Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (186 page)

“Did you meet Dad?”

“Yeah, once he got home from church.” Green sorted through his impressions. “A bitter man.”

Sullivan snorted. “Church? Doesn’t sound like any O’Shaughnessys I know. Maybe the good Irish boy’s got religion all of a sudden. More likely putting money in the bank with the Big Guy so he’ll look kindly on Riley in the draft. Catholics still believe that stuff, you know. We may act all rational, but give us a wish, and we’re down on our knees doing Novenas faster than you can say Hail Mary. Dad thinks McIntyre is the Second Coming, by the way. I ran into Darren O’Shaughnessy at the hockey picnic yesterday, and we talked some more. His brother sees Riley as the brass ring that’s going to set them all up in a fancy house on the river, with a monster boat to cruise the Great Lakes and winter vacations in Florida instead of running his shitty little snow ploughing business. He’s out at five a.m. in the pitch black on a freezing January morning, clearing laneways so the rich can get their Beemers out in time for work. Darren says Ted was always looking for a shortcut, but instead found himself saddled with one son, four daughters and a wife with
MS
, scrabbling for a buck any way he can.”

Green picked sesame seeds off his desk thoughtfully as he recalled Noreen O’Shaughnessy’s awkward movements the day before. He felt a twinge of sorrow for the woman and moderated his judgment of Riley’s father. The man had a lot on his plate. Green remembered his muttered curse when Riley arrived with the Mustang, his sad expression on the stairs. “I think privately he has his doubts. Or maybe just jealousy. But I don’t think we can count on him to pry Riley away from McIntyre.”

“There’s too much riding on it.” “Or he’s afraid of losing Riley altogether. But the kid’s eighteen. We can bring him in for formal questioning any time we want.”

Sullivan swirled his coffee in slow, pensive circles. “Do we have enough yet? Yeah, we have him with Lea the night she died, but we’ve got nothing to tie him to her body or even the park bench. We’ve got gaps between the time she died and the time she got thrown—” His cell phone rang, and he fumbled at his belt to retrieve it. As he listened, his expression grew alert. After a brief conversation, he thanked the caller for the hard work and hung up.

“All right!” he crowed. “That was the lab. The marijuana roaches Cunny found at the scene? They were laced with crystal meth. Enough to give you a real buzz, and if you took too many, to stop your heart cold. Six roaches were found at the scene. More than enough, the lab says.”

Green thought about the methamphetamine in her tox results. “So she did die because she bought laced marijuana.”

“From someone who obviously didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Or someone who wanted her dead.”

Sullivan stared at him. “That’s a stretch. They might just as easily have knocked out Riley too. In fact, they probably would have if he wasn’t so anti-drugs.”

Green tapped his pen impatiently on his desk. “Anyway, we now know the how of her death, if not the why. And Gibbs is working on the who—the supplier. If this was some amateur who didn’t know what the hell they were doing—” He jumped to his feet and flung open his office door. Gibbs was still at his computer, jotting notes on a pad.

“Bob! Any progress?”

“Yessir!” Gibbs snatched up his notepad and loped towards them. “A couple of interesting prospects. One is Ben O’Shaughnessy—with that name, I figure he’s related to Riley?”

“His cousin.” Green perked up. “He’s a dealer?”

“No, he’s not on the suspects list for that, but he is in Lea’s English class, and he was at one of McIntyre’s parties.”

Sullivan was leaning forward, his eyes narrowing. “His father mentioned he liked to party.”

“Motive?” Green asked.

“In these families, with this much competition, who knows?” Sullivan replied, and Green knew he meant old Irish Valley families. Sullivan was the expert on how twisted the roots could become. “Good, old-fashioned jealousy? Riley was certainly the golden boy, got all the success and attention. And all the girls. Good work, Bob. Keep digging on him.”

Gibbs nodded. He looked more excited than Green had seen him in weeks. “But I’ve got someone even more interesting! I got one hit on all three counts. I’ve found a kid who was a friend of Lea’s from her Outdoor Ed class, who was on the list of possible dealers at the school, and—” his eyes sparkled, “who was present at Vic McIntyre’s party.”

“And who is this sonofabitch?”

