Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (181 page)

“Inspector Green? It’s Rita Berens calling.” The voice was brisk and professional, but laced with an undertone of tension. Green took a moment to place the name. The dragon lady from the school board.

“I expected a call last night,” he said, just to keep her on her toes.

“We’ve not been able to locate Ms Zukowski, and I waited until we’d exhausted all possible avenues before calling you.”

“What have you tried?”

“We’ve tried her cell phone and her home line numerous times. Yesterday we phoned all her schools, but most of them had closed down for the weekend. She didn’t call in Friday afternoon to check messages or report in. I left an urgent message on her home phone, and when she still hadn’t called in this morning, I sent one of my staff to her apartment. There was no answer.”

“Is this a usual pattern of behaviour for her?”

“No. All my staff know to call in to the secretary at the end of the day, and I expect them to return their calls as soon as they’re contacted. Ms Zukowski is generally conscientious about this.”

“What’s your next step?”

“I don’t know. I’m asking you. I’m becoming concerned.”

Privately, Green felt the same niggle of concern. There could be any number of innocent explanations, not the least of which was a weekend excursion with family or friends.

“Should we report her missing?” Berens asked. “You could, but it’s not yet forty-eight hours, and there are several steps you can take more easily through unofficial channels than we can. Contact her family, check her apartment, check if her vehicle is in its parking spot.”

“It’s the weekend, and I have other priorities, Inspector.”

“And I have a homicide investigation to run. I can’t have precious resources tied up by school board infighting.”

“It’s not infighting!”

“Until I have evidence to the contrary, that’s exactly what it sounds like to me. Fearing disciplinary action from yourself or the principal, Ms Zukowski has chosen to make herself scarce.”

“I’ll be in touch,” she said frostily and hung up. Green allowed her that small measure of defiance. He did plan to assign someone to track down the social worker’s whereabouts, but he had no intention of telling the dragon lady that. He knew she would break all speed records trying to locate the missing woman. Control freaks do not tolerate staff who make them look bad. Woe betide Jenna Zukowski if she was in fact just lying low. Green, however, was beginning to fear a more sinister explanation. The woman
had
been poking around in a homicide investigation.

It took the dragon lady less than two hours to get back to him. He was in his office, poring over witness statements. Secondguessing Sullivan’s leadership, but he couldn’t help it. A crime was sometimes solved by that little unexpected needle in the haystack of evidence.

“We’ve found her car for you,” Berens announced without preamble. “It’s parked outside her apartment building. However, she’s still not responding to her phone or the buzzer.”

“Where are you now?”

“In my car outside her apartment. I’m here with one of my staff.”

“Then I suggest you ask the landlord to let you in for a look.”

There was a pause, and when Berens resumed, her tone had chilled. “Look, I’m not comfortable with this. I’ve conferred with our board lawyer, and he’s indicated this is a police matter, not one for the school board to be involved in. If you want to talk to her, then it’s your responsibility to find her. You have the means to do so, he said.”

Fucking lawyers, Green muttered to himself. Especially corporate lawyers, whose first, last and only instinct is to cover the corporate ass. “Well, your lawyer clearly knows very little about criminal law and the notions of obstruction of justice and interference in a police investigation. Ms Zukowski was acting in her capacity as a representative of the school board and is assumed to be operating under your supervision. In any case,” he said airily, “we may be the least of your problems. I’m sure you’re aware the media is covering every minute development in this case.”

She got the point. Sputtering about lodging a formal complaint, she agreed to track down the building super. Once she’d hung up without a word of goodbye, however, Green remained in his chair, gripped by second thoughts. He’d won his battle with her, but it would be a hollow victory—indeed an ultimate loss—if her amateurish search of the apartment contaminated the scene and destroyed valuable evidence.

Grabbing his rain coat, he called her back to ask her and the super to wait outside the apartment until he arrived. As an afterthought, he shoved latex gloves, plastic evidence bags and a magnifying glass into his pocket. Sherlock Holmes would have been proud.

