The Guilty (32 page)

‘Which means?’

‘They worked the forklift. Unloaded cargo.’

Striker smiled at that; finally, he was starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. He looked at the screen and saw that the dates of employment were short – less than sixteen
months in all. He pointed at the screen. ‘We need copies of all the Vancouver Police Department shipments that occurred on these dates, and we need them now.’

Striker looked up at Felicia and saw the excited expression on her face. It was clear she had made the connection too. They had now linked Sleeves and Chipotle and Koda to the burning facility
– Sleeves and Chipotle by way of employee records, Koda by being the sergeant in charge of ERT’s Red Team.

They were finally getting somewhere.

Once Striker and Felicia pulled up out front of Main Street Headquarters, Felicia stuffed the burn records into a file folder, carried it with her, and the two of them hurried
up the front stairs. Striker cut past the Public Service counter and adjoining Ident booth, where a woman was being fingerprinted.

He used his keycard to swipe in to the property office.

Striker found the clerk he was looking for. Larry Smallsy was a tall man with thinning white hair and John Lennon spectacles. Striker had known him for ten years and liked doing work with him
because of two things: Smallsy was easy-going, and he operated within the bounds of common sense, not policy and procedure.

‘Larry!’ Striker called.

The property clerk, seated at his desk, looked up from a far-too-healthy looking bran muffin. ‘Hey, Detectives.’

Striker approached his desk. ‘I need to see sixteen months of your burn records from ten years ago, and I need them now.’

Smallsy said nothing. He just removed a bag of Wet Wipes from his desk, began cleaning the sticky bran crumbs from his fingers, and bobbed his head. Once his fingers were clean, he got up and
wandered down the back corridor.

Striker gave Felicia a nod, and they followed.

As they went, Striker absently assessed the property office. The place was a dump. Crammed to the roof with box after box of old evidence, infested with cockroaches, and loaded with rat traps in
every corner, the place screamed of disrepair.

It matched the rest of the downtown station.

Felicia sniffed loudly, then made a face. ‘Everything smells damp and mouldy down here, Smallsy. And there’s no room to move. It’s a wonder you can even do your job.’

‘Yeah, well I’m Larry friggin’ Potter,’ he said. ‘I keep everything organized.’

Up ahead, Smallsy stopped at a long counter that was fronted by numerous shelves of archives. From the uppermost row, he pulled down three ledgers. When he laid them down on the counter and
opened them up, Striker saw that the pages of the books were more yellow than white, and coffee stains decorated the edges. He looked at the headings of the books. They were all the same:

Evidence Transfer – Montreaux Incinerator.

Striker grabbed the file folder from Felicia. From it, he removed a wad of papers. He placed them down on the counter top, next to the ledger. He ran his finger down the pages, one by one. When
he came across the corresponding date, he stopped. Compared. And found discrepancies.

Felicia made a surprised sound.

‘The weights don’t match,’ she said.

Striker saw it too. The weights logged in at the burning facility were less than the ones shipped out from the property office. In fact, not only were the weights short, but they weren’t
even close – off by thirty kilos.

‘That’s far too much to be human error,’ he said.

‘And far too regular an occurrence,’ Felicia added. She scanned down the list. ‘What were they transporting?’

Striker pointed to the alphanumeric code in the ledger’s rightmost column.

24701 – MHC.

He explained: ‘The first five digits are the police file number. I’m not entirely sure what the last three letters mean.’

Because the report was so old and could not be brought up electronically, Felicia had to attend Archives. When she returned with the folder and opened it, she was surprised to see how short the
report inside it was.

One page, half full of writing.

It stated that a transfer had been done from 312 Main Street to the Montreaux incinerator. Most of the evidence marked for destruction was paperwork – old files, witness statements,
Computer-Aided Dispatch call printouts, and such. But part of the evidence marked for destruction had also been drugs.

Striker looked back at the letters in the ledger. ‘MHC . . . Marijuana. Heroin. Cocaine.’ He looked at Felicia. ‘Who authored that report?’

