LITMIR.BIZ

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not to imagine the worst. Perhaps she had just gone to stay at a nearby friend’s house, where she would not need money or ID. Perhaps they were using a friend’s car. He realized with a pang how little he knew of her social circle. She rarely brought friends home, and when she did, it was only a quick stop between one party and another. Introductions, if they were given at all, were a perfunctory flick of her hand in his direction.

      “Deedee, this is Mike,” she’d mutter. Not father, not Dad. Even after a full year, he had not yet earned that privilege.

      Hannah was an extrovert who ranged far afield in her pursuit of new thrills. The names and numbers of her many friends would be on her cell phone or in her agenda, both of which were nowhere to be found. But her high school was as good a place as any to start his search.

      Norman Bethune Alternate School was a rambling Victorian brick blockhouse on a side street in Old Ottawa South. There was very little about the ivy-covered exterior to suggest that it was a school, which was probably intentional, and Green had to bang on the dark, heavy door several times before a woman opened it a crack to peer out at him. She looked like an aging hippie, with her grey hair tucked into a frizzy braid and ropes of beads cascading over her braless chest.

      He introduced himself and held up his badge for good measure. She frowned and did not budge to open the door. “All the students are gone, Mr. Green. I’m just locking up.”

      Green stood on the doorstep feeling like a supplicant as he explained his inability to contact Hannah and his concerns in light of the missing girl. The woman looked unmoved.

      “I’m sure she’s just taking advantage of your absence to stay with friends,” she replied, edging out the door. “Students here are quite independent, and we find it works best to allow them freedom of choice.”

      He wanted to strangle her with the beads that drooped over her scrawny chest, but he behaved himself. Politely he asked her name and made a point of jotting it down. Eleanor Hicks, guidance counsellor.

      “Can you at least tell me if she came to school today?”

      “She did not.”

      The woman spoke without a hint of concern, and Green forced himself to remain polite. “Is that usual for her?”

      “For Hannah, yes.” Hicks pulled the door firmly shut behind her and headed down the front walk. “You have to understand, Independent Learning Credits are just that, Mr. Green. Hannah directs her own pace and quantity, and she gains credit as she fulfills the assignments. I can tell you she’s doing very well with that freedom. Independence suits her.”

      With Hannah, there is no other choice, he thought to himself. “I know that, believe me. I was like that too,” he added, hoping to breach the barricade of her mistrust. Why do people always equate police with authoritarian control? “I’m not going to force her into anything, but I do want to know she’s safe. I’m scared. Surely you can understand that.”

      “I’m sure she’s safe. She has a good head on her shoulders.”

      “No one said Lea Kovacev didn’t,” he countered. She had reached her bicycle and was fastening her helmet. “Please tell me the name and address of at least one of her friends.”

      Her lips drew tight. “Student records are confidential.”

      “One friend. Off the record. I won’t say where it came from.” Perhaps the anxiety in his tone finally touched her, for her disapproving scowl softened.

      “I can’t give it to you, but I will speak to some of her classmates tomorrow when I see them—”

      “Tomorrow! That leaves a whole night when she could be in trouble!”

      She sighed. “All right, give me your phone number. I’ll speak to one or two of the girls tonight when I get home and tell them you’re worried. It will be up to them to call you if they want.”

      Green bit back his frustration and scribbled his cell number on his card. The wait was going to drive him crazy, but it was probably the best he could hope for without dragging in subpoenas, justices of the peace and the rest of the heavy artillery of the state, for which he had not a whit of justification.

      * * *

      By five o’clock in the afternoon, the Ottawa Police headquarters on Elgin Street was normally winding down, the day shift and administrative staff heading home and the evening shift already out on the streets. Today, however, as Green came off the elevator from the parking garage, a crackling energy gripped the second floor, where the major crimes squad was housed. Every desk was occupied, and several detectives were clustered around the corner conference table, hunched over their laptops. They looked up as he passed by, but no one registered surprise at his presence there during his supposed holiday. After almost fifteen years in CID , I guess I’m a fixture, he thought. For the fifth time since leaving Hannah’s school, he checked his cell phone for messages, on the remote chance he had failed to hear its ring through the rush hour noise. Nothing.

      Brian Sullivan was not at his desk, but Green spotted Bob Gibbs in the corner. The lanky young detective sat with his phone jammed between his ear and his shoulder, while his slender fingers raced over his keyboard. His fine brown hair stood in harried tufts, and his eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue. Gibbs was a committed, meticulous detective who would sleep at his computer if it helped solve the case faster. If anyone besides Sullivan knew the latest details about the missing girl, he would.

      Green was just heading over towards him when the door to the stairwell flew open and Superintendent Barbara Devine swept in. She was dressed today in a surprisingly conservative navy suit, her flair for drama limited to a red silk scarf at her throat to match her crimson nails. Her eyes raked the squad room like a hawk searching for prey until they lit on Green. She skewered the air with a manicured nail.

      “Mike! Just the man I need!” A muffled snigger drifted across the room from an unknown source. Green turned toward her in dismay.

      “I’m just in here checking...” He hesitated. Devine didn’t need to know about his domestic tribulations. As her subordinate, he operated on the principle that the less she knew, the better. “Something in my office, Barbara. I’m on vacation, remember?”

      She waved a dismissive hand. “This will only take half an hour. Mrs. Kovacev is camped outside my office, demanding an update on her daughter’s case. I don’t have time. I’m late for an appointment already.” She glanced at the elegant gold watch on her wrist as if to drive home the point, then her eyes took in his jeans and rumpled Bagelshop golf shirt. Her arched eyebrows shot higher. “Good God, Mike. I need a senior officer, but what kind of impression—”

      “I’m on vacation,” he repeated. “Besides, I don’t know the case. Staff Sergeant Sullivan is the man to see.”

      She barely glanced around. “But he’s not here, is he?”

      “Then Detective Gibbs—”

      “Gibbs!” She snorted. “I don’t have to tell you the media is >all over this case, Mike. We need a respectable profile. We can’t have Mrs. Kovacev and all the other tearful mothers of teenage darlings filling up airtime on the six o’clock news. Which I guarantee will happen if she walks out of this station dissatisfied. You don’t have to actually know anything, Mike. Just hold her hand awhile. You’ve done that so often, you can do it in your sleep.”

      Green ignored the hidden innuendo, choosing to assume she meant his kindness and not his seductive prowess. Even so, practice hardly made perfect when it came to his handholding skills. Faced with the tears and anguish of relatives, he always felt clumsy and inadequate. There was nothing he could do to ease their pain, except go out and catch the perpetrator responsible.

      But before he could rally further protest, Devine pivoted on her stiletto heel and stalked back down the hall. “Get a tie on and wait by the elevator. I’ll send her down.”

      Green did keep a tangle of well-worn ties in his desk drawer for surprises like this, but even a tie wouldn’t salvage the golf shirt.

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