Jenna Zukowski’s apartment was in Beacon Hill, one of the hundreds of towering, featureless highrises that had sprouted up all over the city during the 1970s. Its lobby was dingy and sterile, with fake marble floors, cloth panelled walls, and a single rubber plant drooping in the corner. When Green walked in, he stopped short in surprise. Rita Berens didn’t look like any dragon lady he’d ever imagined. She was less than five feet tall, with short, curly blonde hair, impeccable makeup and a pert figure Sharon would die for, neatly packaged in a belted white trenchcoat and high black boots.

By contrast, the super was a six-foot, three-hundred-pound bruiser, recently roused from bed, to judge from his bloodshot eyes and sulky scowl. Fortunately his brain seemed too hazy to be concerned with warrants and technicalities. He pulled out his massive key ring without a word.

Green gestured to the bank of apartment buzzers. “Still no answer?”

Berens shook her head. Not a single curl dislodged.

“Let’s go look at the car first,” Green said, returning outside. The storm had reduced to a drizzle which coated everything in a chilly mist. Berens led the way around the building to the parking lot at the rear. The super frowned, roused slightly from his stupor.

“She’s not supposed to park here. This is the visitor parking lot. I tell the tenants all the time, don’t park here, we get complaints from visitors there’s no room.”

“Does Ms Zukowski park here often?”

“No, she’s not one of the troublemakers. It’s them that’s too lazy to walk up the stairs from the underground garage.” Jenna’s car was one of the legion of ubiquitous and unremarkable Honda Civics, this one silver in colour and sporting a single dent on its left rear bumper. Green had the same dent on his Subaru, caused by backing up into a lamppost in a moment of distraction.

Otherwise the car was untouched, although spattered with dusty raindrops. Green peered inside. The back seat of the car was buried in papers and fast food containers. Berens had joined him in peering through the window, and her nose wrinkled in distaste.

“What did she carry with her?” Green asked. “Briefcase, file folders, laptop?”

“I have no idea,” Berens said, as if such minor housekeeping details were beneath her. “Most of my staff carry briefcases with their files. Some of them have laptops as well and keep their records on them. Perhaps in the trunk?”

Green hesitated. He still had no official investigation, no owner permission, no warrant, yet the car’s presence in visitors’ parking was out of character. Perhaps a little unobtrusive sleuthing was in order. He sent the super to get a hanger. While he waited, he snapped on latex gloves, extracted his magnifying glass and examined all the door locks and handles for signs of tampering. Nothing. The super arrived with a hanger and a long lock jimmy, which he handed to Green, who refrained from questions. It was many years since Green’s skills in car jimmying had been tested, so it took him nearly five minutes to pop the lock on the Civic, and he could feel the super itching to take over. As he opened it, he noted it had an alarm which hadn’t been set. A quick search through the debris of the interior and the glove compartment revealed nothing useful. Jenna was a Diet Coke and Tim Hortons addict and was doing serious harm to her arteries, if not her pocketbook, by her choice of food.

He popped the trunk latch, then lifted it with trepidation. Too many memories of bodies stashed in trunks. But the trunk was crammed full of winter tires, ski boots and old winter clothes. There would have been barely room for an emergency kit, let alone a briefcase or a laptop. He returned to the front of the car. “Do your employees collect mileage records?”

“We reimburse their travel, but how precisely they keep track of mileage is up to them.”

Green glanced in the car. If her records were as chaotic as her car, not very precisely at all. Still, it was worth a try. He slipped into the driver’s seat to check the odometer and was surprised to find he had to stretch to reach the pedals. How tall was this woman, he wondered, and when he posed the question, Berens looked alarmed. She too had noticed how far back the seat was set.

“She’s short and dumpy. No more than five-three, I’d say.” Green kept his expression bland, but recorded the odometer reading and the station the radio was set to. Sometimes criminals gave themselves away by the smallest of details. Climbing out of the car, he turned to the super, who was sitting on the curb looking more annoyed than concerned that trouble had brought the police to his door.

“How do tenants access the underground parking?”

“There’s an access code.” Not a key or a magnetic card, which would be available to anyone in possession of Jenna’s personal effects, but a memorized code carried inside her head. Whoever had parked this car had not done so with her permission, for otherwise she would have given them the code.

