Dream Chasers (5 page)

“Mike! Just the man I need!” A muffled snigger drifted across the room from an unknown source. Green turned toward her in dismay.

“I'm just in here checking...” He hesitated. Devine didn't need to know about his domestic tribulations. As her subordinate, he operated on the principle that the less she knew, the better. “Something in my office, Barbara. I'm on vacation, remember?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “This will only take half an hour. Mrs. Kovacev is camped outside my office, demanding an update on her daughter's case. I don't have time. I'm late for an appointment already.” She glanced at the elegant gold watch on her wrist as if to drive home the point, then her eyes took in his jeans and rumpled Bagelshop golf shirt. Her arched eyebrows shot higher. “Good God, Mike. I need a senior officer, but what kind of impression—”

“I'm on vacation,” he repeated. “Besides, I don't know the case. Staff Sergeant Sullivan is the man to see.”

She barely glanced around. “But he's not here, is he?”

“Then Detective Gibbs—”

“Gibbs!” She snorted. “I don't have to tell you the media is >all over this case, Mike. We need a respectable profile. We can't have Mrs. Kovacev and all the other tearful mothers of teenage darlings filling up airtime on the six o'clock news. Which I guarantee will happen if she walks out of this station dissatisfied. You don't have to actually know anything, Mike. Just hold her hand awhile. You've done that so often, you can do it in your sleep.”

Green ignored the hidden innuendo, choosing to assume she meant his kindness and not his seductive prowess. Even so, practice hardly made perfect when it came to his handholding skills. Faced with the tears and anguish of relatives, he always felt clumsy and inadequate. There was nothing he could do to ease their pain, except go out and catch the perpetrator responsible.

But before he could rally further protest, Devine pivoted on her stiletto heel and stalked back down the hall. “Get a tie on and wait by the elevator. I'll send her down.”

Green did keep a tangle of well-worn ties in his desk drawer for surprises like this, but even a tie wouldn't salvage the golf shirt. Besides, he had more important worries at the moment. He dashed over to Gibbs, who'd witnessed the exchange, along with half the squad. Gibbs's lips twitched in a faint smile, which he quickly brought under control.

“Any breaks in the Kovacev case?” Green demanded urgently.

Gibbs shook his head. “Neighbours saw her leave the house around four in the afternoon, and a bus driver on the #149 bus recalls picking her up at the corner of Pleasant Park and Haig. According to the bus schedule, that would have been 4:15. He thinks she got off at St. Laurent and Walkley, probably to transfer buses, but we have no further sightings of her. We checked—”

Hearing the hum of the elevator, Green jumped in. “How many officers do we have on the case?”

“Between Uniform, General Assignment and our squad, thirty. Plus volunteers. The whole neighbourhood and several schools in the area are pitching in. If she's still in the city, we'll find her.”

The door to the elevator slid open, and Green hurried over to greet the frantic mother. Whatever picture of grief and desperation he was expecting, his first reaction was one of surprise. Lea Kovacev's mother stepped off the elevator with her broad shoulders squared and her blue eyes clear. Even before he could speak, she extended her hand. “Inspector Green? I'm Marija Kovacev.”

She was a tall, regal woman with silvery blonde hair swept into a bun at the nape of her neck and high, sculpted cheekbones that hinted at Slavic blood. Even devoid of make-up, her skin was porcelain-smooth, and only a faint charcoal bruising beneath her eyes betrayed her recent ordeal. If the daughter had inherited even half her mother's looks, Green thought, she'd arouse the fantasies of just about every red-blooded male who crossed her path. Under the circumstances, not a comforting thought.

Her handshake was firm and her stride unfaltering as she accompanied him back to his little alcove office. He unlocked the door, trying to remember how clean he had left it. Inside, his phone message light was blinking furiously, and a dozen memos spilled over his desk. Only two days away, he noted wryly, and already a week's worth of paperwork had piled up. He swept the memos into a stack and gestured her to the small chair that was squeezed between his desk and the door. She perched on the edge and propped her purse on her knees as if preparing to do battle.

