Another remnant, valuable not to her past, but perhaps to her future.
* * *
After Green left Twiggy, he headed up to speak to Detective Bob Gibbs. He opened the passenger door and slipped in just as the young detective was lifting his coffee cup from its holder. Gibbs started, spilling coffee all down the front of his impeccable white shirt. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he searched for his voice.
“Sorry about that, Bob,” Green said, rescuing the cup and setting it down. Bob Gibbs had many talents, but a confident disposition was not one of them. Still, in the current state of CID , you had to take the good with the bad. He glanced at the screen on Gibbs’s laptop. “How’s it going?”
Gibbs found his voice. “It’s still early, sir. How...how did you know...?”
“I was just driving by. Any luck with missing persons?”
“It’s no one local, at least recently. But I’ve asked MisPers to check Quebec and Ontario.”
“There may be a military connection.”
Gibbs blinked in surprise, and a faint flush crept up his neck. “Are you...should I...?”
“It’s your case, Bob. I’m heading to the office to meet with Superintendent Devine. But because of the military line of inquiry, I’d like to be kept in the loop.”
A shout from down by the water interrupted any reply Gibbs might have attempted. Green peered out of the car window and saw an officer gesturing towards the water at the base of the pumphouse wall. Green and Gibbs got out of the car for a better look and saw Lou Paquette striding over towards the spot,cameras bouncing, yelling at them not to touch anything.Without a moment’s hesitation, Gibbs and Green hurried backdown the slope, reaching the scene only seconds after the Ident officer. The young uniformed officer who’d made the discoverywas on his knees, leaning out over the water, oblivious to the damp seeping into his pants. A strange pink mottled object layin about four feet of murky water.
“I think it’s a purse, sir,” he said. “Looks like it got stuck on the lip of the culvert.”
Paquette was already chasing everyone away so that he could photograph it. Gibbs and Green waited patiently with the others until he had completed the photos and had fished the purse out into a large plastic pan. Water oozed from it as it gradually deflated. It was large enough to carry a small tank, Green thought, but it was hideous. Something even his wife Sharon, with her practical streak and her sense of humour,would have left on the rack. Shiny black vinyl with big, floppy,pink daisies stuck all over it.
Paquette pried open the clasp, methodically removed the contents and laid them beside it in the pan. A hat and scarf, two lipsticks, a glasses case, a half-eaten pack of Dentine, half a dozen cheap pens, black gloves, an empty Tupperware container, a hair brush, bits of sodden paper, and three large rocks.
Paquette hefted these, looking perplexed.
“Could they have gotten into the purse when it bumped along the bottom?” the young uniform asked.
Another officer elbowed closer. “The clasp was shut.”
Green stepped forward and pulled on a glove before picking up one of the stones. It was heavy. Not something a woman would be eager to lug around in her purse. It was grey and irregularly shaped, certainly not chosen for its beauty. He studied the rocky shoreline thoughtfully. Similar grey stones of all sizes poked through the mud.
“The killer put them in there, hoping to make the purse sink,” he said.
Paquette’s shrug was non-committal. Green knew the Ident officer was not fond of theories, only of evidence he could lay his hands on. Evidence won cases in court.
The second officer peered over Paquette’s shoulder at the pan. “Wallet’s missing. Looks like there’s no ID whatsoever. Who’s to say it’s even the Jane Doe’s?”
Paquette had begun poking in side pockets, removing more soggy bits of paper. At this point, he glanced up. “It’s not been in the water very long. The fabric’s not degraded, the vinyl’s still shiny and the print on these papers is still pretty clear.”
Green looked at the sixty odd feet between the purse and the body. “It’s hers. The killer took all the ID out, weighted it with rocks, and tossed it into the water, probably hoping the current would carry it farther away. Which was a risk, because he had to know we might find it. He must have thought it was a greater risk to carry it with him.”
The second officer snorted. “Yeah. Like what guys’s gonna walk down the street carrying that thing?”
Green turned to give the officer a closer look. Constable Jeffrey Weiss, his tag said. He was dressed in a casual sports jacket with his tie trailing loose and his blond hair curling over his collar. He had high, Slavic cheekbones, and beneath the peak of his jauntily set baseball cap, his blue eyes stared back, almost in challenge. Green had seen that look before. Cocksure and cynical, the mark of a lousy cop. Yet there was an intelligence in the man’s gaze that gave Green pause. An instinct for the job, which could not be taught.
Green turned back to the purse. “Lou, can you dry out the pieces of paper? Maybe one of them will give us some answers.”
Paquette gave him a long, exasperated stare. “Gee, I thought I’d just chuck them. I suppose you want these answers like yesterday? When I’ve got a whole scene to process.”
Green chuckled. “Bob here is in charge of the case. I’m sure you’ll get it to him as soon as you can. After all, it’d be nice to know who she is. It helps the investigation no end.”
FOUR
The tragedy of Jane Doe’s death yielded one dubious bonus. When Green finally made his appearance in Barbara Devine’s office, she was so distracted by this new crisis on her turf that she forgot most of the tedious items on her agenda.
“Three murders in less than a week, Mike! Last year there were eight in the whole year. Ottawa is the laughingstock of the criminal world. While our politicians squabble about funding tulip festivals and light rail projects, the drug lords and the pimps are moving in and setting up shop. What are your drug squads doing? And Vice? Selling tickets to the show?”
She had shut the door to her third-floor office and closed the blinds on her fabulous view of the turreted museum across the square—sure signs that their meeting was not for the public eye. Or ear. She perched on the edge of her chair, the wings of her black lacquered hair skewering the air, and as she built up steam, her face grew almost as crimson as her nails.
Green leaned back in his chair with deliberate calm. “It’s too early to classify this as a homicide, Barbara. MacPhail’s doing the autopsy tomorrow. But in any case, there’s nothing to suggest drugs or prostitution.”
“Then you find it, or wrap this case up before the six o’clock news. If it’s her lunatic husband, nail him before the women’s groups have a field day claiming the streets are not safe. If it’s drugs or vice, I want ammunition so I can go to the Chief for funds. Who’ve you got leading the investigation?”
“Detective Gibbs.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Gibbs is afraid of his own shadow.”
Green checked his own flare of anger. “The senior guys are all on the Byward Pub murders.” At your insistence, remember, he thought, but kept it to himself. He wanted to escape with as little meddling from her as possible. “Gibbs has nearly three years in Major Crimes, and he knows what he’s doing.”
“Then I want you checking his every move, as I will yours.”
It took him half an hour to talk her down