The Survivor (43 page)

‘Fuse box. Source of the fire.’

Felicia furrowed her brow. ‘Brady said they used white gas.’

‘They did – for the second fire.’

‘
Second
fire?’ Felicia looked at Striker, then at the destruction all around her. ‘You think there were two fires?’

‘I’m betting on it.’ He walked to the window, where no glass remained, and stared outside, down into the north lane of Pandora. Outside, a series of industrial garbage cans lined the lane.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

They tried to go out of the kitchen door down into the backyard, but the stairs were all but burned away, so they cut back through the house, went out through the front door and took the sidewalk around the house. Once in the rear lane, Striker flipped open the first of five huge garbage containers. He looked inside, but could see little in the darkness.

‘Lot of garbage cans for one place,’ Felicia noted.

‘Exactly.’

Striker continued flipping open the rest of the lids. When done, he took out his Maglite and shone it inside the garbage cans, one at a time. The first two were empty. At garbage can number three, he stopped, reached inside and pulled out three empty plastic cups and the remnants of two very large fans. The fan blades were covered in soil. He held one of them up and muttered, ‘Jesus Christ, could it be that simple?’

Felicia frowned. ‘I’d say no, since I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.’

He threw the box back into the garbage can and met her stare. ‘It was a grow-op, Feleesh.’

‘A pot palace?’ She looked doubtful. ‘There’s no record of a grow-op ever being here.’

‘Exactly. So why not? That’s the million-dollar question, ain’t it?’ He looked at the array of plastic cloning cups in the next garbage can and shook his head. ‘There has to be documentation somewhere.’

Felicia got out her cell. She called Info and requested an Incident History Location on the address. After a couple of minutes, the operator got back to her, and she hung up the phone.

‘Nothing new,’ she said. ‘All that’s listed here is the first Suspicious Circumstance call, and then, a few hours later, the Arson.’

Striker walked around the far side of the house, searching through the burned refuse. When he found nothing of value, he hiked back to the front. Analysed the devastation the fire had caused. Saw the
Condemned by City
sign.

‘With a fire of this magnitude, they’d have to shut off the power first,’ he said. ‘Get an engineer to attend. Electrical and Structural. I know some people at the City – you got any contacts with the electric company?’

‘Yeah, I got one at BC Hydro. Just up the road from here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘But it’s getting late though. She might not even be there.’ She flipped open her cell again. ‘Hold on, I’ll see what I can get.’

As Felicia made the call, Striker walked back to the roadside. Once there, he scanned the street for any video cameras, found none, then spotted the only other house that still survived on this block.

Sitting under the lone working streetlamp was a rickety old two-storey, covered in blue-painted stucco. A rusted iron fence ran around the yard, which was covered mostly by crabgrass and other weeds. Out front of the yard was a collection of old metal garbage cans, most of which had no lids and were dented.

Striker detected movement in the upper window of the house. Peering out from between the curtains was a thin, old woman. The moment Striker met her eyes, the curtains swished shut, and she was gone.

Felicia came up the walkway. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got someone at Hydro who’ll help us, but we’ve got to go now.’

Striker kept his eyes on the house across the street. He hesitated. Something about the old woman struck him as odd – no doubt, she was one of the many fruitloops in this area; everyone down here was wing-nut crazy – but the way she had ducked out of view told him something was up. He turned to Felicia and threw her the keys.

‘Meet me back here when you’re done.’

‘You’re not coming?’

‘No,’ he said, and flashed her a grin. ‘I think I just found us a witness.’

Eighty-Three

The memories of being Child 157 settled in Shen Sun’s brain like cold fall mists in the Danum Valley. They left him fragmented and drained. As they always did. Amidst the fading recollections, a light clicked on and stole him from the stupor. He focused left. There, in the first ground-window of a nearby house, an old white woman was having tea.

For a moment, Shen Sun almost ignored her. He was tired and felt weak – as thin as rice paper. But something in her living room caught his eye. The television screen. The news was on, with a blonde woman reviewing the high-school massacre. Behind her pale face flashed the image of the gwailo.

Detective Jacob Striker
, the headline read.
Hero cop
.

