Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (250 page)

The photos trembled slightly at the edges in Reg’s hand as he and Norah bent over them. The silence was broken only by their breathing. Slowly Sue saw their hope fade, until finally Norah shook her head. She looked questioningly at her husband. “Do you think it’s her?”

“Do y-you recognize any of the clothing?” Gibbs pressed when Reg shrugged.

“No. She doesn’t have a parka like that. But—” Norah raised her head. “She could have bought one, right? I mean, if she is trying to hide? She’d know everyone would be on the lookout for a red suede jacket. It’s pretty distinctive. Whereas this parka—it could be anybody in there! Where was it taken? When!”

Gibbs slipped the photos back into the envelope. He didn’t answer for a moment, and Sue knew he was trying to decide how much to reveal. The first rule in crime detection was always to look first at those nearest and dearest. Were these just desperate parents entitled to the latest information on their missing daughter’s investigation, or were they two more on the growing list of suspects in her disappearance?

“Just following up every lead, Mrs. Kennedy,” he said, unfolding his tall, lanky body from the chair. “We’ll keep you posted if anything comes of it.”

EIGHT

Frankie Robitaille leaned on his shovel and wiped sweat from his face. He was starving and remembered that he’d left his plate of bacon and eggs barely touched on the coffee table in his TV room. He had dug half the length of the snowbank where the dog had been pawing but still hadn’t turned up anything.

He was surprised the police hadn’t shown up yet. Maybe they were too busy with the search to respond to a suspicious lady complaining about a stranger on her fancy street.

After catching his breath, he plunged his shovel into the next chunk of snow, dreading every new move. Dreading the idea of a young woman freezing to death on a dark, cold night, dreading the idea that he might have hit her, knocked her out and left her to die. Dreading the trouble he’d be in. Nightmare scenarios flashed through his mind. Charges of speeding and reckless endangerment, leaving the scene of an accident, vehicular manslaughter, what the hell else? His livelihood, his licence, his kids and mortgage...all gone.

Just when he was beginning to hope there was nothing, he hit something soft and solid. He yanked his shovel away, his heart rate spiking. Cautiously he began to explore the area with the tip of the shovel, scraping away the snow from the object that emerged. Something red. Leather. He swallowed and fell to his knees, pawing with his gloved hands to uncover the object. Not a body, not an arm. He worked it free and pulled out a frozen, misshapen lump that he finally identified as a woman’s purse. The zipper was half open and the contents scattered in the snow.

He tugged at the frozen zipper to open it the rest of the way and looked inside. It was nearly empty. No wallet, no cards, nothing to show who it belonged to. He gathered up the keys, scraps of paper, lipstick and breath mints and stuffed them back into the purse. He was almost afraid to dig further. Maybe this flash of red was all he’d seen. Maybe it was a discarded purse that had nothing to do with the missing woman.

But he remembered the jolt to his steering wheel and the dog pawing excitedly. This red purse, big as it was, would not have caused that. Reluctantly he picked up his shovel and began another careful probe. Ten feet farther on, he encountered more resistance. This time, as he cleared away the snow, a hand appeared.

Bare, waxy white, and frozen stiff.

He sank down in the snow, sick at heart. Pulled out his cell phone and with tremulous fingers, punched 911. He had just pressed the final digit when he snapped the cell phone shut and dropped it from his nerveless fingers into the snow. He clutched his head in his hands, hyperventilating. Glanced up and down the street. No sign of the cops, nor the dog lady. He snatched up his phone and shovel and raced back to his truck, his large work boots scrabbling on the ice. He had to get out of here. To use his own cell phone and make himself known to the police was to invite the ruin of his life. He could just as easily call from a pay phone and leave an anonymous tip.

He flung himself into the cab of the truck, revved it to life and spun its wheels in a U-turn back towards Beechwood Avenue. But just around the corner, he stomped on the brake. He had probably left a dozen footprints and tire tracks the cops could trace, and who knows how many eyes had been watching him through the fancy curtains of those houses? Watched him pick the spot and start to shovel. If the cops ID’ed him, it would look even worse for him if he fled the scene a second time. If the dog lady had called the cops, he might even meet them on the road out, giving them a perfect make on his truck.

