by Sean Slater
The words seemed to bring the girl a moment’s clarity. She blinked, sat up straighter. ‘Her cheeks . . . the bones were, like, really high.’
‘High?’
‘You know, like, prominent.’
‘And the man?’
The girl’s face tightened. ‘He’s a worker. From the plant.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Had . . . had on overalls. A uniform or something.’
Striker took a moment to write this down in his notebook, then continued with his inquiry. But the more he questioned the girl, the more she contradicted herself. In the end it was all gibberish. And when paramedics finally arrived, Striker’s frustration level had reached new limits. He stood up, curled his fingers into fists, and looked at Felicia, whose eyes were filled with concern.
‘Can you take care of this?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank friggin’ God.’
Feeling precious time slipping away, he turned around and headed for the one place he hoped would shed some clues on this whole mess.
The torture chamber in the steel barn.
Eight
Ten minutes later, Striker stood alone in the loft of the steel barn, directly in front of the chair where the woman had been bound. No restraints had been left behind. No ropes. No straps. No belts. No wires.
Using his flashlight to illuminate the area, he focused on the chair. It was an old thing, sturdy, made from steel legs and a solid steel backing. It was dusty, grimy, dirty as hell.
Not the greatest material for fingerprinting.
As he crouched down and examined the surface more closely, looking for any traces of hair or other DNA-testable substance, he noticed that there was no blood. The torture appeared to have been entirely electrical.
It was odd – something he had never seen.
Behind him, a plank groaned. Striker swivelled around and spotted a wizened old face at the top of the stairs. Barely reaching Striker’s shoulders, and weighing in at a measly sixty-five kilos, was Inspector Tekuya Osaka.
At fifty-five years of age, Inspector Osaka was nearing his 80-factor – that magical total derived from age plus years served. It allowed for superannuation, and for Osaka, retirement was fast closing in. The look on his face suggested he wished he’d taken an early leave. Striker couldn’t blame him.
‘You don’t look happy,’ Striker said.
Inspector Osaka just frowned. ‘This is downright creepy.’
‘Tell me about it. Guy used electrical torture.’
‘A stun gun?’
‘More like a wand of some kind.’
Inspector Osaka moved nearer. ‘A rather unusual instrument, don’t you think?’
‘The guy who did this is a pro.’
Osaka came to within a foot of Striker, his face better illuminated in the flashlight glow. With his thick white hair brushed back over his head and a matching goatee, he looked just like an Asian Colonel Sanders. ‘Haven’t heard of an electrical wand being used in years – not since that renegade biker got taken out back East.’
Striker made no reply. He was too intent on the scene before him.
Beneath the chair, the floorboards were no longer discoloured. The water stains had all but evaporated in the humid, growing heat. But the bucket was still there, half full of water. On the ground beside it was the old yellow sponge.
Everything would have to be swabbed for DNA.
Striker turned to look at the inspector. ‘I want this scene processed like no other, sir. Top priority. Private labs, if needed. If a woman really is missing, every minute counts.’
Inspector Osaka nodded. ‘Authorized.’
The word brought Striker a modicum of relief.
He stood up, feeling the haunts of two previous knee injuries, and took a final glance around. To the south, broken glass littered the windowsill and floor, and recollections of gunfire flooded him. He could still hear the shrill sounds of the glass breaking and the heavy, damn-near palpable blasts of the gunfire. It had been distinctive.
A forty-cal, for sure.
Striker moved up to the window. Analysed a few of the entrance holes in the frame. They were uniform, roughly ten to twelve millimetres in diameter, and the exit holes weren’t much wider. No mushrooming. In some areas, the wood from the beams had exploded outwards in uneven chunks.
Full Metal Jacket.
He looked at the holes for a long moment, at the broken and splintered wood, then let out a long breath. The rounds hadn’t missed him by all that much. Inches.
Inspector Osaka saw this too. ‘That was damn close, Striker.’
Striker said nothing; he just stared out the window. In the southeast, the sun was slowly creeping out from its earthly blanket, turning the skyline from a light bruised colour to a deep crimson. The natural light illuminated the waters below. Down there, the helicopter had already scoured the shoreline, but a much more thorough search still needed to be done.
He headed for the river.
Nine
Striker watched Inspector Osaka return to his police cruiser. His responsibility was to report the incident up the chain of command. With the unexpected health scare DC Hughes had suffered this past month, Superintendent Laroche was acting as the fill-in Deputy Chief.
That was bad news for Osaka, because Laroche was notorious for poking his nose into ongoing investigations and for being unfairly demanding. Striker had dealt with Laroche too many times to count, so he felt for Osaka.
By the time Striker had hiked down to the river, the sun had risen just enough to flood the entire waterway with a reddish glow. Being careful where he stepped, Striker crossed the sandy expanse and stepped onto the pier. At the far end, tied to the last post, was the rope he had found earlier, still dangling in the wind.
He walked down the pier and studied the rope. Unlike the thick nylon normally used to harness vessels, this rope was thin – a twine that could be bought at any hardware store. Definitely not easily traceable. Also of note, the knot fastening the rope to the post was of the ordinary overhand kind. Nothing unusual like a bowline, hitch or cat’s paw. Just a regular old knot.
