Thin Ice (26 page)

Smith stared at the file folder in front of him and felt his stomach contract. He had ordered the CPIC search the day before and when the results had come in he had ordered copies of the related documents. With Marshall at home in the east end, enjoying a couple of hours with his family, Smith sat at his desk and opened the file. Lisa was right. There had been two separate peace bonds filed against Melissa McAdam in the past five years, both by men who had accused her of various types of erratic, even violent, behaviour. He had only received one of the supporting files so far, but it sounded like the bond in that case had been sought following the breakup of a relationship — to which Melissa had reacted badly, apparently. The affidavit filed by the complainant alleged that Melissa had threatened to kill him, and she had also allegedly threatened the complainant's new girlfriend — presumably the woman she had been dumped for. He noted the name of the Toronto constable who had appeared as a witness at the bond hearing and looked him up on the police contact database. He picked up the phone and dialed the number, and was in the process of formulating his voice message when he was surprised by a live voice.

“Weber.”

“Constable Darren Weber?”

“Yeah.”

“Hi. This is Jack Smith, from the Ottawa Police. I wasn't expecting to get you live.”

“Guess it's your lucky day.”

“Have you got a minute?”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to ask you about a peace bond application a couple of years ago that you testified at. The complainant was,” he rifled through the paperwork for the name. “Don Tavener, and the respondent was …”

“Melissa McAdam.”

“You remember?”

“How could I forget? She was a total whack-job. A real bunny boiler.” Smith was surprised by the gravelly voice at the other end of the line. He had expected someone younger, but the unmistakable reference to
Fatal Attraction
confirmed his suspicion that Weber was more veteran than rookie. “She get dumped again? Whoever the guy is, you should put him in protective custody.”

Smith swallowed hard. “No, her name came up in relation to an ongoing investigation. She's not a suspect or anything. It's more out of curiosity, really.”

“What do you want to know?”

“It says here that you witnessed a domestic dispute?”

“Yeah, the neighbours called it in. It was one of those fancy condos down on Front Street, you know the kind that cost too much and have paper walls? They called 911 over the racket coming from Tavener's apartment. They said they thought someone was gonna get killed if we didn't break it up. So we roll up, knock on the door, and this hot young thing shows up at the door, all sweet as pie.”

“McAdam?”

“Yeah. I don't know if you've seen this gal, but she's pretty easy on the eyes, if you get my drift.”

“Right.”

“So we ask her what's going on, and she says nothing. There's no sign of anyone else, so we ask if she's alone and she says no, her boyfriend's in the bathroom, and I get this weird feeling — you know, my Spidey sense start tingling. So I say we want to talk to him. She makes a fuss but we insist, and she eventually lets us in and says she'll go get him. So my partner and I are standing there for five minutes, wondering what the fuck is going on, when this guy comes out, white as a sheet. I don't think I've ever seen anyone that scared in my life. He's got a cut over his eye that's been taped shut, and he's walking with a limp.”

“What happened?”

“The little minx had kicked the shit out of him, that's what happened, and this guy was too terrified to come out of the bathroom and tell us in front of her. We took him back to the station and he spilled the beans. We're talking multiple assaults — the cut was from her clubbing him with a hairdryer, and she booted him in the nuts as well, for good measure. There was a pretty good case for unlawful confinement as well, not to mention threatening all sorts of heinous shit, killing him being the least of his worries. She threatened to cut off his balls and feed 'em to him, that kind of thing. Girl's a real psycho.”

“But she was never charged with anything, was she?”

“No, this guy — some hotshot corporate lawyer — was too much of a pussy. He didn't want anything to do with an assault charge, but she scared him enough that he wanted the bond. He was embarrassed as hell at being bitch-slapped, but he was more afraid that she was gonna do something
really
crazy.”

“Did he go into detail?”

“Not really. We gave her a look anyway, found out she had a juvie file, but we never got around to getting it unsealed. What's the point, right?”

“Sure.” Smith's mind was swimming. “One last thing. Did Tavener tell you what set her off?”

“He started seeing someone else at the office, so he broke it off with McAdam. Big mistake.”

“Right.”

“Whatever you do, don't date this chick.”

“Thanks for your help,” Smith said, as he hung up the phone and stared at his computer screen. He flipped through his notepad, to the names he had scribbled from his furtive search of Melissa's home office. He entered both Michelle Riggs and Speelay into his search engine and scrolled through the top ten hits for each, but saw nothing of any relevance. He tried again and followed a few links before abandoning his search and, in response to a rumble from his stomach, decided to go grab some dinner.

Smith sat at a window table, chewing the last bite of his burger and swearing to himself that he would refrain from eating all of the fries. He couldn't pin this one on Marshall, but the effect on him was the same. He was going to have to get back to better eating habits sooner or later. He plucked his cellphone from his jacket pocket and stared at the display. Lisa White's last message had been a plea to meet, but that was before yesterday's call, when he had told her to get on with her life. Would she even answer his call now? He dialed it and held his breath. She picked up on the third ring.