He called the com centre to request a patrol car. Before he impounded the car, he needed to check out Jenna’s apartment to make absolutely sure she was not up there, closeted away with her lover, but he didn’t want to leave it unguarded while he went upstairs. He had serious doubts she would be there. Twenty years of experience on the force told him quite another story.

Once he had the officer on guard, he nodded to the super, who was looking more sullen by the moment. Berens, on the other hand, looked unnerved to find herself out of her depth. Inside, the apartment building was as featureless as outside. Its long straight corridors had rows of numbered beige doors along each side. When the super stopped at one of these, Green intervened before he could insert the key in the lock. Feeling like Sherlock Holmes, albeit more foolish, Green bent to examine the lock with his magnifying glass. There were no telltale scratches to suggest forced entry. Just inside the door, however, he could hear a cat meowing frantically. He took out new latex gloves and instructed them all to put them on before giving the super the go-ahead.

The cat rushed to greet them as they entered and began to twine itself between their legs, meowing. The apartment smelled of fermenting fruit and cat urine. Piles of newspapers, mail and dirty dishes cluttered the counters, and a linen suit lay tossed over a chair in the living room.

Jenna, however, was nowhere to be seen. A quick check of the rooms revealed her toothbrush in the bathroom and her pyjamas rumpled on the bed, but no cat food in the dish. She had not planned a trip away. She had intended to return, but judging from the cat’s agitation, had not been home in some time.

Without waiting for permission, Berens began hunting through kitchen cupboards, presumably for cat food. Green left her to it and asked the super the last time he’d seen Jenna. The super shrugged. “I got a hundred units in this building. You think I see everyone that comes and goes?”

“Does she have visitors? Perhaps a boyfriend?”

“I’m not the nanny, just the super. Her tap drips, her toilet leaks, I see her. Else I...” He lifted his massive shoulders again.

“Her car is here. Is it usual for her to go out on foot? Or take the bus?”

This time just a marginal lift of the shoulders. Then “Listen, can I go now? I got work to do.”

Green gestured them both back towards the hall and nodded to Berens. “Find someone to take the cat. I’m going to seal this room until I get a warrant to search it. You can go back downstairs, but I’d like the two of you to keep yourselves available.”

After some protests about their busy lives and multiple duties, they complied, leaving Green alone in the apartment. He phoned for another uniform back-up, then briefed Sullivan and asked him to start the paperwork for a search warrant. As he waited for the back-up, he began a preliminary, unofficial search for her work files, computer and appointment book, hoping one of them would give him a hint about what she’d been up to and whose paths she might have crossed.

A quick search turned up no briefcase or computer, so he began to look in earnest. It was nearly impossible. Newspapers, junk mail and work files cluttered almost every surface without apparent logic or method. He sifted through the piles carefully so as not to dislodge anything, and worked his way systematically through the kitchen and hall.

In the living room, under Thursday’s paper, he found a laptop. He hesitated. He ought to wait for the warrant and for proper technical back-up before delving into her private world. Yet he was convinced something had happened to her, and time might be running out. He opened the lid and stared at the cluttered desktop. Computer whizzes like Gibbs could find out what files she’d been working on most recently, but to Green the array of icons was a mystery, except for recognizable programs like Word, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. He clicked on the latter and was relieved to encounter no password or other barrier between him and her inbox. Thirty-six new messages began pouring in. The usual stock tips, penis enhancers and pleas from Nigerian banks, some digests from message groups and an online social work discussion forum. Surprisingly, no personal emails at all, leading him to think Jenna must not have an extensive social life. He checked the date of the first message to arrive. It was sent Thursday at 10:02 p.m. Which meant Jenna Zukowski had not been near her email since Thursday evening, the day she had been nosing around at the school.

He checked her Sent box, but she had sent nothing at all on Thursday night. A more thorough search of the laptop could wait for the Hi Tech crew, but for now he just needed to know what she’d been investigating. He clicked on Internet Explorer and then on History, proud that he’d managed to retain something from watching Gibbs at work.