Snakes & Ladders (46 page)

‘Berlin,’ Felicia said.

‘Yet the receptionist back at Mapleview said Lexa was from Prague.’

‘And Lexa was none-too-happy about her knowing.’

Striker Googled Charles University, and got the number. He looked at his watch and saw it was slowly approaching noon in Vancouver. It would be around 8 p.m. there.

He called up the Information and Advisory section of Charles University and was relieved to find a person who was fluent in English. Less than ten minutes later, he got off the phone and gave Felicia a hard stare.

‘She went there all right, under the name Novak – and for
eight
years.’

‘Why so long? Did she change her programme?’

Striker offered a grave stare. ‘She didn’t go there for a nursing degree, she’s a friggin’ doctor. She minored in
psychology
.’

Felicia’s face took on a stunned look, but then she nodded. ‘It actually makes sense, when you put it all together. Lexa gets her medical degree over there, and comes to Canada.’

‘But not all her courses are transferable,’ Striker pointed out.

‘So she finds a man who’s also a forensic psychiatrist.’

‘Erich Ostermann. Who just happens to own his own clinic.’

‘Where she’ll have access to all the patients she wants.’

‘Not patients,’ Striker said. ‘
Victims
.’

Felicia thought this over for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘There’s one small problem here. Why not just take the extra courses required to make her degree recognized over here? I mean, think of it, she put in eight years towards it. Why downgrade to nursing after all that?’

‘I can think of two reasons,’ Striker said. ‘One, it’s easier to hide in the background when the police come knocking – everyone thinks of the doctor, not the nurse.’

‘And two?’

‘Because she couldn’t. Lexa Novak was already on the run.’

It was a blur, really. A muddled white haze that slowly pushed away the darkness. And William was there, calling for him to
Get up, Gabriel! Get up! You must get up!
And then William was shaking him. Shaking him fiercely. Shaking him so hard his entire body shook like a child’s rag doll.

‘Get up, Gabriel.’

And the clouds slowly thinned.

‘Get up!’

Slowly lifted.

‘GABRIEL!’

And he could see blue sky once more.

The Adder lifted his head off the cold, hard earth and it felt like it weighed a million pounds. As he awoke, so did the pain – a cold sharp stabbing sensation. Like a trillion needles poking the skin all over his body, from his head to his feet.

But his legs, they were the worst.

Sharp,
biting
pain, and yet they were also numb. Strangely, achingly numb.

It made no sense.

With all the strength he could muster, the Adder sat up and looked at his legs. They were half submerged in the icy waters of the lake, and they were whiter than the ice.

‘Get up, Gabriel!’ he heard from behind him.

Whispers
.

Desperate panicked whispers.

And he knew that it was Dalia. Somewhere behind him. Up above. Her bedroom window perhaps.

He was too weak to turn around and look.

‘Gabriel, you must get inside!’

Without thought, without real intention, the Adder tried to bend his knees. Tried to remove his legs from the icy cold waters of the lake. But his muscles refused to obey the commands of his mind. They were like dead chunks of flesh attached to his body. Useless pieces of meat.

He rolled over, on to his belly, and felt the cold sharpness of the rocks against his skin. To his left, less than an arm’s reach away, were his clothes. But he could not reach for them. His mind was slowly clearing now. Ever so slowly. And his rationale was coming back in blips.

The cabin .
. .

The cabin was the only chance for survival.

And so inch by inch, arm pull by arm pull, the Adder dragged his body from the lake. Dragged himself up the gravelly beach. Across the frozen lawn. Even up the slippery wood of the porch steps. The back door was still wide open, and he wondered why.

A test from the Doctor? A goal?

Or one of her many taunts?

In the end, it did not matter. He pulled himself inside, his useless legs dragging behind him. When he reached the kitchen, he saw the Doctor.

She was seated at the table, a steaming cup in one hand, her newspaper in the other. She sipped her drink, placed the cup carefully back on the saucer, and then looked down to face him. ‘Welcome home, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘I trust you have learned yet another lesson today.’

