Dream Chasers (33 page)

“And look what she got for her trouble” was the sentence that hung in the air, unspoken. The parents pulled themselves to their feet and headed towards the door.

“The pathologist will be releasing her body in the morning,” Green said. “Meanwhile, would you like someone with you? A counsellor...”

“No.” The father's voice snapped like a whip in the small room. He reached to take his wife's arm. “We don't need none of that. Once we can take her with us, we'll be going home.”

When Green arrived back upstairs, he was still awash in sorrow, futile anger and most of all, a nagging shame. He had resented Jenna's interference, resented her stupidity that had placed her in harm's way. Dismissed her motives as sheer nosiness. After more than twenty years dealing with the tragic choices people make, he should have known better.

Only a few detectives remained in the squad room. Gibbs was on the phone, and Sullivan was preparing the video setup for Darren O'Shaughnessy's interview. Sullivan jerked his head towards Gibbs.

“He's talking to the
ER
, waiting for an update. After that, I'm going to ask him to join me in the interview with Darren.”

Green chose his words carefully. “You have a history with this guy, Brian. Maybe you shouldn't be involved.”

Sullivan's jaw tightened. “A kid is possibly dead, and this bastard knows something. I know the case. I know what to ask him.”

“We'll get someone else and give them an earphone. You can supervise from down the hall.”

“Who?” Sullivan challenged. “Bob?”

Green glanced at Gibbs, who sat resting his head in his hand. Distress was etched in every line on his forehead. Green had seen him at the accident scene earlier, carefully avoiding even a glimpse of the body on the stretcher. Almost three months had passed since the attack on Sue. Time was not helping. If anything, he was getting worse as Sue's struggle dragged on. Something more drastic needed to be done.

Green shook his head. “I'm not taking the risk. Not with a multiple murder case.” He thought of Hannah nursing her fears all alone as she waited for him to come home. Then he thought of Jenna's parents, wondering if justice would be served this time. He heaved a deep sigh. “I'll take the interview myself.”

A dull red crept up Sullivan's neck, and Green thought he was about to witness his famous Irish temper. But Sullivan picked up some papers from his desk.

“Here are my notes and questions. Don't forget, the guy has a short fuse.”

Green scanned the latest notes from Ident on the blood at Darren's home. “Gibbs can come in with me,” he said more gently. “He can wear the earphone and if you think of something that needs asking, feed it to him.”

Green's instincts about Gibbs were reinforced when the young detective hung up the phone, looking grim. The detectives all clustered around him. “What's the news?”

“He's in surgery. They said it will be hours. There's internal bleeding, multiple fractures...”

“But he's going to live?”

“Well, you know what they say. The next forty-eight hours...”

“So let's take it one hour at a time,” Green said, clapping Gibbs' shoulder. “So far, so good.”

Riley was the first word out of Darren O'Shaughnessy's mouth the moment Green and Gibbs walked into the interview room. The man looked exhausted. His shaved head shone with sweat, and his skin had an unhealthy blue tinge. A junior member of the defence bar sat at his side—a young man with a cherubic face and a slight lisp who Green suspected had never seen the inside of a police station before. Darren waved aside the introductions and the charter warning impatiently.

“Riley? Is he alive?”

Green nodded and relayed what little they'd been told. The man's relief was minimal.

“Multiple fractures. To what?”

“I don't know. Let's get the preliminaries over with—”

“Fuck the preliminaries. Is he going to be able to play again?”

Green remembered the crushed and bloody body that the emergency workers had pulled from the car. He remembered the paramedic's off-the-cuff appraisal as he secured the back board. ‘The kid will be lucky if he ever walks again, let alone skates.' He relayed none of this. “He's alive, Darren. Let's go with that for now.”

“Fat lot of good that does him if he can't play any more. Have you reached his parents?”

Green nodded. “His father's on his way.”

Darren's face twisted. “This will kill Ted. He's put so much into that boy.”

