Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (194 page)

“Looks like he slipped the net,” Sullivan said when Inspector Ford strode over.

“If he’s smart, he’s ditched the red Mustang,” the inspector replied.

“Green thinks he’s not running from us, but from Vic McIntyre.”

“The guy in the black Navigator? Well, that’ll be easy to spot too.”

Sullivan stared at the map. Where would the kid run to? Friends? Hockey mates?

Or home. Gananoque. Sullivan turned to the larger map of Eastern Ontario on the other wall. Gananoque was a straight run down Highway 416 and along the 401. In an opened up Mustang, barely an hour and a half ’s drive. He tapped the map. “We need to call in the
OPP
, expand the search south, set up road blocks along 416.”

Ford looked unconvinced. He was a sparkplug of a man bulked up by body armour and equipment that made him look twice as wide as he really was. He shook his head slowly. “If I was the kid, I’d take back roads. A red Mustang on the 416 is a sitting duck.”

Sullivan’s phone rang before he could answer. It was Lyle Cunningham from Ident. “You got an overtime budget for all this new shit your guys just brought in?”

“That’s Devine’s problem, not mine. Green’s okayed it. We’ve got two murders here, nice young women. If Devine ever wants to make Deputy Chief, she’ll know what’s good for her.”

“If you say so. We’re just logging in the stuff from the O’Shaughnessy house, but I thought you’d want to know. We did some preliminary tests before we even took it off the truck, just to see if we could eliminate anything from our investigation.”

Sullivan smiled. “You’re the best, Lyle. Anything?”

“Good news, bad news. The clothes you brought me? None of them appear to have any blood on them.”

Well, that was a long shot, Sullivan thought. The murder clothes would be soaked in blood, so the kid would almost certainly have ditched them. “What about the shoes? Any match to the print?”

“We haven’t got to that yet. We can’t do everything at once, you know, so I went with the blood first.”

“All right, what’s the good news?”

Cunningham’s voice almost sounded excited. “It’s not final yet, you understand. But it looks like the shovel, the axe and the wheelbarrow all have traces of blood on them.”

“Even though they’d been cleaned?”

“You know you can never wash all that stuff out of the cracks and pits. That’s how we get the bad guys. If there’s a molecule left in there, the Luminol will find it. But it could be anyone’s blood, or animal blood for that matter. Is your guy a hunter?”

Sullivan pictured the O’Shaughnessys. They’d grown up in a small town in Eastern Ontario, rugged and blue collar. Chances are they all hunted deer. But cutting up deer meat is a very precise science; hunters don’t chop up their quarry with an axe.

His heart felt heavy. “Could be, but I’m betting this isn’t deer blood.”

“We’ll need time to see if it’s human, even longer to get the
DNA
back, but at least this gives you a start.”

“What about the plumbing van?”

“Jeez, Sully, give me a break. I haven’t got to that yet either. The guys just towed it to the lot. There are lots of tools and piping and drop cloths that look pretty clean, but when I know something definitive, you’ll be the first to know.”

Sullivan thanked him and rang off, deep in thought. The net was closing, and despite what Green believed, things were looking worse and worse for the hockey whiz kid. They now had the tools the woman had been killed with. The body had been stuffed into garbage bags, so it could have been transported in the van without spilling much blood in the interior. But chopping up the body would have produced a mess, even if it was done post mortem. Whoever did this would have needed a concealed location, and even after clean-up, there would be traces of blood left behind.

He remembered the wet, flattened area of grass in Darren O’Shaughnessy’s backyard. Was that where the dismemberment had taken place? Did the tall cedar hedge provide enough privacy, or would neighbours have seen and heard something? It was worth making a few inquiries. And with Riley a potential out-of-control killer driving around the city in a panic, it was better than sitting around the Com Centre twiddling his thumbs and waiting for the search to turn up something. He phoned Cunningham back, fully expecting an earful when he asked for an Ident officer to check out the back yard and the garage, but the man was surprisingly amenable. He couldn’t send someone right away, but would put it on the list.

“I saw the body,” he said by way of explanation. “Whoever did this to that poor girl deserves to be strung up by his balls.”

Darren O’Shaughnessy answered the doorbell himself this time, and at the sight of Sullivan, his face darkened in a scowl. He blocked the doorway, six inches shorter than Sullivan but solid as a tank.

