Beautiful Lie the Dead (3 page)

When she re-entered the room carrying a tea tray, Brandon felt a flash of frustration. Tea before Meredith—how like Elena Longstreet. To her credit, Natasha ignored the tea and ploughed straight into the questions with no chit-chat or preamble.

“I understand your son and Meredith Kennedy are engaged.

When is the wedding?”

“New Year's Eve. A choice they may later consider unwise, but at the time it seemed romantic.”

“When was the last time you or your son had contact with Meredith?”

“I haven't seen her in nearly a month, although she's due to come to my annual eggnog party on Christmas Eve. She's been extraordinarily busy—”

“But your son?”

“He had dinner with her Sunday evening, I believe.”

“How did she seem?”

“As far as I know, she was fine. She's a bride, so she has a lot on her mind. She may have been a little anxious recently, but certainly nothing to worry about.”

“Any particular things she was anxious about?”

“Oh, the usual. One of her bridesmaids has withdrawn, and her family wants some young cousin to be a ring bearer, but he's only two and naturally there are concerns—”

“Any disagreements with your son?”

Brandon saw his mother lift her chin to face the interviewer squarely. He knew the fluff she'd supplied so far would not survive the cutting room, but this question was the heart of the interview. The clip that would be replayed throughout the day and possibly across the country. The clip that would be dissected by the police. He found himself holding his breath.

“They are blissfully happy. They have both waited a long time to find each other, and I truly believe that their love is far more important to them than any disputes over menu or wedding procession. They always find a middle ground.”

“What do you think has happened to her?”

Elena hesitated, and Brandon wondered how she would answer. This too might play across the nation. To his relief, she settled on a message of hope. “I hope she simply wanted a day or two of solitude to regroup. We invest so much emotion in our wedding, as a highlight of our lives and expression of our hope for a perfect future. Yet the reality of planning it—balancing out the guest list, finding the right shoes for the dress, choosing between pecan-crusted salmon and Cornish game hen—robs the event of its romantic sheen. Brides in particular struggle with that. She did seem distracted of late, as if her mind were elsewhere.”

“Distracted by what?”

“Possibly the move. They were going to Ethiopia after the honeymoon for a two-year posting with Doctors Without Borders. Meredith worked in Haiti for a brief stint, but neither of them have ever been to Africa. Perhaps she was apprehensive. Natural enough.”

“Are she and her family close?”

Brandon moved down the stairs. So far, his mother had said all the right things, but he knew she was playing to the jury. He wasn't sure he trusted her to keep her views of Meredith's family quite so benign.

She must have heard his footsteps, for she raised her voice.

Warning him, he wondered? “Very. She comes from a lovely family.” She rose to her feet. “Now if you'll excuse me, I hear—”

“There is no trouble,” Brandon said, striding into the room. He knew he was a sight, still dressed in yesterday's rumpled hospital garb and sporting a day's growth. His blue eyes were probably bloodshot and his thick hair plastered in unruly spikes. When the camera swung to him, he faced it square on. A spectacle for sure, but also raw truth.

“You need to get that message across,” he said. “Meredith was not an overwrought bride who got cold feet. She was excited about the wedding and looking forward to working overseas. She has not run off. Something has happened to her. An accident, a slip on the ice that knocked her out. She could be out there somewhere. Buried. In this weather, hypothermia could set in in minutes...” He broke off, quivering.

Elena moved to his side, deftly shielding him from the camera.

“The police are taking this very seriously,” she said. “I believe they have patrol cars on the look-out and are going to search her home for clues.” She glanced outside and allowed herself a small shiver. “We ask for everyone's help. Check your driveways and the walks in front of your houses. If anyone saw her or has a clue where she might have gone, please call the police. The more eyes we have looking, the sooner we'll find her.”

* * *

Once again, Green glanced at his phone. Almost eleven a.m. and Sergeant Li from Missing Persons still had not returned his call. He didn't want to phone again, concerned that his impatience might arouse suspicions. A routine inquiry, that's all it was supposed to be.

