The Guilty (7 page)

After a long moment of searching, the alarm went off again. Striker gave up and returned to the living room. Already two of the neighbours – both middle-aged women, both cupping their
hands over their ears – had come to investigate the alarm. Normally, they would have appeared nervous, even timid, but standing with them was a patrol cop – a tall Slavic-looking guy
Striker had never seen.

Striker took out his badge and showed the cop and the neighbours. ‘Detectives Striker and Santos.’ He asked the women if they’d seen Dr Owens lately. Both ladies began chirping
like a pair of overexcited hens, but in the end the result was the same. Neither woman had seen Sharise Owens since yesterday morning.

It was no good.

Felicia exited the den and joined them. She looked at the two women, then at the patrol cop, and then at Striker. She shook her head and spoke above the high-pitched alarm. ‘You find
anything?’

‘Yeah. Another zero. You?’

‘Zero plus zero equals zilch.’

Striker frowned. The lack of progress and the alarm was getting to him. He moved into the hall, away from the drone, and pulled out his phone. He tried calling Dr Owens’ cell one more
time, and was yet again directed to voicemail. He hung up.

Before leaving, he explained to the patrol cop what was going on with Dr Owens, then asked him to guard the suite until members of the City Maintenance Crew arrived to fix the door, or until
Owens returned. The constable agreed, and Striker and Felicia left the scene under his care.

Back in the car, Striker scoured his notebook, hoping to see something they had missed. But the more he went over things, the more he ended up back where they had started.

‘We need to know how Owens’ bracelet got down by the docks,’ he said. ‘Even if she turns up okay, it’s too coincidental.’

Felicia shrugged. ‘For all we know someone stole it.’

Striker hadn’t thought of that. ‘Any history of thefts or robberies in PRIME?’

Felicia did a search. ‘No . . . but this is interesting – she was arrested once.’

Striker closed his notebook and looked at her, surprised. ‘Really? For what?’

‘For refusing to leave an anti-abortion rally.’ Felicia read through the report. ‘Interesting. She was fighting with the protesters.’

‘I guess that makes her pro-choice.’

Felicia nodded. ‘Look here. She was also arrested a few more times. At different rallies. Who knows? Maybe this entire call could be a pro-choice thing.’

Striker let out a groan. ‘Abortion activists? That’s the
last
thing we need. It would be a political nightmare.’

He leaned closer to Felicia to read the screen and smelled her musky perfume and perspiration. She smelled good and, like always, her scent calmed him a little. He focused on the computer, on
the entity known as Dr Sharise Owens, then spoke.

‘We need to learn more about this doctor,’ he said. ‘So we got two options here – we can either wait at St Paul’s until she shows up for work, or we can hightail it
back to HQ and start searching the databases.’

The choice for Felicia was simple. ‘I’ve had enough of hospitals to last me a lifetime.’

‘Good. Because there’s no guarantee she’ll show up there at all.’

The moment Striker spoke the words, he regretted them. It was as if they were taboo. The fact that Sharise Owens might already be dead was a sobering thought. But there it was – the cold
hard reality of it all.

Welcome to Homicide.

The clock read 09:45 when Striker logged onto his work computer at Homicide headquarters and waited for the Versadex program to initiate. It was a standard Wednesday, midweek
hustle, and the office was half-filled with weary investigators. As always, the building echoed with a mechanical thunder from the prehistoric air conditioner that rattled sometimes, clanked
others, but almost always blew out warm air – especially on hot summer days.

While Striker waited for the program to load, he walked to the kitchen area and poured himself a cup of the sludge the office brass called coffee. Normally he drank it black, but this brew
required chemical creamer and sugar to smooth out the burned taste.

For the next five minutes, he sipped his coffee, checked his voicemail for messages from Courtney, and found that there were still none. He tried calling her twice himself, but to no avail. In
the end, he called up the airlines and was told that the plane had landed without problem.

The information soothed and angered him all at once.

‘Damn kid,’ he said.

He scanned the office. All around him, rows and rows of makeshift cubicles were set up, each one a carbon copy of his own work station – a desk, a chair, a pin-up board, and an archaic
crappy computer that was one generation away from being a Commodore 64. Hell, the monitors weren’t even widescreen.

