Snakes & Ladders (8 page)

‘How?’ Felicia asked.

Striker gave her a cross look. ‘From hanging out and smoking outside the school fence – I could have killed Courtney when I caught her.’

Felicia grinned at that.

‘Anyhow,’ Striker continued, ‘that was when Mandy’s depression really deepened. I must have picked her up a half-dozen times when she’d run off. And every time, I took her back to her father and told her she had to keep taking her meds. It was a never-ending cycle.’

Felicia shook her head. ‘So?’

‘So, what I didn’t know at the time was that Mandy’s father was abusing her. Sexually. Which was one of the reasons for her growing depression, why she kept taking off all the time.’ He shook his head as he relived the moments. ‘Every time I picked her up, I was taking her right back to the monster. I’ll never forgive myself for that.’

‘She never told you?’

‘No, but I should have seen it. There had to be some signs. There had to be
something
. I was so preoccupied with Amanda’s depression problems at the time, I never saw it . . .’

‘It was a bad time for you, Jacob.’

‘Bad for her, too.’ He pushed the keyboard away and rubbed his eyes. ‘Either way, Mandy’s father was caught, but by that point in time the damage had been done. Mandy was put under government care for a bit, but you know how it is. She bounced around a lot, and to be honest, I lost track. If it weren’t for the problems we were having with Amanda, I would have taken the kid in . . . Ah fuck, I
should
have taken her in!’

Felicia reached out and touched his arm. ‘You can’t save the world, Jacob.’

‘She was one girl.’ He looked back at all the reports and felt sick to his stomach. ‘Anyway, she had no siblings. And only one cousin, a guy named James John Gill. You’d know him better as Jimmy J.’

‘Jimmy J? – You mean
Gonzo
?’

‘The one and only.’

Felicia thought it over. ‘Didn’t he die over six months ago? In that meth lab explosion on Blenheim?’

Striker nodded. ‘Damn near obliterated himself.’ He thought it over for a while, then added, ‘They never did recover all the money.’

‘Because it was blown to shreds.’

‘Was it?’ he asked. That was probably the case, but there were no absolutes in this world. Definitely not in the business of policing. He took a moment to write this down in his notebook, then picked up his half-full coffee cup and rolled it back and forth in his hands. He was just about to return to reading the computer screen when Felicia made a
hmm
sound.

‘What you got?’ he asked.

‘Maybe something, maybe nothing. Listen. There was a driving complaint. Brand-new SUV, a Beamer—’

‘Probably an X5.’

‘Sure, whatever.’ Felicia was terrible with makes and models. ‘Anyway, the complaint came in just five minutes after you went over the air requesting a canine unit. This guy was really flying. Doing nearly a hundred, according to the complainant. And he blew right through a stop sign. Almost caused an accident. Never even stopped.’

Striker thought this over. ‘Where?’

‘Vernon Drive and East Hastings Street.’

‘That’s not far from Mandy’s place,’ Striker noted. ‘Just a few blocks east and north.’

Felicia nodded. ‘It’s
real
close. Vehicle was racing north, then made a hard left turn on Franklin. That’s when the complainant lost sight.’

‘Any details?’

She read on. ‘The vehicle was dark, maybe black, with shiny chrome mags.’

‘That’s standard dress, right from the factory. Any plate?’

Felicia just shook her head. ‘Not even a partial.’

Striker thought this over and dumped out his cold coffee. He sat up in the chair and smiled.

‘No plate
yet
,’ he said. He stood up and grabbed his notebook.

‘Where are you going?’ Felicia asked.

‘Put on your coat,’ he said. ‘We’re going to Vernon and Hastings. I’ve been there before. That intersection has a Chevron on the southeast corner.’ Striker’s smile widened. ‘They got
video
.’

The Chevron gas station located on the corner of East Hastings Street and Vernon Drive was a magnet for trouble. Had been ever since Striker joined the VPD. And the details showed that: the front door was always locked after ten; the front window was made out of safety glass; and the bathroom used a black light source for illumination, not white, because it made it harder for junkies to shoot up in there when they snuck inside. All in all, Striker had been to the Vernon Drive Chevron more than a hundred times, kicking out the junk monkeys and drunks, and chasing down shoplifters and armed robbers.

