Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (169 page)

Her pulse quickened. “Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who adore from a distance that are the most dangerous.”

Heads swivelled towards her around the table. Eyes narrowed. “You’re talking as if something bad has happened to her,” Nigel said.

“Well, aren’t we all?” Mrs. Lucas countered. “I know Lea. I’ve taught her English for two years. She’d never leave her mother without a word. They were extremely close. She wrote me a journal piece once about how they escaped from Bosnia together on foot through the mountains after her father was killed by the Serbs. Lea felt a huge obligation to her mother, for all that she’d lost and given up so that Lea could be safe. She’d never cut off ties of her own free will. I agree with Jenna, she’s been abducted...or worse.”

That silenced the threesome for a moment. As the unspoken words “by whom?” hung in the air, Jenna’s thoughts returned to the boyfriend Crystal had described. The police should be looking for this boy. They should be dragging him down to the station— preferably over hot coals, she thought, indulging a private fantasy about all the sleazeballs she’d known—and they should be forcing him to confess to the part he’d played in her disappearance.

“Does anyone know who she’s going out with right now?” she asked.

Mrs. Lucas grunted. “I gave up trying to keep up with today’s kids long ago. They seem to hang out in groups and try each other out as casually as I change clothes.”

The pregnant teacher laughed. “That’s not saying much, Pat! How many outfits do you have? A sweat suit for winter and a white
T
-shirt for summer?”

But Mrs. Lucas merely shrugged and brushed imaginary lint from her white
T
-shirt. “But you know what I mean? Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re dating or just friends.”

“And sometimes it’s not, the way they hang on each other,” the pregnant one said. “I remember hearing she was dating one of the theatre students. But then again, actors and relationships...here today, gone tomorrow.”

“But seriously,” Jenna said, “if we could figure out who her boyfriend is—”

Mrs. Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You seem awfully focussed on a boyfriend. Do you know something we don’t?”

Jenna felt her face burn. Damn! Just when she was beginning to feel more confident with the woman, her stare reduced Jenna to a small child again. “No, no! I just think...you know how boyfriends can be. Jealous, possessive. He could be the culprit.”

Looking unconvinced, Mrs. Lucas snapped her tupperware shut and carried her coffee mug to the sink. “Well, it’s a stretch. Much more likely that some pervert got her. The jail sentences they get, and the way these girls dress, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

The bell rang, and a collective groan rose from the tables as teachers pushed back their chairs, picked up their papers and filed out the door as if heading out to battle. Jenna sat alone with her thoughts. Mrs. Lucas could be right. Certainly there were enough perverts on the prowl for vulnerable prey. But if Crystal was right, Lea had been going to meet her boyfriend, who did not share her passion for the relationship. He was a successful boy with a great future ahead of him that was not to be derailed by the demands of a clingy, overly possessive girl. Within this school alone, how many boys would fit that bill?

Pleasant Park High School was a large, prestigious school with special programs for the artistically gifted, and among its students were the future authors, musicians, painters and actors of the country. Some never pursued their talents beyond high school, but others went on to headline on Broadway or write a Governor General’s Award winning novel. Talent, promise—and massive egos—abounded at Pleasant Park. What if Lea’s boyfriend had been among that elite crowd? She had been dating an actor who would certainly fit the bill.

Jenna lingered in the now empty staff room. It was really up to the police to track down Lea’s boyfriend, but they were probably narrow-minded jerks with no imagination to see beyond the obvious. No kid would confide in them in a million years. But if she told them what she knew, they would demand to know her source, and her social work standards of practice were clear. Client confidentiality could not be broken just to spread a vague rumour. In fact, she could not even mention Crystal’s name. But that wouldn’t stop them from bullying her to get it out of her. Cops didn’t give a damn about sensitivities or confidentiality, only about results.

She needed an outside source. If she could discover the name of Lea’s boyfriend on her own, she could hand him over to the police without having to mention Crystal’s name. Crystal would be protected, the boyfriend exposed, and perhaps, just perhaps, Lea would be rescued before he could do her any serious harm.

A woman had to do something, Jenna thought as she marched off in the direction of the drama room.

