Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (185 page)

“He’s obviously not interested,” McIntyre said. “He’s just gone to change,” the mother said. “I’m sure he’ll be down in a minute.”

“I don’t want my father. I want Vic,” Riley said, loud enough that Green was sure his father could hear. His lips were beginning to tighten, just like his mentor’s. Green wanted to strangle the interfering asshole but kept his face impassive as he rethought his options. He could, of course, insist on a private interview, but that would entail making the interview formal, notifying the local police and probably dragging a lawyer into the fray who would make Vic look like a pussycat. The power game he was playing with Vic almost required him to take that option. Yet he would lose valuable time, Riley would gain time to bolster his defences, and Green would miss the opportunity to observe McIntyre and gauge what he knew about Lea’s death. Even going along with Riley’s request, at least he could rattle a few nerves.

“This is not a me-against-you situation, Riley,” he said, trying to make the best of it. “So you don’t have to feel threatened. If at any time you decide you don’t want Vic there, you just give me the word.” He glanced at Noreen O’Shaughnessy, whose cheeks were blotched pink with anger. “Would it be all right if we used your living room?”

She nodded. “Since you’re going to be longer than you thought, perhaps you’d like that drink after all? Coffee? Coke?”

Riley shook his head, but Green accepted a coffee. She shot a defiant look at McIntyre before turning on her heel without offering him the same. Green signalled both men into the living room and invited Riley to sit in one of the armchairs flanking the window. He immediately chose the matching one opposite, effectively splitting Riley off from McIntyre, who was forced to sit on the sofa across the room. With this arrangement, Green and Riley were backlit by the window, making it more difficult for McIntyre to read their expressions. More importantly, he had forced McIntyre out of Riley’s line of vision and reduced the chances the agent could control him.

McIntyre didn’t see all this until it was too late, when he could do nothing but glower. Green gave Riley what he hoped was a fatherly smile. “Do you know why I’m here, Riley?”

Riley shook his head. He perched forward on the wing chair as if poised to flee, his elbows on his knees and his long, fluid hands dangling restlessly.

“You know a girl in your school, Lea Kovacev, died. We’re interviewing all her friends and classmates, trying to figure out how the accident happened. Your name came up.”

Riley managed a very small “Oh.”

“It’s a terrible tragedy. She was a lovely girl by all accounts. There will be a coroner’s inquest, probably more rules and higher fences by the falls—” He paused, then lobbed his next question as gently as he could. He’d already decided that with McIntyre playing guard dog, his only hope was to sneak up on the topic. “How did you meet Lea?”

“She is—was—” Riley balled his fists and fixed his eyes on some distant point out the window, “in my Outdoor Education class. I missed a lot of the excursions, but we did go on one or two together. Winter camping in Gatineau Park, and just last month, mountain biking.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Just since classes started in September.”

“And did you socialize together outside of class?” “No.” The word came out quickly. Too quickly. Then Riley hesitated. He seemed to be scanning his memory for incidents that could contradict his story. One leg jiggled. “Well, she came to a couple of my games. And we probably had drinks together a few times. You know, as part of a group.”

“Any personal get-togethers? Just the two of you?” “Well...” Riley glanced at McIntyre, who nodded almost imperceptibly. They’ve been rehearsing this, Green thought. “She did help me on a couple of English assignments. She’s a good writer, and I...I didn’t always have time to read the books we were supposed to.”

“You mean she wrote the assignments for you?” “No! She just told me what the book was about. Mostly Shakespeare, which I don’t really get.”

Green grinned sympathetically. “Lots of people don’t really get him.”

“And then she’d read my essays afterwards, just to doublecheck them.”

“Whose idea was this?”

“Hers.” Riley clamped his jaw tight for a moment, as if he was struggling to keep his feelings at bay. His fists clenched and unclenched. “She was super friendly, always out to help people. She was the type of girl to make everyone feel special.”

Green dropped his tone gently. “Sounds as if you liked her a lot.”

It had the desired effect, for Riley’s eyes reddened. He didn’t answer. Green suspected he couldn’t. A movement in the shadows caught his eye, and he glanced up to see Ted pause halfway down the stairs. He was watching his son, and in that unguarded moment Green sensed a profound sadness. More, a father’s impotence to take away his child’s pain.

