Dream Chasers (11 page)

“Yesterday? The day before? Who keeps track? What day is it?”

“Thursday. Was it yesterday?”

Sid shrugged. “She didn't stay long. Always in a rush, that little girl. Just like her father.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“With a friend. She didn't say, but I think it was a young man.” Sid stopped, and the smile faded from his lips. His rheumy eyes fixed on Green accusingly. “Mishka, don't make her go away.”

Green was startled. A quick denial rose to his tongue, but something in his father's tone gave him pause. Goose bumps broke out on his back despite the heat in the room. “Why, Pop? Did she say something to you about going away?”

“She's like you. Who talks? But she seemed upset.
Fermisht.
All the time she was here, she didn't sit still one minute. It was
Zaydeh
, do you want a drink?
Zaydeh
, do you get lonely?
Zaydeh
, do your friends ever visit? When you're eighty-six years old, I said to her, who has friends?”

Green groped to connect the cryptic allusions. Sweat trickled down his back. “You said she seemed upset. Was it about friends?”

“Maybe, but not down inside.” He tapped his bony, gnarled fist to his chest. When he picked up his glass again, this time his hand trembled too much for him to take a sip. He set it down. “I know you, Mishka. Your mind, it's always off somewhere else.” He smacked his head for emphasis. “Don't make her go, like she doesn't belong here.”

Green suppressed his exasperation. It was an old refrain between them. His father had always blamed Green for losing Hannah in the first place, and he lived in fear of losing her again. Green couldn't tell from his father's riddles whether Hannah had actually said anything about leaving, or whether his old paranoia was reading threats into innocuous words. He tried for a concrete lead. “Did she mention the name of this boyfriend?”

“No. You don't know him?” Green shook his head.

“Did she mention any friends' names?” “No. She just said sometimes friends weren't friends after all, like my friends in Poland. I told her such stories are not for her ears.” He sighed and lay back on his pillows, suddenly looking so frail that Green felt a twinge of fear. Even after sixty-five years, the betrayal of the Polish villagers he'd considered friends still ate at his soul.

“Has the nurse been in to see you, Pops?”

Sid waved his hand in dismissal. “They came, they listened—” he gestured to his chest. “They brought soup, and they said get lots of rest. Like I was thinking maybe to run the marathon.”

Green smiled. As long as his father could joke, surely he wasn't dying. He stayed a few minutes longer to make sure his father was comfortably settled, then ducked out of the apartment, leaving
Seinfeld
on full blast for company. On his way out, he stopped by the main office to ask the nurse to check on his father later.

Once he made it back outside, he checked his watch in dismay. He was glad he'd visited his father, not only for the old man's sake but also for the news on Hannah. As of either Tuesday or Wednesday, she had been fine, although troubled about something. Perhaps she would show up home once she'd worked it out. It was a hope he could hang on to, anyway, while he coped with more immediate demands.

Barbara Devine's press conference was due in twenty minutes, and until he had Sullivan's report on the autopsy, he still hadn't a clue what he was going to say. His clothes were sticky with the sweat and grime of the streets, his feet ached, and his throat screamed for water. He caught a cab back to the police station to find Brian Sullivan waiting for him at his desk. The look on the big man's face was unreadable.

Green jerked his head to signal Sullivan to follow him and headed straight to the men's room, where he splashed cold water on his face and drank deeply. Once he felt half human again, he turned his attention to Sullivan.

“Bad news?”

Sullivan checked under all the stalls, then returned to lean against the wall. “What would be good news in this scenario, Mike? That she drowned, accidentally or on purpose?”

“It wouldn't be on purpose. No way was this girl suicidal. No, I mean—do we have a killer on our hands?”

“Who knows? MacPhail can't say. He knows how she died—cardiac arrest—but he doesn't know why.”

“Cardiac arrest! She was a healthy, fit, young woman!”

Sullivan shrugged. “It happens. MacPhail found no diatoms in either her bloodstream or her bone marrow. He thinks she was dead when she hit the water.”

