Snakes & Ladders (44 page)

Typical in the world of policing.

He looked back at Felicia, who had her head buried in the computer. ‘What are you finding on Gabriel in PRIME?’

She looked up as if she was only now aware that his conversation with Collins had ended, and turned the screen to face him. ‘With the exception of Dr Ostermann, there’s not a whole lot on any of them,’ she said. ‘Gabriel is carded in a few of the police reports as a witness, but that was only due to car accidents. There’s also a report here from almost twelve years ago. He must’ve been, what, eight at the time.’

‘What does it say?’

‘I can’t bring it up, it’s privatized, and it’s a Burnaby file.’

‘We still need it,’ he said.

‘Well,
duh
!’ She laughed at the surprised look on his face. ‘I’ve already left a message for the detective in charge. Get this: her last name is
Constable
. Can you believe that? Detective Constable.’

Striker grinned. ‘Well, if she ever makes
Chief
Constable, the papers will have a field day with it.’

‘Yeah, no kidding. I’m just waiting for her to get back to me.’

‘What about Lexa?’ he asked.

‘In PRIME? Lexa is listed only once. Under a fingerprint file.’

‘Probably for when she got her criminal record check done for nursing.’

‘Bang on,’ Felicia said. ‘As for Dalia, she is a complete nonentity. Not in any of the systems. She doesn’t exist.’

Striker thought this over.

‘Run both their vehicles for tickets. Any infraction. Speeding. Red light. Parking. I don’t care. Just run it all.’

Felicia didn’t move. ‘We already know Ostermann drove like a maniac.’

‘I’m not interested in the offence, I’m interested in the locations.’

Felicia said nothing and turned back to the computer. After a few clicks, she made an interested sound. ‘Hey, look at this. We know the X5 has streams of tickets, but the Land Rover, which is registered to Lexa, has only three tickets – all of them on the Trans-Canada Highway.’

This piqued Striker’s interest. ‘Where exactly?’

‘One out near Furry Creek, and the other two just outside of Whistler Village.’ She looked up. ‘Maybe they have a cabin there, or something. I’ll check it out.’ She turned around and got on the phone to Whistler’s registrar office; while she talked, Striker continued going through the boxes of files. When he finished the
K
s and started the
L
s, he found one file that made him pause.

Logan, Larisa.

‘Holy shit,’ he said.

He opened up the file, but it was empty.

Confused, he looked back in the box for any loose papers, but found none. The words on the tab stared back at him. Made him angry. He searched the next three files to see if Larisa’s paperwork had accidentally slipped into the wrong folder.

None had.

He sat there, letting everything sink in and feeling sick about it. He picked up his desk phone and checked his voice messages. There were seven, but none from Larisa, and none relevant to the file.

No time for them now.

He archived the phone messages and looked through his emails. Again, there were tons of messages, but nothing pertinent to this investigation. Irritated, he brought up the email Larisa had sent him the previous day and made another reply to it:

He looked at the message for a moment, hoping it was personal enough to make her respond. He hit Enter and the message sent. After that, he sat there for a long moment, waiting for a response. None came. And after recalling the way things had gone down at the Arabic Beans coffee shop at Metrotown, Striker wondered if one ever would.

It was doubtful.

The woman no longer trusted him. She trusted no one. She was all alone and in hiding. And the longer she stayed missing, the worse their chances of finding her became. It was a cold, hard fact. But it was real.

They were running out of time.

It was morning by the time the Adder reached his destination. He was tired. He had not slept all night. He was hungry. He was cold.

He rounded the cabin from the north in the mid-morning light, and stood on the back deck. As he breathed out, the warmth and moisture from his breath fogged the air. He stared out over the lake. The edges were still covered with a fine layer of ice, and the weeds and reeds were frozen in place. The air smelled strongly of pine and cedar. Morning sun broke the top of the mountains to the far east. It gleamed on the cold, calm waters of the lake.

It was the perfect day. The kind of morning every skier and snowboarder craved all season long. Crisp, clear, cold. It should have been beautiful.