Green felt a flash of anger that the man seemed more concerned with Riley's playing prospects than with his very life. Or with the life of the innocent young woman he himself had chopped into bits. “Let's get on with the interview, Darren,” he said. This time Darren didn't interrupt while Gibbs read the charges and charter warning, and made the introductions for the tape. When Green asked him if he had anything to say in response to the charges, Darren merely snorted.

“You haven't got a thing.”

“On the contrary, we have blood on your axe, shovel and wheelbarrow.”

“I killed a groundhog this spring that was burrowing under my shed.”

Green made a show of consulting Ident's report. “This has been identified as human blood of the same blood type as the victim. Our Ident team has also just confirmed the presence of blood in your living room and back yard.
DNA
testing will cinch it, Darren.”

Darren digested this and grew sullen. “My lawyer says if you can't prove which one of us killed that broad, you can't touch any of us. Reasonable doubt.”

“Oh, we'll prove it. There's only you, Ben and Riley in the house. Once we get through going over everyone's clothing with a fine-tooth comb, lifting prints off the body... Did you know we can get fingerprints off a body nowadays?”

“Do you think I give a shit about that with Riley lying in the hospital? All of this would never have happened if that stupid broad hadn't decided to try to ruin his life!”

Green reached for the manila envelope at his side and took out a sheaf of crime scene photographs. Methodically he began laying then out along the table top. Baby-faced lawyer turned green. “This is what was left of that stupid broad by the time the killer was finished with her. When I show them to Ben, do you think he'll be as cool about it as you? Are you telling me Ben's capable of this savagery?”

Darren slammed his chair back against the wall and leaped up, his fists clenched but his face the colour of putty. His eyes bulged and spittle clung to his slack lips. “You bastard! I'm not saying another fucking word, except you touch my son and I'll—”

Baby-face recovered enough to grab his client's arm.

“You'll what, Darren? Punch me out, just the way you did Jenna Zukowski?”

Darren's eyes were riveted to the photos, and gradually his rage transformed to horror. His mouth opened several times, but no sound emerged. He sagged back into his chair, shaking his head. “I got nothing to say. Not while Riley's fighting for his life. If he doesn't recover, it won't matter anyway.”

G
reen
finally arrived home much later than he'd hoped, only to discover to his dismay that the house was empty. Nothing but a note on the kitchen counter. “Don't sweat, I'm at Jim's.” No number, no explanation of who Jim was, no word on when she'd be back. But at least she had left a note. At least she was with someone, not alone reliving her close brush with death while her father the bigshot detective put everyone else first. Again.

As much out of need as guilt, he phoned to touch base with his father, then Sharon. He listened to his son chatter on about Modo and the chipmunk, joked with Sharon about the utter hunting ineptitude of their hundred-pound dog, then hung up to a silence even louder than before. He poured a stiff scotch and spent a long night staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, reliving the case. Wondering if he could have done anything differently, if he could have prevented the tragedy, if they had the right man in custody after all.

Nothing seemed to add up. Riley had believed Vic McIntyre was the killer—or so he claimed—but McIntyre's outrage had seemed genuine when Green accused him of trying to kill Riley to cover it up. They had no forensics, witnesses or blood to tie McIntyre to Jenna on the day she died. Furthermore, McIntyre was still strutting around like a man with nothing to fear, threatening to sue everyone over his incarceration and the car chase that had injured his multimillion-dollar player.

Instead, the forensics pointed to the O'Shaughnessys. The bloody murder weapon, and the probable murder scene, had been at Darren's house. Yet it was difficult to fake the horror on Darren's face when he'd seen the grisly photos. Darren was not a sophisticated man, nor a subtle one. Could he be that good an actor?

To add to all his doubts, there would be fallout from the chase that had led to Riley's accident. Even though neither had been directly the result of police action, Green knew the public would want answers. In the press, the tense, split-second decisions made by himself and Ford would be minutely dissected. With a young man's promising future in ruins, everyone would be looking for someone to blame.

