Beautiful Lie the Dead (39 page)

“Emergency medical supplies, the best I could throw together. Hypothermia is the biggest danger, especially if she's fallen in the lake. I've got hot tea, a tuque, dry clothes and a waterproof jacket, plus packing and bandages if she's hurt.”

Green nodded, grateful for the man's forethought but hoping medical intervention wouldn't be necessary. After much cursing and sweating, he managed to strap the snowshoes on and waddled out the front door, leaving Gibbs and Zdanno behind to guard the cabin.

Levesque and Brandon glided ahead, silent and effortless while he floundered about in the soft snow. They moved through the tall, swaying trees without talking, their ears attuned to every sound and their eyes straining to track the trail. The snow lashed through the branches in stinging pellets that swallowed up sound and reduced the footprints to vague outlines. All around, whiteness blurred the contours of space. Sky blended with snow and with the very air they breathed. Brandon and Levesque would ski ahead then stop to listen and scan the woods until Green caught up.

He was puffing and drenched with sweat by the time they reached a point of land that jutted out into the lake. The tracks ended here at the edge of the white expanse that marked the lake.

“This is as far as I'd got when I thought I heard your cars,”

Brandon said. “I wasn't sure if she'd gone out there...”

Green followed his gesture out onto the open expanse, where the wind swirled the snow into thick drifts. Further out from shore, patches of open water glistened black through gaping holes. Despite himself, Green shivered at the appalling thought. They squinted at the surface of the snow, looking for tracks leading out onto the lake. His mind played tricks as he studied the small hollows carved by the wind. It was Levesque who headed the other way, inland. A moment later, she called out. She'd found a faint trail heading up the slope toward a dense stand of spruce. Brandon dug in his poles and raced off to join her. Green was grateful to turn his back on the black open water for the protection of the trees. His eyes were attuned to the ground by now, and he could distinguish not just a vast blanket of white but the small tracks of squirrels and rabbits, the deep, delicate cloven hoofs of deer, and even the maze of bird tracks etched around the base of a tree covered with pine cones.

He pressed on doggedly, trusting the two younger people to track the trail while he concentrated on keeping up. One foot in front of the other, swinging his snowshoes in huge, awkward steps to avoid tripping on the tips. Damn, he was out of shape! After what seemed an eternity, he came upon Brandon and Levesque waiting for him again under cover of a huge, spreading pine. Levesque pointed to the bits of broken bark littering the snow below.

“Porcupine,” she murmured, peering overhead. “He lives way up there somewhere, but he's hidden by the pine needles. Nature is perfect, isn't it?”

Green leaned against the tree trunk, trying not to appear too winded. Porcupines and perfection were the last thing on his mind. “Look, why don't you two go on ahead. You can get to her faster than me.”

Brandon wasn't listening. He'd skied impatiently a short distance up the trail and was tilting his head intently. Then he raised his hand to silence them. As quietly as possible, they moved to join him.

“Hear anything?” he whispered.

Green stood stock still, holding his breath and straining to hear past the pounding of his heart. In the utter silence, even the falling snow seemed to whisper. Far off, some bird tapped a rhythm on a tree and a squirrel chattered a warning. Nothing else.

“There!” Brandon's whisper was hoarse with excitement. Green listened again, and faint snatches of sound drifted on the breeze. A sound that didn't belong in the forest. A human weeping.

“Oh my God!” Brandon plunged in his poles and struck out ahead. Forgetting his fatigue, Green struggled to catch him, swallowing up the distance with huge, clumsy steps. The sound softened, then stopped. Green forced himself forward, chasing only the memory now. With every step his fear grew.

A fresh wail broke the silence, much closer now. Green's scalp prickled. It was a deep, guttural sob torn from the throat of a man. Green was almost upon them before he saw Brandon bent over two figures huddled in the snow under the shelter of a pine. Reg was on his knees, rocking back and forth as he cradled his daughter in his arms.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” he wept. Dread raced down Green's spine. Please God, don't let us be too late. But then he saw Meredith move and extend her own arms around her father's shaking form to hug him back.

