Dream Chasers (27 page)

Now that the euphoria and heartbreak of the Stanley Cup finals was over, the
NHL
Entry Draft had become the talk of the sports pages. All the sports reporters were feeding the public's hockey addiction by analyzing choices and making predictions. Being a local boy, Riley's photo had been plastered across the sports section several times in recent months, and he'd even popped up on a couple of local television ads, which must have netted him a nice chunk of change. But Sullivan had noticed that recently his agent had done most of the talking, giving the excuse that Riley needed to concentrate on finishing school exams before the end of the week.

School exams my ass, Sullivan thought. The kid is a basket case, and McIntyre is keeping a lid on him. Even a hint of this scandal—of drug use or criminal negligence, especially after his recent slump—and the teams wouldn't touch him, at least in the first few rounds when all the future stars were being snapped up.

Jones and Wallington pulled up behind him in a police panel van. After a brief discussion, the surveillance team headed around the house to cover the back door, while Sullivan and the other two detectives mounted the front steps and rang the doorbell.

No answer. No sound from within. Sullivan rang again, leaning on the bell for a full five seconds. At the end, he heard a muffled volley of curses and some thumping in the distance. He was about to ring a third time when the door cracked open, and a red-eyed youth peered out. He had on nothing but boxers, and muscles bulged on his bare, hairless chest. His straw-coloured hair stuck up in cowlicks around his head. Sullivan barely recognized Ben, whom he'd last seen as a pimply kid with half the muscles. Judging from the blank look on the kid's face, he didn't remember him at all. Sullivan decided to go by the book. Holding up his badge, he introduced himself.

“Is your father at home?”

Ben scratched his stubble, then turned to bellow into the hall. Silence answered him, and after a moment he shrugged. “I guess not.”

“But his vehicle is here.”

Ben peered out at the plumbing van in the drive. “Must have taken the other car.”

“Do you know where he went?”

Ben shrugged again, looking bored. “I just got up.”

Sullivan held up the official papers. “No matter. We have a warrant to search these premises.”

The bored look evaporated. The youth staggered back, his mouth falling open. “A-a warrant! Why?”

“It's all in here. We also have a warrant for the arrest of Riley O'Shaughnessy. May we come in, please?”

“Riley! No!” Ben shoved forward to block the door. He was a big kid, almost as tall as Sullivan. “I mean, without my dad, you can't come in.”

Sullivan pushed past him and signalled the others inside. “It's all quite legal, son. These officers will conduct the search, and I'll ask you to remain in the main room while they're doing that. Where is Riley?”

Ben had backed up into the hall, flexing his fists and breathing hard. He was trying for bluster, but the whites of his eyes betrayed his fear. “You're the one with the search warrant.”

“Upstairs?”

Ben snarled but said nothing. Sullivan went to the back door to let the other two detectives in and pointed upstairs. He listened to their footsteps thumping overhead, to doors opening and closing, and a minute later, they came thundering back down the stairs.

“No one there.”

Sullivan glanced at Ben and saw no surprise on his face. “Search the rest of the house. I'll check outside.”

Sullivan had a bad feeling as he slipped outside into the back yard. The house was surrounded by a tall, overgrown cedar hedge which was easily penetrable if a person was determined to escape. If the surveillance team had been clumsy and Riley had spotted them from his upstairs bedroom window, he could be long gone by now.

The backyard looked like a typical handyman's junkyard. A couple of old doors leaned against the wall, and an old washer and wood stove sat rusting in the corner. A garden shed with peeling paint and a sagging roof filled the back corner of the yard, its door half open. Sullivan moved quickly, checking behind shrubs on his way, and pressed himself against the shed wall.

He knocked cautiously. “Riley, it's the police. Come on out, son. I don't want anyone to get hurt.”

Nothing. He shoved the door back hard, causing it to slam against the wall. The whole shed shook. Then stillness. He peered around the door into the interior, which was swept, with tools stowed away against the wall. He spotted a spade and an axe, both gleaming clean. Too clean, he wondered? Who the hell bothers to clean a spade?

