Snakes & Ladders (26 page)

All he could see was a dark stairway leading down.

Somewhere down there were the cops. Deep inside the trap. Oblivious of his presence. Unaware of the danger.

And so the Adder initiated the plan.

The front door was heavy, built of solid oak – he knew this for he had installed it himself – yet it shut smoothly and silently as he pushed on it, thanks to the heavily oiled hinges he had screwed into the frame. He pushed the door all the way closed until the lock clicked in place. Then he put the key into the slot and locked the door from the outside.

A sense of excitement blossomed in his chest.

The critical part was done.

He put down the burlap sack, removed the metal brackets, and began fixing them alongside the frame. There were six brackets in total – a pair for each of the three two-by-six beams. As the almost-inaudible whirr of the screw-gun filled the air, the Adder smiled beneath the thin, cold leather.

It was happening,

It was
really
happening!

The Beautiful Escape was almost here.

‘The place is clear,’ Striker called to his partner.

Felicia marched into the room. The moment she saw the body slumped back in the chair, a hard look took over her normally pretty features.

‘Sarah Rose?’ she asked.

Striker nodded and handed the photocopied picture to Felicia.

She gave it a quick glance, then handed it back. She cursed and place a hand against her forehead as if disbelieving what they had found. She moved around the room for a better look at the body. After a brief moment, she asked, ‘How long?’

Striker shrugged. ‘Judging by the smell, I’d say more than two days. Judging by the rigor, I’d say less than three.’

‘So before Mandy,’ Felicia said.

‘I would think so. It’s hard to tell. We’ll leave that to the medical examiner. The question here is
why
. Why kill Sarah and then Mandy? Did they both know something? Was it an act of jealousy? A love triangle or something to do with the sessions at the clinic?’

‘Or was Mandy murdered next because she knew Sarah?’ Felicia suggested. ‘Because she knew what had happened to Sarah?’

Striker paced the floor and thought this all over. After a moment, he stopped talking and craned his neck. Somewhere behind them – back from the way they’d come – there was a soft whirring noise. Like a drill.

Felicia heard it, too.

‘What is that?’ he asked.

‘Sounds like they’re working on the building again,’ she noted. ‘Leaky condo.’

Striker nodded. ‘We’ll talk to the workers afterwards – see if they saw or heard anything.’

The sound of the drill faded, and Striker focused back on the investigation.

He removed a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. As he put them on, Felicia got on the phone with Dispatch and had them create a Sudden Death call at this address.

Striker looked over at her. ‘Tell them to put an APB out on Billy Mercury while you’re at it – arrestable on sight. Armed and Dangerous. Possible suicide by cop.’

Felicia nodded and kept talking to the dispatcher.

Satisfied, Striker tuned out her voice and fiddled with the gloves. Once they were on tight, he took out his flashlight. He was about to examine the body of Sarah Rose in greater detail when something else caught his eye: along the edge of the coffee table in the far corner of the room was a row of pill bottles. White labels, blue caps.

He crossed the room and picked them up. Read the labels. All of them were the same medication.

Lexapro
.

Striker thought this over. Then he recalled seeing more pill bottles elsewhere. He returned to the kitchenette down the hall and stood in the doorway, letting his eyes take in every detail. All along the countertop were more pill bottles, just like he’d seen on the bedroom bureau.

All of them were empty.

He moved up to the counter and read them. Many of them were marked: Lexapro. But there were others, too. Mainly Effexor.

Just like Mandy Gill’s.

He opened his notebook, wrote down the type and number of bottles he’d found, then looked at the dosage. He frowned. It was the exact same as Mandy’s medications – and again, the same prescription number, ending with MVC.

Mapleview Clinic.

Striker closed his notebook and examined the area. Unlike the filthiness of Mandy Gill’s unit, Sarah Rose’s townhome was clean and orderly, for the most part. Sure, it was messy in some areas – dirty dishes in the sink, unwashed laundry in the basin, a vacuum cleaner left out in the centre of the room – but nothing beyond the realm of normality. Mandy’s apartment slum had been chock-a-block full of trash and old food, old newspapers and old mail. Sarah’s was not.