“Mrs. Kovacev, I can imagine how worried—”

“My daughter Lea is a good girl.” The woman had a soft, lilting, Eastern European accent that reminded him of his own parents. He nodded.

“I know. I want to assure you we're doing everything we can—”

“You asked if she took drugs, or if she has a boyfriend. You think she ran off with him because I am too strict. This is impossible.”

He wondered how blunt Ron Leclair had been. It was the obvious theory for police to operate under, and more often than not, it would be true. But Marija Kovacev was in no mood to hear it, so he held up a soothing hand. “We don't know anything, Mrs. Kovacev. I know how scary this is, but when a teenager goes missing, we look at all possible explanations. It doesn't mean we believe them, but we don't want to rule out anything that might help us find her. We have dozens of officers out looking for her. We've been tracing the bus route she took, tracking down her friends—”

“I left Bosnia so that she would be safe. I have a degree in mathematics from the University of Sarajevo, but I work in a home for old people, and I clean bedpans so my daughter will be safe. If you don't find her...” her voice faded, and for the first time emotion quivered on her lips, “my life will be nothing.”

“We will find her,” he replied, feeling hollow. “I know it's hard to be patient, but in almost all cases, missing teenagers turn up safe and sound by the end of the week. We don't have any reason to think that anything bad has happened to her. No witnesses have reported trouble, no evidence has been found...”

She raised her eyes to his. Now, looking into their depths, he saw the panic she strove so hard to keep at bay. “Do you have a daughter, Inspector Green?”

He nodded, his answer stuck in his throat. “And if a policeman told you about all the statistics and all the police who work on the case, would you be patient?”

He thought of the silent cell phone in his pocket, of his own desperate plea to the guidance counsellor at Hannah's school. “No.”

A grim flicker of triumph lit her eyes. “Good. You are a better man than Sergeant Leclair. Because you know that when it's your daughter, and you have not heard from her since two days, and you know what I know about the savage nature of men, to be patient, to trust...this is impossible.”

He had no answers for her, no hope beyond platitudes, but he handed her his card as a gesture of understanding, and Marija Kovacev left his office seemingly lighter of heart for having shared her burden with him. Green, however, felt profoundly shaken, as if the enormity of her fear had only just hit home. He returned to the squad room to find it suddenly crackling with tension. Brian Sullivan was bent over his desk, talking on his cell phone and jotting in his notebook. His massive linebacker frame was rigid, and a deep frown furrowed his brow. The other detectives had stopped what they were doing, and all eyes were fixed on him expectantly.

After a brief conversation, Sullivan signed off, flipped his notebook shut and looked at the others. His face was grim.

“They found her backpack.”

“Where?” a half dozen detectives asked in unison.

“Shoved under a park bench at Hog's Back Falls.”

Green froze in the doorway. “Anything else?”

Sullivan shook his head. “One of the high school students found it. We've secured the scene, Ident's been called, and Uniform is focussing its search on the vicinity. I'm on my way out there.” He looked around at the tense faces.

“It could be good news, I suppose. The terrain is rough and isolated around there. She could have fallen, gotten hurt.” He grabbed his jacket. “At least we know where to look.”

Green stepped forward to intercept him. “I'm coming with you.” Sullivan frowned, as if surprised to see him. Green tried for a casual shrug. “To see what develops. I've been talking to the mother, and I promised to keep her informed.”

Sullivan's eyes narrowed, and a slight smile crept across his face. “Enjoying your vacation in the country, Mike?”

S
ullivan
flicked on the emergency lights, but even so, half a dozen police cruisers and the Ident van had arrived before them and lined the curb of Hog's Back Road just east of the bridge. Sullivan passed the official vehicles and pulled the Malibu into the parking lot near the edge of the falls. Already they could hear the roar of tons of white water plunging through the gorge.

