Damaged

Home > Other > Damaged > Page 6
Damaged Page 6

by Pamela Callow


  The cottage seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when she had locked it up earlier this morning and ventured tentatively onto St. Margaret’s Bay Road. The drive had been slow, the road windy and nerve-racking in its opacity, although the dense fog that hugged the curves didn’t seem to slow down some drivers. Normally she liked to tune into the CBC radio morning show. But today she had needed to concentrate extra hard. She would never admit it to anyone, but driving was a bit difficult nowadays. She missed things that would suddenly rush at her and cause her heart to jump.

  The call from the headmistress had been the third in the past two weeks. Hope put the phone down and stared at her hands. Her fingers clenched slowly into fists, then stretched out onto her desk. She breathed deeply. She had to be in court in five minutes. She needed to calm down. But it was difficult. The headmistress’s insinuations had been offensive.

  “Have you heard the morning news?” Ms. MacInnes had asked her.

  Hope had. A homicide in the south end of the city. Police were refusing to provide any details until the victim’s family had been notified, but witnesses claimed the victim had been a prostitute.

  At first, Hope did not grasp why Ms. MacInnes had brought this up. But then it hit her. And she was outraged. She couldn’t believe the nerve of the headmistress—Headmistress—who was she kidding? A glorified public school principal, more like it.

  Hope’s voice became glacial. “What, exactly, is the relevance of that question in terms of my daughter’s absenteeism?”

  Ms. MacInnes paused. Hope felt a spark of satisfaction. It quickly died at the headmistress’s next words. “It is very relevant if Lisa is using drugs again.”

  “She’s not,” Hope snapped. “There has been no proof whatsoever that she is using them.”

  “Besides the fact of her truancy,” Ms. MacInnes said softly. Then she asked, “What does she do when she skips school?”

  Hope inhaled sharply. “Her grandmother keeps an eye on her.”

  “I see.” The headmistress did not bother to disguise her disbelief. “Lisa cannot continue to miss school, Your Honor. We have academic standards that must be met.”

  “I assure you that I am handling matters,” Hope said stiffly. “Lisa will be at school tomorrow.”

  “Good. Perhaps we could arrange a time to meet about this…?”

  “I will have my assistant call you.” Hope disconnected the line.

  She did not want to make the next call but she had to.

  The phone rang. It jarred the stillness. Marian jumped. She had been lost in thought. Kate Lange had left a message on her answering machine just minutes before she had arrived home from the cottage. She’d left one the day before, as well. She wanted Marian to call her, but Marian hadn’t—not yet. She decided she would talk to Margaret before she dove into those muddy waters.

  The phone rang again. Insistent.

  Was it Kate Lange? Marian’s fingers hovered over the handle. She really didn’t feel ready to talk to her.

  The phone rang a third time. She hesitated. Maybe it was Margaret. She really should answer it. She snatched up the receiver.

  “Marian.”

  Her heart sank at the sound of the crisp voice on the other end. “Yes.” Why was Hope calling? Had her ex-daughter-in-law heard that Marian had consulted a lawyer about Lisa?

  “I don’t have much time—” you never do when it comes to family “—court is about to begin, but I wanted to check that Lisa was with you.”

  Dread crawled down Marian’s spine. “I haven’t seen her since last week.”

  “Lisa told me yesterday that she was having dinner with you. I assumed she stayed over.”

  How convenient. “No. I was at the cottage.”

  “Did Lisa know that?”

  “Yes.” Why did you lie again, Lisa? Marian silently wept for the child who had once had nothing to hide. “So she didn’t come home last night?”

  “No.”

  Marian’s heart began skipping beats. She forced herself to calm down. “Where do you think she is?”

  “I don’t know. The school called five minutes ago to report her absence.” Hope’s voice was remarkable in its steeliness. Or maybe it wasn’t remarkable. “But as we both know, she’s gone off on her own before. She’s probably at her friend’s.”

  There was a murmur on Hope’s end, someone had come into her office. Hope’s voice became staccato. “Look, I have to go. I want you to call her friends. I’ll recess court at 10:45 and call you.”

