Dream Chasers (18 page)

“I'm at Hog's Back,” he shouted. “I've got the girl who sold Lea the ice cream, and she has a story I thought you might like to hear. Do you want me to bring her to the station?”

Sullivan made a quick calculation. He was just approaching Riverside Drive; a quick detour west along the river would bring him to Hog's Back. “Just hang on to her. I'll be there in a jiff.”

The “girl” turned out to be a dumpy, middle-aged woman with frizzy orange hair and a pair of missile tits you could impale a moose on. Someone should have told her pointy bras went out with Marilyn Monroe. According to her name tag, she was Phyllis. She was working behind the counter at the Pagoda, where a line-up had begun to form. She ignored the loud protests when she slapped the “closed” sign on the counter and stepped outside to talk to the detectives.

She talked at breakneck speed. “I don't got much time, because I'm not supposed to close like that, but this is important, eh? I thought I recognized that girl when I saw her picture in the paper last week, but people can look so different, eh? And it was dark, and even with the lighting, there's a glare. But when the detective asked me if I sold anyone like her an ice cream, well, then I was sure, eh? It was Monday night, you said?”

“Well, was it?” Green asked drily.

“Nights are all the same to me, eh? So I'll take your word for it. Anyways it was late, I was closing, and there weren't too many people in the park. This girl and her boyfriend came up and asked me for ice cream, and I said I'd already cashed out, and she begged me. They were such a cute couple, they looked so lovey-dovey—hard to believe that still happens to today's kids, or to anybody for that matter. I mean, before my Billy took up with Rufus, he'd hardly ever touch me—well, maybe that was the reason. But these two had their arms around each other's necks and their lips all over the place. I hardly wanted to look. She must have given him fifty kisses while they were waiting. Anyways, she just wouldn't take no for an answer, she was that excited and determined. In the end, I opened up the freezer and gave them two. No charge. It wasn't worth my time to open up the cash again. But if the company ever found out...”

For the first time, she stopped for breath long enough for Sullivan to get a word in. Beside him, Wallington was grinning. Obviously the woman was just as entertaining the second time around.

“Did you get a good look at the boyfriend?”

“Well, he was quieter. It was her did all the talking. But he was a dishy one, tall, dark and handsome like in the fairytales.”

“Do you mean dark-skinned?”

“Oh, no, he was white. Just dark-haired. Curly. She kept ruffling it and laughing.”

“How long was the hair?”

“Not down in his collar or anything. He was neat looking. The shoulders on him—whew!” Phyllis fanned herself.

Painstakingly, Sullivan extracted a description from her, and with each detail, his heart grew heavier. The picture she painted fit Riley O'Shaughnessy to a T. Green, however, had been oddly silent, and once Sullivan had arranged for her to view a photo line-up later in the day, Green stepped quietly into the breach.

“Did anything about the girl's behaviour strike you as odd?”

Phyllis, who had just turned to go back to her post, looked taken aback. “How do you mean, odd?”

“You said she was excited and laughing. Unusually so?”

“Well, she was in love, like I said. And love can make you goofy. That's what it was, I'm sure.”

As Green and Sullivan headed back to the car, Green shook his head. “I'm not so sure.”

“You're thinking the marijuana roaches?”

“Possibly. But given the degree of mania that woman described, and the unexplained cardiac arrest, I'm thinking something stronger. This is the first concrete evidence we have that Lea was high the night she died. I want Lyle Cunningham to expedite the analysis of the roaches and also look at every piece of physical evidence collected at the park bench that might have contained drugs”

Sullivan climbed into the car, his spirits lifting marginally. It made sense now to wait until Phyllis had confirmed Riley as the boyfriend before they headed off to interview him. Which meant that the rest of Sullivan's afternoon was not going to be shot on a three-hour round trip to Gananoque. Furthermore, if Lea Kovacev had been high on drugs the night she died, then her death might have been accidental. Perhaps terror and panic had nothing to do with it, and Riley O'Shaughnessy was guilty of no more than being a hapless bystander. If that was the case, the poor kid might not come out of it with his reputation unscathed, but adolescent indiscretion was far less damaging than criminal negligence or homicide.

