Dream Chasers (25 page)

He nodded at Watts and LeBlanc. “Impound Darren O'Shaughnessy's plumber's van and have Ident go over it with a fine-tooth comb.”

Jones had been writing furiously. Now he glanced at the clock on the wall, which read three p.m. “These warrants will take a while. They probably won't be ready before the morning. If I was the kid, I'd be halfway to the U.S. border by then.”

Green nodded. “That's why we're going to put him under surveillance. He should be in school writing exams. Watts, you and LeBlanc set that up, for overnight if you have to. As soon as Jones gets the warrants signed, we'll pick him up.”

The late June sun was still blazing off their living room window when Green pulled into his driveway at six o'clock, having exhausted all possible leads he could follow up that day. He felt restless and out of sorts, and the silence that greeted him when he opened the front door only heightened his mood. No Tony rushing into his arms, no Modo thumping her shy tail on the rug, no cooking smells wafting from the kitchen.

Just the roar of his neighbour's lawnmower and the burned smell of this morning's coffee. Then gradually the pulse of rock music penetrated the roar, and he smiled. To his amazement, Hannah was home. Five nights in a row, previously unheard of. What miraculous transformation had occurred? Not that he dared ask, but he was glad of the result. He picked up the mail and sifted through it as he padded down the hall. Bills, promotional flyers, charity requests—all badges of suburban middle age. He tossed them aside unopened and headed upstairs to shower, the whiff of decay still clinging to his clothes.

He stripped, turned on the hot water full blast and climbed into the tub. An object looped around the showerhead startled him. He picked it up and stepped out of the tub, rubbing it to clear the steamy film.

It was a clear glass pendant in the shape of a tear drop, hanging from a leather cord. He'd never seen it before. It was a new age piece of jewellery quite unlike the beads, chains and silver studs that Hannah wore. Yet who else could have put it there?

After his shower, he dressed and knocked on Hannah's door. The music stopped and after some shuffling, the door opened to frame Hannah's delicate face. To his surprise, she was wearing no make-up, and her hair was wrapped in a towel. She looked almost soft enough to hug, but he contented himself with a smile.

He held up the pendant. “What's this?”

Her eyes flicked over it, betraying nothing. “Looks like a pendant.”

“What was it doing in my shower?”

She lifted her shoulders languidly. “Maybe it migrated there. They're supposed to have magical powers, those things.”

He played along. “And why would it migrate there?”

“I don't know. Maybe so you'd see it? Maybe it's trying to tell you something.”

A faint smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “Tell me what?”

“How should I know, Mike? You're the detective.” His smile faded. Hannah herself was trying to tell him something. Give me a name, he'd told her, write it in invisible ink if you have to. He studied the pendant, watching the light refract as it twisted on its cord. His heart quickened.

“It's a crystal,” he said.

“So it is.”

“Does it have any other name? A specific kind of crystal, maybe?”

“Gee, Mike, don't ask me. I'm not into all that woo-woo crap.”

“Do you suppose if I rubbed it, it could tell me any more?”

“Oh, crystals love to be rubbed.” She paused, deadpan. “In the right hands, they'll give you anything you ask.”

He remained standing in the doorway, feeling like a fool as he tried blindly to follow her cryptic clues. They were on a delicate footing. Because it was a confidential police investigation, he could not tell her what he knew, and because of loyalty, she would not. He tried a more oblique approach.

“Do you know anything about these crystals?”

She shrugged. “I've heard things. But I gotta go. I'm in the middle of something.”

“Can we talk about it over dinner? Hypothetically, of course. Not this particular crystal.”

She looked past him into the hall as if sizing up the legion of police lined up behind him. Her eyes, devoid of their usual make-up, looked wide and guileless. Without all the harsh black, he could see his own deceptively innocent hazel eyes.

He cooked hamburgers on the barbeque, a skill he'd been trying to master since becoming a suburban family man, but he could almost hear the laughter of his colleagues on the force, who discussed
BTU
s and side burners as easily as they discussed cars. The hamburgers were nearly done when Hannah joined him on the back patio, her make-up now complete and her hair freshly spiked. It was, however, now orange instead of blue. Two new silver studs had joined the others on her left eyebrow.

