Snakes and ladders

When Felicia finished her phone conversation, she joined him once again. He showed her his find.

‘What does that wear on the toe tell you?’ he asked.

‘The wearer had an awkward gait. Maybe from some type of previous injury. Or a leg length discrepancy.’

Striker agreed.

They marked the area off for Ident to do a casing of the shoe prints. Then they continued the search.

Nearly a half-hour later they had cleared the lane, the vacant lot to the west, and were now performing a final search of where the suspect had landed. Striker paused for a moment to look up at the window. Unit 305. From down here, it looked awfully high up.

Felicia nudged him. ‘He had a mask on, right?’

‘Yeah. Black leather thing. Narrow eye slits. Kinda like the one you wore on our first date.’

‘Yes, well, I like to surprise my men.’ Felicia looked up to the same window. ‘No power at all, huh?’

‘All the power’s been cut off, and it looks like it’s been that way for a long time. We’ll check with the City for an exact date.’

Felicia thought this over. ‘This guy . . . could he have been a squatter?’

‘Maybe. Or even some toad with a warrant. Who knows? Anything’s possible at this point. But it doesn’t explain why he’d have a camera set up outside her window.’

Felicia nodded, but said nothing.

Striker swept the flashlight through the blades of crisp grass. He was just about to leave the area when he spotted a glint of silver, coming from beneath the edge of a utility box. An object was there. He crouched down, gloved up with latex, and picked it up.

‘Interesting,’ he said.

‘What is that?’ Felicia asked.

Striker wasn’t sure yet. The object looked like a broken-off piece of equipment – a tiny plastic box with a sensor attached to it. There were no part numbers on it. No model number. No serial.

He shrugged. ‘Might be junk for all I know. We’ll get the tech boys to look at it later.’ He slid the object into a small paper bag he had folded up in his pocket, wrote the details on the bag, then took a final look around the scene.

He made his way back towards the front entrance of the Lucky Lodge with Felicia by his side. Patrol were now on scene and they had cordoned off the area with yellow police tape. Some of the cops were doing a secondary canvass.

It was much appreciated. But unfortunately it didn’t diminish the amount of work still required, and Striker started a list in his head. They still had to reassess the primary crime scene, investigate the secondary, get Ident down here to photograph and mark everything, and, lastly, they had to hit the DNA lab to have the glove bagged and tagged for testing – and all had to be done before this night was through.

As if on the same wavelength, Felicia said: ‘This week is killing me. It’s only Wednesday and it feels like Friday.’

‘Well, get used to it,’ he replied. ‘Our long day just got a whole lot longer.’

She said nothing for a moment as she looked up at the blackened windows of the old building where Mandy Gill had died. When she looked back at Striker, her dark eyes were concerned and focused. ‘This is creeping me out,’ she said. ‘Seriously. What kind of sicko films a suicide like that?’

Striker gave her a hard look and spoke determinedly.

‘The kind we’re going to catch,’ he said.

Seven

The Adder – for that was how he thought of himself – opened up the hidden hatch in the floor and stepped down on the first rung of the ladder. The wood was old, and it squeaked beneath his weight as it always did. Hinted at giving way. If that ever happened, the results would be dire. The drop below was nearly twenty feet in total, and on to concrete.

But the rung held, and the Adder continued down the old ladder into the murky darkness below. His mind was not on the possibility of a fall, but on other things. More pertinent things. Tonight had been a first.

Caught . . .

He had almost been caught.

It was unthinkable.

Shaking, as much from the astonishment as from the excitement, he found his special little corner of his room – the Place of Solace – and dropped to his knees. His mind was reeling. Going a million miles a second. Thoughts too fast to string together. The sounds were back again:

The laughter.

The powerful thunder.

The screams.

And finally, the silence . . . That god-awful, overwhelming silence.

The Adder could not catch his breath. Could not breathe. He lay down on the cold hard concrete, ignoring the pain in his back and hip – a result of the fall – and reached up blindly for his iPod. When he found the device, he grabbed it with his shaking hands. Fumbled to make the headset cover his ears. And inserted the headphone jack. Once done, he thumbed the Play button and his ears filled with static charge – the wonderful, soothing, blessed, healing sound of white noise.

It was the only thing that helped.

Eight

The doorway to Mandy Gill’s room had a wide yellow slash of police tape across it, set up by rookie cop Wong. Striker was glad to see it. Locking down a scene was always best practice. He gave the young constable a nod. ‘Tape off unit 305 as well. No one in or out but Ident. Keep a log. And you’re go

‘Delta Thirteen’s already en route, Detective.’

‘Good job.’

Striker turned away from the constable and went inside Mandy Gill’s unit. The first thing he noticed upon re-entry was the empty pill bottle still clutched in the girl’s hand. It was a small plastic vial. Blue cap, white label, with some black and white lettering. Standard stuff.

Cross-contamination was always a worry at scenes like this, so Striker removed his latex gloves, stuffed them in his back pocket, and re-gloved with fresh ones. Then he knelt in front of the body.

He gently prised Mandy’s thumb and index finger back – they went easily; full rigor had not yet begun – and removed the bottle from her possession. He turned it around and read the label.

Lexapro.

‘Jesus,’ he muttered.

He looked up and spotted Felicia in the entranceway. She was setting up a Sunlite, one of the portable lighting systems the department used. It was actually designed for film sets, but worked perfectly for odd situations like this. Once turned on, the entire room was illuminated.

To Striker it was a depressing sight. The room looked better in the dimness of the flashlights. With the bright glare of the Sunlite making every inch of dirty floor and grimy countertop visible, the true filth which Mandy Gill had been living in became apparent – garbage on the floors, water damage and mould in the corners, a dead rat on the kitchen counter.

He turned his mind away from the depravity and got Felicia’s attention. Held up the empty pill bottle. ‘She’s on anti-depressants,’ he said. They both read the label:

Pharmasave.

Prescription number: 1079880 – MVC.

Quantity: 50 tablets.

Dispensary date: Jan 28th.

Striker did a double take on the date.

‘The twenty-eighth,’ he said.

‘That was just yesterday,’ Felicia noted. ‘Tuesday.’

Striker thought this over. Fifty pills dispensed just twentyfour hours ago, and now there were none. It was more than enough for anyone to overdose. He wrote down all this information in his notebook, then placed the bottle directly beside the chair leg for Noodles, the Ident tech, who was already on his way. Then he stood up and looked around the room some more.