Dream Chasers (22 page)

Green led both of them out into the sunshine and urged the man to take deep breaths as they strolled through the tall grass towards the road. The terrier scampered off ahead, pouncing on rocks and leaves in her path. When they were sufficiently far from the crime scene, Green invited Reg to tell his story.

“Maggie was off-leash,” he began, his voice surprisingly strong for his frail frame. He watched his dog anxiously as he walked. “I know she's not meant to be in that part of the park, but I could never see the harm in it. There are so few people around, especially at that hour, and she finds all the big dogs in the main area too overwhelming. I love the woods, especially when all the woodland flowers are out. The violets and trilliums were spectacular last month. We take the same route every day, you see.” He paused and turned back to gesture towards the far corner of the woods. “We start in the parking lot and we hug the outside trails all the way around, where almost no one else goes. It takes me about an hour, but I'm not very fast any more, and it's an excellent workout for both of us. Maggie runs off chasing chipmunks and digging up sticks.”

Knowing the value of letting the recollections flow unimpeded, Green refrained from interruption, but his impatience must have showed, because the man pulled himself erect with determination.

“Today we were about halfway around, when all of a sudden Maggie tore off into the woods out of sight. The next moment she set up this high-pitched barking—the kind she makes to warn me. I called her repeatedly, but to no avail, so I left the trail and followed the sound through the brush. About a hundred yards in, I see her racing in circles, digging. I can smell the decay at this point, so I'm afraid she's going to roll in some dead animal. Terriers are good diggers, and by the time I reached her, she'd dug up the ground all around this pile of dead branches and leaves. I had an uneasy feeling, and then I see she's tugging on something and trying to pull...”

For the first time, Reg's voice faded. Green waited. “It's a foot. It's the first time I've found my cell phone useful since my daughter gave it to me. In case of emergencies, Dad, she said, and I guess this qualifies. I dragged Maggie away and came out into the field here, thinking this would be the best way for the police to access it. The parking lot would be an awfully long trek in, and the paths get very confusing. I know them like the back of my hand, of course, but only the regulars would. After I called 911, well...” He managed a faint smile. Some colour had returned to his papery skin. “I just sat down to wait. There was no strength left in my legs after that.”

Green nodded. He'd been studying the grass as they walked, and besides the tracks made by their own vehicles, he could see no signs of disturbance. It didn't look as if the killer had driven in by this route. “Did you notice anything unusual in the park today? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Like what?”

“You're here every day. You see the regulars, the patterns. Was anything different? Cars, people, dogs?” Reg was shaking his head. “Did you encounter anyone else on your walk this morning?”

“Oh yes, there were at least half a dozen cars in the parking lot, and I saw walkers on the trails. I gave descriptions to the other officer.”

“What about farther out, closer to the body? You said far fewer people go on the outer trails.”

“That's because dogs aren't allowed off-leash, you see. So the area is left to kids having drug parties and setting camp fires.”

And killers burying bodies, Green thought. “Did you meet anyone at all there today?”

Reg wagged his head back and forth in denial. He whistled sharply as his dog ranged too close to the busy road. Maggie wheeled about and raced back towards them on her stubby legs. “I've been trying to remember,” Reg said once he'd slipped on her leash. “But I don't think I saw a soul. Not that that was unusual, at that hour on a weekday.”

Green thought about the body, ripe enough to smell. “What about the last three days. You said you walk here every day. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary on...say, Friday or Saturday?”

Reg stopped and stared into the distance, screwing up his craggy face in an effort to remember. Maggie tugged at the end of her leash. “Saturday and Sunday are always much busier around here, with what we call the weekend walkers. You even get kids on mountain bikes going along the path I take. They nearly run Maggie over sometimes, so I usually go earlier in the morning on the weekends. But I don't recall anyone out of the ordinary. Everyone had a dog, it's the ones who don't that you notice. You wonder what they're doing here, and Maggie usually barks at them.” His face cleared, and his pallid blue eyes grew wide. “Come to think of it, there was one man on the track without a dog. Saturday? Maybe Sunday. No, Saturday, because it was just before the thunderstorm. Maggie barked at him. But it could mean nothing. You do get joggers really early in the morning, and this man was jogging, dressed in a bulky sweat suit with a hood.”

