morning rush hour was just revving up. Frost had settled onto the ground, and her breath swirled white around her. She curled herself stiffly into a ball, trying to warm up as she gathered her rum-soaked thoughts.
Jesus, was her first thought. She’d jumped the gun. It was still too fucking cold to be sleeping outdoors. Tonight she’d have to grit her teeth and go back to the women’s shelter. No one in their right mind was out here this early in the spring. No one except . . .
A vague recollection fluttered down, like a forgotten leaf from a barren tree. She rolled over and lifted her head to peer at the body by the water. Saw in the daylight that the woman was still there. Blonde and long-legged, but scrawny as a chicken and wearing a man’s old jacket. She was curled on her side with one hand flung out and her face tilted towards the sky. A fine layer of frost had settled on her cheeks and eyelashes, and not even the faintest puff of white mist drifted between her parted lips.
Inspector Michael Green eased the clutch out and inched his car eastward in the bumper to bumper morning traffic along Albert Street. Up ahead, the light at Booth Street turned red yet again. A long line of buses snaked along the transitway, waiting to turn left onto Albert Street. Green craned his neck to search for any signs of obstruction and spotted flashing red lights through the brush on the north side of the street.
As he drew closer, he saw a uniformed police officer directing traffic and a police vehicle blocking access to the municipal parking lots on the north side, throwing hundreds of downtown commuters into confusion. Lined up on the back street behind the parking lots were four squad cars, two unmarked Malibus, an Ident van, and a black coroner’s van. Just beyond the official vehicles, the land fell away to a scruffy mix of trees, construction fencing and neglected scrubland that surrounded the city’s old aqueduct. The entire parking lot, scrubland and aqueduct were cordoned off with yellow police tape.
Green hesitated. This was obviously a major incident. The coroner’s van meant there was a body, and the sheer number of officers suggested the cause of death was far from clear. All crimes against persons fell under Green’s command, and even though he had a team of major crimes detectives to handle the frontline fieldwork, he could never quite trust they actually knew what they were doing. Especially since Brian Sullivan, his oldest friend and the backbone of the Major Crimes Squad, was off playing Acting Staff Sergeant in strategic planning, and CID’s new superintendent Barbara Devine was trying to control every dime and man-hour expended, so that her stats would look good in the annual report.
At this very moment, in fact, Barbara Devine was probably pacing her colour-coordinated office, tapping her red fingernails on folded arms as she waited for him to show up for his weekly report. That image alone began to shift the scales in favour of checking out the scene. Then he spotted a young woman with a cloud of frizzy red hair and a hideous black and white checked suit clumping down towards the water’s edge.
The sight of Detective Sue Peters was the final straw.
He pulled out into the opposing lane and jumped his car up onto the curb, ignoring the outraged looks of the other drivers and thankful for the Subaru’s all wheel drive. He drove along the grassy verge until he reached the parking lot, then clambered out of the car. Logging in with the startled officer guarding the scene, he ducked under the cordon and slithered down the frost-slicked slope. Sue Peters swung on him in surprise. Her green eyes danced irrepressibly.
“Good morning, sir!”
He nodded to the group clustered by the water. “What do we have, Peters?”
“A body, sir. Looks like a working girl stayed out too late.”
Green shot her a scowl, bristling at the flippancy in her tone and the haste of her conclusions. The body wasn’t even out of the scene. He prayed someone other than Peters was in charge. “Who’s lead?”
The dancing eyes faded slightly. She nodded toward the parking lot. “Bob Gibbs. He’s up at the car.”
“Do we have an ID?”
“She had no wallet or purse on her, sir. But Gibbsie’s running her specs through the system, and maybe Missing Persons will come up with a match.”
Green raised his head to scan the scene. As he’d expected, there was no sign of any of the NCOs from Major Crimes. A brawl in one of the Byward Market clubs two nights ago had resulted in the stabbing of two college students in a room full of underage witnesses, who had scattered before the police arrived, tying up a dozen detectives in the search to track them down and leaving enough prints and blood spatters to keep the entire Ident unit poring over their microscopes for a month. There were precious few resources left over for this luckless Jane Doe, and with Barbara Devine clutching the purse strings, Green feared there was little chance of more.
The one positive was the presence of Sergeant Lou Paquette, an Ident officer who drank too much and whined too much, but who’d lived and breathed forensics for over twenty years. He was crouched by the stone bank, snapping photographs. When he moved aside, Green glimpsed a lanky figure on his knees beside the victim, his wild white mane of hair tumbling into his eyes. Green’s pulse quickened. Dr. Alexander MacPhail was the region’s senior forensic pathologist. What had prompted Gibbs to call in the big guns?
Green took a quick breath to steel himself before heading over for a closer look. He loved the thrill of the hunt, but quailed at the gut-churning stench and gore of death. Images of splattered brains and amputated body parts crowded his subconscious, clamouring for memory whenever he approached another death. Three years behind a desk had not improved his defences either.
To his relief, the victim looked almost peaceful curled up on her side on the cold stone bank. Her eyes were half shut, and she had no apparent marks on her. A working girl, Peters had concluded, but at first glance Green didn’t think so. She looked thin and sick, as if she’d taken a beating from life, but her clothing had been chosen for warmth rather than titillation, and her porcelain-white face had not a trace of make-up. Crow’s feet were beginning to tug at the corners of her eyes and her matted blonde hair was shot with grey.
MacPhail was bent over her, inspecting her face with a powerful flashlight.
Green crouched as close as he dared. “What can you tell me?”
MacPhail cast him only the briefest glance of surprise. “This is an interesting one, laddie,” he announced in his customary Scottish boom. Green had never known the man to whisper, even in the presence of the most heart-wrenching death. MacPhail waved his beam. “See the colouring on this side of her face?”
Green forced himself to study the woman’s face carefully. Where the frost had melted, beads of moisture clung to her lashes and to the down on her cheeks. But beneath the waxy pallor of death, he saw what MacPhail meant. Faint red blotches discoloured one side of her face.
“She’s been moved some time after death,” he said.
“Aye. Now the lass who found her . . .” MacPhail cocked a brow towards a group of people clustered at the base of the graffiti wall. In the middle sat a familiar figure with a mop of stringy grey hair and a paramedic’s blanket draped around her massive frame. Calling her a lass seemed a stretch. Nonetheless, MacPhail continued with no trace of irony. “She says she tripped on her last night in the dark.”
“That would be enough to dislodge her, certainly.” Considering the weight differential, Green thought.
“Aye.” The pathologist’s blue eyes twinkled briefly. “But