The image twisted Shen Sun’s guts. He turned his whole body away, and the bundle of papers Sheung Fa had given him fell from his pocket.

Information on Detective Jacob Striker.

Shen Sun picked the paperwork up, stared at it with bad thoughts. As he flipped through the pages, the last one – the photocopy of Jacob Striker’s picture – unexpectedly broke into two, and Shen Sun realised there were actually two pictures stuck together. He separated them and studied the photograph he had not seen.

The image was that of a young girl. About sixteen, with long, curly, reddish-brown hair, milky skin and light freckles. Her eyes were a soft, sad blue.

The image filled him with excitement and renewed vigour. And he laughed out loud, silently praising Sheung Fa for protecting him still. It all made sense to him now. He had found The Way.

He would kill the Man with the Bamboo Spine, saving Father. And then he would repay Detective Striker for all that the man had stolen from him – Sheung Fa, Tran, his future with the Triads, his entire
life
. Shen Sun stared at the picture of the young girl and felt everything fall into place.

A daughter for a brother. It was more than fitting.

It was karma.

Eighty-Four

Striker watched Felicia drive away, south towards Hastings Street. When the roar of the Crown Vic faded, the sound of the wind became more prominent, howling between the burned framing of the house.

Striker spotted the old woman peering out between the drapes again. She pretended not to see him, then slowly backed away from the window. This time, Striker knew he had something. He used his cell to call Info, queried the address, and discovered there were numerous calls to her residence – all of them labelled as EDP.

An Emotionally Disturbed Person.

Commonplace for this area.

He headed up the block. By the time he had crossed the street and made it to her lot, the curtains were pulled shut and the interior and exterior lights were turned off. From here, the house looked empty, abandoned. And it gave him the creeps.

He took the stairs two at a time until he came flush with an old screen door. It let loose a creaky protest as he swung it open and knocked three times. He’d barely finished the knock when the door opened and a tiny old woman stood in the doorway.

She was an even five foot and about one hundred pounds. Her rail-thin body had a look that suggested she was either on the way out of this world, or suffering from crack addiction, and her face was deeply lined with wrinkles. The three coats of make-up that plastered her skin were thick and oily.

‘Hello,’ Striker said.

‘Hello, Officer,’ she replied, her voice smoker-rough. ‘I’m Phyllis. I’ve been expecting you.’

Five minutes later, Striker stood inside a crowded living room that stank of decade-old cigarette smoke and mustiness. The walls were now smoker’s-teeth yellow, and everywhere he looked, ashtrays full of cigarette butts covered the tables.

He tried to ignore them and looked around the room. Old newspapers were piled up high in every corner, as were mountains of rocks and artistic stacks of Diet Pepsi cans. The sofas were brown, sat in an L-formation, and were covered in a clear plastic so old it was cracked and discoloured. When Phyllis offered him a seat, Striker politely declined and remained standing. He moved left, nearer the window, and knocked over another stack of Diet Pepsi cans.

He looked up at Phyllis, forced an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m sorry.’

Phyllis picked up the cans, restacked them. ‘Diet Pepsi, kid. Nectar of the fucking gods.’

‘Not a Coke fan?’

She humphed. ‘Coke? That stuff is shit. Know why? It’s not the original – all they did was steal the Diet Pepsi formula, ’cause they knew it was better than the poison they were selling. They stole it and they renamed it Coke Zero. Read that in one of those supermarket papers.’

Striker nodded. ‘There sure is a lot of information out there nowadays, isn’t there?’

Phyllis lit up a smoke, inhaled deeply. ‘Coke fuckin’ Zero. Pfft! Know why they call it Coke Zero? ’Cause only a zero would drink it!’

‘Hey, I hate the shit.’

Phyllis gave him a queer look, as if trying to either believe or disbelieve his words. Finally, she shrugged like she didn’t care one way or the other and brushed her skin-and-bones fingers through her long, yellow-grey hair.

‘So I know why you’re here, Sugar. Came ’bout that fire, I betcha.’

Striker’s interest piqued. ‘Bang on, Phyllis. You see it?’

