Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (160 page)

“Have you noticed any signs of stress recently? Restlessness, short temper?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

The woman’s not as fragile or as obtuse as she pretends, Green decided. He hooked his arm over the back of his chair and affected a casual pose.”I’ve been speaking to his superior officer. He said Jeff is still getting over his experiences in Yugoslavia. Did you ever notice that?”

She shifted her attention from Sullivan to Green, and her eyes narrowed. “If Jeff is involved in something, I want to know what it is. So stop pussyfooting around.”

Green nodded. At four o’clock in the morning, straight talk was refreshing. “Your husband is in a lot of trouble, Mrs. Weiss, and the best thing he can do for himself is come clean. He faces disciplinary charges and possibly even criminal ones. You are aware that his partner was nearly killed in Petawawa while investigating a case involving the military. There’s evidence that Jeff set her up.”

Her jaw dropped. “He would never do that.”

“There’s more. You’re probably aware that John Blakeley, a Liberal candidate from Petawawa, withdrew from the campaign today.” Her eyes widened at the news, but still she said nothing. “John Blakeley is a former military officer who was your husband’s unit commander in Yugoslavia. Did he tell you that?”

The colour drained from her face. “He...he didn’t talk much about those days. And I avoided them.”

Green sensed a vulnerability in her tone. Beneath the defiance, she was frightened. He felt a twinge of guilt for harassing her. He leaned forward, trying to sound gentler. “Why was that?”

“Because it worked him up. It was better for everyone if he didn’t get worked up.”

“You mean safer for everyone?”

Her chin quivered. “His temper... I know it was a struggle for him, and he hated himself afterwards, but it was like he couldn’t help himself.”

“And that’s why you left him?”

“I didn’t want to. I know he needed us. I felt terrible turning my back.”

“But he needed more help than you could give him.”

She nodded. A touch of anger hardened her jaw. “The police force didn’t help. They never noticed how stressed he was. He hid it well, and none of his superior officers saw past his front. Just said he had an attitude problem. And now you say he’s in trouble, and you’re going to blame him for what happened to his partner.”

“That’s just the way it looks, Mrs. Weiss,” Green said. “But you’re right; he’s been a good cop, and I’m sure there’s another explanation. Did he ever mention Captain Blakeley or a soldier named Corporal Ian MacDonald?”

She hesitated and he could see her hovering on the brink of revelation. After a moment, she sighed as if releasing a great burden, and gave a faint nod. “Jeff ’s been working on John Blakeley’s campaign.”

Green nearly choked on his surprise. He struggled to sound casual as his mind raced over the implications. “On his campaign? So Jeff knew him here as well? What did he say about him?”

“He said Blakeley would sure stir things up at the Liberal caucus table, because he fought for what he believed in and said what he meant. Jeff said those mealy-mouthed, two-faced Liberals wouldn’t know what hit them.”

“So Jeff liked him?"

“He thought the world of him.”

“Enough to cover up evidence in order to protect him?”

She froze as if realizing the trap too late. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I can’t give you details, but the evidence suggests that Blakeley has done something wrong, and Jeff has been helping him cover it up. Perhaps even committed a crime on his behalf.”

She pressed herself back against the counter, as if trying to retreat. Her head whipped back and forth. “He wouldn’t do that! He admired Blakeley, but he would never, ever, commit a crime.”

“Even for some greater good?”

Hesitation flickered across her face. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but it told Green what he needed to know. She had doubts. In fact, perhaps she was beginning to put some puzzle pieces of her own together.

He leaned towards her gently. “For Jeff ’s sake, he needs to come in, before he digs himself in any deeper and someone else gets hurt.”

She groped her way to a chair and sank into it as if her legs could no longer support her. “I...I don’t know.”

Green eyed her thoughtfully. She had been away most of the day, then in the dead of night she’d been awake, a bundle of nerves. Who else but Weiss could tie her into such knots? He took a wild guess. “Did you go to see him this evening?”

She stared at the table, her eyes slowly filling with tears. Faintly, she nodded.

“Please tell us where he is.”

“It’s too late.”

Green felt a sick dread rising in his throat. “Why? What happened?”

