routine interviews of all the students in Lea’s classes, so exams in those classes will have to be postponed. Assign the students a study period.” He paused. “And for the love of Pete, don’t let them start talking about it!”
As the teachers filed out of the room, Jenna fell in step beside one of the guidance counsellors, an attractive young man with a goatee and a single piercing on his left ear. She knew he was married, with a baby adopted from China, but that didn’t stop the tingle of pleasure she felt at his closeness. Of all the staff, she felt he understood the world as she did. No macho posturing there.
“It’s difficult to operate in the dark,” she murmured. “Do you know anything about Lea Kovacev?”
The man chuckled. “Well, you know how it is, we seldom see the well-adjusted ones. I think she worked with the newcomers’ club in school.”
“What does that do?”
“It’s mostly for new immigrants, although kids new to the city can go there too. Basically it’s to help kids make friends.”
“Have the police condescended to tell us anything, even off the record?”
“Not much. They spent most of yesterday talking to her friends and trying to track her movements. So far we just know she went home after school and then went out again around four in the afternoon, with her backpack, a cell phone and a beach towel—”
“Beach towel! That’s a clue, surely!”
The guidance counsellor paused in his doorway with an indulgent smile. “I’m sure they’re following up on it. But there are a lot of beaches and pools in the city, and maybe she just planned to sunbathe in the park.”
Jenna considered the implications. It was true that in the affluent neighbourhood of Alta Vista alone, there were probably dozens of backyard pools, but if Lea had gone instead to a public park or one of the city’s beaches, there were always perverts lurking around hoping to satisfy their sick fantasies with the unsuspecting young girls who played there. A shiver passed through her. Girls had so little knowledge of—or control over—what they stirred up.
* * *
Green managed to wait until ten a.m. before he finally caved. Even in the likely event that Hannah was still asleep, ten o’clock was a perfectly reasonable hour for a parental phone call. There had been no further news releases about the missing girl, but Sullivan had assured him he’d call if anything developed. No phone call meant they were still slogging along, tracking down everyone Lea had ever talked to, following every lead and probably combing every public park within a five kilometre radius of her home. A huge task, but as time passed, hope was surely dimming among all concerned.
To his surprise, Hannah didn’t even answer the phone. When the answering machine kicked in, he dialled again, thinking she might have been slow to wake up. Still no answer. He dialled her cell phone. Voice mail announced the caller was unavailable. He scowled. Hannah carried the phone around on her belt as if it were a lifeline and never turned it off.
He debated whether to leave a message. He and Hannah had been virtual strangers a year ago when, in a fit of pique at her mother, she’d come to live with him. Every seemingly simple decision took on layers of unspoken meaning in the complex dance of feelings between them. Accusations of interference and mistrust would fly, and the closer he inched to intimacy, the more prickly she became.
“Oh, just leave a message!” Sharon exclaimed in exasperation after fifteen minutes of listening to him dither. “Whether she gives you hell or not, she’s going to know you care.”
So in the end he left her a chatty message about their arrival and the news of the missing girl, signing off with a casual request that she give him a ring just to let him know everything was okay.
He took his phone with him down to the dock, where Sharon, in a valiant attempt to make a swimming area for Tony, was clearing weeds from the patch of muddy shoreline that had been billed as a beach. For two hours, he forced himself to build a sandcastle with his son, complete with moat and coloured stones to reinforce the walls. It was a hot, sunny day, and the lake was filled with the roar of speedboats and the high-pitched squeal of small children towed behind on tubes. So much for peace and quiet.
By noon, Tony’s enthusiasm for coloured stones had waned, and a temper tantrum was brewing over the sandcastle that refused to stay standing. What do I know about sandcastles, Green thought irritably as the walls caved into the moat yet again. His parents had come from a small village in Poland, and from their limited immigrant perspective, beaches and water were dangers to be avoided. They had confined family holidays to picnics on the Rideau River in Strathcona Park, where they had all watched the ducks from the safe embrace of a distant shade tree.
With a cheerful announcement about lunch, Sharon scooped Tony into her arms and headed up to the cottage. Green picked up his phone and checked its battery, which was still fine. He dialled home. Voice mail. Hannah’s cell phone. Voice mail. Finally he gave up and phoned Sullivan. To his credit, the man didn’t utter a single gripe about interference.
“No breakthrough yet,” he said, “but we’re narrowing our search down to the most likely spots. Lea works at McDonald’s, and she told a co-worker on Monday that she hoped the weather would stay warm, because she was planning to go to the beach. So we’re focussing on area beaches.”
Green did a quick mental inventory. Ottawa was located at the convergence of three large rivers, all of which had swimming areas. As well, the wilderness playground of Gatineau Park, with beaches on its three lakes, was only a short drive across the Ottawa River into Quebec. He visualized the city map. Alta Vista was bordered on the west by the Rideau River, with its magnificent beach at Mooney’s Bay. He pointed that out to Sullivan.
“Yeah, and Mooney’s Bay has the most parkland, so it’s the best for parties. We’re concentrating there, but according to her friends, she didn’t like the crowds and noise there, so she preferred to go somewhere more private.”
“Like where?”
“Anywhere in the park, as long as it was by the water.”
Which doesn’t narrow it down much, thought Green. Almost all the waterfront in Ottawa was parkland. “Did she have access to a vehicle?”
“Her mother doesn’t own a car, so that leaves out the beaches in the Gatineau Park.”
“Unless someone else had a car. If she has a secret boyfriend, they may have been looking for privacy.”
Sullivan paused. “I’ll ask Ron Leclair to alert the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP , since strictly speaking, Gatineau Park is in the RCMP ’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, we’ve got guys combing the beaches at Britannia and Westboro for her too. We’ve also got officers at her school trying to shake loose a clue about a possible secret boyfriend, but you know how teenagers are. Misplaced loyalties and all that.”
Despite the blazing noon sun, Green felt a chill as he hung up. Misplaced loyalties, conspiracies of silence, a pack mentality of us against them. How little he knew about Hannah’s friends and the places she hung out. But he did know that, coming from Vancouver, she loved beach parties, and Westboro beach on the Ottawa River was a mere stone’s throw from their house in Highland Park.
It seemed irrational to fear that there was a connection, but why the hell wasn’t she answering her phone?
* * *
Jenna
