Snakes & Ladders (4 page)

Caught .
. .

He had almost been caught.

It was unthinkable.

Shaking, as much from the astonishment as from the excitement, he found his special little corner of his room – the Place of Solace – and dropped to his knees. His mind was reeling. Going a million miles a second. Thoughts too fast to string together. The sounds were back again:

The laughter.

The powerful thunder.

The screams.

And finally, the silence . . . That god-awful, overwhelming
silence
.

The Adder could not catch his breath. Could not breathe. He lay down on the cold hard concrete, ignoring the pain in his back and hip – a result of the fall – and reached up blindly for his iPod. When he found the device, he grabbed it with his shaking hands. Fumbled to make the headset cover his ears. And inserted the headphone jack. Once done, he thumbed the Play button and his ears filled with static charge – the wonderful, soothing, blessed, healing sound of white noise.

It was the only thing that helped.

The doorway to Mandy Gill’s room had a wide yellow slash of police tape across it, set up by rookie cop Wong. Striker was glad to see it. Locking down a scene was always best practice. He gave the young constable a nod. ‘Tape off unit 305 as well. No one in or out but Ident. Keep a log. And you’re gonna need a second unit up here, too.’

‘Delta Thirteen’s already en route, Detective.’

‘Good job.’

Striker turned away from the constable and went inside Mandy Gill’s unit. The first thing he noticed upon re-entry was the empty pill bottle still clutched in the girl’s hand. It was a small plastic vial. Blue cap, white label, with some black and white lettering. Standard stuff.

Cross-contamination was always a worry at scenes like this, so Striker removed his latex gloves, stuffed them in his back pocket, and re-gloved with fresh ones. Then he knelt in front of the body.

He gently prised Mandy’s thumb and index finger back – they went easily; full rigor had not yet begun – and removed the bottle from her possession. He turned it around and read the label.

Lexapro
.

‘Jesus,’ he muttered.

He looked up and spotted Felicia in the entranceway. She was setting up a Sunlite, one of the portable lighting systems the department used. It was actually designed for film sets, but worked perfectly for odd situations like this. Once turned on, the entire room was illuminated.

To Striker it was a depressing sight. The room looked better in the dimness of the flashlights. With the bright glare of the Sunlite making every inch of dirty floor and grimy countertop visible, the true filth which Mandy Gill had been living in became apparent – garbage on the floors, water damage and mould in the corners, a dead rat on the kitchen counter.

He turned his mind away from the depravity and got Felicia’s attention. Held up the empty pill bottle. ‘She’s on anti-depressants,’ he said. They both read the label:

Striker did a double take on the date.

‘The twenty-eighth,’ he said.

‘That was just yesterday,’ Felicia noted. ‘Tuesday.’

Striker thought this over. Fifty pills dispensed just twentyfour hours ago, and now there were none. It was more than enough for anyone to overdose. He wrote down all this information in his notebook, then placed the bottle directly beside the chair leg for Noodles, the Ident tech, who was already on his way. Then he stood up and looked around the room some more.

He felt at a loss, and he wondered if his guilt was clouding his vision. Despite the oddity of the camera being set up outside the window and the subsequent altercation with the suspect – evidence which was all circumstantial, by court standards – there was no
physical
evidence of foul play. At least none he could detect on the body, or anywhere in the primary crime scene.

Suicide was still not out of the question.

Especially not when considering this was Mandy Gill. Striker knew her well. He had for several years, ever since he’d met her at one of his daughter’s Sports Day rallies. Mandy had been sixteen years old then, just a few years older than his daughter, Courtney. She had been living in the Dunbar area, not overly far from his own place. She had been a sweet young girl, polite and gentle, but she had already been suffering from depression problems, even back then.

There were reasons for it. Biochemical issues aside, the poor kid’s mother had died from cancer the previous winter, and her father had been a cold, distant man who had eventually found his way back to jail on aggravated assault charges. With no siblings for support, Mandy had been alone in this world.

Just like she had been found tonight.

The thought pained Striker. ‘I should have done more,’ he said softly.

