Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (187 page)

“What colour?”

“Navy? Black? Nondescript.”

And hard to see in the woods, Green thought. “Can you describe the individual?”

“Not well. He had his head down and the hood up. I was so busy trying to corral Maggie that I barely noticed. Some of these joggers kick at them, you see.”

“But it was a man?”

“Oh, yes. Solidly built, with a powerful stride. A fairly young man, I’d say. At least...” his eyes twinkled, “from my perspective.”

“Did he have anything with him? In his hands, on his back?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Could you show me where you saw him? Take me there?”

“Yes, but it’s quite a ways from here, up near the Cedarview Road portion of the trail. It would be quite a long way to carry a body, I should think, no matter how strong you are.”

The two men retraced their route to Green’s car, then drove around the outskirts of Bruce Pit to the official parking lot. A flashing police cruiser blocked off the entrance, and the paths had been cordoned off, although a group of curious and disgruntled dog walkers had collected outside the yellow tape. Green noted with satisfaction that the parking lot had a gravel base and a sandy entrance to the trails, both excellent materials to lodge in the treads of tires and shoes. The sand was crisscrossed with shoe and paw prints, however, a forensic investigator’s nightmare.

With a warning from Green to stick to the edge of the path, Reg picked up his dog and struck out along the trail that hugged the fence at the edge of a large field, walking with a confident, upright stride that belied his frail appearance. Green kept his eyes to the ground, looking for any clues that suggested a heavy object had been transported along the path. The recent rains had left muddy patches where prints and bicycle tracks stood out in stark relief. The problem was knowing whether any of them were connected to the killing. Lyle Cunningham’s and Lou Paquette’s teams were already swamped by the physical evidence associated with Lea’s death; how would the Ident team even begin to process this scene? He contemplated the unpleasant possibility of asking Barbara Devine to borrow resources from some other police section. In her bid for the Deputy Chief ’s chair, she would not appreciate the implication that her own department was not up to the job.

Reg stopped at a fork in the trail and gestured to the left one leading into the woods. “I saw him just in there. And truth be told, it’s not a very good trail for joggers, too many rocks and roots to twist your ankle on.”

“What’s up ahead?”

“More of the same. It’s a very secondary trail that eventually loops around to connect up with a larger one farther up.”

Green stepped forward. “All right. Let’s continue your route of this morning to where the body is.”

Reg wavered and reached out to grasp a tree trunk. In his arms, Maggie struggled to break free. “I’ve already shown the police...”

“I know. I just need to know what route was used. We won’t go up to the crime scene.”

With a far less confident stride, Reg set off again. They walked for about ten minutes, the woods thickening and the path narrowing as it wove around trees and over protruding roots. Suddenly Reg stopped and frowned intently into the dense brush. “This is where Maggie ran off.”

The crime scene was too far to be visible through the woods, but Green could hear the distant murmur of voices. He scrutinized the ground. There were fewer prints visible in the mud here, and the dirt looked as if it had been smeared. He was no forensic expert, but beneath the smears, he thought he could make out the deep cut of a tire track slightly thicker than a bicycle tread. His heart quickened. Had someone been trying to erase the track?

After thanking Reg, Green sent him and Maggie back the way they had come, promising to get an officer to drive them home. Green himself went further down the trail and looped in a semi-circle to approach the crime scene obliquely. Lou Paquette’s Ident team would have to scout every inch, looking for the entry route through the woods, and there was no point in adding his own contamination to that of previous dogs and walkers over the past three days.

Sullivan spotted him as he approached and broke off his intense conversation with Paquette. His broad face was taut and his eyes flat, as if neutrality was an effort.

Green steeled himself. If Sullivan was shaken, it was bad. “What have we got?”

“Nude body, young adult female, according to MacPhail, quite heavyset—”

Green sucked in his breath. “Jenna Zukowski?”

Sullivan shook his head grimly. “Impossible to tell. The killer cut her into pieces and stuffed them into garbage bags. The head’s missing.”

Green felt his stomach rise. “What’s MacPhail’s estimate on time of death?”

