Jenna considered the implications. It was true that in the affluent neighbourhood of Alta Vista alone, there were probably dozens of backyard pools, but if Lea had gone instead to a public park or one of the city’s beaches, there were always perverts lurking around hoping to satisfy their sick fantasies with the unsuspecting young girls who played there. A shiver passed through her. Girls had so little knowledge of—or control over—what they stirred up.
* * *
Green managed to wait until ten a.m. before he finally caved. Even in the likely event that Hannah was still asleep, ten o’clock was a perfectly reasonable hour for a parental phone call. There had been no further news releases about the missing girl, but Sullivan had assured him he’d call if anything developed. No phone call meant they were still slogging along, tracking down everyone Lea had ever talked to, following every lead and probably combing every public park within a five kilometre radius of her home. A huge task, but as time passed, hope was surely dimming among all concerned.
To his surprise, Hannah didn’t even answer the phone. When the answering machine kicked in, he dialled again, thinking she might have been slow to wake up. Still no answer. He dialled her cell phone. Voice mail announced the caller was unavailable. He scowled. Hannah carried the phone around on her belt as if it were a lifeline and never turned it off.
He debated whether to leave a message. He and Hannah had been virtual strangers a year ago when, in a fit of pique at her mother, she’d come to live with him. Every seemingly simple decision took on layers of unspoken meaning in the complex dance of feelings between them. Accusations of interference and mistrust would fly, and the closer he inched to intimacy, the more prickly she became.
“Oh, just leave a message!” Sharon exclaimed in exasperation after fifteen minutes of listening to him dither. “Whether she gives you hell or not, she’s going to know you care.”
So in the end he left her a chatty message about their arrival and the news of the missing girl, signing off with a casual request that she give him a ring just to let him know everything was okay.
He took his phone with him down to the dock, where Sharon, in a valiant attempt to make a swimming area for Tony, was clearing weeds from the patch of muddy shoreline that had been billed as a beach. For two hours, he forced himself to build a sandcastle with his son, complete with moat and coloured stones to reinforce the walls. It was a hot, sunny day, and the lake was filled with the roar of speedboats and the high-pitched squeal of small children towed behind on tubes. So much for peace and quiet.
By noon, Tony’s enthusiasm for coloured stones had waned, and a temper tantrum was brewing over the sandcastle that refused to stay standing. What do I know about sandcastles, Green thought irritably as the walls caved into the moat yet again. His parents had come from a small village in Poland, and from their limited immigrant perspective, beaches and water were dangers to be avoided. They had confined family holidays to picnics on the Rideau River in Strathcona Park, where they had all watched the ducks from the safe embrace of a distant shade tree.
With a cheerful announcement about lunch, Sharon scooped Tony into her arms and headed up to the cottage. Green picked up his phone and checked its battery, which was still fine. He dialled home. Voice mail. Hannah’s cell phone. Voice mail. Finally he gave up and phoned Sullivan. To his credit, the man didn’t utter a single gripe about interference.
“No breakthrough yet,” he said, “but we’re narrowing our search down to the most likely spots. Lea works at McDonald’s, and she told a co-worker on Monday that she hoped the weather would stay warm, because she was planning to go to the beach. So we’re focussing on area beaches.”
Green did a quick mental inventory. Ottawa was located at the convergence of three large rivers, all of which had swimming areas. As well, the wilderness playground of Gatineau Park, with beaches on its three lakes, was only a short drive across the Ottawa River into Quebec. He visualized the city map. Alta Vista was bordered on the west by the Rideau River, with its magnificent beach at Mooney’s Bay. He pointed that out to Sullivan.
“Yeah, and Mooney’s Bay has the most parkland, so it’s the best for parties. We’re concentrating there, but according to her friends, she didn’t like the crowds and noise there, so she preferred to go somewhere more private.”
“Like where?”
“Anywhere in the park, as long as it was by the water.”
Which doesn’t narrow it down much, thought Green. Almost all the waterfront in Ottawa was parkland. “Did she have access to a vehicle?”
“Her mother doesn’t own a car, so that leaves out the beaches in the Gatineau Park.”
“Unless someone else had a car. If she has a secret boyfriend, they may have been looking for privacy.”
Sullivan paused. “I’ll ask Ron Leclair to alert the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP , since strictly speaking, Gatineau Park is in the RCMP ’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, we’ve got guys combing the beaches at Britannia and Westboro for her too. We’ve also got officers at her school trying to shake loose a clue about a possible secret boyfriend, but you know how teenagers are. Misplaced loyalties and all that.”
Despite the blazing noon sun, Green felt a chill as he hung up. Misplaced loyalties, conspiracies of silence, a pack mentality of us against them. How little he knew about Hannah’s friends and the places she hung out. But he did know that, coming from Vancouver, she loved beach parties, and Westboro beach on the Ottawa River was a mere stone’s throw from their house in Highland Park.
It seemed irrational to fear that there was a connection, but why the hell wasn’t she answering her phone?
* * *
Jenna accompanied the anxious student from her office and glanced out into the main guidance room. Students, mostly girls, still filled every seat in the waiting area, and the guidance secretary was busy on the phone, fielding calls from parents. Despite the admonition not to talk to each other, the girls were excitedly sharing the rumours they’d heard and the tidbits of knowledge they possessed about Lea’s life. None of them looked too stressed, she noted with relief, but then teenagers could hide a mountain of feelings beneath a flighty façade.
One girl sat apart, staring at her hands and twisting her many rings round and round her fingers. She looked harder than the others, her skin disfigured by acne despite a heavy layer of makeup, and her body stuffed into the trashy clothes that young girls thought they had to wear to gain the attention of boys. The school dress code had been circumvented by a loose-fitting, virtually transparent white overshirt, beneath which was visible a lacy tank top stretched over size D breasts and an expanse of tanned stomach accented by a silver ring through her belly button. Her blonde hair escaped her ponytail in a cascade of ringlets that framed her face. She’d be a very pretty girl if not for the acne, the ton of smoky eye make-up she didn’t need, and the sulky frown.
Jenna walked over to introduce herself.
“Crystal Adams,” the girl responded, accepting Jenna’s hand in her moist, limp grip. Jenna ushered her into the little office the school had provided her. The door had a glass insert which prevented privacy, and the space inside was overtaken by a desk and computer, but she squeezed Crystal into the guest chair and contrived to look as welcoming as she could.
Crystal twisted her rings. Seven, Jenna noted with interest. Some were discreet bands of silver, others gaudy clusters of cheap stones.
“What brings you here, Crystal?” Jenna prompted eventually.
Crystal shrugged. “Have they found her? Do they know what happened?”
Jenna shook her head. “Did you know her?”
“Oh, yeah, we were friends. Kind of.”
Jenna waited, not sure what to ask. Then she remembered her Rogerian training: when in doubt, reflect. “Kind of?”
“No, we were. But like, we weren’t in classes together or anything, but we sometimes hung out. Like at parties