She read the badge number. ‘Detective 1160.’

Striker frowned at the words. ‘That’s Harry.’

He leaned against the counter and rubbed his face as a mixture of excitement and disappointment spilled through him.

‘You okay?’ Felicia asked.

Striker just shook his head. ‘So that’s what this has all been about then –
drugs.
Harry and Koda were selling the seized drugs back to the Prowlers and using Sleeves
as their conduit.’

Felicia nodded, but the confused look remained on her face. ‘This was a long time ago, Jacob.’

‘So?’

‘So why is all this violence happening
now
? The barn down by the river, the bomb at the toy store, the explosion at Koda’s house – why now and not a decade ago? Could
it really all be just Sleeves?’

Striker shrugged. He had no idea.

‘There’s only one thing we really know for certain,’ he said. ‘Somewhere along the line, something went wrong. And now it’s all come back to haunt them.’

The bomber chanted the rhyme under his breath as he stood in front of the makeshift lab he and Molly had set up in the command room.

It was a very basic lab: kerosene-fuelled cooking stoves with charcoal filtration to prevent toxicity; coffee filters in lieu of a filtration kit; a glass carafe instead of an Erlenmeyer flask;
and pads of standard triple-ply paper towels used for a drying rack. All in all, it was poor apparatus for the job, but what did that matter?

The HME was near completion.

Looking at it now, the soft, yellow-grey, putty-like material resembled a wad of bread dough, waiting to rise. Like the sourdough Mother had often made for him whenever he was sad. The thought
of that light fluffy bread smothered in melting butter filled him with a warm, safe feeling. The dough Mother had made was wonderful. But his was better.

His dough would rise like no other.

Behind him, Molly sat on the steel table, busy sewing the latest uniform – the one that mattered most, the one that had to be precise. She put on a good show, but her normally stable hands
trembled with every stitch.

He pretended not to notice and finished chanting his rhyme.

Molly stopped sewing. Looked up. A sense of loss filled her eyes.

‘Did you tell him I loved him?’ she finally asked.

He did not bother to turn around. ‘
Loved
him? He’s still alive, Molly. You’d know that if you went to see him.’

‘I . . .
love
. . . yes, yes. Did you tell him I love him?’

‘No.’

A heavy silence enveloped the small room, and moments later, Molly returned to her sewing as if nothing was wrong. She was whispering to herself now.
Praying
, he knew. To a God who did
not care for them now – just as He had not cared for them before.

It angered him to hear it. And he glared at her as she kept praying, praying, praying. He felt like screaming. Raging. Losing control. He closed his eyes. Fought for that elusive calm.

And then the GPS tracker beeped.

He picked it up and stared at the screen. The unit was working well. Everything was going to plan once again. Target 3 was on the move. And the explosives were ready. Had the sight given the
bomber even a modicum of happiness, he would have smiled. But it did not bring him joy. So he just put on his workman’s overalls. Grabbed the cell, the radio, and the handheld lasers. And
packaged up the HME.

‘It’s time,’ he said.

It was going on for four o’clock, and they hadn’t eaten since morning. When Felicia complained about light-headedness, Striker made a quick pit stop at the local
Safeway and grabbed them some grub.

Back in the car, Striker took a few bites of a Soprano sandwich that was stuffed with capicola and hot bell peppers, then downed some Coke. He leaned back against the seat, going over what they
had learned, and realized he felt quite a bit better after getting some food in his stomach.

Beside him, Felicia tore a chunk out of her pesto chicken and spoke between bites. ‘I’m really getting sick of this game with Harry and Koda. I say we just haul their asses in now,
and be done with it.’

Striker swallowed before speaking. ‘We’ve been through this, Feleesh – what actual hard evidence do we have against them?’

‘We got a dead woman in Koda’s house – the same woman who was victimized down by the river.’

‘That doesn’t mean he took her there.’

