Do or Die Read Free Page B

stabbing in a library, for God’s sake! If the call had come from a parking lot in the Byward Market, we’d have sent four experienced teams down there right away. Not one poor rookie.’ And it’s not the kid’s fault, after all. There was a lot of blood around, and he just wanted to save the boy’s life. I’d have forgotten all the procedural shit myself fifteen years ago.”
    Sullivan pulled the Taurus to a halt behind a police van near the entrance to the library, and the two jumped out. A police officer was posted at the entrance to the library and another at the elevators. One elevator had been commandeered for use in the investigation, and the fourth floor button had been taped on the other elevators. Students gathered in whispering clumps, gawking curiously.
    Sullivan led Green into the elevator and punched four. “Looks great now, doesn’t it? Everything according to procedure, every ‘t’ crossed. The Ident team has cordoned off the entire fourth floor, and they’re probably still there.”
    The elevator door slid open, revealing yellow plastic tapeacross the exit. They logged in with the uniform on guard, and ducked under the tape. Ahead of them, half a dozen men were crawling around on the floor with magnifying glasses.
    â€œYes, they’re still here.”
    â€œAnd we’ll probably be here till Christmas,” came a gravelly voice from behind a bookcase. An instant later the senior Identification Officer, Sergeant Lou Paquette, emerged around the corner, red-faced from crawling. “We haven’t found a damn thing yet.” He peeled off his latex glove and held out his hand to Green. “Glad to see you, Mike.”
    â€œYou’ve got nothing?” Green echoed in dismay.
    â€œOh, we’ve got tons of shit. Fingerprints, hair, fibres, bloodstains. There’s blood all over the place. The witnesses tracked it around, the paramedics tracked it around. The only thing I can’t tell is if the killer tracked it around. And this is a public place. There could be fingerprints and fibres from half the city of Ottawa here. The half that doesn’t have prints on file downtown.” Paquette grinned at his own attempt at humour. His mustache quivered. “I’ve sent a guy to collect the shoes from every fireman and paramedic who was at the scene. That’ll be fun.”
    Green took out his notebook. “Can you tell us anything?”
    Paquette sighed and grew sober. “As far as I can tell, there was no struggle. No books were pulled down, nothing kicked out of place. It’s a narrow space. It would be hard to fight without knocking the bookshelves.”
    â€œAnd the young woman who found the victim heard no sound of an argument, no screams,” Sullivan added. “Libraries are pretty quiet. She would have heard a violent scuffle.”
    â€œDid she see anything unusual that evening? Anyone suspicious or out of place?”
    â€œNothing that she remembered, but she was pretty shakenup. She got covered in blood, and all she could think about was getting cleaned up. After the preliminaries, I let her go home.”
    Green nodded. “We’ll get to her later.”
    They had walked to the far end of the library along the path Ident had laid out and now stood in front of the large, browning pool of blood where the body had been.
    â€œThe victim was stabbed once in the abdomen,” Sullivan said. “According to the emergency room surgeon, the weapon pierced the stomach and lacerated the liver, nicking an artery as it went by. It sounds like a horizontal thrust directly forward, made by a knife held at waist level.”
    â€œI suppose nobody took photographs of the wound before they sutured it all up?”
    Sullivan grinned. “You got it.”
    Green looked up from his notes with a snort. “Jesus. Jules said the case needed me, but what it really needs is a goddamn