TWENTY-NINE

A
re you arresting me?” Reg asked as Green handed him a cup of coffee. Gibbs had brewed it, and it smelled as if it could strip paint. They were the first words Reg had uttered since Green and Levesque had pried him and Meredith apart. He'd hung his head in defeat and allowed himself to be guided back to the cabin without protest or explanation. From time to time during the long trek, Meredith had cast him a worried glance but like the others, she'd said little, as if preserving her strength. but like the others, she'd said little, as if preserving her strength.

Darkness had begun to shroud the forest by the time they reached the cabin. Green had dispatched Levesque to handle the SQ , who had arrived en masse for the search, and asked Gibbs to make coffee and food while he brought Devine and the deputy chief up to date. Brandon was tending to Reg, who had collapsed into an easy chair by the wood stove and sat staring through the glass at the glowing flame. His face was still alarmingly grey, but his breathing had slowed.

Green hesitated. Poulin had asked him the same question, and he gave the same answer. “I want both you and Meredith checked out at the hospital just as a precaution, and then I'll take both your statements. There's no rush.”

“I killed her mother,” Reg said. “There's no getting around that.”

“Reg, don't talk now. Drink some coffee and get your strength back.”

“I don't know what came over me. Yes, I do. Panic. I've lived in fear of this happening for years. Ever since all those organizations and websites started cropping up allowing parents and children to reunite. Meredith was so different from us, and I heard those horror stories of children who met their natural parents and felt this instant connection to them, like some kind of telepathy, and the parents who'd loved them since they were little are shoved aside to make room for some stranger who dumped them outside a church when they were babies.”

“Reg, before you make any statement, I need to warn you—”

Reg waved him aside. “I don't give a fuck about Miranda or whatever you call it. I'm not going to fight this. I'm not going to put Meredith through any more. She's lost her mother, she's lost the man she was going to marry—”

“Meredith is fine.” Green thought fast. Reg's statement should be done by the book, complete with the Charter warning, properly prepared questions and a video record. Green had been burned too many times by suspects eager to confess in the heat of the moment, only to recant when their lawyers got hold of them. He made a quick decision.

“For the record,” he said, signalling Gibbs to take notes, “I'm going to give you the Charter warning and then we can talk. Detective Gibbs will document it.”

Reg listened with disinterest while Green recited the warning. At the invitation to consult a lawyer, he scowled. “Bunch of bottom feeders. I always said crooks shouldn't be able to weasel around the law, and now it's my turn to stand up and take it like a man. I'm sorry for what I did to that woman. I haven't had a moment's peace since it happened. But she wouldn't listen to me. Wouldn't take no for an answer.”

“You spoke to her?”

Reg shrugged. “Well, you know that, don't you? At least he does.” He jerked his thumb at Gibbs. “I could tell him and his partner didn't believe that story about the phone call. Norah knew I'd answered a call that night too, but she had nothing to do with any of this. I told her it was my buddy's car stuck in the snow and I had to go out and help dig him out. I threw a bag of salt and a shovel in the back of the truck to prove the point, and that's all she figured it was.”

Shovel. Green thought about the blunt force wound on Gravelle's head. A strong swing, the momentum of the blade through the air...

“It was your partner tipped her off.” Reg thrust his chin at Gibbs. “When she asked us about those phone records. Lise had called before, about two weeks back, at my work. She wanted to know about the adoption, where we'd gotten Meredith from and all. I told her she was nuts, Meredith wasn't adopted, and if she called again, I'd call the cops. I thought that would scare her off. I didn't know...” He faltered and the coffee cup shook in his hand. Green rescued it. “I didn't know she'd go straight to Meredith.”

He shook his head bitterly. “I was ripping mad when I found out she had. When she called that night, she said she was in town and she was going straight to the Longstreets to tell them the truth. The rich bitch owed her, she said. I don't know what I thought. That I could stop her, I guess, and make her see sense. I didn't believe that Brandon was Meredith's brother. I mean, what are the fucking chances! I figured she was lying just to tap into all that Longstreet money, but she was going to ruin my daughter's life and blow our whole family sky high, and for what? For what!” Reg had grown red and spittle had collected at the edges of his mouth. He swiped at it savagely.