‘A polygraph—’

‘We can’t force them to take a lie detector, and we both know they never will. Harry’s no dummy. And Koda’s a retired cop, for Christ’s sake. He knows everything we
got is circumstantial. He’ll lawyer up and walk, and we’ll have blown our one good chance at charging them with anything criminal. Hell, forget the Criminal Code; if we screw this up,
we won’t even get a breach of the Police Act.’

Felicia looked down at her sandwich like she had lost her appetite. ‘What about the shipping weights to Montreaux?’

‘What about them? Harry may have authored the report, but the actual shipment transfers are all
unsigned.
All we have are some really old records from a private burn facility
– nothing that actually ties Harry or Koda directly to trafficking. Hell, we can’t even prove that’s what really happened. All we have are some consistently wrong shipment
weights. If it was me under suspicion for it, I’d argue that the scale was improperly calibrated. There’s no way to prove it now.’

Felicia nodded as she reconsidered. ‘The difference in the shipment weights was almost always exactly thirty kilos – that constant difference would actually support their claim. They
could argue that the scale was out that exact amount.’

Striker agreed. ‘Knowing Harry, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was done on purpose for just such a defence. He’s always been extremely smart.’

Felicia swore. She crinkled the cellophane wrap around her sandwich and shoved it back into the bag. She looked out the window. Turned silent.

Striker could tell she was getting rapidly frustrated, and he didn’t blame her. He felt it too. He got on the phone and called the plainclothes unit for a status check. Quaid answered on
the first ring.

‘What’s up with the target?’ Striker asked.

‘Nothing,’ Quaid replied. ‘Sleeves went back inside his suite and hasn’t come out since. Some girl came by and went into the suite with him. I saw her looking out the
window a couple of times, almost like she was doing her own recon on us. She’s a short thing. Kind of plump.’

‘What about Sleeves?’

Quaid made a weary sound. ‘Nothing yet. The little prick just – oh wait, hold on a minute.’ The line went silent for a moment, then Quaid returned. ‘Gotta go.
Target’s moving. And
fast
.’

The line went dead.

Striker hung up. He turned in his seat to face Felicia.

‘Sleeves on the move?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Maybe it’ll lead us somewhere.’

‘I won’t hold my breath.’

Striker frowned. ‘It still feels like we’re missing a part of the puzzle here. We need more information. On Sleeves. On Harry. On Koda. Even on Williams and Owens.’

Felicia looked back from the window and fixed Striker with a detached look. ‘And what about Rothschild?’

Striker felt like he’d been slapped. ‘
Mike?
What – are you kidding me? He would never get involved in anything like this. I trust that guy with my life. I’d
stake my entire career on it.’

‘Well good. Because you might have to.’ She turned her body to face him. ‘There’s
something
wrong here, Jacob. There has to be. And you’re letting your
friendship with Mike Rothschild cloud your vision.’

He laughed. ‘You don’t seriously think that Mike—’

‘All I’m saying is that
everyone
needs to be fully investigated, even if it’s just to clear their name. Think about it. Rothschild used to be on Koda’s squad,
both in Patrol and ERT. And we also know that the bomber was inside his old house – he missed them by only two days. The question is
why
.’ She shook her head in frustration.
‘We got too many connections here with drugs and bikers. I say we call Gangs.’

Striker tapped the empty Coke bottle against his palm. ‘We already have. Del’s the best, and he told us everything he knows.’

‘Not the Gang Crime Unit,’ Felicia explained. ‘IGTF.’

IGTF was the Integrated Gang Task Force. They were composed of municipal and federal cops, and had a much broader scope than the Gang Crime Unit. Where the GCU typically dealt with local
targets, IGTF worked all across the country.

Even back east to where Sleeves was from.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Striker said. ‘You got any contacts there?’

For the first time in hours, Felicia smiled. ‘Whenever you need information, baby, you just come to momma.’ She picked up her cell and started dialling her contact, a detective by
the name of Jimmy Sang. Five minutes into the conversation, Felicia’s face brightened and she hung up.

Striker could see the excitement in her eyes. ‘Well, what you find?’

‘
Carlos Chipotle
is the name of another Prowler thug.’