Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (21 page)

“Come on, you can’t expect them to admit—”

“I know. I didn’t expect anybody to break down and
confess, but it would have been nice if I’d gotten just an inkling. Enough of a fumble that we had something concrete to go forward on. But they all acted so bewildered, each hinting it must have been the other. It was either very clever, or true.” He sighed again. “We’ll have to let all three of them go, Brian. We haven’t got enough to hold them on. Their lawyers would walk all over us.”

“We’d have the support of the guys upstairs here.”

“Fair weather friends, believe me.” He sat back, tossing the spoon aside in disgust. “Fuck it. Tell the Haddads not to leave town, and check their alibis. Get as many men on this as you need. Check the airport, phone records, neighbours, friends. They’re protecting each other, but someone has to know something. And check the activities of Eddie and Paul. If either has militant connections, I want to know.” He sighed. “What else should we do?”

“I ordered a trace on the knife,” Sullivan said. “Maybe they’re not that common over here.”

“Good thinking. Who’d you put on it?”

“Gibbs. You know how he loves shopping through the yellow pages.”

They both laughed. Shy, diligent Constable Gibbs gave new meaning to the word “thorough”.

“While he’s hunting, make sure he finds out when the shops are open so—”

The intercom interrupted them, paging Inspector Green. Green slid down in his chair, hoping to escape notice.

“That will be Adam Jules, wondering why I haven’t answered anyone’s calls. Answer for me, will you, and tell them I’m out on the road.”

But when Sullivan returned from the phone some minutes later, he was tight-lipped and pale.

“Carrie MacDonald’s place was hit a couple of hours ago. Turned upside down.”

Horror slammed him. He had forgotten all about her police protection! He forced his lips around the words. “And Carrie?”

“Dead.”

Eleven

Carrie MacDonald’s apartment
building was ringed with squad cars by the time Green and Sullivan arrived. Revolving splashes of red flashed off the yellow plastic tape stretched all around the front yard and lobby. Curious neighbours and passers-by had already begun to gather. Green barrelled through the crowd to the policeman at the door.

“What the hell happened?” he roared.

“Dispatch got a 911 at two forty-six from the occupant of 106, sir,” the officer replied. “She reported a break-in—”

“What about Carrie! Oh, goddamn it, I’ll see for myself!” Green rushed down the hall, ducked under the tape at the entrance to her apartment and started across the living room.

“Hold it, Mike!”

He swung around, startled. Lou Paquette from the Ident Unit was standing in the corner of the room, sketchbook in hand. He stared at Green incredulously.

“Do you mind? Look at this place! You kick one paper out of the way and I might as well kiss the scene good-bye. Check with me, for fuck’s sake.”

Green paused in his tracks, breathing deeply to restore calm. It would do no good to show his feelings. Glancing around, he realized the enormity of his error. The room was in chaos. Papers and clothing littered the carpet. Cushions had been tossed from the couch and chairs overturned. Seeing
Green’s expression, Paquette nodded.

“It was either one hell of a fight or someone was looking for something.”

“Where?” Green croaked. “In her bedroom. MacPhail’s been called. Mike—” he called as Green turned gingerly to continue on his way, “my men aren’t done in there either.”

Green paused in the doorway to the bedroom, shut his eyes and took three deep gulps of air. Through them he heard Paquette’s team muttering. There were two men in the room, one taking pictures, the other doing an initial search for physical evidence. With one final gulp of air, he opened his eyes. Carrie lay sprawled naked on her back across the bed, her head flung back and her expression frozen in surprise. Blood covered her forehead and settled in crusting pools beneath her head.

“Oh, oh,” he heard someone say. “Green’s about to do his passing-out routine.”

“I am not,” he replied, stepping over to the bedside. “What have we got? Gunshot wound?”

“Yup,” said the Ident officer. “One shot between the eyes. But this time I think we got lucky. Look in her hand.” He pointed. Following his finger, Green forced himself to look back at the body. Past her long, blood-soaked locks, past her vacant blue eyes, down her outflung arm to her hand. There, clutched in her death grip, was his own necktie.

Green was sitting by the toilet bowl resting his head in his hand when Sullivan found him. They were in the apartment next door, temporarily commandeered as a field command post. Teams from forensics and pathology buzzed about in the outer
living room, and now and then shouts punctuated the hum.