“She’s ambient temperature, so probably at least twentyfour hours, but there’s still traces of rigor mortis, so three on the outside. MacPhail’s gathered bugs, and he says he’ll have more for us in a day or two. He did say one other thing. The body was moved several hours after death, according to the lividity on her side.”

“That suggests the killer had to wait to dispose of the body. Probably had to wait till cover of darkness. Too many people here during the day.” Green was already thinking of the long route in through the woods. “Anything to help identify her?”

“There’s no purse or other
ID
, no clothes, the killer left nothing to help us. But judging from her pubic hair, she might be a brunette.”

“Jenna was a brunette.”

“At this stage it’s all speculation, Green. Pubic hair and head hair are not always the same colour. We could have a sexual predator on our hands who likes to collect heads.”

“Other than the dismemberment, are there any signs of violence or sexual assault?”

“Nothing obvious, but MacPhail has to get her cleaned up and onto the table. Right now we don’t have any reason to link the two cases, so I’ll assign another team to this Jane Doe. Meanwhile, we’ll get all the information we can about Jenna— medical history, distinguishing marks, shoe size, fingerprints. The killer thought he was smart cutting off her head, but he didn’t realize we can take fingerprints from a corpse.”

Green grimaced. “So now there’s a severed head lying around somewhere, waiting for some lucky soul to stumble upon it.”

“Heads are a lot easier to transport than whole bodies. It could be at the bottom of some lake by now.”

Green mulled over the meagre facts. Jenna Zukowski had been missing at least three days, which fell at the outside limit of the estimated time of death of this body, unless she had not been killed for some time after her disappearance. It was possible her disappearance and this body were unrelated, but what were the chances of two heavyset young female victims surfacing at the same time?

He glanced at the white-suited officers working around the makeshift grave. Paquette was setting evidence markers in the soil nearby. Green tiptoed closer with care until Paquette’s scowl stopped him.

“Any theories yet on how he transported her here and what route he took?”

Paquette nodded, allowing a grin to sneak through his scowl as he gestured to the ground. Green kept his eyes averted from the bloated white body, but could see little through the leaves and twigs. “At least we’re having some luck with that. The body was placed here before the storm, but luckily the thick trees protected the site. Looks like he tried to wipe out his tracks, but we’ve got one nice clear footprint in the loose dirt he was digging, and some tracks that look like tire marks. Bigger than a bicycle, maybe a cart or wagon. I’ll take molds of them. He used a medium-sized spade to try to dig a grave. Dug down only six inches before giving up and piling branches on top. People don’t realize how hard it is to dig in the forest, with all the roots and rocks in the way.”

So the killer had been equipped with a cart and a shovel when he brought the body here, Green thought. Which meant that, unless he’d hidden them somewhere, the jogger Reg had seen was not their man. Probably just a local resident out for his morning exercise.

Paquette was peering at the ground as he scrabbled through the bush in the direction of the trail Green had used. “Judging from these broken branches and dislodged stones, I’d say he brought her this way.” He straightened and surveyed the woods. “Considering how close he is to the field, he took the long way in. Risky too, coming all that way with a body in a cart.”

“Which means he must have dumped her in the middle of the night,” Green noted. “It also suggests he didn’t know the park that well. He was probably playing it by ear looking for an isolated area. All in all, not the best thought-out murder plan.”

Paquette grunted. “You guys can speculate all you want, but I’m sticking with my clues here. There’s plenty of stuff here to keep me going, and if you bring me the guy’s shoe, I can nail him for you.”

A distant movement in the field caught Green’s eye, and he glanced through the trees to see a cameraman crouching in the long grass just beyond the yellow tape, with his telephoto lens centred on the scene. Parked in the field behind him were half a dozen media vans. Reporters milled around, setting up field shots. Green cursed. Devine had told him to babysit the media, and here they were again, shoving their cameras and microphones into the case before an potential next-of-kin had been warned.

He ploughed towards them, formulating his statement on the fly. Just as he ducked under the yellow tape, three microphones converged on him. The city’s on edge, he reminded himself as he tried for patience.

