Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (217 page)

The officer bounded off again, her eyes shining. Probably the most excitement she’s had all week, Green thought. He took Lindsay’s elbow and felt the girl shrink back. Did she distrust all men, or just cops? Releasing her, he gestured to his car. “Let’s wait in my car. It will be warmer.”

She hesitated then picked up her bag in acquiescence. Inside, he turned the heater up, but she sat stiffly with her backpack on her lap like a shield. She had a single silver stud in her left nostril but otherwise she wore no jewellery or make-up. The backpack bulged with the weight of her books, and one of the zippers was broken.

“Do you have time for lunch?” he asked, trying to ease into the suggestion. “I haven’t eaten yet.”

The girl didn’t answer, but her mouth worked convulsively as if already savouring the food.

“My treat,” he added as he started the car.

“Why?”

He drove the circuitous route down to Rideau Street and pulled into the parking lot at Harvey’s. Only then, with the smells of charbroiled hamburgers and fresh fries drifting in through the window, did he answer her. “Because I think you can help. You notice things. People. Maybe even more than you realize.”

Once they were settled into a booth by the window, Green watched her devour the hamburger and wondered what else she was sacrificing to attend university. “Where are you from?”

Her head shot up, mouth full of fries. “Why?”

He shrugged easily. “Just remembering my own university years. I had my parents to live with and a full-time job as a rookie patrolman, but I still had trouble paying for it all.”

She managed a thin smile. “
OSAP
. I’ll be paying the government back until I’m ninety.”

“It’s not enough to live on, is it?”

She shook her head. “I had a job in an art store till they tore it down to build a condo. Dr. Rosenthal was pretty good about the rent, even when I missed a month.” She hung her head and fiddled with the zipper of her bag. Took a deep, wistful breath. “I’m from Timmins. Never thought I’d miss it...”

Green waited.

“Here, you don’t know anybody. You don’t know who to trust. Truth is, I wasn’t exactly telling the whole truth when I said I never talked to Dr. Rosenthal. He tried to talk to me lots of times.” She paused to push all the crumbs into a pile in the middle of the plate then picked them up with a wet finger. Green pushed his plate of half-finished fries towards her, but she shook her head.

“I didn’t know he was a psychiatrist. I thought he was coming on to me. He asked if I was eating all right, and he told me I should never skip breakfast. He even bought me groceries once. Fruits and yogurt and oatmeal and stuff. He came into my room to put them in my cupboards, and he checked in my fridge.” She squirmed. “He told me he never had a daughter. No grandchildren either, so he had nobody to worry about. I thought it was creepy. Because of...” She stopped and reached over to take the smallest fry from his plate.

“Because of?”

“Well, there were other girls, you see. At least one that I saw. And they were, you know...hookers. Sometimes he’d bring them home from his walks. Other times they’d come to visit him on their own. This one girl came every week, and she looked young enough to be his granddaughter. I even wondered how many times can an old guy get it up, you know. But she kept coming over.”

Green had been listening casually as she filled in the lonely details of the victim, but now he grew alert. “When did you first see her?”

She shrugged. Picked up another fry. “I went home to Timmins for the summer, so I don’t know about then, but for sure she was there last spring when I was pulling all-nighters to finish papers and exams. I could hear them talking, sometimes half the night.”

“You said she was young but looked like a prostitute. Can you remember what she looked like?”

“Tall, skinny, long messy brown hair. She seemed jumpy, like she was scared of something. Whenever she visited, she checked all around, even inside the garbage bins, before she went inside. She might have been a street person, but she had some nice things. Better than I can afford. A fur jacket, nice leather boots. I figured he was buying stuff for her. He fed her too. I could hear the kettle whistle like he was making her tea. That’s why I figured he was coming on to me.”

“Did you see her last Saturday night? The night he died?”

She froze, another fry halfway to her open mouth. She laid it down and thrust back from the table. “She wasn’t a killer! She was a scared kid, not much older than me.”

He held up a soothing hand. “I’m not saying she was. But she may be able to help us. If she was with him, she may have seen something.”

She shook her head. “No. Anyway, she wasn’t with him. I didn’t see her. He went out for his long walk by himself.”

“What time was that?”

