Beautiful Lie the Dead (35 page)

As Brandon descended the steep, narrow staircase to the street, he turned his restless thoughts to his next move. He was due at work to cover the evening shift, but he couldn't even think about that now. Not when he was so close. He mentally reviewed the list of Meredith's friends and contacts he'd compiled the night before when he was trying to figure out where she was hiding. Last night his mind had gone around and around in futile circles, but now, without the fog of fatigue, alcohol and emotion, one name jumped out. Tanya Neuss, one of her childhood friends, who was away on a six-month overseas posting.

Perhaps that was why he hadn't given her a second thought last week when he was trying to find out where Meredith was.

* * *

Tanya Neuss lived in a spacious apartment on the top floor of a chunky brick low-rise in Westboro. Brandon parked on the side street in front of it and studied the façade, trying to pick out the window. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, his hopes soared. How had he been so stupid as to discount Tanya simply because she was overseas? How could he have forgotten that she had left Meredith her keys so that Meredith could keep an eye on her apartment? What better place to hide out than in an obscure apartment building on a dead-end side street, where it was possible to come and go through a back door that opened onto the parking lot?

Tanya lived modestly. Working for NGOs overseas was never guaranteed to make you rich, but in addition, Brandon knew she funnelled all her savings back into the organization. He was grateful for her frugality as he opened the Sixties-style glass door and entered the tiny vestibule. No lavish lobby here, no fancy security system or coded entry buzzers. Just an old-fashioned intercom and a panel of buzzers labelled with the apartment numbers, which he contemplated with dismay. He and Meredith had visited only once and he could picture Tanya's apartment in his mind. Top floor, but that was all. In any case, if Meredith was in hiding, she would never answer the buzzer.

He began to buzz other apartments and was astonished when one of the tenants came on the intercom. “Apartment 402,” he mumbled in falsetto. “Forgot my key.”

The door buzzed open and he was in. Too impatient for the balky old elevator, he bounded up the stairs two at a time, huffing by the time he exited the fire door onto the top floor. He padded along the deserted hall and came to a stop partway down, outside #408. There was a peephole but no extra deadbolt on the flimsy wood-panelled door. Meredith had often bugged her about that. This had to be the one.

The hallway was utterly silent. Not even the murmur of TV or tenants emanated from the nearby flats. Holding his breath, he laid his ear to the door. Silence, except for the beat of his racing pulse. Leaning against the wall, he drew deep breaths to slow himself down. Tried again. Still no sound from beyond the door. On a wild chance, he reached above the door for a spare key. The walls were high and the door tall, discouraging all but the biggest of burglars from reaching it. But there it was, a single brass door key covered with dust. He blew it off, inserted it and heard a satisfying click as the door drifted silently open.

He searched the one-bedroom apartment in less than five seconds. Nothing. He returned to the kitchen for a closer look. The whole place looked tidy and uninhabited. There were no dishes in the sink or on the rack. The garbage pail under the sink was empty and scrubbed clean, the fridge, coffee maker and toaster all unplugged. The cupboards contained only some pasta, spices and a few cans.

No one had used this kitchen in a long time. Disappointed, he moved on to the bathroom. Also clean and dry. The bed had been stripped and a dust cover spread over it. Not a single rumple disturbed its surface. It took him ten minutes to go through the apartment inch by inch, methodically looking for any signs of covert habitation that Meredith might have missed. There was nothing. The phone was disconnected and unplugged. Tanya was nothing if not thorough.

He wanted to scream. He had come so close, yet he was nowhere. She was not here. She had to be somewhere else, but where? This had seemed like such a perfect idea—a friend out of town for months and her apartment lying empty for the taking. As he travelled back down in the elevator, he thought about the last time they'd seen Tanya. It had been her going away bash, held not in her apartment but at her parents' cottage on Loon Lake. It was a ramshackle cottage built with spit and salvaged lumber by her grandfather and his brothers decades ago. The other cousins squabbled over it during the premium weeks of summer, but Tanya loved to party there in the autumn, when the colours were glorious but the bugs and other cottagers were gone. It was on a dead-end dirt road, all alone on its section of the lake, and they could make as much noise as they wanted. Bonfires, guitars, off-key singing, and way too many coolers of beer.

