Felicia saw the frown on Striker’s face and asked, ‘What? What does that mean?’
‘It means that, in all likelihood, Billy Mercury stole the gun from the 7th Regiment when he got discharged – it means it will probably lead us nowhere but back to the army. And a stolen pistol at that.’
‘I’ll look into it and let you know what I find,’ Noodles said.
Striker appreciated it.
He was about say more when his cell vibrated against his side. He picked it up and read the screen, expecting to see Laroche’s or Courtney’s name. But what he saw made his heart skip a beat. He had received an email from: Larisa. He opened up the file and read the message.
I trusted you and you sent the Mental Health Team after me.
‘Oh shit,’ Striker said.
He immediately thought of Bernard Hamilton from Car 87, and anger rose in his chest. He looked at Felicia, then showed her the message. ‘What did I tell you – she thinks we sent the Mental Health Team after her.’
He typed back:
Not true. They were there on their own separate call. We never knew till later.
He sent the email and waited. But there was no immediate response. He added:
Where are you? We will meet you.
He hit Send. But again, there was no response. And he waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, just when he was about to close the email program and stuff the phone back into his jacket pocket, it vibrated again. He opened the email, read the screen and was disheartened by the words:
I trusted you, Jacob.
After that, nothing else came back. And after another long moment, Striker knew the discussion had ended. He closed off his email program and put his cell away. He leaned back in the chair and felt like screaming. Partly because he was frustrated, but partly because of the guilt. What Larisa had written was not entirely untrue. She had trusted him, reached out to him, and he had failed her.
‘She won’t listen to me now,’ he realized. ‘The trust is gone.’
Felicia nodded. ‘I’m not surprised. Don’t forget, Jacob, she’s paranoid right now. She thinks the whole world is out to get her. We need to ping her number and find out where she is.’
‘That’s the problem. She’s not sending it from a cell phone; she’s at a computer terminal somewhere. Using email. Who knows where?’
‘I have a contact with Shaw and some other service providers. Let me see if we can trace it for an IP address. Then maybe we’ll get a location of that terminal.’ Felicia grinned and stuck out her hand. ‘Come on, baby. Give momma the phone.’
Striker hesitated while looking at the message. After a moment, he relented and handed the cell to her. Felicia opened up the email program, pressed the Details button, then looked at the email sender’s address:
‘It’s a Gmail account,’ she said. ‘I have a contact there.’
Before Striker could reply, Felicia was on the phone to her contact. Striker spent the time going over the prints with Noodles one more time, making certain there was nothing they had overlooked. Ten minutes later, when she finally hung up, she had a smirk on her face. She said nothing.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Whenever you need something, you just come to momma, baby.’
Noodles laughed at this; Striker did not.
‘Come on, Feleesh. What you got?’
‘She’s at a coffee shop in the Metrotown Mall. A place called Arabic Beans.’
Striker swore. That was Burnaby. ‘We’ll never get there in time.’
Felicia agreed. ‘We need to send another unit.’
Striker shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. She sees one of their cruisers and she’ll freak.’
Felicia’s eyes stayed on his. ‘We have no choice in the matter. She may be delusional, Jacob, but Larisa knows something. You said that yourself. And if you’re right – if there is more than one person involved here – then she’s in a lot of danger, too. She could get herself killed before we have a chance to catch her again.’
Striker said nothing as he thought it over.
‘I agree with Felicia,’ Noodles said. ‘And you’re running out of time.’
Striker shook his head and gave in. ‘Fine. But a plainclothes cop only. No goddam uniforms. I mean it. She sees one of them, she’ll bolt on us. Even worse, she’ll know we sent it and she’ll never trust me again.’
Felicia grabbed Noodles’s portable radio, then went over the air, asking if there were any plainclothes units out east near the Boundary border. When the answer was negative, she switched over to the Info channel and asked them to see if there was a plainclothes unit in Burnaby South, near the Metrotown Mall. There was one, and Felicia relayed the message to them.
‘Be discreet,’ she said. ‘This woman is super heaty.’
‘Copy,’ the unit replied.
Striker cut in. ‘Give me your cell-phone number and I’ll send you a photo of the target.’
The Burnaby South cop gave Striker his number, and Striker flipped through his iPhone photos till he found the one of Larisa the Sarj had downloaded from her personnel file back at the Victim Services Unit. He brought it up and sent the attachment. Moments later, when Felicia handed the radio back to Noodles, she looked at Striker and smiled.
‘It’s done,’ she said.
Striker didn’t smile back. He couldn’t – he was sick to his stomach. If Larisa spooked on this one and got away from them, there was no telling what might happen. Thoughts of suicide even crossed his mind.
He stood up from the chair and grabbed his keys from his jacket pocket.
‘Come on,’ he said to Felicia. ‘We’re going there, too. Code 3.’
Sixty-Five
Normally the drive from Main Street to Burnaby’s Metrotown Mall took a good twenty minutes. With Striker driving lights and siren the entire way, they made it there in less than ten, and ended up intercepting the plainclothes cops from Burnaby South.
Striker spotted their undercover cruiser turning off Kingsway and driving into the underground parkade. It made him shake his head; he had hoped for an undercover operative, not a plainclothes cop in an unmarked Ford. A white Crown Victoria stood out in the parkade like a lighthouse at sea. It was no good. If anything, it was detrimental. And to make matters worse, Larisa had spent three years working for Victim Services. She knew what an undercover police sedan looked like. Hell, she used to drive around in one of them while en route to calls.
‘Just get them the hell out of there,’ Striker said to Felicia. ‘Larisa will make them in a second, if she sees them.’
Felicia agreed. She got on her cell, called Burnaby South Dispatch, and had the unit pulled. Less than a minute later, the Crown Vic peeled out of the underground, leaving in its wake a loud squeal of tyres and a patch of rubber on the parking lot surface a foot long.
It was a fuck you from the other unit.
‘That idiot,’ Striker said. ‘Get their unit number. I want to deal with them later.’
While Felicia got the number from Dispatch, Striker drove them into the central part of the parkade and dumped the wheels behind a tall support pillar, hoping to blend in with the grey concrete. When Felicia got out and stared at the size of the parkade, a worried sound escaped her lips.
‘We got our work cut out for us on this one,’ she said. ‘This mall is huge. If she’s left the coffee shop, we’ll never find her in here.’
‘All the more reason to get going,’ Striker replied. He pointed to the escalator. ‘Arabic Beans is on the northwest side of the mall, below the movie theatres – the older ones, not the new Cineplex. You go round the Skytrain ramp and come in from the south; I’ll cut through the mall and come in from the north.’