“Is it the missing social worker?” Green spun around to stare at Frank Corelli, wrestling his surprise under control. How the hell had Corelli found out about that?

“What missing social worker?” the others demanded, but Corelli didn’t reply. His eyes remained locked on Green’s.

Green turned deliberately away to address the group. “At approximately nine o’clock this morning, police were called to the scene of some remains discovered off one of the trails in Bruce Pit. At this early stage of the investigation, I can confirm that the remains are human and that officials from the coroner’s office and our forensic unit are examining the scene. We have no information as to the cause of death nor the identity of the deceased.”

“We heard it was a young woman,” one of the
TV
reporters said. Her cameraman was firmly focussed on Green.

“As we learn more, we will be releasing further details, but speculation and rumour are ill-advised. There is no point in creating undue alarm.”

“Undue alarm!” the reporter cried. “Two young women found dead in less than a week in our public parks, and the police don’t think it’s cause for alarm?”

“At this stage, we’re treating them as two unrelated incidents.” He began to push through them. “I’ll have a further statement in two hours down at the station. For now, guys, let us get on with it.”

Corelli dogged his footsteps and leaned on the door jamb as Green climbed into his car. “It’s the social worker, isn’t it? She uncovered the drug connection in the Kovacev case and—”

“Corelli, I don’t know where the hell you invent this stuff.”

“You told me about the drugs yourself! And I nosed around the school. The social worker was asking questions—”

“Who told you that?”

“Confidential source. Come on.”

“Well, don’t print it. We don’t know anything, there’s her family to consider, and—”

“And this is one hell of a juicy story!”

Green locked Corelli’s gaze. “Frank, sit on it till I’ve got something to give you. Don’t be a bull in a china shop.”

“I get paid to be a bull in a china shop.”

“At least wait till the press release in two hours. Then maybe you’ll have some facts to write about.”

Green drove back downtown with the accelerator almost to the floor, swearing all the way. The reporters were right. Two dead women within a week was cause for alarm, although not for the reasons they believed. He knew in his bones this was no random killing spree, but with the press crawling all over the story, he could barely find the time and concentration needed to put the pieces together.

By the time he reached the station, the discovery of the body was headline news on the radio. In the absence of facts, the airwaves were filled with hastily corralled experts commenting on sexual predators and tips to keep women safe. Back at his office, Green phoned Rita Berens to see whether she had any news on Jenna. The search for the missing social worker had spread, and the dragon lady found herself at the hub of a massive ground search. Jenna was from the close-knit rural community of Barry’s Bay that had been Polish for over a hundred and fifty years. Three quarters of them seemed to have descended on Ottawa in vans and pick-up trucks to find their lost kin. They plastered “Missing” posters of her in corner stores and on lampposts all over Alta Vista, and street by street canvasses were being conducted. But so far, all their efforts had failed to turn up a single trace of her.

“The school custodian said he spotted her outside Pleasant Park High School early Friday morning,” Rita said, “even though the school wasn’t on her itinerary for the day.”

“How early?”

“Seven thirty. Before school started. But no one else saw her, and certainly she never reported in to Guidance, which she should have done. I’ve asked Anton Prusec to continue asking—”

“You’ve been very helpful, Ms Berens,” Green said quickly. “This is an important lead, but we’ll take over from here. Sergeant Leclair of Missing Persons is coordinating the case, so if anyone else uncovers further information, please have them pass it on to him. Or me.”

There was silence over the phone, followed by a sharp intake of breath. “The body in Bruce Pit. It’s Jenna, isn’t it?”

“We don’t yet know who it is.”

“But you can look at it!”

If it had a head, he thought grimly. “It’s not that simple. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll be looking into all possibilities, so don’t mention anything to her family at this stage.”

The platitudes sounded fatuous to his ears, and he doubted he had fooled her for a moment, but the news seemed to deflate her, for she signed off without protest. Next he called Ron Leclair to check his progress in tracking down Jenna. To his relief, the MisPers sergeant seemed really on the ball. He had already requested dental and medical records from her family and had brought a few objects from her apartment that he hoped would yield fingerprints and hair samples.