“Jeez, Mike, get a grip!” exclaimed Sullivan, leaning against the bathroom door. “Information is coming in fast and furious. We need to stay on top of it.”

With an effort, Green rallied his professional front and pulled himself to his feet. “What have we got so far?”

“MacPhail’s made a preliminary ETD between eleven a.m. and one p.m. He thinks she was dead three or four hours before she was found, shot from probably five to six feet away with a small caliber gun. Killer probably surprised her in bed. There are no defensive wounds and no sign of a struggle, just one neat, clean bullet to the head.”

Green swallowed and groped for strength. “Any sign of sexual…?”

“Assault?” Sullivan shook his head. “No obvious bruising or tearing, although of course MacPhail will have to check for semen. But I don’t think the motive for this was sex.”

“No. This has to do with Jonathan Blair.” “Yeah, the mess was probably made after the murder. The killer was looking for something.”

Green gripped the edge of the sink, swaying as a fresh wave of nausea swept over him. “I should have prevented this. Goddamn it, I told her I’d get her protection!”

“Mike, who could have known—” “She left a ten-year old kid behind.” Green stiffened. “Fuck, the kid!”

“We got the Children’s Aid to intercept her at the school bus, so she wouldn’t come home to this.”

“Yeah, but her mother’s dead, her grandmother’s dead. She’s got nobody, all because I…” Green couldn’t finish.

Sullivan sobered. “I know. It stinks. But she’s the one who talked to the press, not us.”

“And that makes this her fault? I forgot! I forgot to arrange the protection.”

“It probably wouldn’t have been approved anyway.”

“I would have paid for the hotel out of my own pocket!”

Sullivan touched his shoulder, frowning. “Hey buddy, it’s done. Don’t beat yourself up. The hit was fast, probably too fast to get protection in place anyway. The best we can do for her now is find her killer. At least now we have loads more forensic evidence to sift through. And—we have the tie! That’s something we didn’t have before. Forensics will put it through every test ever invented. We’ll get sweat, we’ll get skin cells, and they just might help us nail him!”

Green stared at the faded tiles at his feet. “The tie’s mine.”

“What?”

He cleared his throat. “I said the tie’s mine.”

“What the fuck is it doing here?”

“I—I was here this morning to warn her about talking to the press. To tell her to move out for a few days, actually.”

“But how—” Sullivan broke off, comprehension dawning. Green felt his cheeks flush hot. He felt Sullivan’s eyes upon him, disbelief gradually growing cold. “You stupid sonofabitch,” Sullivan muttered. “Never could keep it in your pants, could you? When are you going to grow up, Green?”

“Sh-h!” Green swung the bathroom door shut. Anger, slow in coming, began to take hold. “For your information, nothing happened! I stopped it. But in trying to get away with my marriage vows intact, I forgot my tie. She must have brought it into her bedroom.” A deep flush crept up his neck as a thought occurred to him. Her eyes, when he left her that morning, had been hot with need.

In spite of himself, Sullivan began to laugh. “This will look good in the headlines.”

Green winced. “Could you maybe talk to Paquette? Keep a lid on this thing?”

“Oh no, you can do your own clean-up. I wish you luck. There’s a dozen guys out there, and in half an hour they’ll all know Mike Green left his tie behind. You think they’ll sit on that? This is the best dirt they’ve had since you got married. We may be able to keep it out of the media, but sure as hell not out of the locker room.”

Green leaned his head back against the bathroom wall. “Shit. If Sharon finds out…”

“Hey, if nothing happened…”

“The way things are right now, I’m not sure she’ll believe it.”

“Maybe the gossip won’t reach her. She’s not exactly on the officers’ wives hotline.” Sullivan clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, we’ve got a case to solve.”

Reluctantly Green followed Sullivan back into Carrie MacDonald’s apartment. The bedroom door was closed, for which he was grateful. It allowed him to keep his detachment. Paquette and his men were covering the living room in a grid inch by inch, photographing, sketching, scraping and dusting. When he spotted them in the doorway, Paquette got up from his knees to join them, mopping sweat from his brow.

“Any clue why he trashed the place?” he wheezed, coughing. “What was he looking for?”