Green climbed out and glanced around the park. The late afternoon sun glared harshly through the trees and glinted off the shiny silver roof of the fast food pagoda nearby. In all directions he could see meandering paths, grassy knolls and copses of trees. Hog's Back was much tamer than it had been in his youth, when the sheltered nooks had provided the perfect cover and ambiance for young lovers, and where the high rocks along the gorge beckoned to the daredevil divers seeking thrills in the churning water below. Now the paths were paved, the lawns manicured, and a three-foot ornamental iron fence ran all the way along the top of the gorge to keep the divers out. Knowing the determination and ingenuity of youth, he wondered how successful it was.

Hog's Back Falls Park was just one section of the ribbon of green spaces that ran along the banks of the Rideau River all the way from the heart of Lowertown to the sandy expanse of Mooney's Bay. Beaches, picnic areas, woodlands, ball fields and bike paths flowed one into the next, creating an outdoorsman's paradise but a patrolman's nightmare. Green considered the sheltering trees and hidden nooks, the dips and turns in the landscape. There were a thousand places for an injured girl to get lost, a thousand places for a killer to hide a body.

“We should seal off all of Hog's Back Road at both ends,” he said. “And call in K-9.”

With a brief nod, Sullivan set off in search of the duty inspector, who was in charge of deploying resources. Green watched a phalanx of officers from the Public Order Unit methodically combing the grounds in huge boots and grey coveralls, sweeping aside shrubbery with long probes and peering into the shadows beneath the trees. Green realized from their attention to detail that they were looking for physical evidence. This area had already been searched for the girl herself.

A uniformed officer directed him along the riverside path towards the bench beneath which her backpack had been found, about a hundred yards from the pagoda and framed by a semi-circle of tall pines that screened it from casual view. The backpack had been placed in a plastic evidence bin sitting in the path. Ron Leclair, the lead investigator from Missing Persons, squatted by the bin, flipping through a student notebook with a latex-gloved hand.

The bag's contents were spread out in the bin beside it—a wallet, a folded towel, sandals and three neatly folded articles of clothing, including a green cardigan, a white tank top and a denim skirt. Did that mean she was wearing nothing but panties when she disappeared? Green wondered. Or had she changed into a bathing suit? The folded clothes suggested they had been slowly and deliberately removed rather than ripped from her body in a moment of passion. Or rage.

The entire fifty-foot circle around the bench was cordoned off, and a solitary officer dressed from head to toe in a white jumpsuit stood inside the enclosure, methodically dusting white powder on the painted wooden slats of the bench. Green recognized Sergeant Lyle Cunningham from the Ident Unit, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Ron Leclair was doing this by the book every step of the way, knowing that if this ever became a crime scene, or worse a homicide scene, they would need all the forensics they could get to nail the killer.

At the moment, though, it looked anything but. There were no signs of disturbance, no broken branches or gouged turf to suggest a struggle. The bench sat all alone on the bluff near the end of the gorge, overlooking the white water and the sun silhouetting the high-rises across the river. It was a perfect spot for a romantic tryst, with the backpack tucked safely out of sight in the tall grass beneath. It was also a leisurely ten-minute stroll across Hog's Back Road from the bustle and crowds of Mooney's Bay beach. What better place to escape for a moment alone?

The problem was that the romantic tryst had been two days ago. What had happened in the interval, and why in all that time would she not at least have put her clothes back on?

The obvious answer send a sliver of dread down his spine. The black ornamental fence was intended to prevent the public from diving off the bluff into the water, but when he peered over the fence, he spotted a well-worn path meandering along the rocky bluff on the other side, suggesting that many had already breached the barrier in order to get closer to the thrill. The roar of the white water masked the voices of the officers nearby, but from their gestures Green suspected their speculations were much like his. Had she gone over the fence and fallen? Dived? Been pushed?

He followed the fence to its end point downstream, rounded the end and clambered back up the path on the outer side to reach the rocky outcrop. Below him the water tumbled down in foamy chaos. Spray landed cool and slick on his skin, and up close, the roar of the falls thundered in his ears. Suddenly he realized how far the drop was. He clutched the rock face and shut his eyes as dizziness washed over him. Why hadn't he remembered his fear of heights before embarking on this excursion? Now the safety of the fence was some twenty feet away, and the eyes of half a dozen police officers were fixed on him.