But the Adder could focus on none of this. All he saw was one bad memory. And the images in his head. Ones that had once been terrifying but now seemed like faded stills from a different life. A different world.

And in some sense, that was exactly what they were.

The sliding glass door opened behind him with a soft rolling sound.

‘Gabriel,’ a feminine voice said. Soft, and with emotion. With
relief
. And the Adder immediately knew it to be Dalia. She was the only one who cared. The only one who had
ever
cared. She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest, then let loose a gasp and shivered. ‘You’re so cold,’ she said softly. ‘Come inside. Later on, I’ll help you warm up.’

He said nothing; he merely turned around and walked with her towards the cabin. Before entering, he stopped.

Thought.

He knelt down and removed the DVD from his pocket. It was Disc 1, the only copy he had left, and the only one that truly mattered. He slid it beneath the porch steps, far into the back where it was out of view. Then he stood up and moved into the warmth of the cabin. He’d barely stepped foot on the ceramic tile when the smell of green tea hit him. And then the Doctor came storming into the kitchen. Her eyes were set and dark, her face so tight it looked bloodless.

‘It’s about time – you fool,’ she said.

Dalia stepped forward. ‘Mother, please—’

‘To your room, girl.’

‘But Mother—’

‘To your room!’

Lexa Ostermann stepped forward and gave the Girl a backhanded strike – a sharp, hard
SLAP!
that resonated like the crack of a whip. Dalia recoiled from the blow and grabbed her cheek. Sobbing, she spun from the kitchen and raced up the stairs to the second floor of the cabin.

The Adder watched her go, but did nothing. A strange tingling sensation was tickling the back of his mind. His heart. His entire body.

And he did not like it.

‘You’re a fool,’ the Doctor continued. ‘Everything, ruined. Years of work, ruined. Our family, ruined!’

‘I did nothing.’

‘Your
videos
,’ she said, and there was ice in her words. ‘They are what set everything off. Your father, dead. The police, hunting us down. Like animals, Gabriel. Like animals!’

He said nothing, and his silence only seemed to infuriate her more.

‘Outside. Now.’

He looked out of the sliding glass door. ‘There is no reason.’

‘You know the rules.’

‘But there is no well here,’ he started, then he saw the lake.

‘Outside,’ the Doctor ordered. ‘I will not tell you again.’

The Adder said nothing for a long moment, then he nodded absently and walked back out through the door. The moment he left the kitchen, the cold wind slapped his face. Sharp, stinging, burning his skin and eyes. He marched across the slippery wooden porch, down the steps and across the small back yard. The frozen blades of grass crunched beneath his feet. Then he was at the edge of the lake. Memories of the past
deluged
him. Memories of William.

He could not bear it.

‘Take off your clothes,’ the Doctor ordered.

Mechanically, the Adder did as instructed, folding them neatly and placing the articles one on top of the other. Shoes, then pants, then shirt. When he was completely naked – when the winter wind was cutting into him like an icy blade – the Doctor stepped closer.

‘Into the lake.’

Without so much as a word, the Adder stepped forward until the soles of his feet touched the thin ice of the lake. The ice cracked, and broke beneath his weight, and the sounds of laughter grew in his ears and the image of William was suddenly there before his eyes. A little boy running and giggling on the lake.

He stopped moving.

‘Into the lake,’ the Doctor said again.

But this time, the Adder did not respond.

‘I
order
you into the lake.’

The Adder turned. Faced her.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not do this any more.’ And for the first time in his memory – the first time since William’s death – the Adder felt more than alive, he felt
awake
.

The Doctor’s face took on a shocked look, and then she nodded slowly. ‘I always knew this day would come, Gabriel. Very well then. You have finally left the past behind you. Pick up your clothes and join me in the cabin. We have much to discuss.’

The Adder nodded. He bent over to pick up his clothes and suddenly sensed movement beside him. He turned – but was far too slow. A sharp pricking sensation stung his neck, and he knew the needle had gone in.