Striker thought this over, comparing the two. And something else occurred to him. While clearing this place, he had seen medications and newspapers and even some flyers – but no mail.

None of any kind.

He looked around the townhome, going through the drawers and cupboards and closets. Eventually, on the top shelf above the fridge, he found what he was looking for – a small plastic organizer. He pulled it down, opened it, and flipped through the contents.

Inside the folder were all sorts of bills, and all of them marked
paid
in thin red pen. There were receipts for the electric company and the phone company and even separate listings of Visa and MasterCard payments. In the back of the folder, there was one section for bank records, another for insurance papers, and one for miscellaneous details.

Striker noticed one thing: the bills were all
old
, outdated by at least six months. The oldest went back two years. The most recent bill he could find was one for the cable company, and that had been paid in July of the previous year.

After that, there was no mail.

‘Keep your eyes open for another mail organizer,’ he said.

Felicia nodded and began snooping around the other rooms.

After another fruitless search of the kitchen, Striker put the organizer he was holding back on the shelf, then returned to the den where Felicia was making a list of the medications.

‘You find anything?’ he asked her.

She looked up. ‘No. Maybe she just gets rid of the stuff.’

‘She
doesn’t
. Her old stuff is all still there. And it’s all categorized. This woman was anal about it.’

Felicia thought it over before speaking. ‘Well, according to my guy at the welfare office, she just moved here two months ago. Maybe she hasn’t done a change of address yet. Either way, I don’t think it’s something to be concerned over.’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘It’s more than missing mail. It’s a broken pattern in the woman’s daily routine. And if you look at the way she kept track of everything before, something here has changed.’

Felicia said nothing in reply; Striker made a mental note of the issue. He gloved up with fresh latex, then returned to the body of Sarah Rose.

Even in death the woman looked troubled. Her face was sad, and in the dim light of the room, her long blonde hair looked like brittle straw. Her flesh seemed more like sculptured wax than human skin. It was tight across her bloated tissue, stretching her mouth open and deepening the wrinkles near her brow.

Striker shone his flashlight on the woman’s face. Her icy blue eyes stared at nothing, and the pupils did not change. They remained milky, lost-looking, and seemed to stare right through him – as if accusing him of being too late to save her.

He looked away. Took a moment to collect his thoughts. He tried to re-set his viewpoint. To think of Sarah Rose not as a person, but as just another body. Another sudden death.

One of the thousand he had seen.

But he could not. Ever since the death of Mandy, everything had felt more personal to him. These weren’t just sudden deaths, they were lost lives. There was no ignoring that fact.

The thought was depressing, and he tried to vanquish it by keeping busy. He shone the flashlight all over Sarah Rose’s body, looking for any trace evidence. The white blouse she wore was distended over her breasts and belly, and the buttons looked one gas bubble away from popping. The body was bloating profusely. Evidence of this could be seen in the swelling of her cheeks, and of her fingers too, where the rings all appeared to be three sizes too small. The one on her ring finger was so tight, the gold looked melted into the flesh.

Striker noted this ring, and turned to Felicia. ‘Did you research her fully on the way over?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’ Felicia said the words like she was offended; research was always the passenger’s job.

‘Was she married?’

Felicia nodded. ‘According to PRIME, she was married. Years ago. To a man named Jerry something. I can’t remember the details, but he died of an overdose. I’ll read up more on it when we get back to the car.’

Striker looked back at the ring on her finger. ‘Guess she never let go of him.’

He used a gloved finger to pull away the soft material of her blouse, exposing the neck and upper sternum regions. Using his flashlight, Striker inspected the skin. On the right side, there was nothing out of the ordinary, just paleness and bloating. On the left side, a very small area of the skin looked different to the rest. A tiny red dot.

