Dream Chasers (24 page)

“That your daughter may be in danger, and we need to find her.”

“From this guy she was talking to on the phone?”

“So you know it was a man?”

“Don't put words in my mouth. I don't know who she was talking to. But I do want to know what the fuck you're not telling me!”

He felt a rush of nerves. The interview was getting away from him, and any minute now he'd start to stutter. “Ma'am, I'm not a-at liberty to discuss the details of the case, but we do have information that your daughter may know something about the girl's death that puts her at risk.”

“It's that stuff in the newspaper, right?” She waved her hand at the
Sun
, now on the floor. “That the girl was given bad drugs? That's what you're saying Crystal did?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I'm not stupid, okay? Right after the phone call, Crystal ran out and bought the newspaper. Next thing I know, she calls me a stupid cow and packs her bags.”

“So she knew she was in danger?”

“No, she was just mad about what was in the paper. But my daughter don't deal drugs. She's no angel. and she probably smokes a little weed, but she's not going to get into that crap. Her father's been in jail half her life, and she always said she's not going to make the same mistakes he did.”

Gibbs tried to think through his nerves and the throbbing in his head. He was getting a very bad feeling about the whole phone call. “It doesn't matter if she sold the drugs or not, the point is maybe the man on the phone thinks she did. If so, that puts her in danger.”

Mrs. Adams seemed to absorb that, and some of her defiance faded. “You think he might be after her too?”

Gibbs nodded. “That's why we have to find her.”

The woman reached for a cigarette, then caught Gibbs's glance and put it back. She chewed a fingernail. “Well, I mostly know first names.”

“First names is a start. Plus the school they go to.”

“Oh, she knows friends all over the city. I don't even think half of them are in school.”

Gibbs waited, pen poised, and after a moment the woman supplied half a dozen names, all of whom meant nothing to him. None matched the friends Lea had.

“What about Riley? Ever mention a Riley?”

Her face cleared. “Oh, yeah! On the phone, it was always Riley this, Riley that.”

“You mean she spoke to him often?”

“Oh, no, it wasn't to him. It was to everyone else. He's that hot hockey player, never gave her the time of day.”

Gibbs digested that with interest. “What about Vic? Did she mention a Vic?”

She shot him a quick glance that made Gibbs wonder if she'd recognized the name. But she shook her head. “There were other kids, Vic might have been one of them. Check with the kids at the Alternative School. She seems to know most of them, and a lot of them have been on the street. They have their connections, so when she really wanted to drop out of sight, she'd hook up with them.”

“What's the name of the school?”

“I don't know,” she whined. “Look it up. Norman something. It's off Bank Street somewhere in Old Ottawa South.”

“Norman Bethune,” Green said when Gibbs told him. He dismissed a faint twinge of alarm. There were other kids at Norman Bethune, and Hannah had already admitted to a passing acquaintance with Crystal. Surely that was all it was. Two rebellious teenagers moving in the same crowd.

Green forced his attention back to the information Gibbs had uncovered. The pieces were finally falling into place. It looked as if Frank Corelli's piece on the doctored drugs had worked too well. If Crystal was in fact the supplier, she might have feared the police were about to pin a homicide charge on her, so she had dropped out of sight.

Gibbs' voice broke through the silent phone line. “Should I follow this up, sir?”

Green dragged his thoughts back to the present. “Where are you now?”

“I'm heading to Pleasant Park High School to check out all the names the mother gave me. Then if I have time, I thought I'd head out to this Norman Bethune place.”

Green stared at his office ceiling, trying to find perspective. Was Gibbs experienced enough to handle the delicate task, given Hannah's connection to the school, or should he, Green, handle that part of the inquiry himself? “Sounds good, but hold off for now,” he said, equivocating. “There's something else I need you to do at Pleasant Park.” He told Gibbs about the school custodian who'd spotted Jenna Zukowski outside the school Friday morning. “Find out what she did there, and who was the last person to see her. We've got about forty-eight hours unaccounted for, and we need to trace her movements.”