  “Yes, all right—” The dial tone buzzed in Marian’s ear. Hope had hung up on her.

  She put down the receiver and hurried over to her desk. Her address book was there. She hoped she had the phone numbers for all of Lisa’s friends. Her stomach clenched with anxiety. Where had Lisa gone last night? And why hadn’t Hope done anything about it until now?

  This was exactly the behavior that had driven her to see Kate Lange in the first place.

  She flipped open the book and began dialing.

  Kate closed her office door and slid behind her desk. It was 10:25 a.m., although you couldn’t tell by looking out the window. The rain had started. Everything was gray.

  She picked up the phone. Her heart pounded as she dialed Marian MacAdam’s number again. She had a feeling her client had deliberately not returned her phone call. But Kate couldn’t wait anymore. Urgency thrummed through her. After hearing about the homicide on the radio this morning she knew she needed to act—before Lisa followed the same path as that dead prostitute.

  “Hello?” Marian MacAdam said breathlessly.

  “It’s Kate Lange from Lyons McGrath Barrett.” Kate stared at the Child Protection phone number she’d jotted on her notepad. Would she have to give an ultimatum or would Marian MacAdam call Child Protection herself?

  “Yes? Are you calling about Lisa?”

  Her tone wasn’t what Kate expected. She thought Marian MacAdam would be haughty, reluctant. But there was no mistaking the desperation Kate heard. She swallowed her unease. “Yes. I’m calling about the meeting we had on Friday—”

  “I haven’t been able to find Lisa,” Marian MacAdam said abruptly. “She’s gone.”

  “Since when?”

  “Her mother hasn’t seen her since she went to school yesterday morning. She told Hope she was having supper with me, but that was a lie. She knew I was at my cottage.”

  “Well, I’m sure she’s fine.” Kate forced herself to sound reassuring. “She’s probably at a friend’s.” Hadn’t Kate done the same thing when she was sixteen? Snuck out to a party, taking her younger sister and her mother’s car. But it had all gone horribly wrong after that. She pushed that from her mind. Lisa was probably cozied up with a friend cruising Facebook.

  “I’ve called all her friends. No one’s seen her.”

  The news report said it was a young prostitute who had been murdered. What if it wasn’t? “Did anyone see her last night?”

  Marian’s voice was bleak. “None of her school friends have spoken to her for a few days, apparently.”

  Kate wiped her palms on her skirt. “Have you called the police?”

  “No.”

  “You need to call them.”

  “I want to wait until Hope calls me back. She said she’d recess court at 10:45.”

  “Marian.” Kate didn’t know how to ask this, so she blurted: “Have you heard the news today?”

  “No.” Her client’s voice became scared. “Why?”

  “There’s been a homicide. The reports suggest it was a prostitute, but—”

  “It can’t be Lisa!”

  “But you don’t know where she is.”

  “She’s not a prostitute!”

  “I know that.” Kate tried to be gentle, yet she needed her client to see the urgency in this. “But the news report could be wrong. You need to contact the police.”

  “I’m going to wait until Hope calls. Lisa may have tried calling her this morning.”

  Clutching
at straws. It was clear her client could not consider the alternative. That the unthinkable might have happened. Kate glanced at the clock. It was 10:33. Judge Carson should be calling soon. “All right, then. When Judge Carson calls, tell her if she hasn’t heard from Lisa, then she needs to call the police. Or your lawyer will.”

  Kate hung up the phone. She knew, without a doubt, she had made the right call.

  What she didn’t know was if she had made it too late.

  Kate found out twenty minutes later. Marian called her back. Her client could barely speak. Lisa hadn’t called. But Hope was dismissive of Marian’s suggestion that the homicide victim could be Lisa. She wanted Marian to track down some of Lisa’s old friends.

  “It’s a waste of time,” Marian said, despair weighing her voice. “Lisa hasn’t spoken to them for years.”

  “Why won’t she call the police?” Kate asked. It seemed incomprehensible that a criminal court judge could not put two and two together when her daughter was missing and a dead girl had been found.