Because of this, he knew the staff well.

‘Hey, Wanda,’ he said as he entered the store.

The large woman with the wild hair looked up from behind the register and beamed. ‘Detective Striker!’ she said in an overly loud voice. ‘Now just where have you been, my big beautiful man?’

‘Cloud eight,’ he replied. ‘Still trying to work my way to Nirvana.’

Wanda laughed in big heavy gusts, then hurried around the counter. She was a big woman. Her hips were so wide they barely fitted through the desk opening, her knees were knocked, and her breasts were so large and heavy they came close to popping the buttons of her uniform. She gave Striker a bear hug that lasted embarrassingly long, then let go almost unwillingly.

Felicia stood there watching the show with a half-smile on her face. She gave Striker an odd look, and he just shook his head. He’d known Wanda Whittington for over ten years now, and the woman would never change. At five foot five and nearing two hundred and forty pounds, no one would ever be accused of calling the woman dainty. But her build was never what he noticed; it was her heart. Wanda was a good person.

Striker introduced the two women, then got right down to business.

‘We need help,’ he said to Wanda. ‘A big SUV came rampaging through here, sometime between four-twenty and four-forty earlier today.’

Felicia nodded. ‘The driving complaint was called in at exactly four twenty-eight.’

‘Do you remember it?’ Striker asked. ‘This guy was apparently driving balls to the wall.’

Wanda Whittington thought it over, her big brown eyes taking on a faraway look behind her chubby, freckled cheeks. She scratched at her hair, then let out a frustrated sound and shrugged.

‘It was just so damn busy today,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Striker said. ‘Either you saw it or you didn’t. Was anyone else on shift with you at that time?’

She absently rubbed the knuckles of her left hand. ‘Well, Davie was
supposed
to be working with me today, but he never showed – he’s probably drunk again. You know how he is. Called in three times last week saying he was sick, but everyone knows he’s on the sauce. And on the cheap stuff, too. Likes the red can.’

Striker just nodded. He’d known Davie for almost as long as he’d known Wanda. A nice, harmless guy. But he had a problem, no doubt. Like half the population down here.

He looked past Wanda, past the black-light washrooms, at the manager’s office. The door was painted blue and had a brand-new peephole installed. It was closed and more than likely locked.

‘You still got video back there?’ Striker asked.

Wanda nodded. She returned to the register, locked the till, then grabbed the office key they kept hidden behind the moneydrop box. She rounded the counter and passed Striker by.

‘Follow me, my beautiful man.’

She walked up to the blue door, unlocked it, and disappeared inside. Striker started to follow her. When Felicia didn’t join him, he stopped and turned to face her. ‘You coming?’

She didn’t respond at first, she just kept looking out of the window. To the north. ‘The caller said the Beamer turned left on Franklin,’ she recalled. ‘Vernon and Franklin . . . isn’t that the corner where we attended that suicide last year – the one in front of the plastics warehouse?’

Striker nodded, seeing her point. ‘They got video, too.’

‘I’ll head down there and see what I can dredge up. In the meantime, you finish here. Pick me up down there when you’re done.’ She leaned close, smiled, and whispered, ‘Want to borrow my rape whistle in case things go bad?’

‘You mean in case things go
well
.’ He smiled back at her, then shook his head. ‘If I can handle you, I can handle anyone, especially Wanda. I’ll pick you up in twenty.’

Felicia just rolled her eyes, gave his face a pat and left the store. With her gone, Striker locked the front door for Wanda – to prevent anyone from coming inside and stealing products – then entered the back room.

To reach the office, he had to cut through a small narrow stock room. Walls of motor oil, and candy bars filling the shelves. Everything smelled of lemons from the car deodorizers.

Tucked away in the far back corner of the store was a small nook, used to house the security system. Wanda was already standing over it, leaning forward over the desk. With her there, there was little room left for anyone else – much less a man of Striker’s six-foot-one, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound size. He did his best to lean over her shoulder and watch the security surveillance feed.

The video system was new, and that made Striker smile. The old one had been a software program called Omni-Eye. Striker had used it before. The program was slow, buggy, and crashed halfway through most of the applications – especially when burning video evidence for court. It was also not uncommon to burn the video, then leave with a blank DVD.