“Would you say you knew her better than most of her classmates?”

“Riley already answered that, Inspector.”

McIntyre’s interruption was designed to buy Riley time to compose himself, and it worked. The youth sat back in the chair, feigning calm.

“Like I said,” he resumed in a stronger voice, “she was friendly with a lot of people.”

“Do you know if she had a boyfriend? Someone special?”

Riley shrugged, well in control now. “I didn’t know her well enough for that.”

“She seems to have had a special boyfriend whom she loved very much. She wrote beautiful poems about him.”

Riley shrugged again, a gesture of defeat this time. “I don’t know.”

Green sensed McIntyre stirring again. He could have pushed further and told him about the ice cream seller’s
ID
, but decided not to tip his hand. Not with Cerberus running interference. Better to wait for the formal interview. Meanwhile, he would let the kid box himself into a corner with lies. He unfolded the
Ottawa Sun
article in his hand. “Have you seen today’s paper?”

The boy blinked in surprise, momentarily relieved until Green handed him the paper. He took it, then let it fall in his lap as if it were hot. “Oh, no!”

McIntyre reached over to snatch the paper from Riley. He scanned it, then tossed it aside with contempt. “It’s the
Sun
. What do you expect?”

“It suggests Lea took a drug that might have killed her,” Green said, gritting his teeth and turning back to Riley. “Did you know she used drugs?”

The boy was starting to shake his head when McIntyre cut him off again. “Hardly a big deal. Lots of kids take drugs these days. The paper’s just trying to stir up shit.”

Green stared him down. “Oh, but in this case, with the coroner’s inquest coming up, we have to take every contributing factor seriously.” He softened and turned back to Riley. “We think she just used them recreationally, to add to the party, but we have to trace who she buys them from. Did you ever sell to her?”

Both Riley and McIntyre shot forward in their seats. Their denials were simultaneous and vigorous.

“Well, we’ll be looking at all her friends, to see their drug involvement and to see who might be dealing. You see, whoever sold her these particular drugs could be facing a manslaughter charge.”

“I don’t know anything!” Green had the sense Riley was beginning to panic and depart from the rehearsed script. “What she did was her own business.”

“Like I said, drugs are everywhere in high school, Mr. Green,” said McIntyre coldly. “But Riley never uses them, so he knows fuck-all about the drug scene at Pleasant Park.”

“But he knows some of the students she hung around with. A name would be really helpful, Riley. Point us in the right direction. And help balance the tragedy of her unnecessary death.” He leaned forward. “After all, she was such a super girl. She shouldn’t have died the way she did. Her body trapped on the bottom of the gorge, washed up like a piece of garbage on the rocks down below.”

Riley was shaking his head vehemently, looking for a way out. “She might have mentioned there was a girl in our Outdoor Ed class who she used to hang around with.”

McIntyre leaped in. “Riley, you don’t have to give them shit.”

“Name?” Green demanded.

Riley shot McIntyre a confused glance. “I don’t know who. It’s something she mentioned. But she also mentioned Justin Wakefield, and I think he deals a bit to his friends.”

Green made a show of jotting down the names, then spread his hands apologetically. “This is just routine, son, but I have to ask. Where were you last Monday night from nine p.m. to three a.m.?”

McIntyre rose from his chair as if to signal the end of the interview. “Okay, that’s enough. He’s answered all your questions, but this one, you’re way out of line.”

Green waited, pen poised. Riley looked about to open his mouth, but McIntyre waved him silent. “He was with me. We were discussing draft offers and it got late, so he crashed at my place. Now I trust this is the last time you’ll need to bother us.”

You can trust all you want, Green thought, but you don’t know the half of what I’ve got in store for your golden boy. I’ve set the hook, but I haven’t even begun to reel him in.

Thirteen

 G
reen managed to spend most of the rest of the day at the cottage, immersing himself in the warm, sunny June day at the beach and only checking in with the sergeant on duty by cell phone twice. There was still no news on Jenna Zukowski’s disappearance, although Ron Leclair had launched all the usual inquiries. Green put his nagging uneasiness out of his mind until he and Hannah headed back to the city early Monday morning. The full force of the investigation hit him again, however, the moment he walked back into the office, an hour late and clutching coffee and a bagel from Vince’s Bagelshop.

