Текст книги "Snakes and ladders"

Автор книги: Sean Slater

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Five

Five minutes later, Striker looked up and down Union Street for the red and blue glow of the Canine Unit’s lights. When he didn’t see them, he got on his phone and called the Central Dispatcher, Sue Rhaemer.

‘Where the hell’s the dog?’ he demanded.

Rhaemer paused for barely a moment, and Striker knew she was checking the GPS. ‘He’s just a few blocks out.’

‘Well, tell him to get his ass here now.’

Striker had barely ended the conversation when the dogman’s emergency lights tinted the air and a white Chevy Tahoe came racing around the bend of Gore Avenue. The man behind the wheel was Harry Hooch, one of the department’s best dogmen.

The Tahoe came to a sliding stop on the icy road surface and stopped right in front of the Lucky Lodge. Hooch climbed out. He was shorter than most cops, maybe five foot seven, and he was rail-thin, weighing less than a hundred and sixty pounds. But what Harry Hooch lacked in height and weight he made up for with his steel determination. He yanked open the rear door and Sable jumped out. The Shepherd’s colouring was completely black. Even in the grey light of the coming night, her coat glistened.

‘Where’s the scent?’ Hooch asked.

Striker pointed to the area where the suspect had fled. ‘Landed there. On the slope beneath the window.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘None. The area’s clean.’

Hooch said nothing. He got the Shepherd to sniff the glove, then led the dog across the lot and got to work.

Striker watched eagerly as the Shepherd scoured back and forth in search of the trail. When the dog finally picked up the scent, she beelined down the south lane of Union.

Hooch went with her, and so did Striker. The dogman didn’t want the extra protection, and the scowl on his face showed that; like most dogmen, Hooch liked to play the game solo. But Striker wasn’t about to leave him without proper cover. Especially when they had no idea what they were dealing with here.

He ran with the man.

The dog continued the trail southeast, eventually turning down Malkin Avenue. As they ran, Striker mapped out the area in his head, and cursed.

‘What?’ Hooch asked.

‘He’s heading for the train yards.’

Hooch made no reply, but the tightness of his face showed his own frustration. The train yards were always a bitch during tracks. Too many obstacles: the fenced-off areas, the moving freightliners. And, of course, the endless streams of the homeless people who camped out behind the industrial area, or grouped together down by the bottle depot and recycling plant.

All in all, it all made for a difficult track.

When they reached the dead-end stop of Glen Drive, Sable stopped running. The dog dropped her tail low and began running back and forth all along the gated area that led into the train yards. Hooch gave the dog more leash and marched impatiently with her.

Striker took the moment to scan the area and catch his breath. The cold air stung his lungs and it was dirty, stinking of diesel gas fumes and smoke from the industrial plants. Not twenty yards away stood a tall chain-link fence that separated the federal land of the national railway with that of the City. Behind it were pockets of homeless people. Small fire-lit camps dotted the rail yard.

‘Tracks gonna get messed up in there,’ Striker noted.

Hooch shook his head. ‘Track doesn’t lead there anyway.’

‘Then where’s it go?’

‘Right fucking here.’

Striker looked all around the immediate area. There was nothing here except a dead-end street, a gravelly roundabout, and a row of old vacant warehouses.

‘It’s a dead fucking end,’ Hooch griped.

Striker watched where the dog was pin-balling back and forth on a small strip of gravel, less than twenty feet long. Using his flashlight, he lit up the area and focused on the road’s surface. It was a mess of concrete and rock and dirt, and there were no discernible tyre tracks.

Hooch’s posture slumped, and he began reeling in the dog. ‘He had wheels parked here, Shipwreck. No doubt about it.’

Striker nodded in agreement.

‘Or a ride waiting for him.’

He looked all around the area for witnesses, or better yet, video surveillance. But aside from the video cameras that CP Rail owned – all of which faced inwards towards the train tracks – there were none to be seen.

Hooch reeled in his beast. ‘It’s done, man. He got away.’

Striker shook his head. He offered the dogman a weak grin and held up the black leather glove.

‘Not completely,’ he said.

Six

By the time Striker made it back to the Lucky Lodge, Felicia was on scene. She was speaking with Constable Wong – although from Striker’s vantage point, it looked more like an interrogation than a discussion.

A smile broke his lips; Felicia was always so intense. It was one of the things he loved about her.

Under the pale light of the street lamp, her breath looked like steam. Striker hoped she wasn’t grilling the kid too hard. Wong was only a rookie. Had just a few months of road time under his belt and was now stuck in the middle of a strange Sudden Death call that made no sense.

Welcome to the Force, kid.