Three

 T
wo o’clock that afternoon found Green inside the car again, hunched over the radio. The news on the missing girl was brief. Dozens of officers and volunteers had been dispatched to search the wooded areas along Ottawa’s waterways, and a photo of the girl had been released to the public with an appeal for anyone with any information to contact the police. Superintendent Barbara Devine, the head of
CID
, had even secured a ten-second sound bite which she used to assure the public, with a ferocity and confidence she couldn’t possibly feel, that the police had made the girl’s safe return their number one priority. No expenses spared, no resources untapped.

Quite the attitude reversal for Devine, for whom purse strings, bottom lines and promotional prospects were usually the top priorities, Green thought. She must have been pressured by the higher-ups in the food chain, who were ever mindful of public image and positive press. After all, beautiful, blonde, innocent schoolgirls should be safe in their own communities.

All schoolgirls should be safe in their own communities, even blue-haired ones, Green thought as he dialled home once more. Still no answer. He was just leaving another message on Hannah’s cell when Sharon opened the car door and slipped in beside him. This time she looked neither annoyed nor reproachful. Her gentle fingers caressed his arm.

“Why don’t you drive into the city and check on her?”

He looked at her in surprise. Was she as worried as he? Was she saying his anxiety was more than the paranoia of a police officer who’d seen too much of the depraved side of human nature?

“It’s only an hour and a half drive,” she added. “You can be back before suppertime.”

“But this was supposed to be our family time.”

“I know.” She flashed him a wry smile. “But Tony’s having a nap, and he’ll hardly notice you’re gone. And Hannah is family too. You have to take care of this.”

He hugged her, buried his face in her dark curls. “Thank you.”

She held him. “Bring her back with you, okay? Kicking and screaming, if need be.”

Taking nothing but his wallet, keys and cell phone, Green drove at breakneck speed up the busy, twisting Highway 15, grateful that his little Subaru had all-wheel-drive, but wishing it was equipped with lights and siren too. Eighty-six minutes later, he was weaving through the narrow, leafy streets of his west end neighbourhood. The house looked empty and undisturbed. Today’s
Ottawa Citizen
still sat in the middle of the front porch where the delivery boy had tossed it, and the mail bulged from the box.

Green unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall. It echoed eerily, as if it had been abandoned for a week instead of a mere day. A shout to Hannah elicited no response, and a rapid search of the premises yielded no trace of her. He tried not to panic. This was the same girl who had climbed onto a plane in Vancouver on a whim when she was barely sixteen years old and had flown east to visit the father she had never known. The same girl who, upon arrival, had hung out on the streets of Ottawa for days without a word to either parent before fate had delivered her into Green’s hands. She was no stranger to the grand gesture of liberation. But she was still an innocent girl, albeit blue-haired instead of blonde, and now finishing her first year at an alternative high school, a far cry from your model student.

He debated phoning his father, who lived in a small senior’s residence in Sandy Hill. Hannah had adored her gentle, oldworld grandfather ever since their first meeting, and she showed him a sensitivity and affection she never shared with her father. But Sid Green was eighty-five, frail and partially deaf. Scars from the Holocaust had left him with a weak heart and a penchant for paranoia that no amount of security on Canadian soil could ever quite counter. Even a casual question about Hannah’s whereabouts would send him spinning into panic. Until Green had exhausted all other avenues, he would not put his father through that.

He stood in the middle of her bedroom, looking for clues. Its severe black decor—Sharon called it eggplant, but it looked black to him—reflected a goth influence but she had recently added some brightly coloured posters of music groups other than Three Inches of Blood and Avenged Sevenfold. The clothing strewn across the floor was red, turquoise and even pink. Progress.

He looked for her school bag. It wasn’t there. Nor was her cell phone or her school agenda book, despite a detailed search under the piles of books and papers that littered every surface. He did, however, turn up her little black purse and her wallet, complete with credit card, bus pass and student
ID
. Also in the wallet, he noted with resignation, was a fake
ID
with her photo and name, but a date of birth four years earlier that her real one. It bore a Vancouver address, leading him to wonder how long she’d owned it.