“It was snowing a bitch and you couldn't hardly see a thing in front of you, and I had a couple of beers inside me that didn't help. So I spot this woman walking down the middle of the road and I think how easy it would be to run her down, but I stop. Ask if she's Lise. She won't get in the truck, so I get out. She looked super pissed off at me, says she's got nothing to say to me, that this is between her and her daughter and the Longstreets now. And the next thing I know, I whack her.”

He stopped. He shook, and tears seeped into his eyes. “I whacked her. Fuck. She went down and I thought... Well, it wasn't that hard a hit, eh? Maybe I knocked her out, but someone will come along and find her. So I grabbed her wallet and phone—I don't know, hoping maybe nobody would connect her to us. Then I got back in the truck and gunned it out of there. When no one was reported dead, I figured I was safe. That she'd recovered or someone must have found her on time.”

“
I
found her.”

They all turned to see Meredith standing in the doorway. Brandon stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder. “You don't have to do this, Mer,” he said.

She shrugged him off and came into the room. “No more secrets. We are all responsible. I was walking up the street myself, hoping to get to Brandon before she did. It was so much to absorb. I needed to check out her story and if it was true, he needed to hear it from me, not from some stranger showing up on his doorstep.”

Green found he was holding his breath, praying she wasn't about to confess to another crime herself. “Meredith, I think all this should wait till a doctor—”

“It's waited long enough. A woman is dead because of a dream she'd held on to for nearly thirty years. From up the street I saw Dad arguing with her, I saw her shove him away and him grab the shovel from the back and hit her. He crouched at her side for a moment and then took off.”

Reg grabbed her arm in panic. “No, Meredith! Don't! I would have seen you.”

“I ducked out of sight when you drove past. You weren't seeing anything, Dad. You were staring straight ahead like a wild man. I ran up to her. She was lying face down in the snow, eyes open, blood all over the place, and I knew she was dead. I should have called 911, but all I could think of was how much trouble you were in, and how it was all my fault. I'd been so angry at her. I'd told her I didn't believe her, so she got in touch with you instead.”

Reg had grown deathly pale. She reached out to take his hands in hers and fixed her eyes on his. “We're both to blame for what happened, Dad. We both ran, and we both left her alone in the street. I was completely freaked out. My life was shot. The man I was going to marry had turned out to be my half-brother, and the woman who claimed to be my mother was lying dead at my feet. Because of me, my father had panicked and killed her. If anyone found out who she was, the clues would point straight to him.”

Reg clutched her hands as if they were a lifeline to hope. “I was so scared. I was so afraid you knew, because I didn't know where you'd gone!”

“I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go home and face you and pretend nothing had happened. I couldn't go to Brandon and snuggle up in his arms the way I wanted to. Even though he was my brother, I still wanted to. But I couldn't, maybe ever again. So I checked into a hotel, and all night I thought about what to do. At first, I thought of dropping out of sight altogether. I could just start a new life. But I knew the police would be checking my bank accounts and credit cards, even my passport if I left the country. So I holed up here, buying myself time to think of the best way out. It was only going to be for a couple of days, but as I thought about it, I realized I had to find out the truth above all else. Was I adopted, and was Brandon my brother? Once I had those answers, I might know what to do next.”

She sat down on the sofa, her head bowed, and continued so quietly that Green had to strain to hear. Everyone sat transfixed. “There's no phone or internet access out here, so I didn't know exactly what was going on in Ottawa. I figured people would be worried, especially Brandon, but when I checked the
Ottawa
Citizen
at the village store on Wednesday, I found no mention of either me or a dead woman. So I hoped you'd figured I just had cold feet about the wedding because we'd had that huge fight about it on Sunday night. After a few days I went back to the village. I had to know if they'd identified Lise and traced her to us. That's when I saw there was a massive search on and everyone was frantic. The village store had an internet connection, so I sent an email to Brandon hoping at least to reassure him while I waited for my DNA results.” She raised her head finally and her gaze met Brandon's. She smiled at him sadly.