He heard Gibbs's sharp intake of breath. “It's confirmed, sir? The Bruce Pit Jane Doe is Jenna Zukowski?”

“No, it's not confirmed yet, but it's my working assumption, and I don't want the trail to go cold while we wait for forensic tests.”

After he'd hung up, Green took a moment to jot down some crucial notes. With two deaths, two missing women and one unidentified corpse, the case was rapidly spinning out of control. He and the team badly needed a full briefing meeting on the whole case, but with Sullivan and Ident still out at the scene and with Gibbs tracing valuable leads, there was no time for one. The media would not sit on the details of a second woman's death for more than a couple of hours before they flooded the airwaves with hysterical warnings about the perils of Ottawa's city parks. Barbara Devine would be screaming for damage control.

Green, however, did not see these deaths as evidence of a city overrun with random sexual crime, but rather as the determined efforts of a killer trying to cover his tracks. It had all started with Lea's death. No, with the sale of the lethal drugs that had precipitated her death. He jotted down the multiple lines of inquiry being pursued from that point.

1. ID
   Bruce Pit
   DOA
   —autopsy—MacPhail
   - medical records—Leclair
   - fingerprints—Paquette
   - results unlikely till at least tomorrow
   
2. Forensics on killer—
   DNA
   on roach—
   RCMP
   lab, long wait
   - shoe print at grave site—Paquette. Need shoe
   
3. Find Crystal Adams—pressure mother?
   - friends—Gibbs, drug squad
   - phone records—Gibbs
   - Alternative school—who?
   
4. Trace Jenna Zukowski's movements—Gibbs
   

Staring at this last item, he realized there was a very large piece of the picture that he'd forgotten in the crises of the morning. Riley O'Shaughnessy. The young man who was probably at the centre of the whole story, the young man whom Jenna Zukowski had been researching the Thursday evening before she disappeared.

Suddenly he realized what Jenna was probably doing Friday morning outside Pleasant Park High School, and who she had gone to see. He could call Gibbs and tell him to follow up, but this was an instance when the power and mystique of his own senior rank would come in handy. Grabbing his jacket, he headed out of the office. Barbara Devine would get her report, but it would be via his cell phone en route to the school.

As Green pulled into the high school parking lot, he spotted a solitary figure jogging around the track at the side of the school. The pudgy, balding man looked familiar, and when Green drew nearer, his theory was confirmed. Ken Taylor ran with his head down, his shirt soaked with sweat and his breath exploding in wet gasps. When Green called his name, he started violently and stopped in the middle of the track, his chest heaving. His face was so red that Green feared an imminent coronary. This was not a man who jogged every day. What had precipitated this sudden burst of activity?

“Mr. Taylor,” Green said, not wanting to give him time to regroup, “you are aware that Ms Zukowski has been missing for three days?”

Taylor nodded weakly.

“And you're aware the body of a young woman was found this morning?”

Taylor swayed. Green caught his arm and half dragged him to the bleachers, where Taylor sagged onto the bottom bench.

“I...I heard. But I didn't know it was her.”

Green let the conclusion stand. “She came to see you out here on Friday morning, didn't she?”

He hung his head and shook it, still gasping for breath.

“I have a witness,” Green said. “So unless you killed her yourself, I advise you to talk to me.”

Taylor raised a shaky hand to wipe the sweat from his face. “Not me. She came to see Riley O'Shaughnessy.”

“And?”

“He wasn't here. He didn't come to school that morning.”

“Was that usual for him?”

“He has a big week coming up, what with the draft, so he's been distracted.”

“So what did Jenna do?”

“She asked if I knew where he lived.”

“And?” Green allowed his impatience to show.

“I don't. I mean, I know he lives with his uncle, but I wasn't about to tell her that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's none of her business.”

“What did she do then?”

“She said she could look it up. She can, of course, all the student info is in the system computer.”

Green was silent a moment, processing the significance of that, and of Taylor's sudden burst of energy. “And this morning, when you heard about the dead woman, you suddenly realized what might have happened to her.”