The suspect had left them little to go on.
Striker took out his notebook and wrote all this down. By the time he had finished, Jim Banner had arrived on scene.
Banner – Noodles to all his friends – was making his way down from the roadside. Striker knew the man well. Hell, Striker was the one who had given Banner the nickname, after Banner had almost choked to death on a creamy linguine at the Noodle Shack. In return, Banner had nicknamed Striker Shipwreck – which Striker thought only fair, since it had been Banner’s boat Striker had destroyed in a not-to-be-discussed water-skiing incident.
Striker waved the man down. ‘Over here, Noodles.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold your friggin’ horses.’
Short, stubby, with white bushy eyebrows that made him look more Muppet than human, the ident technician waddled as he walked. He cut through the concrete plant loading zone and approached the dock. When he reached the river’s edge, Striker nodded.
‘’Bout time you got here – should I send you a special request next time?’
‘Sure. Address it to your mother’s bedroom.’
For the first time since this nightmare had started, Striker managed a bit of a smile. He explained to the technician all that had happened, then got Noodles to swab the bracelet for DNA and examine the cut rope. Once done, he guided him a few metres back towards the trail.
There, he stopped.
In the softer region of sand and silt were the footprints he had seen a half-hour earlier, during the chase. Three separate indentations. In the morning light, it was obvious that they were poor at best. Little ridge detail, blurred by the twisting motion in the sand. But one thing was for certain – the prints pointed in the direction of the dock.
‘Any chance of casting these?’ Striker asked.
Noodles placed his toolbox down on a
n unblemished section of land and crouched down low. Breathing hard from the exertion, his big belly protruding out, he pulled the flashlight from his tool belt and aimed the beam down into the first set of prints, then the second, and lastly the third.
He made some unhappy sounds.
‘Not good?’ Striker asked.
‘Poor. But we’ll do what we can . . . Any others?’
Striker shook his head. ‘Not that I’ve seen – but we haven’t done a full sweep of the beach yet. Got a canvass team being called out as we speak.’
Noodles just nodded.
Striker studied the footprints alongside the tech, assessing each one individually, then viewing them as an ongoing chain. After a moment, he pointed at two of the three shoe prints – the right ones.
‘The heel kicks out every time,’ he noted.
Noodles nodded. ‘Could have a fucked-up gait.’
‘Or a previous injury of some kind.’
‘Could be. But the ground here slopes down towards the river. So his foot would naturally slip a little, especially if he was trying to turn as he ran. Size is probably an eleven.’
‘An eleven?’
‘Or a ten.’
‘Great. We’ve just narrowed it down to eighty per cent of the adult male population.’
A few feet ahead, they found another print, this one much smaller. Possibly the victim. Noodles studied it. ‘There’s some basic ridge detail on this one,’ he said. ‘Enough maybe for a sample comparison . . . maybe . . . but the odds of discerning a brand and model are poor at best.’
‘Poor as in your chances of being voted Cop of the Year?’
‘Worse. Poor like your chances.’
Striker smiled weakly, then swore under his breath. He breathed in deeply, and the reedy stink of the river hit him.
Torture rooms. Rave girls. And vanishing suspects – this call was turning out to be the case from hell.
He was about to leave the river’s edge when something else caught his attention – something he noticed in only the first of the three footprints. He knelt down, took a pen from his pocket, and used it to point into the instep of the first footprint. There, in the dirt, was a small patch of a whitish-grey powder. In the mottled tones of sand and silt, it was almost indiscernible.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
Noodles took a long look. ‘Cement. Guy probably tracked it in from the plant yards – the stuff is everywhere.’
Striker said nothing for a moment, then nodded.
‘Analyse it anyway,’ he said.
‘If you want.’
‘I want,’ Striker said. ‘At this point we’re looking for miracles.’
Ten
Striker met Felicia back at the cement plant in the foreman’s office. The manager – a man who had run the concrete plant for twenty years without a glitch – had been called in from his Vancouver home and was now being questioned by Sergeant Rothschild in the back room.
Striker looked through the glass partition. The manager was wearing a pair of jeans and a New England Patriots jersey. He looked like he’d thrown on the first thing available upon getting the phone call. His befuddled expression also held notes of worry and shock.
He was clearly out of his comfort zone.
Felicia bumped Striker as she moved past him to the nearest work desk. She dropped a laptop down – one of the department Toughbooks – and punched in her password. Then the system known as PRIME – the Police Records Information Management Environment – initiated.
PRIME was essentially one giant police database, listing the majority of police contacts, with the obvious exception of privatized files, invisible entries, and anything attached to a sealing order set forth by the courts.
Felicia looked over at Striker. ‘You were right. Our witness was high as a kite. Paramedics were worried she could overdose right there on scene, so they rushed her off to the Children’s Hospital.’
‘Children’s?’
‘Yeah. She’s only fourteen.’
‘Jesus Christ, are you serious? I thought she was older than that.’ Striker took a moment to think of such a young girl being alone and high in a dark secluded industrial area. Thoughts of the scanty way in which she’d been dressed made him frown as his fathering instincts kicked in.