Except for that damn business of her being thrown over the cliff afterwards.

It was no surprise to either detective when Phyllis picked Riley O'Shaughnessy out of a photo line-up later than evening. Reached at home, Lyle Cunningham agreed to expedite the drug analyses, but could promise nothing before Monday. Green protested when Sullivan filled him in. They were sitting in Green's office doing a last minute check of the day's reports. The clock on Green's desk read 20:06.

“I wanted those results when we go to interview Riley in the morning,” Green grumbled.

Sullivan tipped his chair back and eyed Green wearily. “You know, Mike, we could just as easily wait till he's back in town Monday. Save ourselves the trip and maybe have the drug testing to back us up.”

Green shook his head. “I want the element of surprise. With his uncle tipping him off, he's already had too much time to prepare himself and cover his ass.”

“He's a kid, not a hardcore criminal. The longer he waits, the more scared he's going to get.” When Green continued to shake his head, Sullivan sighed. “This is our Sunday we're giving up. It's Sean's hockey team picnic tomorrow. I promised him I'd go. I miss way too many of my kids' things as it is, and so do you.”

Green fought his own impatience, knowing Sullivan was right. Knowing that there was no substitute for time invested in their children's lives, and that even as he sat reviewing reports, he should be down at the cottage with his own son.

“There is a third alternative,” he said, as an idea struck. “Gananoque is not far from the cottage we're renting on Lower Rideau Lake. I can go to the cottage this evening, swing down to Gananoque tomorrow morning, and still have most of the day with the family.” He warmed to the prospect. “Who knows, I may even persuade Hannah to join us at the lake.”

Sullivan's tense posture relaxed, and a grateful smile spread across his broad, freckled face. “You got an address in Gan?”

“No, but it's not that big a town. I'm sure everyone in town will be able to point me to where the local hockey hero lives. I just wish...”

“What?”

“I wish I had something, a little something more, to use as leverage.”

The solution came to him fifteen minutes later just as he was packing up to go home. He'd already phoned Sharon to tell her he was coming out, and he'd left a message for Hannah on her cell. When his own cell phone rang, he thought it was her, and it took him a moment to focus on the clipped French Canadian voice. The man's tone was chilly.

“Dr. Pommainville, toxicology. You want this result right away?”

Green glanced at the time on his watch, astonished. Almost nine o'clock on a Saturday night! He wondered what acrobatics Barbara Devine had performed to accomplish that. “Yes! Thank you very much. Anything?”

“Three substances were present in her blood. A small amount of ephedrine, and large concentrations of
THC
and amphetamine.”

Green was surprised. Ephedrine was a common stimulant found in cold medicines and diet pills, but hardly a drug of choice for kicks. “No ecstasy?”

“No, but methamphetamine is much stronger. Judging by the concentration, injected or smoked.”

Both extremely dangerous, potentially addictive ways to get a buzz. Green felt an irrational surge of anger at Lea's blind, youthful quest for thrills. “Enough amphetamine to kill her?”

“That's for the pathologist to determine.”

“But can you guess? You must see cases like this all the time.”

The scientist paused. “I have seen death from this amount. In a small woman, perhaps, with other factors like exertion. And since ephedrine is a stimulant, maybe together...”

Exertion, Green thought, as in a physical struggle before death? He thanked the man and hung up, his thoughts already planning the next step. He needed to check with Lea's mother whether the girl took cold medicine or diet pills, but regardless of that, the ephedrine was a minor contributor. A meth overdose combined with a struggle had killed Lea. That meant whoever had inflicted those bruises on her arms had contributed to her death. Until Lyle Cunningham got the marijuana roaches and other items analyzed, the exact means of the drug overdose remained unclear, but at least this was leverage he could use with Riley.

He was formulating his line of questioning when his cell phone rang again. This time he recognized the high-pitched, manic voice at the end of the line.

“Mike, old buddy!” crowed Frank Corelli. “How ya doing?”

“I'm not talking to you, Corelli. Not after what you pulled today.”

Corelli's voice dropped a notch. “The photo? I know, that was tacky. I tried to get the guys not to run it, but what can I say? We got to sell papers.”

