The Guilty (39 page)

Striker did the same, and the two men sat down at the table with the stacks of file folders in front of them.

‘How’d you sleep?’ Striker asked.

Rothschild rubbed his eyes and an almost defeated look filled his face. ‘Dreams of Rozzie.’ He gave Striker a tired look. ‘I sure miss her . . . Does it ever stop?’

‘Do you want it to?’

Rothschild said nothing, he just shook his head in a
no
manner.

It suddenly occurred to Striker how similar their lives had been. Both of them had spent too many hard years living for the job; both had lost their wives to tragedy; and both were still
struggling with the notion of raising their kids.

Striker sipped his brew. The memories were harder to deal with than the investigation, so he changed the subject back to the police-involved shooting of Chipotle and began firing questions at
his old friend.

Rothschild soon conceded the point.

‘Yeah, I shot Chipotle. So what? It was a goddam gunfight. Everyone was shooting. Bullets were flying everywhere. Mine was just the one that finally found its target – I had the
sniper rifle.’ He took a long sip of his coffee and made a bitter face. ‘It’s old fuckin’ news. I still don’t see how any of this is relevant.’

Striker splayed his hands. ‘It
has
to be relevant, Mike. It’s the only thing that connects you to the Prowlers. And to Koda and Harry too.’

‘Harry? He was never part of the Emergency Response Team. How the hell is he connected?’

Striker thought of how the two bikers – Sleeves and Chipotle – were linked to the two cops – Harry and Koda – by way of the drugs. Then he thought of how Chipotle and
Koda were also linked to Rothschild through the Emergency Response Team and the shooting.

The whole thing was a tangled web. Two separate files that were connected, though only through the people involved.

‘It’s complicated,’ Striker finally said. ‘But there’s no denying one thing – the bomber was at your
house,
Mike.’

Rothschild nodded. ‘He was also at the Toy Hut, and I got no connection to the shop or that woman he killed.’ He stood up from the table looking stressed out. ‘I need some
air.’

He topped off his cup with another splash of coffee, then walked down the hall to the front door. He disabled the alarm, opened the door, and walked out onto the porch.

Striker got up and followed him. By the time he stepped onto the porch, Rothschild had already lit up a cigarillo. The sweet burning smell of wine-tipped tobacco filled the morning air. As much
as Striker hated to admit it, he loved the aroma. It reminded him of his father.

At his feet, on the front-door mat, was the morning newspaper. It was all rolled up in an elastic band. Striker picked it up, unrolled it, and read the headline:

‘Oh Jesus, you gotta be kidding me,’ he said.

The header was your typical media scare tactic, implemented to sell more papers, and it drove Striker crazy. The editors often unleashed their stories with no concern for the public anxiety it
would create. All this would do now was put even more attention on the file, and more pressure on the bombers to achieve their task.

It would speed up their attacks.

‘You see this, Mike?’ he asked.

‘What? Yeah, sure.’

Striker looked up and saw that Rothschild had wandered down to the roadside, where he was enjoying his smoke and watching the sun rising in the east. Next to him was a marked cruiser, and inside
it was the patrol cop on guard.

Striker looked farther down the road.

Ten feet away was another car – an old Honda Civic, parked by the kerb. The vehicle was covered with leaves and the right front tyre looked half flat. Striker had never seen the car
before, and something about it bothered him.

‘Hey Mike, move over here.’

‘Huh?’

‘Get away from that car.’

Before Rothschild could so much as respond, Striker realized what was bothering him. It was the maple leaves on the hood – they didn’t match the cherry blossoms of the tree above it.
On autopilot, Striker swept his hand down to his gun, felt nothing – not even a holster – and realized he hadn’t geared up yet. He felt naked without the gun. Exposed.

He started down the porch steps.

‘Get away from that goddam car!’

Tiny, invisible strings pulled at the bomber’s consciousness as he waited, hidden in the dark crevice of the observation point. Like a slowly coming night, the darkness
was pressing in on him, forcing out the light. And his body was weakening as fast as his mind. Thoughts of the big homicide cop kept charging into his mind, and he found that oddly intriguing.

