Dream Chasers (6 page)

He forced his eyes open and willed them down to study the rough grey rock at his feet. There were no telltale scuffs or drag marks to suggest someone had slipped or been pushed over the edge. Loose bits of gravel and broken glass lay undisturbed. Studying each square centimetre of the ground, he picked his way out over the rock until he was directly opposite the bench. Nothing. If Lea had met with tragedy, there was no sign of it here.

What then? Had she simply run off with a boyfriend? Been carried away by the romance of the moment and lost all track of time? Had they got so drunk or high that her judgment and memory went out the window? But later on, when the drink and the drugs wore off, surely she'd realize she'd forgotten her backpack and return for it. Surely she'd phone her mother.

What girl would leave her mother frantic with worry for two whole days?

Don't even go there, Green chided himself, acutely conscious of the heavy, silent presence of his cell phone in his pocket. Of course she might, because teenagers are idiots, whose parents' existence are barely even on their radar. Hours are suddenly days. How time flies when...

“Mike, what the hell are you doing out there!” Sullivan's voice crashed through his thoughts. He tore his eyes from the ground in front of him to see Sullivan peering down over the fence. Sullivan was one of the few who knew Green was terrified of heights, and his eyes were wide with astonishment.

To Green's relief, he sized up the situation immediately. “You want a hand over there?”

Green nodded. Sullivan vaulted over the fence and slithered down the slope, grasping at shrubs to slow his pace. Out on the clifftop, he made his way over to Green with sure, nimble strides that belied his bulky frame.

“It doesn't look as if she fell or was pushed over,” Green shouted, more loudly than he needed, even with the roar of the falls. “There are no marks on the ground.”

Sullivan squinted down into the foam. “There wouldn't be if she jumped, though. All her clothes were neatly folded like she'd taken them off to go in the water.”

Green shuddered at the thought. “Suicide?”

“Probably just misadventure. We'll have to ask her mother if she was a good swimmer and liked to dive. The mother should know if her bathing suit is missing too. That will tell us if she set off with a swim in mind.”

Green nodded, but a small inconsistency nagged at the corner of his mind. If she had been wearing a bathing suit, why hadn't her panties been found among her clothes? “Can we carry on this discussion back up there on flat land?”

Sullivan chuckled. “Sure. Want a hand?”

“No! Just walk behind me.” No point in giving the guys more to laugh about. Green knew that, as a Jew with two university degrees and an aversion to blood and guns, he was an oddity in the locker room as it was. His knees were wobbling when he clambered back over the fence, but he feigned nonchalance. He glanced questioningly towards Ron Leclair, who was just closing the student notebook.

“Not much useful stuff in here that I can see,” Leclair was saying. “It's her English notebook, seems to be mostly class notes, doodling and lots of stuff that looks like Shakespeare.”

One of the officers guffawed. “Oh, like you'd recognize Shakespeare if he bit you in the ass, Ron.”

Leclair grinned. “Well, it's not Don Cherry, is all I'm saying.”

“Any names, contacts, phone numbers hidden among the Shakespeare?” Green interrupted.

Leclair sobered as if only just remembering his inspector was here. “Not that I could tell. But maybe you should take a look, sir.”

Green ignored the jibe. He doubted Leclair was aware of the hint of mockery in his tone. Plenty of police officers had university degrees nowadays, and even Green's masters degree in criminology was not unusual. Unlike Green though, for many it was less about knowledge than about gaining a toehold up the promotional ladder. Leclair himself was ambitious enough that he'd probably go home and read a Shakespeare play that night, so that he could sound better informed in the morning.

Green nodded distractedly. “I want Ident to give everything a thorough going over first,” he said.

Lyle Cunningham looked up from his camera. He had identified one useable print on the left side of the bench where the paint was still fairly new and glossy, and he was focussing his lens for the shot before he lifted it. “I'll get to it tomorrow. I've still got lots to do at the scene here tonight. When it gets dark, I want to check the vicinity for semen and blood.”