Green nodded. “She had drawn four sketches of people in the library at the time of the murder. I meant to bring them to the station, but unfortunately…” He trailed off, remembering how his hormones had chased all rational thought from his mind. “The killer was probably after them, or something else he thought incriminated him. If we can figure out what he took, we may have him.”

It was four hours before the Ident Unit had worked its way
through all Carrie’s papers and had handed them over to Green. He took five minutes to flip through them all before he looked up at Sullivan with a puzzled frown.

“That’s funny. He’s taken two of the sketches. The dark-haired man with the mustache—our mystery student at the elevator.”

“So? That’s good. The Haddads are dark-haired.”

“But he also took the sketch of Jonathan Blair. What possible use is that?”

All the way back to the police station, Green wrestled with that curious twist. Nothing fit together. Violence was no stranger to the man who had killed Blair and Carrie. He knew exactly when and where to strike, so his victims never had a chance. The knife and shirt had been found in Haddad’s garage, but Eddie and Paul Haddad were too fresh and guileless, too sheltered to be that deadly. It also bothered him that the sketch of Jonathan had been taken and that Jonathan’s wallet had never been found.

But when he and Sullivan arrived back at his office to check field reports, he learned three facts which made him rethink his opinion.

First, a preliminary memo from the officer looking into the Haddad sons’ background reported that Eddie belonged to the Arab League, a student group composed mainly of Muslim exchange students from Arab countries. Within the Arab League was a militant core which was anti-Western in its bias and highly inflammatory in its rhetoric. Eddie was not one of this inner circle—as a Canadian and a Christian he was excluded from full acceptance—but he hung around on the fringes eagerly soaking up the zeal.

Secondly, on the night of Blair’s murder, a neighbour across the street from the Haddad house had been out walking his
dog and had seen a dark silhouette slip out the side door of the Haddad house, climb on a bicycle and pedal away into the dark. The neighbour had been uncertain about the time, but guessed it was about ten.

The third fact was almost icing on the cake. When Green checked the times at which the three Haddads had been brought in for questioning that day, he found the father and the younger son could not have killed Carrie. The father had been picked up at the store about eleven o’clock and Paul from a friend’s house in the south end of the city at eleven twenty-five. But Eddie had not been found until one-ten. He had skipped his morning shift at work and had arrived for the afternoon dishevelled and out of breath.

And of course, Eddie had a mustache.

“Jesus, why don’t we arrest him?” Sullivan exclaimed.

Green sighed and rubbed his eyes. They were hunched over two Harvey’s All-dressed burgers, taking stock of the case. The sun was setting, and the Friday night tattoo-and-leather crowd was just emerging on Rideau Street, but both men barely noticed them. They had been at work for over twelve hours. Sullivan was anxious for some closure, but Green just couldn’t face going home.

“The noose isn’t tight enough yet,” he replied doggedly. “We’ve got to substantiate the neighbour’s report that someone sneaked out that night. The family swears they were all home together. Eddie’s not going anywhere. When I’ve broken his alibi, we’ll pick him up.”

“What are you talking about! He could skip to Lebanon on the very next plane.”

Green fell silent. Sullivan was right. One person was already dead because of his failure to act. And if Eddie did skip, it would be the end of both their careers. Great, he thought, marriage and career both dead in one fell swoop.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll put a surveillance team on him to make sure he doesn’t skip. If I can prove it was him who sneaked out that night, we’ll go straight out to pick him up. For now, go home and get some sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I…” Green wavered. The time for Shabbat dinner had come and gone. Sharon would have waited a while, then lit the candles, sung the prayers and gone on without him. He felt a twinge of regret. Shabbat was supposed to be about sharing. But he didn’t even know whether Sharon had begun her shift early or late tonight, or indeed at all.

Sullivan had always been a fierce believer in marriage, both Green’s and his own. How could he tell him what was happening? Sullivan would see it as all his fault. You have to put your family first, he’d lectured after Green’s first wife left. Sullivan played hockey with his boys on the front drive, sat in the front row at his daughter’s dance recitals and got sappy poems from his kids on Father’s Day. Green wondered what his own first real Father’s Day would be like this year, with Sharon not speaking to him and his son barely knowing who he was.