  “Because then she’d have to admit to the police that she had no idea where her daughter was,” Marian said bitterly. “She doesn’t want to involve them until she has to. She said she wanted to look for her first ourselves.”

  “It’s too late to be worried about what the police will think. If Lisa is not—” Kate paused at the sound of Marian’s sudden sob. “I’m sorry. But Lisa’s safety is paramount. Someone just killed a girl. If Lisa is still unaccounted for, we need to make sure she’s safe.” Kate picked up her pen. “I need a description of her I can give to the police.”

  Marion gave her the details in a numb voice, swallowing hard at the end. “You’ll call me as soon as you know something?”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispered.

  Kate knew exactly how her client felt. She’d said the same thing fifteen years ago.

  She hung up the phone and dialed Ethan’s number before her courage failed her.

  “Detective Drake.” His voice was terse.

  “Ethan. It’s Kate.”

  “Jesus.” He didn’t hide his shock. Nor his anger. “This is a bad time to call, Kate. I’m on a homicide investigation.”

  “I’m not calling about what happened on Friday night,” Kate said quickly. “I’m calling about the prostitute who was found murdered this morning. Is that the case you’re on?”

  “I’m investigating the homicide, but who said it was a prostitute?”

  “That’s what the media is saying.”

  “It’s unclear.”

  Kate’s heart lurched. If it wasn’t a prostitute, then could it be Lisa? She took a deep breath. “Look, my client’s granddaughter went missing yesterday.”

  Ethan’s voice sharpened. “What’s her name?”

  “Lisa MacAdam.”

  “What does she look like?”

  Kate read off the description: “Fifteen years old, five-foot-four, one hundred and ten pounds, dark brown hair with a blond stripe down the middle—”

  “How do we reach next of kin?” Ethan asked abruptly.

  “Oh, my God.” Kate swallowed. She clutched the phone against her cheek. “Is it her?” Please say no. If there is a God, please let Ethan say no.

  “Sounds about right.” There was an unnerving mix of adrenaline and somberness in his voice. “Who are her parents?”

  “Robert MacAdam and—Ethan, this is going to be a minefield—her mother is Judge Hope Carson.”

  There was a stunned silence. “Holy shit.” He added softly, “We thought she was a street kid.”

  “No. Just a forgotten kid.”

  “Look, I gotta go. We need to get her parents down here.”

  “Right.”

  There was an awkward silence. “Thanks for the tip. I’m sorry it was your client’s granddaughter.”

  “Me, too.” She hung up the phone. She pressed her palms into her eyes. How could she call Marian MacAdam? What would she say?

  In the end, Marian MacAdam said very little. Just, in a tremulous voice, “Is it Lisa?”

  Kate said softly, “The police need Judge Carson to ID the body.”

  Marian choked a sob. “I see.” She swallowed. “I need to call Rob. He’s in Singapore. I think… Oh, damn!” Her voice choked as another sob overwhelmed her.

  The phone buzzed in Kate’s ear.

  Kate grabbed her purse and stumbled down the hallway to the elevators, ignoring the startled looks of the support staff. She got off on the wrong level of the parkade and had to climb up a set of stairs to find her car. Once in it, she rested her head on the steering wheel.

  Why hadn’t she called Child Protection sooner? Hadn’t she learned from her own past? Why had she waited?

  She’d been persuaded by Marian MacAdam’s insistence that she had no real proof of Lisa hurting herself. But that was just scratching the surface. There were other reasons. Ones she hadn’t wanted to examine but couldn’t help drag out from under the cracked rock of her conscience.

  They flailed her with their whiplike truths. You were scared you’d hurt your client’s case for no good reason if you called Child Protection; that you’d destroy the limited faith your client had in you; and—this one made her heart curl in shame—destroy whatever shred of confidence Randall Barrett had in your judgment. She’d wanted to impress Randall Barrett with her smarts, not embarrass LMB with an unfounded call to Child Protection, bringing down the wrath of a client assigned by no less than the managing partner.