“What colour?”

“Navy? Black? Nondescript.”

And hard to see in the woods, Green thought. “Can you describe the individual?”

“Not well. He had his head down and the hood up. I was so busy trying to corral Maggie that I barely noticed. Some of these joggers kick at them, you see.”

“But it was a man?”

“Oh, yes. Solidly built, with a powerful stride. A fairly young man, I'd say. At least...” his eyes twinkled, “from my perspective.”

“Did he have anything with him? In his hands, on his back?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Could you show me where you saw him? Take me there?”

“Yes, but it's quite a ways from here, up near the Cedarview Road portion of the trail. It would be quite a long way to carry a body, I should think, no matter how strong you are.”

The two men retraced their route to Green's car, then drove around the outskirts of Bruce Pit to the official parking lot. A flashing police cruiser blocked off the entrance, and the paths had been cordoned off, although a group of curious and disgruntled dog walkers had collected outside the yellow tape. Green noted with satisfaction that the parking lot had a gravel base and a sandy entrance to the trails, both excellent materials to lodge in the treads of tires and shoes. The sand was crisscrossed with shoe and paw prints, however, a forensic investigator's nightmare.

With a warning from Green to stick to the edge of the path, Reg picked up his dog and struck out along the trail that hugged the fence at the edge of a large field, walking with a confident, upright stride that belied his frail appearance. Green kept his eyes to the ground, looking for any clues that suggested a heavy object had been transported along the path. The recent rains had left muddy patches where prints and bicycle tracks stood out in stark relief. The problem was knowing whether any of them were connected to the killing. Lyle Cunningham's and Lou Paquette's teams were already swamped by the physical evidence associated with Lea's death; how would the Ident team even begin to process this scene? He contemplated the unpleasant possibility of asking Barbara Devine to borrow resources from some other police section. In her bid for the Deputy Chief 's chair, she would not appreciate the implication that her own department was not up to the job.

Reg stopped at a fork in the trail and gestured to the left one leading into the woods. “I saw him just in there. And truth be told, it's not a very good trail for joggers, too many rocks and roots to twist your ankle on.”

“What's up ahead?”

“More of the same. It's a very secondary trail that eventually loops around to connect up with a larger one farther up.”

Green stepped forward. “All right. Let's continue your route of this morning to where the body is.”

Reg wavered and reached out to grasp a tree trunk. In his arms, Maggie struggled to break free. “I've already shown the police...”

“I know. I just need to know what route was used. We won't go up to the crime scene.”

With a far less confident stride, Reg set off again. They walked for about ten minutes, the woods thickening and the path narrowing as it wove around trees and over protruding roots. Suddenly Reg stopped and frowned intently into the dense brush. “This is where Maggie ran off.”

The crime scene was too far to be visible through the woods, but Green could hear the distant murmur of voices. He scrutinized the ground. There were fewer prints visible in the mud here, and the dirt looked as if it had been smeared. He was no forensic expert, but beneath the smears, he thought he could make out the deep cut of a tire track slightly thicker than a bicycle tread. His heart quickened. Had someone been trying to erase the track?

After thanking Reg, Green sent him and Maggie back the way they had come, promising to get an officer to drive them home. Green himself went further down the trail and looped in a semi-circle to approach the crime scene obliquely. Lou Paquette's Ident team would have to scout every inch, looking for the entry route through the woods, and there was no point in adding his own contamination to that of previous dogs and walkers over the past three days.

Sullivan spotted him as he approached and broke off his intense conversation with Paquette. His broad face was taut and his eyes flat, as if neutrality was an effort.

