Beautiful Lie the Dead (15 page)

Green considered the location. It was in Ottawa's near east end, far from any of her work or home haunts, but not too far from Rockcliffe. “What did she buy?”

“A parka and a big bag. Whelan is thinking—and I'm beginning to agree—that maybe this woman really did want to disappear, and her red suede jacket was too easily recognized.”

* * *

In the past eighteen hours, Frankie Robitaille had barely eaten or slept. The night before, he had held himself together long enough to get dinner, supervise the girls' homework, and tuck them into bed, but then he had sat glued to the news network, unable to stop crying. He had killed a woman. Not even aware she was there, marking her death with a mere bump of his snowplow. That poor girl! Her whole life ahead of her, about to be married, and in an instant it was snuffed out.

How could he not have seen her, he kept asking himself. Sure, it was snowing. Sure, the street lighting was poor on the back roads of Rockcliffe. Sure, he was tired and maybe a bit zoned out. But he'd never hit anything before. The lights on his plow were strong and flooded the street for half a block ahead of him.

It had been a tight curve, he remembered that, and it had taken him by surprise. Corners were always tricky and the visibility poor. The cab sat so high and the blade so far in front that it was impossible to see the road right ahead. The year before, a plow operator in Montreal had crushed an elderly couple to death as he turned a corner. A nightmare Frankie knew the poor man would never overcome. Even so, Frankie blamed himself. A woman walking down that quiet street at four a.m. should have caught his attention, especially with that shiny red hand bag. Everything else around was so white, so still.

In the morning, he waved his girls off on the school bus and went back into the house. He forced himself to shower, shave and brew a cup of coffee, tuning in to the local TV's morning show in the background. There was nothing new to report. The dead woman had not yet been identified but did not appear to be Meredith Kennedy. That's no help, he thought, cradling his coffee in both hands and fighting fresh tears. Some other woman was dead, crushed in a few terrifying, excruciating moments by a ton of sharp, unforgiving steel.

The doorbell rang and Frankie started, spilling coffee all over the sofa and carpet. He trembled, debated not answering, and sat cowering waiting for them to go away. The bell rang again, longer this time. He set down his coffee, wiped his eyes and headed for the door. Through the small window in the door he could see two strangers, one a tall, lanky young man and the other a short woman with frizzy brown hair. Both were wearing identical black parkas. Cops.

As he opened the door, he pasted a mask on his face that he hoped looked calm but curious. Right off the bat, the man showed his badge.

“Are you François Robitaille?”

Frankie nodded but couldn't find his voice. The cop introduced himself and his partner, but their names flew right over his head. “We have a few questions, Mr. Robitaille. May we come inside?”

He stepped back to let them in. No point in pretending to know nothing. If they had found him, they already had him. His mind raced ahead frantically to figure out how much he should tell.

“Can I...” He cleared his throat. “Can I get you some coffee?”

They shook their heads in unison and sat down at opposite ends of the living room, trapping him in the middle so that he couldn't watch both at once. The woman took out her notebook while the man leaned forward.

“At 3:16 yesterday afternoon, did you place a 911 call from a payphone at the corner of Beechwood and Charlevoix Avenues?”

He swallowed. He thought of his two girls, expecting to come home this afternoon to his bad jokes and even worse cookies, expecting him to be there forever like he'd promised when their mother took off to Calgary and left them all high and dry. He didn't dare answer. Let's see what they've got, he thought. Don't admit to a thing.

The cop waited a moment, then consulted his notes. “Do you drive a black 1999 Silverado, Ontario license plate KKLT 809?”

The cops would know that from Motor Vehicles records. No point denying that, so he nodded.

“Was it parked in the vicinity of Maple Lane in Rockcliffe on or about three p.m. yesterday?”

He thought of the dog walker. Had she reported the license plate, or were the cops fishing? He said nothing.

“Was it, Mr. Robitaille?”

“Why are you asking? Is that a no-parking area?”

“What were you doing there?”

