The Survivor (12 page)

And he wondered if it would ever be that good again.

Just then, the blue cafeteria doors swung open, stealing Striker’s attention. He looked over and saw a short cop walk through. He had a full head of jagged white hair, big white bushy eyebrows, and a stomach that hung way down over his belt. Looked like a mad professor.

Striker counted him as a good friend. It was Jim Banner. Noodles, as everyone called him – ever since he’d almost choked to death while eating a creamy linguine at the Noodle Shack in Burnaby. Noodles worked in Ident. Hell, he
was
Ident. Worked seven days a week and damn near twelve hours a day. He carried the usual blue-light device and associated tool box, and upon seeing Striker he waddled faster and hollered across the room: ‘Hey, Shipwreck, stay the fuck out of my crime scene!’

Shipwreck
. Few people were allowed to call Striker that, but Noodles was one of them. Which was only fair, considering that the eighty-thousand-dollar speedboat Striker had sunk on the team getaway ten years back had belonged to the man.

Striker smiled at him. ‘This is
my
crime scene, Noodles.’

‘Not yet it ain’t.’ Noodles reached the body of White Mask. ‘Last thing I need is more of your goddam DNA screwing up my results.’

‘I’ll try not to jerk off in the scene.’ Striker looked at his watch. ‘’Bout time you got your ass down here. It’s only been six hours since the shootings. What the hell took you so long? Someone open an all-day buffet down the road?’

‘Yeah, your mother did. Wanna know what I was eating? I’ll give you a hint – I’m not a vegetarian.’

Striker laughed, and let the banter go.

Noodles put down his tools. ‘Already been and gone twice, numb-nuts. Here to get some more blood samples.’ He looked down at the blown-apart body. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’

Striker followed his gaze to the corpse. All the humour he had felt moments ago dropped away. ‘What have you got for me so far?’

Noodles shrugged. ‘The kid had a wallet in his back pocket. Nothing’s confirmed, but the name on the ID is Quenton Wong. He’s nineteen. Born December twenty-fifth.’

‘Oh joy, a Christmas Baby.’ Striker looked the body over. ‘Nineteen? Sounds a bit young for what I’m seeing.’

Noodles nodded in agreement.

‘What kind of ID?’ Striker asked.

‘Just the standard stuff. Driver’s licence, BCID, some bank cards, and of course, an old Saint Patrick’s Student ID Card. His primary residence is listed as Kerrisdale – Balsam Street. I’ve already sent the ID upstairs for prints and trace evidence.’

Striker thought of the gunmen. It looked like they were connected to the school in some way. Ex-students maybe. ‘You run him, Noodles?’

‘Yeah. And he’s got nothing. No history, criminal or otherwise.’

Striker frowned. ‘Completely negative? Tattoos and all?’

‘Fucking everything.’

Striker looked at White Mask’s ribs. On the left side was a series of thick white serrated scars, each about three inches in length.

‘What about those marks?’ he asked. ‘He’s got some on his inner arm too. Really odd scar formation.’

‘They look odd because he got them when he was still growing.’ Noodles looked back at the corpse, gave a shrug. ‘I dunno, Shipwreck. The guy’s a complete non-entity in the system. And by that I mean every damn database: CPIC, LEIP, PIRS and PRIME. Haven’t checked across the border yet, but I’ve done enough of your job. You can do that later.’

Striker turned silent for a moment. The fact that this kid had no police history, criminal or otherwise, was disturbing, if not unbelievable.

Noodles strapped on a pair of latex gloves. He nodded towards Felicia, who stood across the room with a pissed look still marring her pretty features, and said with a smirk, ‘What’s with my Spanish fantasy? Seems kind of sour. Or is she just picking up the better parts of your personality?’

‘The world should be so lucky.’

Noodles laughed. ‘You two at it again?’

‘Like the Inquisition.’

‘Jesus, isn’t this your first day back?’

Striker sighed. ‘Call me when you get some results.’ He wrote this latest information into his notebook. By the time he’d closed the book and stuffed it back into his pocket, Felicia had joined them.

‘Hey, Noodles,’ she said.

‘My Persian Princess.’

‘I’m Spanish, not Middle Eastern.’

Noodles shrugged as if to say,
What?
After that he went to work on the body. Felicia addressed Striker. There was no warmth in her voice.

‘Grid search done, Boss. No teeth found, Boss. Anything else, Boss?’