Halfway out the front door, Brandon froze. Tanya had been drunk and maudlin by the end of the party when she'd given Meredith the keys to her apartment. “I'm so sorry I'll miss the wedding. If I could, I'd fly home. But you guys have a great time and if you want to use my apartment or my car for—you know, a getaway—just do it. It's my present to you.”

The car! Brandon sprinted around the edge of the apartment building into the parking lot at the back. Meredith had planned to move the car every few weeks to make sure it didn't seize up. It was an ancient, rust-riddled red Honda, and Meredith had joked that she wouldn't let it die on her watch.

The parking lot held about a dozen cars, each parked in their designated numbered spot. Nowhere among them, however, was there an ancient red Honda.

TWENTY-SIX

A
s soon as they arrived back at the station, Green sent Levesque to begin work on the DNA warrants while he shut himself in his office to redraft his notes on Adam Jules to include the new revelations from Elena and the Kennedys. The deeper Jules's involvement became, the more worrisome his absence. Deputy Chief Poulin had vetoed a missing persons report but had reluctantly agreed to an off-the-record meeting Tuesday morning.

Green was on his third reworking and ready to pack it in for the day when his phone rang. It was the front desk. “There's an individual down here, Dylan Whyte, sir, who says he has information on the Kennedy case.”

Glancing through his half-open office door, Green spotted Gibbs bent over his phone, scribbling in his notebook. “I'll send someone down to see him.”

“Sir, he insists on speaking to you. Well, to the head honcho that runs the show.”

To Green's knowledge, the man's name had not come up in the investigation. Could this be a new angle, new information, he wondered, as he told the officer to bring him up. Or just another glory-seeker.

Likely the latter, Green decided when the young man got off the elevator. The kid was one step away from a cadaver. Even his bulky parka could not disguise the protruding bones and the hollow cheeks. Jesus, Green thought, what's he on? The man's clothes were clearly thrift shop, but he looked too well groomed to be a street person. His face had a few fresh razor nicks and his hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail.

“Bob,” Green murmured as he walked by, “get some sandwiches and coffee and meet us down the hall.” He extended his hand to the newcomer. “Mr. Whyte? I'm Inspector Green.”

Dylan nodded towards Gibbs with a nervous laugh. “I hope that's not Detective Brown.”

Oh boy, Green thought as he led the man down the hall. He hoped it was just nerves. In the interview room, the young man shed his parka, unwound his long wool scarf from his neck and placed a laptop case on the table between them. His body trembled with anxiety, but Green was reassured by the clear intelligence in his gaze.

The young man took a deep breath. “This is Brandon Longstreet's computer.” He moved to open it.

Alarmed, Green stopped him. “Wait a minute, where did you get it?”

“He brought it to me and asked me to trace the source of an email he'd received. It's all legal.”

“For you, but without a search warrant, not for me.” Green looked for a way around the procedural snag. Elena Longstreet would have his head. “Why don't you tell me the entire story from the beginning. Who you are, what happened, and why you've come to the police.”

Dylan sat for a moment frowning at Green in bewilderment before the light seemed to dawn. With a nod, he embarked on his tale. Gibbs arrived with the food, and Dylan became visibly more enthusiastic as he tucked into a slice of pizza. His story came out in a flood.

“It took me awhile to figure out who he was. I've been barricaded in my own little world for over a month, so I haven't really been following the story. His name was sort of familiar but I'd done some work for him before. But anyway, when I started searching his computer for other emails to and from the same person, I realized what this was—an email from this girl who's been missing all week. When I checked news websites, I saw not only was the whole police force looking for her but it might be connected to another woman's death. So—”

Green's pulse leaped. “Hold it! You're talking about a recent email from Meredith Kennedy?”