Green stared at him. He knew all about the microscopic organisms that lived in rivers and lakes. Diatoms were so small that if the heart was still beating when a victim entered the water, they would be pumped throughout the circulatory system. It was one of the hallmarks of death by drowning, although as a definitive test, Green knew it remained controversial. “Dead people don't throw themselves in the water. So is he saying someone else was there to help her along?”

Sullivan nodded grimly.

“Shit.” Green turned the revelation over in his mind, remembering the faint abrasions MacPhail had mentioned at the scene. “Did he find any signs of trauma or a struggle?”

“What looks like two thumb impressions on her upper arms, like someone held her with enough force to cause bruising before she died. There are also post mortem abrasions consistent with falling on the rocks in the river. And her hip was broken, again post mortem. Probably some time after death, MacPhail thinks, based on the absence of bleeding into the tissue.”

Green propped himself against the sink and gazed absently at the tiles on the floor. They formed a nice geometric pattern of browns and creams, nothing like the crazy jigsaw of this case. “So she struggles with someone, goes into cardiac arrest and then someone—maybe that same person—instead of calling 911, waits a bit and then tosses her off the rocks into the falls?”

“Well, he might not have known she was dead right away. Maybe they were both asleep, and when he woke up, he realized...”

“It's still a crazy reaction, Brian. If I found my girlfriend dead, I wouldn't toss her over the falls unless I had something to hide. Could he have raped her? Any sign of sexual activity?”

“Inconclusive,” Sullivan said. “There were no obvious vaginal abrasions, but the tissue edema was too great to be certain, and the river could have washed away any traces of semen.”

“Or our man could have used a condom.”

Sullivan nodded. “There are still a lot of questions. MacPhail's ordered a full tox screen. He's put a rush on it, but he's treating the death as suspicious.”

“At the very least it's interference with a body,” Green replied. “But meanwhile we treat it as a homicide. We open a Major Case file on it.”

“Already started. I'll keep the lead myself until we hear from MacPhail about the toxicology results.”

Green nodded, and a ghost of an idea brightened his thoughts. “I'll sic Barbara Devine on the lab. She'll have the Commissioner of the
RCMP
himself ordering the rush. Did MacPhail see any signs of drug use?”

Sullivan shook his head. “Like you said, the girl was healthy and fit. Took care of herself, didn't even smoke much pot, from the condition of her lungs.”

“So has he any idea what caused the cardiac arrest? A congenital abnormality?”

“Not that he could see. Her heart was healthy and properly formed. She had nothing much in her stomach other than what MacPhail thinks may have been a sports drink and walnut ice cream.”

“Not even one beer or cooler?”

“Not judging by the smell. Of course, he'll do a full analysis and let us know.”

Green's eyes narrowed in thought. “Did MacPhail say what could cause a perfectly normal seventeen-year-old heart to stop?”

“Besides drugs? He said it was highly unlikely, but extreme emotion—terror or fury—or extreme exertion.”

“You mean as in fighting for her life? Running away, probably terrified to boot?”

Sullivan shrugged. “It's as good a guess as any right now. Two things we know for sure. She wasn't alone the night she died, she struggled with someone, and someone hefted her body over the fence and threw it into the water.”

“I'd say we're talking a strong young man here.” Sullivan nodded. “A hell of a strong young man.”

Jenna Zukowski staggered through her apartment door, dropped her briefcase on the floor and sucked in a deep breath of cool, dry air. Thank God for air conditioning. Even her cat didn't budge, but merely greeted her with a flick of his tail. She tossed her keys and mail on the kitchen counter, peeled off her linen pantsuit and wilted into the armchair in her living room. It was a full five minutes before she rallied the energy to fetch a Diet Coke and fire up her laptop.