He stood there and thought of all this, and didn’t move until Felicia called out to him: ‘Look at this.’ She was in the kitchen, scouring through the cupboards.

Striker crossed the room, the garbage that covered the floor crunching beneath his shoes. Once beside Felicia, he saw the tray of plastic bottles in her hand. There must have been over forty of them.

‘Jesus, that’s a lot,’ he noted.

‘It’s all Effexor,’ she said.

‘
Effexor?
Let me see that.’ He took one of the bottles and read the label. On it was the same pharmacy name and prescription number as the Lexapro. The combination of the drugs told him what she’d suffered from.

‘She was bipolar depressive,’ he said.

Felicia looked up. ‘How do you know?’

He gave her a hard look. ‘Personal experience – they put Amanda on the same stuff, after her first suicide attempt.’

Felicia looked back at him, her face taking on a concerned look. She said, ‘Oh,’ and then became quiet. For a moment, the silence of the room was uncomfortable, and Striker’s thoughts filtered back to his wife and all her depression problems.

It was a memory that would never fade.

He prayed that Courtney was different from her mother – God knows she had the same stubbornness and unpredictable, fiery disposition that Amanda had always displayed – and it often worried him that she would develop the same depression problems, too. That she had suffered a serious spinal injury this last year and was now going through occupational therapy didn’t help matters much. Lately, she’d been distant and moody. Brooding, really. Typical for a sixteen-year-old girl, he told himself. Or as Felicia always put it, bang on for a Scorpio.

He moved over to the window and gave her a call. She answered on the fifth ring.

‘Hey, Pumpkin,’ he said.

‘Oh, hey, Dad. Let me use my psychic powers here – you’re gonna be late again.’

‘Funny girl. But I think I already am.’

‘You definitely are. I was giving you an out.’

He laughed softly. She knew him too well. Knew the job.

‘It’s a bad call, bad day,’ he explained. For a moment he considered telling her it was Mandy, but then he reconsidered. This might not have been a close friend of hers, but it was someone she knew. He’d tell her in person. It was better that way.

‘Dad?’ she asked.

‘How’d it go with therapy today?’

‘I didn’t go.’

Striker said nothing for a moment, then continued, ‘Look, Courtney, we’ve been over this before. You
need
to go to therapy. It’s not an option. Without it, you won’t regain full function. Even Annalisa—’

‘I don’t like Annalisa. She’s a bitch.’

Striker took in a deep breath. He caught Felicia staring at him, eavesdropping openly on their conversation like she always did, and he turned away. ‘Look, don’t call her that. I don’t like it. It’s not respectful. And besides, the woman’s only trying to help you.’

Courtney let out a bemused laugh. ‘Help? You call that help? It doesn’t help
anything
. And what would you know anyway? You’re not the one going through this!’

‘I’m not, am I? You’d be surprised to know—’

‘I have to go, Dad, the bath is running.’

‘Courtney—’

The line went dead.

Striker felt his fingers tighten on the phone as he stood there listening to the silence. Finally, he dropped his hand and stuffed the iPhone back into his inner jacket pocket. He gave himself a few seconds to get grounded. It had been like this with Courtney a lot lately – the angst, the anger and defiance, the never-ending rollercoaster ride of ups and downs.

Amanda all over again.

He turned around and met Felicia’s stare. ‘If you want to be a part of the conversation next time, just come over.’

Felicia didn’t bite. ‘She mad at you again?’ she asked.

‘She thinks I’m the Antichrist.’

‘Well,
all
women think that.’

She laughed softly at her own joke; Striker did not. He examined the room and saw nothing but the sad signs of mental illness: counters covered with old dirty dishes; spoiled food on the tables; heaps of unwashed clothes in every corner; and stacks of newspapers piled up randomly all around the room. The entire place looked like it had been flooded and then drained, with everything left lying where it landed.

He crossed the room to the kitchen area and looked at the piles of papers on the countertop. They were bills for an old cell phone. And for credit cards. Letters from creditors. Job application forms coupled with received rejection forms.

