“Is she a good swimmer?” he asked. She nodded. “She is good at many things. She took lessons in the public pool.”
“Diving too?” Marija looked up from her folding, startled.
“What?” “Does she like to dive from the high diving board?”
Marija frowned, and Green could see her trying to make sense of his question. Suddenly, fear raced across her face. “The falls? You think...”
“I don’t think anything. I’m just looking at possibilities.”
Marija pressed her hand to her mouth. The stark panic in her eyes gradually died as she wrestled her emotions under control. Reason crept back in, and she shook her head. “No. Lea loves to swim, but she’s careful. She’s a lifeguard, and she knows the dangers of water. Never.”
Unless she was so drunk or high she threw caution to the wind, Green thought grimly. Teenagers did foolhardy things all the time, believing in their utter invincibility, when in fact the human body is very fragile indeed. Before Marija Kovacev could make the same observation, he focussed her on practical details. “Is there anything else missing that may give us a clue? Even something fairly ordinary?”
She had moved from the lingerie drawer to straightening the knickknacks on the top of the dresser. A photo of a man in a silver filigree frame, her father perhaps, two hand-painted ceramic dolls, a Swiss cuckoo clock, a carved wooden jewellery box and an assortment of creams and make-up containers. She ran her hand lovingly over the jewellery box as she considered his question.
“Sergeant Leclair asked me the same question, and police searched all through this room yesterday, looking for clues. They even took her cell phone bill to check her records.” She broke off with a sharp intake of breath. “Her cell phone! It should have been in that bag! She carries it everywhere. Possibly she took it with her where she went?”
“Does the bikini have a pocket?”
The brief flare of hope died in Marija’s eyes. “No, there is not cloth for that.”
Then where would she carry it? Green thought. She had left all her clothes and even her wallet with all her bank cards. Clearly she had not planned to go very far or stay away very long. Moreover, if she had gone for a swim, she would certainly not have taken her phone into the water. Not with the cost of the latest little gadgets. A further thought struck him.
“Does her cell phone have a camera or a video?”
Marija nodded. “I bought it for her birthday in April. The salesman said it had all the best technology. I can’t understand how to operate it, but Lea was thrilled. She took pictures of everything.”
She smiled faintly at the memory, obviously failing to see the sinister connection between pictures, panties and the missing cell phone. But Green spotted it, and his sense of foreboding grew.
Five
At six thirty the next morning, Ruth Mendelsohn left her house in Old Ottawa South with her Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever. She crossed Billings Bridge, which spanned the Rideau River about four kilometres north of Hog’s Back Falls. By the time the river reached the bridge, it slowed to a languid pace as it meandered through marshy bays along the shore. From the bridge, Ruth spotted an official-looking Zodiac in the middle of the main channel. Not giving it much thought, she walked her dog up the bike path beside the river, relishing her early morning coffee and the chirping of the songbirds in the trees. This was her favourite time of day, before the roar of cars blocked out the birds and the breakneck blur of commuter cyclists transformed the bike path into a Tour de France circuit. Once they were far enough from the traffic, she glanced around and surreptitiously slipped off her dog’s leash. He bounded off across the grass towards the shore. Ducks quacked and flapped angrily out of reach, but for once Digby had no interest in them. Instead, after snuffling excitedly along the shore for a moment, he disappeared behind an overgrown alder and began to bark furiously. Ruth recognized his high-alert, alien-invasion bark.
Shouting at him in vain, Ruth hurried towards the shore, swearing as the coffee sloshed out of her cup and spilled down her shorts. When she rounded the bush, she saw him in the shallow water at the river’s edge, barking at the police team out on the river. Ruth’s first reaction was guilt, for dogs were not allowed off-lead in this park, let alone in the water. She tried to grab his collar, but he danced further out of reach. Her sandals sank into the wet mud.
Her second reaction, once she’d absorbed the diving gear and the waterproof yellow clothes, was that this was about the missing girl. They were dragging the river for her body. Although they hadn’t acknowledged Digby’s presence, the earsplitting barking could hardly be improving their focus.
Digby, however, was not to be reassured, forcing her to wade ankle deep in muck to secure his collar. As she leaned forward to snap on his leash, trying not to think about the turtles and mud-dwelling creatures that might be tempted by her toes, she caught sight of a yellow and black object coiled around a reed. At first she thought it was some exotic snake, and she recoiled with a small shriek. On closer inspection, she realized it was cloth, and when she fished it out of the water, she saw it was the skimpiest bikini bottom she’d ever seen. She pictured it stretched over her own expansive tush, and the unflattering image made her chuckle.
Don’t suppose anyone even missed this, she thought. Then she raised her head to consider the men combing the river bottom just off shore. What were the odds, she wondered? The bikini wasn’t remotely like the description of the girl’s clothes reported in the media, yet it looked almost brand new and showed no signs of fading or rot from being in the water for long.
“Hey!” she shouted to the men in the water, brandishing the sodden bikini. “This was in the water. Could it be important?”
The driver of the boat looked over at her with an annoyed frown that vanished the instant he saw her find. He got on the radio, and within seconds he gestured to her urgently. “Stay in the water exactly where you found it, ma’am, and wait there. An officer will be right there.”
Ruth stared at the slip of clothing in dismay. The police reaction told it all. They believed the girl had drowned wearing this bikini. Only now, when they found her body, the poor girl would be nearly naked.
The police responded very efficiently from that point, taking her statement and her contact information before sending her firmly on her way. Police in dark coveralls swarmed the marshy area by the alders, and others fanned out along the water’s edge up towards Hog’s Back. She could see similar activity on the north bank of the river, and she shuddered. She’d lived in her old brick house by the Rideau River almost thirty years. It was a tame river, at least within the city, since its force had been blunted by dams and canals. Small children frolicked in its waters, along with the frogs and ducks. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had drowned in the Rideau, unlike its larger and wilder sisters, the Ottawa and the Gatineau. It seemed impossible that a girl in her prime, especially a strong swimmer as the papers reported, could have died here.
* * *
Sullivan phoned Green with the news at seven thirty. Green had managed a fitful night’s sleep and had been up since dawn, preparing to do battle once again with Hannah’s school. The news hit him like a sledgehammer in the chest.
“We’ve set up a command post in the parking lot by Billings Bridge,” Sullivan said, “and the dive team are now concentrating their search on the stretch of the river downstream of the falls. We’ve got a local expert on the topography and currents of the river coming to meet with us at the CP. MacPhail’s also coming to check water temperature and perform his magic calculations on the buoyancy of the body...stuff like that.”
Green absorbed the news about the forensic pathologist’s involvement grimly. “Has anything been released to the media?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. Hold off until we have something.” Green didn’t bother