Thirty-Six

The Form 21 – the medical warrant sent out by a director, who was almost always a psychiatrist – was signed at the very bottom. Striker sat in the driver’s seat of their vehicle and tried to make out the name, but it seemed damn near impossible. He would’ve had a better chance of reading hieroglyphics. He handed the warrant to Felicia.

‘Can you make any sense of this?’

She took it, scanned it over, then shook her head. ‘Chicken scratches. I think it’s a prerequisite to being a doctor – the inability to write legibly.’

‘It’s a joke is what it is,’ Striker said. ‘Can you imagine if we submitted court notes like this? Defence would freak. What’s the point in having someone sign a warrant if you can’t even make out their signature? I can’t tell if it’s Ostermann or Richter.’

‘Or Dr Phil.’

‘Should be Kevorkian, the way I’m feeling now.’

Felicia let out a soft laugh.

Striker started the car and got the heat going. ‘I’m sick of hearing the names Ostermann and Richter,’ he said. ‘I left a message for Richter, but as for Ostermann, he still hasn’t gotten back to us on this whole Billy patient of his. What time is it?’

Felicia checked her watch. ‘Ten.’

‘That’s late enough,’ he said.

He dialled Dr Ostermann’s cell number and got the message system. Then he tried Riverglen and was told that Dr Ostermann didn’t start until noon on Thursdays. Finally, he dialled the home number. Again, he got voicemail.

‘Screw it,’ he said. He put the car into Drive and hit the gas.

They headed for the Endowment Lands.

Rush hour was still going strong, but the worst of it was thinning. The drive from 312 Main to Point Grey usually took about twenty minutes. They were only ten minutes into the drive when Felicia spoke up.

‘Stop by ’bucks, will you?’

‘Starbucks? What if we miss Ostermann?’

Felicia shook her head. ‘The guy doesn’t start till twelve; we got lots of time.’ She gestured to the long stretch of West 4th Avenue. ‘Besides, if he’s going to go to work, he’s got to come down this stretch of road. We’ll see his X5 a mile off.’

When Striker said nothing and kept driving, Felicia gave him a jab in the arm. ‘Really, Jacob, just a quick one to go. I’m dying for some caffeine.’

‘Fine,’ he relented.

When they reached the twenty-two hundred block of West 4th Avenue, he pulled over and Felicia darted across the road. He watched her go. As she crossed in the morning sun, she glanced back at him and smiled.

He couldn’t help but smile back. When she disappeared through the glass doors of the coffee shop, a sense of gloom came over him, and he felt bad for giving her hell back in the Warrants section. He wondered if he had really been mad at her for not knowing the time-delay issues with CPIC, or if he was really just mad about her not staying the night.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He sat and thought about that.

Five minutes later, when she returned with a latte for herself and the usual Americano for him, Striker took it and thanked her. He cast her a quick glance. She had vanilla milk foam on her upper lip, and he reached out and wiped it away.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he started.

She looked back with a lost expression. ‘Sorry? For what?’

‘Back there. At 312. I shouldn’t have given you shit about the warrants. Calling you a piss-kid rookie. I was out of line.’

She met his stare. ‘You’ve been testy all morning. I thought maybe it was Bernard.’

‘It was. I guess. I dunno.’

‘Then why take it out on me?’

‘I wasn’t trying to take it out on you.’

‘Sure felt that way.’

‘Well, I can’t help the way you feel, Feleesh.’

‘Obviously.’

Striker frowned. What had started out as an apology was fast turning into a tense moment. He put the car into Drive, did a quick shoulder check, and pulled back out into traffic. When Felicia added, ‘You don’t know how I feel sometimes because you’re not exactly sensitive to it,’ Striker felt his frustration growing.

He cast her another glance while driving. ‘And you know what, Feleesh? Sometimes you’re not sensitive to the fact that I’m the lead on our cases. In fact, you outright begrudge it.’

‘I do not.’

‘You do. Yet the reason I am the lead is because of things like what happened back there in Warrants – I’m senior here not only because I’ve got more time on the road than you, but because of the experience that comes with it. That’s why I know things. Like the delay with the Form 21s.’

Felicia’s eyes had a flash of fire. ‘I don’t ever begrudge you being the lead in our partnership, Jacob. What I begrudge is you having a condescending attitude sometimes. I begrudge you assigning me to menial tasks instead of having me assist you in the real meat of the investigation. And I begrudge you talking at me instead of to me.’

‘I do not talk at you.’

‘You do, and you don’t even see it. You often treat me like I’m some civilian here to take statements for you and drop your evidence off at the lab. Well, I’m not a civilian, Jacob. I’m a cop. A homicide detective, no less. And when you don’t treat me like one, yes, I do begrudge it.’

Striker turned on to Northwest Marine Drive and continued west. ‘I guess we’ll agree to disagree then.’

‘What else is new? Once again Jacob Striker has the final say.’

He gave her a hot look. ‘Well, you know what I begrudge? You uprooting my life. One minute, you’re close and with me, the next moment you’re gone and running.’

She looked back at him for a long moment with a look of shock on her face, then her expression hardened. ‘Are we talking about our professional life here, or our personal life?’

‘Is there a difference any more?’

‘And you wonder why it failed,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Well, just don’t run out on me professionally, if things get too hard one day here, too.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘You’re right. It’s not fair.’

He made a hard turn at Belmont Avenue, so hard the tyres slipped on the frosty street. He drove a half-block down. On the right-hand side sat a huge lot, gated, with tons of maple and Japanese plum trees.

The Ostermann house.

The front gate was already open. So was the front door.

Striker pulled the car inside the gate and parked on the roundabout. When he shut off the engine and stepped out of the car, the girl with long black hair and pale skin walked out of the front door. She spotted them and stopped short, her face turning hard.

She said nothing to them.

‘Good morning,’ Striker offered. ‘It’s Dalia, right?’

The girl said nothing at first, she just looked back at him with a cold empty stare. Striker didn’t like it. Her eyes seemed damn near vacuous. Disconnected. He gave Felicia a quick glance, which she returned.

‘Yes, Dalia,’ the girl finally said, her voice low and neutral.

She bundled up her coat, a long black lambskin number that came down to her knees, then tied the accompanying sash. After looking back inside the house, she turned around and fixed them with a stare that suggested she was surprised to see them still standing there.

‘Is your father home?’ Striker asked.

‘The Doctor is out.’

Striker found her wording odd. Not Dad or my father. It was the Doctor.

He moved up the walkway to be closer to the girl, and Felicia joined him, flanking Dalia from the opposite angle. At this closer distance, the girl looked different. For one, she had tons of make-up plastered all over her face. Her skin was pale, no doubt. Practically ghostly. But the concealer made her look one step away from being a modern-day vampire. When Striker took a closer look, he saw that beneath the white make-up, there were blemishes – as if her skin was marred in some way, bruised. Below her right eye. And near her chin. Like she’d been smacked a few times.