He said nothing back. He could not. And after a moment, the Doctor stood and walked away. Out of the front door of the cabin.

As he lay there, waking, returning to life, the heat from the furnace vents blasted on his torso and legs. His skin went from that strange numbness to a cold piercing fire. He ground his teeth and wanted to scream. Wanted to wail with every ounce of strength his lungs had left.

But the Adder did not.

Instead, he lay there, his mind number than his body, and he thought of the only thing left in this world that brought him any true pleasure. The final doorway. The moment of release. The only exit from this world.

The Beautiful Escape.

It was coming once more, and this time for Jacob Striker. The thought almost made the Adder smile.

It was going to be a truly wonderful moment.

Striker wanted to run Lexa Ostermann and all her aliases through Interpol – the International Criminal Police Organization. Interpol’s primary purpose was to facilitate cooperation between police departments from almost two hundred countries. Essentially, it was a spider’s web of information. Starting there was their best bet.

They headed back for Homicide.

When they got there, Striker was surprised to find the office busy, and upon speaking to fellow detective Jana Aiken, learned that there’d been another gang shooting on the Granville Strip.

Nothing interesting.

He found his way to his cubicle and sat down. The computer was still running, but locked, so he logged on and quickly checked his email. No message from Larisa. No voicemail either. Frustrated, he initiated Versadex and loaded the Query page for Interpol.

As far as Striker knew, Lexa had no criminal record, not that it mattered. The database listed everything from wanted criminals to missing children to stolen property. Striker was hoping Lexa would be there, in some form or another; how, he didn’t much care. All he wanted was a lead.

Instead of starting with Ostermann, Striker typed in the oldest name they knew of:

Lexa Novak.

For a date of birth, he typed in an age range of thirty-five to forty-eight.

The query came back within thirty seconds to a positive hit, low score, meaning that the details provided matched perfectly but the details provided were few and vague. There were over thirty hits.

Striker sorted through them all until he found one that matched:

Striker looked up the name of the town and saw that it was not far from Prague. He looked for any tattoo or scar descriptions, but found none. He scrolled down the page and came to a Remarks section.

What he saw made him smile.

‘
Č
eské?
’ Felicia asked.

Striker nodded. ‘Police of the Czech Republic,’ he explained. ‘We got a legitimate possible.’

He picked up the landline and dialled. The number took a long time to connect, but then it started to ring. The man who answered spoke in limited English, but managed to convey to Striker that Detective Lundtiz was now
Inspector
Lundtiz, working in the Unit for Combating Corruption and Financial Crime.

He patched Striker through.

After another set of rings, Striker’s call was answered by a receptionist and, after again explaining who he was and why he was calling, he was transferred to the main line.

As Striker waited for the inspector, Felicia got the call from one of the cops she knew in Burnaby South. The privatized file from Gabriel’s childhood was ready. She gave Striker the thumbs up, then left to pick it up from the Burnaby North detachment.

Striker waved goodbye and waited on hold.

After a long pause, the phone was picked up. ‘Good evening, Detective Striker, this is Inspector Lundtiz.’

Striker was surprised to hear that the inspector spoke with good English and had almost no accent. ‘Good evening, Inspector. Thanks for taking my call. I’m enquiring about—’

‘Lexa Kaleena Novak,’ Lundtiz replied. ‘Yes, I know her quite well.
Intimately
well, I would say. I spent many months following this woman before she disappeared on me. That was many years ago. Almost twenty, I would think. My God . . .’

‘Well, she’s been found in Vancouver, Canada,’ Striker said.

‘Has she killed again?’

The words shocked Striker. ‘Has she killed there?’

‘Undoubtedly. Proving that, however, was another matter.’

Striker said nothing for a moment, then took out his notebook and a pen. ‘What exactly do you know about this woman?’

‘A great deal.’

‘I’ve got the time.’

The inspector cleared his throat and began speaking. ‘I have the file right in front of me, though I went over it so many times, I practically know it all by memory. Lexa Novak was born in the city of Prague. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, Charles Bridge and all.’