Sullivan scanned the yard. There was no sign of a cart, but propped against the back wall of the garage, next to the garbage bins, was a large wheelbarrow.

Wheelbarrow! It was the perfect way to transport a body, lightweight and easy to manoeuvre. Pulling on latex gloves, he eased it away from the wall. It too was scrubbed clean. Not even a speck of rust. He'd never seen a wheelbarrow without at least a few rusty dings in it. Underfoot, the ground was soggy and the grass flattened as if soaked by a strong spray.

He went back inside to find the search team poking around in the bedroom closet. A half dozen pairs of shoes sat in evidence bags on the bed.

“There's a spade and axe in the shed,” Sullivan said. “Make sure you bring them, and the wheelbarrow as well.”

Wallington nodded. “Do you want us to bag all these clothes?”

Sullivan looked at the closet stuffed with shirts, sweaters and jackets. All high-end, all in camera-friendly colours of rust and green that would look good with Riley's dark hair and eyes. McIntyre's touch. Hardly the kind of stuff you'd wear for chopping up a body. But stranger things have happened.

“Yeah, take it all. But the main thing to look for is old clothes or a raincoat. Easier to rinse blood off.”

“He probably threw the stuff out, sir. I would.”

Sullivan glanced out the window. “There's a row of garbage cans out back. Check them thoroughly. I don't think he'd be stupid enough to leave the stuff on the premises, but you never know.”

Riley's bedroom window looked over the side of the house, with a clear view of both the backyard and the street where the surveillance team had been parked. Sullivan's eyes settled on the garage directly below and he sucked in his breath. From this angle, he could see it was an oversized garage, with plenty of room to skirt around the van in the drive. “You said his car was in there?”

The surveillance detectives nodded like twins. “He drove it in there himself last night.”

Sullivan swore as he headed back outside and hauled open the garage door. It glided easily, well oiled and soundless. But when the sunlight finally poured in to illuminate the dank interior, there was nothing but an empty concrete floor.

The kid had flown the coop.

A
n
airplane loomed overhead, so low that it cast a shadow over the street like a massive bird of prey. Its jet engines blotted out all other sound. Green squinted up into the midday sun and tracked its descent over the tall pines. It looked as if it were going to land on nearby golf course, not at the airport more than a mile away. Back in the days before Ottawa's airport was first built, the land around it had been a pleasant, rolling woodland on which the local gentry hunted and played. Now, Hunt Club was a typical labyrinthian tangle of suburban crescents crowded with comfortable fourbedroom homes, tattered basketball nets and
SUV
s that never saw anything rougher than the soccer field.

But bland, well-mannered suburbia can hide all sorts of secrets behind its decorative glass doors, Green reflected as he stood outside Vic McIntyre's innocuous-looking brick house. McIntyre did not appear to spend much time or imagination on his garden, which was limited to grass and lowmaintenance evergreen shrubs. Nor did he have much flair for colour and contrast. The house was entirely coloured in drab shades of brown. The only hint of drama was the red curtains in the living room window. No one would give this house a second glance.

Perhaps that was the intention.

The driveway was empty, but the garage door was closed, keeping alive Green's slim hope of finding the players' agent at home. However, when ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door failed to bring a response, he had to accept defeat. Casually he strolled around the side of the house down a neat cobblestone path. Halfway down was a side door which probably opened into the garage. Idly, Green tried the knob and was surprised to feel it give beneath his hand. He peeked into the spacious garage, past the empty space where the car would have been and saw a door on the far side which led into the house. Even more surprising, the door was ajar. In the city, few people still left their doors unlocked, and McIntyre did not strike him as the trusting type. Carelessness or haste, Green wondered? He stepped back outside, feeling conspicuous, and continued on towards the back, where he unlatched the gate and slipped into the backyard.