Everything in the room signalled the downward spiral of depression, and no one had caught it. Striker was in the process of making a list of what he was seeing when a short, portly cop with white bushy eyebrows appeared in the doorway. His stomach hung way down low and he waddled more than walked. He took a few steps into the room and spotted Striker.

‘Shipwreck.’

Striker looked over at the man. ‘Hey, Noodles.’

Noodles
. Real name: Jim Banner. Striker had requested him personally. Noodles was the Vancouver Police Department’s best Ident technician. Hell, he was the best tech Striker had ever worked with. The Noodles nickname had come from a near-death experience Jim had suffered when choking on creamy linguine at the Noodle Shack up in Burnaby. It was a nickname Banner had always hated, but one that would forever stick.

That was the police way.

‘You friggin’ detectives,’ Noodles growled. ‘You’re ruining my social life.’

In the sombre setting of the room, it was all Striker could do to force a grin. ‘You need friends to have a social life, Noodles.’

‘I was sitting there with Jack Daniel’s when you called.’ He dropped his tool box and gear just inside the door. ‘Why the hell didn’t you just call Marty? He’s already on duty.’

‘This one is important to me, Noodles. I wanted the best here.’

The Ident tech raised an eyebrow and made a
whatever
face, but clearly liked the compliment. ‘The best, my ass,’ he said. ‘You can blow as much sunshine up my ass as you want, Shipwreck, but it don’t change nothing – you owe me one for this.’

‘Pick your poison.’

‘Jack Daniel’s. Gentleman’s blend.’

‘Done. Now get to work. Time is important.’

Noodles said nothing; he just did his own visual assessment of the scene, then opened his camera box. Striker relayed the whole experience to him, in exact detail, then guided him around the room, from the body of Mandy Gill to the kitchenette and, last of all, to the window area where the camera had been set up on the ledge.

‘When I saw the guy, he had gloves on, but maybe he took them off at some time before I got here. I’m hoping for some prints around the lower pane,’ he explained. ‘Especially on the outside of the window, right here, where the lens was located.’ He pointed to the exact area to be precise. ‘Check all the pill bottles as well. I’ve already handled the one by the chair – gloves on – and Felicia touched the ones on the counter. Gloves, too. When you’re done with this, I need the entire fridge in unit 305 dusted. Prick was hiding in there.’

‘In the suite?’

‘In the
fridge
.’

Noodles raised an eyebrow in surprise, then promised to have it done before going home tonight. For a brief moment, he focused on the body of Mandy Gill and his round, old face took on an expressionless look. After a moment, he shook his head and spoke.

‘She was young.’

‘She was a good kid,’ Striker said. ‘It’s not right.’

The words felt heavy and the mood darkening, so Striker gave Felicia a nod to leave and they said goodbye to Noodles. Now that Ident had arrived and the scene was secure, he wanted to get out of there ASAP. For many reasons. Noodles worked faster when alone; the glove had to be properly bagged and tagged for DNA; and, without a doubt, Car 10, the Road Boss, would be pulling up on scene any minute. Striker wanted to be clear of this place – clear of this entire area – when the man arrived.

He and Laroche didn’t exactly see eye to eye.

Striker settled into the driver’s seat, and Felicia into the passenger’s. He’d barely driven a half-block down Union Street before he hit the brakes, stopped hard, and stared out of the window at the building on the other side of the vacant lot.

It was an old house, a three-storey, directly west of the Lucky Lodge. Out front was a billboard notice from the City, explaining that construction would soon be underway. The place was going to be rebuilt into a quadplex.

Typical for the area. More money that way.

Most of the windows were boarded up, and on the ground beneath some of the planks Striker could see piles of broken glass. A big red Realty Inc. sign hung off a post out front, swaying in the growing night-time wind. Striker stared at it for a long moment.

‘What?’ Felicia asked. ‘You got something?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said and got out of the car.

Immediately, harsh winds blew his hair about and he buttoned up his trench coat. He slammed the driver’s side door, rounded the car and started into the vacant lot that separated the two buildings.

Felicia got out too and followed him.