in a home for old people, and I clean bedpans so my daughter will be safe. If you don’t find her...” her voice faded, and for the first time emotion quivered on her lips, “my life will be nothing.”
“We will find her,” he replied, feeling hollow. “I know it’s hard to be patient, but in almost all cases, missing teenagers turn up safe and sound by the end of the week. We don’t have any reason to think that anything bad has happened to her. No witnesses have reported trouble, no evidence has been found...”
She raised her eyes to his. Now, looking into their depths, he saw the panic she strove so hard to keep at bay. “Do you have a daughter, Inspector Green?”
He nodded, his answer stuck in his throat. “And if a policeman told you about all the statistics and all the police who work on the case, would you be patient?”
He thought of the silent cell phone in his pocket, of his own desperate plea to the guidance counsellor at Hannah’s school. “No.”
A grim flicker of triumph lit her eyes. “Good. You are a better man than Sergeant Leclair. Because you know that when it’s your daughter, and you have not heard from her since two days, and you know what I know about the savage nature of men, to be patient, to trust...this is impossible.”
He had no answers for her, no hope beyond platitudes, but he handed her his card as a gesture of understanding, and Marija Kovacev left his office seemingly lighter of heart for having shared her burden with him. Green, however, felt profoundly shaken, as if the enormity of her fear had only just hit home. He returned to the squad room to find it suddenly crackling with tension. Brian Sullivan was bent over his desk, talking on his cell phone and jotting in his notebook. His massive linebacker frame was rigid, and a deep frown furrowed his brow. The other detectives had stopped what they were doing, and all eyes were fixed on him expectantly.
After a brief conversation, Sullivan signed off, flipped his notebook shut and looked at the others. His face was grim.
“They found her backpack.”
“Where?” a half dozen detectives asked in unison.
“Shoved under a park bench at Hog’s Back Falls.”
Green froze in the doorway. “Anything else?”
Sullivan shook his head. “One of the high school students found it. We’ve secured the scene, Ident’s been called, and Uniform is focussing its search on the vicinity. I’m on my way out there.” He looked around at the tense faces.
“It could be good news, I suppose. The terrain is rough and isolated around there. She could have fallen, gotten hurt.” He grabbed his jacket. “At least we know where to look.”
Green stepped forward to intercept him. “I’m coming with you.” Sullivan frowned, as if surprised to see him. Green tried for a casual shrug. “To see what develops. I’ve been talking to the mother, and I promised to keep her informed.”
Sullivan’s eyes narrowed, and a slight smile crept across his face. “Enjoying your vacation in the country, Mike?”
Four
Sullivan flicked on the emergency lights, but even so, half a dozen police cruisers and the Ident van had arrived before them and lined the curb of Hog’s Back Road just east of the bridge. Sullivan passed the official vehicles and pulled the Malibu into the parking lot near the edge of the falls. Already they could hear the roar of tons of white water plunging through the gorge.
Green climbed out and glanced around the park. The late afternoon sun glared harshly through the trees and glinted off the shiny silver roof of the fast food pagoda nearby. In all directions he could see meandering paths, grassy knolls and copses of trees. Hog’s Back was much tamer than it had been in his youth, when the sheltered nooks had provided the perfect cover and ambiance for young lovers, and where the high rocks along the gorge beckoned to the daredevil divers seeking thrills in the churning water below. Now the paths were paved, the lawns manicured, and a three-foot ornamental iron fence ran all the way along the top of the gorge to keep the divers out. Knowing the determination and ingenuity of youth, he wondered how successful it was.
Hog’s Back Falls Park was just one section of the ribbon of green spaces that ran along the banks of the Rideau River all the way from the heart of Lowertown to the sandy expanse of Mooney’s Bay. Beaches, picnic areas, woodlands, ball fields and bike paths flowed one into the next, creating an outdoorsman’s paradise but a patrolman’s nightmare. Green considered the sheltering trees and hidden nooks, the dips and turns in the landscape. There were a thousand places for an injured girl to get lost, a thousand places for a killer to hide a body.
“We should seal off all of Hog’s Back Road at both ends,” he said. “And call in K-9.”
With a brief nod, Sullivan set off in search of the duty inspector, who was in charge of deploying resources. Green watched a phalanx of officers from the Public Order Unit methodically combing the grounds in huge boots and grey coveralls, sweeping aside shrubbery with long probes and peering into the shadows beneath the trees. Green realized from their attention to detail that they were looking for physical evidence. This area had already been searched for the girl herself.
A uniformed officer directed him along the riverside path towards the bench beneath which her backpack had been found, about a hundred yards from the pagoda and framed by a semi-circle of tall pines that screened it from casual view. The backpack had been placed in a plastic evidence bin sitting in the path. Ron Leclair, the lead investigator from Missing Persons, squatted by the bin, flipping through a student notebook with a latex-gloved hand.
The bag’s contents were spread out in the bin beside it—a wallet, a folded towel, sandals and three neatly folded articles of clothing, including a green cardigan, a white tank top and a denim skirt. Did that mean she was wearing nothing but panties when she disappeared? Green wondered. Or had she changed into a bathing suit? The folded clothes suggested they had been slowly and deliberately removed rather than ripped from her body in a moment of passion. Or rage.
The entire fifty-foot circle around the bench was cordoned off, and a solitary officer dressed from head to toe in a white jumpsuit stood inside the enclosure, methodically dusting white powder on the painted wooden slats of the bench. Green recognized Sergeant Lyle Cunningham from the Ident Unit, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Ron Leclair was doing this by the book every step of the way, knowing that if this ever became a crime scene, or worse a homicide scene, they would need all the forensics they could get to nail the killer.
At the moment, though, it looked anything but. There were no signs of disturbance, no broken branches or gouged turf to suggest a struggle. The bench sat all alone on the bluff near the end of the gorge, overlooking the white water and the sun silhouetting the high-rises across the river. It was a perfect spot for a romantic tryst, with the backpack tucked safely out of sight in the tall grass beneath. It was also a leisurely ten-minute stroll across Hog’s Back Road from the bustle and crowds of Mooney’s Bay beach. What better place to escape for a moment alone?
The problem was that the romantic tryst had been two days ago. What had happened in the interval, and why in all that time would she not at least have put her clothes back on?
The obvious answer send a sliver of dread down his spine. The black ornamental fence was intended to prevent the public from diving off the bluff into the water, but when he peered over the fence, he spotted a well-worn path meandering along the rocky bluff on the other side, suggesting that many had already breached the barrier in order to get closer to the thrill. The roar of the