“And the Nazi quote? Also not your department?”

“Yeah! You know I don't write the headlines. Come on, the more you work with me, the more you control the story.”

Green hesitated, for the reporter had a point. Part of him wanted to slam the phone down in the two-faced whiner's face, but part of him was already considering how to gain an advantage.

Corelli seemed to interpret the silence as acquiescence. “I'm dying here, Mike. We go to print in a couple of hours, and I've got nothing but a black hole. Any post mortem results on the Kovacev case? Any forensic tidbits you can toss my way?”

“There is a whole lot of forensic evidence to process, Frank. Three crime scenes. We're still working on it. You can fill your hole with that.”

“Aw, come on. That won't even get me the back page. Anything on her love life? I hear she had a secret lover.”

“Oh, yeah? Did you get a name too, Frank? We could really use one.”

“So you're saying the police don't know who her secret lover is? Are you appealing to the public?”

Green thought fast. “Yes, that might work. Also...” He hesitated as a crazy idea came to him. He'd used Frank before to plant information that he wanted a suspect to know— information that was not yet official and was sometimes even misleading—in the hopes it would drive the bad guy to action. “There's some suggestion bad drugs were involved. Her blood shows more than safe levels of an illegal substance, so whoever sold it to her is looking at...oh, I don't know, a possible manslaughter charge? You might want to warn people that there are bad drugs on the street.”

“I see. So this is a kind of public safety announcement.”

“Yeah.”

Frank chuckled. “You're a prince! Always looking out for the public, and your friendly neighbourhood scribbler.”

“Anonymous police source, remember?” Corelli sputtered his usual reassurances before slamming the phone down. Green pictured him already hitting the keyboard. The reporter would spin that tidbit into a nice little story that would hit the news stands all over Eastern Ontario well before Green headed down to Gananoque in the morning.

C
orelli
outdid himself. His story hit the front page with a full page picture of Lea and the usual understated
Sun
headline “
BAD DRUGS KILL TEEN
”. When Green picked up a copy of the paper in Portland on his way down to Gananoque the next morning, he was grateful he'd taken the time to warn Lea's mother before he and Hannah headed out to the country.

Gananoque was a small town on the St. Lawrence River in the heart of the Thousand Islands, and although tourism was the lifeblood of its economy these days, it had once done a thriving business in rum running and other forms of smuggling. The rugged, slightly defiant character of the town still remained today. Riley O'Shaughnessy was one of their own, from a family with deep roots and broad tentacles in the region. O'Shaughnessy boys had first tilled the land north of the town in the early 1800s, and their numerous descendants had tried their hand at ship building, milling, blacksmithing and most recently guide fishing. All this Green learned from the Esso gas station owner on the edge of town, who even admitted that a little rum running had probably figured in the mix.

“O'Shaughnessys are resourceful, that's one thing. Not good at keeping money, but they find lots of ways of making it.” The gas station owner had mistaken Green for yet another journalist looking for an angle, and Green had not bothered to dissuade him. He listened without interruption until the man spotted another customer ambling towards the cash and cut the conversation short with a vague gesture towards the east end of town.

Green had barely begun his search of the modest Victorian woodframe houses when a big banner stretched across the front porch of one of the houses caught his eye.

“Knock 'em dead, Riley,” it read. Green stopped in front of the house. It could just be a fan, or one of the many O'Shaughnessy cousins who lived in the area. It was a simple, two-storey clapboard house with a steeply pitched roof and a covered porch running the length of the front. The white paint was fresh, and the garden boasted splashes of showy pink flowers. An ancient blue Buick sat on blocks in the gravel drive, and a collection of boats under tarps littered the side yard.

Green climbed out of his car, folded the
Sun
article into his pocket and walked up to the front door. A small wreath of dried flowers announced “welcome”, but the large black cat on the porch hissed as it scurried away. He rang the doorbell, and after what seemed an eternity, a woman opened the door. She was tall and raw-boned, wearing blue sweatpants stretched over expansive hips and a thin brown sweater several sizes too small for her. Her greying hair flew about her shoulders in frizzy clumps, and her broad face looked apprehensive. The smell of burnt baking drifted from the interior.