Free American Crow by Jack Lacey Page B

noisy machine, then discovered quickly that
that was all she did know.
    I drank my coffee in silence, staring out
of the massive floor to ceiling windows, at several metalwork tipis erected on
the grass outside, celebrating the region’s Sioux and Ojibwa heritage. It was
looking more and more likely that Olivia had just absconded, that she was
simply trying to find some happiness after all the tragedy in her life whilst
enjoying a bit of teenage romance, as I’d initially thought.
    I took in the skyscrapers in the distance
thinking how Laura would have loved to explore the city, then headed back out
onto the steps where I stopped halfway down to breathe some of the sharp spring
air into my lungs.
    Henry was a worrier, perhaps had been
over-zealous with his parenting and that had driven Olivia away, but the girl
could just as easily be a spoilt brat too, who needed to take a fall in order
to appreciate what was good in her life.
    Maybe I was just there to pick up the
pieces, like so many of the other teenage disappearance cases I’d worked on.
Maybe she just needed to stretch her wings for a bit, then have them clipped a
little?
    Even if she had hooked up with the wrong
crowd too, it was more than likely that she would be unharmed and in good
health when I found her. The odds were still stacked in my favour. I could talk
her around into returning so Lenny and I could pick up the full thirty clicks
or whatever it was from Deacon.
    At the very least I could take a
photograph, or get her to speak on the phone to prove that she was still alive,
so Lenny could get the first ten. It was a promising situation whatever way you
looked at it. The assignment had gotten me out of the holiday park, my
moroseness, and given me a better perspective on everything, if nothing else.
All I needed was the first decent lead to join the dots and I could wrap things
up in perhaps a couple of days.
    I wandered over to some rainbow-coloured
taxis parked in the bays directly opposite the gallery still deep in thought.
As I opened the door on the first in the line, I noticed a white Oldsmobile
parked on the other side with a guy sat in the front seat reading a newspaper,
trying to look as if he was waiting for somebody. Something told me he wasn’t
waiting on his cousin Billy to do the tour around the new exhibition...
    I carried on as if unaware and gave the
driver his instructions as I climbed in the back. As we pulled out and melted into
the morning traffic I saw the Oldsmobile edge out discreetly in the side-view
mirror, then tail us a few cars back, confirming my suspicions. I tensed,
feeling that poisonous spider get a little closer again…
    The search for Olivia Deacon had taken a sinister
turn suddenly, just as all the pieces of the case looked to be fitting snugly
together. It was always the damned same with the jobs Lenny gave me...
    I cracked a bemused smile and wondered
just how easy the case was going to be now, now there could be other darker
elements involved, then reflected on how much time I actually had to find the
banker’s daughter safe and well, before someone else did. Someone perhaps, with
the worst of intentions...

Chapter Nine
         ‘uneasy alliances’
     
    T he Oldsmobile tailed us all the way then hung back as we
pulled up outside the small, lime-coloured house where Finch’s sister
supposedly lived.
    I tipped the driver generously then
stepped out onto the snow-encrusted pavement, looking straight ahead as I did
so, so as not to arouse any suspicion from my admirer.
    Much to my relief footsteps sounded out
straight away after I rang the bell, then security bolts being pulled back on
the inner door. The sullen fifty-something face that greeted me when it opened
though, wasn’t one I’d been expecting. It wasn’t some fifty-something American
housewife. It belonged to a cop. I suppressed my shock and forced a polite
smile.
    ‘Is Chrissie in?’
    ‘Who’s asking?’
    The guy’s tone was gruff