Jacob Striker was the one cop he had no desire to kill. But desire or not, some things were unavoidable.

Collateral damage was often necessary.

He stood there with so many thoughts rampaging through his head. And he fought to stay alert. It was hard. His mind felt off. Like he was losing control. Like he was slip . . . slip . . .
slipping away into a semiconscious state . . .

And then the haze cleared.

And Target 4 was spotted.

There, coming down the walk.

The goddam cop.

The bomber took a quick look at the sedan. At the little wooden duck with the red number 4 painted on its chest. It was sitting on the hood. He willed his fingers to relax on the remote
detonator, tried to calm his nerves. The plastic device was slippery in his sweaty grip, and his fingers felt clumsy. He flicked the switch. Armed the bomb. And the wheels became hot.

The cop came. Ten feet.

Five feet.

Two.

One.

And the bomber pushed the activation button:

Click – spark –
combustion.

The driver’s side of the car exploded in a fountain of flame and light and smoke, showering the cop with metal shrapnel and sending him reeling twenty feet from the percussive blast.

It was done.

Target 4 was eliminated.

Striker and Rothschild stood on the front porch, Striker drinking his coffee and Rothschild sucking back a second smoke.

‘Man, you really need to relax a little,’ Rothschild said. ‘You really scared the shit out of me back there.’

‘I needed you to get away from that car. And fast.’

‘It’s your
neighbour’s
car.’

‘Well something looked off about it. The leaves on the hood.’

‘The leaves?’ Rothschild let out a soft laugh that was filled with cigarillo smoke, and shook his head. ‘Look thirty metres down – there’s a maple right there. The
owner just moved the car a little, probably because it’s got a flat . . . The stress is making you paranoid, man.’

Striker was about to respond to the comment when his cell went off. Being five-thirty in the morning, Striker felt an immediate concern. A call at this time likely meant one of two things
– it was a call from Courtney in Ireland, where it was now one-thirty in the afternoon, or it was more bad news from work. Without looking at the caller ID, Striker stuck the phone to his
ear. Listened. And all the wind left his lungs.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ the patrolman told him.

‘Are you one hundred per cent positive?’ he asked a second time.

‘Yes,’ came the answer again.

Striker nodded and said, ‘Get the drains screened . . . we’ll be right down.’

When he hung up the phone and turned around, Rothschild was staring at him, frozen to the spot. The cigarillo dangled precariously from his lips and a wary look smeared his face.

‘What the hell’s going on now?’ he asked.

Striker spoke the words almost mechanically. ‘Terry Osaka was killed this morning.’

‘What?’

‘Ten minutes ago. Just outside his house . . . Another bomb.’

Rothschild looked stunned. For a moment he just stood there and stared. Then he shook his head, threw down his cigarillo, and said, ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Striker said. ‘You stay here with the kids. They need you now more than ever. I’ll let you know what we find.’

‘I really should—’

‘You can’t, Mike. Not even if you want to. Not until we know how you’re connected in all of this. Until then it’s a conflict of interest.’

Rothschild’s face took on an almost hurt look, but he nodded. Striker gave the man no time to argue. He spun about and beelined back inside the house to gear up and wake Felicia. They
needed to get down to that crime scene before the fire trucks did. This time it had to be processed right.

Terry Osaka had not only been a workmate, but a man Striker considered a friend. To think of him dead was too much to process at the moment, so Striker buried the grief swelling up inside of him
and focused on what needed to be done.

Go after the man’s killers.

It was the right thing to do. The only thing to do.

Terry would have wanted it that way.

It was just six a.m. when Striker and Felicia arrived on scene at Rosemont Drive, and the sight shocked them. Already, neighbours had spilled out into the street and the fronts
of their yards to witness the spectacle of the burning car. The press was also already there, standing flush with the single strip of yellow police tape that blocked off the entire road. One of the
reporters, a tall African-American woman with wild, star-shaped hair, recognized him.

