Snakes & Ladders (35 page)

Striker just nodded, but he didn’t like it. He couldn’t help feeling like this was just too easy. Too convenient. And more than that, he was worried for Larisa. Billy Mercury and the whole case aside, the woman needed professional help.

He was determined to get her that.

He took out his iPhone, logged into his Gmail account, and sent her a message. In the subject heading, he typed: URGENT!!! Then he worked out a few sentences:

He sent the email, then put his iPhone on top of the dashboard and grabbed the remainder of his burger. He brought it to his mouth, found he couldn’t eat, and threw it in the bag. He sipped his coffee and watched the sky slowly turn a darker shade of purple. He wished to God there was something else he could do for the woman. He wished she would just get back to him.

But the minutes passed and his cell never rang.

Felicia finished her Filet-o-Fish and looked over at him. ‘Hey. You okay?’

Striker said nothing. He just looked at the world beyond the windshield and frowned. It looked like a cold and dark place out there. And to Larisa Logan, it was. He blamed himself for that. For not responding to her calls until it was too late.

It had been a terrible mistake.

Sweat dampened the Adder’s body. He could feel it as he lay there on the cold hard concrete of the floor. Drips of sweat, sliding down his cheeks. Drips running down his neck. Down his back. Everywhere.

His heart was racing. And the more he thought of the woman detective surviving the attack, the worse his heart pounded.

No more, he thought.

Please, no more.

As if on cue, the bell rang. The
high
bell. Not the one that was low and resonated all through his chamber like the call of some ungodly demon – that was the one that summoned him to the Doctor’s office. No, this one was the sound of the angels. The chimes. And it told him he had done well today.

The Adder struggled to sit up. Wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. Looked daftly around the room.

Broken in two in the middle of the floor was a DVD. Try as he might, the Adder could not recall breaking it. His memory failed him. All he knew now was the lost feeling that filled his insides.

That terrible, terrible feeling of grieving.

The bell chimed again, this time twice. And the Adder knew it was time to go. The Doctor was alerting him, and as always it was best not to keep the Doctor waiting.

He climbed to his knees. Then to his feet. And made his way towards the ladder. He climbed the rungs numbly, mechanically, until he reached the hatch. As he undid the latch, a sense of surreal awareness came over him. It was time to play the part again. To put on his outer-world face. His mask. To become one with the facade of the upstairs world.

His reward was waiting.

When Striker’s iPhone went off on the car’s dashboard, he snatched it up like it was a bomb ready to go off, and read the screen. He was hoping to see Larisa’s name, or an email notification. Instead he saw the name
Jim Banner
across the display.

Striker hit the Talk button and put the phone to his ear.

‘Noodles,’ he acknowledged.

The technician sighed. ‘God, I hate that nickname.’

‘Just be happy you didn’t choke on Fish Balls. Now what do you have for me?’

‘How about another partial print, for starters?’

Striker leaned forward in the seat. ‘Where?’

‘We recovered one from apartment 109 in Hermon Heights – the suite across the road from Sarah Rose’s place, the one you thought this guy might have been watching you from.’

‘I knew it,’ Striker said. ‘And?’

‘Nothing earth-shaking, but we got some relatively interesting findings. I dusted all the areas you wanted – the electrical outlets, the window and frame, the plug end of the extension cord – and we got something. One single print on the inside of the front window. When I was doing it, one of the neighbours came by. Told me that suite’s been vacant for over six weeks, ever since the last renter moved out.’

‘And the print – you run it?’

‘Can’t. It’s just a partial,’ Noodles replied. ‘Nothing good enough to send through the database. But I did use it for a comparison.’

‘With whose?’

‘Billy Mercury’s. And once again, it
doesn’t
match.’

Striker thought this over. Just because the print was on the inside of the window, and just because it didn’t belong to Billy Mercury, that didn’t prove anything. Anyone could have been in that suite over the last six weeks. A squatter. Some neighbourhood kids. The landlord. Anyone. Or it could belong to the previous tenant.

