A piece of masking tape was stuck over the doorbell. Malan knocked. I shifted in my boots. It was very cold. Our breath formed little puffs in the air.
Malan knocked again. And again. Louder each time. Then a light came on at the back of the house. The barking dog got closer.
The front door opened a crack. “What the fuck do you want?” a man said. His hair was thin and unwashed. His eyes were small and very red. He blinked away sleep. He smelled of unbrushed teeth and stale beer.
“Mr. Grey,” Malan said. “May we come in?”
“Not without a warrant, you can't.”
“You're not in any trouble. Do you have a daughter by the name of Maureen?”
“What the fuck's she done now?”
“Mr. Grey, is Maureen at home?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“What is it?” asked another voice from inside the house. It was a woman's voice, low and frightened.
“Mrs. Grey, I'm sorry to disturb you, but I'm afraid I have some very bad news. It would be better if we discussed this inside.”
For the first time, Grey looked at me. I tried to keep my face still. He looked me up and down, and I felt very uncomfortable.
“Let the officers in,” the woman said. “If they have news about Maureen.”
Grey hesitated, and then he shrugged and opened the door.
The dog lunged for us. Grey laughed as I jumped backward with a frightened cry.
It was a big dog. Traces of German shepherd. Half its right ear was missing and its teeth were yellow. But the animal didn't get near me. Mrs. Grey was holding tightly to its leash.
“Put the dog in another room, please,” Malan said.
The woman looked at her husband. He shrugged, and she dragged the snarling animal away.
Sergeant Malan and I stepped into the house. The living-room furniture was shabby, but no dust was on it. Aside from many ornaments, the room was uncluttered, but it smelled of cigarette smoke and cooking grease. Mrs. Grey came back. She twisted her hands in her faded blue nightgown.
“You have a daughter named Maureen?” Malan asked. His voice was soft and kind.
The Greys nodded.
“Is Maureen at home?”
“Nah,” Grey said. “She moved out a while ago.”
His wife's eyes were wide with fear. “Is she in some sort of trouble? Maureen left home a few weeks ago. A temporary move. She's been having problems at school. She needed a break. She's staying with a friend.”
“Do you have the friend's address?”
“No.”
“The name of this friend?”
She shook her head.
Maureen Grey had left home and her parents didn't know where she'd gone. I'd call that running away, not taking a break. But I wasn't here to express my opinion.
Malan reached into his pocket. Slowly he pulled out the student card from PE District High. I caught a glimpse of the picture. A blond girl, smiling broadly.
“Is this your daughter?” he asked Mrs. Grey. She reached out and took the card. Her hand was shaking.
“Yes.” Her voice was so soft it was hard to hear. “It's Maureen. It's my daughter.”
“I'm sorry to have to tell you this,” Malan said. “We found a body, a young girl, in the snow outside of town. She had this on her.”
Mrs. Grey let out a moan. She shook her head. “No, that can't be right. Some other girl must have been carrying her school card. You've made a mistake.”
Her husband made no move to comfort her. “Where is she?” he asked Malan.
“She's been taken to the hospital. If you'll get dressed, we'll take you to see her. We'll need you to make a positive identification.”
A
couple of days later I ran into Sergeant Malan in the lunchroom at the station. I was back on day shift, and as usual things were pretty quiet in the County in winter. He came in as I was filling the kettle to make a cup of tea to take on the road. He dug into the fridge for a plastic container. He sat at the big table in the center of the room and took out his sandwich. It looked good. Thickly sliced roast beef and Swiss cheese on whole-wheat bread. Bright yellow mustard leaked from the sides.
“Nicole,” he said. “You're the one who found her, right? You'll be interested in this. I'm just back from the Maureen Grey autopsy.”
“What'd they find?” I asked. I was interested. Right now I'm just a probationary constable, still pretty wet behind the ears and nervous whenever I get a call. But one day I might like to be a detective. “I figured it looked pretty obvious. She was strangled by that scarf.”