It was like going down the rabbit hole. Here, hidden from view by a six-foot-high privacy fence, was a playground fit for Hollywood. A huge, kidney-shaped pool glistened in the sun, surrounded by a broad, meandering slate walkway. Reclining lounge chairs, patio umbrellas and a poolside bar were arranged artfully around, and in the corner, an ornate gazebo housed an octagonal marble hot tub. A fake waterfall burbled against the back fence, and wrought iron lamp posts marked every few yards, promising romantic splashes of light on a warm summer night.

Green stood just inside the gate, absorbing the spectacle. This must have cost the high-flying agent well over a hundred thousand dollars. His secret paradise, known only to those privileged to be invited and to the neighbours who looked down on it from their second storey windows.

As if by telepathy, one of them was standing in the McIntyre driveway when Green returned to the front. He was a beefy man in his late fifties by Green's guess, dressed in baggy shorts, a battered Tilley hat and a
T
-shirt with the Green Party logo. He had a set of keys in his hand and a suspicious scowl on his face.

“You looking for something, buddy?”

Green hesitated, then decided that his police badge might net him more cooperation than some lame cover story. At the sight of it, the man drew himself up and sucked in his gut. Green recorded his name—Eugene Boulder—and his address, then gestured towards McIntyre's house.

“I'm looking for Mr. McIntyre, but he doesn't seem to be home.”

“No, he's out most days. You might catch him in the evening, but then again, maybe not.”

“He's not here much?”

Boulder shrugged. “Well, he travels all over. He's a sports agent, says he's got to go where the players are.”

“Has he been here recently? Say in the past ten days?”

“Oh, yeah. He comes and goes, sometimes at all hours of the night.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Boulder wiped some sweat from his forehead and squinted at the ground. “This morning. He drives a big, gas-guzzling Lincoln Navigator—black.” Boulder sneered. “Hard to miss when it's staring you in the face first thing in the morning.”

“So it was here this morning? What time did it leave?”

“Pretty early, for him anyways. Eight thirty, maybe? I was out laying earwig traps over there under my peonies, and he roars off, foot to the floor like always.” Boulder shook his head, then sighed as if in resignation and cocked his eyebrow at Green. “What's this all about?”

“Mr. McIntyre is assisting us with some inquiries,” he replied drily, then tossed in a diversionary clue. “That's quite a set-up he has around back. Does he have many parties out there?”

Boulder grunted. “Enough. One would be too many for me, but then the wife says I'm a stick-in-the-mud. Pretty noisy affairs, on till all hours. The Stanley Cup playoffs were awful.”

“Ever think of complaining?”

Boulder eyed him in silence for a moment as if trying to gauge the impact of his answer. “I thought of it. Told him I was thinking of it, and the next day one of my roses was dug up. I'd been babying it for ten years. I can't prove a thing, but I got the point.”

“You should have complained anyway. Otherwise bullies like that win the game.”

“Yeah, but you don't live next door to him.”

“Tell me about these parties.”

Boulder needed no further encouragement to spill forth the frustration and venom he'd stored up in the two years since McIntyre had moved in. Loud music, dancing outside by the pool, a constant parade of girls, each wearing less that the last, cars revving up and down the street at three in the morning, kids barely old enough to drive throwing up in his prize rhododendrons. Other times there were smaller parties, with quieter music, nudes in the hot tub, girls giggling—who knew what was going on?

“The wife says I should get out of the nineteenth century, but this used to be such a peaceful street, and the couple who owned the place before him were such nice people. They had a beautiful maple out back that turned scarlet every fall, you could see it for miles, but he moves in, and within a week he had the backhoe in there and tore the whole place up.”

Green made sympathetic noises and prepared to leave. As an afterthought, he pulled out some photos from his car. “Did you ever see this girl here?”

Boulder studied the picture of Crystal and shrugged. “Could be. That's the type you see, and they all look the same, don't they, with all that make-up on and barely enough clothes to cover a baby's bottom.”

Green showed him Jenna Zukowski, and he frowned. “He sure likes the ladies, but this one looks too old for him. I'd have to see her with make-up to be sure.”

“What about him?”

“That kid, yeah. That's the hockey player, and he's over a lot. Not just at the parties.”