“Daughter of a bitch. Girl by the name of Crystal Adams. Sixteen years old, and not a mark against her except that witness contact. The vice principal wasn’t even sure if she’s a dealer, but the rumours are there. Small time, friends only, he thinks.”

An amateur, thought Green in disgust. A fucking amateur.

They sent Gibbs away, ostensibly to research background on Crystal Adams, but actually so they could argue in private over what to do next. Sullivan wanted to go straight to Crystal, but Green wanted to tackle Riley.

“Until Gibbs gets us more details,” Green said, “we’ve got nothing concrete to tie her to that night. We’ve got rumours she’s dealing and evidence she was at McIntyre’s party, but that’s it. Until we get the
DNA
from those roaches, we can’t even prove it was the marijuana that killed Lea. Crystal is a minor, and the minute we lean on her, we’ll have her parents down our backs. If she’s not smart enough to see we’ve got nothing, they will be.”

Sullivan looked skeptical. He propped his big feet on the desk, drained the last of his coffee and lobbed the cup over Green’s desk towards the waste basket. It hit the floor and rolled under the desk. Green grinned. “I moved it. I got tired of your perfect record.”

Without a word, Sullivan scooped the cup from the floor and lobbed it again, this time directly into the basket. “The same thing could be said about Riley, only Vic McIntyre will have the smartest lawyer in town on our ass. I think we should lean on Crystal. Scare her into telling us who sold her the adulterated marijuana. She’s not going to like staring at a possible homicide charge, and I think her parents will be smart enough to figure that out.”

“We could always pick them both up,” Green said with a grin. “Hedge our bets, play them against each other.”

Sullivan laughed and was just drawing breath to respond when his phone rang. All traces of levity vanished as he listened, and after a couple of moments he said three simple words: “Be right there.”

When he hung up, he was already shrugging on his jacket. His expression was grim. “We’ve got another body. No doubt about how this one died.”

Bruce Pit had once been a sand quarry on the outskirts of the city but was now surrounded by suburbs and bounded by major city roads and highways. It was an overgrown scrubland officially designated as an off-leash dog park with a network of trails through the fields and the adjacent woodland. There were several official access points, including a large parking lot on the west side, but the first officer on the scene directed Sullivan to a field off Hunt Club Road. It was at the remote southern edge of the park, he said, but closest to the body.

“The murderer sure as hell didn’t know anything about dogs,” Green observed as Sullivan bumped the car over the uneven grass towards the collection of vehicles in the middle of the field. A brilliant June sun shone in the cloudless sky, baking the ground. “There must be two hundred dogs that pass though Bruce Pit every day. A buried body would be heaven for every one of them.”

“Maybe he just didn’t know Bruce Pit was an off-leash dog park. Not everybody has dogs, Green. Maybe he just figured, wow, here’s a nice, isolated place to ditch this body. Convenient if you don’t want to drive too far with a body stashed in your trunk.”

Up ahead, Green could make out an ambulance as well as Coroner and Ident vans, and through the trees beyond, flashes of moving white. Alongside one of the cruisers, a uniformed officer was waiting for them.

“We’ve closed off the entire park, sir,” he explained when Sullivan showed his badge. “There are still lots of walkers on the trails, but we’re interviewing each one as they come out.”

Sullivan nodded his approval. “Where is she?”

The officer led them to the edge of the woods. About a hundred yards in, Green could now distinguish the unruly white hair of Dr. Alexander MacPhail, as well as the bulky outline of Lou Paquette. Under the canopy of trees, the air was hot and moist. A whiff of decay drifted past Green’s nostrils, churning his stomach and telling him the body had been there some time.

“A man and his dog found her,” the officer was saying. “Mr. Reg Talbot, lives in the neighbourhood. We’ve got his preliminary statement, but he’s over there—” he nodded to one of the police cruisers, “if you want to speak to him. We had the paramedics check him out, on account of his age.”

Sullivan glanced at Green. “I want a look at the body first.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Green replied quickly. Hysterical witnesses were infinitely preferable to rotting bodies. He found Reg Talbot in the back of the squad car, clutching a paper cup of vile-smelling coffee and huddled under a blanket despite the heat. Beside him, a small white terrier panted with excitement, steaming up the windows. The man started when Green opened the door, and beneath his leathery, liver-spotted skin, he was paper white. His eyes were huge.