“That was the cause of death, yes. She'd been dead for two or three hours when you found her. There were no defensive wounds. No marks on her arms or hands to show she tried to fight off her attacker. Her fingernails were torn where she tried to get a grip on the scarf. Plenty of fibers from the scarf under her nails. A big bruise on her rear end where the attacker pressed his knee against her to hold her steady while heâor sheâchoked her.”
“What does that mean?”
“She was taken by surprise. Either her attacker snuck up on her or she didn't expect him to attack her. It would have been over very fast.”
“I can't see that anyone could have surprised someone out there. In a field in the middle of the night?”
“I agree. Highly unlikely she would have gone there alone. And not without gloves. There were none in her pockets, and we couldn't find any nearby. Almost certainly she arrived in a car. And the driver of the car either killed her there or dumped the body. And drove off.”
“Can you tell anything from the bruise? About the size or height of the attacker?”
He smiled at me. “Good question, Constable.” I was childishly pleased at the praise. The other night was the first time I'd even spoken to the detective sergeant. He didn't have much to do with a mere probationary constable.
“Yes, the assailant was around the same height as the girl, perhaps a bit more. She was very tall at five foot ten, so that includes a lot of men. Also any woman who might be shorter but was wearing boots with high heels.”
“So the autopsy didn't tell you much?”
“Actually, Nicole, it told me a lot. Maureen Grey was four months pregnant.”
“Wow. I wonder if that's important.”
“If you want hot water, you'd better get it,” he said. “The kettle stopped boiling a long time ago.”
I felt blood rush into my face. I blush very easily, and that's a bad thing for a police officer. I busied myself with a tea bag, milk and sugar.
“It might explain why she wasn't living at her parents' house,” Malan said. “Her father has a bad temper and is quick with his fists. He might not have taken the news that he was about to become a grandfather very well.”
“Maybe he killed her when he found out?”
“It's possible. Anything's possible. I can't really see Grey sneaking up behind his daughter and strangling her. He's more a fist to the mouth sort of guy. Plus, he doesn't own a vehicle. His truck was repossessed about a month ago. But he has plenty of friends who'd lend him their car, no questions asked. There's no telling what a man like that is capable of. I can't help but think the pregnancy might have had something to do with her death.”
“Her clothes were disturbed. Was sheâ¦?”
“Raped? Molested? No. Either pulling down her pants was an attempt to make us think it was a rape or the guy was scared away.”
“But she was dead already? You said it was quick.”
The sergeant gave me a long look. He was in his forties. He had transferred to the OPP about a year ago from the Toronto Police Service. Station gossip said he wanted a quieter life and more family time. I knew that he was married and had two young kids, a boy and a girl. A picture of the smiling family sat on his desk. His wife was pretty and stylish, and the children cute and well-scrubbed.
“Sometimes,” he said, “the rapist doesn't want to be bothered struggling with a victim.”
For a moment I wasn't quite sure what he was saying. Then I understood and my blood ran cold. “You mean,” I said, “they like the women dead.”
He nodded. “Sometimes. In this case it might have been rough sex gone badly wrong. Guy sees she's dead. He panics, dumps her and drives away. But that's unlikely if she was standing when he attacked her. The autopsy found no signs of recent intercourse.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
He shook his head. “Other than Pete Grey? No one obvious. I've interviewed her teachers and the kids at her school. No one mentioned her being pregnant. Now I'll have to go back and ask the people she seemed close to if she'd told anyone about it. We can't find her cell phone. Everyone at the school said she had one. They all do these days, don't they? It would help, a lot, if we could see who'd called her the night she died. Almost certainly her killer dumped it somewhere.”
The radio on my shoulder crackled. It was dispatch. Two boys had grabbed a stack of chocolate bars off the rack at a convenience store and bolted for it.
“Gotta go,” I said.
He lifted a hand in farewell and bit into his sandwich.
I never did get that cup of tea.
