Twiggy felt laughter bubble up inside her. April was her favourite time of year, when the squirrels and the leaf buds began to appear again. When the sun warmed the frozen ground and beat down on her secret hideout. After six years on the streets of Ottawa, she knew all the best spots — the ledges under the bridges, the back doors and vents of the indoor parking garages, the window wells of old office buildings. And best of all, this hidden sliver of trees and water running through the city core almost within sight of Parliament Hill. Cars whizzed by on the roads up above, but only a few regulars knew the old aqueduct existed beneath the canopy of trees. Twiggy had hoped it would stay that way, but every year the bulldozers and backhoes ripping up the Lebreton Flats rumbled ever closer to this little corner of history.
She’d had enough of her fellow man after a winter of stinky, crowded shelters, noisy drunks, paranoid psychos and ridiculous rules. She’d been waiting all month for the moment when she could finally return to her cubbyhole near the water’s edge, spread out her belongings in the shelter of the graffiti wall and settle in for the summer. Her living room, she called it, complete with wall paintings from the most renowned street artists.
During the summer months, she had her regular panhandling spot next to the Tim Hortons on Bank Street, just a few blocks away. She had a special deal going with the day manager, who gave her day-old doughnuts and newspapers at the end of each day in return for her not crowding the door and for being polite and respectful to his customers. He said he’d rather have a friendly, middle-aged woman sitting quietly against the wall than a surly, in-yourface punk with piercings and tattoos all over the place. She usually made a pretty good haul during the tourist season.
Earlier that evening, she’d got a full meal at the Shepherds of Good Hope before linking up with a couple of friends to pool their take and party a little. She’d even had a little snooze in the side doorway of a hotel before some security guard kicked her out. So she was really groggy when she finally stumbled down the ravine toward her favourite spot in the shelter of the graffiti wall. The moon was high, and the looming silhouette of a steam shovel shimmered in her vision like a massive insect ready to scoop up her private paradise. So close now! Above the gurgle of the water, there was no sound. No giggles of stoned teenagers, no grunts of hurried sex or wails of homesick drunks.
Twiggy wavered dreamily along the stone embankment until her foot hit something solid, pitching her forward onto her face. Her fingers encountered hair. Masses of long, tangled curls and cool, doughy flesh. She jerked back in panic and groped the length of the body, feeling high boots and denim stretched tight over a boney ass.
Some little whore had passed out cold, half dangling in the water.
“Lucky the little bitch didn’t fall in,” Twiggy muttered, staggering to her hands and knees. She tried to drag the girl farther from the water, but in the end could only budge her a few inches. In disgust, she hauled her garbage bag up to the shelter of the wall, shoved the wad of newspapers under her and collapsed with a grunt to fall asleep.
The cold woke her just after dawn. Pale sunlight speckled the ravine, and the 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