“No evidence that he followed up either?”
She pursed her lips, as if to keep her thoughts to herself. “At that point it was a pretty cold case and we had a few other things on the go. Plus... Norrich got promoted out of the unit.”
Green had his own theories as to why Norrich had never followed up on the tip. For one thing, it would have meant admitting he frequented the strip club, but more likely, he’d been too damn drunk to remember anything he’d been told. From McGrath’s disgusted expression, he suspected it was not the first time.
He smiled at her. “You had breakfast yet?”
She looked up, her face lighting at the idea. “Oh man, I’d kill for a double shot of Columbian Dark.”
He laughed. “My kind of woman.” He unhooked her jacket from the door knob and held it out. “Lead on, Sergeant.”
She led him on foot down Duke Street to Argyle at a pace that soon left him huffing. Her long, effortless stride suggested an athlete, and once again he cursed the long hours he spent behind his desk. Walking the dog from tree to tree around the block did not seem to be doing the trick.
The Economy Shoe Shop was a trendy bistro tucked into a block of heritage storefronts on Argyle. At eight o’clock, it was packed with workers catching their last dose of caffeine before heading to the office, and the hiss of cappuccino machines rose over the general chatter. Green breathed in the smells. Strong coffee, fresh muffins, and the buttery sweetness of croissants. His stomach contracted, and he selected a banana chocolate chip muffin, feeling virtuous for having passed on the croissants.
The shop had a cluster of cast iron chairs outside on a cobblestone patio. A brisk breeze kept most of the patrons indoors, but McGrath found a small patch of sunlight and sat down, tilting her face to the rays and shutting her eyes. A smile spread across her features as she savoured her first sip.
Arousal tingled unexpectedly through Green, bringing a mixture of idle pleasure and caution. It was just as well he was going back on the ten o’clock flight tomorrow morning, he thought, as he busied himself unwrapping his muffin.
“So,” he said, “in your search last night, did you find any references in the bar to a military connection?”
She opened one eye almost reluctantly. “There were several soldiers among the witnesses. In fact, the man who was seen in conversation with the assailant—the one who gave me the fake ID —he seemed military. The precise language and the ramrod back tend to give them away. At the time, I figured he was slumming it and didn’t want to be found out.”
“Did he think the assailant was military?”
“If he did, he didn’t volunteer it. He said they just talked about the news on TV.”
Green mulled this over. In his experience, soldiers, like police, shared a kinship that they could sense a mile off. If the two men had both been military, the first words out of their mouths would have been “What’s your unit?”
Maybe it had been. “Did you believe him?”
She opened both eyes and turned to face him. In the sunlight, her blue eyes were startling. They held a glint of excitement. “Not particularly, especially once I found out he’d lied about his ID . But at the time I had no reason to be suspicious, so I just let him go. I had a whole bar full of drunken witnesses to go through.”
He returned her smile for an instant before his thoughts scattered again. “So now we’re stuck with not just one, but two unknown soldiers. Maybe if we poke around in Danny’s military service, we can get some names to go with them. Did you find out anything else?”
Her smile broadened as she flipped a page in her notebook. “I did. I found an interesting witness who was at the bar that night. In his statement at the time, he said he’d been asleep and had seen nothing. But his name was Roger Atkinson.”
* * *
Back at the police station, McGrath set out to track down the current whereabouts of Roger Atkinson while Green put in a call to Gibbs. He relayed the information about Daniel Oliver’s murder and its potential connection to his military past, then asked Gibbs to start tracking Oliver’s army associates. Normally Gibbs was conscientious and thorough to a fault, and Green knew if there was any information to be found, Gibbs would pry it loose. But this morning he sensed the young detective was barely listening. “What’s up, Gibbs?”
Gibbs’s newfound confidence echoed through the phone lines as he filled Green in on his own inquiries. He didn’t stutter once.
“Yesterday Detective Peters and I interviewed the desk clerk and other residents of the Vanier hotel where our Jane Doe—I mean Patricia Ross—was staying. They said she seemed to spend her time like any other tourist. She’d go out in the morning, catch a bus on the corner and be gone most of the day. They always noticed her because of that big flowery purse she carried everywhere. She had a street map, and once she asked the desk clerk in the lobby how to get to the Voyageur Bus Station and also the House of Commons. She seemed quite disappointed that it wasn’t in session because of the election.”
“The bus station?” Green pounced on the implication. The House of Commons was a standard destination for any tourist to Ottawa, but the Voyageur bus station wasn’t. It was strictly for cheap intercity travel. “Did you—”
“Sue’s going down to the bus station this morning, sir,” Gibbs interjected. “She’s taking the photos of the DOA and the purse to see if anyone remembers her.”
Green chuckled to himself at the pride in Gibbs’s tone. Pride not only in his own investigative skills, but also in his partner. Who would have thought the mismatched pair would ever gel? “Excellent. Keep me posted. If Patricia took a bus somewhere outside of Ottawa, she was probably going to meet someone important. This was a woman on a mission, I’m convinced of it. Anything else to report?”
“Yessir!” Gibbs’s voice cracked in his exuberance. “The dead woman apparently made a number of phone calls from the payphone in the hotel lobby, and she received at least one there that the desk clerk can remember. It was a man’s voice. We’re working on getting the phone records for that payphone, which might even tell us who she was meeting.” When Green hung up, he was energized by the progress being made on all fronts. They still had no idea what was going on, but with all the promising avenues opening up, he sensed the solution was almost within reach. He was just jotting some notes in his book when McGrath burst back into the room, brandishing her notebook. Her whole body vibrated with excitement.
“Well!” she announced, tossing the notebook down on the table. “This is an interesting coincidence. Roger Atkinson’s mother hasn’t seen him in nine years, ever since he was offered some plum job up in Ontario. According to my calculations, this job came less than two months after he opened his big mouth about Daniel Oliver’s death.”
TEN
Today, Twiggy decided, was a make or break day. No more games or stall tactics. That resolution put some energy into her flagging muscles as she trudged up Albert Street on her way to Tim Hortons for her daily dose of caffeine and doughnuts.
The spring sun was finally warm enough to sit outside without discomfort, and she was just arranging her bulk against the brick wall when the manager opened his shop door to give her a coffee. This time as she sucked back the bitter liquid, he stood over her hesitating.
“A man was in the shop last night, asking about you,” he said.
She paused, her cup to her lips. “Asking how?”
“Just asking if I knew anything about a bag lady who hangs out around here.”
She frowned. Who the hell would be interested in what she was up to any more? Her thoughts drifted to her family. Her inlaws were a write-off, of course. Way too much pain for them to ever face her. They hadn’t even come to the coroner’s inquest, brief