A puncture mark?

With all the bloating of the body it was difficult to tell, but the mark was in the same area – lateral to the base of the neck, over the first rib area – just like Mandy Gill’s injury.

Thoughts of injections again filtered through Striker’s mind. He took out his notebook and made a crude drawing of the neck and the position of the possible puncture mark. He then drew a diagram of the room, and noted something critically important – the positioning of the body.

Mandy Gill had been seated in her easy chair, facing the window.

Now so was Sarah Rose.

Striker turned slowly around and looked at the window with bad thoughts filling his head. He put away his notebook and approached it. The window was small – much too small for an intruder to fit through, especially with iron security bars blocking off the inside.

But that wasn’t what he was concerned about.

As Striker got closer to the frame, he could see that the panes of glass were quite dirty. As if they had never been cleaned since the townhome had been built. The dirt was so thick, the outside world was difficult to make out.

Except in one place.

A small portion in the bottom right corner. There, the glass was sparkling clean, as if someone had cleaned it today.

Striker leaned closer for a better look. What he saw made him reach for his pistol. Positioned on the other side of the glass was another camera.

They were being filmed.

The Adder finished covering the front door with the wood varnish, then threw the last of the empty cans into his burlap sack. He removed his leather gloves and snapped on a fresh pair of latex, covering up the red rash of his skin.

Smiling, he stood back and examined his work. The door was so wet it glistened in the cold winter sun.

It was beautiful.

Unfortunately, there was no time for enjoying his work. He grabbed the lighter from his pocket – a long, ten-inch one for lighting barbecues. With his fingers trembling from the excitement, the Adder took a half step back. Raised the lighter. And pulled the trigger.

The entire front door exploded with a soft
whoooosh!
sound, and white-hot flame crawled up the front of the building like a living beast.

It was beautiful, the Adder thought again.

So undeniably beautiful.

Mesmerizing
.

He fought to pull his eyes from the blaze. With the operation complete, he regained his focus, grabbed his burlap sack from the ground, and hurried back across the road to the Command Room. Minutes were critical now. He needed to be out of sight when the cops and fire crews arrived. And more important than that, he needed to be sure the video feed was being properly transmitted and recorded.

That
was essential.

He climbed back inside the ground-level apartment and pulled the drapes closed. The moment the outside light was blocked, a sense of relief spilled through him.

It was done.

The job was complete.

He glanced over at the computer screen, saw that the video was recording – saw the two detectives moving through Sarah Rose’s suite – and an excited sound escaped his lips. Outside, smoke was already flowing strongly from the fire – the dark angry tail of the beast snaking around the west side of the building. The sight filled the Adder with a sense of heavenly calm.

It was here. It was here. It was here . . .

The Beautiful Escape had arrived.

Striker whirled away from the camera.

‘Someone’s here!’

He drew his gun and scanned the area all around them. As if on cue, four tiny red lights turned on, one at each corner of the ceiling. Like the glowing red eyes of some angry creature. Striker raised his gun to fire, then stopped as he realized what he was looking at.

More cameras.

‘There’s smoke!’ Felicia said.

Striker saw it, too. He searched through the black haze that was unfurling. At first, in the dimness of the basement area, he had thought the smoke was leftover residue from the burned coffee grounds in the kitchenette. But now as he looked at the thickening mass unrolling around them, he realized the truth of what was happening.

The place was on fire.

They’d walked right into a trap.

Gun out, he hurried back into the hallway that led to the stairs, and then the front door. All he could see down at the far end was a smear of puffing blackness. A crackling noise now filled the air. And it was growing louder.

‘Come on!’ he screamed to Felicia. ‘We have to get the hell outta here!’

She ran to his side and they moved back down the long narrow corridor together. The closer they got to the stairs, the more the blackness thickened – to the point where it was difficult to breathe. The air was hot, irritating Striker’s eyes and choking his lungs. Felicia began coughing, and raised her arm to cover her mouth.