‘You guys switched to digital,’ he noted.

Wanda just shrugged. She used the mouse to navigate back through the video timeline.

Unlike most gas station security systems, the video for the Chevron at Hastings and Vernon was excellent. The new owner was a former military officer and, as such, took security very seriously. Striker had never met the man, but he sure appreciated all the benefits. He looked down at the timeline and said, ‘You’re getting close, Wanda. Slow the feed down.’

She did.

The machine read 1625 hours, and the angle of the exterior camera caught the northwest corner of the lot. This was the Vernon Drive entranceway. The camera had been placed there to catch the never-ending stream of Gas-n-Go fraudsters, which was becoming a pandemic nowadays. With any luck, the driver of the SUV would be driving tight to the kerb, and thereby visible. Any further out than that, and they’d be shit outta luck.

Striker watched the feed at normal speed.

‘I shoulda been a cop,’ Wanda said. ‘Or at least married one.’

‘You say that every time I see you.’

‘Because you never take the hint.’

Striker grinned. He was about to say something back, when he spotted a black SUV on the feed. The caller was right – the driver had been driving like an idiot. The vehicle raced down Vernon Drive, punched straight through the stop sign, and bulleted across East Hastings Street. It happened in less than two seconds. Given the time of day and the thickness of the rush-hour traffic, it was a wonder that no one was hurt. The vehicle was going so fast, Striker had to back up the video twice and slow down the speed to have any hope of making out the details. With the video in slow mode, the make and model of the SUV became apparent.

It was a Beamer, no doubt. And he had been right about the model.

An X5.

As for the driver, it was impossible to tell. The distance was too far and the angle bad. The speed of the vehicle also made the quality poor – not blurry, but definitely indistinct.

Striker doubted if the tech guys could even sharpen it.

‘It’s not very good, is it?’ Wanda asked, frowning.

‘It’s better than what I had coming down here.’

Wanda smiled at that.

The front door alarm buzzed – more customers trying to enter the gas station – so Striker told Wanda to go unlock the front door. She could leave the video with him. He knew how to work the system.

He spent the next ten minutes trying to magnify and sharpen the image. It wasn’t easy. But when he was done, he was fairly certain that the first letter in the licence plate was a J.

The rest of the letters and numbers were impossible to make out.

He snagged a disc from the shelf, slid it into the tray, and burned a copy of the feed for the Forensic Video Unit. They could do wonders with digital files nowadays, but Striker had little hope in what they could find. The problem wasn’t just the clarity – it was the angle.

J
was likely as good as it would get.

He saved the file on the hard drive, started a new video timeline for the store, then left the office and closed the door behind him. He’d barely gotten three steps into the store before he ran right into Felicia, who was rushing in through the front doors.

‘You get anything?’ she asked.

He gave her a flat look. ‘It’s a Beamer. Dark, possibly black. An X5, just like we thought. The first letter in the plate looks like a J. But that’s as good as it gets.’ He looked at her hopefully. ‘Any video on your end?’

‘No,’ she said, then smiled. ‘But I did one better – I found us a
witness
.’

They drove two blocks down to the warehouse where Felicia had already gotten the business owner, John Gibson, to start writing up a proper witness statement. GPT Industries – Gibson Plastics & Tubing – was a square cement warehouse that sat on the corner of Vernon Drive and Franklin Street.

Striker knew this area well. They were dead smack in the heart of the Franklin industrial area. He had done a hundred stings here over the years, all related to sex and drugs because it was the hottest spot for all different flavours of the sex-trade industry. When someone on Franklin Street said they blew their tranny, they weren’t talking about the transmission of their Oldsmobile.

The warehouse was old, looked ready to crumble, and sat less than a hundred metres from the train tracks and overpass. Striker pulled their cruiser up front and parked in the gated lot. With Felicia by his side, he walked under the broken yellow neon sign that now read only
GPT Indust
and climbed the cement stairs.

Inside the warehouse, the air was no warmer than the freezing chill outside. All the workers had long gone home for the day, and because of that the place looked deserted. The air stank of diesel oil and some type of plastic glue. Together, the two scents produced a strange, caustic smell.