Snakes & Ladders (43 page)

They went straight to Dr Ostermann’s office. The room had already been photographed by Ident, and during the subsequent search, all sorts of files and folders of interest had been boxed as evidence.

Striker pointed to the farthest row of boxes. They were all ready-made cardboard containers, each with the case number written in thick black felt on the sides.

‘You take that row,’ he said to Felicia. ‘I’ll take the one over there.’

Felicia sipped her coffee, then made her way over.

Striker opened up the closest box and leafed through the paperwork inside. There were mounds of the stuff. Everything from paid bills to case studies to back-ups of patient files. And Striker now wished they’d brought a thermos of coffee for the day.

They were gonna need it.

As Striker went through the boxes, he made sure he kept everything in order. Nothing was more frustrating as an investigator than realizing something you’d already read was now a critical piece of evidence, but you had no idea where you’d left it. It was a lesson learned once, and learned hard, and never repeated.

The process was slow and time-consuming. By the time Striker got to the fourth box, he considered running down the road to grab them both yet another cup of coffee. He was about to suggest it when Felicia made an interested sound.

He looked over. ‘What ya got?’

‘Look at this,’ she said.

She held up a thin white file folder. On it was a printed label with the words: Jonathon McNabb. But when she opened up the file, there were no patient reports, only a list of credit cards and bank accounts. Attached to the inside back cover was an envelope. Felicia opened it and pulled out several pieces of identification: a BC driver’s licence, a social insurance number card, even a birth certificate.

The picture on the driver’s licence showed Gabriel Ostermann.

‘Let me see that,’ Striker said.

He took the driver’s licence from Felicia and scrutinized it. Everything was done in perfect detail, from the writing on the front and back of the card to the authentic-looking hologram on the front.

‘Are they fakes?’ Felicia asked.

Striker raised an eyebrow. ‘These are pretty good. They might be legit.’

‘So then is Gabriel Ostermann’s real name Jonathon McNabb, or is he using someone else’s identity?’

‘Call your guy at the credit bureau. Will he be in yet?’

Felicia nodded. ‘They’re on eastern time.’

Less than two minutes later, she hung up the phone and gave Striker the nod. ‘Victim of identity theft,’ she said. She pulled another file out of the same box. The name on this file was Eleanor Kingsley. When she opened up the folder, everything inside was the same as in the last folder – credit card applications, bank accounts, gas cards, and more. Attached to the back of the folder was another envelope. From it, Felicia took another stack of identification cards. Only this time the face wasn’t Gabriel Ostermann’s, it was Lexa’s.

‘Run the name with your contact,’ Striker said.

She went through the process again. Two minutes later, they had another confirmed hit. Eleanor Kingsley had reported over seventy-eight thousand dollars in charges to credit cards she had never requested or received.

Striker saw the pattern.

‘They’re stealing everyone’s identities,’ he said. ‘And then taking them for every damn penny they can get from their credit. Bankrupting them.’ He looked at the box Felicia was holding. It was thick with folders. Probably contained more than fifty.

‘Look for Mandy Gill and Sarah Rose,’ he said.

It took Felicia less than thirty seconds to find both, and when she took the IDs from the two folders, it was the same thing all over again – only this time Lexa was Sarah Rose and Dalia was Mandy Gill.

Felicia couldn’t believe it. ‘My God, they’re a one-family crime ring.’

Striker looked at the row of boxes behind her and thought of all the file folders in each one. Eleanor Kingsley alone had been ripped off for more than seventy grand. Here they had boxes and boxes of file folders.
Hundreds
of victims.

The money count was mind-boggling.

It was over two hours later, at quarter after nine in the morning, by the time Striker and Felicia left the Ostermann house. With them they took three cardboard boxes, jam-packed with file folders.

All possible victims of identify theft.

When they reached their vehicle, Felicia opened the trunk and Striker dropped the boxes inside. He closed the trunk, then took a moment to pull out his phone and call Courtney. She had an appointment booked with her OT this morning, and Striker wanted to make sure she attended.