Green loved being interrupted by a real life enigma. By Wednesday, the desk in his little office was awash in memos, updates, reports, and his computer inbox was stuffed with more of the same. As the city dug out from its first major snowstorm of the season, the second floor of Elgin Street Headquarters was eerily calm. Criminals too had been deterred by the weather. It was tricky robbing a bank when the getaway car might get stuck in a snowbank, and sexual assault was much more of a challenge in bone-chilling cold and knee-deep drifts. Only the serious and the desperate were out on the street looking for trouble on days like this.

In the Major Crimes Unit, detectives were using the lull to catch up on paperwork or follow up on existing cases. They hunched over computers or talked on the phone, jotting notes. Green could see Detectives Bob Gibbs and Sue Peters at their adjacent desks, unconsciously leaning towards each other as they worked.

On his desk in front of him, Green had assembled the stack of performance appraisals prepared by his NCOs, and he was trying to make decisions he hated. Who to transfer out, who to keep. Organizational policy required police officers to move at least every five years. He knew all the bureaucratic reasons. In theory, it was to ensure a well-rounded, experienced police service, to allow for fresh perspectives and enthusiasm, and to avoid burn-out in the high stress jobs. In practice, it usually meant that just as an officer became really good at the job and developed a network on the street, he or she was moved out, leaving the supervisors with a continual pool of inexperienced, uncertain staff.

Bob Gibbs was one of the officers he'd been trying to shelter for months. The young detective had always been the most valuable geek in the unit, roaming the vast world of cyberspace with ease to track down bad guys and ferret out information. Now, however, he was finally beginning to gain some confidence and skill as an interviewer. He was a far better detective than he would ever be a front line officer, a paradox Green could relate to. If he himself hadn't had Jules to rescue him from the uniform division, he likely would have been turfed out of the force within a year. Or quit in a fit of righteous pique.

Yet Superintendent Devine, herself the master of job hopping her way up the ladder without staying long enough in any job to get really good at it, had issued Green an ultimatum after yesterday's meeting. She had her quota of underlings to move as well and had hinted that Green's own name could be on the list if he didn't play the game. He knew that he was well past due for a transfer and stayed at the helm of Major Case Investigations only because she'd decided no newbie inspector would make her look as good. It was a dubious vote of confidence that could be rescinded on a whim. Barbara Devine was famous for whims.

Devine argued that more experience in other areas, particularly in Patrol, was just what Gibbs needed to put the necessary swagger in his step and teach him to make decisions in the span of two seconds. “Not just high-pressure decisions, Mike,
any
decisions,” she'd said. Green wasn't so sure. It might make him, but it might also break him.

Mercifully, the phone rang before he had to decide. He pounced on the distraction, expecting the MisPers sergeant, only to hear a slight pause followed by a breathy, little-girl voice from long ago.

“I want her home for Christmas, Mike.”

He felt his jaw clench. How his first wife still had the power to do that was a mystery. She'd walked out on him eighteen years ago, putting a bitter, moribund marriage out of its misery. His second wife, Sharon, had brought him infinitely more joy in the years since then, along with a son who had the dark, curly hair and laughing brown eyes of his mother, but whose stubbornness and intensity was all Green.

Green glanced at his watch. Barely eleven o'clock in the morning, eight o'clock in Vancouver. The crack of dawn for Ashley. She must have been stewing all night.

“Good morning to you too, Ashley.”

“It's time this nonsense ended. I want to see her. It's the least you can do, Mike. You don't even celebrate Christmas!”

“She's eighteen. I'm not stopping her. She makes her own decisions.”

“She's done that since she was two years old,” Ashley retorted. “But you could encourage her. Tell her it's time to mend fences. You have Tony too, but Hannah's all I've got.”

Green heard the catch of well-rehearsed tears in her voice. He could have argued the point. Children were not interchangeable or replaceable, and Ashley had had Hannah all to herself for the first fifteen years of her life. But he knew she was right. For her own sake, Hannah needed to reconnect with her mother. She was no longer the defiant, resentful teenager who had landed on his doorstep nearly three years earlier. She was on track to graduate from high school with full honours this spring, an edgy, thoughtful young woman who could run rings around her empty-headed mother.