He jerked backwards, stunned, and felt a strange hot warmth rush from his neck down his arms. The flow carried on through his body, down his legs, and even up into the top of his head – a strange numb warmth. Almost immediately, his muscles grew weak and he felt himself folding inwards. His legs trembled, then gave out, and he collapsed on the edge of the lake.

A strange, distorted sound filled the air, and the Adder realized it was the Doctor. She was laughing at him. One second there was only white sun and blue sky above him; the next moment, the Doctor was there, looking down at him with a dark smile on her lips.

‘Mivacurium chloride,’ she said. ‘How does it feel to be on the receiving end, for a change?’

The Adder could not speak. He looked up at her melting face and tried to respond, tried to say something – what, he had no idea – but his lips would not move.

‘There is a certain set order, Gabriel,’ the Doctor continued. ‘A
hierarchy
. And you need to remember your place within it.’

The mask she wore crumbled away in pieces, and the Adder saw her for everything that she was. Everything she had always been.

The monster beneath.

He felt her grab his legs. Felt his body being dragged along the ground. There was a wet, cold feeling surrounding his legs and hips, and he knew she had left him in the lake. Cold. So terribly cold. And the sky was black and growing blacker by the second. After a while, the sky faded. And eventually the sun burned out, leaving him with nothing but black.

Felicia hung up the phone. ‘Nothing comes back,’ she said.

Striker cursed. ‘Nothing?’

‘
Zilch
. The only address the registrar’s office has on file is their house on Belmont.’

Striker thought this over. ‘What about using EvenHealth as an entity?’ he asked.

‘Already one step ahead of you. EvenHealth as an entity comes back to every clinic the programme is associated with – and there’s more than two dozen all across the city. Not to mention the rest of the Lower Mainland. How many clinics there are out there in total, I have no idea.’

Striker frowned. It left them with nothing. All they had was a house where Lexa and her children had fled from, and a pair of speeding tickets from the Whistler Village area.

He met Felicia’s stare. ‘If you were Lexa Ostermann and you needed somewhere to store some extra cash and ID, where would you go?’

‘A PO box.’

‘Agreed. But a post office box is only accessible during business hours. Normal people like you and me could always wait till the next business day, but someone involved in a scam like this would have to run at a moment’s notice. So where else would you go?’

Felicia was quiet for a moment, then shook her head. ‘There’s only one other place I can think of – where she works. The clinic her husband owns.’

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘It’s time to go to Mapleview.’

At exactly ten-thirty, Striker parked the undercover cruiser by the roundabout and stepped out. With the morning sun now rising high overhead, and backed by brilliant blue sky, the modern clinic of Mapleview looked pleasant enough. But all Striker could think of was when they’d come there to kidnap Dr Ostermann and intercept Billy Mercury. That had happened at three o’clock yesterday afternoon.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

‘I’m starting to hate this place,’ he said.

‘You’re preaching to the choir,’ Felicia replied. She started up the old cement stairs, and Striker went with her. The moment they walked through the wired-glass double doors into the antechamber of the facility, the receptionist behind the desk looked up. Her face took on a pleasant look, and she smiled at them.

‘Detectives,’ she said. ‘Good morning.’

Striker smiled. Obviously she hadn’t heard the news of Dr Ostermann’s demise and the family’s disappearance.

‘Good morning back,’ he said. He approached the front desk, smiled at the woman, reached out and gently touched her hand. ‘You know, in all the pandemonium yesterday, I never did get your name.’

She smiled at his concern. ‘It’s Pam,’ she said. ‘Well,
Pamela
. Pamela O’Malley.’

‘I’m actually surprised to see you in here today.’

She looked around and shrugged. ‘Everyone else called in sick, and someone has to be here for the patients.’

‘It’s very decent of you.’

‘Yeah, good job,’ Felicia added.

Striker met the woman’s stare. ‘How are
you
coping, Pam? If you need a card for Victim Services, I can give you one.’ He looked around the room as if suddenly realizing where he was, and grinned. ‘Actually, if you need some therapy, I guess you’re probably covered.’