He started the truck again and headed deeper into Rockcliffe Park. He would take a roundabout route out so that he’d be less likely to meet the cops, and if anyone noticed a black pick-up leaving the area, it would be from a different direction altogether than the suspicious black truck noticed at the scene. He drove through the maze of streets, trying to act slow and calm like a workman going to a routine job site.

By the time he reached Beechwood, he had a plan. He parked the truck in the middle of the grocery superstore parking lot and headed in through the automatic doors. Inside, he wandered up and down one aisle, grabbed a bag of chips and a chocolate bar and went through the cash before exiting the store farther down and walking away from his truck. He tucked the grocery bag in his pocket and kept a sharp eye open for surveillance cameras, but he spotted none. He only had to walk to the corner to find a pay phone outside a gas station. No cameras there either. Maybe they were hidden or miniature, but he could only hope.

Holding the phone with one leather glove, he took the other off and wrapped it around the mouthpiece. Using his scarf over his fingertip, he punched in 911. When the operator came on, he spilled out the first line of his carefully rehearsed speech without even having to fake the tremor in his voice.

“There’s a body! I think I found a body!”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“In Rockcliffe, on Maple Lane. Hurry!”

He heard some clicking and then, “Can you tell me exactly what you found, sir?”

“In the snow! Oh God, I’m going to be sick!” he gasped and slammed down the phone. He almost was, had to swallow back bile as he shoved his hands into his pockets and strode purposefully away from the phone. He knew 911 would already have located the pay phone and dispatched a cruiser. He needed to be nowhere in sight when it arrived, but he couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself by running.

He ducked back behind the gas station to the far edge of the grocery parking lot. Heading back into the store, he retraced his steps and re-emerged near his truck with his grocery bag back in plain view. He was into his truck and already sitting at the light two blocks up by the time the first cruiser came screaming down the Vanier Parkway with its blue and red lights flashing.

He drove on. Figured if they did manage to connect him to the scene, he could say he’d gone to the nearest pay phone to report it because his cell phone was dead, and he’d been too shaken up to stick around.

The call came in to the Incident Command Centre at 3:54 p.m., fifteen minutes after Frankie Robitaille’s initial 911 call. The first responders had confirmed the sighting of a frozen human hand in a snowbank, which at first glance appeared to be female, but since the body had been only partially excavated, they were requesting direction.

Green’s heart sank. Not matter how much you steeled yourself for such an outcome, you always hoped. He forced himself to think through his sorrow. Partially excavated, he wondered. By whom, and why?

Still on the phone, he headed down the hall towards his office. “Are there footprints in the vicinity?”

“Yes, sir,” said the patrolman, whose voice had cracked slightly. He sounded young. Probably his first body. “I didn’t disturb them.”

“Good work,” Green said. “Secure the whole area, protect the footprints, and look for more arriving and leaving the scene. Teams are on their way.”

“Should—should I contact the coroner, sir?”

Green had already reached his office and was pulling on his jacket, wedging the phone against his shoulder. At this point there was no indication the death was suspicious—indeed, hypothermia was the most likely cause—but the fact that someone had deliberately dug it up, on an obscure side street nowhere near Meredith’s usual locations, raised a red flag. He wanted the expertise of a forensic pathologist rather than the routine coroner.

“I’ll call Dr. MacPhail and Ident,” he told the patrolman. “Your main concern is to secure that scene.”

He rode with the duty inspector, and on the drive over, they listened to the 911 tape. Dispatch had identified the origin as a pay phone on Beechwood Avenue, the nearest main street to the scene and likely the nearest pay phone. It was a male caller who spoke English with no discernible accent, and to Green’s practised ear, he sounded shaken up. But the muffled tone suggested he was also trying to disguise his voice. Another red flag. From the passenger seat of the inspector’s cruiser, Green radioed the dispatcher again.

“Send a unit to secure that pay phone until an Ident team can check it out.” Half an hour had passed since the call, but with any luck there might still be fingerprints. Not too many people used pay phones any more.