“Late. Way after midnight. I think it was because he couldn’t sleep.”

Maybe, he thought. But maybe it was because he had gone looking for the mystery girl.

Twelve

Staff Sergeant Brian Sullivan was swallowing his third Rolaids when his cellphone rang. He was sitting at his desk with his feet up, reviewing Levesque’s case to date against Omar Adams. She wanted to pick him up and lay formal first degree murder charges as soon as possible, so she was hounding Ident and the
RCMP
lab to speed up their analyses.

Even without the final forensics, the case against Omar was impressive. Sullivan could see this was not the blind miscarriage of justice that Green feared, but a carefully reasoned conclusion from the facts. All that was missing was a bloody baseball bat with Omar’s prints on it. Even the Somali community was not protesting his innocence. Green suspected they were so tired of their own unruly youth tarring their reputations as new Canadians that they were reserving their outrage for members they believed to be unfairly targeted. Clearly Omar did not fit the bill.

Granted, his father was white, which made the boy an anomaly in the conservative Muslim community. But so far, his father had not screamed racial profiling but instead had quietly hired the best Jewish defence lawyer in the city, as if he knew the boy needed every advantage he could muster. The lawyer had a reputation for finding the tiniest crack in the Crown’s case and driving an eighteen-wheeler through it with reasonable doubt. Sullivan wanted to make sure the case was crack-proof.

He debated letting his voicemail pick up until he saw the name on the call display. He glanced at his watch. Two p.m. This better be quick. “Yeah, Mike. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a witness who says Rosenthal got together with a prostitute most Saturday nights—”

Sullivan suppressed the urge to say “Good for him!” He wondered if he’d be up for that when he was seventy-five years old. Recently he’d sometimes found it a struggle at forty-six. He held his breath as he waited for the heartburn medication to do its work.

“You there?”

“Yeah,” he managed. Over the phone he could hear the background sounds of people chatting and voices calling. What the hell was Green up to? “What about it? So he was out on the street hoping to score?”

“There was a sex trade worker caught on the pawn shop surveillance tape. Levesque has a picture of her. Not a very good one, but it might be enough for this witness to
ID
her.”

Sullivan thought fast. The hooker might have seen something. This might be the extra nail Levesque needed to crack-proof her case. “I’ll pass this tip on to Levesque and see if she’s had any luck
ID
’ing the woman on the tape. If not, we’ll send someone else out to ask around tonight. If she’s a regular, we might even spot her.”

“Screech recognized her, I’m positive, but he didn’t want to rat on her. He watches out for most of the girls, especially the young ones.”

“Okay, I’ll send—”

“I want this nailed down
ASAP
, Brian. Show the photo to Screech again on your way. Use your Irish charm and try to shake a few facts loose from the old bugger. Then bring a photo line-up over to Rosenthal’s place so my witness can look at it.”

Sullivan shifted cautiously. The heartburn was worse, and he wasn’t sure he could walk to the car, let alone interview witnesses. “Mike, I’m beat. Sean has a big hockey game tonight in Brockville, and I’m driving. I was hoping to book off early.”

“You can. Right after we do the photo line-up.”

“What’s the rush? Your witness going somewhere?”

“No, but the prostitute might.”

“It’s Friday night. She’ll be at her post drumming up business.”

There was a beep on the line. “Hold on,” Green said, and the line clicked, engulfing Sullivan in silence. He used the few seconds to lean back and savour the moment of peace. When Green came back on the line, his tone was urgent. Almost angry. “Listen, I gotta go. Talk to Screech, then meet me at the Nelson Street address.”

The line clicked dead, leaving Sullivan little choice but to pop another Rolaids and haul himself to his feet.

The traffic on Rideau Street was crushing. Because it was the Friday before the most glorious weekend for fall foliage in the Gatineau Hills, the rush hour exodus across the river into Quebec had begun early. The homebound cars mingled with transport trucks amid the perennial road construction, snarling King Edward Avenue and backing up onto Rideau. Sullivan put on his emergency flashers to almost no avail and finally drove down the bus lane in the wrong direction in order to reach Screech, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in his spot of choice by the liquor store. He gave those who dropped the occasional quarter into his Tim Hortons cup no illusions about what he would spend it on.