“I didn't say I was there.” Frankie knew he came across as stupid and risked pissing off the police, but he felt like he was standing in the middle of a mine field. One wrong step...

The woman laid down her notebook and flexed her wrist irritably. She had a lopsided face and spoke with care. “You can make it easier on yourself if you just tell us what happened, Mr. Robitaille. We have a witness who saw you digging in the snow in the vicinity where the body of a woman was later found buried in the snowbank. We know that street was plowed only once during the snowstorm. According to the city's public works manifest, it was plowed between three and five a.m. on Tuesday of this week. We also know you were the driver of that plow. Tell us what happened.”

Frankie sat a long time in silence. He didn't want his voice to shake. “I don't know.”

“You don't remember hitting her?”

“No. I don't know if I hit her.”

“According to the pathologist, she's got broken bones and gashes all over her body, consistent with blows by a large, heavy, sharp-edged instrument like the blade of a plow. The actual post mortem examination will establish that more conclusively, as well as match the shape of the blade to the shape of the wounds.”

Frankie winced. He felt his stomach rebel, and he wanted to bolt to the washroom, but he forced himself to stay still. Barely breathed. “There was a snowstorm that night. Everything was white, and it was hard to even make out where the road was. And there was a curve.”

“You're saying you didn't see her.”

He nodded, trembling.

“You didn't see her at all?” Like she didn't believe him.

“Do you think I'd have left her there if I saw her?” Frankie began to cry. “I'm a family man, just trying to earn a decent wage for my kids. I've never done anything wrong in my whole life.”

The first cop broke in. “We know that. You're not in trouble here, Mr. Robitaille. You're right, it was snowing hard, visibility was very poor and the roads in Rockcliffe are very narrow. We just need to know what happened. We need to know whether she was walking, what direction she was going in and how she was acting. Not too many people would choose to be out at night in the middle of that storm.”

Frankie dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “I didn't see her, I swear. I came around the corner and all I saw was white.”

“If you didn't see anything,” the woman interrupted, “then why were you back there yesterday, digging in the snowbank?”

“I–I felt something.” He explained about the bump and about not thinking anything of it until a few day later. “But I swear to God I never saw her. She must have come out of nowhere, because there was nothing, nada, on the road!”

He hoped it sounded convincing. He believed it. Goddamn it, yes, the more he thought about it, he thought—I wasn't
that
asleep. Where the hell did she come from?

ELEVEN

I
nspector Green was in the midst of an argument with Media Relations over the release of information about the dead woman when Gibbs phoned in their report on Frankie Robitaille. Green was grateful for the distraction. Two mystery women within a four-day span barely a week before Christmas had the public hungry for details. However somewhere, someone was frantically worried about a missing middle-aged woman with dark hair and, judging from the red purse and the turquoise nails, a flair for drama. She was someone's wife or mother or daughter, and Green didn't want them learning her gruesome fate in a sound bite on the News at Noon.

He listened to Gibbs's report carefully. “He seemed genuinely shaken up, sir,” Gibbs concluded. “Sue is gung ho to charge him with leaving the scene or criminal negligence, but he claims he never even knew he hit her. Didn't see her at all.”

Green massaged his temple. The old Sue was coming back with a vengeance. “Sounds sensible to me, Bob. At least for now we don't have reason to believe there was a crime involved. Let's wait for the PM.”

“Do you want me to go to that, sir?”

“Sergeant Levesque is there now. She's handling the Jane Doe, you and Sue stay on the Kennedy case with Li.”

“Oh.”

Hearing the disappointment in the young detective's voice, Green was about to fill him in on the latest developments in the Kennedy case—the cellphone call from the unknown caller and the purchase of winter clothes at The Bay. At that moment, however, he glanced up to see Sergeant Li himself at the door, waving some papers. Hastily Green told Gibbs to come back in to the station for details then signed off.

