The Ambitious City (14 page)

That would mean, he thought, both at the time of the killing and when the body was eventually discovered. When everything identifiable is removed, a body’s just a body. It can never be identified by anything other than DNA, and if you haven’t any idea who you’ve got and don’t know who you’re looking for, how do you begin to find a DNA match? Killing Hughes had been a savage anonymous message undone by a small tattoo under a full head of hair. And yet he was dumped with someone who was identifiable, which meant that the mutilation had nothing to do with identification. But then, what was it about? MacNeice was turning into the parking lot of Dundurn Hospital to check on the interviews Williams was conducting, when it hit him.
Payback
.

I
T WAS LATE
in the afternoon, late in August. Lea Nam had finished her weight training and stretching in the Brant University athletics facility before putting on her running shoes. She was BU’s finest cross-country runner and was ramping up for two track meets coming in September. She left by the gym door, setting her stopwatch to her target: the time of her previous run. She pressed Start and ran across the soccer field towards the cross-country trail.

Lea ran along the bank towards Princess Point, already ahead of her season’s best time by more than a minute. All systems were functioning well, she thought, and her right hamstring, which had given her trouble over the past month or so, felt as good as new. She looked at her watch and tapped the face to increase her pace. Turning back from the point, Lea climbed the side of the ancient escarpment, the forest providing cool respite from the afternoon sun. The path was rough but familiar; there were no surprises, and she revelled in her ability to pick up speed, gaining ground as she
climbed. Her heart rate and breathing were both unlaboured. Lea glanced at her watch, thinking,
UN-STOP-ABLE
.

The path followed the escarpment for more than a kilometre, up and down as the contour changed before looping back at a higher elevation. Her hamstring still felt fine. She recalled running like this as a child—the sheer joy of it, a sense that she could run forever, jumping over rocks and fallen branches like a deer or a dancer, feeling that she could pick up speed at will. Without breaking stride, at the two-and-a-half-kilometre marker she checked her watch—half a minute ahead of her previous run. “UN-STOP-ABLE!” Lea raced onto the higher path.

At the three-kilometre marker she looked down to check her time again, but before she could read the watch face, someone appeared directly in front of her, blocking the path. She saw a flash of silver and instinctively lunged to the left. Something stung her neck, but she had a bigger problem—her speed—as she tried to maintain her balance while running in the rough beside the path. She grazed a rock outcrop with her right hip; the impact pushed her onto the slope, where she tripped over broken branches and then was airborne, falling headfirst down the escarpment.

Lea instinctively threw up her arms to protect her face and head, but she began skidding and tumbling uncontrollably downwards. She felt a branch puncture her left side, knocking the wind out of her. In desperation, she stretched out her arms to grab hold of something solid. It was too late—she was in the air again and free-falling. Her feet landed first, but the momentum of her upper body sent her tumbling forward again. Her forehead hit something hard and her right eye filled with blood; she reached out, grasping at branches, but they came away in her hands. Spread-eagled on her back, she slid faster, sideways down the incline, and slammed into a tree—another rib snapped. She couldn’t breathe, but she had stopped falling. Above, eighty or ninety feet up, she could see a
figure backlit by the sun, still, his head a shiny black bubble. Trying to catch her breath, she pushed herself into a sitting position, wincing from the pain. When she looked up again, he was gone. Terrified, she scanned the path in either direction, but she couldn’t see him.

Within minutes, three members of the men’s cross-country team approached along the lower path; she could hear them talking as they ran. She tried to call out but couldn’t summon enough breath to make a sound louder than a whisper. She grabbed a stick and, with great effort, threw it towards the path above, narrowly missing the front runner’s face. Someone called her name. Before she blacked out, Lea again looked up to the path above—he really was gone.

Casey Mullin, a former cop and now a member of the Brant University Campus Police, met MacNeice at the doors of Dundurn General’s trauma unit. Recognizing the detective, he said, “It’s not a homicide but I’m glad to see you here, MacNeice.”

“Sorry, I’m here on another matter. What happened at Brant?”