Taylor sucked breath noisily into his lungs. Almost sobbing. “It's impossible. Riley's a good kid. He's got so much going for him. It makes no sense!”

So much going for him, and so much to lose, Green thought grimly as he headed back towards his car, already dialling Sullivan's cell phone. The big detective picked up on the fourth ring.

“It's time to pick up Riley O'Shaughnessy, but I want all our ducks in a row first. Call all the guys in and meet me at the station.”

W
hen
Green breezed into the incident room half an hour later, Sullivan was already at the head of the table, an irritated frown on his face. Green wasn't sure whether it was Riley O'Shaughnessy's possible guilt or Green's cavalier assumption of control that had annoyed him the most, although he suspected a little of both. To his credit, however, Sullivan remained calm, jotting down notes while Green filled the detectives in on the Riley O'Shaughnessy connection. Their faces reflected their disbelief and dismay. When Green mentioned laying charges, however, Sullivan raised his head.

“Shouldn't we wait for confirmation on the Jane Doe?” he asked, the epitome of reason.

“The kid is set to drive down to Ohio any moment. He's already panicked once—”

“Wait a minute. We don't know that for sure.” Green saw other heads nod, and he leaned forward to press his case. “It all points that way, Brian, and if everyone wasn't so infected by hockey fever, you'd have seen it ages ago. Look at the facts. The kid's an elite athlete in a competitive sport. That means he's determined, focussed and a man of action. He wouldn't waste time on analysis. When he sees his opportunity, he'll grab it. He's got to be strong, and God knows our killer is strong and not squeamish about using brute force. We know he he was Lea's secret lover, they met that night, smoked some bad weed. We know they struggled, not enough to kill her, but with the drugs in her system, enough to be a contributing factor when she dies, so he sees his future going down the tubes if he's implicated. With a potential criminal record hanging over his head, who's going to sign him at the big draft? So he throws her over the falls, hoping it will look like an accident, and he tries to lie low. But the school social worker starts poking around, and before he knows it, he's backed into a corner. If he doesn't shut her up, he's going to be in even worse trouble, because he covered up the crime. So the social worker has to go.”

Silence greeted his analysis, and when Sullivan spoke, he was more subdued. “It's a nice theory, Mike, but what do we have to hang it on? To lay a charge, I mean.”

“That's why we need our ducks in a row. I want search warrants for Riley's cell phone records and for his uncle's house.” He glanced at the short, squat detective who had already opened his notebook. “Jones, you're the warrant wizard, so you start the ball rolling. We're looking for calls he made last Monday night or early Tuesday morning when Lea died, and again on Friday. The kid's only eighteen. I want to know if he had advice or help. In the uncle's house, we're looking for Lea's cell phone and panties, all Riley's shoes and clothes. Also a shovel and some kind of cart. Cutting up the body would have been messy, so we're looking for an implement like a saw—”

“MacPhail is sure it was an axe,” Sullivan interjected. “It wasn't pretty.”

Green winced in spite of himself. “And not for the squeamish, that's for sure. There would be lots of blood, probably in the shed or garage. You're hardly going to chop someone up in the backyard in full view of the neighbours.” Green's eyes scanned the computer screen where Gibbs was recording the assignments. “We need a team out at the house interviewing the neighbours—did they see or hear anything between Friday and Sunday, etc. etc.” He gestured to Wallington and Charbonneau. “You guys take that. The moment the search warrants are signed, we all move. Watts and LeBlanc, you execute the search warrant and Brian, you and I will pick up Riley. I don't want him tipped off beforehand, so we'll hang on to him down here until the results of the search come in.” He paused, studying the screen and the postings around the room. “Have we forgotten anything?”

“The vehicle he transported the Jane Doe in?” Gibbs ventured.

Green nodded, grateful for the young detective's meticulous mind. He pictured the brand new Mustang that Riley had been driving on Sunday. There was barely room to squeeze a body in its trunk, let alone a shovel and a cart. But then he remembered the large plumbing van sitting in Darren O'Shaughnessy's drive, with way more room than a Mustang. There would be plenty of room for everything in the van, even for the murder itself.