“Sully. Now there’s a true friend in need.”

“It’s not a social call, Darren.”

“You bet it’s not. What’s the idea of coming in here when I wasn’t home, upsetting my kid and turning the place upside down. With warrants, for Chrissake. I would have given you anything you wanted!”

“Nothing to hide, is that it?”

“You bet. And neither does Riley.”

“Then you won’t mind answering a few questions?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah, I do mind. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”

“There’s a couple of points that have come up in our investigation. You might want to clear them up sooner, rather than later down at the station.”

“That a threat?”

“No,” said Sullivan, wishing he’d brought someone with him. Given his previous acquaintance with Darren, this was not going to look good if a defence lawyer got hold of it. “But just so you know, we did find blood on the axe, shovel and wheelbarrow in your backyard. That needs an explanation.”

“You’re bluffing. I keep all my tools clean as a whistle.”

“I guess you don’t watch enough
CSI
. Blood is impossible to get out of all the cracks and pits.” Darren’s jaw fell open. Sullivan pressed on. “We also know that the board social worker, Jenna Zukowski, visited Riley here last Friday morning, asking questions. That’s the last time anyone saw her alive. It doesn’t take much to build a case once we get forensics.”

Darren still blocked the doorway, but now his body swayed. Sullivan stepped forward. “Maybe we should continue this inside.” Darren glowered up at him, then shrugged and turned to lead the way into the living room. Hockey memorabilia was everywhere, including a signed photo of Wayne Gretzky, dozens of trophies and a picture of the Salt Lake City gold medal team. There was not much else in the room except a giant screen
TV
and a scuffed old lazy-boy chair sitting directly in front of it. A plaid couch with a broken spring was shoved into a corner, covered in newspapers, plumbing pipes, two cases of Labatt Blue, and some bags from the hardware store. Thumbtacked over the mantlepiece was a huge Ottawa Senators flag. A true bachelor’s pad. Sullivan’s own wife Mary, being a real estate agent, would never stand for the mess, but then Darren’s wife had left him in disgust years ago. Sullivan remembered talk about domestic assault, but nothing had ever been proved.

But in spite of the mess, the floor didn’t have a speck of dust, and the lazy-boy looked freshly washed. Pretty selective housekeeping, Sullivan thought with interest. He wandered over to the mantlepiece and pretended to study the photos propped along its top. Front and centre was a large photo of Canada’s World Championship Junior Hockey Team, with Riley beaming from the front row. Sullivan was about to comment when he detected some tiny flecks of brown against the white border. Darren had planted himself by the door with his arms crossed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he was saying. “If that broad came here Friday, I didn’t see her.”

“Is that what the blood analysis of these specks is going to tell us, Darren?”

Darren turned white. He said nothing, probably a wise move when you don’t know what the other guy is holding.

“Where were you Friday morning?”

“Fuck you, Sullivan.” Sullivan strolled around the room, trying to look casual as he inspected the walls and floor. “Darren, we’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’ve got forensics going over everything. Riley’s clothes and shoes, your tools, the pressure-washed spot in the back yard. I’ll get them to check out this room too. A young woman has been brutally murdered. Do you think the department is going to let this slide? You can answer my questions here and now, man to man, or I can take you down to Elgin Street and do a whole formal interrogation. Your choice. Where were you Friday morning?”

Darren looked like he was turning over Sullivan’s words. Finally, he shrugged. “Here. Off and on. I don’t always hear the doorbell when I’m in the back. Maybe she rang and no one answered.”

“Who else was at home Friday morning?”

“No one.”

Too quick, Darren boy, Sullivan thought. “Where was Riley?”

“Out. Training. His agent has been on his case, so he went for a long bike ride.”

“From what time to what time?”

“All morning. He went out early, maybe seven o’clock. Didn’t come back till noon.”

“How do you know that if you were in the back?”

Darren started to speak, then snapped his jaw tight.

Sullivan considered his next move. He had evidence that Jenna had planned to come here, evidence that there was blood on the axe and wheelbarrow, and possible traces of blood in this room. But three men lived at the O’Shaughnessy house— Riley, Darren and his son Ben—and there was no way to know for certain which of them was involved. Not to mention how the hell McIntyre figured into the mess.