“Lea Nam, our cross-country superstar—she was attacked on a path in Cootes Ravine. Where she fell, the grade is roughly fifty degrees, but since she was going pretty fast, it would have been like taking a running leap off a cliff. The guys who found her said she was bleeding badly in several places, but you’ll want to speak to the doctor about that. Nam mumbled something about a ‘bubblehead’—they couldn’t make any sense out of that. We’ve closed the trail and marked it for you if you want to see it.”

“Is there a parking lot near the site?”

“Yeah. Well, actually, directly above it. We’ve closed that too. It’s for overflow coming to the varsity games—empty most of the time.”

“Thanks, Mullin. Let your people know I’ll be coming.” MacNeice walked past the three young men in BU-branded running gear and assumed they were the ones who had found the girl.

He went to the closest nursing station and asked, “Who’s responsible for Lea Nam?”

The nurse looked around, then pointed with her ballpoint and said, “That’s her over there—Dr. Dorothy Woodworth.” She put her head down and continued her charts.

MacNeice approached the doctor, who was examining an X-ray on a screen. She was wearing blue scrubs and a surgical cap.

“Dr. Woodworth, I’m Detective Superintendent MacNeice. May I have a word?”

She gave him a quick once-over. “Be brief, Detective.”

“Lea Nam. Tell me about her injuries.”

“There are abrasions and contusions over most of her body, a punctured side and broken rib”—she pointed to the X-ray—“that narrowly missed going into the lung, and two cracked ribs on the other side. A nasty cut above her right eye—we’ve sewn that up—and then there’s this slice in her sternocleidomastoid muscle.” Seeing that MacNeice needed clarification on the last wound, Woodworth indicated one of two major neck muscles that rose like a V from the top of the breastbone to behind the ears.

“Do you think that cut could be a knife wound and not the result of her fall?”

“Most certainly it is, and it’s not as bad as it could have been. She’s a very lucky girl. I’ve been told she’s an outstanding athlete, and it shows. We’ve stitched up that wound as well—it’ll be very uncomfortable for her, but she’s tough; she can take it.”

“Is she awake? Can I speak to her?”

“She is—just. We’ve manipulated the rib back into place and cleaned out the puncture wound. The anesthetic has worn off but she’s on Demerol for the pain, so she’ll be groggy. You can have five minutes now, but you’ll get better results in the morning.”

“I’ll take both. Can you take me to her?”

“Five minutes, Detective. Don’t make me come and get you.”

Lea was in the corner unit. A uniform from the west end was leaning against the wall but straightened up when he saw MacNeice and the doctor approaching. He held the door open for them. The blinking lights of monitors surrounded the young athlete, whose arms lay on top of the blue blanket. Two IV tubes were attached, one to her right arm, the other to her hand. Her eyes were closed; there were bandages on her forehead and neck, scrapes and small cuts on all the skin that was visible.

“Lea … Lea, I’m Detective Superintendent MacNeice. I’d like a brief word with you.”

Dr. Woodworth stood at the bedside till the young woman opened her eyes, then, looking directly at MacNeice, she said again, “Five minutes,” and left.

He waited till the young woman’s eyes focused on his. “Can you tell me anything about the person who attacked you?”

It took several seconds before she spoke. He could hear the effects of the pain medication, her voice barely audible. “I … was running, checking my time … looked up … he was there. Something … something silver … and then I was off the path … I don’t remember anything after that.”

“Anything about him—what he looked like, what he was wearing, how tall he was?”

“Not sure …”

“Did you get a look at his face?”

“Don’t know … so fast … going so fast … had to focus … where to run … He was tall, I think, and slim … I couldn’t see his face … had a bubblehead … black, shiny bubblehead … maybe all black …”

“A bubblehead. Like a motorcycle helmet, Lea?”

“Yes … Black clothes.” She closed her eyes. He waited for them to open again but they didn’t. MacNeice left the room and
the hospital. On his way to the Chevy, he called Williams and told him what was happening. The only thing the young detective said was, “One for two.”

D
RIVING ONTO CAMPUS
, MacNeice realized he didn’t know where either the athletic facility or the parking lot was. He stopped at the curb as a jogger approached, flagging him down with his lights.

