Snakes & Ladders (3 page)

The man plummeted three storeys down. No scream, just silence. He hit the crabgrass, rolled down the small slope of hill, then got back to his feet.

Striker tried to flood the man with light from his flashlight, but from three storeys up the beam was too weak. All he saw was black clothing. A dark hoodie. And beneath that, what appeared to be a black leather mask. The suspect leaned down and picked up his camera. Then, for a brief moment, he looked back up at the window.

‘Don’t move!’ Striker ordered.

But the man ignored him again; he turned and raced into the shadows of the south lane. And then he was gone.

Five minutes later, Striker looked up and down Union Street for the red and blue glow of the Canine Unit’s lights. When he didn’t see them, he got on his phone and called the Central Dispatcher, Sue Rhaemer.

‘Where the hell’s the dog?’ he demanded.

Rhaemer paused for barely a moment, and Striker knew she was checking the GPS. ‘He’s just a few blocks out.’

‘Well, tell him to get his ass here
now
.’

Striker had barely ended the conversation when the dogman’s emergency lights tinted the air and a white Chevy Tahoe came racing around the bend of Gore Avenue. The man behind the wheel was Harry Hooch, one of the department’s best dogmen.

The Tahoe came to a sliding stop on the icy road surface and stopped right in front of the Lucky Lodge. Hooch climbed out. He was shorter than most cops, maybe five foot seven, and he was rail-thin, weighing less than a hundred and sixty pounds. But what Harry Hooch lacked in height and weight he made up for with his steel determination. He yanked open the rear door and Sable jumped out. The Shepherd’s colouring was completely black. Even in the grey light of the coming night, her coat glistened.

‘Where’s the scent?’ Hooch asked.

Striker pointed to the area where the suspect had fled. ‘Landed there. On the slope beneath the window.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘None. The area’s clean.’

Hooch said nothing. He got the Shepherd to sniff the glove, then led the dog across the lot and got to work.

Striker watched eagerly as the Shepherd scoured back and forth in search of the trail. When the dog finally picked up the scent, she beelined down the south lane of Union.

Hooch went with her, and so did Striker. The dogman didn’t want the extra protection, and the scowl on his face showed that; like most dogmen, Hooch liked to play the game solo. But Striker wasn’t about to leave him without proper cover. Especially when they had no idea what they were dealing with here.

He ran with the man.

The dog continued the trail southeast, eventually turning down Malkin Avenue. As they ran, Striker mapped out the area in his head, and cursed.

‘What?’ Hooch asked.

‘He’s heading for the train yards.’

Hooch made no reply, but the tightness of his face showed his own frustration. The train yards were always a bitch during tracks. Too many obstacles: the fenced-off areas, the moving freightliners. And, of course, the endless streams of the homeless people who camped out behind the industrial area, or grouped together down by the bottle depot and recycling plant.

All in all, it all made for a difficult track.

When they reached the dead-end stop of Glen Drive, Sable stopped running. The dog dropped her tail low and began running back and forth all along the gated area that led into the train yards. Hooch gave the dog more leash and marched impatiently with her.

Striker took the moment to scan the area and catch his breath. The cold air stung his lungs and it was dirty, stinking of diesel gas fumes and smoke from the industrial plants. Not twenty yards away stood a tall chain-link fence that separated the federal land of the national railway with that of the City. Behind it were pockets of homeless people. Small fire-lit camps dotted the rail yard.

‘Tracks gonna get messed up in there,’ Striker noted.

Hooch shook his head. ‘Track doesn’t lead there anyway.’

‘Then where’s it go?’

‘Right fucking
here
.’

Striker looked all around the immediate area. There was nothing here except a dead-end street, a gravelly roundabout, and a row of old vacant warehouses.

‘It’s a dead fucking end,’ Hooch griped.

Striker watched where the dog was pin-balling back and forth on a small strip of gravel, less than twenty feet long. Using his flashlight, he lit up the area and focused on the road’s surface. It was a mess of concrete and rock and dirt, and there were no discernible tyre tracks.

Hooch’s posture slumped, and he began reeling in the dog. ‘He had wheels parked here, Shipwreck. No doubt about it.’