Felicia spotted Striker and her expression turned even more serious. She stopped talking mid-sentence, left the young constable hanging, and came marching up the sidewalk towards him.

‘Any luck?’ she asked.

Striker nodded. ‘Lots. All bad.’ He relayed the entire call to her from the second he’d heard the dispatch over the air until the moment when the dogman had lost the track out by the train yards. When he was finished speaking, Felicia made a sour face.

‘Train yards, huh?’

‘Yeah. He had wheels, too. I’m sure of it.’

She thought this over. ‘Long way off to park his wheels.’

‘For sure. And yet the safest place, too. Who’s gonna notice anything going on down there at Glen and Malkin? It’s the industrial area. Dead-end streets. No video of any kind. Only people down there are the homeless, and they don’t want to get involved. When you think about it, it’s actually a perfect place to hide some wheels.’

‘Which leaves us with jack.’

‘Not entirely.’ Striker held up the glove once more. ‘Got this from the suspect. Ripped it right off his hand during the struggle.’

‘We’ll have to hit the lab.’ She grabbed the keys from his pocket, hurried back to the trunk of the police car, and returned with a brown paper bag. She wrote the time, location and incident number on the outside of the bag in thick black felt, then held it open for Striker to drop the glove inside. When he did, she put the bag back in the trunk and handed him the keys.

It wasn’t until she had marked the time of transfer in her notebook – continuity was always a bitch in court – that she took a long look at Striker and assessed him. The skin around her brow tightened and her eyes turned soft.

‘Your forehead,’ she said, and reached out to touch it.

He leaned back. ‘Leave it.’

‘It’s been bleeding, Jacob.’

‘I know that. And it stopped.’

‘What happened? You get hit? He hit you? You need someone to look at that.’

‘I’ll live, Feleesh, really.’

She gave him another one of her long, drawn-out motherly looks, and Striker ignored it. Before she could say more, he turned back towards the Lucky Lodge.

In the five o’clock darkness, the building looked even more dilapidated. He took out his flashlight and set the cone to the halfway setting for equal amounts of intensity and expanse. Then he began scouring the crabgrass, taking slow careful steps – the last thing they needed right now was to step on and destroy any trace evidence.

Felicia came up beside him to assist in the search.

‘He ran this way,’ Striker explained. ‘Landed right over there beside the power box. Look for footprints and any electrical stuff, too. Wires, a lens, whatever. Maybe he left something behind.’

They moved closer to the area where the suspect had landed.

‘It’s so cold, the ground is like rock,’ he said. ‘When he landed, he must’ve landed hard.’

Felicia kept looking. ‘He get hurt?’ she asked without looking up.

‘Dunno. He could’ve – though you’d never know it from the way he raced out of here.’

‘I’ll call the hospitals.’

‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Striker pointed to the east. ‘Maybe he sprained something. Broke a bone, if we’re lucky.’

Felicia thought this over. ‘If he was high, he could’ve fractured a bone and not even known it – but he will later when the juice wears off.’ She got on the phone and called Central Dispatch. She got them to flag all the hospitals for patients coming in with injuries that could possibly be related to a high fall.

While she did this, Striker continued searching the outer perimeter for evidence. He did a grid search, line by line. It was an arduous process, but the best way to go. In cases like these, it was one hundred per cent necessary.

No evidence could be overlooked.

Not three minutes later, he found a footprint. It was not overly far from where the suspect had landed – just east of the utility box – in a patch of earth that had been recently covered with fresher ground from the construction work in the next-door lot.

Striker squatted close to the footprint. It was a right-foot imprint. Standard size, maybe a ten or eleven. But that was not what got his attention. What stole his focus was the sole pattern in the mud. It was a checkered tread, and the grooves were deep. The imprint itself was level for the most part, but wore away almost completely near the toe.

Striker looked around the area, and found a left-shoe imprint that matched in size and tread. He noted that the toe of this shoe was not as worn as the right.

When Felicia finished her phone conversation, she joined him once again. He showed her his find.

‘What does that wear on the toe tell you?’ he asked.

‘The wearer had an awkward gait. Maybe from some type of previous injury. Or a leg length discrepancy.’

Striker agreed.

They marked the area off for Ident to do a casing of the shoe prints. Then they continued the search.

Nearly a half-hour later they had cleared the lane, the vacant lot to the west, and were now performing a final search of where the suspect had landed. Striker paused for a moment to look up at the window. Unit 305. From down here, it looked awfully high up.

Felicia nudged him. ‘He had a mask on, right?’

‘Yeah. Black leather thing. Narrow eye slits. Kinda like the one you wore on our first date.’