Screech recoiled instinctively into a ball as Sullivan jumped his pick-up half up on the curb and climbed out. His fearful look gave way to a smile as he recognized the big detective.

“Hey, Sarge.” He held up his cup. “Spare a loonie for a dying man?”

Sullivan laughed. It had been Screech’s line since he’d hit the city ten years earlier. That and his snaggle-toothed smile netted him a fairly good take most days. Sullivan squatted and dropped a toonie in the cup.

“I may have more somewhere. First things first.” Sullivan held out the photo of the prostitute. He didn’t recognize her himself, but he’d been off the street too long, and faces changed rapidly in that business. “My buddy the inspector says you recognized this girl.”

Screech scrunched up his old, shoe-leathery face, looking blank. “No, I didn’t. I said no.”

“But your eyes said yes. You gotta give him credit for some brains, that’s how he made inspector.”

Still Screech shook his head. Sullivan’s legs felt like jelly, and the heartburn was worse. Spreading. Fuck, he was tired. What the hell bug had he picked up? He sat on the pavement and propped himself against the wall next to the vagrant. “Come on, Screech. She may be in danger if she saw something Saturday night. Or if the killer thinks she did.”

Screech chewed his gums and ran his tongue around his caked lips. He cast a longing glance at the liquor store, and Sullivan twisted to pull his wallet out of his pocket. Pain knifed through his shoulder. Goddamn Green, he thought. He dangled the wallet in view but didn’t open it.

“She’s not a regular,” Screech said. “But I seen her around.”

“How long?”

He squinted. “Who counts? Springtime? She has a fur coat. Fake for sure, but nice. Mostly on Saturdays. Best crowds. I figured she had a home somewheres.”

“Name?”

He shook his head. “Never got beyond Foxy, on account of the fur. Don’t know what the johns called her.”

Foxy was better than nothing, Sullivan thought, taking ten dollars from his wallet. If she was in the police database, that name would catch her. “Have you ever seen her with the murder victim?”

Screech plucked the bill from Sullivan’s fingers and stuffed it directly into his pocket out of sight. It was still early in the day, but Sullivan saw he had nearly enough to visit the liquor store and send himself into his nightly oblivion. He was already looking vague, as if his brain had fired its quota of neurons.

“Screech?”

“Maybe,” Screech replied eventually. “I seen him with some others, the young ones. Brings them a coffee, a bite to eat. Just for talk.” He shrugged. “Well, he’s old, eh?”

“Was she around that night, when he was killed?”

Screech’s expression closed. “I didn’t see nothing. I was in my sleeping bag. But I heard...” a sly look flitted across his face, “bunch of black punks shouting to her. Mighta been the ones that killed him. I seen in the papers. She was screaming help, get away from me.”

Earlier in the week Levesque had released the photos of the four gang suspects to the press with the usual police nonsense about wanting to eliminate them from their inquiries. Sullivan was surprised that Screech had even glanced at the newspaper, but then street people were full of surprises.

He felt a surge of energy. This was an interesting twist. Coincidence was rare in detective work, and if this Foxy had been both a special girl to Rosenthal and the victim of unwanted overtures by the main suspects, that put a new spin on things. Had Rosenthal stopped to intervene? Or had the boys come back to exact revenge for their earlier humiliation at her hands?

Sullivan hauled himself to his feet, massaging his stiff hand and breathing lightly to avoid the pain. Wishing Screech good luck, he got into his truck and flipped the flashers on. The sooner he got this information to Green, the sooner he could go home to bed. A sliver of fear was creeping into his gut.

After Green had finished the call to Sullivan, he ducked back inside Harvey’s to find Lindsay dumping her tray into the trash station and preparing to leave. She smiled shyly.

“Thank you for lunch. I’d better get to class now.”

“Wait. I have an officer coming over to show you some photos.” He led her out to his staff car. “We’ll meet him back at the house, because the intruder you saw earlier in Rosenthal’s apartment is back. The surveillance officer just called.”

Lindsay’s face grew pinched. She looked trapped, like a child in water way over her head. Green guessed the cause. “You’ll wait with the patrol officer in my car. He won’t even see you. Once you’ve had a look at the photos, the officer will drive you to school.”