Snakes and ladders

The dog continued the trail southeast, eventually turning down Malkin Avenue. As they ran, Striker mapped out the area in his head, and cursed.

‘What?’ Hooch asked.

‘He’s heading for the train yards.’

Hooch made no reply, but the tightness of his face showed his own frustration. The train yards were always a bitch during tracks. Too many obstacles: the fenced-off areas, the moving freightliners. And, of course, the endless streams of the homeless people who camped out behind the industrial area, or grouped together down by the bottle depot and recycling plant.

All in all, it all made for a difficult track.

When they reached the dead-end stop of Glen Drive, Sable stopped ru

Striker took the moment to scan the area and catch his breath. The cold air stung his lungs and it was dirty, stinking of diesel gas fumes and smoke from the industrial plants. Not twenty yards away stood a tall chain-link fence that separated the federal land of the national railway with that of the City. Behind it were pockets of homeless people. Small fire-lit camps dotted the rail yard.

‘Tracks go

Hooch shook his head. ‘Track doesn’t lead there anyway.’

‘Then where’s it go?’

‘Right fucking here.’

Striker looked all around the immediate area. There was nothing here except a dead-end street, a gravelly roundabout, and a row of old vacant warehouses.

‘It’s a dead fucking end,’ Hooch griped.

Striker watched where the dog was pin-balling back and forth on a small strip of gravel, less than twenty feet long. Using his flashlight, he lit up the area and focused on the road’s surface. It was a mess of concrete and rock and dirt, and there were no discernible tyre tracks.

Hooch’s posture slumped, and he began reeling in the dog. ‘He had wheels parked here, Shipwreck. No doubt about it.’

Striker nodded in agreement.

‘Or a ride waiting for him.’

He looked all around the area for witnesses, or better yet, video surveillance. But aside from the video cameras that CP Rail owned – all of which faced inwards towards the train tracks – there were none to be seen.

Hooch reeled in his beast. ‘It’s done, man. He got away.’

Striker shook his head. He offered the dogman a weak grin and held up the black leather glove.

‘Not completely,’ he said.

Six

By the time Striker made it back to the Lucky Lodge, Felicia was on scene. She was speaking with Constable Wong – although from Striker’s vantage point, it looked more like an interrogation than a discussion.

A smile broke his lips; Felicia was always so intense. It was one of the things he loved about her.

Under the pale light of the street lamp, her breath looked like steam. Striker hoped she wasn’t grilling the kid too hard. Wong was only a rookie. Had just a few months of road time under his belt and was now stuck in the middle of a strange Sudden Death call that made no sense.

Welcome to the Force, kid.

Felicia spotted Striker and her expression turned even more serious. She stopped talking mid-sentence, left the young constable hanging, and came marching up the sidewalk towards him.

‘Any luck?’ she asked.

Striker nodded. ‘Lots. All bad.’ He relayed the entire call to her from the second he’d heard the dispatch over the air until the moment when the dogman had lost the track out by the train yards. When he was finished speaking, Felicia made a sour face.

‘Train yards, huh?’

‘Yeah. He had wheels, too. I’m sure of it.’

She thought this over. ‘Long way off to park his wheels.’

‘For sure. And yet the safest place, too. Who’s go

‘Which leaves us with jack.’

‘Not entirely.’ Striker held up the glove once more. ‘Got this from the suspect. Ripped it right off his hand during the struggle.’

‘We’ll have to hit the lab.’ She grabbed the keys from his pocket, hurried back to the trunk of the police car, and returned with a brown paper bag. She wrote the time, location and incident number on the outside of the bag in thick black felt, then held it open for Striker to drop the glove inside. When he did, she put the bag back in the trunk and handed him the keys.

It wasn’t until she had marked the time of transfer in her notebook – continuity was always a bitch in court – that she took a long look at Striker and assessed him. The skin around her brow tightened and her eyes turned soft.

‘Your forehead,’ she said, and reached out to touch it.

He leaned back. ‘Leave it.’

‘It’s been bleeding, Jacob.’

‘I know that. And it stopped.’

‘What happened? You get hit? He hit you? You need someone to look at that.’

‘I’ll live, Feleesh, really.’

She gave him another one of her long, drawn-out motherly looks, and Striker ignored it. Before she could say more, he turned back towards the Lucky Lodge.

In the five o’clock darkness, the building looked even more dilapidated. He took out his flashlight and set the cone to the halfway setting for equal amounts of intensity and expanse. Then he began scouring the crabgrass, taking slow careful steps – the last thing they needed right now was to step on and destroy any trace evidence.

Felicia came up beside him to assist in the search.

‘He ran this way,’ Striker explained. ‘Landed right over there beside the power box. Look for footprints and any electrical stuff, too. Wires, a lens, whatever. Maybe he left something behind.’

They moved closer to the area where the suspect had landed.

‘It’s so cold, the ground is like rock,’ he said. ‘When he landed, he must’ve landed hard.’

Felicia kept looking. ‘He get hurt?’ she asked without looking up.

‘Du

‘I’ll call the hospitals.’

‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Striker pointed to the east. ‘Maybe he sprained something. Broke a bone, if we’re lucky.’

Felicia thought this over. ‘If he was high, he could’ve fractured a bone and not even known it – but he will later when the juice wears off.’ She got on the phone and called Central Dispatch. She got them to flag all the hospitals for patients coming in with injuries that could possibly be related to a high fall.

While she did this, Striker continued searching the outer perimeter for evidence. He did a grid search, line by line. It was an arduous process, but the best way to go. In cases like these, it was one hundred per cent necessary.

No evidence could be overlooked.

Not three minutes later, he found a footprint. It was not overly far from where the suspect had landed – just east of the utility box – in a patch of earth that had been recently covered with fresher ground from the construction work in the next-door lot.

Striker squatted close to the footprint. It was a right-foot imprint. Standard size, maybe a ten or eleven. But that was not what got his attention. What stole his focus was the sole pattern in the mud. It was a checkered tread, and the grooves were deep. The imprint itself was level for the most part, but wore away almost completely near the toe.

Striker looked around the area, and found a left-shoe imprint that matched in size and tread. He noted that the toe of this shoe was not as worn as the right.