‘Yes, well, I like to surprise my men.’ Felicia looked up to the same window. ‘No power at all, huh?’

‘All the power’s been cut off, and it looks like it’s been that way for a long time. We’ll check with the City for an exact date.’

Felicia thought this over. ‘This guy . . . could he have been a squatter?’

‘Maybe. Or even some toad with a warrant. Who knows? Anything’s possible at this point. But it doesn’t explain why he’d have a camera set up outside her window.’

Felicia nodded, but said nothing.

Striker swept the flashlight through the blades of crisp grass. He was just about to leave the area when he spotted a glint of silver, coming from beneath the edge of a utility box. An object was there. He crouched down, gloved up with latex, and picked it up.

‘Interesting,’ he said.

‘What is that?’ Felicia asked.

Striker wasn’t sure yet. The object looked like a broken-off piece of equipment – a tiny plastic box with a sensor attached to it. There were no part numbers on it. No model number. No serial.

He shrugged. ‘Might be junk for all I know. We’ll get the tech boys to look at it later.’ He slid the object into a small paper bag he had folded up in his pocket, wrote the details on the bag, then took a final look around the scene.

He made his way back towards the front entrance of the Lucky Lodge with Felicia by his side. Patrol were now on scene and they had cordoned off the area with yellow police tape. Some of the cops were doing a secondary canvass.

It was much appreciated. But unfortunately it didn’t diminish the amount of work still required, and Striker started a list in his head. They still had to reassess the primary crime scene, investigate the secondary, get Ident down here to photograph and mark everything, and, lastly, they had to hit the DNA lab to have the glove bagged and tagged for testing – and all had to be done before this night was through.

As if on the same wavelength, Felicia said: ‘This week is killing me. It’s only Wednesday and it feels like Friday.’

‘Well, get used to it,’ he replied. ‘Our long day just got a whole lot longer.’

She said nothing for a moment as she looked up at the blackened windows of the old building where Mandy Gill had died. When she looked back at Striker, her dark eyes were concerned and focused. ‘This is creeping me out,’ she said. ‘Seriously. What kind of sicko films a suicide like that?’

Striker gave her a hard look and spoke determinedly.

‘The kind we’re going to catch,’ he said.

Seven

The Adder – for that was how he thought of himself – opened up the hidden hatch in the floor and stepped down on the first rung of the ladder. The wood was old, and it squeaked beneath his weight as it always did. Hinted at giving way. If that ever happened, the results would be dire. The drop below was nearly twenty feet in total, and on to concrete.

But the rung held, and the Adder continued down the old ladder into the murky darkness below. His mind was not on the possibility of a fall, but on other things. More pertinent things. Tonight had been a first.

Caught . . .

He had almost been caught.

It was unthinkable.

Shaking, as much from the astonishment as from the excitement, he found his special little corner of his room – the Place of Solace – and dropped to his knees. His mind was reeling. Going a million miles a second. Thoughts too fast to string together. The sounds were back again:

The laughter.

The powerful thunder.

The screams.

And finally, the silence . . . That god-awful, overwhelming silence.

The Adder could not catch his breath. Could not breathe. He lay down on the cold hard concrete, ignoring the pain in his back and hip – a result of the fall – and reached up blindly for his iPod. When he found the device, he grabbed it with his shaking hands. Fumbled to make the headset cover his ears. And inserted the headphone jack. Once done, he thumbed the Play button and his ears filled with static charge – the wonderful, soothing, blessed, healing sound of white noise.

It was the only thing that helped.

Eight

The doorway to Mandy Gill’s room had a wide yellow slash of police tape across it, set up by rookie cop Wong. Striker was glad to see it. Locking down a scene was always best practice. He gave the young constable a nod. ‘Tape off unit 305 as well. No one in or out but Ident. Keep a log. And you’re gonna need a second unit up here, too.’

‘Delta Thirteen’s already en route, Detective.’

‘Good job.’

Striker turned away from the constable and went inside Mandy Gill’s unit. The first thing he noticed upon re-entry was the empty pill bottle still clutched in the girl’s hand. It was a small plastic vial. Blue cap, white label, with some black and white lettering. Standard stuff.

Cross-contamination was always a worry at scenes like this, so Striker removed his latex gloves, stuffed them in his back pocket, and re-gloved with fresh ones. Then he knelt in front of the body.

He gently prised Mandy’s thumb and index finger back – they went easily; full rigor had not yet begun – and removed the bottle from her possession. He turned it around and read the label.

Lexapro.

‘Jesus,’ he muttered.

He looked up and spotted Felicia in the entranceway. She was setting up a Sunlite, one of the portable lighting systems the department used. It was actually designed for film sets, but worked perfectly for odd situations like this. Once turned on, the entire room was illuminated.

