Dream Chasers (9 page)

As he was nosing his way into the impossible traffic on Bank Street en route to the Elgin Street Police Headquarters, a police cruiser streaked by towards Billings Bridge, its lights flashing and siren blaring. Green's blood ran cold. At that very moment his phone rang, and he grabbed it, praying it was Hannah.

It was Brian Sullivan.

L
ea
Kovacev had travelled a mere hundred metres from where she'd probably entered the water, and had come to rest on the rocky point of a small island just below the falls. The Rideau River, having picked up speed on its plunge through the gorge, raced white and angry over the rocks below the falls and split to encircle the tiny island in its path. Only five metres of water separated the island from the eastern shore, and it was easily crossed by a person wearing rubber boots.

She was still face down in the shallow water when Green arrived, her bloated body rocking gently in the reeds and rocks that marked the shore. MacPhail was completing his examination, and Lyle Cunningham was photographing the scene. Green splashed out to join Brian Sullivan, who stood knee-deep in the river a safe distance away. The rest of the officers clustered on the eastern shore of the mainland opposite. The roar of the falls rushed in to fill the human silence that had descended on the scene.

“Likely caught underwater on a lip of rock in the gorge and only dislodged when the body began to bloat,” MacPhail intoned, showing none of the glee that usually accompanied even the grisliest of deaths. His mood was reflected in the faces of all the police officers on the scene. They had known the odds and read the danger signals, but they had hoped against all reason that they would find her alive. Dejection radiated from their slumping shoulders and their listless search of the grounds. There was no urgency now, no race against time. There never had been.

On his way to the scene, Green had pushed through the media, who were pinned back in the park above, mercifully out of sight. They were suitably sombre, waxing poetic as they spun the sparse information they'd been given into full-bodied stories of Lea's ill-fated end. Green knew that within minutes, the news would be on all the airwaves, reaching her school, her friends, and her mother. Someone needed to get to the woman first.

He eyed the body, which appeared to be naked. Lea's mother had said the bikini came off easily, and Green wondered whether the river had torn it free, or some human hand.

“Has MacPhail said anything about sexual assault?” he asked Sullivan.

Sullivan shook his head. “So far he's observed no signs of trauma, except some tearing of the skin on her shoulders and hips. Post mortem, he said, likely caused by the rocks in the river.”

“Thank God for that small mercy. It might be a comfort to her mother, if anything could be. She needs to be informed before she catches the whole discovery on
TV
.”

Sullivan nodded. “I sent Bob Gibbs and a woman from Victim Support over to give her the news. They'll bring her to the morgue for the
ID
when MacPhail gives us the word.”

The two detectives watched in silence as MacPhail prowled around the body with his powerful flashlight, probing every inch and frequently signalling Cunningham to photograph a particular detail. Cunningham's partner could be seen stalking through the trees on the island, marking every broken beer bottle, used condom and cigarette butt to be photographed and collected. On this picturesque little island a stone's throw from Carleton University campus, there were sure to be plenty of all three.

It felt like an eternity before MacPhail straightened up, nodded to Cunningham and headed back towards Green and Sullivan. He strode through the water, oblivious as it engulfed his hiking boots.

“I came prepared for dirt and trees, not water,” he announced in his booming Scottish brogue. Dr. Alexander MacPhail hadn't been near the Highlands in the last thirty of his sixtyodd years, but managed to sound more Scottish with each passing year. The joke in the police force was that he was drinking up Scotland shot by shot. It did not appear to diminish his acumen one bit, however.

He snapped off his latex gloves and crushed Green's hand in his powerful grip. “I thought you were on holidays, laddie.”

Green stifled a grimace at the thought of where the hand had just been. “I am. Just dropping by.”

“Oh, aye.” MacPhail shot him a knowing smile. “
HRH
will be calling you back in, mark my words. Any time the press is going to shine a spotlight, she likes all her boys lined up neatly in a row. In their Sunday best as well,” he added, arching one eyebrow at Green's
T
-shirt.