She handed him some unrecognizable brown lumps in a shrink-wrapped package. “Veggie burger. I don't eat red meat any more.”

He took the package without protest, for he needed her at her most congenial. “What do you like on these? Onion? Tomatoes?”

“Hot salsa's good.”

Kills the taste, he thought but refrained from saying so. A moment later, she sneaked him a smile. “Kills the taste.”

He laughed and waved a fork at the wine bottle on the patio table. “Help yourself. A little merlot might help things too.”

If she knew he was softening her up, she gave no sign as she poured them both some wine. He waited until all the food was served, and she had doctored her veggie burger to her satisfaction. A soft pink flush glowed through her pale make-up.

He lifted his glass.
“L'Chaim.”
She sipped thoughtfully without replying.

“So,” he said, holding up the crystal. “Hypothetically, what can you tell me about this.”

She pushed her burger around her plate, and when she spoke, her tone was troubled. Gone were the teasing and the enigmatic allusions. “It's a whole different way of looking at things. Cliques, who's in, who's out, who gets to fuck who and show it off. Everybody's using everybody else. You see it in school all the time, and I hate it.” She stole him a glance from under her thick mascara, as if expecting an argument. When he said nothing, she continued.

“At least I'm honest. My sex is honest. If I like a guy, it's because he's interesting or he's hot or maybe just because he's a really good fuck. Not because he's the most popular or richest guy in the school. And I don't go around with my boobs falling out, offering free blow jobs just to get him. All so I can brag.”

He clenched his jaw to refrain from commentary. “What kind of crowd would this crystal hang out with?”

She shrugged. “Any crowd that thinks they're cool. But the jocks are the worst, because the guys are all into muscles and power, and who's bigger, faster and stronger than the next guy. The more girls you have hanging off you, the bigger you are.”

“And what's in it for the girl? Good old-fashioned status?”

She raised her head to contemplate him thoughtfully. “Good old-fashioned power. Do you know how it feels to have a guy— the hottest guy in town, the biggest man on the hockey rink, the guy in all the headlines—do you know how it feels to have him in the palm of your hand? Begging, promising you anything you ask?”

“That doesn't last, however. Five minutes later, he probably doesn't give the girl another thought.”

“He does if she knows how to play it. But that doesn't matter. The thrill is in catching him and having him under your spell. Hearing those words so you can repeat them over and over.”

“But guys will say anything when they're aroused.”

“That just adds to the thrill. To get a guy to say anything, to know that this big guy can outscore anyone on the team or outrace anyone on the field, but right now all he wants and all he's thinking about, is you.”

“But it's not you. He's just using you.”

“Who's using who? Who's in control, Mike?” She locked his gaze. “I used to be like that, when I was about thirteen, and I discovered no matter what else the kids thought of me or said about me, I could get the hottest guy to pay attention to me by giving hand jobs. Sometimes even in the school cafeteria under the table, but that wasn't very satisfying because you couldn't have their full attention. The woods behind Mom's house were better.”

He sat in silence, wrestling with dismay and discomfort as he tried to absorb this unwelcome image. He remembered being a teenage boy, and the girls who offered their bodies for free. They'd been disdained and ridiculed, even as their offers were accepted with thrills of delight. In his job, he'd met sexually abused girls who offered sex as a kind of welcoming gift, the only way they knew to please a man. He'd met prostitutes who regarded it as little more than a business deal. But the notion that teenage girls as young as thirteen enjoyed the power and the sense of dominance was unnerving.

While he was working out how to respond, Hannah herself retreated to safer ground. She picked up the crystal. “Girls like this are deep into this sex game. They set their sights on the top guy in the crowd, offer it for free, look for chances. The party scene is the best place, because the guys are on the make too, and everybody's dancing hot and heavy, hopped up on booze and drugs. Even on just weed, a blow job is pure gold.” She laughed. “So the guys say.”