“Riley O'Shaughnessy hockey” yielded an astounding 634 hits on Google. For a boy not even out of high school, he certainly was generating a lot of news. She scanned the first page for a promising website that profiled his career. Wading through the alien world of hockey culture, she found herself utterly baffled. Junior A, Major Junior, Minors, scoring forwards, wingers, prospects, draft picks... She was able to glean that Riley had been born in Gananoque and had moved to Ottawa two years ago to play for the Ottawa 67's—which was called a Ontario Hockey League Major Junior team, whatever that was. Because of his scoring skill, he'd almost single-handedly brought the team to the Memorial Cup final this spring. The Memorial Cup was not the Stanley Cup, which even she knew was the big hockey prize, but it was obviously important.

A couple of articles hinted at a recent fall-off in his game but suggested it was a temporary loss of focus that should not affect his future. Everywhere the articles trumpeted his statistics as one might the measurements of a contestant in a beauty pageant. Most of the numbers were meaningless to her, except for two. Height six-foot-three, weight two hundred pounds. She studied the photo of Riley dressed in full hockey regalia, leaning pensively on his hockey stick. Bulked up by the shoulder pads, he looked like an Adonis, but it was his face that caught her attention. Deep-set brown eyes, a mop of dark curls, and a shy, dimpled smile that could charm the pants off any girl.

Had he been Lea's secret love? How could she, Jenna, ever find out? It wasn't as if she could ask him outright, or even pump that obnoxious creep Vic for information on his golden boy. Maybe if she could see the boy for herself, she'd be able to tell. Surely his demeanour or the expression in those beautiful puppy dog eyes would betray the torment and guilt that he felt.

She glanced at her watch and saw with dismay that she'd missed the first few minutes of the six o'clock news. She turned her television on in time to see a panoramic vista of river and trees overrun with yellow tape and police officers. A reporter voice-over was announcing.

“...discovered by police searchers around nine thirty this morning on an isolated section of the Rideau River just south of the Heron Road Bridge. Police confirmed the body to be that of seventeen-year-old Lea Kovacev, who had been missing since Monday evening.”

The scene switched to a close-up of a plainclothes police inspector who looked as if he'd slept several days in the suit he was wearing. “Obviously this outcome is deeply upsetting to all of us in the police and in the community, and our sympathies go out to her family and friends. The body appears to have been in the water two to three days. She was discovered not far from where her backpack was found in Hog's Back Park yesterday. The investigation is still in its early stages, and we don't know exactly what happened. We'll be conducting interviews and examining evidence; however, there is currently no evidence to suggest she was attacked, and so there does not appear to be any ongoing risk to the public at large. Hog's Back is a dangerous waterfall that in the past has been used by divers. We ask anyone who might have knowledge of her activities at the park to please call the Major Crimes Unit at the number on the screen.”

Jenna listened to the police inspector with growing impatience. So the official cop line was going to be that Lea drowned accidentally while diving. Jenna watched as the broadcast went on to other news. Students at Pleasant Park were interviewed as they left the school. Shock and tears were etched on their faces, and Jenna cursed the principal's stupidity for not having called for her help in dealing with the media invasion.

When one of the students mentioned Lea's adventuresome spirit and her love of swimming, Jenna's annoyance grew. They were buying the cop's story that she had died swimming in the dangerous waters of Hog's Back and had thus been the agent of her own misfortune. This was nonsense! The police needed to know about her secret lover and her responsible approach to sport. Riley O'Shaughnessy was just a shot in the dark, but now that Lea's body had been discovered, even a glimpse of him might be enough to reveal the truth.

It was worth a try.

The rain was pelting down by the time Green reached home. He made a mad dash from the car to the porch and shoved his key in the lock. The front door swung open, unlocked. Adrenaline spiked through him as he slipped inside. A faint humming, off key but cheerful, emanated from somewhere at the back. Hope and fear swept him as he dashed through into the kitchen.

Hannah swung around in surprise, her mouth open and her hand frozen on the fridge door. She found her voice first. “Mike!”

He rushed to embrace her, his breath deserting him. Ignoring her resistance, he planted three kisses on her spiky head.

“What the fuck...?” she demanded, flushing with confusion. A half-smile hovered on her lips as she wrenched herself free.

“Where the hell have you been!”

“What do you mean? I've been out.”

“I've been calling you for two days. I left messages, I went to your school—”