Snakes & Ladders (20 page)

Felicia nodded. ‘Because the second we see her, we have to apprehend her and take her back to the hospital.’

‘Not just any hospital,’ Striker corrected. ‘
Riverglen
.’

‘The insane asylum.’

‘Mental Health Facility,’ Striker corrected. ‘Gotta be PC nowadays.’

Felicia raised an eyebrow. ‘New term, same old shit.’

Striker agreed, even if he didn’t say it. ‘No matter what route Larisa takes, she loses. And she obviously realizes this, otherwise she’d come in to see us.’

‘It also means she’s unstable, Jacob.’

Striker took the warrant, photocopied it, and returned it to the fresh warrants bin. When he turned around, Felicia had a lost look on her face.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I ran her in the car,’ she said. ‘None of this came up.’

Striker nodded. ‘Because it hasn’t been entered in the system yet. CPIC can be up to six weeks behind at times.’

‘Six
weeks
?’

Striker gave her an irritated glance. ‘Yes, six weeks. Sometimes more. Jesus Christ, Felicia, get your head in the game. You should already know this. What are you, a homicide detective or some piss-kid rookie?’

Felicia said nothing back, but her cheeks flushed red. ‘You need to seriously chill out, Jacob,’ she finally said. ‘Take a pill.’

Striker barely heard her. ‘Most warrants aren’t walked through the courts,’ he continued. ‘Only when there’s been a history of violence. And Larisa hasn’t tried to hurt herself or anyone else, so it won’t be expedited.’

‘She hasn’t tried to hurt anybody
yet
.’

Striker turned and said goodbye to Lilly, then gave Felicia a curt nod and headed back down the narrow corridor of brown threadbare carpet. Before heading out through the exit, he ran right into Bernard Hamilton. The man stopped hard, looked surprised to see him, then put on his usual waxy smile.

‘Striker, Santos. How goes the battle?’

Striker didn’t bother to step out of his way. ‘I know about the warrant, Bernard.’

Bernard Hamilton kept the smile on his face, but his expression tightened. ‘What warrant?’

‘The Form 21. Which tells me
why
you were out at Larisa’s place last night and this morning. And why you created the CAD call. You want to apprehend her yourself – even though you know what we’ve been doing here. You’re trying to pad your goddam stats.’

The smile fell from Bernard’s lips. ‘What I’m trying to do here, Striker, is locate one of our patients – for her own well-being.’

‘Her own well-being? Really? You gonna seriously hide behind that?’ Striker took a step closer to the man. ‘Tell me, Bernard. Why didn’t you inform us of the warrant when we saw you this morning? You knew we were looking for her.’

‘I . . . I didn’t know at the time—’

‘The warrant came out last night. Car 87 gets first knowledge of anything related to mental health. So you of all people would have known
first
.’

Bernard’s face reddened. ‘There’s privacy issues here.’

‘Since when do privacy issues supersede protection of life?’

‘I’m not getting into this.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, would you, Bernard? What does a woman’s life matter when compared to your apprehension statistics?’

Hamilton’s eyes darkened. ‘Larisa Logan has a warrant out for her. She needs to be taken into custody. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Which would have happened already if you hadn’t screwed us.’ When Bernard’s face took on a confused look, Striker grew angry. ‘Larisa Logan was waiting to see me when you tried to nab her. Now she thinks I called you there. She thinks I screwed her. And she’s out there on the fly because of it. Good job, Bernard. Top ten as always.’

‘I . . . never knew—’

‘You would have, if you had even bothered to ask.’

Bernard offered nothing back, and Striker just stared at the man. After a short moment, Felicia touched Jacob’s arm to get him moving. He shrugged her hand away.

‘One more thing, Bernard. Anything happens to Larisa, and I’m going to make damn sure that everyone in this department knows just how badly you screwed this. How you put your stats ahead of her protection. You got that? We’ll see how far your bid for Cop of the Year goes after that.’