“So drugs are part of the game for these girls? Using it, maybe even supplying it?”

“Just for fun. Hypothetically, like I told you before, just to help out friends or to add to the party. They're not serious users.”

“So where would a girl like this, hypothetically, get these drugs from?”

Hannah hesitated, taking time to lick all the salsa off her fingers. “Drugs are everywhere. But at those parties, sometimes adults have their own agendas. Their own reasons for wanting to see kids drunk or stoned or having a good time.”

“What reasons?”

“I don't know, Mike. That's all I heard. I've never been to one of those parties. Like I said, it's not my scene. But nobody opens up a candy store for nothing.”

G
reen's
bedside phone blasted him awake at six o'clock the next morning. Barbara Devine's voice over the line was almost as shrill. “Have you seen today's
Sun
?” Green squinted outside at the steel grey dawn. The stars were nowhere to be seen. Had the woman lost her mind? “There's a full page close-up of the Bruce Pit crime scene—you can even see the poor woman's naked foot, for God's sake—and the headline is the usual Frank Corelli sensationalism. ‘Did school social worker know too much?' Mike, what did you tell the guy?”

Green bolted upright, instantly clear-headed. Goddamn Corelli. Anything to sell a damn paper. “What's in the body of the article?”

“Well, that doesn't matter, does it? People don't read the fine print, the part where he admits the body hasn't been identified and the police are denying a connection between the two deaths. Corelli's got the story the police aren't telling yet.”

“Does it name the social worker?”

There was silence as Devine scanned the article. Green pictured her sitting at her kitchen table, still dishevelled from sleep and surrounded by the three local papers she scanned every morning. “No, fortunately not,” she said, several decibels lower.

Green breathed a sigh of relief. It was a small reprieve, since Jenna Zukowski's family and friends would know only too well who Corelli was referring to. Moreover, the killer would know that his attempt to conceal her identity and her connection to the Kovacev case had not worked, making him all the more dangerous and desperate.

But at least Jenna Zukowski's name had not been broadcast across the entire city.

“I want you down at the station
ASAP
, issuing a clarification, Mike. And you can tell Corelli that his boss will be hearing from me!”

That will make his day, Green thought. The boys in the
Sun
newsroom were probably laying bets on how long it would take the police brass to lodge their complaint. Controversy and conflict sold papers.

“Oh, and Mike!” Devine snapped just as he was about to hang up. “Let's get an
ID
on this woman so we can put all this speculation to rest.”

“Gee, I hadn't thought of that,” Green muttered once he'd hung up. Thanks to his early wake-up call, he arrived at the station to find the Major Crimes Squad room still virtually empty. None of the day shift had clocked in yet, and predictably Corelli was nowhere to be found in the
Sun
newsroom. Green used the time to do damage control by issuing a press release and contacting media relations to handle the fallout. Then he called Jenna Zukowski's parents, who, along with half the town of Barry's Bay, had taken over the entire Super 8 Motel in Kanata, but who fortunately had not seen the
Sun
. He reassured them they'd be the first to know of any developments.

Finally he checked in on the surveillance team sitting down the street from Darren O'Shaughnessy's house. LeBlanc sounded groggy but pulled himself together quickly at the sound of Green's voice. No sir, there'd been no activity at the O'Shaughnessy house yet, except an
Ottawa Sun
delivery man around four in the morning. The uncle's van was still in the drive, and the kid had parked his sports car in the garage the night before. In the background, Green heard Watts volunteering that he would too, if he had a set of wheels like that.

Outside Green's office, the squad room had begun to fill up, and he spotted Sullivan coming down the hall from the briefing room. Quickly he told LeBlanc to record everyone who came and went from the house, and if Riley O'Shaughnessy left, they were to call it in and follow him.

Sullivan's bulk filled the doorway, and when Green hung up, he stepped inside and closed the door. A frown carved deeply into his brow. “Fucking Corelli,” he said, dropping into the guest chair, which screeched beneath his two hundred and fifty pounds.