Dream Chasers: An Inspector Green Mystery: 6

The aging bedsprings creaked as Inspector Michael Green rolled over and opened one eye. Pre-dawn light bathed the unfamiliar room in pale grey. What the hell was that godforsaken racket? It sounded as if an entire army of angry fishwives was camped outside the window. What had happened to the idyllic country morn Sharon had promised? What had happened to sleeping till all hours with no alarm clocks, no radios, no early morning briefings at the station? Not even Tony, their energizer bunny toddler, was up yet, for God’s sake.

Green lay in bed, trying to ignore the spring that poked into his back. Crows, he realized. Flapping and screeching in the pines overhead. They were soon joined by the warbling and chirping of other birds and the scolding chatter of a squirrel. At the sound of the squirrel, Modo, their Lab-Rottweiler mix who weighed in at over a hundred pounds but thought she was a Chihuahua, began to crawl out from under the bed, where she had hidden when they first arrived at the cottage the night before. Being a Humane Society refugee, Modo did not handle change well, and the pitch darkness filled with alien smells and sounds had sent her into a panic. She had not even emerged for dinner, and all night long at every creak and thump in the cottage, her pathetic whimper had emanated from beneath the bed.

It had not been a restful night. But squirrel chatter was a sound Modo recognized, and since in the city it was her job to chase every one of them away from Sharon’s bird feeder and up into the trees, she struggled out from under the bed to report for duty. Green slipped out of bed and padded to the cottage door. Modo bolted outside, stopped to relieve herself on the nearest patch of weeds, then looked back at him expectantly. All around her, nature was waking up, and she obviously figured it was high time he was too. Besides, there was no way she was staying outside by herself. After feeding her, Green hunted through their food bags for the Bridgehead French Roast he had packed, unearthed a battered aluminum kettle in their supposedly fully equipped housekeeping cottage, and brewed up a full pot of coffee. By the time it had dripped through, a salmon pink glow filtered through the trees in the east. Curious to see the place by the light of day, he threw on some clothes, took his coffee and, with Modo glued to his heels, slithered down the steep, overgrown path to the lake.

Sharon had found the cottage on the internet after a particularly long and exhausting week at Rideau Psychiatric Hospital, when she had thought she couldn’t survive another day without a respite. “This will be a chance to catch our breath, read, take lazy walks and teach Tony to swim,” she’d promised, with a dreamy glow in her eyes that he could not refuse. So far, the ancient beds, battered kitchenware and screaming crows did not seem worth the eight hundred dollars she had shelled out for the week of summer paradise, but then the price of paradise was high in the Rideau Lakes area, which was less than two hours drive from Ottawa. He stepped onto the rickety dock and contemplated the surroundings. There were cottages on either side, pressed uncomfortably close but still empty this early in the season, with blue tarps over their boats and plywood over the windows. Weeds choked the shoreline and poked up through the rotting planks on the dock.

He perched on the edge of the dock, sipped his coffee and eyed the lake. It was glassy calm in the pink light of dawn. Wisps of mist drifted over its surface, and in the distance he could see the silent hulls of small boats. The serenity was almost scary.

Green knew nothing about the country. The summer holidays of his youth had been spent running up and down the back alleys of Ottawa’s Lowertown, playing marbles in the dusty yards and tossing balls back and forth between parked cars. He was approaching his quarter century mark with the Ottawa Police, most of it in the gruesome trenches of Major Crimes, but before his marriage to Sharon, his summer holidays could be counted on one hand. Occasionally in a misguided spirit of pity, colleagues and friends had invited him up to their cottages for weekends. He had tried to enjoy the fishing, the camaraderie and the simplicity of country life, but inwardly he had chafed. No radio, no TV news, no take-out deli sandwiches at midnight, no wail of sirens or crackling of radios…

I’m a crime junkie, he thought, as he gazed out over the peaceful lake. A whiff of breeze rustled the trees, and far out, the plaintive trill of some bird echoed over the water. Sharon’s right, he thought, I have to learn to relax, to appreciate silence, nature and the simple pleasures of my family’s company. Maybe here, in this rosy magic dawn, I’ll make a start. That optimism lasted all of two minutes, before the first mosquito whined in his ear. At first he tried to ignore it, but then its friends arrived. Swatting and brandishing his arms in vain, he sloshed half his coffee down his crotch.

“Fuck this,” he muttered and headed back up to the cottage. The swarm of mosquitoes escorted him. Inside, miraculously, Sharon and Tony were still sleeping. After changing his pants and replenishing his coffee, he sneaked up to the car with Modo at his heels again. She leaped in ahead of him and settled in her favourite spot next to Tony’s car seat. Green turned the key to activate the radio, then fiddled with the buttons until he found an Ottawa station with a strong enough signal to reach this rural backwater. The cheery patter of the morning DJ filled the car. Cradling his coffee, Green sank back in the passenger seat with a sigh of delight. Just in time for the six o’clock news.

He listened through the thumbnail reports of suicide bombings in Israel, tornadoes in Kansas and a minor earthquake in Indonesia before the local news came on.

“Ottawa Police have stepped up their search for a local teenager first reported missing early yesterday morning. Seventeen-year-old Lea Kovacev told her mother she was getting together with friends Monday evening, but when she failed to contact her mother or return home by midnight, her mother became concerned. Police do not suspect foul play but ask anyone with any knowledge of her whereabouts to call them.”

Green’s instincts stirred. Just over thirty hours had passed since the girl’s disappearance. By her own account, she was getting together with friends. Seventeen-year-old girls dropped out of sight temporarily for all sorts of reasons. An impromptu trip, excessive partying, an undesirable boyfriend, or just the impulse to shake off the parental bonds for a while.

What was different about this case? What had caused the police concern, despite their official denial of foul play?

He reached for his cell phone, then hesitated with it in his hand. As the head of Crimes Against Persons, Missing Persons fell under his command, but a missing teenager was routine, even if the police had stepped up their efforts. There was an entire Missing Persons’ squad with the power to ask for extra resources or support should the case merit it. They didn’t need his meddling. He was on holiday.