1700s. But in the past fifty years, the area, which sat virtually in the shadow of Parliament Hill and constituted some of the choicest urban real estate in the country, had gone to seed while politicians and bureaucrats bickered about what to do with it.