‘No, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Due diligence done.’

He turned away from Felicia and Noodles and marched steadily back across the room to the north-east corner – the one area he’d been avoiding since he’d entered this damn cafeteria. That was where the other gunman was still lying.

The shooter Laroche had deemed ‘possibly innocent’.

Black Mask.

Twenty-One

As Striker approached the body of Black Mask, he searched the floor for the machine gun. It had been an AK-47. A Kalashnikov. He was certain of that – or at least he had been – but as he scanned the area, it was nowhere to be seen. He recalled seeing it fly over the serving counter behind the hot food racks, right after he’d plugged the shooter.

But nothing was there. Just blown-apart pop cans, jars of Jell-O, and Saran-Wrapped sandwiches.

Doubt lingered in Striker’s mind, like the beginning of a migraine. He shrugged it away, pretended it didn’t exist, then spotted another round on the floor near the serving counter. It was longer than the one Felicia had found, and pointier, tapered near the front. The cartridge was grey steel, the bullet jacketed with dull copper plate.

An AK-47 round.

The find killed Striker’s doubts. The gun must have been secured by the first attending officers, he rationalised. Had to be. Sure as hell couldn’t leave a machine gun sitting around unattended. Not in a school of all places. It was a detail he would have to investigate later.

Even if a part of him didn’t want to know the answer.

The lighting above Black Mask was dim, because the overhead fluorescent lights had been shattered by the ricochet of gunshot blasts. It was fitting, if not poetic. Black Mask, out of the light, dead in the shadows.

The body was lying in the exact same position as the last gunman – on his back, hands out to the sides, face up towards the ceiling. Yellow crime scene tape formed a box around the tertiary crime scene, looking like an evil Christmas ribbon. Striker gloved up with fresh latex.

‘I’m not finished over there!’ Noodles called out.

‘You never are.’

‘Don’t fuck with it, Shipwreck!’

Striker was too deep in thought to respond. Red Mask had taken the time to de-face and de-hand the other shooter, White Mask – the one with the Quenton Wong ID in his pocket – but not this gunman. So why? It didn’t add up. Striker leaned over the body and studied it. This gunman’s physique was less muscled than the other. Thin. Not fully developed. It was not implausible that he was a teenager. A student.

Striker studied the mask of the fallen gunman. It was pitch black in colour, moulded to fit the face, with two horizontal slots for eyes.

Two bullets had struck Black Mask, one just left of the centre of his head – a perfect lethal shot – and one in the chest bone. Striker inspected the path of the first round. The fatal bullet had entered through the gunman’s left cheek, the shock of the impact shattering one third of the black hockey mask.

Striker recalled what Laroche had told Felicia: ‘The boy might have been innocent.’

Impossible, Striker thought. And yet, the words haunted him.

With gloved fingers, he reached out and gently peeled the mask up and over the gunman’s head. Dried blood had stuck the plastic to the young man’s face like a second skin, and it came off with a soft
pop
sound.

He was exposed.

Striker studied the face. The shooter was definitely a teenager. One he had never seen. Asian, young – maybe sixteen. Something tugged at the back of Striker’s mind.

‘Felicia,’ he called. She was standing by Noodles; the two were going over something. She stopped talking and looked over.

‘Yeah?’

‘Get Caroline.’

Felicia didn’t respond verbally. Maybe it was the tone in his voice. She nodded and left the cafeteria. When she returned with Principal Myers five minutes later, Striker saw that Caroline’s eyes were clearer now, but her face remained ghostly white. She walked across the cafeteria on wobbly legs.

‘Over here,’ Striker called.

Felicia marched along, unruffled and unconcerned; Principal Myers followed slowly, as if every step was painful. Her eyes scanned the cafeteria, stopping on every covered body that filled the room. The grief on her face was damn near palpable. Striker could tell what she was thinking:

Which ones of my kids are under those sheets?

Hardened cop or naive civilian, it was too much for anyone to assimilate.

Principal Myers came to within a foot of the crime-scene tape, where Striker was crouched, and she shivered as if cold.

‘Caroline—’

‘You want me to look?’

‘I’ve got a hunch who this kid is, and I think you know too.’ He looked up at the Principal. ‘Be warned, he’s been shot in the face. Most of the damage is out the back of the head, where the bullet exited, but still . . . it won’t be pretty.’

‘Okay,’ she managed.