“I'm surprised to get a call from you.”

“Yeah, well … look, I wanted to apologize about yesterday.”

“Where are you?”

“I'm at Tony's”

“Marshall with you?”

“No.”

“I thought you didn't eat that crap anymore, unless you had no choice…. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm around the corner. You gonna be there for awhile?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll see you shortly.”

Smith looked up a few minutes later to see her coming through the door. She was clad in workout gear, with a fleece vest on top and a yoga mat slung over her shoulder, her hair tied up in a ponytail. It always amazed him that whatever she wore, or whatever she had been doing for the past hour, she always looked fresh.

“I hope I didn't interrupt your workout.”

“You caught me coming out of the shower,” she said, sitting opposite him as he inhaled a warm breeze of citrus body wash and tried, almost successfully, to skip over the mental image she had just planted in his mind. Was it on purpose? He never knew with Lisa, but it certainly wasn't beyond her.

“Listen, I really am sorry about yesterday.”

She waved a hand. “Don't worry about it. As long as you know, I was only calling out of concern.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, as the waitress came over and took her order for sparkling water. “So, what exactly did you hear about Melissa that's of such concern?”

“You really want to know? I thought you didn't want …”

Smith gave her a frown. “Come on, Lisa. I know you're dying to tell me.”

“It's not that, I assure you,” she said, though she had to look away for a moment. “She really is bad news, from what I'm told.”

“By who?”

“Several people, actually. One of the clerks at the office worked with her in Toronto — said she was a bitch from hell.”

“This clerk a he or a she?”

“Definitely a he. He said McAdam harassed him, got him booted out of the firm. The managing partner's a friend of her father's.”

“Sounds like sour grapes to me. You lawyers are a prickly bunch at the best of times. Throw in job jockeying and some sexual tension and things are bound to get nasty.”

“Glad to see you have such a high opinion of us, Jack,” she said, though she seemed to acknowledge some truth in what he had said. “But that's not what worries me, anyway. She tried to run over an ex-boyfriend.”

“Come on.”

“I'm serious, Jack. She's a real psycho. Did you check her record?”

“I couldn't tell you if I did,” he said, lowering his voice. “And I couldn't tell you if I had checked and found no record of any such incident on her file.”

“I have it on pretty good authority.”

“You mean some other cut-throat articling student who lost out in a head to head with her at the office?” He shook his head. “I don't buy it, Lisa.”

“I know she's attractive, but I'm just saying be careful.”

“You mean real beauty's not skin deep? What's your excuse, then?”

“I'm trying to be serious, here. If you want to be immature about it …”

“All right, all right.” He looked at his watch. “I should probably be getting back. Thanks for dropping by. You look good, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she said, slipping into her fleece vest. “Still trying to lose those extra couple of pounds.”

“Hmm,” he said as they got up. She had been saying the same thing for years, but if she was carrying any extra weight, he didn't know where she was hiding it. “By the way, have you ever heard of the name Speelay?”

She slung her yoga mat over her shoulder. “Sounds vaguely familiar. I think it might be a case, can't remember off hand what it's about, though.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” he said, as they stepped out onto Elgin. “I'll look it up.”

She snapped her fingers. “Contracts, that's it. It's a famous case on contract law — capacity, I think. I don't remember the facts.”

“Pretty impressive.”

She grinned. “How many times do I have to tell you, Jack? I'm not just a pretty face.” They stood on the sidewalk in an awkward moment of silence. “Well, take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, and she half-hugged him. She watched him make his way back up Elgin while she crossed over and headed off down Cooper, oblivious to the midnight blue BMW parked facing her as she walked by.

Smith was staring at his monitor, scrolling down through the first page of the Speelay case, a decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, and wondering how he had ever imagined attending law school. The head note alone was five pages, the case itself was almost a hundred, and he had no intention of reading it in full. Lisa was right — it was a contracts case, and he skipped to the end of the head note and arrived at the result. The appeal court had reversed the trial judge, who had held that a contract was enforceable, despite the plaintiff's less than obvious mental capacity to enter into and understand all of the terms. He pondered the case for a moment, as an uneasy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach, as he wondered why Melissa might have made a note of this particular case. There were any number of reasons, he assured himself. After all, she presumably came across all sorts of legal issues with the numerous Raftsmen player contracts, not to mention the ones covering the coaching staff, suppliers, concessions, and media rights. He sat staring at the screen for a while, considering the daunting task of reading all ninety-five pages. Then he activated the search function and typed a word into the box and hit enter. The cursor stopped in the middle of the screen, in front of the word he had selected, surrounded in blue highlight and shining at him like a beacon. He drew a deep breath and read the surrounding text.

“Fuck,” he muttered, oblivious to his surroundings as the implications of what he was reading sank in. He racked his brain to find some confirmation of the hunch that had been growing at the back of his mind over the past few days. Suddenly, it occurred to him there was one area he hadn't fully explored, and he headed over to a small filing room at the rear of the Major Crimes Unit, where the evidence from the Ritchie investigation was being stored. He read the labels on the banker's boxes on the shelves, skipping over the personal effects from Ritchie's condo, then spotted the Ashcroft files at the far end of the top shelf. He dragged down the first box and set it on a small table by the door.