By the time they arrived at Maple Lane, a crowd of about twenty had gathered around an area halfway up the block. Two police cruisers were parked diagonally to block access to the spot, and yellow tape had been strung in a large semi-circle in the road. Onlookers craned their necks and several people were taking pictures with their cell phones, dragging voyeurism down to new depths in Green’s opinion. No sign yet of the media, but they’d soon join the voyeurs.

He left the duty inspector to manage the crowd and ignored the barrage of questions as he pushed through. The hand looked unreal, reaching up through the snow like a prop in a bad Halloween horror flick. It was a left hand, small and delicate with its nails painted a metallic turquoise that looked garish against the waxy white skin. He felt a twinge of intrigue. Meredith Kennedy was reportedly wearing a large diamond engagement ring. This hand had no rings, nor any circular marks on the skin to suggest where a ring used to be.

He stayed well back, respecting the integrity of the crime scene while he studied the snow. It bore the deep, straight cuts of a shovel in a line all the way along the bank, as if someone had been systematically searching. Numerous overlapping boot prints were visible in the snow, large and deeply treaded like a man’s work boot. Each was marked with an Ident number.

“There’s a purse too, sir,” said the young patrolman, pointing to a red object about ten feet away. He sounded in control now, excited by his role in the drama.

“Did you search it?”

“Yes, sir, there was no ID.” The patrolman looked alarmed, as if realizing he’d overstepped. “But I put it back where it was.”

The purse lay on top of the snowbank. The snow beneath it was undisturbed, but beside it was a large hole scored with glove marks as if someone had been digging through the snow.

The duty inspector joined him. “What do you think?”

“I think our mystery man found the purse first, checked it, tossed it aside and then began to search the snowbank for the body. Maybe he spotted the purse half buried and thought he’d check it out.”

“While he was walking down the street?”

Green raised his head to scan the neighbouring houses. By Rockcliffe standards, they were modest, but security would still be paramount. “Get someone to check for surveillance cameras and photograph this crowd—”

“He wasn’t walking,” came a voice at his elbow. He turned in surprise to see a petite woman in a ski jacket and jeans. Her face was a web of wrinkles, her blue eyes grim. “He drove a black pick-up truck.”

“Licence plate?”

She shook her head. “He parked it near the corner. I knew he was up to no good, walking along the snowbank as if he were searching for something. He told me he thought he’d hit a sled or a garbage bin during the storm a few nights ago. I almost called the police.” Her lips tightened. “I wish I had.”

“Would you describe the man for us?”

The woman gave a surprisingly vivid description of a workman in his mid-forties, tall and fit with leathery skin that suggested a lifetime in the sun. But he had three days’ growth and baggy eyes which hinted at recent stress. “A working man, uneducated and probably of French origin.”

Green smiled. The perfect witness. Before he could ask how she could be so certain, she smiled grimly. “I’m an artist. It’s my job to see behind the face. I can draw him if you like.”

Green took her name and address before sending her off to do just that. He beckoned to a patrol officer who had just arrived. By now, two more cruisers had shown up, along with the Ident van, and Green could see Dr. Alexander MacPhail’s black van rounding the corner. He hastily sent the young patrol down to the corner to look for truck tire tracks before anyone flattened them.

MacPhail arrived with his usual drama—booming voice, large boots, white bunny suit and kit of macabre tools for taking temperatures and samples. Ident produced supplies for gridding, excavating and sifting the snow, then erected a tent over the snowbank, mercifully shielding the scene from view. By now the audience had swelled to several dozen, and the media cameras were snapping. Green cursed to himself. In these days of instant communication, the discovery of the body would be up on Twitter and on the twenty-four hour news channels within minutes. The Kennedys and the Longstreets had to be warned.

Doyle seemed to read his mind. “I’ll get a unit over to the Kennedys right away.”

“I’ll send my man Gibbs over with a photo of the purse. As for Brandon Longstreet—”

“That’s easy. He lives near here.” He consulted his phone, which showed a GPS on its screen. “Just a couple of blocks farther up.”

Green’s head shot up. If this DOA was Meredith, maybe that’s why she was here on this street. She didn’t have a car, so she might have got off the bus on Beechwood and cut through here. Had she been on her way to her fiancé’s house, or had she just left?