Bernard’s eyes widened at the comment, and Striker finally moved out of his way. Without looking at Bernard, or even Felicia, Striker stormed down the hall, kicked open the door, and made his way down the stairs.

Everything had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.

Time was important, the Adder knew. Everything was progressing quickly. The items were prepared, all packed away and ready to go. And the van was filled with gas, the keys already in the ignition. It was parked, unseen, under the overhang of a weeping willow tree, at the end of a nearby dead-end lane.

He went over his checklist.

Leather mask.
Check
. Leather gloves.
Check
. Latex gloves.
Check
.

Video equipment . . .
No
.

The thought caused a frown to form on his face. How could he forget that? The camera was the most important thing.

He returned to his dwelling, opened the hatch in the floor, and climbed down the ladder into his home. When he reached the concrete below, he beelined for the east side of the room. On the wall hung a print of M.C. Escher’s
Relativity
– where people walked up and down stairs in all directions, in a world where gravity made no sense.

The Adder loved the image. However, his taste in art was not what made him buy the piece. What made him buy it was the size of the lithograph.

He reached out, grasped hold of the frame, and removed the picture from the wall. There behind it was an odd-sized door, two feet wide and three feet tall. Thin, made from wood.

An old dumbwaiter. It had been built God knows how long ago, and had long since been boarded up.

The Adder opened the door. Inside was the passageway leading up between the floors. It went all the way to the top of the house. Up there, the Adder knew – for he had rebuilt the system himself – were two strong platforms, each one less than one foot wide and two feet deep. The base of each was built on rollers, which rose and fell when the cords were pulled.

The Adder reached inside and grasped the cord. When he pulled it, the first unseen platform descended silently from above, revealing the array of electronic equipment. He removed the items he needed for the job.

Camera.

Relay.

Computer box with digital receiver.

And, of course, the back-up external hard drive. He
always
had a back-up drive. Because the thought of losing even one precious moment of the Beautiful Escape was horrifying and left him cold.

He took all the equipment out, placed it in the black leather duffel bag, and dropped it by the door. Then he raised the dumbwaiter once more, closed the door, and placed the painting back over it.

Almost set.

He crossed the room to the west side, to the only other door the room owned, and opened it. Inside was a small bathroom with a toilet and a shower but no bath. The Adder took off his clothes, revealing the marks on his back and legs – the unsightly welts he had received as part of his punishments – and turned on the water.

It was cold. Freezing cold – there was no hot water down here; never had been – but that was okay. He took the bar of soap from the rack and vigorously brushed it through his hair and across every inch of skin. Then he grabbed the horsehair brush and did the same, pressing hard, scraping it against his skin until the flesh turned pink.

He did this every time in preparation for a job. It was a necessary part of the routine.

By the time he was done, some twenty minutes later, he was chilled to the bone and his welted skin stung like it had been sandpapered raw. He climbed out of the shower, dried himself off, and redressed in a brand-new pair of unworn black jogging pants and a matching black hoodie.

One more thing.

And perhaps the most important of all.

He crossed the room to the cabinet where his computer sat, and logged on. He started the Private Search program, then navigated to his MyShrine site. Once he had logged on, he began typing. The message was brief, direct, and aimed well:

The Adder stopped typing. Read the message over.

And was content.

He hit the Send button and then logged off. Sometime today, Detective Striker would receive the warning. But would he get it soon enough? And would he make use of it?

It did not matter. Not in the end.

The Adder set up the KillDisk program. One wrong password and the entire hard drive would be deleted and then formatted. He logged off the computer and shut it down. Got up from the chair and headed for the ladder to the hatch above. The day may have been young, but there was still much work to do.

The Form 21 – the medical warrant sent out by a director, who was almost always a psychiatrist – was signed at the very bottom. Striker sat in the driver’s seat of their vehicle and tried to make out the name, but it seemed damn near impossible. He would’ve had a better chance of reading hieroglyphics. He handed the warrant to Felicia.

‘Can you make any sense of this?’

She took it, scanned it over, then shook her head. ‘Chicken scratches. I think it’s a prerequisite to being a doctor – the inability to write legibly.’