U
nlike Sergeant Malan, I'm a County girl. Born and bred. I went away to university and spent four years in Toronto. I hated the big cityâthe noise, the crowds, the pollution. But there aren't many good jobs in the country these days. I was lucky to get on with the OPP and be able to come back to Prince Edward County. Where I belong. Someday I might have to think about going back to the city. If I want to get a range of solid police experience and climb the ladder. But for now I'm content to be here.
I had an apartment in town, but my parents, Janet and Roy, still lived on the farm outside of Milford where I grew up. Mom and Dad hoped I'd take over the farm some day. I love the country life, but being a farmer just never appealed to me. Too much hard work, maybe. My younger sister, Sandy, was going to university in Ottawa next fall. My parents were hoping she'd come back to the farm. Sandy wants to be a doctor.
My mom volunteered twice a week at the Prince Edward County Youth Center. It's a drop-in place. Teenagers can hang out, play some games, use the computers to do homework in a quiet setting. Maybe get advice on career and life choices. The center's important to Mom. She was working hard to get funding to open a small café. It would serve hot food and drinks and give the kids some work experience.
I'd quickly found the boys who'd stolen the chocolate bars. They were standing on the next street over, stuffing chocolate into their mouths. Ten years old.
When my shift ended, I changed out of my uniform and drove to the youth center. Maureen Grey might have gone there sometimes. Maybe Mom knew her.
She did.
“Such a tragedy,” Mom said after we'd said hi. “It's upset the students a lot. We got a counselor to come in and help some of the kids here deal with it. I think that's helped.”
We were in the office. It was a cramped room with a badly stuffed couch and a battered desk. A cork notice board on the wall was covered with scraps of paper. The glass wall of the office looked out over the reading room. A couple of teenagers slouched over a table, glancing at textbooks. They were waiting for their turn on one of the two computers. The computers were good up-to-date ones. They'd been donated by a local company.
“Can you tell me anything about Maureen?” I asked my mother.
“Like what?”
“Did Sergeant Malan or Detective Roberts come here to ask about her?”
“I don't think so.”
“Did you know her well, Mom?”
“Not really. Maureen was a nice girl. Quiet. Hardworking. They don't have a computer in her home, so she came here to use ours. I liked her. I felt sorry for her. With those no-good parents and⦔
“And what?”
“I'd rather not say.”
“Mom, if you know something you have to tell me. We don't have any leads. You might be able to help.”
“I don't like to gossip.”
“It's not gossip if you tell a police officer.” I didn't mention that I'm not a detective. No one had told me to get involved. But I know people in small towns in a way that Sergeant Malan wouldn't. I'd poke around a bit. See if I could find anything important.
“I'm sorry to say.” My mom began to talk very slowly. As if the words tasted bad in her mouth. “Maureen had a reputation.”
“What sort of a reputation?”
“She wasâ¦well, she dated a lot of the boys at school.”
“What's wrong with that?” I asked. “If she was popular?”
Mom was looking at me very strangely.
“Oh,” I said. “You don't mean dating. You mean she screwed around.”
Mom nodded. “That's the reputation she had. I never saw her with more than the occasional boy. But it does often happen in families such as hers. A girl gets no love from her father so she looks for it somewhere else.”
“Like with boys at school?”
“That's right. Poor Maureen. She didn't have many girlfriends. I heard the other girls talking about her sometimes. Teenage girls can be pretty mean. When they get an idea in their minds, and someone to bully, stories can getâ¦exaggerated.”
I had been a teenager not long ago. I knew Mom was right.
“Boys did seem to pay attention to her. I'd heard that a couple of boys had slept with her. And then they dumped her and called her names to their buddies. At least that's what people say. It might or might not be true.” Mom has a cheerful face with round chubby cheeks and a big smile. Now she looked like an unhappy Mrs. Santa Claus.
“Any boy in particular?” I asked.
“I don't know who she was dating lately. She wasn't coming into the center as much in the last few weeks as she used to. Do you think that's important?”