Green led both of them out into the sunshine and urged the man to take deep breaths as they strolled through the tall grass towards the road. The terrier scampered off ahead, pouncing on rocks and leaves in her path. When they were sufficiently far from the crime scene, Green invited Reg to tell his story.

“Maggie was off-leash,” he began, his voice surprisingly strong for his frail frame. He watched his dog anxiously as he walked. “I know she’s not meant to be in that part of the park, but I could never see the harm in it. There are so few people around, especially at that hour, and she finds all the big dogs in the main area too overwhelming. I love the woods, especially when all the woodland flowers are out. The violets and trilliums were spectacular last month. We take the same route every day, you see.” He paused and turned back to gesture towards the far corner of the woods. “We start in the parking lot and we hug the outside trails all the way around, where almost no one else goes. It takes me about an hour, but I’m not very fast any more, and it’s an excellent workout for both of us. Maggie runs off chasing chipmunks and digging up sticks.”

Knowing the value of letting the recollections flow unimpeded, Green refrained from interruption, but his impatience must have showed, because the man pulled himself erect with determination.

“Today we were about halfway around, when all of a sudden Maggie tore off into the woods out of sight. The next moment she set up this high-pitched barking—the kind she makes to warn me. I called her repeatedly, but to no avail, so I left the trail and followed the sound through the brush. About a hundred yards in, I see her racing in circles, digging. I can smell the decay at this point, so I’m afraid she’s going to roll in some dead animal. Terriers are good diggers, and by the time I reached her, she’d dug up the ground all around this pile of dead branches and leaves. I had an uneasy feeling, and then I see she’s tugging on something and trying to pull...”

For the first time, Reg’s voice faded. Green waited. “It’s a foot. It’s the first time I’ve found my cell phone useful since my daughter gave it to me. In case of emergencies, Dad, she said, and I guess this qualifies. I dragged Maggie away and came out into the field here, thinking this would be the best way for the police to access it. The parking lot would be an awfully long trek in, and the paths get very confusing. I know them like the back of my hand, of course, but only the regulars would. After I called 911, well...” He managed a faint smile. Some colour had returned to his papery skin. “I just sat down to wait. There was no strength left in my legs after that.”

Green nodded. He’d been studying the grass as they walked, and besides the tracks made by their own vehicles, he could see no signs of disturbance. It didn’t look as if the killer had driven in by this route. “Did you notice anything unusual in the park today? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Like what?”

“You’re here every day. You see the regulars, the patterns. Was anything different? Cars, people, dogs?” Reg was shaking his head. “Did you encounter anyone else on your walk this morning?”

“Oh yes, there were at least half a dozen cars in the parking lot, and I saw walkers on the trails. I gave descriptions to the other officer.”

“What about farther out, closer to the body? You said far fewer people go on the outer trails.”

“That’s because dogs aren’t allowed off-leash, you see. So the area is left to kids having drug parties and setting camp fires.”

And killers burying bodies, Green thought. “Did you meet anyone at all there today?”

Reg wagged his head back and forth in denial. He whistled sharply as his dog ranged too close to the busy road. Maggie wheeled about and raced back towards them on her stubby legs. “I’ve been trying to remember,” Reg said once he’d slipped on her leash. “But I don’t think I saw a soul. Not that that was unusual, at that hour on a weekday.”

Green thought about the body, ripe enough to smell. “What about the last three days. You said you walk here every day. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary on...say, Friday or Saturday?”

Reg stopped and stared into the distance, screwing up his craggy face in an effort to remember. Maggie tugged at the end of her leash. “Saturday and Sunday are always much busier around here, with what we call the weekend walkers. You even get kids on mountain bikes going along the path I take. They nearly run Maggie over sometimes, so I usually go earlier in the morning on the weekends. But I don’t recall anyone out of the ordinary. Everyone had a dog, it’s the ones who don’t that you notice. You wonder what they’re doing here, and Maggie usually barks at them.” His face cleared, and his pallid blue eyes grew wide. “Come to think of it, there was one man on the track without a dog. Saturday? Maybe Sunday. No, Saturday, because it was just before the thunderstorm. Maggie barked at him. But it could mean nothing. You do get joggers really early in the morning, and this man was jogging, dressed in a bulky sweat suit with a hood.”