Striker nodded in agreement.

‘Or a ride waiting for him.’

He looked all around the area for witnesses, or better yet, video surveillance. But aside from the video cameras that CP Rail owned – all of which faced inwards towards the train tracks – there were none to be seen.

Hooch reeled in his beast. ‘It’s done, man. He got away.’

Striker shook his head. He offered the dogman a weak grin and held up the black leather glove.

‘Not completely,’ he said.

By the time Striker made it back to the Lucky Lodge, Felicia was on scene. She was speaking with Constable Wong – although from Striker’s vantage point, it looked more like an interrogation than a discussion.

A smile broke his lips; Felicia was always so intense. It was one of the things he loved about her.

Under the pale light of the street lamp, her breath looked like steam. Striker hoped she wasn’t grilling the kid too hard. Wong was only a rookie. Had just a few months of road time under his belt and was now stuck in the middle of a strange Sudden Death call that made no sense.

Welcome to the Force, kid.

Felicia spotted Striker and her expression turned even more serious. She stopped talking mid-sentence, left the young constable hanging, and came marching up the sidewalk towards him.

‘Any luck?’ she asked.

Striker nodded. ‘Lots. All
bad
.’ He relayed the entire call to her from the second he’d heard the dispatch over the air until the moment when the dogman had lost the track out by the train yards. When he was finished speaking, Felicia made a sour face.

‘Train yards, huh?’

‘Yeah. He had wheels, too. I’m sure of it.’

She thought this over. ‘Long way off to park his wheels.’

‘For sure. And yet the safest place, too. Who’s gonna notice anything going on down there at Glen and Malkin? It’s the industrial area. Dead-end streets. No video of any kind. Only people down there are the homeless, and they don’t want to get involved. When you think about it, it’s actually a perfect place to hide some wheels.’

‘Which leaves us with jack.’

‘Not entirely.’ Striker held up the glove once more. ‘Got this from the suspect. Ripped it right off his hand during the struggle.’

‘We’ll have to hit the lab.’ She grabbed the keys from his pocket, hurried back to the trunk of the police car, and returned with a brown paper bag. She wrote the time, location and incident number on the outside of the bag in thick black felt, then held it open for Striker to drop the glove inside. When he did, she put the bag back in the trunk and handed him the keys.

It wasn’t until she had marked the time of transfer in her notebook – continuity was
always
a bitch in court – that she took a long look at Striker and assessed him. The skin around her brow tightened and her eyes turned soft.

‘Your forehead,’ she said, and reached out to touch it.

He leaned back. ‘Leave it.’

‘It’s been bleeding, Jacob.’

‘I know that. And it stopped.’

‘What happened? You get hit? He hit you? You need someone to look at that.’

‘I’ll live, Feleesh, really.’

She gave him another one of her long, drawn-out motherly looks, and Striker ignored it. Before she could say more, he turned back towards the Lucky Lodge.

In the five o’clock darkness, the building looked even more dilapidated. He took out his flashlight and set the cone to the halfway setting for equal amounts of intensity and expanse. Then he began scouring the crabgrass, taking slow careful steps – the last thing they needed right now was to step on and destroy any trace evidence.

Felicia came up beside him to assist in the search.

‘He ran this way,’ Striker explained. ‘Landed right over there beside the power box. Look for footprints and any electrical stuff, too. Wires, a lens, whatever. Maybe he left something behind.’

They moved closer to the area where the suspect had landed.

‘It’s so cold, the ground is like rock,’ he said. ‘When he landed, he must’ve landed hard.’

Felicia kept looking. ‘He get hurt?’ she asked without looking up.

‘Dunno. He could’ve – though you’d never know it from the way he raced out of here.’

‘I’ll call the hospitals.’

‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Striker pointed to the east. ‘Maybe he sprained something. Broke a bone, if we’re lucky.’

Felicia thought this over. ‘If he was high, he could’ve fractured a bone and not even known it – but he will later when the juice wears off.’ She got on the phone and called Central Dispatch. She got them to flag all the hospitals for patients coming in with injuries that could possibly be related to a high fall.

