The survivor

Twenty-Nine

Twenty minutes later, Striker picked up Felicia and headed to the police garage. He needed to check the forensics on the stolen Honda Civic. Something was bothering him about it, and he always followed his instincts. While en route, he pulled out his cell and dialled Noodles. On the fourth ring a gruff voice answered.

‘Christ almighty, Shipwreck, I got three hours’ sleep and work to do.’

‘I need your help.’

‘Why? What now?’

‘Raymond Leung’s DNA — I need it compared to the blood in the Honda Civic.’

‘You called me for that? I’ve already got the samples done. They just need to be submitted to the lab.’

‘I need it now.’

Noodles cursed. ‘You’re like a high-maintenance girlfriend.’

‘Noodles-’

‘The lab doesn’t even open for another two hours. And even if I get the samples in first thing, and even if I get a priority one rush put on it, it’s still gonna take three to four days to get any results — and that’s without a full report. It’s DNA. You know how it is.’

‘The DNA can come later,’ Striker explained. ‘All I need at this point is blood type. Find out if Raymond Leung’s blood type matches the blood in the stolen Civic. You can get those results for me fast if you stop dragging your ass.’

‘So I should just get up and leave our floater here.’

‘Noodles, I need this.’

‘I thought Red Mask was found.’

‘He’s not Raymond Leung. I know it, Noodles. I just need your help proving it.’

Noodles let out a frustrated sound, but finally relented. ‘I’ll get to it as soon as I got the bases covered here, then I’ll come back and finish the Wong body later. But you owe me huge for this, Shipwreck. Two bottles of Crown Royal. Ten-year.’

‘You got it. Just call me the second you know.’

The police garage is located in the worst part of town, the Skids. Also known as the Downtown East Side — that unpredictable area occupied by only criminals, addicts and the mentally ill.

In short, it was ten square blocks of bedlam.

Striker looked around. To the west was a series of community buildings offering housing for the down-and-outs. To the east were four straight blocks of slum apartments, housing dealers, enforcers, mules, and every other type of drug-related offender who haunted the area. Homeless people — the ones who had either refused help from the nearby community programmes or had been banned from them — roamed the block, setting up makeshift camps all along the sidewalk and rear alleyways. Their numbers had grown over the past few years, causing overpopulation of the street and sidewalks. And as a result, the City had set up sprinkler systems, timed for midnight activation, in order to keep the police bays clear.

It was a sad statement of the times.

Striker checked his watch. It was almost six a.m. He parked the Crown Vic out front and told Felicia to wait. She didn’t seem to mind; she looked half-dead in the passenger seat, and she made a soft uh-huh sound as he got out.

It was cold. The sky was still dark, and the fall winds bit into him, sent his short brown hair blowing back over his head. He looked east and west at the cardboard tents set up all along the drive and frowned. The street was one giant paper city. A few blocks down, a marked patrol car turned east, away from him, and continued driving along Alexander Street until it disappeared in the heavy murk.

Alpha shift. Had to be. God knows, no one else was out yet.

The rain had stopped, but it had failed to clean the streets of all the used rigs and dirty condoms. Striker looked away from the filth. He used his police key to enter the barred-off entrance to the garage, then let himself in and turned off the beeping alarm. Far above, the industrial fan rattled loudly. The Department had fixed the thing ten times over the past year, and here it was on the fritz again.

He stood inside the doorway of the police garage and took in a deep breath. The place smelled of dust and dampness, oil and kitty litter. A flick of the light switch bathed the huge space in a bleak fluorescent illumination, revealing a fully-stacked bay: rows and rows of vehicles awaiting processing. Fingerprints, DNA, Hidden Compartment Searches, Paint Comparisons — all needed something.

Two Escalades with shaded windows and big chrome mags — gangbanger rides — occupied stalls one and two. A bright cherry-red sports car occupied stall three. It was heavily customised, decorated with an oversized chrome muffler, spinning gold mags, and a tail fin larger than any humpback could hope for. Gang style. Probably belonged to the White Lotus — Canada’s version of the Lotus gang, made up solely of Canadian Chinese.