“He wanted his passport. He phoned and asked me to bring it to him.”

“And did you?”

She nodded wretchedly. “I didn’t even dare ask questions. I’d never heard him so tense.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s probably not there any more.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “He’s on his way out of the country.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Green saw Sullivan reach for his cellphone. “How? By air?”

“I’m not sure. That’s what he said, but...”

Sullivan was already slipping into the hall to alert security at the airport. If they could lock down the exit routes, they might still have a chance of catching him.

“But what, Mrs. Weiss?” Green asked.

“I don’t want him in trouble. I know, no matter what he’s done, he’d never hurt anyone. He’s a good man, he’s just not thinking straight right now.”

“Then for his sake, you have to be strong for him. He may be in too deep to see a way out. But his best chance is us. If he’s all alone on the run from us and—”

“He’s not alone.”

Green stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“He has a friend helping him escape.”

“Who?”

“Another police officer.”

Green hid his shock. “Jeff told you this?”

“No. The man called a little while ago. Woke me up. He said he was supposed to pick Jeff up and help him get across the border, but he was lost and needed directions again.”

Green’s stomach knotted with dread. “Did you get a name?”

She must have heard the alarm in his voice, for her own voice rose. “No. My caller
ID
just gave a number.”

“Is the number still on your phone?”

She rose and disappeared into the hall for a moment, reappearing with a cordless phone in her hand. “I gave him directions. Oh, my God, I hope I did the right thing.” She found the number and held out the phone. Green had only to glance at it to confirm his fears.

It was the same number that had phoned Patricia Ross at her Vanier Hotel and the same number that had called for Sue Peters at the bar in Petawawa before she was attacked.

TWENTY-SEVEN

 T
he night was just beginning to lift when Green and Sullivan left Eleanor Weiss’s house and raced back to their car. Green was grateful to see the dark smudges of treetops and roof lines etched against the faint grey of the sky. A search in the countryside would have been nearly impossible in the pitch dark.

Once Weiss’s wife realized the error she’d made, she had held nothing back. “The man sounded so nice!” she’d exclaimed.

“You’re sure it was a man?”

“Yes. Well—” she paused, her eyes frantic as she raked her memory. “I thought so, but the connection wasn’t good. Oh, God, Jeffie! What have I done!”

“We don’t know that there’s anything wrong,” Green lied without much conviction. “But you have to tell us where Jeff is.”

“He was at his trailer in Quebec. He has a little trailer on a river up past Wakefield that he uses for fishing. And for peace and quiet when things get too much.”

He nodded toward the phone. “Can you reach him there?”

She shook her head. “There’s no electricity or phone. And his cellphone has no service there.”

“Then how did he get in touch with you earlier?”

“There’s a payphone at the general store in the village.”

“What village?”

“Brennan’s Hill.” She grimaced in dismay. “It’s up near Low, Quebec, at least twenty minutes’ drive from the trailer.”

Green’s thoughts were already racing ahead. “Can you show us where the trailer is on a map?”

She dashed out of the room. As soon as she was out of earshot, Sullivan shook his head grimly. “That cellphone call came in at 3:49, which means that our killer, assuming he called her from Ottawa, has about a half hour’s head start. Low is about an hour north of here by car, which means our guy’s not there yet.”

Green nodded. “We’ll have to get the Sûreté du Québec on it
ASAP
, and at least get some uniformed officers out to the trailer to check what’s going on.” Just what I need, he thought. Not only another jurisdiction and another province, but another language to add to this intricate mess.

Eleanor reappeared clutching a map and a page of directions. She was flushed and breathing hard, but the task seemed to focus her. “I’m afraid the trailer is really hard to find. It’s on a river at the back of a farm owned by a Claude Theriault, and the lane isn’t marked from the road.”

Green took small comfort from that as he thanked her, grabbed the material and headed towards the door. He paused in the open doorway for a last look at the worried woman. “We’ll find him, Mrs. Weiss, but if he calls, warn him to stay away from the trailer and to report in to the station.”