Removing the cover of the box, he flipped through the various file folders, recognizing some of the names from the time he had spent in Ashcroft's DC offices. There hadn't been time then for an exhaustive review, and someone else had taken over the in-depth review of the files. He retrieved the second box and flipped off its cover, and was about to go through the same process, when he noticed a typed index of files taped to the inside of the lid. He noticed Nancy and John Ridgeway's names among the list, next to Stephen Gravelle, but it wasn't until he reached the second-last name that his heart skipped a beat — Micheline Riggs. He fingered through the folders until he identified the one dedicated to Riggs and pulled it free. It was thin, compared to the others, and as he flipped it open, he could see it contained only a half-dozen pages of paper — a mix of handwritten notes and a typed report. The last item on file was a cheque stub, for ten thousand dollars, dated August 7. The stub was stapled to a one-page, typed internal memo on Ashcroft letterhead. Smith read the report, the gist of which was that the client had insisted on the payment, against advice from the account manager — it was signed by Chad McCleod.

Smith was standing there, staring at the file, when he sensed someone in the small room behind him. He got a start when he spun around and almost bumped into Beaudoin.

“Jeez, Sarge, you scared the shit out of me.”

Beaudoin didn't smile, or even bother with his trademark grimace. Instead he just stared at Smith, the tension evident from the narrowing around the eyes, and the vein over his left temple that bulged visibly. He seemed a shade pinker than usual, as well.

“Everything okay, Sarge?”

“You tell me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want to tell me anything about Melissa McAdam?”

Smith froze at the sound of her name, and he could tell from Beaudoin's reaction that he had done a poor job of concealing his shock.

“Well?” Beaudoin crossed his massive forearms in front of his chest and waited, his eyes boring into Smith for an answer.

“Look, Sarge. It's not what —”

“Jesus Christ, Smith. I haven't got enough to worry about, between wondering whether we've got enough on Saunders to stick, or whether Ellen Ritchie's lawyer's going to succeed in his threat to dismantle the entire force over this arrest, you have to fuck a potential witness!”

“She's not —”

“Not another fucking word! I don't want to hear it. You're on leave, effective immediately. You're not to set foot in here again until this is cleared up, do you understand?”

“But Sarge —”

Beaudoin held up a hand to cut him off, then glared at him one last time. “Out,
now
. I mean it.” He was almost through the door when he turned and looked back at Smith. “And I'd advise you to steer clear of Melissa McAdam, if you ever plan on coming back to Major Crimes.”

Smith sat on a bench built into the retaining wall that formed one side of the canal jogging path, looking out past the iron railings at the murky water beyond, still, except for the occasional ripple caused by a falling leaf. A couple of months from now, the water would be drained down to a few feet in depth and the air would be filled with the sound of steel crunching ice, from the thousands of skaters who would flock to the canal for Winterlude. Sitting here now, with the late afternoon sun blocked by the still-thick canopy of overhanging leaves, Smith felt a chill as he glanced at the exact spot where Curtis Ritchie had died just a couple of weeks earlier. It wasn't the murder itself — he had been in the job long enough to have developed a certain familiarity with death — or even his banishment from Elgin Street that really bothered him, though it would make it difficult for him to get to the bottom of what had been bothering him for the past few days. He took a deep breath and broke down in his mind what he knew, once again.

First, he had a bad feeling that Dennis Hearst was right about Melissa and Ritchie, and her evasion when he had raised the topic had only heightened his suspicion. That meant that she had lied to him, or at least omitted material information. Then again, he didn't think he had ever asked her directly whether she had slept with Ritchie and, anyway, there were plenty of reasons why she might not want to reveal the fling. He had only to look to his own encounter in the evidence room a few hours earlier with Beaudoin — a direct result of blurring the lines between work and intimacy. Strange how he had been unable to see the train wreck coming until it was too late. Maybe it had been the same for her with Ritchie: her judgment blinded by a moment of weakness that she immediately regretted and wanted nothing more to do with. The motives for obscuring the relationship in that sense were certainly not difficult to understand. But he knew she had concealed much more than her fling with Ritchie, and the outline of an alternate scenario was slowly but steadily forming in his mind. But he needed to be sure — now more than ever, thanks to his forced leave, which saddled him with a considerable handicap in filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and watching a pair of ducks paddling their way toward him, the copper spires of the Château Laurier rising in the distance behind them. He wondered how Beaudoin had found out. Not that it mattered.

In fact, he decided, as he stood and started walking down the path toward the Somerset Bridge, the only thing that mattered now was finding the answers he needed, and quickly. There were really only two possibilities lurking in the back of his mind. Either there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything, one that he hadn't considered, or he had made an error in judgment so grave that it could cost him everything.