Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (282 page)

Back in the sky, he made one more pass and dipped his wing at her before shoving the throttle forward and banking hard into a climb. His heart was racing. He knew she would likely not have given him the time of day back in Ontario, surrounded by her university friends, but up here under the magical spell of a Nahanni summer, anything was possible.

He lost his concentration briefly, his thoughts on Olivia instead of the stranded canoeists on the river. Shaking his head, he forced himself back on track and dropped back low over the endless swaths of spruce.

Olivia called him by satellite phone the next evening, just as he and his friends were stoking the campfire to fry some trout.

“I’ve already notified the park warden, but I thought you’d want to know,” she said in her clipped eastern accent. She was a native of Northern Ontario, from bush country almost as remote and wild as the territories, but years of schooling in Southern Ontario had gentrified her speech. “We found your turquoise canoe. I had a good look at it. The storm really battered it around so it’s hard to tell what happened. But it was beyond repairing, so maybe they just ditched it. We didn’t find anything else, like gear, or …” Her voice trailed off.

Drowned bodies, he thought. “Could you get the serial number?”

“Yup, and I passed it on to Reggie. He checked it against their registration list, but no go.”

“No canoe with that serial number?”

“Not only that, but no group listing a turquoise canoe even registered for the park. No reservation at Virginia Falls either.”

He pondered this. Both park registration and reservation of a camp site at Virginia Falls were mandatory. “So we have a rogue.”

“Looks like it. Who knows, maybe it was some guy paddling solo, or someone who never intended to go into the park at all.”

In which case, Chris thought, this is a hell of a big place to get lost in.

Chapter Three

Ottawa, July 10

 G
reen’s cellphone vibrated on his belt while he was in the middle of a meeting with the deputy chief and the head of human resources. The meeting concerned the reassignment of Staff Sergeant Brian Sullivan, who was back from sick leave, and Green was determined to have him back in Major Crimes. Human resources was of the view that no one was indispensable, but where Major Crimes was concerned, she was wrong. Green ignored his phone but when it vibrated for the third time in less than five minutes, he peeked at the call display.

Ashley calling

Hastily he excused himself and rushed out into the hall.

“She’s missing!” Ashley wailed.

“What?”

“She’s gone! No trace of them! The canoe’s wrecked and she’s … oh God, Mike!”

Green cut through the wails. “What happened?”

“They found the canoe abandoned —”

“Who?”

“What? I don’t know! They found it on the rocks.”

“Who called you?”

“I don’t know, I said! Some cop. They won’t tell me anything! Just questions. Where was she going? Who was she with? What was she up to? Like she’d done something wrong!”

Green wrestled his own fear under control. “Ashley, hang up and look at your call display. Write down the number and phone me back.”

“I don’t have call display! Not on our home line.”

“Jesus.” He bit back his frustration. “Hang up, dial star-six-nine, and phone me back.”

“Mike, please!”

Belatedly his own cop’s mind kicked into gear. “Okay, Ashley, I’ll find out. Sit tight and I’ll get back to you.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before he hung up and opened the meeting room door to make his apologies and his escape. Back in his office, it took him less than five minutes to track down the police detachment with jurisdiction in Nahanni National Park. The park lay in the southwestern corner of the Northwest Territories, which meant the RCMP were in charge. Careful to identify his rank, he asked to speak to the officer who had called about Hannah Pollock.

“Oh, that would be Constable Tymko.” The woman on the phone sounded impossibly young. “He’s out on a call but …”

“Then please patch me through.”

There was a pause, during which Green wondered whether such basic communication technology was beyond them up in the north. But just then the woman spoke again, in a muffled tone as if she were covering the phone.

“Oh, Chris! There’s an Inspector Green from the police in Ottawa on the phone, calling about that canoe.”

The man answered in less than two seconds, his voice crisp and well-rehearsed. “Constable Tymko here. How can I help you, sir?”

Green forced himself to be equally professional. “I understand you found an abandoned canoe on the Nahanni. I believe you traced it to my daughter Hannah. What’s happened?”

“Yes, Inspector, I phoned her emergency contact —”

“I know, and she phoned me. Tell me what’s happened.”