In the silence, as Green struggled with his own reluctance, Ashley pressed her case. “I'm not going to force her, Mike. Fred and I have done a lot of talking, and I know that doesn't work. But she'll listen to you. She's just like you. Tell her I'll promise not to fight with her.”

A promise that will last precisely half an hour, Green thought.

In a tight spot, fighting was still Hannah's preferred mode of expression. It was all she'd known when she'd arrived in Green's life. Fortunately, however, conflict resolution between mother and daughter was not his responsibility. He only had to get Hannah on the plane, and the rest was up to Ashley and Fred. Disguising a tightness in his chest, he agreed to try.

No sooner had he hung up than there was a soft knock at his door, and the Missing Persons sergeant poked his head in.

A twenty-four year veteran of Patrol, Li had been on modified duties for nearly a year while he awaited hip surgery. Most of the time, Missing Persons was a clerical job of filling in forms, making internet and phone inquiries, and liaising with other units and agencies. Every few months a genuine mystery came along that the missing persons team could sink its investigative teeth into. Li looked as if he was long overdue.

Green beckoned him in and watched as Li eased himself into the plastic guest chair wedged in the narrow space between the desk and the door. He had packed an extra fifty pounds onto his mid-size frame since being parked behind a desk, and his bad hip obviously complained at each new move.

“I'm guessing this is about the missing girl,” Li said before Green could even form his question.

Green masked his surprise. “What's the story?”

“So far, it's not clear. Her name's Meredith Kennedy, thirty-two years old, good family, no known criminal ties. Fiancé called it in last night.”

Green's thoughts were already racing ahead, wondering about Jules's connection to a thirty-two-year-old from a “good family”. Jules was a lifelong bachelor at least twenty-five years her senior. “Any leads yet?”

“Dead ends. We did the usual checks—hospitals, ambulance, accident reports—with no results. By all accounts the young woman has fallen off the face of the earth. Family hasn't heard from her for two days. She was set to get married soon, and her fiancé and friends say she was looking forward to the big day.”

“Banking and cellphone enquiries in the works?”

Li nodded. “We should have that info by tomorrow.”

“What's the last known contact?”

Li flipped through the file. “That's the really interesting part. Jessica Ward, a close friend, spoke to her at 5:45 Monday evening. Our girl sounded upset, said she really had to talk to her, and could they meet somewhere for coffee. Jessica couldn't because she was working an evening shift, so they arranged to get together the next day after Meredith's work.”

“That would be Tuesday? Yesterday?”

“Yes. She never showed up, never phoned to cancel, didn't show up for work either.”

“Any prior history of similar behaviour? Or mental health issues?”

Li shook his head. “Everyone says she's pretty solid.”

“What's Jessica's theory on the disappearance?”

“She's scared. Thinks something has happened to her.”

“What kind of work does the missing girl do?”

“Contract work for the government. Citizenship and Immigration.” “Immigration?” Green let his imagination roam. “Could there be anything there? Sensitive file?”

Li chuckled. “No. She was in Haiti last winter after the earthquake, helping to sort through immigration red tape, but back in Ottawa she mostly drafts policy positions for someone else's signature. I talked to her boss, who said she does a good job but really wants to get back overseas. That's their plan after the wedding. He was going to work for Doctors Without Borders in Ethiopia and she was going to teach school.”

Green was still searching for a connection to Jules. “What's the fiancé's name?”

“Dr. Brandon Longstreet.”

Green's interest spiked again. “Related to Elena Longstreet?”

Li looked alarmed. “Who's Elena Longstreet?”

“Big name attorney in town. Years ago she used to do criminal cases, but now it's mostly complex appeals. Charter challenges are her big thing. She also teaches criminal law at the University of Ottawa.” Green searched his memory for long-forgotten details. Only two stood out. Elena Longstreet was as much a master of courtroom drama as of the law. Her regal elegance and sleek black hair captured centre stage whenever she was in the room. As well, she'd been a ferocious critic of the police for lazy and incompetent case preparation. If the police had fouled up a single step of an investigation, Elena would find it and demolish the case. Even experienced officers had been known to quail under her cross-examination.