Green steeled himself. If Sullivan was shaken, it was bad. “What have we got?”

“Nude body, young adult female, according to MacPhail, quite heavyset—”

Green sucked in his breath. “Jenna Zukowski?”

Sullivan shook his head grimly. “Impossible to tell. The killer cut her into pieces and stuffed them into garbage bags. The head's missing.”

Green felt his stomach rise. “What's MacPhail's estimate on time of death?”

“She's ambient temperature, so probably at least twentyfour hours, but there's still traces of rigor mortis, so three on the outside. MacPhail's gathered bugs, and he says he'll have more for us in a day or two. He did say one other thing. The body was moved several hours after death, according to the lividity on her side.”

“That suggests the killer had to wait to dispose of the body. Probably had to wait till cover of darkness. Too many people here during the day.” Green was already thinking of the long route in through the woods. “Anything to help identify her?”

“There's no purse or other
ID
, no clothes, the killer left nothing to help us. But judging from her pubic hair, she might be a brunette.”

“Jenna was a brunette.”

“At this stage it's all speculation, Green. Pubic hair and head hair are not always the same colour. We could have a sexual predator on our hands who likes to collect heads.”

“Other than the dismemberment, are there any signs of violence or sexual assault?”

“Nothing obvious, but MacPhail has to get her cleaned up and onto the table. Right now we don't have any reason to link the two cases, so I'll assign another team to this Jane Doe. Meanwhile, we'll get all the information we can about Jenna— medical history, distinguishing marks, shoe size, fingerprints. The killer thought he was smart cutting off her head, but he didn't realize we can take fingerprints from a corpse.”

Green grimaced. “So now there's a severed head lying around somewhere, waiting for some lucky soul to stumble upon it.”

“Heads are a lot easier to transport than whole bodies. It could be at the bottom of some lake by now.”

Green mulled over the meagre facts. Jenna Zukowski had been missing at least three days, which fell at the outside limit of the estimated time of death of this body, unless she had not been killed for some time after her disappearance. It was possible her disappearance and this body were unrelated, but what were the chances of two heavyset young female victims surfacing at the same time?

He glanced at the white-suited officers working around the makeshift grave. Paquette was setting evidence markers in the soil nearby. Green tiptoed closer with care until Paquette's scowl stopped him.

“Any theories yet on how he transported her here and what route he took?”

Paquette nodded, allowing a grin to sneak through his scowl as he gestured to the ground. Green kept his eyes averted from the bloated white body, but could see little through the leaves and twigs. “At least we're having some luck with that. The body was placed here before the storm, but luckily the thick trees protected the site. Looks like he tried to wipe out his tracks, but we've got one nice clear footprint in the loose dirt he was digging, and some tracks that look like tire marks. Bigger than a bicycle, maybe a cart or wagon. I'll take molds of them. He used a medium-sized spade to try to dig a grave. Dug down only six inches before giving up and piling branches on top. People don't realize how hard it is to dig in the forest, with all the roots and rocks in the way.”

So the killer had been equipped with a cart and a shovel when he brought the body here, Green thought. Which meant that, unless he'd hidden them somewhere, the jogger Reg had seen was not their man. Probably just a local resident out for his morning exercise.

Paquette was peering at the ground as he scrabbled through the bush in the direction of the trail Green had used. “Judging from these broken branches and dislodged stones, I'd say he brought her this way.” He straightened and surveyed the woods. “Considering how close he is to the field, he took the long way in. Risky too, coming all that way with a body in a cart.”

“Which means he must have dumped her in the middle of the night,” Green noted. “It also suggests he didn't know the park that well. He was probably playing it by ear looking for an isolated area. All in all, not the best thought-out murder plan.”

Paquette grunted. “You guys can speculate all you want, but I'm sticking with my clues here. There's plenty of stuff here to keep me going, and if you bring me the guy's shoe, I can nail him for you.”