‘It’s a joke is what it is,’ Striker said. ‘Can you imagine if we submitted court notes like this? Defence would
freak
. What’s the point in having someone sign a warrant if you can’t even make out their signature? I can’t tell if it’s Ostermann or Richter.’

‘Or Dr Phil.’

‘Should be Kevorkian, the way I’m feeling now.’

Felicia let out a soft laugh.

Striker started the car and got the heat going. ‘I’m sick of hearing the names Ostermann and Richter,’ he said. ‘I left a message for Richter, but as for Ostermann, he still hasn’t gotten back to us on this whole Billy patient of his. What time is it?’

Felicia checked her watch. ‘Ten.’

‘That’s late enough,’ he said.

He dialled Dr Ostermann’s cell number and got the message system. Then he tried Riverglen and was told that Dr Ostermann didn’t start until noon on Thursdays. Finally, he dialled the home number. Again, he got voicemail.

‘Screw it,’ he said. He put the car into Drive and hit the gas.

They headed for the Endowment Lands.

Rush hour was still going strong, but the worst of it was thinning. The drive from 312 Main to Point Grey usually took about twenty minutes. They were only ten minutes into the drive when Felicia spoke up.

‘Stop by ’bucks, will you?’

‘Starbucks? What if we miss Ostermann?’

Felicia shook her head. ‘The guy doesn’t start till twelve; we got lots of time.’ She gestured to the long stretch of West 4th Avenue. ‘Besides, if he’s going to go to work, he’s got to come down this stretch of road. We’ll see his X5 a mile off.’

When Striker said nothing and kept driving, Felicia gave him a jab in the arm. ‘Really, Jacob, just a quick one to go. I’m dying for some caffeine.’

‘Fine,’ he relented.

When they reached the twenty-two hundred block of West 4th Avenue, he pulled over and Felicia darted across the road. He watched her go. As she crossed in the morning sun, she glanced back at him and smiled.

He couldn’t help but smile back. When she disappeared through the glass doors of the coffee shop, a sense of gloom came over him, and he felt bad for giving her hell back in the Warrants section. He wondered if he had really been mad at her for not knowing the time-delay issues with CPIC, or if he was really just mad about her not staying the night.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He sat and thought about that.

Five minutes later, when she returned with a latte for herself and the usual Americano for him, Striker took it and thanked her. He cast her a quick glance. She had vanilla milk foam on her upper lip, and he reached out and wiped it away.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he started.

She looked back with a lost expression. ‘Sorry? For what?’

‘Back there. At 312. I shouldn’t have given you shit about the warrants. Calling you a piss-kid rookie. I was out of line.’

She met his stare. ‘You’ve been testy all morning. I thought maybe it was Bernard.’

‘It was. I guess. I dunno.’

‘Then why take it out on me?’

‘I wasn’t trying to take it out on you.’

‘Sure felt that way.’

‘Well, I can’t help the way you
feel
, Feleesh.’

‘Obviously.’

Striker frowned. What had started out as an apology was fast turning into a tense moment. He put the car into Drive, did a quick shoulder check, and pulled back out into traffic. When Felicia added, ‘You don’t know how I feel sometimes because you’re not exactly sensitive to it,’ Striker felt his frustration growing.

He cast her another glance while driving. ‘And you know what, Feleesh? Sometimes you’re not sensitive to the fact that I’m the lead on our cases. In fact, you outright begrudge it.’

‘I do not.’

‘You
do
. Yet the reason I am the lead is because of things like what happened back there in Warrants – I’m senior here not only because I’ve got more time on the road than you, but because of the experience that comes with it. That’s why I know things. Like the delay with the Form 21s.’

Felicia’s eyes had a flash of fire. ‘I don’t ever
begrudge
you being the lead in our partnership, Jacob. What I begrudge is you having a condescending attitude sometimes. I begrudge you assigning me to menial tasks instead of having me assist you in the real meat of the investigation. And I begrudge you talking
at
me instead of
to
me.’