more. Still no answer. He was just leaving another message on Hannah’s cell when Sharon opened the car door and slipped in beside him. This time she looked neither annoyed nor reproachful. Her gentle fingers caressed his arm.
“Why don’t you drive into the city and check on her?”
He looked at her in surprise. Was she as worried as he? Was she saying his anxiety was more than the paranoia of a police officer who’d seen too much of the depraved side of human nature?
“It’s only an hour and a half drive,” she added. “You can be back before suppertime.”
“But this was supposed to be our family time.”
“I know.” She flashed him a wry smile. “But Tony’s having a nap, and he’ll hardly notice you’re gone. And Hannah is family too. You have to take care of this.”
He hugged her, buried his face in her dark curls. “Thank you.”
She held him. “Bring her back with you, okay? Kicking and screaming, if need be.”
Taking nothing but his wallet, keys and cell phone, Green drove at breakneck speed up the busy, twisting Highway 15, grateful that his little Subaru had all-wheel-drive, but wishing it was equipped with lights and siren too. Eighty-six minutes later, he was weaving through the narrow, leafy streets of his west end neighbourhood. The house looked empty and undisturbed. Today’s Ottawa Citizen still sat in the middle of the front porch where the delivery boy had tossed it, and the mail bulged from the box.
Green unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall. It echoed eerily, as if it had been abandoned for a week instead of a mere day. A shout to Hannah elicited no response, and a rapid search of the premises yielded no trace of her. He tried not to panic. This was the same girl who had climbed onto a plane in Vancouver on a whim when she was barely sixteen years old and had flown east to visit the father she had never known. The same girl who, upon arrival, had hung out on the streets of Ottawa for days without a word to either parent before fate had delivered her into Green’s hands. She was no stranger to the grand gesture of liberation. But she was still an innocent girl, albeit blue-haired instead of blonde, and now finishing her first year at an alternative high school, a far cry from your model student.
He debated phoning his father, who lived in a small senior’s residence in Sandy Hill. Hannah had adored her gentle, oldworld grandfather ever since their first meeting, and she showed him a sensitivity and affection she never shared with her father. But Sid Green was eighty-five, frail and partially deaf. Scars from the Holocaust had left him with a weak heart and a penchant for paranoia that no amount of security on Canadian soil could ever quite counter. Even a casual question about Hannah’s whereabouts would send him spinning into panic. Until Green had exhausted all other avenues, he would not put his father through that.
He stood in the middle of her bedroom, looking for clues. Its severe black decor—Sharon called it eggplant, but it looked black to him—reflected a goth influence but she had recently added some brightly coloured posters of music groups other than Three Inches of Blood and Avenged Sevenfold. The clothing strewn across the floor was red, turquoise and even pink. Progress.
He looked for her school bag. It wasn’t there. Nor was her cell phone or her school agenda book, despite a detailed search under the piles of books and papers that littered every surface. He did, however, turn up her little black purse and her wallet, complete with credit card, bus pass and student ID . Also in the wallet, he noted with resignation, was a fake ID with her photo and name, but a date of birth four years earlier that her real one. It bore a Vancouver address, leading him to wonder how long she’d owned it.
So she had taken her cell phone and her school bag, but not her credit card, bus pass or IDs, fake or otherwise. He tried not to imagine the worst. Perhaps she had just gone to stay at a nearby friend’s house, where she would not need money or ID. Perhaps they were using a friend’s car. He realized with a pang how little he knew of her social circle. She rarely brought friends home, and when she did, it was only a quick stop between one party and another. Introductions, if they were given at all, were a perfunctory flick of her hand in his direction.
“Deedee, this is Mike,” she’d mutter. Not father, not Dad. Even after a full year, he had not yet earned that privilege.
Hannah was an extrovert who ranged far afield in her pursuit of new thrills. The names and numbers of her many friends would be on her cell phone or in her agenda, both of which were nowhere to be found. But her high school was as good a place as any to start his search.
Norman Bethune Alternate School was a rambling Victorian brick blockhouse on a side street in Old Ottawa South. There was very little about the ivy-covered exterior to suggest that it was a school, which was probably intentional, and Green had to bang on the dark, heavy door several times before a woman opened it a crack to peer out at him. She looked like an aging hippie, with her grey hair tucked into a frizzy braid and ropes of beads cascading over her braless chest.
He introduced himself and held up his badge for good measure. She frowned and did not budge to open the door. “All the students are gone, Mr. Green. I’m just locking up.”
Green stood on the doorstep feeling like a supplicant as he explained his inability to contact Hannah and his concerns in light of the missing girl. The woman looked unmoved.
“I’m sure she’s just taking advantage of your absence to stay with friends,” she replied, edging out the door. “Students here are quite independent, and we find it works best to allow them freedom of choice.”
He wanted to strangle her with the beads that drooped over her scrawny chest, but he behaved himself. Politely he asked her name and made a point of jotting it down. Eleanor Hicks, guidance counsellor.
“Can you at least tell me if she came to school today?”
“She did not.”
The woman spoke without a hint of concern, and Green forced himself to remain polite. “Is that usual for her?”
“For Hannah, yes.” Hicks pulled the door firmly shut behind her and headed down the front walk. “You have to understand, Independent Learning Credits are just that, Mr. Green. Hannah directs her own pace and quantity, and she gains credit as she fulfills the assignments. I can tell you she’s doing very well with that freedom. Independence suits her.”
With Hannah, there is no other choice, he thought to himself. “I know that, believe me. I was like that too,” he added, hoping to breach the barricade of her mistrust. Why do people always equate police with authoritarian control? “I’m not going to force her into anything, but I do want to know she’s safe. I’m scared. Surely you can understand that.”
“I’m sure she’s safe. She has a good head on her shoulders.”
“No one said Lea Kovacev didn’t,” he countered. She had reached her bicycle and was fastening her helmet. “Please tell me the name and address of at least one of her friends.”
Her lips drew tight. “Student records are confidential.”
“One friend. Off the record. I won’t say where it came from.” Perhaps the anxiety in his tone finally touched her, for her disapproving scowl softened.
“I can’t give it to you, but I will speak to some of her classmates tomorrow when I see them—”
“Tomorrow! That leaves a whole night when she could be in trouble!”