He should wait for the rest of the evidence, and he should do this interview by the book, down at the station with all the proper procedures and warnings. But Riley was out on the streets in his sports car, running from something but refusing to go to the police. Sullivan thought that if he could lean on Darren, he might be able to get some answers that would help the police know what they were dealing with.

“Here’s what I think happened,” Sullivan said quietly. “I think Jenna came here to see Riley, and she got kind of pushy. I hear she’s like that. You know these social workers, they always think they’re right. I bet she accused him of dumping his girlfriend’s body, maybe even of killing her. Anyway, Riley’s been under a lot of pressure recently, for a small town kid who’s just eighteen. His girlfriend just died, his agent is on his case, the media are watching his every move, the scouts are picking apart his recent slump, and the speculators are saying the sky could be the limit if he keeps his shit together. He’s been trying to wrap up his exams, he hasn’t been sleeping, and Friday, when the social worker got in his face, he just lost it.”

“He wasn’t here!”

“I’ve seen Riley play, Darren. He’s real aggressive on the ice, trained to go after what he wants, trained to see what he can get away with. He sees his whole future crumbling before his eyes. Maybe he has the O’Shaughnessy men’s famous temper, eh? Or maybe it was ‘roid rage. He’s filled out a lot in the last year. Is he taking steroids?”

Darren snorted. “He would never touch the stuff. Thinks it’s cheating.”

Sullivan shrugged. “Still, I heard McIntyre’s into that. And I know how much Riley listens to him.”

Darren tightened his arms defiantly, but his eyes twitched, and Sullivan knew he’d hit a nerve. “Steroids could be enough to push him over the edge,” he said. “They could also be a defence, remember, if it comes to that. Whatever happened when Riley and the social worker argued, he just snapped and popped her. Didn’t mean to kill her, I’m sure. Freaked out and tried to get rid of the body, forgetting we’d have all kinds of forensics to tie him to the case.”

“You don’t have shit!”

“But we will. And now Riley is racing around Ottawa in his Mustang. Maybe he’s in a panic, maybe he can’t think straight. You know what steroids do to the human brain? Irrational rage, paranoia, maybe even hallucinations. There’s no telling what he’s thinking. We have to get him in, Darren. You need to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Riley’s not on drugs. And you’re so far off base with that social worker it’s a joke.”

“Okay, maybe it was your son, Ben. He’s got a temper on him, I can see that.”

Darren turned the colour of raw steak. “You leave Ben out of this!”

“Why? Riley’s almost like a brother to him. Maybe they even talked about girlfriends. Ben’s seen the papers, he knows all about this dead girl and how the cops are trying to figure out what happened to her.”

Darren opened his mouth, but Sullivan rolled over his protests. He hadn’t primed the pump enough yet. “So when this social worker shows up asking for Riley, Ben puts two and two together. He tells her no way she’s seeing Riley, she gets pushy, and before he knows it—pop!” Sullivan slammed his fist into his palm, making Darren jump.

“Your fuse has always been your downfall, right, Darren? No matter how hard you tried, you could only take so much before all of a sudden, before you even know it, someone is on the floor. Almost like you couldn’t help yourself. I bet it’s like father, like son.”

Darren walked over to stare out the window, flexing his fists. Finally he turned to face Sullivan, backlit by the sun. “You fucking bastard. That’s dirty, even for you. You know Ben’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Do I? I saw his temper this morning. And he’s bulked up a lot since last year too. I know he hangs out at McIntyre’s place. Maybe he’s been slipping him some performance enhancers too.”

“You said yourself there are three guys live here. How do you know it wasn’t me popped that bitch?”

“You said you didn’t see her.”

“What if I was lying?”

“Are you saying you did see her?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m saying maybe it was me. Maybe she came like you said. Maybe she pissed me off. Fucking social workers are all the same. It’s always the guy’s fault. Women are just these poor, helpless innocents that never start anything. Lying? A woman never lies. Conning? A woman never cons. And temper? A woman can tear a strip off you up one side and down the other, but if the guy so much as shows his fist, well, it’s jail for him. And sex? Women never heard of sex, it’s all some big macho conspiracy to take advantage of them. Sometimes a guy can only take so much shit before he blows.”