Striker’s eyes moved on until they found the vehicle he was looking for. The stolen Civic.

Red Mask’s ride.

Striker moved to the bay door and took hold of the handle. The rollers were rigid and in desperate need of oiling. The metal made a sharp, grating noise as Striker reefed down hard on the chain and rolled the steel door open. It was barely three-quarters up when Felicia drove the cruiser inside the bay. She climbed out, shivered from the cold, zipped up her suede jacket.

‘Coffee after this,’ she said. ‘Immediately.’

Striker agreed. He closed the garage door and turned towards the Civic. The yellow copy of the Ident Form was trapped beneath the driver’s side windshield-wiper. Before he could read it, Felicia snatched it up. She held it in her long, thin fingers, her clear nails digging into the paper. She finished reading, made a face, deflated.

‘Not a single goddam print in the car.’

‘You didn’t really expect any, did you?’ Striker looked inside the vehicle. One clear bag sat on the front passenger seat, tagged after processing for fingerprints and DNA analysis. It held the key-ring and keys, complete with fob and happy face. Someone had written No Prints in thick black felt on the bag. The member’s badge number and the incident number were included.

Striker looked at the badge number, saw it wasn’t Noodles, and it pissed him off. He liked Noodles. Noodles was the best. Then he looked over the paperwork and saw that the cigarettes had also been processed:

Prints positive. Subject: Quenton Wong.

Striker stared at this for a long time, then showed it to Felicia.

‘It puts him in the car,’ she said.

‘No. It connects him to the car, the shooter, or anyone connected to either one. But how, we don’t know.’

Striker removed his long coat and draped it over the work bench. He put on a fresh pair of latex gloves, then moved over to the metallic whiteboard on the west wall, where numerous yellow forms were hanging by clip-magnets. He shifted them all to the left side, exposing a large patch of white steel, then returned to the Civic.

Felicia joined him. ‘So Que’s prints are on the cigarettes, and now he’s dead. Great. So aside from knowing he’s somehow connected, all we got is another dead end on our hands.’

Striker corrected her. ‘This has been anything but a dead end.’

She furrowed her brow.

‘It’s not just about the prints,’ he explained. ‘It’s about why they stole the car a whole week before the shootings.’

‘And you got an answer for that?’

‘I think so.’ He pulled Courtney’s happy face magnet from his pocket and handed it to Felicia. ‘What do you see?’

She flipped it over. ‘A happy face. Where did you get this?’

‘Courtney had it on the fridge, next to her Britney magnets,’ Stiker said. ‘Put it on something metal. Like the whiteboard over there.’

She did, and the happy face stuck. She pulled it off the board and looked back at Striker. ‘It’s magnetic. So?’

Striker returned to the Civic. According to the notes on the Ident bag, there were no prints on the key-ring and the items had already been swabbed for DNA. So there was no fear of cross-contamination. However, taking no chances, he gloved up with fresh latex. He took the key-ring complete with key, fob, and happy face out of the bag and held it up for Felicia to see.

‘This happy face is magnetic, too.’ He gave the key-ring an underhand toss across the room. When it hit the metallic whiteboard, the key-ring and fob fell down towards the ground, but the happy face stuck hard, holding everything up.

He looked at Felicia and smiled. ‘That tells us everything.’

Felicia played with Courtney’s happy face and shook her head. ‘It tells me nothing.’

Striker tried to explain it from a different angle. ‘How many keys do you see on that key-ring?’

‘One.’

‘Wrong,’ he said. ‘There’s two. The Honda key, and the happy face — which is a key in its own right. Magnetically-speaking.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that’s why they stole the car a whole week before the shootings: they were modifying it somehow.’ He lowered his voice. ‘There’s something hidden in that car.’