On Striker’s pin-up board were two pictures. One of his daughter Courtney standing with her friend, Raine; and the other of his parents, who had died two decades ago in a motor vehicle
accident, leaving him as the sole provider for his three younger siblings. He stared at the photos for a long time. When the program finally started, it was an emotional relief.

Immediately, he sat down and typed:

Then he entered her date of birth.

Before hitting send, he added in a request for information from LEIP – the Law Enforcement Information Portal – and also from PIRS – the Police Information Retrieval System.
Both were older databases, used by municipalities that had not yet transferred over to PRIME.

The results came back almost instantly.

‘Desktop system’s fast today,’ he said. ‘Look at this.’

Felicia was seated in her own cubicle behind him, trying to get a hold of weapons expert Jay Kolt. Having no luck, she hung up, swivelled about and looked over his shoulder at the screen.
‘What you got?’

‘Same pro-choice arrest you had for Sharise Owens. But look at this – there was also a death threat made against Sharise. And it’s a Vancouver file.’

‘Vancouver? That’s strange . . . I never saw it in PRIME.’

Striker nodded. ‘Of course you didn’t. This file is eight years old. PRIME didn’t exist back then. We’re not reading the actual report – this is an electronic
summary.’

Felicia cursed, and Striker echoed it. Retrieving information could be extremely frustrating in the world of policing. Older cases often existed only on paper. Some were reintroduced to the
system as electronic summaries, but they were few, and they almost always lacked vital information.

Striker let out a heavy breath. ‘We’re lucky this call even had an electronic summary; otherwise we wouldn’t have known it existed at all. The original report should be filed
away somewhere.’

‘In Archives?’

‘It’s a Vancouver file. So, yeah, hopefully.’

Striker read the summary. It was about as bare bones as it gets – critically lacking for something as serious as a death threat. The suspect in the file was a male named Chad Koda. In the
remarks column was one word:

Unfounded.

Felicia pointed at the entity. ‘Chad Koda . . . is he a pro-lifer?’

‘Apparently.’ Striker looked at the last line of the summary. ‘Says Koda had a “relationship” with Owens, but it doesn’t specify what kind of relationship.
Looks more and more like this was a domestic someone didn’t feel like writing up properly, so they changed it to an Unfounded Threat call.’

Striker ran the name Koda, but nothing else came up. He looked at the name for a long moment, knowing he had heard it somewhere before. Then he made the connection. ‘Wait a second . . .
Chad Koda . . . isn’t he that high-end realtor you see on all the billboard ads? The self-proclaimed multimillionaire?’

‘Oh yeah. That’s right. The guy who colours his beard.’

Striker raised an eyebrow. ‘Colours his beard? If you say so.’

‘It’s obvious, Jacob – to a woman.’

‘Remind me of that when I go grey.’

‘So, tomorrow then?’

Striker just shot her a wry look.

He picked up the desk phone and called Archives. The woman who answered had a smoker-rough voice and Striker was familiar with her. He gave her the file number and year, then waited when she put
him on hold. When she finally picked up again, almost ten minutes later, her one-word answer bothered him.

‘Purged.’

‘
Purged?’
It was all Striker could do not to swear. ‘But this was a violent call.’

The clerk made a weary sound – like she’d given this explanation one too many times and was growing tired of it. ‘I wish I could say it was unusual, Detective, but the
department purged a lot of stuff back then. Especially the year the basement flooded and all the records had to be moved.’

Striker felt his blood pressure rising. ‘Try one more for me. See what you got on a guy named Chad Koda.’

‘Hold on.’ After a few seconds, she came back to the phone and her response was the same. ‘You’re batting zero today, Detective. I wouldn’t bother buying any
lottery tickets if I were you.’

Striker sighed. ‘I’ll cancel my prostate exam too.’

The woman gave a soft chuckle before Striker finished the conversation and hung up.

‘Well?’ Felicia said.

‘Purged. All of it.’

‘But that call was a
death
threat.’