Green was wondering himself when Superintendent Devine would call. No doubt when the news of the body reached her ears. God forbid she should actually oversee the case all by herself. After ten years as Ottawa's chief forensic pathologist, MacPhail had her pegged to a T.

“Before she calls, I'd like some facts to feed her,” Green replied. “What can you tell us?”

“Well, from the degree of putrefaction and the absence of rigor, I'd say she's been dead about two to three days, so she likely died sometime the night she disappeared. We know she only surfaced in the past twelve hours, since your lads searched this entire area yesterday evening, but with the water still so cold, it's difficult to estimate how long she was under beforehand.”

“Cause of death? Drowning?”

MacPhail hesitated. “Impossible to tell at this point, till I get a peek inside. There are no signs of obvious trauma, such as a gunshot wound or crushed skull. There's water in her lungs, but that is inconclusive after three days submerged. There is some water debris in her nasal and oral passages which could also be consistent with drowning, but the debris could have been washed in post mortem.”

“Debris? Like sand?”

“And algae. But I'll need microscopic analysis of her blood and bone marrow in order to confirm whether she was still alive when she hit the water.”

“Any other points? Sexual activity?”

“I can't see anything forced. No bruising or tearing around the genitals. But as for consensual sex, that's impossible to tell, given the amount of edema. She was a sexually active girl, I can tell that, and with any luck the river won't have washed away all the semen if she had intercourse before she died.”

With any luck, Green thought. Semen would go a long way towards pinpointing who she'd been with the night she died, and perhaps unravelling the mystery of how she'd ended up in the water without any clothes. Even if her ultimate death proved to be drowning by misadventure, that mystery lover had a lot to answer for.

“However,” MacPhail was saying, and the twinkle in his blue eyes stirred Green's interest, “there is
one
thing, difficult to detect with the edema and the discoloration. I'll know more when I can get her on the table this afternoon, so I may have a more definitive answer for you then.”

Green's eyes narrowed. “What thing?”

“Ach, it's naught but a wee tiny detail. Better lighting or a close look at the tissue will do the trick.”

“What wee tiny detail?”

MacPhail swept his hand in invitation towards the body, grinning. “Shall we take a look?”

Green grimaced. He knew he should be taking a close look at the body, but the words edema and discoloration were deterrent enough. “Just tell me.”

MacPhail laughed then lunged forward to grip Green by the upper arms. Green jumped back reflexively, thinking he meant to drag him over to the body, but in the next instant the doctor softened his grip and struck a didactic pose. “She's got these very small dark spots on her arms that could be bruises. Just like someone's thumbs were holding her very hard. Mind you, with the degree of putrefaction and the time in the water...”

“So you're saying it's possible she didn't drown accidentally?”

“I'm not saying that. Odds are she did. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't be packing away your interview forms and your evidence kits just yet.”

Before Green could even digest the implications, a highpitched scream echoed down the river bank, and all three men spun around to see a commotion in the woods by the shoreline.

A woman was shrieking, part rage and part anguish. “Take your hands off me, you fucking Nazis!”

Green recognized Marija Kovacev's voice, and he sprinted across the water to the shore just in time to see her tear loose from the half-dozen officers restraining her. She plunged down the embankment towards the water, slithering over rocks and clutching at branches to slow her descent. Her hair had come free from its neat bun and flew about her face in wild disarray, and her eyes were huge with panic.

Green caught her arm as she reached the shoreline. “Marija, wait.”

She fought against his grip, staring through him as if he didn't exist as she strained for a glimpse of the body in the water. Sullivan and MacPhail moved to block her view.

“I have to see her!”

“Not here. Not like this,” Green murmured, trying to sound calm. On the bluff above, he could see the media cameras clicking and caught a glimpse of Watts, one of Major Crimes' lesser lights, cosying up to them, as if hoping to get his picture in the paper.