Green's fears were not allayed when he arrived at his desk to find three urgent messages from Barbara Devine and one from the office of the new Chief, who seemed anxious to make his authority felt. Tossing them aside for the moment, he went in search of Sullivan, who was nowhere to be seen. But Gibbs was at his desk on the phone. He looked freshly showered and shaved this morning, but a worrisome aura of gin hung around him.

“Anything on Riley?” Green asked once Gibbs hung up. Others in the squad room drifted close to hear. Riley was a minor celebrity; it seemed he carried the dreams of many on his shoulders.

“Good news, sir. He's out of recovery, and he's conscious this morning. The doctors say he's still not out of the woods yet, but they're amazed at how fast he's come around.”

“So the prognosis looks good.”

“Better, that's for sure. At least there's no neurological or spinal damage.”

The relief in the room was palpable, and Green smiled. He could handle Devine and the media, he could even handle the Chief himself as long as Riley recovered. He nodded to Gibbs. “You all set up for the Crystal Adams interview? Make sure you find out how she and McIntyre are connected.” He slapped his head in dismay. “Speaking of McIntyre, get Jones working on a search warrant of his house. We're looking for drugs. Right now all we have on the
putz
is a couple of driving offences, but he fits into the bigger picture somehow.”

He left Gibbs jotting eagerly into his notebook, and he was just returning to his desk to place the call to the Chief when his cell phone rang. To his surprise, it was Marija Kovacev. Her tone crashed him back to earth.

“What did you do!” she shrieked. “Why did you chase him!”

“Marija, I can't discuss the case—”

“Yes, you can! I called you, I tell you where he is, then you trick me—”

“No, I didn't. I was trying to help him.”

“But he may die.” Her voice rose. “Because of you. Because of me!”

“Marija, listen to me. He's not going to die. He's had surgery, and it's looking very good.”

“He was so scared yesterday, and I tell him to trust you. I need to explain to him.”

“I'm sure when he's better—”

“No, I am at the hospital now. I bring him his phone.”

“His what?” Green asked, startled.

“He forget his phone. Just like Lea's.”

The implication did not hit Green until after she'd signed off. “Just like Lea's,” she'd said. Lea's phone had never been recovered in any of the searches, whereas Riley had obviously used his own phone to call Green yesterday from his car. What if this was Lea's phone, and Riley had been trying to return it? What if there was crucial evidence on it that would help put all the pieces in place?

Green glanced at his watch. Marija had said she was already at the hospital. If he hoped to intercept her, he had no time to call the Chief's office or fend off Barbara Devine. He was just pocketing his keys and getting ready to sneak out of the station when he spotted Sullivan climbing off the elevator. The big detective looked red-eyed and rumpled, as if he'd slept in his suit.

“Want to grab a coffee?” Sullivan asked.

“I'm trying to get out of here before they catch me,” Green said. “Come with me to see Riley O'Shaughnessy.”

“The kid will barely be conscious!”

“Maybe. But I'm very curious to hear what he has to say. And to see what's on a cell phone he left at Marija Kovacev's. It might be Lea's.”

“The Chief will have your head,” Sullivan said as they accelerated out of the parking lot, but he was smiling. Outside, masses of black clouds roiled in the western sky, threatening trouble. Steering with one hand, Green reached for his cell phone and dialled the Chief 's office. To Green's relief, the secretary said he was in a meeting.

“I'm returning his call,” Green said, the essence of courtesy. “I'll be out of phone range at the hospital for a while, but when would be a good time to call again?”

The secretary wasn't falling for it. “He wants to see you, along with Superintendent Devine, in his office at eleven o'clock.”

Green glanced at his watch. That gave him little more than an hour to accomplish what he wanted at the hospital. When it came to this new chief, timing was not negotiable. He flicked on his emergency lights and stepped on the accelerator as he shot onto the Queensway.

“I don't know what the big deal is,” he grumbled. “There's no other way we could have handled it.”

Sullivan shrugged. “The Chief's just flexing his muscles, making sure we know who's boss. Probably just an image exercise, so the public doesn't think he's running a bunch of cowboys. McIntyre's lawyer is shooting his mouth off.”