A situation like that could only lead to bad things.
And it had.
‘Anyway,’ Felicia continued. ‘The girl says she saw something on the woman’s shoulder. A tattoo of some kind.’
‘What kind of tattoo?’
‘A bird. An eagle, she thinks. Something red.’ Felicia turned back towards the laptop and resumed typing. ‘I’m running anything that’s even remotely close. But this machine is old and slow. The search keeps crashing . . . We’ll have to do a full scan at HQ.’
Striker was not surprised about the crashes. The portable laptops were notorious for failing during data searches. From what computer techs had told him, the problem was not so much a hardware issue as a software one.
Too many firewalled security checks.
Laptop issues aside, the notion of the girl spotting a tattoo on the victim’s body was troubling. A tattoo was a great lead, no doubt, but Striker wondered just how valid it was, given the girl’s mental state. He looked at Felicia. ‘What exactly did she say the victim was wearing for clothing?’
‘She didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s high, Jacob. The details were poor. Hazy at best.’
‘Yet she was clear on this tattoo?’
‘Does it matter? It’s all we got to go on. If you think you can do better—’
Striker held up his hands. ‘Hey, I’m not criticizing here, Feleesh. Just thinking out loud. For this girl to see a tattoo on the woman’s shoulder, then the victim must have been wearing something like a tank top. Or she was undressed.’
‘So you’re thinking this might be a sexual assault as well?’
A sick expression took over Striker’s face. ‘God, I hope not. I’m just talking this thing out.’ He thought of a woman being strapped to a chair in the loft of the barn. ‘Plus, it was dark in there. Plus, the woman was black.’
Felicia cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘So?’
‘So how well does red ink show up on black skin, especially in a dark environment?’
‘Probably not all that well,’ Felicia admitted.
Striker looked back through the window at the plant manager, who was still being questioned by Rothschild. The man’s New England Patriots jersey made Striker think. ‘Some sports teams have winged logos. Like the Detroit Red Wings. Heck, their logo is even red.’
Felicia typed in the data, then sent off another search.
As they waited for a return of information, Striker moved to the exit and looked outside. Across the lot, yellow police tape cordoned off all the crime scenes: the incoming road; the entrance to the cement plant; the barn with the orange exterior lamp; and the dock area below. Yellow lines were pretty much everywhere he looked, marking off a half-dozen secondary crime scenes.
It was disheartening.
‘So much forensics . . . this is going to take time we don’t have.’
He took a step outside to get some fresh air. High overhead, Air 1 still hovered. The bird had been combing the riverbanks for over an hour now, and air time was expensive. Once she landed to refuel, financial costs would come into play. Budgetary considerations.
The air search would be called off.
Striker could feel the seconds ticking by. He turned to look at the inspector. Seeing Osaka as the Road Boss still felt wrong for some reason. For anyone with ten seconds of operational experience, it was easy to see how hard the job was on the man. Terry Osaka was damn near a wizard in Investigations, and a legal genius when it came to Planning and Research.
But for all his skills off the road, he had an equal lack of ability on the road. During operations, he often was the epitome of a second-guesser, and his lack of confidence led to
long bouts of dangerous hesitancy. Striker could see the stress in his eyes at every call.
‘How low is the bird on fuel?’ Striker asked.
‘You got twenty minutes, nothing more.’
‘I’ll take every one of them I got.’
Osaka looked ready to say more, but his cell went off. He raised the BlackBerry to his ear, then met Striker’s gaze and frowned. ‘Laroche,’ he whispered, then walked back towards the Road Boss car – a white unmarked sedan.
As Osaka climbed the hill, Mike Rothschild came down. The sergeant smirked and jabbed a thumb at the inspector. ‘Did you ask the Colonel about the eleven herbs and spices for our barbecue tonight?’
Striker smiled at the joke, then frowned at the remembrance.
The barbecue with Mike and the kids . . .
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one,’ he said. ‘I got a feeling this call is going to be a long one.’
Rothschild frowned. He pulled out a pack of Old Port wine-tips and lit one up. ‘Fuckin’ hope not, man. Kids are really looking forward to seeing you. Plus, I picked us up some thick-ass T-bones. Gonna try this Jack Daniel’s BBQ recipe I found on the net. Supposed to be great.’ He took a long drag on the cigarillo and blew out a stream of wine-scented smoke. ‘Real great.’
Striker barely heard him. His mind was preoccupied with the list of tasks that still needed to be done. Without responding to Rothschild’s remarks, he pulled out his cell phone and called E-Comm. Sue Rhaemer answered with more of her usual 80s slang.
‘Word up, Shipwreck.’
Striker tasked her with notifying all the hospitals. ‘Tell them to be on the lookout for anyone coming in with injuries indicative of electrical torture.’
‘I’m on it,’ Rhaemer said, then hung up.
As Striker lowered his cell, his eyes caught sight of the land mass in the centre of the strait. Mitchell Island was a small section of land, connected by only the single-lane off-ramp of the Knight Street Bridge. The area was home to industrial plants, warehouses and shipping docks. Only factory workers ever ventured there. It was a good kilometre upriver and another kilometre across the waterway.