“That’s what we’re trying to determine. We’re not sure anything has happened, we just haven’t been able to locate them.”

Green listened as the man described his sighting of the canoe and the subsequent tracing of the canoe’s serial number. “The park office has no record of this serial number —”

“And should they?”

“Park regulations require visitors to provide details of their gear; colours, makes, and any serial numbers; to assist in identification and rescue.” Before Green could interrupt, the man plowed methodically on. “The canoe was found just inside the park, so technically they may not have been in breach of park regulations. Technically we don’t even know if they’re missing. But it’s a big wilderness out there, Inspector, and the well-being of everyone in it is our responsibility. I’m not too happy to ignore a wrecked canoe and the fact there’s no sign of its owners. I understand your daughter was canoeing the Nahanni from Moose Ponds?”

Reason found a toehold in Green’s fear. “Yes, but what makes you think it’s my daughter’s canoe?”

“I traced the serial number to an outfitter in Whitehorse. It was purchased in June by a Scott Lasalle.”

Scott. All hope that it was someone else’s canoe vanished.

“Do you know Mr. Lasalle?” Tymko was asking.

Reluctantly Green admitted that he did.

“I checked airways and independent operators until I found the plane he hired. A bush pilot who does private runs. The flight manifest lists four in the party. Is that correct?”

“I don’t —” Green stopped himself from admitting how little he really knew. “I believe so.”

“The pilot says he dropped them off at Moose Ponds with two canoes. That sound right?”

With sinking heart, Green agreed.

“Four people can’t travel in one canoe, if that’s all that remains. What was their planned itinerary?”

I haven’t a fucking clue, Green wanted to say. Because my daughter lied to me. “I believe they were travelling all the way to the end, to Nahanni Butte.”

“They weren’t registered to enter the park,” Tymko said. “Do you know if they were carrying emergency communications equipment, like a satellite phone or GPS?”

“Yes, they were. At least that’s what my ex-wife was told.”

Tymko paused for a beat. “Who was leading the group?”

“Scott Lasalle.”

“Is he an experienced outdoorsman?”

“I don’t know him, but my ex-wife says he is.” Green grimaced at how ineffectual he sounded. How had he let this happen?

“What about the others in the party?”

Green had to admit he didn’t know them either. “My daughter has some canoeing and camping experience from summer camp in British Columbia, but nothing that would prepare her for this.” He forced his fear back. “What are you planning to do?”

“Officially, nothing yet, sir. We have received no distress signals or calls for help, and no one has spotted any signs of injury or —”

“Except their canoe! You yourself said four people can’t get down the river in a single canoe. That’s what? Over five hundred kilometres?”

“Yes, but it’s early days yet. And sometimes there are other canoes cached up there for emergencies. Technically, they’re not yet missing and no one has reported them missing.”

“I’m reporting them missing!”

“But you don’t know that. According to this bush pilot, their take-out from Lindsberg Landing is July 23, and until they miss that —”

“That’s nearly two weeks away! Two weeks wandering the bush. Maybe lost, maybe hurt —”

“That’s why I said
officially
,” Tymko began, but Green barely heard him through the roar of blood in his ears.

“Goddamn it, I’m coming up there!”

“Of course you have to go,” Sharon said.

Green was surprised. He had been expecting a thousand objections, and who could blame her? Even now, as the words were out of her mouth, she lay back on the couch and propped her swollen feet on the coffee table, wincing at the pummelling the baby was inflicting. This baby was proving more difficult than Tony. At six months’ gestation, it was already shoving its feet under her rib cage, making her nauseous and short of breath. She laid her hand on her belly and caressed it. She’d had all the genetic testing done and knew the baby was a girl. She’d even chosen her name, Aviva, which meant springtime. A new beginning.

Green had accepted the name without hesitation, feeling guilty enough that everyone treated him like an equal partner in this venture. All the suffering and indignity had been hers. At forty-one years old and five-foot-two-inches tall, those were numerous. She’d waved aside the doctor’s mutterings about “geriatric” and “high-risk” pregnancy with an impatient snort. For eons, good Catholic women dropped out fifteen to twenty babies between farm chores, so why should a healthy, modern Jewish woman not manage two?