‘Detective Striker, Detective Striker!’ she called.

‘No comment,’ he said, and pushed past her.

To his dismay, the firefighters had beaten them to the scene and were busy hosing down the smouldering wreckage of Osaka’s personal vehicle – some type of a sedan, impossible to
recognize now. They had used their fire engine to block video coverage from the opposite end of the street.

Striker appreciated that.

In between the smouldering wreck and the fire engine was a soaked white sheet, under which lay an unidentifiable lump. As Striker got closer, he could see two feet sticking out. One of them was
wearing a dress shoe, the other only a sock.

‘Osaka,’ Felicia said softly.

The sight hit Striker hard. Deep in his belly, a sickness developed, a feeling he couldn’t quite define. Something between degrees of rage and loss.

‘This should never have happened,’ he said.

To the left of the fire engine, the reporter with the star-shaped afro snuck through the police tape. Felicia swore out loud, then ran over to deal with the woman. Striker watched her go. When
Striker saw that she had the situation well in hand, he turned his attention back on the crime scene.

Up ahead, he spotted Corporal Summer. She was rushing around the scene, setting up screens over the drains so that the firefighters didn’t wash away all the trace evidence. Striker ran
over to help her. When they were done, she stood up and wiped her brow and looked at him with a lost expression distorting her features.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘Osaka.’

Striker pushed away the grief. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right now time was critical. ‘What have we got here, Summer?’

The corporal regained her focus. She raised her hand in the air and whistled loudly, signalling for one of her techs to bring over what they had discovered. A large man in white Tyvek coveralls
walked over carrying a twisted steel container. Striker wasn’t wearing latex so he didn’t touch it.

‘That’s the base?’ he asked.

Corporal Summer nodded. ‘It is.’

‘Jesus, that’s a ton of explosive.’

‘HME again.’

Home-made explosive
. . . the notion concerned Striker. Not only because of the bomber’s apparent skill in creating the material, but because they were smart enough to realize
that all other routes of acquiring a commercial or military grade product would now be flagged.

‘And look at this,’ Corporal Summer said. She held out a plastic bag, containing the remnants of what appeared to be a doll in a policeman’s uniform. ‘Is this what you
were talking about?’

Striker took the bag from her and nodded. It was the same kind of toy found at the Toy Hut and at Koda’s place – a ten-inch wooden doll in a policeman’s uniform. Just like
before, the head and legs had been blown away in the explosion, making Striker believe that those two areas must have been structurally weaker.

On the doll’s torso was another number. In red paint.

A number 4.

The sight left Striker chilled.

A 6, a 5, and now a 4. There was no more doubting the fact that this was a countdown of sorts – a taunt from the bombers.

But what was the significance? And furthermore, who were the remaining numbers left for? Although only one number had been found at Koda’s, there had been three legs there, so therefore,
two dolls. No doll had been found in the carnage of the exploded police cruiser, back at the A&W parking lot, but that didn’t mean one hadn’t been there – the vehicle had
burned for a long time. And there was no doubt that the same people had set that bomb.

So had it been placed there for Koda, the resultant victim? Or had it been placed there for Harry? For both of them? Striker went over everything in his mind for the umpteenth time. It was
entirely plausible that Harry and Koda were targets 3 and 2.

But if so, then who was target 1?

Only one person came to mind, and it was one that left Striker feeling sick to his stomach.

Rothschild.

He got on the phone with Dispatch and made sure he had units stationed outside his house. Then he looked back at Corporal Summer and cautioned her. ‘The doll is holdback evidence, you
understand?’

She nodded. ‘What doll?’

‘Exactly.’

She returned to work, and Striker let her go. Thoughts of his own preoccupied him. Too many of them. And he was still deep in thought when a strong voice with a French drawl called out from
behind him. ‘Striker.
Striker!
’

He knew it at once. Acting Deputy Chief Laroche.