Slowly, Striker stood up, to reveal the body behind him.

‘You recognise this kid?’

Principal Myers said nothing for a moment. She just wavered on the spot, and Felicia had to grab her arm for fear the woman would careen over. After a few seconds, tears slid down her face as she whispered, ‘It’s Sherman. My student helper.’

Striker nodded. ‘Now we know who turned off the video.’ He ducked out from under the crime scene tape. Spoke softly. ‘Who was this kid, Caroline? I mean, really. Who did he hang out with?’

‘He . . . he was a good kid. Really, he was. A good kid.’

‘Good kids don’t murder other kids.’ Together with Felicia, Striker guided the Principal away from the fallen gunman, to the other end of the cafeteria where there were no bodies or blood to distract her. Once there, he sat her down and said straight to her face: ‘Whatever image you had about this kid is gone, Caroline. Forget it. He’s not what you thought. I need you to be sharp here. Think hard. Who was Sherman Chan, and who did he hang out with?’

The woman reached into her suit jacket and pulled out a package of Kool Lights. Menthol.

‘Not in here,’ Striker said. ‘It’s a crime scene.’

She put them away. ‘He . . . he didn’t have a lot of friends. Sherman was a computer kid, a bit of a loner, really. Though he did hang out with two other boys. One was from the computer lab, and the other was his friend’s friend. An older boy by a few years. Previous drop-out.’

‘Their names?’

‘Raymond Leung was one of them,’ she said. ‘He was Sherman’s friend in the computer lab. A foreign kid. Exchange student from Hong Kong. Doesn’t speak a whole lot of English. I can get you his details.’

‘Good, we’ll need them.’ Striker wrote down the name in his notebook, then looked at Caroline. ‘And the other kid? The older one – the drop-out.’

‘Que Wong.’

‘Que Wong?’ Striker’s eyes shifted back to the crime scene behind them, where Noodles was taking swab samples from the headless gunman. He gave Felicia a quick glance, making sure she said nothing, then focused back on Principal Myers. ‘I need to speak to these kids, Caroline.’

She nodded. ‘I think they live together,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you their contact information. And photographs.’

Striker stopped her. ‘They haven’t been located yet?’

‘Raymond never showed up for school today, and as for Que – well, he’s been gone from this school for a long time now. Never really was in attendance, even when he was here.’

An electric sensation pulsed through Striker, but he said nothing more. As he ushered Principal Myers out of the cafeteria, he told her he needed their yearbook photos, or whatever else she had that was more recent. On the way down the hall towards her office to get him the printouts he required, she stopped, leaned against the wall, and wept.

Striker looked away and sighed. She was damaged goods now. Nothing would ever be the same for her again. Certainly not in this school.

And maybe not in life.

Felicia came up next to him. ‘Good instincts about Black Mask. You were bang on right about the kid.’

He turned to face her. ‘I know that. I
always
knew that. You should have known it too, instead of listening to Laroche.’

She let out a tight breath. ‘Look, Jacob, I never said I didn’t believe you.’

‘And you never said you did, either.’

‘You’re picking at straws.’

‘Am I? Look at the dead kid over there and tell me that.’ Striker tried to suppress his anger, but couldn’t. ‘
We’re
the only reason more kids aren’t dead, Felicia. Us, not Laroche. And here Mr White-shirt wants to take my gun away. Un-fucking-real.’

‘Jacob—’

He turned away and grabbed his cell. He looked at the screen, saw that there were no calls, and grimaced. He dialled Courtney’s number again, got the latest Britney message, something about someone being a womaniser. That was good, it meant she was fine, though more concerned about changing her voice messages than contacting her father. Again, he tried to leave a message but couldn’t. He shut off the phone. Cursed. Caught Felicia’s stare.

‘She’s still screening her calls,’ he said.

‘She probably doesn’t know what happened yet – you know how teenagers are with the news – and she sure as hell doesn’t want you to know she’s skipping school. She probably has no clue about any of this. Otherwise she would call, Jacob. You know that.’

He looked at her like she was crazy. ‘How couldn’t she know? It’s been
hours
since the shootings.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe her cell died, maybe she left it at home, maybe she’s turned it off to avoid you because she knows she’s in shit. Who cares? We know she’s all right, people have already told us that. One of those girls – Marnie Jenkins – spotted her on a bus near the mall not an hour ago. She’s out there having fun.’