But this pregnancy was wreaking havoc with her body. High blood pressure, weight gain, water retention, and dizziness had laid her flat on her back a few times, and she’d finally heeded the doctor’s advice to take a leave of absence from her nursing job. To help her cope, she had even organized day camps and carpools for Tony so that she could nap in the afternoon.

As a husband and father, Green knew he wasn’t much help. Between his erratic, demanding job and his general domestic ineptitude, Sharon had often been left carrying the responsibility. And now he was proposing to leave her all by herself in charge of the household and their five-year-old son, who was a full-time job in himself.

She was entitled to be a diva, pampered with breakfast in bed and back rubs after dinner. Instead, he was deserting her.

“If there was any other way …” he said, feeling even guiltier.

“There is no other way. I’d go with you if I could.”

He slipped his arm under her shoulder and massaged her neck. She purred. At their feet as always, their oversized dog sprawled the length of the couch, snoring softly. It was a rare moment of quiet in the house. Green had come home from the station in the middle of the afternoon, before Tony’s arrival from day camp.

He chuckled. “What a pair we’d be. Me, who’s never been in a canoe in my life, let alone a tent. And you …”

“The princess from Toronto?”

“Worse than Toronto — Mississauga.”

She laughed. She’d been living down her over-protected, suburban Toronto roots since she was sixteen and first felt the stirrings of her global social conscience. And her need to rebel. “But the local RCMP and Parks Canada staff will know what they’re doing, Mike. That’s their turf.”

Hardly a comforting thought. Green was used to being in charge and he hated to feel at a disadvantage. “But they’ll have their own procedures and priorities. I know. I’m a cop. I don’t want to be twiddling my thumbs in some one-room RCMP shack in the boonies listening to them debate procedure.” He pulled his arms free and stood up, too restless to relax. In truth, the prospect of going up into the hinterland, where he didn’t understand the land and couldn’t read the danger signs, terrified him. Only Hannah’s disappearance terrified him more.

Outside a car door thudded and then the front door banged open. Tony spilled into the hallway, stopping short at the sight of his father. A big, gap-toothed grin split his face. He dropped his camp bag on the floor and bounced into the room.

“Daddy, you’re home!”

Green swept the little boy up in his arms and tossed him overhead, barely catching him on the way down. Either he was getting too old or his son too big.

“Is it a special treat, Daddy? Can we go to the beach?”

Westboro Beach was one of the many delights of their neighbourhood, a quiet enclave of aging houses, overgrown trees, and narrow streets located mere minutes from the shops of Westboro and the parks of the Ottawa River. At Sharon’s insistence, Tony had been taking swimming lessons since he was six months old. Unlike Green, who could barely manage a dog paddle, he had developed a passion for the water.

“Not today, buddy. I have to go away on a trip for a few days.”

“In an airplane?”

Planes were another of Tony’s passions. Where are my genes? Green sometimes wondered ruefully. But he knew that despite having the curly dark hair, the chocolate brown eyes, and the adventurous spirit of his mother, his character was all Green. Impatient, obsessive, impetuous, and dogged as a mule.

“Yes, in an airplane.”

“What kind? A Boeing 737, an Airbus 330, a …”

I’ll be lucky if it has wings, Green thought, but before he could formulate a reply, Sharon interrupted. “Daddy is flying up north to Yellowknife. Remember? Where Hannah went.”

Tony looked incredulous. “You’re going to go with her in a canoe?”

Green had to laugh. “Probably not. I just have to meet with some people up there.”

Sharon interrupted again. She was propped up on pillows now, looking very serious. “Hannah might be lost, honey. Daddy is going to help find her.”

Green shot her a silencing look, which she pretended not to see. Tony’s expression changed from excitement to alarm as he tried to figure out the news. “Lost? You mean in the woods?”

Sharon nodded.

“With all those bears?”

“Who told you there were bears?” Green asked.

“Hannah did. She said there were six hundred grizzlies in the park she was going to.”