The Guilty

After a moment, he looked over at Felicia. ‘You got all that?’

She read it all over and nodded slowly.

‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘Make one hell of a novel.’

One Hundred and Thirty-Eight

Oliver needed to discard the dead cop.

He drove slowly along Crown Street, searching for a good dump site. To the east was the sprawling suburbia of the Dunbar area, but to the west was the wilderness of the Pacific Spirit National Park. He pulled up next to a natural hollow that was three feet deep and filled with reeds and further covered by shrouds of bush.

This was the place.

From the cop’s tool belt, Oliver took the gun – a SIG Sauer P226 – the radio, the pepper spray, and the handcuffs. He then glanced at the police laptop. On the screen, the small GPS icon flashed in the bottom right-hand corner of the task bar.

He was online.

Oliver immediately undocked the laptop and threw it into the bushes. Then, with his shoulder screaming in pain, he dragged the cop’s body out the passenger side of the vehicle and dropped it into the hollow where it was quickly hidden by bush and reed. Someone would find the body, he knew, and probably within days. But so what?

It would all be done by then.

Ten minutes later, after a quick stop at Tim Horton’s coffee shop, Oliver made his way towards Striker’s house. The smell of the freshly brewed coffee filled the car. Four large cups – double cream, double sugar – sat in a cardboard cup holder on the passenger seat, along with a second tray of chocolate milks, a couple of egg salad sandwiches, and a large box of miscellaneous doughnuts.

He drove down Camosun Street until he saw the undercover police car out front of Striker’s house. He pulled over and attached the Black Knight suppressor to the SIG Sauer pistol. Once secure, he laid the pistol on the passenger seat and covered it with the box of doughnuts. Then he pulled up in his marked patrol car, rolled down the window, and smiled.

‘Got some coffees,’ he said. ‘Compliments of the boss man.’

The patrolman in the other car was a dead ringer for Ricky Gervais. He smiled. ‘Thank Jesus. I’m falling asleep here and the day’s not half over.’

Oliver handed him one of the paper cups. ‘I hope I bought enough. All I got was four coffees, plus my own.’

‘That’s perfect – all we got is four.’

Oliver sipped his own coffee. ‘Where’s the rest of them?’

The Gervais cop removed the lid from his cup. ‘House and lane. Want me to call them?’

Oliver shrugged. ‘Tell whoever’s inside to come grab theirs. I’ll drop the rest off to the mates out back.’

The Gervais cop took out his cell, made the call, and a short moment later, the front door opened. The cop that emerged from the house was tall and thin with long bony arms. He crested the cop cars, then nodded at Oliver. ‘You from the odd side?’

Oliver wiped away the sweat from his brow. ‘Yeah. Call-out.’

They both nodded.

The cop accepted the coffee and thanked Oliver. When he sat down in the passenger seat, next to the Gervais cop and said, ‘Fuck, I hate guard detail,’ Oliver acted. He drew his pistol and shot the driver first, then the passenger. Two quick blasts. Both head shots.

Thwip-thwip!

And it was done.

Oliver watched the cop in the passenger seat slump forward against the dashboard. He felt nothing. It was all immaterial now. Just one more road block dealt with on the way home.

He exited the cruiser, climbed on top of the dead cop in the driver’s seat, and drove the car thirty feet down the road. He parked out of view, on a side street, and then walked down to Striker’s house.

The front door was unlocked.

Inside, watching cartoons in the den, were the two children. The boy – Cody was his name – did not so much as glance back when Oliver entered the room. The Girl – Shana – turned and studied him for a moment. Her eyes fell to his uniform and a relaxed look spread across her face.

Oliver smiled at her. ‘Shift change, little ones. Where’s your father?’

‘What?’

‘Your father. Your dad.’

‘He’s out killing bad guys,’ the boy said, and he made a pretend gun with his fingers, which he started shooting.

The girl rolled her eyes. ‘He went out.’

Out? The word made Oliver’s jaws clench. ‘When’s he getting back?’

‘Who knows?’ the girl said. ‘He never tells us anything.’

Oliver steeled his nerves and refused to allow his emotions to get the better of him. Evaluate. Act. Reassess. If Rothschild was not here, he would simply go to Plan B: Why run after Rothschild when he could simply make Rothschild come to him?

Oliver smiled at the children. ‘Well, too bad for Dad. Because I brought doughnuts and chocolate milk!’

The boy finally turned away from the TV set. ‘Awesome.’

Even the girl smiled.

Oliver looked at the children and their happy eager faces. He allowed them to dig into the treats he had brought. As they ate, he offered them a wide captivating smile.

‘Who wants a ride in the police car?’ he asked.

One Hundred and Thirty-Nine

Striker sat in the car, staring at the SIG Sauer, and frowned. This pistol Hal had given him didn’t feel right. It didn’t have the special order, rubberized grip he was accustomed too. And it was brand new. The slide had barely been broken in. He ejected the magazine and expelled the last round from the chamber.

Felicia sat beside him, finishing the last of the notes she had made on the file. When done, she let out a long breath and looked back at Striker, ready to continue going over their chronological sequence of events.

‘So where were we?’ she said. She glanced back to the last line. ‘Archer is shot in the gunfight – blown up by the breach – and everyone thinks it was Chipotle who tagged him.’

Striker nodded absently as he racked the slide a few times; it needed oil. ‘At some point, either during the battle or just after it, Koda figured this out – or at the very least, he suspected it.’

‘You think?’

‘One hundred per cent. How else does Sharise Owens end up being the surgeon called out? Something had to happen there.’ He removed the slide from the base of the pistol and put it on the dashboard. ‘Besides, it makes sense from Harry and Koda’s standpoint. Think about it – Koda’s in charge of this whole botched takedown, and because he and Harry are already worried about being investigated for the trafficking operation, the last thing they want is more heat coming their way for a cop-on-cop shooting . . . this slide needs oil.’

‘I got some in my bag – hold on.’ Felicia went to the trunk and returned with some gun oil and a clean rag. She handed it to Striker. ‘So Harry and Koda get Owens to doctor the report.’

Striker oiled the rail guides as he spoke. ‘You can see why – the shooting was an accident. As far as Harry and Koda were concerned, it was a good choice of action: Archer would be taken care of. Rothschild would get a commendation. And a public investigation into a cop-on-cop shooting would never occur. So they got Owens to alter the report. Just a few amendments here and there . . . but ones that changed everything.’

‘But she made mistakes.’

Striker nodded. ‘Not destroying her original tapes was one of them. She may have been an excellent doctor, but she wasn’t used to being a cover-up artist. And she screwed up in the written report as well – she changed the locations of the entrance and exit wounds, but she didn’t change the wound sizes. That discrepancy alone proves that the entrance and exit locations were reversed.’