To Striker it was a depressing sight. The room looked better in the dimness of the flashlights. With the bright glare of the Sunlite making every inch of dirty floor and grimy countertop visible, the true filth which Mandy Gill had been living in became apparent – garbage on the floors, water damage and mould in the corners, a dead rat on the kitchen counter.

He turned his mind away from the depravity and got Felicia’s attention. Held up the empty pill bottle. ‘She’s on anti-depressants,’ he said. They both read the label:

Pharmasave.

Prescription number: 1079880 – MVC.

Quantity: 50 tablets.

Dispensary date: Jan 28th.

Striker did a double take on the date.

‘The twenty-eighth,’ he said.

‘That was just yesterday,’ Felicia noted. ‘Tuesday.’

Striker thought this over. Fifty pills dispensed just twentyfour hours ago, and now there were none. It was more than enough for anyone to overdose. He wrote down all this information in his notebook, then placed the bottle directly beside the chair leg for Noodles, the Ident tech, who was already on his way. Then he stood up and looked around the room some more.

He felt at a loss, and he wondered if his guilt was clouding his vision. Despite the oddity of the camera being set up outside the window and the subsequent altercation with the suspect – evidence which was all circumstantial, by court standards – there was no physical evidence of foul play. At least none he could detect on the body, or anywhere in the primary crime scene.

Suicide was still not out of the question.

Especially not when considering this was Mandy Gill. Striker knew her well. He had for several years, ever since he’d met her at one of his daughter’s Sports Day rallies. Mandy had been sixteen years old then, just a few years older than his daughter, Courtney. She had been living in the Dunbar area, not overly far from his own place. She had been a sweet young girl, polite and gentle, but she had already been suffering from depression problems, even back then.

There were reasons for it. Biochemical issues aside, the poor kid’s mother had died from cancer the previous winter, and her father had been a cold, distant man who had eventually found his way back to jail on aggravated assault charges. With no siblings for support, Mandy had been alone in this world.

Just like she had been found tonight.

The thought pained Striker. ‘I should have done more,’ he said softly.

He stood there and thought of all this, and didn’t move until Felicia called out to him: ‘Look at this.’ She was in the kitchen, scouring through the cupboards.

Striker crossed the room, the garbage that covered the floor crunching beneath his shoes. Once beside Felicia, he saw the tray of plastic bottles in her hand. There must have been over forty of them.

‘Jesus, that’s a lot,’ he noted.

‘It’s all Effexor,’ she said.

‘Effexor? Let me see that.’ He took one of the bottles and read the label. On it was the same pharmacy name and prescription number as the Lexapro. The combination of the drugs told him what she’d suffered from.

‘She was bipolar depressive,’ he said.

Felicia looked up. ‘How do you know?’

He gave her a hard look. ‘Personal experience – they put Amanda on the same stuff, after her first suicide attempt.’

Felicia looked back at him, her face taking on a concerned look. She said, ‘Oh,’ and then became quiet. For a moment, the silence of the room was uncomfortable, and Striker’s thoughts filtered back to his wife and all her depression problems.

It was a memory that would never fade.

He prayed that Courtney was different from her mother – God knows she had the same stubbornness and unpredictable, fiery disposition that Amanda had always displayed – and it often worried him that she would develop the same depression problems, too. That she had suffered a serious spinal injury this last year and was now going through occupational therapy didn’t help matters much. Lately, she’d been distant and moody. Brooding, really. Typical for a sixteen-year-old girl, he told himself. Or as Felicia always put it, bang on for a Scorpio.

He moved over to the window and gave her a call. She answered on the fifth ring.

‘Hey, Pumpkin,’ he said.

‘Oh, hey, Dad. Let me use my psychic powers here – you’re gonna be late again.’

‘Funny girl. But I think I already am.’

‘You definitely are. I was giving you an out.’

He laughed softly. She knew him too well. Knew the job.

‘It’s a bad call, bad day,’ he explained. For a moment he considered telling her it was Mandy, but then he reconsidered. This might not have been a close friend of hers, but it was someone she knew. He’d tell her in person. It was better that way.

‘Dad?’ she asked.

‘How’d it go with therapy today?’

‘I didn’t go.’

Striker said nothing for a moment, then continued, ‘Look, Courtney, we’ve been over this before. You need to go to therapy. It’s not an option. Without it, you won’t regain full function. Even Annalisa—’

‘I don’t like Annalisa. She’s a bitch.’

Striker took in a deep breath. He caught Felicia staring at him, eavesdropping openly on their conversation like she always did, and he turned away. ‘Look, don’t call her that. I don’t like it. It’s not respectful. And besides, the woman’s only trying to help you.’