So she had taken her cell phone and her school bag, but not her credit card, bus pass or
ID
s, fake or otherwise. He tried not to imagine the worst. Perhaps she had just gone to stay at a nearby friend’s house, where she would not need money or
ID
. Perhaps they were using a friend’s car. He realized with a pang how little he knew of her social circle. She rarely brought friends home, and when she did, it was only a quick stop between one party and another. Introductions, if they were given at all, were a perfunctory flick of her hand in his direction.

“Deedee, this is Mike,” she’d mutter. Not father, not Dad. Even after a full year, he had not yet earned that privilege.

Hannah was an extrovert who ranged far afield in her pursuit of new thrills. The names and numbers of her many friends would be on her cell phone or in her agenda, both of which were nowhere to be found. But her high school was as good a place as any to start his search.

Norman Bethune Alternate School was a rambling Victorian brick blockhouse on a side street in Old Ottawa South. There was very little about the ivy-covered exterior to suggest that it was a school, which was probably intentional, and Green had to bang on the dark, heavy door several times before a woman opened it a crack to peer out at him. She looked like an aging hippie, with her grey hair tucked into a frizzy braid and ropes of beads cascading over her braless chest.

He introduced himself and held up his badge for good measure. She frowned and did not budge to open the door. “All the students are gone, Mr. Green. I’m just locking up.”

Green stood on the doorstep feeling like a supplicant as he explained his inability to contact Hannah and his concerns in light of the missing girl. The woman looked unmoved.

“I’m sure she’s just taking advantage of your absence to stay with friends,” she replied, edging out the door. “Students here are quite independent, and we find it works best to allow them freedom of choice.”

He wanted to strangle her with the beads that drooped over her scrawny chest, but he behaved himself. Politely he asked her name and made a point of jotting it down. Eleanor Hicks, guidance counsellor.

“Can you at least tell me if she came to school today?”

“She did not.”

The woman spoke without a hint of concern, and Green forced himself to remain polite. “Is that usual for her?”

“For Hannah, yes.” Hicks pulled the door firmly shut behind her and headed down the front walk. “You have to understand, Independent Learning Credits are just that, Mr. Green. Hannah directs her own pace and quantity, and she gains credit as she fulfills the assignments. I can tell you she’s doing very well with that freedom. Independence suits her.”

With Hannah, there is no other choice, he thought to himself. “I know that, believe me. I was like that too,” he added, hoping to breach the barricade of her mistrust. Why do people always equate police with authoritarian control? “I’m not going to force her into anything, but I do want to know she’s safe. I’m scared. Surely you can understand that.”

“I’m sure she’s safe. She has a good head on her shoulders.”

“No one said Lea Kovacev didn’t,” he countered. She had reached her bicycle and was fastening her helmet. “Please tell me the name and address of at least one of her friends.”

Her lips drew tight. “Student records are confidential.”

“One friend. Off the record. I won’t say where it came from.” Perhaps the anxiety in his tone finally touched her, for her disapproving scowl softened.

“I can’t give it to you, but I will speak to some of her classmates tomorrow when I see them—”

“Tomorrow! That leaves a whole night when she could be in trouble!”

She sighed. “All right, give me your phone number. I’ll speak to one or two of the girls tonight when I get home and tell them you’re worried. It will be up to them to call you if they want.”

Green bit back his frustration and scribbled his cell number on his card. The wait was going to drive him crazy, but it was probably the best he could hope for without dragging in subpoenas, justices of the peace and the rest of the heavy artillery of the state, for which he had not a whit of justification.

By five o’clock in the afternoon, the Ottawa Police headquarters on Elgin Street was normally winding down, the day shift and administrative staff heading home and the evening shift already out on the streets. Today, however, as Green came off the elevator from the parking garage, a crackling energy gripped the second floor, where the major crimes squad was housed. Every desk was occupied, and several detectives were clustered around the corner conference table, hunched over their laptops. They looked up as he passed by, but no one registered surprise at his presence there during his supposed holiday. After almost fifteen years in
CID
, I guess I’m a fixture, he thought. For the fifth time since leaving Hannah’s school, he checked his cell phone for messages, on the remote chance he had failed to hear its ring through the rush hour noise. Nothing.