Li set the top paper down on Green's desk. “Kennedy's cellphone. Lots of calls from the Ottawa area, usually short. Our girl doesn't seem to be the chatty type. I'll track them all down of course, but there's one number that jumped out at me. It's not local and there's no record of it before ten days ago. Then six calls, both incoming and outgoing. The most recent one was at 8:32 Monday evening. Duration ninety seconds. That's the last call ever made on Kennedy's line.”

That doesn't bode well, Green thought. He studied the number, which had a 514 area code. Montreal. “Who is it?”

“It's registered to a Lise Gravelle. I called the number but got no answer.”

Green frowned. Lise Gravelle rang absolutely no bells. Her name had not come up in the investigation at all, yet judging from the snippet Hannah had overheard, Lise wanted to ruin everything. A secret lover of Brandon's trying to sabotage the wedding, perhaps?

“I could get the Montreal police to interview her,” Li was saying. “She lives in an apartment in the Côte Des Neiges area.”

Green tried to recall his paltry knowledge of Montreal. Côte des Neiges was a major shopping street that sliced through the mountainside deep in the heart of English Montreal.

“Let's hold off on that until Gibbs and Peters can do some background inquiries. We need to know how this woman fits in before we start asking her questions. Judging from what we do know, she and Meredith Kennedy were not on good terms.”

Li shrugged. “Kennedy's not such a priority any more, now that it looks like she disappeared on purpose—”

“There are still some serious question marks,” Green interrupted. “Like the death of this Jane Doe so close to the Longstreet home. It could be a coincidence, but I'm not a fan of coincidence. Until we know the circumstances of her death, we keep Kennedy active.”

“I've been making some inquiries on Jane Doe.” Li had another file in his hand, and now he held it out. “There's no active MisPers case in our own system that fits her description, so I checked everything within a hundred kilometres. The OPP, Gatineau, Sûreté du Québec, Kingston, Brockville... No women aged 30 to 50, 190 cm., 60 kilos have been reported missing in the past month whose whereabouts are still unknown.”

“She could be a visitor. It is the holiday season.” Even as Green suggested the idea, he thought it unlikely. Visitors and tourists stayed in the major downtown areas. Wellington Street past Parliament Hill, fashionable Elgin Street or the Byward Market. No visitor would be walking along the back roads of Rockcliffe at four in the morning. In a blizzard.

“There may be more information once MacPhail finishes the PM,” Green said. Apart from the obvious clues like tattoos and birthmarks, a post mortem could tell them whether she'd had surgery or broken bones, whether she'd had children, when and what she'd last eaten, whether she used drugs, and sometimes even where her dental work had been done. All details that would help narrow the search for her identity. “My sergeant is attending, and I'll let you know what she reports.”

“Okay,” Li said, hauling himself stiffly to his feet, “I'll keep tracking down these other phone numbers to see who else Kennedy spoke to in the hours before she disappeared.”

After Li left, Green turned his attention to his own private Missing Persons case. Superintendent Adam Jules. Jules's cell phone now went directly to voicemail as though it were turned off or out of battery power. He was not answering his office phone either, and according to his clerk, he hadn't called in that day. She had been busy on the phone all morning cancelling his appointments with feeble excuses and lying outrageously to his colleagues. She was frazzled, annoyed and worried.

So was Green. But Jules was a very private man. He might have a perfectly valid reason for his absence, and if Green launched a full-scale manhunt to find him, Jules would be outraged. Green didn't even dare call the deputy chief to obtain Jules's personal contact information. Instead he used his back door contact at Bell Canada to find out Jules's unlisted home address and number. When the home phone also went to voice mail, Green hung up in disgust, threw on his coat and boots, and headed out the door.

Jules lived in an old limestone school board building that had been converted to tasteful condo apartments. Living at the heart of Centretown only a short walk from police headquarters and from the pubs and restaurants of Elgin Street, he led the perfect bachelor's life. When he was in charge of Criminal Investigations at headquarters, he had walked to work daily.

Briefly Green debated walking to the condo himself, aware that it might take more time to find a parking space than to walk. However in the end, thinking he might uncover clues in that apartment that would lead him elsewhere, he took his Subaru.