Striker shook his head. ‘Why does this feel like
Groundhog Day
?’

He scratched his chin as he thought. With no known victim, their weapons expert still unreachable, and Noodles needing another four hours to process the crime scenes, they were quickly running
out of leads.

Felicia said, ‘We’re at a standstill.’

Striker agreed. He stood up. Put on his coat. Adjusted his holster. And made sure that the magazine was seated securely. ‘Come on.’

Felicia stood up as well. ‘Chad Koda’s place?’

‘You got it.’ Striker grinned. ‘Time to see how a multimillionaire lives.’

Striker stared at the inlet and faraway border of Stanley Park as they drove across the Burrard Street Bridge, his mind not able to enjoy the glorious view and instead focused
on the details of the case.

Where they were headed – the 1300 block of Pacific Avenue – was the lateral edge of the downtown core, an area nestled in between the sprawling urban jungle of city life and the
tranquil walkways of the sandy-beached Burrard Inlet.

The seawall below Pacific Avenue ran all the way to Stanley Park. Felicia looked at the bay, at the sun shimmering off the waters, at the people windsurfing, and sighed. ‘I wish I could
own a place down here. But I’d have to sell my soul to afford one.’

‘That wouldn’t get you the down-payment.’

She let out a bemused laugh. ‘You’re probably right. I’ve probably lowered its value over the years – I’ve been known to be a bad girl from time to time.’

Striker grinned. ‘Not often enough.’

They exited the bridge.

On the southwest side of Pacific Avenue, apartment complexes rose up twenty storeys high. They blocked the view of the bay that the northeast houses had once boasted so many decades ago. Not
that people living there could complain. The view may have been blocked, but those houses were still within throwing distance of Sunset Beach.

Striker drove past the row of homes, each one in its own Victorian style, and took note of the surroundings. The house Chad Koda owned was a single detached residence, three levels high, with a
steep wooden stairway. The exterior wood sported a brand new burgundy paint job with clean white trim. Out front was a wall of recently trimmed hedges and a red brick patio with garden.

Everything looked professionally maintained.

Felicia whistled. ‘Something tells me he’s not operating on a policeman’s salary.’

‘A cop couldn’t afford the gardener. You do a history check on this place yet?’

‘Yeah, but there’s nothing relevant. Only call ever made here was a noise complaint, and that was six years ago.’

The information was disappointing; Striker had hoped for something more.

They parked away from the traffic flow, on Thurlow, and walked down the sidewalk with the hot sun pressing down on them. By the time they reached the front walkway, Striker felt stuffy in his
suit. It was only ten-thirty in the morning, but already the day was beginning to swelter. And being next to a row of cars spewing out exhaust fumes didn’t help.

At the front door, Striker went to knock, then hesitated. There was no known history of dangers connected to this address, but he never took chances. He leaned over the railing and tried to peer
through the window, but it was too dark to see.

‘The window’s got some kind of tint on it,’ he said.

‘Wards off the sun.’

‘Sure. And it stops people from seeing inside.’

Striker approached the door and rapped hard, three solid knocks. Less than thirty seconds later, footsteps could be heard inside. A latch rattled. The front door creaked open. And Striker got
his first real-life look at the man from the billboard ads.

Chad Koda.

Realtor extraordinaire.

Striker was somewhat surprised. The man was not what he had expected. Chad Koda was a bit shorter than average height, a bit stockier than his billboard photo suggested, and he looked every bit
his fifty years of age. His silvering hair was almost gone on top, and kept short on the sides. His goatee was darker than the hair on his head – Felicia mouthed the word
dyed
once
more – and it stuck out against his deeply bronzed skin. He wore a wine-coloured kimono that hung half open and matching slippers.

Koda gave them both an impatient look. ‘Well, what is it?’

Striker badged the man. ‘Detectives Striker and Santos. We’d like a few minutes of your time, if you don’t mind.’

The man rubbed his eyes. ‘This really isn’t the best time.’

‘It won’t take long.’

‘I’ve heard that one before.’

Striker made no move to leave. ‘You are Chad Koda, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you once used to date Dr Sharise Owens?’