Felicia frowned at the words, but nodded her agreement.
Striker followed the same route Red Mask was most likely to have taken. It wasn’t easy. Fall’s frosty moisture slickened the roads, and the wheels of the undercover police cruiser skipped on the asphalt as they rounded the bend of Imperial Road.
Directly ahead, in the faraway distance, were the North Shore Mountains — blackish peaks of uneven rock, covered with white patches of snow. Above them was pale blue sky. The image suggested a calm that didn’t exist.
A storm was coming.
Striker could feel it in the air like a static charge.
Slowly, methodically, he drove on. He scanned the next alley to his left, saw the wideness of the road, the lack of open garages, and the minimal number of areas of possible concealment. Not the best place to dump the vehicle. So he continued north.
‘Clear left,’ he said at the next lane.
‘Clear right,’ Felicia responded.
And so they went. It had been less than ten minutes since Red Mask had escaped, and already the memory felt surreal. The adrenalin from the shootout was thinning in Striker’s blood, and the shakes were hitting him hard. His palms sweated. His mouth was dry. And his chest felt hollowed out. He stared at the GPS, studying the map.
‘Where are the quadrants set?’
Felicia was on the radio with Dispatch, ordering more emergency units to the school — Ambulance, Fire, Ident, the whole gamut — and broadcasting the last known direction of travel of the suspect. When done, she hung up the mike and rotated the terminal to face him.
‘We got a weak box. Just six units in all. From Sixteenth to Thirty-third Ave, and from Blanca Street all the way to Dunbar.’
‘That’s a lot of land. Any mobiles?’
‘Just two.’
‘ Two? But that makes only eight goddam cars.’
Felicia shrugged helplessly. ‘All units not in containment have been ordered back to the school. The Emergency Response Team is doing a full clear.’
‘How many units there?’
‘Four.’
That still made for only twelve units in total. ‘Where the hell is everyone?’
Felicia brought up the unit status, frowned. ‘Most are coming from way down south.’
‘Why so far?’
‘They had a gun call in Oakridge not an hour ago. Couldn’t be any further out. Real bad timing.’
Striker cursed. The timing of the gun call was too convenient, and he wondered if it was a diversion tactic. He looked down at the computer map. The box they’d set up was too large, and there were too many holes in it. To make matters worse, many of the roads serpentined through and around the forest of the nature reserve — which was another problem in itself. Even if they had the proper number of units — which they didn’t — visual continuity would be a bitch.
‘We need more units.’
‘They’re making requests from Burnaby North.’
That was RCMP territory. Mounties. Any help was welcome, but they were still too far away.
Up ahead was a blockade. Striker hit the brakes and they came to an abrupt stop. He looked both ways. Scowled. Sixteenth Avenue was a long line of gridlock in each direction. In the middle of the traffic, city engineers were tearing up the median.
Striker scanned the area and saw numerous flagmen in bright orange reflective vests amid tall stacks of blue tubing and clusters of yellow work vehicles. It was construction chaos.
‘No way he got through this mess,’ Felicia said.
Striker bit his lip, doubtful. He drove up to the nearest construction worker — a fat guy with tangled grey hair that hung down to the crack of his ass. The man looked back at them through mirrored sunglasses and nodded.
‘Dude,’ he said.
Felicia flipped open her wallet, exposing the badge. ‘You see a green Civic pass through here?’
The flagman brushed some hair out of his face. ‘Across this friggin’ nightmare? You kiddin’ me? No, I ain’t seen no one.’ He turned away, then started waving the westbound traffic through. A motorcycle swerved around a reversing dump truck and the flagman started screaming.
‘He didn’t come this way,’ Felicia said to Striker.
Striker didn’t respond. He just reversed out of the work area, back to Sixteenth Avenue, and studied all routes.
‘To go west, he’d have to cut across the gridlock and drive against the traffic.’
‘Which he likely wouldn’t do,’ Felicia said.
Striker agreed. ‘It would bring him too much unwanted attention.’
‘So that leaves only east.’
But Striker didn’t like that either.
‘A right turn here is the natural turn,’ he said. ‘Especially when driving fast.’ He took a long look at the gridlock on either side of the construction zone, then grunted. ‘If he broke Sixteenth, we’re screwed.’
Felicia’s voice was harder this time. ‘He didn’t break it. And we’ve still got tons of lanes to cover to the south. Let’s do a grid search, lane by lane, right down to Dunbar.’
Striker dragged his sleeve across his brow, wiped away the perspiration. The air smelled strongly of Felicia’s perfume and of molten tar from the fresh blacktop. It left his skin feeling sticky.
‘The grid,’ Felicia pressed.
Strike finally relented. It was the logical thing to do, even if instinct told him otherwise. He cranked the wheel and made the turn.
Twenty minutes later, the grid search of the north-east quadrant was complete, and they found themselves back at the intersection of Sixteenth Avenue and Imperial Road. Exactly where they had started. The results were SFA.
Sweet Fuck All.
‘Too much time has passed,’ Striker said.
Felicia didn’t respond. She just got on the air and broadcast the areas they’d cleared, then slammed the mike back into its cradle. Her voice was gruff, tired. ‘Okay. Let’s start west.’
But Striker looked at the long procession of backed-up traffic and didn’t take his foot off the brake. He sat there, immobile, for a long moment, thinking. Debating.
Felicia punched his shoulder. ‘Earth to Jacob.’
He rammed the steering column in park, climbed out, and felt the cold winds bite into him. They blew his short brown hair in every direction. He bundled up the charcoal flaps of his long coat and marched towards the work crews at Sixteenth Avenue. The median and surrounding grasslands were torn up, with mounds of dirt and chunks of concrete scattered throughout the passageway, making it difficult to traverse.
Halfway across, Felicia caught up to him. ‘We should finish the grid,’ she said.
Striker gave her a quick but dismissive shake of his head. ‘He didn’t go that way. He knew the natural turn was to the right. And he knew we’d search that way for him.’
‘You’re giving this guy too much credit.’
‘Am I?’ He knelt down, raked his fingers along the ground and felt something sharp. Scattered across the brown-grey earth was a line of small dirty opaque cubes. He picked one up, rubbed it between his fingers, analysed it.
Safety glass. From a shattered rear window.
He turned to Felicia, held up the glass, and gave her a look of frustration.
‘Shift containment north,’ he said. ‘He broke the goddam line.’