They needed corroboration.

‘Did you compare it with the prints found on the fridge at the Lucky Lodge?’ he asked.

‘There’s the key,’ Noodles said. ‘The print might not match up with Billy Mercury’s prints, but it’s a perfect match with the one I found on the fridge at the Lucky Lodge.’

Striker felt a bolt of energy surge through him. What were the odds of finding two partial prints at two separate crime scenes that matched?

The answer was
zero
.

‘What about the can of varnish?’ Striker asked.

‘We got a good print there too. But it’s not the same.’

‘
Not
the same?’

‘Doesn’t match the print on the window, doesn’t match Billy’s.’

Striker frowned. There was no doubt that the varnish had been used as an accelerant on the door. ‘Run the print through the databank when you get time and let me know the results either way. For all we know, it could come back to a checkout girl. And swab everything for DNA. We need something here, Noodles. Gimme some magic.’

‘The only tricks I know involve a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a pair of air stewardesses.’

Striker smiled into the phone. ‘Just call me the moment you know.’

He hung up the cell and relayed the entire discussion to Felicia, paying particular attention to the fact that the partial print from the fridge back at the Mandy Gill crime scene matched the print from the window at the Sarah Rose crime scene.

The news seemed to shock her.

‘It has to be connected,’ she admitted. ‘The odds are too high.’

‘Which means that there’s a very good chance Billy Mercury wasn’t acting alone.’

‘Jesus.’

Felicia rubbed her face, massaging her temples. She brushed her hair back over her shoulders and shook her head as if she just couldn’t believe it. Without warning, she opened the car door.

Cold wind swept into the car, sucking away the heat.

‘I need some air,’ she said.

She climbed out, and Striker got out with her. He took his coffee cup with him. They walked down the long stretch of Kootenay Street, just below the highway overpass, where it was dark and quiet. They talked. After going over everything from beginning to end one more time, Felicia stopped walking and turned to face him.

‘Only two people stick out to me – Dr Ostermann and Dr Richter.’

Striker agreed. ‘Dr Richter is nowhere to be found. And I don’t like the way Ostermann is constantly avoiding us and skirting around our questions. There’s more going on here. You can bet your pay cheque on that.’

Felicia shivered, but nodded in agreement. She bundled up her coat, then snagged the coffee cup from his hand and slurped some back. She kept the cup.

‘Ostermann has proximity to everyone involved,’ she noted. ‘The timelines also correlate; he was seen driving like a madman through the area five minutes after you got into a fight with the suspect at Mandy Gill’s crime scene. He’s been resistant to our questions from the beginning. He had a sharp pain in his side that first night we spoke with him – maybe from a high fall. And last of all, we’ve caught him lying to us about working at Mapleview. Which is odd. Why lie about something so trivial?’

‘He says it was all a misunderstanding,’ Striker said, and they both laughed. After the moment had passed, he continued speaking. ‘This is all excellent insight, but it’s also all
circumstantial
.’

Felicia shivered and took another sip of Striker’s coffee. ‘Circumstantial, fine. But how much do we need?’

‘What we need here is
motive
.’

Felicia nodded. ‘That’s what interrogations are for.’

Striker didn’t disagree. ‘You’re bang-on right about that – but not just yet.’

‘Why not? Now’s as good a time as any.’

Striker only smiled at her. ‘You don’t go big-game hunting with a mag that’s half full of bullets.’ He took back his coffee cup and sipped it, then let out a long breath that fogged the air under the street lamp. ‘No, we’ll finish our investigation first, gather as much evidence as we can on Ostermann, and then we’ll go after him fully loaded.’

‘Guns a-blazing,’ Felicia said.

Striker smiled back.

‘I never fire blanks.’

The Adder entered the Special Room. He had been in here over a dozen times in his life. And every time for his reward.