Out in the car, Sullivan did a rapid U-turn and headed back towards the main road while Green called the communications centre to explain the situation. “Get hold of the Sûreté du Québec’s Outaouais District and patch me through to the commanding officer,” he snapped.

While headquarters worked on that job, Green spread out the map and bent his head over it, tracing the thin, squiggly roads deep into the Quebec bush.

“It sure is out in the boonies,” he grumbled. “But I suppose that cuts both ways. The killer may have trouble finding it too.”

Sullivan squealed around a curve. “You know, Mike, it seems to me more likely what he told Mrs. Weiss is true. That he’s an accomplice who is supposed to meet up with Weiss to get out of the country. We know from the call to Peters in the bar that this has been a two-person job all along. And now that we know Weiss was working for Blakeley, we’ve got his motive for protecting him.”

Green pondered the idea. Sullivan’s scenario was possible, even likely given this latest discovery about Weiss, but something didn’t feel right. If this had been a planned rendezvous between the two men, surely the man would have had proper directions and some sort of back-up means of communication. It made no sense for him to phone Weiss’s ex-wife, who not only knew nothing about the escape, but who was not even married to him any more.

The main streets of Orleans were still dead quiet as Sullivan accelerated onto Jeanne D’Arc Boulevard. Activating the emergency lights, he sped down onto the Queensway. En route, Green called the comm centre again to order bulletins at all the border crossings in southern Quebec and Eastern Ontario, as well as
APB
s on Weiss’s vehicle in both provinces.

The roads were empty, but narrow streets slowed their progress as they wove through downtown to the MacDonald Cartier Bridge. Just after they’d crossed the Ottawa River into Quebec, Green’s cellphone rang. It was Sergeant Fortin of the Low Detachment of the Sûreté du Québec, speaking in a rapid, broad vowelled French. Green had taken the usual obligatory French courses at school, but had learned more from the rival French gangs in the inner city neighbourhood of his youth than he had ever learned memorizing conjugations in class. Over the years, he often used this limited repertoire when dealing with Ottawa’s francophone community, but Fortin’s Outaouais version of the language was almost more than he could decipher. He stumbled through a basic explanation of the situation.

Sergeant Fortin’s voice rose in excitement, and his French became even more indecipherable. Theriault was his wife’s uncle, Fortin said. He’d never been to the man’s farm, but he’d seen him at family affairs. He was a frail old man, and even the arrival of squad cars with sirens and guns might give him a heart attack.

Oh, wonderful, Green thought. What else could possibly go wrong? Lots, he amended on second thought. Hanging onto the overhead strap, he struggled to talk Fortin through the directions.

“No problem,” said Fortin cheerfully. “We have lots of experience with this area. We can have a team there in less than half an hour.”

Fuck, Brian and I will be there ourselves in less than that, Green thought. “How many officers?”

“Two.” There was a silence, during which Green kept his protest in check with an effort. Seconds were ticking by.
“Ben,
it’s the middle of the night.”

“Then wake some others up, pull them from other detachments. We need all available units.”

More silence on the line. “Okay, I’ll check with—”

“Don’t check, do it! Get out to that farm and lock it down. But no lights, no sirens.”

He hung up before the sergeant could object, and turned to find Sullivan grinning at him. “I understood most of that,” Sullivan said. “I think those French lessons are paying off. Next thing, I’ll be gunning for your job.”

Green snorted. “You wouldn’t want it.” He filled him in on the gist of Fortin’s information and Sullivan grew sober again.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he muttered. “Those guys aren’t going to get there much ahead of us.”

“And we have absolutely no idea what they’re going to face when they do.” Green cursed and slapped the dash. “Push it, Brian!”

Sullivan stepped on the gas, and Green felt the car surge forward. They were racing along Quebec’s divided Highway 5 now, climbing high into the Gatineau Hills which rose in pine-jagged silhouette against the greying sky. Green welcomed the light with relief. Dawn was still more than an hour away, but at least they would no longer be bumbling around the backwoods in utter darkness.

Sullivan was frowning. “We could be way off-base, you know. Maybe Weiss doesn’t have Twiggy with him. Maybe she’s hiding out in the city somewhere, and Weiss is just laying low while he puts together a plan to get out of the country.”