“Yes. From last night.” Dylan bit off another chunk of pizza. “It didn't say much, just ‘safe', but I got to wondering why Brandon didn't bring it to you. You're the guys investigating, and he must know you have the resources to trace this even better than me, so I got worried. I don't want to get involved in anything criminal, or obstruct a police investigation or anything. And what if the girl was running from him, and I hand her over to him? I'm your quintessential peace and love geek, just want to study how people get along and how their play reflects their values. I...I could just have called him up and said I couldn't find anything, but I figured he'd go to someone else, and besides, this is something the police should know, right? That she's alive, but it looks like she's in hiding.”

Green's mind was racing ahead, but he said nothing. He knew he needed to let the young man make his statement in his own way, that he mustn't ask specific questions about the contents of the computer. Gibbs too was so excited that he'd stopped taking notes, but at least he also remained quiet. This girl's fate had consumed them for almost a week, they had explored every aspect of her life and felt they knew her very soul. They had tried not to imagine the worst. Now this! Yes, she was alive, but not yet out of danger. Technicalities stood between her and rescue.

“Is there more?” Green finally prompted, as vague as possible. Dylan hesitated. Fingered the laptop uncertainly. “He's sent her a whole lot of emails over the week, and there's stuff on Facebook as well, but until last night, there was nothing from her. Then this reply from a brand new Yahoo account. Like she was expecting her regular emails to be intercepted or something. The thing is, it's hard to track an email to its exact source. It takes a lot of detective work and cross-checking. Cyberspace doesn't know physical boundaries like we have. It's easy to find the IP address it came from and to track down who owns that IP address, but that might be a company in Windsor or Quebec City that's managing servers in Ottawa, St. Catherine's, Guelph, wherever. See what I mean?”

Green nodded. He had only the vaguest idea, but it didn't matter. He just wanted the young man to keep talking.

“I considered searching that IP address on Google to see what other emails had come from that address. Had she sent out any others? Or had someone else used it and mentioned where they were sending from? But that would take time, and I was still trying to figure out if this guy was a danger to her and if I should bring it to you guys. So I started looking at recent activity on his computer. There were a whole lot of email inquiries and website searches. Nothing rang an alarm bell until I checked his recent documents file.”

Green held his breath while Dylan gulped his coffee and once again half-opened the laptop. “I really wish I could show this to you.”

“Just keep talking.”

“I found a list he wrote last night, after he got this email. Names of people and places, with pros and cons listed beside them. Questions like ‘would she trust them, would anyone else know them?' Places where no one would recognize her or get the Ottawa news. Then below that a list of the most likely places and people. It spooked me out. He's got an idea where she is, and he was using me to narrow down the search. When I found that, I thought, that's it. I'm handing this over to the cops.”

Green nodded. “You did the right thing. We don't have any specific suspects in this case, but we do need access to all available information if we're going to have a safe resolution to the case for all involved.” He paused, took a sip of coffee and held the young man's gaze. “You do understand I cannot by law examine the contents of that computer without a warrant. I could get a warrant, of course—” Inwardly he winced at the likelihood of that if Elena Longstreet was on the opposing bench. “But it would take time. Do you have any further details to add to your statement?”

Dylan's eyes held his, and Green was grateful for the intelligence reflected in them. “From that list of places and from the IP address I tracked down, I've got some pretty good clues where she might be. That is, where she sent the email from. Am I allowed to tell you?”

Green smiled. “As a private citizen, you're allowed to provide me with any information you have that you consider relevant to the case.”

“Then she's probably at someone called Tanya's cottage, somewhere in West Quebec.”

“Tanya?”

“That's all there was on the list. Tanya's cottage. But the IP address could be from somewhere in the Buckingham Papineau area. I figured, cottage, Buckingham—probably go together.”

Green was already weighing the odds. Buckingham was in the heart of Quebec cottage country about an hour north east of Ottawa. He pictured rugged lakes and forested slopes settled decades ago by simple working families looking for a slip of lakeside to put out a dock and a row boat. Most of the cottages would be boarded up for the winter, with few neighbours to spy and ask questions. The locals might notice someone living there, but would be unlikely to concern themselves with news of a missing woman out of Ottawa.