The room was different from the others. Certainly different from his own dwelling. Thick silk drapes, blood-red in colour, framed the bay window at the far end of the room. The glass of the window was tinted – easy to see out, impossible to see in. Flanking the window was a pair of high-backed leather chairs, red-brown in colour, matching the mahogany bar that was set at the opposite corner. On the countertop of the bar were several bottles of booze. Twenty-five-year-old Bowmore. Fifteen-yearold Grey Goose. Forty-year-old Rémy Martin. And types of hard liquor the Adder did not even recognize. There were also several bottles of mineral water, all for him.

He touched none of it, just as he never had.

Sitting in the centre of the room was a king-sized bed. A fourposter, covered with thick heavy sheets of high-count cotton thread and big puffy pillows that were so deep, you fell right into them.

The Adder stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. His eyes flitted to the old bronze lamp on the desk, then the luxurious chandelier above, and then the mirror on the far wall. These were all beautiful items.

And all perfect for secretly hiding a camera.

He looked around the room but found none. He never did.

He unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall to the thick white carpet below. Then he did the same with his jeans and underwear. When he saw the image in the mirror before him, it was bony thin and terribly white. There were scratch marks all down its arms – from the well, he knew – and two of the fingernails from the left hand were broken off.

The sight was interesting, and for a moment it stole his attention.

Then the door behind him opened and shut. And the Adder knew that she was there. She came up behind him, wrapped her soft hands around his ribs, and his body automatically tightened.

‘You’re cold,’ she said.

Then her body pressed into him from behind. He could feel her firm breasts against his back. Her flesh on his flesh. Her warmth invading his body.

He turned around and met her eyes, and was sucked down deep into their stare. She kissed him with an open mouth, her tongue slipping on his. Touching, tickling, caressing. And then she gently pushed him back to the bed.

He let her. He fell back on the thick cotton sheets. And then she climbed on top of him. Her hips straddled his, her long dark hair spilling all around him like heavy thread. She stared deep into his eyes.

‘Did the Doctor put you in the well again?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re cold.’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me warm you.’

She reached down between his legs and grabbed hold of him, squeezed him, made him stiff. Then she lowered her hips and took him inside her. And the Adder did what he thought he was supposed to do – though his thoughts were still far away, where they needed to be. Not here, not now. But on Larisa Logan.

‘Warmer now?’ she asked.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the immediate.

The Girl let out a soft sound, a moan that escaped her thin bluish lips. And she tightened down on him; he could feel it. A throbbing sensation was pulsating through him. Because of her. She was warm and wet and wonderful.

‘I love you,’ she said, again and again.

The Adder did not reply. Did not even try.

I love you .
. .

He wished he understood that.

Striker and Felicia went to meet Noodles at the Ident Lab at 312 Main Street. As always in this city, there was no parking to be found, so Striker left their car on Cordova Street in the Patrol Only parking – an action which always drove the road cops crazy, but Striker couldn’t help it.

Things had to get done.

He and Felicia walked down the laneway which divided the main building from the annexe. Once inside, they made their way to the Ident Lab. The unit was old and run-down and screamed of makeshift necessity. On the left side of the hall sat the Blood Drying Room, where all soaked materials were tagged before being swabbed. Up ahead they saw the chemical lab, where Noodles had undoubtedly applied the ninhydrin to bring up the print.

To the right of the chemical lab was the main Ident office, where most of the paperwork got done. In this area, it wasn’t all that different from Homicide. Rows and rows of thrown-together cubicles cluttered the office, each one seeming far too small for the amount of clutter the desks owned.

In the last one was Noodles.

The portly Ident tech was sitting far back in his chair with his feet up on the desk and a frozen gel pack laid across his eyes. When Striker got close enough to him, he gave his chair a kick.

‘Trying to get rid of the wrinkles there, Princess?’

Felicia laughed at this. ‘Botox works better.’

Noodles just removed the bag from his eyes and blinked a few times while trying to get used to the light. He threw the cold-pack on the desk, sat forward in his chair, and rubbed his eyes.