‘I’m aware of it.’

‘She grew up one of three sisters. Katerna was eldest, followed by Nava, and then Lexa. The family was upper class. Very well known. Her father, Dagan, was a well-respected man in these parts – a doctor with his hand in politics.’

‘Sounds powerful,’ Striker noted.

‘He was. I remember him. And with Lena for a wife, every man around the town envied him. Lena was beautiful, Lena was the perfect wife and mother, and Lena brought with her a family fortune.’

‘
Elite
upper class,’ Striker said.

‘Entirely. And from an outsider’s perspective, they were living the dream. But home life was very different. Dagan Novak was a
sadist
. He took great pleasure in dominating his family, abusing them in all ways – psychologically, physically, even sexually, once the girls reached a certain age. Life in the Novak family was an existence of helplessness and torture. I am ashamed to say the police of this time failed the family utterly.’

‘They knew?’

‘It was reported. But because of Dagan’s social and political connections, the matter was – how do you say it? –
conveniently overlooked
.’

Striker frowned. It was a situation he had seen before as well. ‘What happened to the rest of the family?’

‘Lena, the mother, supposedly left the family and relocated to Paris, where she had other family connections. Yet when I tried to locate her, the search quickly reached a dead end. I have no doubt that Dagan murdered her.’

‘And the other girls?’

‘The story is quite sad, I’m afraid. Even beyond the abuse.’

Striker shook his head. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘The eldest of the sisters, Katerna, had to be hospitalized when she was but sixteen years of age. For severe schizophrenia. Three years after that, Nava was also afflicted with the illness.’

‘A genetic link.’ Striker thought this over. Given the history, it was unsurprising that Lexa had turned to a career of psychiatry. ‘Lexa must have lived in constant fear of acquiring this illness.’

‘The illness haunted her, tortured her . . . And I think it was the turning point of her freedom. The so-called fuse that set her off. It was not long after the middle child was hospitalized that her father took ill. His symptoms came on slowly, gradually, his skin paling, his body weight diminishing, and then his hair began falling out.’

‘Arsenic?’

‘In his tea, we believe.’

‘And yet you never charged her?’

‘We couldn’t. The family had a cook. They had a maid. Even a live-in nurse for when the children came home for visits, which of course became exceedingly rare as the illness progressed. In short, Lexa was surrounded by other suspects. There was no way to link her to the poisoning. And to be honest, at the time, I wasn’t entirely sure she was involved. I had placed more of my focus on the nurse, still feeling Lexa to be a victim of her father’s evil-doings.’

To hear that Dagan Novak got his own justice didn’t particularly bother Striker. ‘So she got away with one.’

‘Yes, she did. Then, when Lexa was nineteen, she met a man named Victor Devorak. He was a young man, a good-looking man, from an estimable background. Within one year of being married to Lexa, he also developed a strange unknown illness and eventually passed away. Lexa moved on, and within two more years she had met and married another young man, also from a rich family. His name was Kavill Svaboda. He lasted longer than her previous husband – almost three full years. But then, four months after Lexa obtained her medical degree, he passed away from unknown causes.’

Striker said nothing as he thought things through. Most everyone around this woman had died, and her two sisters had ended up sick in mental hospitals. The diagnosis was schizophrenia, but he now wondered if Lexa had also played a role in that. He didn’t know enough about the illness to speculate.

‘So two husbands in just over, say, six years. And they died in a similar manner to her father. Did you bring her in for questioning?’ Striker asked.

‘Of course I did. After the death of both husbands. The woman was a star. Charming and open. Confident. Secure.’

‘Like most psychopaths. Were there any more deaths after that?’

The inspector let out a tired sound. ‘I wouldn’t know. She disappeared. Just upped and left the country. And no matter how I tried to track her down, I could never find her. One of my contacts had traced her as far as Brussels, but it was an unconfirmed sighting. And after that, the trail went cold. Plus the woman in Brussels had been many months pregnant.’