While she did this, Striker continued searching the outer perimeter for evidence. He did a grid search, line by line. It was an arduous process, but the best way to go. In cases like these, it was one hundred per cent necessary.

No evidence could be overlooked.

Not three minutes later, he found a footprint. It was not overly far from where the suspect had landed – just east of the utility box – in a patch of earth that had been recently covered with fresher ground from the construction work in the next-door lot.

Striker squatted close to the footprint. It was a right-foot imprint. Standard size, maybe a ten or eleven. But that was not what got his attention. What stole his focus was the sole pattern in the mud. It was a checkered tread, and the grooves were deep. The imprint itself was level for the most part, but wore away almost completely near the toe.

Striker looked around the area, and found a left-shoe imprint that matched in size and tread. He noted that the toe of this shoe was not as worn as the right.

When Felicia finished her phone conversation, she joined him once again. He showed her his find.

‘What does that wear on the toe tell you?’ he asked.

‘The wearer had an awkward gait. Maybe from some type of previous injury. Or a leg length discrepancy.’

Striker agreed.

They marked the area off for Ident to do a casing of the shoe prints. Then they continued the search.

Nearly a half-hour later they had cleared the lane, the vacant lot to the west, and were now performing a final search of where the suspect had landed. Striker paused for a moment to look up at the window. Unit 305. From down here, it looked awfully high up.

Felicia nudged him. ‘He had a mask on, right?’

‘Yeah. Black leather thing. Narrow eye slits. Kinda like the one you wore on our first date.’

‘Yes, well, I like to surprise my men.’ Felicia looked up to the same window. ‘No power at all, huh?’

‘All the power’s been cut off, and it looks like it’s been that way for a long time. We’ll check with the City for an exact date.’

Felicia thought this over. ‘This guy . . . could he have been a squatter?’

‘Maybe. Or even some toad with a warrant. Who knows? Anything’s possible at this point. But it doesn’t explain why he’d have a camera set up outside her window.’

Felicia nodded, but said nothing.

Striker swept the flashlight through the blades of crisp grass. He was just about to leave the area when he spotted a glint of silver, coming from beneath the edge of a utility box. An object was there. He crouched down, gloved up with latex, and picked it up.

‘Interesting,’ he said.

‘What is that?’ Felicia asked.

Striker wasn’t sure yet. The object looked like a broken-off piece of equipment – a tiny plastic box with a sensor attached to it. There were no part numbers on it. No model number. No serial.

He shrugged. ‘Might be junk for all I know. We’ll get the tech boys to look at it later.’ He slid the object into a small paper bag he had folded up in his pocket, wrote the details on the bag, then took a final look around the scene.

He made his way back towards the front entrance of the Lucky Lodge with Felicia by his side. Patrol were now on scene and they had cordoned off the area with yellow police tape. Some of the cops were doing a secondary canvass.

It was much appreciated. But unfortunately it didn’t diminish the amount of work still required, and Striker started a list in his head. They still had to reassess the primary crime scene, investigate the secondary, get Ident down here to photograph and mark everything, and, lastly, they had to hit the DNA lab to have the glove bagged and tagged for testing – and all had to be done before this night was through.

As if on the same wavelength, Felicia said: ‘This week is killing me. It’s only Wednesday and it feels like Friday.’

‘Well, get used to it,’ he replied. ‘Our long day just got a whole lot longer.’

She said nothing for a moment as she looked up at the blackened windows of the old building where Mandy Gill had died. When she looked back at Striker, her dark eyes were concerned and focused. ‘This is creeping me out,’ she said. ‘Seriously. What kind of sicko films a suicide like that?’

Striker gave her a hard look and spoke determinedly.

‘The kind we’re going to catch,’ he said.

The Adder – for that was how he thought of himself – opened up the hidden hatch in the floor and stepped down on the first rung of the ladder. The wood was old, and it squeaked beneath his weight as it always did. Hinted at giving way. If that ever happened, the results would be dire. The drop below was nearly twenty feet in total, and on to concrete.

But the rung held, and the Adder continued down the old ladder into the murky darkness below. His mind was not on the possibility of a fall, but on other things. More pertinent things. Tonight had been a first.