Jules had encouraged Green to look beyond the surface, to probe the parents’ backgrounds and to interview more than a hundred people in pursuit of the truth. All the while he’d never once raised his voice or clenched his fist, even at the end when the Crown declined to prosecute, having decided that the parents had done all they could to protect a very difficult, ingenious child.
Yet last night Jules had appeared to him in his dream vibrant with passion. What was his subconscious trying to tell him?
What had it detected in Jules’s mysterious request about the missing woman?
The morning shift was just gearing up when Green arrived at the spectacular new station known as the Colonies. He signed in, traded greetings with the officers on the front desk and took the stairs two at a time to the top floor. Jules’s clerk wasn’t at her desk but his door was ajar, so Green strode in without knocking. Jules was at his closet, unwinding a long scarf from his neck.
“I was hoping I’d catch you.”
Jules pivoted, his hands smoothing his collar. A spasm of concern crossed his face, quickly erased. “Michael,” was all he said. “You’re a hard man to reach.Jules didn’t reply. Never explain, never make excuses, had always been his mantra. He closed his office door and gestured to a seat opposite his massive desk, which sat against the window. “I’m afraid I can’t offer coffee just yet.”
Green sat down. Orleans was a huge suburb which spilled over every inch of farmland and hillside for miles. The Colonies were tucked into the countryside part way up the Orleans escarpment, and Jules had a sweeping view of the Queensway, the lowland swamp and the Ottawa River beyond. He stood now with his back to Green as if fascinated by the view.
“Like a luxury hotel, isn’t it?”
“Adam, what’s your connection to Meredith Kennedy?”
Jules didn’t move. Green could read nothing in his rigid back.
“None.”
“Give me some credit. The woman is missing and an entire city is looking for her. And you know something—”
“I know nothing.”
“Then why did you ask me about a missing person even before she was reported missing?”
Finally Jules turned around. He was faintly pink but otherwise unmoved. “I can assure you I know nothing useful to the investigation. If I learn anything, I will tell you.”
“But how did you know she was missing?”
Jules grew pinker. Green realized he was angry, although his only gesture was to draw back his white shirt cuff and check his watch. “None of that is relevant. You have my word, and that should be enough.” His nostrils flared as he calmed himself with an effort. “A concern was raised to me privately, but now that there is an official investigation and every effort is being made to find the woman, I have nothing useful to add. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
He crossed the room to open the door. Green stood up and approached him. “What did you think had happened to her? Did you have some knowledge that she’d been in an accident?”
“Michael, it was a general inquiry. I knew no details, about an accident or anything else.”
Green left the Colonies profoundly dissatisfied. He’d never known Adam Jules to lie or to obstruct a police investigation— the man was obsessively honest—yet this time he had come perilously close to both. He knew something, but no amount of badgering was going to pry it from him. Jules was an honourable man, and it was obvious that he’d given someone his word not to divulge what he knew. After twenty-five years of working together, he did not trust Green enough to confide in him. Was this distrust just an expression of Jules’s secretive nature, or was there a more sinister reason for his stonewalling? Green hoped it was the former, but his instincts prickled.
He had a search to conduct, yet he felt as if there were a door behind which he was not allowed to look.
* * *
The pathetic winter sun had barely crawled over the windowsill into her third floor apartment when Detective Sue Peters sat down at her computer. She had already showered, dressed and brewed herself a full pot of kick-ass coffee. She wanted to get a head start before Gibbsie the computer whiz showed up. He was a sweetheart, but she really didn’t need him holding her hand all day, and if she blundered around in cyberspace for hours instead of skipping nimbly to the websites she needed, who the hell cared? It wasn’t like the inspector was holding his breath for information. She hadn’t even told him the whole story in case it turned out to be a dumb idea.
Her computer was an aging clunker that hated all the fancy new graphics and regularly crashed when she asked too much of it. The trick was to be patient, not ask it to do two things at once, let it go at its own speed, and it would get the job done. She could relate to that. She and her computer were best buds, and she resisted all Gibbsie’s threats to throw it in the dump. Even the idea felt like a personal affront.
She already had a plan. She’d been awake half the night, too excited to sleep, and as she lay in the dark knowing that at least her body had to rest, she’d let her mind run loose. It still tripped up, forgot where it had been and where it was going, forgot why too sometimes. But much less now than a year ago or even a month ago. That in itself was as exciting as any case she might work on. Harvey Longstreet was going to get the full brunt of what her healing mind could do.
After coaxing her computer to load Google, she typed in his name and hit “search”. That yielded a huge bunch of garbage about a circus performer in Australia. What a dumb name for a circus performer—whatever happened to Flying Ace? She added Montreal to the search. The circus had been to Montreal, but in between the mush, she found a single link to a lawyer at McGill.
It was a posting about a student who had won the Longstreet Prize for Criminal Law. A single footnote indicated that the prize had been established in memory of Harvey Longstreet, a popular professor of Criminal Law who had died in 1978. Sue tried a few other search terms to dig up more information but to no avail. Nineteen seventy-eight was just too long ago to have much presence on the web. After surfing pointlessly for an hour, rebooting four times and drinking all three cups of coffee, even she was ready to toss the old pile of crap into the garbage. Time for Plan B. At least she had a date of death to work from.
She had recently had her driver’s licence reinstated, so she headed down to the parking lot, where she stood looking in dismay at the mound of snow in her spot. Somewhere under there was her Toyota Echo. The roads were still an unpredictable mess of ice and slush. The sun was trying hard but at these temperatures, nothing was going to melt in a hurry. No point in wearing herself out shovelling before she was halfway through her day, so she left her car for Gibbsie to dig out and called a cab.
The Ottawa Public Library was only a short hop from her Centretown apartment and the cabbie wasn’t pleased, but that was his problem. The library was in a contest with the police station for the ugliest building in the city. She’d heard the architectural style of both was called Brutalism, as if that was something to be proud of. Brutal it surely was, an ugly chunk of rough brown concrete squatting on the corner like a toad at a garden party. Inside, she made her way straight upstairs to the newspapers and periodicals section and approached a bored-looking library assistant picking his teeth and staring into space behind his computer.
Judging by how long the CSIs and Law and Orders had been around, everyone loved a good old-fashioned crime investigation, so Sue produced her badge and asked for his help tracking down an old lead. The toothpick was whipped out and the guy was all ears. The Montreal Gazette was on microfilm and he could get it in a jiff, but 1978 was a lot of papers. Any idea when in 1978?
“Bring them all. You’ll have to show me how to use the machine,” she said, giving him a wink.
He sat her in the corner at one of the viewers and loaded the first tape for her. January 1978 appeared on the screen,