“What’s up?” the young man asked. He was lanky and wore a tank top and baggy shorts to his knees.

“I’m looking for the overflow parking behind the athletic field.”

“Oh yeah, where Lea got knifed.”

“Exactly. How did you hear about it?”

“It’s a small campus: word travels. You a cop?”

“Yes. How do I get there?”

He turned right at the end of the lane, took the next left as instructed, then passed by the athletic complex and practice field. There were two cruisers—one of them city, the other campus—blocking the entrance to the lot. On the grass beyond them was a blue police bus, used to ferry the personnel who would sweep the hill, and a black Suburban from Forensics. He drove up the curb and
over the grass till he was parallel with the young cop standing outside his cruiser. MacNeice got out of the Chevy and greeted Gianni Del Bianco; his father had been a cop when MacNeice was the kid’s age.

“Hi, Del. Point me in the direction of where she was attacked.”

“Sure, sir. Where you see the yellow markers on the saplings—there, taped around the trunks …”

“I see them. Everyone down below?”

“Yes,” Del said. “They’re sweeping the hill. The forensics team is busy on the path. She was just below those markers when she was hit, then she went down another sixty feet or so. It’s pretty vertical, but that’s been taped too, about six feet either side, so you can see her path pretty clearly. She musta been flying.”

“Good to see you. Say hello to your father for me.”

“I will, sir, thank you.”

MacNeice walked slowly into the lot. Somewhere along the escarpment a crow was calling; a few moments later a response came from farther down in the forest in the opposite direction. As he listened to the long-distance conversation, he scanned for fresh oil stains on the pavement. Nothing. He reached the space between the marked trees—still nothing.

He turned and looked across the lot to the other side. Farther to the right something was catching the light—a small black circle reflecting the evening sunshine coming uninterrupted from the west. At first he thought it was the lid of a can, but as he approached he could see it was a fresh oil stain, roughly three inches in diameter and so close to the edge of the pavement it couldn’t have come from a car or a truck.

Squatting down, he dipped his index finger in the stain and held it to his nose—the sweet smell of oil and gasoline. “Two-stroke,” he said to himself. The black print of a motorcycle’s tire emerged out of the stain and faded to nothing, four feet or so in the direction of the lot entrance.

MacNeice walked over to the dirt path that ran along the side of the ravine just beyond the concrete barrier. There were no prints in the dust and gravel and nothing that indicated where the attacker might have descended the hill to the upper path. He walked over to the far eastern corner of the lot where the saplings were marked. Between the trees there was a narrow path that fell over rocks and tree roots. It was steep but passable. As he looked at the ground for footprints that might connect this incident to Taaraa Ghosh’s murder, one of the Tyvek-clad forensics team climbed up towards him. He was carrying something in a plastic evidence bag; happy to see MacNeice above him, he held it up. He was out of breath but managed to say, “Taaraa Ghosh’s BlackBerry, sir. He tossed it down the hill towards the runner. Your people found it halfway down.”

“Anything else?”

“Two footprints. It’s a well-worn path, but these are pretty good, and fresh. They’re being checked against the one at the mountain. There’s blood all the way down the hill—she was travelling so fast she was bouncing off rocks and smashing branches as she went.”

“When you’ve put that in your truck, I want the oil stain over there.” He pointed to the small circle. “Analyze it against the ones on Wentworth, both up at the mountain and down at Ghosh’s apartment. How quickly can I have the results?”

“Well, we’re almost done here, so I guess by first thing tomorrow, noon at the latest.”

“I’ll take first thing. Also, check out the tire track that leads out of the oil spill. I want to know what make of tire and, if possible, what kind of motorcycle it’s on. I assume it’s a two-stroke but I need to know more.”

“That may take a while, sir.”

“Try for noon.” MacNeice turned and walked back to Del
Bianco, who was talking to a campus cop as he tossed his wind-breaker through the window of his car.

MacNeice asked, “Where do the runners come from and go to pick up the ravine trail?”

The campus cop, a man named James, pointed to the athletic facility on the far side of the field. “They come out of that side door from the gym and they head straight across the field to the cut you see between those trees. That’s a paved road that leads down to Princess Point.”