Courtney let out a bemused laugh. ‘Help? You call that help? It doesn’t help anything. And what would you know anyway? You’re not the one going through this!’

‘I’m not, am I? You’d be surprised to know—’

‘I have to go, Dad, the bath is running.’

‘Courtney—’

The line went dead.

Striker felt his fingers tighten on the phone as he stood there listening to the silence. Finally, he dropped his hand and stuffed the iPhone back into his inner jacket pocket. He gave himself a few seconds to get grounded. It had been like this with Courtney a lot lately – the angst, the anger and defiance, the never-ending rollercoaster ride of ups and downs.

Amanda all over again.

He turned around and met Felicia’s stare. ‘If you want to be a part of the conversation next time, just come over.’

Felicia didn’t bite. ‘She mad at you again?’ she asked.

‘She thinks I’m the Antichrist.’

‘Well, all women think that.’

She laughed softly at her own joke; Striker did not. He examined the room and saw nothing but the sad signs of mental illness: counters covered with old dirty dishes; spoiled food on the tables; heaps of unwashed clothes in every corner; and stacks of newspapers piled up randomly all around the room. The entire place looked like it had been flooded and then drained, with everything left lying where it landed.

He crossed the room to the kitchen area and looked at the piles of papers on the countertop. They were bills for an old cell phone. And for credit cards. Letters from creditors. Job application forms coupled with received rejection forms.

Everything in the room signalled the downward spiral of depression, and no one had caught it. Striker was in the process of making a list of what he was seeing when a short, portly cop with white bushy eyebrows appeared in the doorway. His stomach hung way down low and he waddled more than walked. He took a few steps into the room and spotted Striker.

‘Shipwreck.’

Striker looked over at the man. ‘Hey, Noodles.’

Noodles. Real name: Jim Banner. Striker had requested him personally. Noodles was the Vancouver Police Department’s best Ident technician. Hell, he was the best tech Striker had ever worked with. The Noodles nickname had come from a near-death experience Jim had suffered when choking on creamy linguine at the Noodle Shack up in Burnaby. It was a nickname Banner had always hated, but one that would forever stick.

That was the police way.

‘You friggin’ detectives,’ Noodles growled. ‘You’re ruining my social life.’

In the sombre setting of the room, it was all Striker could do to force a grin. ‘You need friends to have a social life, Noodles.’

‘I was sitting there with Jack Daniel’s when you called.’ He dropped his tool box and gear just inside the door. ‘Why the hell didn’t you just call Marty? He’s already on duty.’

‘This one is important to me, Noodles. I wanted the best here.’

The Ident tech raised an eyebrow and made a whatever face, but clearly liked the compliment. ‘The best, my ass,’ he said. ‘You can blow as much sunshine up my ass as you want, Shipwreck, but it don’t change nothing – you owe me one for this.’

‘Pick your poison.’

‘Jack Daniel’s. Gentleman’s blend.’

‘Done. Now get to work. Time is important.’

Noodles said nothing; he just did his own visual assessment of the scene, then opened his camera box. Striker relayed the whole experience to him, in exact detail, then guided him around the room, from the body of Mandy Gill to the kitchenette and, last of all, to the window area where the camera had been set up on the ledge.

‘When I saw the guy, he had gloves on, but maybe he took them off at some time before I got here. I’m hoping for some prints around the lower pane,’ he explained. ‘Especially on the outside of the window, right here, where the lens was located.’ He pointed to the exact area to be precise. ‘Check all the pill bottles as well. I’ve already handled the one by the chair – gloves on – and Felicia touched the ones on the counter. Gloves, too. When you’re done with this, I need the entire fridge in unit 305 dusted. Prick was hiding in there.’

‘In the suite?’

‘In the fridge.’

Noodles raised an eyebrow in surprise, then promised to have it done before going home tonight. For a brief moment, he focused on the body of Mandy Gill and his round, old face took on an expressionless look. After a moment, he shook his head and spoke.

‘She was young.’

‘She was a good kid,’ Striker said. ‘It’s not right.’

The words felt heavy and the mood darkening, so Striker gave Felicia a nod to leave and they said goodbye to Noodles. Now that Ident had arrived and the scene was secure, he wanted to get out of there ASAP. For many reasons. Noodles worked faster when alone; the glove had to be properly bagged and tagged for DNA; and, without a doubt, Car 10, the Road Boss, would be pulling up on scene any minute. Striker wanted to be clear of this place – clear of this entire area – when the man arrived.

He and Laroche didn’t exactly see eye to eye.