smiled drily. “Whereas boys go out and punch someone? That’s what you mean?”
“Well, no. I mean, not punch someone, but bottle it up. Pretend everything’s cool and under control.” Vic muttered something under his breath. Sensing a hint of mockery, she turned to glare at him. “Suicide statistics among young men back me up on that.”
“You’re right, you’re absolutely right,” Ken interjected. “But I’ve been monitoring the boys in my classes to make sure that if I see any hint of trouble, I speak to them. They may not go down to Guidance, but they talk to me privately.”
“And were there any? I mean, boys that you were worried about?” Ken frowned at her thoughtfully for a moment.
“Not unduly,” he said eventually. Then he glanced at his watch in dismay and shoved his whistle in his mouth. Waving his arms, he blew three blasts that left Jenna’s ears ringing. Through gritted teeth, she persevered with her script.
“Do you know if any of the boys were especially close to her? Boyfriends or ex-boyfriends? Those will be the ones in the most distress.”
Ken continued to wave as he started down the stairs. “I don’t pay attention to that.”
Jenna followed him, aware of Vic uncomfortably close behind her. “She must have had boyfriends. She was a pretty girl.”
Ken stopped abruptly and swung on her. “Was? Are you suggesting she’s dead?”
“No, no! Of course not! But I mean, it’s worrisome, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think anything,” Ken retorted. “And don’t you go putting that kind of thought into the kids’ minds either!”
“Whoa Kenny, easy now,” Vic said. “I think Jenna’s just saying what we’re all thinking. Right? Just preparing ourselves. In case. In the sports business, it’s always good to be prepared. Anticipate that bodycheck before it slams you into the boards.”
“Oh, fuck off, Vic,” Ken said as he strode off across the field.
* * *
By nine o’clock in the morning, the heat had already draped a soggy blanket over the streets. Behind the smoggy haze, the sun shone blurry white in the eastern sky, and not the slightest puff of breeze stirred the leaves in the wilting trees. As Green approached Norman Bethune Alternate School, he saw a group of students clustered in the shade of a massive old tree, fanning themselves with notebooks as they bent over their work. Green scanned the crowd anxiously for a familiar blue head, but to no avail.
He approached the group. It was like looking at a dozen Hannahs. Shredded clothes, body piercings and tattoos were everywhere, and hair styles ranged from tiger-striped mohawks to gothic black sheets. The students eyed him with suspicion, no doubt bemused by his Bagelshop T-shirt and jeans, but their eyes grew dark when he introduced himself. A lanky, skeletal girl in a long, multicoloured kaftan wagged her head back and forth. Her every move seemed to be in slow motion.
“Hannah never told us you were a cop.”
I’m sure she didn’t, he thought. He doubted Hannah even wasted breath on her boring old dad. “Do you know where she is? She’s not answering her cell.”
“Well, that’s Hannah. She comes and goes. Smart though. When she’s here, she gets more work done in half a day than the rest of us do in three.”
“So it’s normal for her not to be at school?”
“Oh, yeah. Especially now. It’s so nice out, we’d all be at the beach if we didn’t have stuff to finish up.”
“Do you know where she’d hang out?”
The lanky girl’s eyes shuttered. She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Hannah never likes the same thing twice. Drugs, boys, hang-outs, it’s always got to be something new.”
Green’s heart chilled at the mention of drugs. He’d been in Major Crimes too long to be cavalier about it. Drugs meant dealers, and dealers meant trouble. “Any guesses?”
“Well—” The younger girl in the striped hair began, but the lanky girl shot her a scowl that silenced her in mid-word. Green wanted to throttle her but forced himself to be nonchalant. Throttling never worked with Hannah either. Instead, he dredged up a rueful smile.
“Look, I’m a dad. I worry. And because I’m a cop, I worry even more. Like right now, with this teenage girl missing, I’m imagining all sorts of crazy things. So please, if you know anything, tell me.”
“We don’t know anything,” the tiger-haired girl said. “Not really.”
“Can you at least tell me if she’s all right?”
“I’m sure.” The lanky girl bobbed her head. Her black hair swung in ropes. “The guy—the people—she’s with are cool.”
Green gritted his teeth to keep from screaming at her. “If you can reach her, or you hear from her, tell her to call me. Please!” They exchanged glances, and to a person twitched their shoulders in a doubtful shrug. It was not a comforting response, but there was nothing more he could do beyond attaching electrodes to unspeakable parts. He headed back to the car, seriously debating the wisdom of filing a missing persons report. Hannah might never forgive him if he did, but if something was really wrong, or something had happened to her, he would never forgive himself if he didn’t.
As he was nosing his way into the impossible traffic on Bank Street en route to the Elgin Street Police Headquarters, a police cruiser streaked by towards Billings Bridge, its lights flashing and siren blaring. Green’s blood ran cold. At that very moment his phone rang, and he grabbed it, praying it was Hannah.
It was Brian Sullivan.
Six
Lea Kovacev had travelled a mere hundred metres from where she’d probably entered the water, and had come to rest on the rocky point of a small island just below the falls. The Rideau River, having picked up speed on its plunge through the gorge, raced white and angry over the rocks below the falls and split to encircle the tiny island in its path. Only five metres of water separated the island from the eastern shore, and it was easily crossed by a person wearing rubber boots.
She was still face down in the shallow water when Green arrived, her bloated body rocking gently in the reeds and rocks that marked the shore. MacPhail was completing his examination, and Lyle Cunningham was photographing the scene. Green splashed out to join Brian Sullivan, who stood knee-deep in the river a safe distance away. The rest of the officers clustered on the eastern shore of the mainland opposite. The roar of the falls rushed in to fill the human silence that had descended on the scene.
“Likely caught underwater on a lip of rock in the gorge and only dislodged when the body began to bloat,” MacPhail intoned, showing none of the glee that usually accompanied even the grisliest of deaths. His mood was reflected in the faces of all the police officers on the scene. They had known the odds and read the danger signals, but they had hoped against all reason that they would find her alive. Dejection radiated from their slumping shoulders and their listless search of the grounds. There was no urgency now, no race against time. There never had been.
On his way to the scene, Green had pushed through the media, who were pinned back in the park above, mercifully out of sight. They were suitably sombre, waxing poetic as they spun the sparse information they’d been given into full-bodied stories of Lea’s ill-fated end. Green knew that within minutes, the news would be on all the airwaves, reaching her school, her friends, and her mother. Someone needed to get to the woman first.
He eyed the body, which appeared to be naked. Lea’s mother had said the bikini came off easily, and Green wondered whether the river had torn it free, or some human hand.
“Has MacPhail said anything about sexual assault?” he asked Sullivan.
Sullivan shook his head. “So far he’s observed no signs of trauma, except some tearing