“Yeah. But maybe I didn’t protect her enough, didn’t consider her safety enough, because I didn’t like her.”
“That’s bullshit, Mike. You weren’t even in town when she took off to Petawawa.”
“But maybe I should have been. Bottom line, the kid’s hanging by a thread, and we’re stretched so thin that Devine has relinquished the whole investigation up there to the OPP . I told her I’d go up and do the damn case myself.”
A slow smile twitched across Sullivan’s lips. “I might have an offer neither she nor the Chief can refuse.”
Green cocked his head. After twenty years on the streets together, he knew Sullivan inside out. Knew what that smile meant, yet he barely let himself hope.
“I’m going crazy in Strategic Planning, Mike. I could ask my Inspector for a temporary assignment back to Major Crimes, just to plug your holes in manpower and provide some experience on the ground. Under the circumstances, the brass would be crazy to refuse.” His blue eyes twinkled. “That is, if you’d like some company working the streets of Petawawa.”
FIFTEEN
Sullivan was already stationed outside Green’s office when Green arrived the next morning. The two men had finally left the hospital at three in the morning, after deciding that Sue Peters would be better served by their being rested and ready to work on her behalf in the morning rather than maintaining a hospital vigil through the dead of night.
Green had managed only three hours of restless sleep before thoughts of the case drove him back to the office, and he was surprised to find Sullivan there ahead of him, sporting a fresh shave and a spotless suit. Green noted that in the past six months he had added a few grey hairs to his sandy blond crewcut and a pound or two to his footballer frame, but his blue eyes crinkled with an excitement Green hadn’t seen in years. Before the grind of Major Crimes and the disappointments of lost promotions had worn him down.
Inside the office, Sullivan propped his size thirteen feet on the corner of Green’s desk as if he’d never been away. “It’s all stamped and approved, all the way up to the Deputy Chief,” he announced.
“When do you begin?”
“This instant. Fill me in on the case she was investigating.”
It took Green half an hour to sketch the details of the Patricia Ross case and Peters’ role in it, ending with a summary of his own confrontation with Jeff Weiss. As he spoke, his doubts of last night came back to him. He shook his head back and forth. “Something is funny about that guy. I’m not sure what it is. He was hanging around the first morning when we found the body, and Gibbs says he asked to be assigned to the case. He’s a cocky bastard, and I thought he was just looking for a way up the ladder, but after his utter screw-up with Peters...”
“He’s not a Major Crimes detective, Mike. Maybe he thought this was the way we work.”
“They were in a strange town, going into sleazy bars, tracking a murderer, for God’s sake. Did he have to be a rocket scientist?”
“Peters didn’t see a problem.”
“Well, Peters is...” Green broke off, remembering the young woman clinging to life by nothing but a few hundred sutures. He left his harsh words unsaid.
“Yeah,” Sullivan agreed. “So what are you thinking, Mike? That this Weiss guy is somehow implicated? That he left her to get killed? Why?”
Green shrugged. “I’m not thinking anything. I just wonder who the hell is this guy? What’s his background?”
Sullivan’s eyes narrowed. “So you want us to investigate one of our own?”
“Quietly. Unofficially. Nose around, maybe have a peek at his file.”
Sullivan sat thinking a moment, his broad face deadpan. “Unofficially. Sure, we’ll just add that to the list. Find out what Peters discovered in Petawawa, get the goods on the peacekeepers Oliver and MacDonald served with in Yugoslavia, figure out the whole Halifax connection and how it fits in with Patricia Ross’s death—”
“Which means finding out who she had a drink with here in Ottawa. Gibbs was working on that.”
“Jeez, Mike. This case has more tentacles than an octopus!”
Green nodded. “And it’s hard to know which tentacle to grab first, especially now that Peters and probably Gibbs are out of commission. Anyway, I can do the inquiry into Constable Weiss more easily than you. I’ll just have a casual chat with his staff sergeant.”
“Don’t underestimate Gibbsie. You know what he’s like when he’s on a mission, and right now I’d lay odds he’ll turn over every rock to catch the bastard who did this to Sue.” He reached across with his foot and nudged Green’s door open wide enough for them to see out into the squad room. Sure enough, Gibbs was bent over his computer, his eyes fixed on the screen. His suit was rumpled, and his features drooped with fatigue, but his fingers were flying over the keyboard.
After a moment, he rose, loped over to the printer to retrieve a sheaf of papers and headed for Green’s office. The sight of Sullivan in the guest chair stopped him at the door. When Green explained Sullivan’s special assignment to help with the Petawawa angle of the case, Gibbs looked overwhelmingly relieved. He swallowed convulsively, and his Adam’s apple jumped as he struggled for words. Sullivan rescued him.
“What have you got, Bob?” he asked, nodding to the papers in his hand.
Gibbs plunked the printouts down on Green’s desk. “Some information from Captain Ulrich at National Defence, sir. At least what he has so far. Photos of Colonel Hamm and Sergeant Sawranchuk, and details on some of the guys in his section. Three are still with the Princess Pats in Edmonton, two are overseas in Kandahar, and two are back in the reserves, going to university.”
“Where?”
Gibbs flipped through the papers. “One at Queens, one at Memorial in Newfoundland.”
Which is a short hop to Halifax, but a long way from Ottawa, Green thought. “Well, Kingston is less than a two hour drive, so the Queens guy could easily do a round trip to Ottawa or Petawawa in a day. Ask Ulrich to send us the Queens guy’s photo ASAP , and we’ll send the three photos down to Kate McGrath in Halifax for her to show around.”
“And I’ll take the three up with me to Petawawa,” Sullivan said. “Sue Peters obviously stirred up someone when she was blundering around in the bars.” He looked thoughtful. “Anything useful in her notebook?”
Gibbs jerked back as if hit by an electric shock. “I forgot about that! Nobody’s seen it. It wasn’t in her personal effects when they handed them over to us.”
Green’s temper flared. A missing notebook should have been a major red flag to the investigators on the scene. The look of disbelief on Sullivan’s face mirrored his own, but the big detective was diplomatic. “Get them to keep looking. Meanwhile, we’d better get everything we can about her activities from that constable who was with her.”
Which will be fuck-all, Green thought, since the idiot wasn’t with her when she was traipsing around the bars. Suddenly a thought struck him.
He leaned forward, his instincts screaming. “The notebook was probably what the killer was after all along! He was tracking her movements in Petawawa and realized she’d learned something to make her a threat.” He swung on Gibbs. “Who knew she was up there?”
Gibbs scrunched up his face in an effort to concentrate through his exhaustion and fear. He counted on his fingers. “The base commander, Colonel Lyttle. The military police captain and the OPP detachment commander—”
“And all their men, of course,” Green added impatiently. “It would have been part of their daily briefing.”
Gibbs