  10

  Tuesday, May 1, 11:00 a.m.

  The granary hummed with tightly controlled energy. City workers had been let in to erect a tent over the nucleus of the crime scene. Between the rain and the reporter who had been caught hanging off a nearby apartment balcony with a telephoto lens, it was clear that the scene needed tighter protection.

  And it would need even more if what Kate told Ethan was true. Cold sweat mingled with the rain on his skin. He knocked briefly on the door of the command bus and pulled it open.

  Ferguson straightened. She’d been hovering over Walker’s shoulder, both of them examining a digital photo of the victim’s neck.

  “Got anything?” Ferguson asked. A middle-aged woman of medium height, she looked like a big-boned Scottish milkmaid except for her eyes. She missed nothing and would put up with nothing.

  Ethan exhaled slowly. “We’ve got a lead on the girl.”

  Walker swiveled his chair away from the computer and looked at him.

  Ferguson’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

  “Pretty sure she’s Judge Carson’s daughter.”

  “Jesus,” Walker said softly.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Who gave you the lead?”

  Ethan’s eyes met Ferguson’s. “Kate Lange.”

  Walker’s eyes widened. Without another word, he swiveled his chair back to the computer.

  “How is she involved in this?” Ferguson asked sharply.

  “She says her client’s granddaughter went missing yesterday. Gave me a description. It sounds like the girl.” He jerked his head in the direction of the crime scene.

  “So her client is Judge Carson’s mother?” Ferguson asked.

  Ethan shifted. He’d been so stunned to hear Kate’s voice on his cell—he hadn’t spoken to her on the phone for months—and then even more stunned by what she told him, that he hadn’t even thought of asking the exact relationship of her client to the victim.

  A flush burned under his collar. Ferguson, he was sure, wouldn’t miss it. “I don’t know. She could be her mother-in-law, I guess.”

  “Why was she consulting Kate Lange?”

  Ethan sighed. Man, he was an idiot. “I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”

  Ferguson threw him a pitying glance. “Contact Judge Carson. Find out if she’s missing her daughter.”

  It was just after noon. Ferguson had called a quick debriefing for the team. Ethan walked into the war ro
om at the station.

  The tension was palpable. As he looked around the table at the detectives’ faces, he knew they were all asking the same question: Was their naked, dismembered victim Judge Carson’s daughter?

  “Heard anything yet?” Ferguson stood at the front by the diagram of the crime scene.

  Ethan shook his head. “I left an urgent message. But she was in court.”

  “You’d think if she was worried about it she’d just adjourn and call,” Lamond muttered.

  Ethan shrugged. “She never lets anyone off the hook.” He took stock of his team. It was a good team. They had each other’s backs. “Anyone else find anything?”

  One by one, the detectives gave their status reports. No sign yet of the missing limbs. “Probably in the killer’s closet,” Lamond muttered.

  “What about missing persons? Did you get a match on the victim’s description?” Ferguson asked.

  “We came up empty,” Walker said. “No matches.” He paused. “Maybe we should call Vicky. She never forgets a face.”

  Ethan threw him a sharp glance. Was that a dig?

  Walker returned it with a “Sorry, but it needed to be said” look. Ethan forced himself to relax. The guy was just trying to do his job. It was well known at the station that Vicky had an uncanny knack of recalling people’s names. They’d be negligent to not involve her.

  “Okay, call her if the victim isn’t Judge Carson’s daughter,” Ethan said.

  “And,” Redding interjected, “I did find a witness named—” he checked his notes “—Shonda Bryant, who said that she’d seen the victim down on Gottingen Street. At approximately 2200 last night.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “The girl was buying E, but she ran out of money and was going home.”

  “So the killer could have lured the girl into the car and offered her more ecstasy…” Lamond murmured.

  “She took it, and then got so high it would be easy to strangle her.”

  “So she was strangled?” Redding asked.

  Ethan nodded. “She’s got petechiae all over her face.” They all knew the significance of that. Petechiae were little blood hemorrhages caused by lack of oxygen—a classic sign of strangulation.

 

‹ Prev