It made sense why. The building had been designed for the nine-to-five business crowd, not the twenty-four-hour/seven-days-a-week needs of a police department. Talks of relocating to a newer address out east were forever ongoing, but for now this was all the Vancouver Police had. Insufficient premises to go with an insufficient crime budget.
It was typical for the City of Vancouver.
In the end, Striker didn’t much care. The Cambie building was mostly patrol. He spent most of his time down at the 312 station, and a lot more of it out on the road. All he cared about with regards to the Cambie building was that it housed Victim Services.
That was Larisa Logan’s unit.
Sargheit Samra, the old bear, was the sergeant in charge of the Victim Services Unit, and had been for just over a year now. Before being transferred to the VSU, he’d spent damn near eight years working Alpha shift, so he’d become something of an early riser – the crazy hours were something he never could readjust from. For this reason, Striker hadn’t bothered to call ahead; he was betting on the fact that Samra would already be on scene.
Even at six o’clock in the morning.
Once inside, Striker and Felicia crossed the foyer and turned right, heading away from the elevators. The Victim Services office was located on the southwest corner of the foyer, surrounded by a transparent wall of tinted glass. By most accounts, it was a tiny section. Six desks, and sometimes not enough workers to fill them. Most of the counsellors were usually busy, called out to the worst crime scenes and at all hours of the day and night. Every shift was filled with stress and anguish.
Striker didn’t envy them their job.
He gave the glass door a solid rap with his knuckles, then turned the knob and went inside. Seated behind his desk with his police boots off, reading the Vancouver Province sports section was a fifty-ish East Indian male. Sargheit Samra.
The Sarj, as everyone called him.
He was a thickset man. Clean shaven. And even though he was carrying some extra cushioning these days, the thick underlying muscle bulk made his uniform fit well. Made him look like a force to be reckoned with.
Despite the fact it was a No Smoking building – a bylaw, in fact – a cigarette dangled precariously from his lips, and a steaming-hot cup of Starbucks coffee sat in front of him. Black as night, and in a paper cup, like always.
Upon seeing them, the Sarj looked up from his newspaper and a sly grin spread his thick lips. ‘Well, holy Shipwreck, look what the cat just dragged in.’ He spoke with no accent. He looked over at Felicia and smiled genuinely. ‘You still hanging out with this loser? He’ll get you a bad rep, you know.’
‘Damage is already done,’ she replied. ‘How’s life, Sarj?’
He folded up his paper and dropped it on the desk. ‘Slow this morning – and happily so.’ He gave them a dubious look. ‘Why? You two lookin’ at changing that?’
Striker closed the door behind them. ‘We’re here about one of your former counsellors. Woman who helped me out, in fact. Larisa Logan.’
The grin stretching the Sarj’s lips slipped away, and he took his feet off the desk. He sat up like he was getting ready for serious business, took a long drag of his smoke, and then spoke. ‘You really know how to kill a mood, Striker. Jesus Christ. What you want to know about her?’
‘Everything. Like why she’s messaging me, saying she has information on one of my cases.’
‘She did?’ The Sarj raised an eyebrow and stubbed out his cigarette in the plastic lid of his coffee cup. He rolled the butt thoughtfully between his fingers, as if debating something in his head. After a long moment, he gazed up at them, and suddenly he looked a whole lot older. Tired. ‘You know she left here, right?’
Striker nodded. ‘We’re aware.’
‘And not too long after I got here. So I didn’t have a whole lot of time to get to know the woman.’
‘Larisa didn’t spend too much time in the VSU?’ Felicia asked.
‘She’d been here for quite a while when I got transferred in. Bout three years, I guess. And by all accounts, she was one of the good ones.’
‘Good work ethic?’ Striker pressed.
The Sarj nodded. ‘The best. Had to be to work down here. Back then, the Victim Services Unit was really a hoppin’ place – as busy as it is now, but with only two girls working it. Now we got five. So Larisa and Chloe were really moving. Hell, they were overworked. It burned them out good.’
‘Chloe?’ Felicia asked.
‘Chloe Sera. Moved to one of the crime analyst areas. Burnaby South, I think.’
Striker nodded. ‘Did you two get along?’
‘Me and Larisa?’ The Sarj spoke the words like the question surprised him. ‘For sure. Everyone did. Larisa was a peach. Always happy, never moody. She did her work and she kept her mouth shut. Never gossiped, never complained. Hell, I wish I could say the same for the new girls – everyone feels so fucking entitled nowadays . . . I miss her.’
Striker crossed his arms, leaned against the wall. ‘So what happened then? What made her leave?’
The Sarj opened his packet of Lucky Strike unfiltered. Thumbed one out. ‘Bad times,’ he said. ‘Real bad. Stuff happened with Larisa.’
‘Stuff?’ Striker asked. ‘Jeez, don’t be so technical, Sarj, you’re losing me.’
The old bear just grunted. He lit his cigarette, sucked deep, and blew out a trail of smoke that clouded the small office. When he spoke again, his voice was gruff. ‘Her parents were killed. Her sister, too.’
Felicia made a surprised sound. ‘My God, how?’
‘Motor vehicle accident. Larisa was never the same after that. She wanted stress leave, I gave it to her. Shit, the tragedy aside, she had earned it. It was a bad, bad time for the girl.’
Striker thought that over.
A bad time. That seemed like an understatement.
On the far wall across the room hung a series of photographs, one for each of the counsellors in the Victim Services Unit. Larisa’s face was still up there. Dark brown hair with reddish highlights. A warm stare. And a big wide smile that was captivating, exactly how Striker remembered it.
He missed seeing it now.
He turned and met the Sarj’s eyes. ‘You talked to her at all lately?’
The Sarj looked at the picture with a lost look distorting his face, as if he had forgotten the photograph was even there.
‘No,’ he said after a long moment. ‘No, I haven’t.’ When Striker asked nothing else, the Sarj closed his desk drawer. Let out a tense sound. Continued speaking. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Shipwreck – and don’t go spreading this around – but Larisa got a little . . . weird on us there.’
‘Weird? How so?’
‘It’s kind of hard to explain, really. She got private. Fiercely private. And to some extent, I can see why – I mean, the way people gossip round here, it’s like a goddam high school sometimes. But after the tragedy with her family, she became really closed-off, really detached. Didn’t come to the social functions. Didn’t talk to anyone at the office – and it wasn’t from a lack of trying. We called her all the time, sent out condolence packages, and we each took turns dropping by her place to make sure she was okay.’
Felicia asked, ‘Did it help?’
The Sarj just furrowed his brow and sucked on his Lucky. ‘Did it help? Who the fuck knows? The more we tried to keep contact with her, the more she stayed away. One time, I remember going out there and knowing she was home – and I mean knowing she was there. But no matter how much I knocked, she just stayed inside the doorway there, pretending to be away. It was really, really odd. After that, I sent an email to Human Resources about her. Thought maybe they could check into it. Do some follow-up on her. See if maybe they could get Larisa some professional help for her problems.’