‘Damn right I saw it. Big production. All them firemen runnin’ round with their big hoses and their big red machine. Smoke was so bad it turned the entire neighbourhood into a black cloud. Stunk up the place worse than the chicken choppers down the street. Then the cops came and they tried to make me leave, but I wouldn’t go. Said I was the last house on this block, I did, and I’d be keeping it that way till the day I die.’

‘Well, hopefully that won’t be any time soon.’

She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Soon enough, Chuckles. Know how old I am? Ninety-two. Ninety-two goddam years old, and I been smoking Camels for seventy years and using aspartame for forty. Been drinking Diet Pepsi! Tell that to those organic-loving granolas!’

‘Drinking Diet Pepsi, not that Coke Zero shit.’

She nodded. ‘Fuckin’ Coke Zero. Always trying to make it look like their recipe is such a big secret when all it is is fuckin’ caramel and water! Everyone knows that. Except in the old days when they tried to hook everyone with the cocaine they put in it.’ She snorted once, dropped her half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray, then took out a bright pink plastic tube. ‘Damn cigarettes always wipe off my lipstick.’ She put on another smear, lit up another cigarette, then took a long drag.

Striker looked at the ashtray full of pink goo and cigarette butts, and shuddered. ‘So about the fire . . . can you tell me if there was anything unusual about it?’

‘Everything down here’s unusual. Makes the unusual look usual, know what I mean?’

‘Sadly, yes I do. Did you know your neighbours before the fire?’

‘Neighbours? Ha! If you can call them that. Never saw them, not once. They always came in the back lane. I heard them though. Always coming in with those big delivery trucks. Sometimes twice a day.’

‘Twice a day?’ Striker tried to sound casual. ‘You ever see what they dropped off?’

‘Who knows? Shoulda been fire extinguishers. Ha!’

Striker grinned. ‘For sure. Not that it would’ve done a whole lot of good. That was a pretty bad fire.’

‘The second one was.’

Striker gave her a hard look. ‘Second one?’

‘Yeah. The second fire. There were two, you know. First one happened earlier in the night – five, maybe six hours earlier – just a little bit of smoke coming out the window, the front one there. But they got it under control. Police came anyway, and the next thing you know, people are being taken out and the entire place is roped off.’

‘Roped off?’

‘Yeah, yellow tape everywhere.’

‘Crime scene.’

‘Sure, whatever. The whole place shuts down, and you think the show is over. But naaaw-aaahh. Suddenly, the cops’re back, hauling shit outta there. Then there’s another fire – the real one this time – and the whole place goes up. Fuckin’
whooosh
!’ Phyllis let out a loud phlegmy cough, took another drag on her smoke, then reached for more lipstick. After smearing it on, she continued, ‘All I know is, someone musta fucked something up real bad, because soon after that, we got the City out here and the entire place is condemned.’

Striker let her finish talking, and he was glad when she reached for another cigarette. The momentary silence gave him a chance to think things over. So he had been right. There had been two fires, hence the two calls. But the two calls had been written up under one file number, then linked. Interesting, but just that. It still left too many unanswered questions. He looked out the window at the blackened shell just down the road.

‘You ever wonder what they were bringing out of there, Phyllis?’

‘You mean, the people that used to live there before the fire? Or the cops after the fire?’

Striker frowned. ‘Both.’

‘No, and I don’t rightfully care.’ She downed her Diet Pepsi, pulled another one from the mini-fridge beside her chair, then cracked open the tab. ‘But one guy did.’

Striker blinked. ‘One guy?’

‘Yeah. The one guy who kept coming round here. Chinaman. Hard face. Real thin.’

‘When did he first come around?’

‘Oh . . . right after the first fire. And he waited for a long time, just over there.’ She pointed her knobby finger out the window, to a small patch of bushes that ran between two auto-body shops. ‘Stood there in the shadows for
hours
, just watching everything.’

Striker thought this over. ‘So to clarify, he got there after the first fire had started, and watched it burn?’

‘Yes. Well, it was already going when I saw him.’

Striker nodded. ‘And he stayed long afterwards, till after the second fire?’

‘Yeah. In fact, he stayed there till after the place had burned down. Just watching. Always watching.’

Striker absently rubbed the skin of his left hand, where the acid had splashed him. The skin around his fingers was raw, swollen. ‘You ever tell the cops about this guy?’