Green rifled through his memory quickly. It hadn't rained since Sunday, which was one blessing, although dozens of lovers and hikers could have trekked through the scene in the last three days. Finding and matching any bodily fluids was a long shot, but all avenues had to be followed up. He was grateful that Cunningham and his partner had been on call. The Ident officer was an obsessive, infuriatingly meticulous pain in the ass, but the evidence he collected and the case he built would be beyond reproach.

“Thanks, Lyle.” Green glanced back at the MisPers sergeant. “Anything useful in her wallet?”

“The kid is a packrat and a doodler. There must be three dozen receipts from her local
ATM
and Mac's Milk stuffed into it. It'll take me awhile to sort through it.”

“Has there been any activity on her bank card in the last two days?”

Leclair shook his head. “The first thing we checked after her known friends. She had a
VISA
and a
TD
debit card. Neither has been touched. In fact, her bank account hasn't been touched since Saturday, and even then there was no big single withdrawal like she was planning to do a bunk. She has a nice couple of grand in there which could have financed a decent trip somewhere, but her mother insists she is saving it for college.”

Green's heart grew heavy. Their missing girl was looking more and more like everyone's perfect daughter. Phoned her mother like clockwork, studied Shakespeare and saved her money for college. Despite the romantic setting here by the falls, despite the absence of a struggle, he had a horrible premonition about her fate. Along with a pretty good idea of who had sealed it. Next to finding the girl herself, they needed to nail down the existence of any special boy in her life.

Jenna Zukowski let herself into her apartment and tossed her keys and mail on the bookcase just inside the door. They teetered precariously on the pile already there before tumbling onto the floor. An obese ginger cat who was ambling over to say hello shot back behind the sofa with surprising speed. Jenna picked them up and plunked them in the corner of the kitchen counter, where a secondary pile was already forming. Who had the time for this? When you worked all day and had to find time for yoga, shopping, cooking and friends in the precious hours left, who had time to vacuum and keep the junk at bay? It wasn't as if anyone ever saw the place. She met her friends at movies or in pubs. This was her private space, and if it was a pigsty, who was to care?

She was feeling particularly annoyed after her futile afternoon. No one else at the high school seemed to want to confide in her or to speculate on the identity of Lea's boyfriend. When she hinted that he might be one of the school's acting students, they clammed up even more. Even the female teachers, from whom she'd expected a little solidarity. No one wanted to imagine that one of their perfect boys next door might have a dark side.

The drama teacher turned out to be Nigel, the handsome young teacher who'd been offended by the cops' suspicions earlier in the day. No way he was going to give the cops any other innocent victims to go after, he said. Jenna stayed around to watch the rehearsal of the musical
West Side Story,
which was being staged that weekend by his senior students. She noticed that the three leading boys were not only handsome but talented. They belted out their songs with a clarity and power that might take them as far as Broadway some day.

She wrote their names carefully on her list of suspects. After the rehearsal, she hung around the main door of the school, hoping to see what they did afterwards. None of them acted at all guilty, at least as she imagined guilty people should act. No agitation or preoccupation, no shifty eyes or furtive gait. They laughed with friends, talked about acting ideas, hugged each other and headed off to bus stops. Two of them linked up with girlfriends who were waiting outside the door and went off with arms entwined. Unless my Romeo is not just a killer but a cheat, I can scratch them off my list, she thought.

That left Justin Wakefield, who played Tony, the doomed lover in the story. He had a voice like honey-coated chocolate and dark liquid eyes to match. Not that Jenna was obsessed with chocolate, although over the years, many more of her pleasures had been derived from the luscious confection than from men. Justin had emerged from the stage door with his knapsack over his shoulder and his head bowed in a sulky scowl. He had barely acknowledged the hugs and the encouragement from the others in the cast and had slumped to the bus stop alone.

As if he'd lost his best friend.