“You promised you'd help me...” she gulped, “you'd tell me—”

“I'll take you to the morgue, where you can see her properly.”

“Properly?” Gibbs appeared at her side, accompanied by a defiant looking young woman with a tag from Victim Support. Gibbs looked distressed. “Sorry, sir, I couldn't s-stop her.”

“After what this woman has been through in her life,” the victim counsellor retorted, “I thought she had a right to see her daughter. She wouldn't calm down otherwise.”

“She wouldn't calm down anyway!” Green hissed, furious. Marija slapped his face. “Don't talk like I'm not here! I am

here. And I will see Lea!”

Green's face stung where the blow had landed. He gaped at her in shock, and for the first time saw not just the panic but the fierce determination in the woman's eyes. Silent seconds ticked by as they stared each other down. Around them, a small group of officers held their breath.

Green relaxed his grip on her arm marginally. “She's not injured, Marija, but after two days in the water, she doesn't look very good.”

“Do you think I care?”

“But do you want this to be your last memory of her? Your last picture?”

“I have a picture of her forever in my heart. A thousand pictures. I must have this final one. To know the truth, to touch her one last time.”

Green looked up at Sullivan reluctantly. “Have we got paramedics standing by? Some sedatives?”

Her eyes glittered, and for a moment Green feared she was going to lash out again. He steeled himself, but instead she simply gripped her hand over his. “In Bosnia, I picked up the pieces of my husband's body, and I held him together in my arms. To say goodbye and to know that he had my comfort on his journey. Lea...” Her voice snagged, and she sucked in her breath. “Lea needs that too.”

Green was speechless. It went against all crime scene procedures and next of kin protocols, but when he looked over at the island, he saw that Cunningham had finished with his photographs and had moved on to the physical evidence. Lea's hands were bagged, and the coroner's staff was standing by with a stretcher, waiting for the word to remove the body.

“Get rid of the goddamn press,” he muttered to Sullivan. Then he took Marija's hand and guided her towards the water. Without a word, the others parted to let them pass.

The lunch bell had just rung, and Jenna dismissed her final student of the morning with an undisguised sigh of relief. There had been a virtual avalanche of hysterical students following the announcement that Lea's body had been found. The principal had convened an emergency mid-morning meeting, and as a group they had hammered out a crisis response plan. The police had released few details, other than that the body had been recovered below the falls and that there were no signs of foul play, leaving the principal to conclude that she had been swimming in the falls against regulations and had drowned. Mr. Prusec had used the tragic occasion to warn students over the
PA
to take all precautions around water this summer.

Jenna was furious, not only at the principal's open broadcast of the tragic news but also at his implicit blaming of Lea for her own misfortune. What about the other possibilities? An unintentional fall, or a very intentional push? Where was the boyfriend in this scenario? Had he ignored her plight? Left her to die? Dared her to dive? Plied her with alcohol and drugs? One thing was certain; he had not come forward to shed light on the tragedy. He was hiding behind his anonymity, like the guilty coward he surely was.

Jenna had hoped Crystal would draw the same conclusions and come forward to discuss it further, but when noon arrived with no sign of her, Jenna decided she'd have to go on the offensive. She had to work at another school that afternoon, so she had no time to waste. She was just heading out of her office in search of Crystal when she spotted the gym teacher, Ken Taylor, talking to the Guidance secretary across the room. He straightened when he saw her and gave her a tentative, collegial nod, but he had the same dazed look in his eyes that she'd seen on the students earlier.

Well, well, she thought, is this the first staff member to admit they need someone to talk to? Mr. Macho men-only-talk-to-men himself?

He smiled a little sheepishly as she approached. “Can we take a walk?” he said. “I need to eat lunch, but I'd like to get out of here for awhile.”

He offered her half his sandwich—peanut butter and jam on white bread—and she suppressed a grimace as she declined. He led the way out the side door towards the treelined residential street next to the school. Resisting the urge to babble to cover her nervousness, she waited for him to speak.