anyone?” “Oh yes. There’s a whole group of graduate students, most of whom are on the list I gave you. They’re all working under Dr. Myles Halton.”
There was respect in her voice as she uttered the name, as if her accomplishments were nothing compared to his.
Green had never heard of him. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“To a neuropsychologist, yes. He’s one of the up-and-coming experts on language and the brain. Students from all over Canada, even the world, would sell their souls for the chance to work with him.”
*
The ten detectives from the Major Crimes Squad had been waiting for half an hour by the time Green barrelled through the door of the conference room. Sullivan had installed them in the unrenovated briefing room walled in blackboards and cork, for which Green secretly thanked him. How he hated the high-tech flash that passed for progress in modern meetings. More time was wasted fiddling with control buttons than it took to fill an entire chalkboard with facts.
Sullivan had used the waiting time to brief them on the background of the case and to pin sketches and photographs of the scene to the cork board on the wall. It took Green an additional ten minutes to report on his visit to the Blair house.
“You are to keep the procedural screw-ups strictly to yourselves,” he admonished in the most inspectorish tone he could muster. “I’ve looked at the case, and I don’t think the crime scene would have told us a hell of a lot more anyway. Jonathan Blair was a quiet, law-abiding kid with no priors, not even a speeding ticket. There aren’t any obvious motives for his murder, and we certainly have no ready suspects. But we’ve got more than enough leads to follow. As the facts stand now, and ruling out robbery and psychos, there are three possible motives. The first two, given the age of the victim, are predictable.”
Green turned to the blackboard and wrote a word in block letters. “Drugs. Was a deal going down in that remote section of the library? Jonathan Blair had no wallet in his possession. No money was found at the scene. But Ident has vacuumed every inch of the carpet in the vicinity, and if some drugs spilled, they’ll find them. The forensic pathologist is working on Blair’s body now, and he’ll tell us if Blair was a user. Meanwhile, we use our standard investigative techniques. Ask his associates, check his bank accounts.”
He jotted the words “forensics, autopsy, interviews, bank” under “Drugs” and moved over to write a new column. “Passion. Blair attracted girls. His mother says there was a recent break-up; check into it, check into jilted lovers and jealous rivals. According to his mother, Jonathan never got angry and never treated people badly, a rose-tinted view of her boy. Let’s find out the truth. He was twenty-four years old, single, rich and handsome. There’s got to be some skeletons.”
Green studied the men around the conference table. He had worked with most of them in the fourteen years he had been solving major crimes. Jules was no fool. He had given Green the ten best officers on the Squad. Sometimes when Green took a personal interest in a case, he ended up doing much of the field work himself because he doubted the competence of anyone else. It didn’t make him popular with the staff sergeant who managed the squad or with the brass, who liked their pigeon holes, but it felt good to be on the streets again.
The men before him were all solid, experienced investigators who needed little direction, but Deputy Chief Lynch’s personal interest added an extra twist. Thoughtfully Green turned to the third column on the blackboard and wrote “Innocent Bystander”, debating how much to let his own disdain and suspicion show through.
“That’s the third motive in this case, the one that Lynch believes most likely. Jonathan Blair may be dead simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, standing in the medieval literature section of the university library while a heavy drug deal went down. Or while some freshman got mugged for his bus money.”
There was a cautious ripple of laughter. The detectives generally shared Green’s view of the top brass, but they never knew who the spies might be.
Green shrugged, deadpan. “It is possible. So check it out, get the help of university security, ask the drug squad, poke around to see if anyone saw anything suspicious last night.”
Green dusted chalk dust off his hands and stepped away from the board. “That’s it. I don’t have any idea which motive is right. Maybe it’s something else entirely. I don’t think it was robbery, but his wallet was missing, so ask his friends how much money he usually carried around with him. I also don’t think it was a psycho. Too clean. So we have five things we need to do.” Green picked up the chalk again. “One team— Watts and Charbonneau—you search for possible witnesses to the crime. I know the guys last night did a routine canvass of people who were at the library, but I want us to do it again. Set up a hotline and advertise it on the radio stations and in the newspapers, on the University’s PA system. Another thing you can do is check the computer records of books taken out or returned on the evening of June 9, especially with call numbers from the fourth floor.”
Watts and Charbonneau exchanged grimaces. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Lots of work and very little payoff.
“The second team—Jackson and Laplante—find out all you can about the victim, including his friends and his recent movements.” Green paused as a small inconsistency niggled into his thoughts. “Blair was studying neuropsychology, which is on the fifth floor of the library. He was killed on the fourth, plus he was killed in a remote corner, not a place you’d usually pass going from one part of the library to another. Find out what he was doing in the literature section.
“The third team—Gibbs and O’Neil—get the autopsy and forensic results, bug them until every last detail is in, and follow up any lead they give. If there are none, help Watts and
Charbonneau. Don’t bug me for every little thing. You guys know your job, but if anybody gets a major break, radio me ASAP.”
He paused a moment, scanning the scribbling on the board. “The fourth team is to conduct a search of Blair’s university lab and interview all his professors, fellow students and associates who aren’t on Jackson’s list. That’s a big job. Goodwin, you better work with Perchesky and Proulx on it.” He grinned at the last remaining detective unassigned. “Brian, you’re coming with me.”
“And what are we doing?” “We’re going to start with the woman who discovered the crime.”
*
Carrie MacDonald had been given the day off to recover from the shock, but it didn’t seem to Green that she needed it. She had just washed her hair, and it was piled high on her head in a pink towel when she greeted the two detectives at her door. Her blue terry cloth robe gaped slightly over her breasts, and her cheeks were pink from the shower. Her eyes lit up at the sight of Sullivan.
“Hi, Sergeant! Are you on duty again?”
“Still,” he muttered.
“You’ll need some coffee, then.” She stepped back to allow them to squeeze past her into the narrow hall. “I sure need it. Boy, what a night we had!”
Green bristled. Carrie MacDonald seemed to have overlooked him completely as she turned to lead them down the dimly lit hall. Sullivan was five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than he was. He looked like a cop, and people responded instinctively to his authority. His ruggedness appealed to women, evoking some primal suppliant need in them, but all this was wasted on him. Sullivan had loved his wife since he was sixteen and seemed impervious to the fire in other women’s eyes.
Green, on the other hand, drifted through a crowd unobserved. His boyish freckled face evoked nothing except the occasional urge to mother him. At times it was an advantage, when he wanted to be unnoticed or underestimated, but there were times when it was a curse.
“I’m Inspector Green,” he said sharply at her retreating back. “I’m in charge of the investigation.”
“Oh!” She turned her blue eyes on him in surprise. “Sorry, I thought you