Gibbs was already at his computer, a rare excitement lighting his face as his fingers flew over the keys. “I-I’ve been chasing down drug leads all weekend, sir. I’ve got a great new idea!”

“Did you ever leave that desk, Bob?” A flush crept up Gibbs’ long face, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “I spent yesterday with Sue, sir,” he said, sounding almost apologetic. “I took her for a drive up in the Gatineau. We had a picnic and w-went around the Sugar Bush Trail. It’s got handicapped access. She tried to walk the whole way, but...” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Sue Peters was in rehab, relearning how to walk, but she fatigued easily. Being Sue, she did not take this failure of her body lightly.

“That’s progress, Bob. Don’t lose sight of that.”

“Yes, sir. But she gets so angry, she ends up in tears. It’s— it’s hard to watch.”

Particularly hard since the old Sue Peters would have hated the tears and would have hated even more that others were witness to them.

“We’ll get her back, Bob. Remember what the doctors said. Her brain is still healing, and the more we stimulate it, the better.”

“I know,” Gibbs said, and his voice grew lighter. “That’s why I told her about the case. I thought it might lift her spirits to know what we were up to. And it was her that came up with the idea.”

“What idea?”

“Well, you know how you said Lea had a drug source at school? So I got the names of all her friends and the kids in her classes and ran them past our school resource officers to see if they knew who might be dealing in the schools. They checked around, and talked to the vice-principals—they’re the ones who really know what’s going down in the school. Of course, there was nothing to say it was one of the kids in her classes, but I figured it was a place to start. Anyway, the
VP
s came up with a bunch of possible matches.”

“Was Riley O’Shaughnessy one of them?”

Gibbs looked surprised. “The hockey player?”

Green hesitated, unhappy that he’d let the name slip. But if Bob Gibbs couldn’t be trusted to be discreet, no one on the squad could. “It looks like he might have been the secret boyfriend.”

A shadow crossed Gibbs’s face which Green couldn’t interpret. Dismay? Or hurt at being excluded? He covered it with a brisk shake of his head. “No, he wasn’t on the list, but it’s a pretty long list. I was planning to start interviewing first thing this morning.”

“But?”

“Well, then Sue had this great idea. Just a long shot. Remember how we had police contact sheets on all the people at Vic McIntyre’s parties when the noise complaints were made?”

“Yes, I remember. Riley was one of those. So was his cousin Ben.”

“Sue suggested I cross-reference those to see if any of them went to Pleasant Park and if they were on the list of possible dealers.”

Green smiled broadly. Before her injury, what Sue Peters lacked in finesse and subtlety was compensated by her creative mind and talent for thinking the unthinkable. It was a huge relief to know that talent had not been lost when her skull was crushed. “And?”

“That’s what I-I’m doing now, sir. I’m almost done.”

“Good work, Bob.” Gibbs’s Adam’s apple bobbed again as he worked up to his reply.

“I—I’d like to make sure Sue gets the credit for the idea, sir. A visit from you...to tell her so... That would mean a lot.”

Green cringed. He was touched to think how far Gibbs had come to have the courage for such a request. It was a courage not to be dismissed, but Green hated hospitals. He’d visited Sue half a dozen times in the past two months, but each visit took him days to psych himself up for and to recover from. He dreaded the sight of badly damaged bodies struggling to gain back the functions that had once been second nature.

“I will. Soon,” he replied, grateful to spot Brian Sullivan coming off the elevator, bearing two Tim Hortons doubledoubles. Sullivan jerked his head towards Green’s office. Once inside, Sullivan kicked the door shut with his foot, signalling a desire for privacy.

“Okay,” he said, propping his huge feet on Green’s desk and prying the lid off his cup. “How’d it go yesterday?”

Between mouthfuls of bagel, Green filled him in on the meagre harvest from his Gananoque visit. “It wasn’t a total loss,” he said. “I learned that Riley is a basket case over Lea’s death, that McIntyre is pulling all the strings, and that the mother doesn’t like that one bit.”