The phone rang three times, then went to voicemail.

‘Get up, Pumpkin,’ he said. ‘I’m already at work and you got an appointment with Annalisa this morning. Ten o’clock, and don’t be late. I love you.’

He hung up the phone and went to put it away, but it vibrated against his hand. He looked down at the screen, expecting to see Courtney returning his call, but all he saw was a red number 1 over his phone icon.

A missed call.

He read the number and recognized it as Kirstin Dunsmuir’s. Which piqued his curiosity. The woman was a pill, and colder than a popsicle enema, but no one could question her work ethic. She had probably been at the lab all night long.

Fitting for a Death Goddess.

‘That was the medical examiner who called,’ he said.

Felicia made an
ugh
sound. ‘I don’t do Kirstin Dunsmuir before lunch.’

‘She might have something.’

Felicia offered no reply, but her scowl remained.

Striker ignored it and checked his voicemail. Dunsmuir hadn’t left a message, so he returned her call. She answered with her usual grace and warmth, which meant one-worded and ice cold:

‘Dunsmuir.’

‘It’s Striker. I saw you called.’

She skipped the small talk. ‘I have the results of the autopsies. There are two things of importance. Mandy Gill had a needle-mark incision. Angled medially and inferiorly, just posterior to the medial head of the clavicle.’

‘Left side?’ Striker asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What about needle marks on Sarah Rose?’

‘Far too badly burned to determine. Regardless, it does appear he’s injecting them.’

‘But with what?’

Dunsmuir made an uncertain sound. ‘I’m not entirely sure at this point – there are numerous drugs in both the victims’ systems. One of them we’ve managed to isolate is a powerful muscle relaxant. There was enough of it in Mandy Gill’s system to eventually stop her heart. We’re awaiting test results for an exact determination.’

Striker thought this over. He recalled how both victims had been facing the windows, facing into the camera. Unable to move. Unable to call for help. Barely able to breathe. He hoped they didn’t realize they were going to die at that moment, but somehow he thought otherwise.

‘No idea on the kind of relaxant?’ he asked.

This seemed to irritate the ME and her tone dropped. ‘These things take time, Detective. It’s not a movie, after all.’

‘I know that. Otherwise we’d have a happier ending.’

Dunsmuir let out a bemused laugh. ‘There are no happy endings.’

Striker had had enough of the conversation. He told Dunsmuir to call him with the results. Then he hung up the phone.

Felicia started to get into the car. When he did not follow her lead, she stopped. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘Is Gabriel left-handed?’

‘Why?’

‘Just a thought. But look at the location of the needle marks. Left side, just posterior to the clavicle. And the angle of the needle – driven in at a medial angle. If the suspect came up behind his victims, this would be a hard angle to get with the right hand.’

‘And why do you think he comes up behind them?’

‘No defensive wounds. Depressed or not, they would still react in some way. But here, there is nothing. It makes me think they were surprised, hence from behind.’

Felicia nodded back but said nothing, and they both piled into the car. For Striker, the phone call with Dunsmuir had been emotionally draining. And he’d had enough of the Death Goddess to last him a lifetime.

He put the car into Drive and drove. There was still tons of paperwork and police reports to comb through. Already they’d been at it for more than three hours, and they’d barely made a dent in things. Neither one of them had gotten enough sleep the last few days, and he was feeling it.

It was going to be another long, hard day.

The day had arrived and the sun was finally out – a piercing ball of whiteness in a sky so light it was barely blue.

Striker drove them down Main Street, then detoured on Terminal. He cut through the Starbucks drive-thru and ordered them a pair of egg-white breakfast wraps and a couple of coffees – an Americano, black, for himself, and a vanilla latte for Felicia.

Then they returned to headquarters.

Back in Homicide, the office was dead. Everywhere Striker looked, he saw empty rows of cubicles. Half the office was on their day off, the other half was out in the field, trying to write off leads and solve files. If any of them caught fire, they’d be back in before noon; otherwise, it would be an early weekend for most.

