Gibbs stared at him in uncomprehending silence for a moment. “My-myself. The staff sergeant, a couple of guys on the squad.”
“And Constable Weiss.”
“Well—yes. Constable Weiss.”
* * *
July 20,1993. On some fucking road somewhere in Croatia.
We’re stuck at another roadblock while the CO argues with another drunken militia leader who thinks he’s a general. This has been the worst day, bar none, of the whole tour. I’d only been back from leave two days when Sarge wakes us all up at four a.m. “We’re moving out, pack all your kit, because nobody knows where the hell we’re going or when we’ll be back.” So I asked if we could take Fundy and Sarge thinks we can squeeze her in the APC , but the Hammer says not a chance. Can’t be tripping over a dog when we’re trying to get out in a hurry, and she might bark when we’re trying to sneak through somewhere.The whole camp loves her and all, but rules are rules. Mahir says he’ll take her, and I figured he’d take good care of her.
She must have been distracted by all the activity, because when the APC s started pulling out, she starts running after us. Mahir is calling her but she cuts a corner and doesn’t see thefucking mine. Blew her twenty feet at least. I can see she’s stillalive, but the Hammer won’t let me go to her. “We’re on theroad, soldier, he says, we’re in formation and we’ve got twentyfour hours to get to our destination.” Wherever the fuck that is.
So the last thing I see is Mahir carrying her towards his house, and I’ll probably never know what happened to her. She was a brave little soldier, says the Hammer, and I want to kill the guy.
* * *
Sergeant Kate McGrath came on duty that Saturday morning to the news of an assault on an Ottawa police officer in Petawawa. She stared at the email bulletin in dismay. Petawawa. What were the chances that two Ottawa Police investigations were taking place in Petawawa at the same time? Nil. The killer was at it again, and this time not even the police were immune. This killer was turning more deadly and desperate with each passing day.
She thought of phoning Mike, but stopped herself. She had nothing to report and nothing to contribute to the case. What could she say? I’m sorry, and I hope you’re holding up all right? That was a ridiculous luxury. Mike was probably up to his eyeballs in crises, trying to coordinate the investigation and respond to the dozens of pressures from the media, the brass and the public at large. No matter how much he might need a supportive word, that was not her place.
He had a wife, after all.
She set her jaw, squared her shoulders and forced herself to think. The best way to help him was to follow up on the case down here, where it had all begun. She felt as if she was in a holding pattern while she waited for details on Daniel Oliver’s military contacts. Yet something had stirred up the case ten years after Oliver’s murder. Something had happened to set Patricia Ross on the road to Ottawa. Just a tenth anniversary epiphany? Or something more concrete—an encounter, a discovery, a stray fact?
McGrath sat bolt upright. The newspaper! In all that had happened, she’d forgotten the newspaper in Patricia Ross’s apartment, with its missing Page 10. It might not be much, it might just be the light-fingered tenant from the apartment below, as the landlord claimed, but it was a place to start. A thread to tug, that might unravel the entire web of secrets.
She clipped on her police belt, snatched up her coffee, and headed for the door. Back issues of the Halifax Chronicle Herald were kept at the public library on Spring Garden Road, a few short blocks from the police station. The chip wagons were out in force along the street, and the air was laden with the smell of stale oil and vinegar. She had to dodge the buskers and the Tai Chi enthusiasts to get in the front door. Inside, a flash of her badge and a quick word sent the young librarian in charge scurrying to the nearby shelves where the latest issues were stacked. He returned with the Sunday Herald of April 9th and pointed to a long reading table. Only one other reader was there, and he didn’t even look up from the notes he was taking.
The paper was full of election campaign news, most of it local, and she flipped rapidly through the results of polls and the profiles of candidate hopefuls until she came to Page 10. “Top Ten Ridings to Watch”, announced the headlines, and below were brief capsules of federal ridings identified by political pundits as either traditional swing ridings or ones where candidates could pull off a surprising upset. The article profiled each riding and the main candidates in the race. In each case the journalist, whom Kate recognized as a born and bred New Democrat, had predicted a winner.
The whole article seemed rather more intellectual than the reading Kate would have predicted of Patricia, but she scanned the ridings curiously. Two were in British Columbia, which was way too far from either Halifax or Ottawa to be of interest. Two were in the Greater Toronto Area, representing the ethnically diverse communities that surrounded the metropolis. Surely Toronto was still too far away. Patricia had chosen Ottawa for a reason, yet none of the ridings were in the Ottawa area. Her hopes jumped when she found one in Nova Scotia, but after reading the article, she couldn’t for the life of her see how it fitted in with old murders, the military, peacekeepers, or Ottawa.
The caption for the next riding stopped her in her tracks, however. Military is wildcard in conservative Ontario riding. She studied the map of the riding. It sat just beyond the northwestern extremity of the City of Ottawa, and more importantly, right near the centre of it, perched on the edge of the Ottawa River, was the town of Petawawa.
Her heart raced with excitement as she scanned the article. The riding was currently held by a hard-line Conservative and was comprised largely of rural, socially conservative voters. It was generally regarded as a safe Conservative win, and yet the journalist was predicting a tight race and a possible Liberal upset because of strong support among the military for the local Liberal candidate, John Blakeley. Who was himself an exarmy colonel and a highly experienced and decorated veteran of numerous overseas missions. Blakeley’s photo showed a man with a frank, steady gaze.
“Colonel Blakeley speaks to the hearts and minds of soldiers in this riding,” said his campaign manager, Roger Atkinson, reached at Blakeley’s campaign office in Petawawa. “His firsthand understanding of military issues would be an invaluable asset in the halls of power.” As an interesting aside, the journalist noted, Roger Atkinson, born in Sheet Harbour and educated at Dalhousie University, brings a local Nova Scotia connection to this most exciting race.
With a whoop of joy, McGrath jumped up and got the librarian to make her a dozen copies of the page. Barely pausing to thank him, she raced out of the room with the pages shoved under her arm and sprinted back to the station. At her desk, as she punched in Green’s number, she tried to catch her breath and collect her thoughts so that she could sound coherent when he answered. But after four rings, his voicemail came on. She cursed.
“Mike! Oh, damn it! I’ve caught a huge break. Check your fax!”
* * *
Leaving Sullivan to prepare for the trip to Petawawa, Green had headed over to the hospital, where Sue Peters remained in the ICU , hooked up to tubes and looking uncharacteristically fragile and still. He hated hospitals and managed to stay only thirty seconds, long enough to lose the battle with other memories from long ago, of the grey, birdlike figure of his mother dwarfed among the pillows and machines that had escorted her to her death. He’d always hoped it was painless at the end, at least for her.
But Peters wasn’t going to die, he told himself over and over as he looked down at her. The doctors were promising nothing, and the nurses were gently hinting at the worst, but Green shrugged them off. She was too young and brazen to be silenced this way. She would awaken to tell the police all they needed to know, and they would nail this murderous bastard for good.
He left the hospital fired with new resolve and with a long list of inquiries to be followed up. En route back to the station, he phoned Constable Jeff Weiss’s staff sergeant to arrange a meeting later in the morning.
“Good