Jenna had scurried back inside the auditorium, anxious to catch Nigel before he left. Even if the drama teacher denied it, she should be able to tell from his expression whether Justin was Lea's boyfriend. Nigel had not had too many kind words about Justin's performance throughout the rehearsal, which he called worse than a braying donkey, so she hoped he would not be too protective.

Her hopes were soon deflated on that score. Nigel was talking to the musical conductor and paused only long enough to glare at her. When she finally seized a break in the conversation to pose her question, he exploded.

“You are playing a very dangerous game,” he snapped. “It's no business of yours who Lea's boyfriend is. If the cops want to know, they will ask. But I will tell you this, in the hope you'll take your nose out of it. Lea is not Justin's girlfriend. Plenty of girls would like to be, and I'm sure one of them is, but it's not Lea.”

“Does she hang around with the acting crowd?” Jenna pressed. “Maybe one of them will know more.”

He took a deep breath, as if trying to make up for his initial rudeness. “She hung around here, yes. Sometimes. She liked the story and wanted to understand how each character felt.”

“Anyone in particular she hung around with?”

“I've already told the police all of this.” He picked up his thick black binder and turned towards the door. “Look, the students are upset enough as it is. Let's just leave it alone and let the police do their job.”

I would do that, she thought, if they knew what they were looking for. But who else besides her knew about the secret lover, the Romeo to her Juliet. In fact, wasn't
West Side Story
a modern-day version of the play, and wasn't the character of Tony the same as Romeo? How was that for a coincidence?

By the time she left the auditorium again, it was after five thirty, and the rest of the school was deserted. There was no chance to follow up on Justin or to inquire about other school leaders who might fit the bill. Musicians, artists, maybe even exotic poets. Tomorrow she would have limited time to poke around, because she was booked at another school in the afternoon, so at this rate she might solve very little of the mystery unless another student came forward to confide.

As was her habit upon arriving home, she grabbed a Diet Coke and flicked on the television in the background as she sat down with her laptop. Google was her best friend. It had an answer for everything, from techniques for dealing with cross-dressing twelve-year-olds, which they'd never taught her in social work school, to the real scoop on the latest man she'd met at yoga. She navigated its quirks with ease and typed in the words “Justin Wakefield Pleasant Park Ottawa”. Those few specific terms should be enough to catch anything there was on the net about the boy.

There were some newspaper reviews of shows he'd been in and an article about a recent Ottawa fringe show, but best of all, the very first hit was Justin Wakefield's own web page. How easy was that? She clicked on the link and found a gold mine. Blazoned across his home page was the announcement of his acceptance into the National Theatre School in the fall. A quick check revealed the school to be the most prestigious drama school in Canada, with an impressive roster of alumni including Sandra Oh, Michael Riley and Colm Feore.

Justin's web page provided a list of previous acting credits, which to her untrained eye seemed astonishingly long for a boy barely eighteen. There was also an effusive bio which thanked his devoted parents for recognizing his talent early and making the move to Ottawa from the town of Prescott so that he could pursue his dance, singing and drama lessons. Jenna had passed through Prescott once when she took a wrong turn off the 401 from Toronto, and she knew it was minuscule. Justin Wakefield, poised on the brink of future stardom, had come a long way indeed.

Some testimonials from directors and acting coaches described the sophistication and charisma that shone through, despite his simple beginnings. His confidence and work ethic were a rare treat among today's spoiled and insecure stars, they said. Jenna recalled the scowl on his face earlier in the day when the director Nigel had criticized his focus and lack of energy. “Where are you today?” Nigel had said.

With the opening night of the show less than a week away, could it be that mentally he was somewhere else, Jenna wondered? Reliving the last moments of his girlfriend's life?

Lea Kovacev's name intruded into her hearing, and she glanced up to see the six o'clock news just beginning. The camera panned over a scene of rolling parkland, police cars and yellow tape before zeroing in on a group of officers in dark grey coveralls with POLICE in large white letters across their backs. They were poking at the underbrush with long poles. Jenna froze, dread crawling down her spine.