Once back at his desk, Striker set down all three boxes they had seized. There were still more boxes back at the Ostermann home, and due to the enormity of the task and their limited time, Striker had called in Clowe and Parker from Robbery to assist them. They were leafing through the files back at the Ostermann house even now.

Felicia came up beside him. She gave him an irritated look. ‘We should be researching Gabriel,’ she said. ‘And Dalia and Lexa. We can go through all this stuff later.’

Striker shook his head. ‘These folders are the reason all this is happening. Understand the victims and you’ll better understand the Adder.’ Striker thought it over. They still needed to access the Police Information Retrieval System and the Law Enforcement Information Portal. ‘You research Gabriel through PRIME and PIRS and LEIP; I’ll keep wading through the files.’

The suggestion seemed to placate Felicia. She went to take another long sip of her latte, found it empty, then threw it in the trash can. ‘I’ll make us a pot,’ she said, and walked across the room.

Striker was glad to have some space. He pulled over the first box and started skimming through the files.

Each was important, because of the crime that had been committed. Identity theft had ruined many a person’s life, and it was the fastest growing crime in today’s white-collar society. But, collectively, the files said so much more. He was less than halfway through the first box – well into the
H
s – when he saw a pattern emerging.

One that twisted up his insides.

The folder he was reading was labelled: Jeremy Heath. It was divided into sections. The first section held pages upon pages of basic information. Everything from his date of birth and mother’s maiden name to computer passwords and banking information. There were also forms from the Post Office for a change of address.

The next section of the folder had every type of insurance Jeremy Heath had ever taken out, ranging from medical insurance to life insurance to disability insurance. Jeremy Heath’s file even had a soldier’s recompense page from Veterans’ Affairs.

The third section of the folder was all the avenues of income. Visa. MasterCard. American Express. Bank names and their associated account numbers. Even pages of stocks and bonds.

The fourth and final section was composed of spreadsheets, showing lists of income from each of these cards. There was also a column for how many times each credit card limit had been upped, and if and when that request had been declined.

Everything was precise, systematic, planned.

Last of all was the envelope attached to the back of the folder that housed all the various pieces of ID. As Striker looked them over, he realized why the ID looked so real. The answer was simple.

The ID was all legitimate.

The Ostermanns hadn’t been creating fake IDs, they had been obtaining real identification from the original source. All the driver licences, social insurance number cards and birth certificates were legitimate issue. He had never seen anything like it, not on this scale.

He showed all this to Felicia. ‘They’ve actually attended the motor vehicle branch and have had their own pictures implemented.’

‘They’re friggin’ experts,’ she said.

He nodded solemnly. ‘And they’re systematically destroying people’s lives. Even worse, they’re going after all the marginalized victims.’ His own words triggered some darker thoughts, and he got on the phone with the Collins Group.

The Collins Group was a private company, run by ex-cop Tom Collins – a friend of Striker’s from years past. Collins had worked primarily in Financial Crime during his twenty-year stint with the VPD, and he had carried that expertise with him into his new endeavours of investigating corporate insurance fraud. When Striker told the receptionist who he was, she transferred him without question.

‘Tom Collins,’ Striker said. ‘How’s my favourite highball?’

The man on the other end of the phone let out a gruff laugh. ‘Shipwreck. Good to hear from you, man. I hear you had some problems last year over at St Patrick’s.’

That made Striker pause. ‘Yeah, memories better left forgotten,’ he finally said. ‘Look, I got some victims of identity theft here, and I was wondering if you could research them a bit for me.’

‘How fast you need it?’

‘Like yesterday.’

‘I should have let it ring to voicemail.’

Striker just laughed and gave the man a list of the names he had accumulated from the boxes.

‘And what exactly are we looking for?’ Collins asked.

‘You’ll know it when you find it,’ Striker said. ‘I need this done fast. Today sometime.’

Collins let out a sour laugh. ‘Your way or the highway, like always, huh?’

‘What can I say? I’m particular.’

He hung up the phone, feeling better. He liked Tom. The man had been a good cop and a better friend. It had been too long since they’d seen one another.