Maybe more.’

She glanced at him, and a nervous tension filled her eyes.

Striker smiled. ‘You’re feeling it already, aren’t you? I can tell. How long’s it been since your last fix? Six, seven hours? Already getting your insides all twisted?’

‘Please-’

‘Feeling that hunger just eating you alive? Well, just fucking wait. Wait till every cell in your body is screaming out for more crack and you start getting the dry heaves and the shakes, and then you’ll realise you’re only one day into your stay-’

‘I don’t know the fucker!’ she screamed. ‘I don’t know him, I don’t know him, I don’t fucking know him!’

Striker stopped talking. He just stood there calmly, giving Trixie an eternity to think. She was sweating, trembling, her eyes looking everywhere but at him. And he no longer cared.

This was about the kids in jeopardy, not her goddam addiction.

‘Either way, I’ll find out who he is,’ Striker said. ‘The fingerprinting will just take time, and it’s time I don’t have to waste.’ He took a half step closer, got right into her face and whispered, ‘I got kids dying out there, Trixie. And this old man might be the link I need to save them. So make your choice — tell me who he is and you walk, and no one knows any the better. Don’t tell me, and you spend the next two weeks being drug-sick in a jail cell. And I promise you this: when I find out who this old prick is — and I will find out — I’ll spread it round the streets that you were the rat who told me. So when you’re finished being drug-sick in your cell for ten goddam days, you can be welcomed back to the Skids the proper way.’

The look of anxiety in her eyes turned to outright fear, and she trembled even worse. ‘If they knew I told you, they’d kill me.’

‘No one will know, Trixie — unless you don’t tell me.’

Her eyes widened when she looked back at the old man. She was still terrified of him, even in death. And that spoke lots to Striker. Finally, Trixie gave in. ‘I don’t know the other two,’ she said. ‘But the old one… he was a bad man, Detective. A very bad man.’

‘His name.’

‘They call him “The Doctor”.’

‘His name, Trixie.’

She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, trembled.

‘Kieu,’ she said, and she started to cry. ‘His name is Jun Kieu.’

Forty-Five

Striker did not release Trixie as promised. Instead, he sent her away — not in the back of the police wagon to jail, but in an ambulance for Vancouver General Hospital — just as he’d planned all along. She was sick, so very sick — the infection of her left arm was already so bad the limb might require amputation — and he feared that without the proper medical treatment, Trixie would soon be the next sudden death in the Skids.

When she was gone, Striker approached the cruiser, where Felicia was waiting inside. She smiled at him knowingly. ‘I always knew you were a sweetie.’

He just gave her a straight look, then handed her the notebook with the doctor’s name. ‘Jun Kieu. Confirm it.’

She took the notebook, punched in the name, then looked back at him. ‘Date of birth?’

‘Put him at seventy.’

‘Looks younger than that.’

‘Most Asians do.’

Felicia grinned. ‘You just look old.’ When the computer beeped and the information came back, she reached out and angled the screen towards Striker. ‘We got a hit back, if he was born in 1937.’

‘CPIC?’

‘No. Criminal Name Index. And unfortunately, that’s all the hits we got. No CPIC. No PRIME. No LEIP. No nothing.’

Striker thought about it. CPIC was the Canadian Police Information Centre, and they had information on just about everyone right across the country, so long as that person had ever crossed the criminal line. PRIME held information on everyone the police so much as came into contact with, be they criminals or good folk. LEIP and PIRS were secondary databases, but good assets in their own right. All this, and still they had nothing on Jun Kieu. Just one hit on the Criminal Name Index.

It was disconcerting.

‘What’s the birthplace?’ he finally asked.

‘Viet Nam.’

‘Does he match the descriptors?’

Felicia read through the file. ‘He got a horizontal scar beneath his chin?’

Striker walked back over to the van, leaned inside and tilted the old man’s head to see under his chin. The scar was there. He nodded confirmation as he headed back. ‘Yeah, it’s him.’

‘He’s got a Do Not Release in the field remarks,’ Felicia said. ‘Immigration warrant.’

‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t run off.’

Felicia smiled, then said, ‘Hang on, Jacob. There’s an attachment on his file.’ She pulled it up, read it through. ‘Wow, never seen one of these before. Crimes Against Humanity.’

Striker stopped beside the car. ‘ War crimes?’

‘It would appear so.’

He thought it over. ‘Viet Nam War, I guess. North or South?’

‘Doesn’t say.’

Striker was about to ask more when Felicia’s cell rang. She answered, held up a finger to demand silence, then began talking.

Striker left her alone and returned to the van. He gloved up with fresh latex, then leaned inside and undid the shirt buttons on all the bodies, exposing the neck and shoulder regions. Their skin was cold, even through the gloves. Striker examined their flesh, hoping to find the same golden artwork he’d seen on the neck of his headless shooter.

There was none. Not on any of the bodies.

The sight deflated him a bit, made him wonder what they really had here, as far as investigative leads went. An old man wanted for war crimes, dead in the back of a stolen van, with two yet-to-be identified goons.

Little, really.

But there was some light. The two men had been murdered with the same MO as the targeted kids in the school shootings.

And with what looked like Hydra-Shok rounds.

Striker thought the scene over. There was little hope of identifying the escaped driver, so the only connection that existed was the registered owner of the vehicle, and that came back not to a person, but to a business. The Fortune Happy restaurant.

Yet another lead they would have to check out.

A frustrated sound escaped his lips. There were too many possibles in this case. It was as if each lead was another long, tangled branch. He looked at the young constable guarding the van, remembered those simple days when he was a rookie, and a part of him missed it.

He put away his notebook, returned to the cruiser and crashed down in the driver’s seat, closing his eyes. They felt heavier than his mood. Felicia was still on the phone, talking beside him in the passenger seat. He listened to her, breathed in slowly and smelled vanilla perfume. He was just drifting off when Felicia snapped her cellphone shut, killing any hope of tranquillity he might have had.

He opened his eyes. ‘Well?’

‘That was my contact at the phone company,’ she said.

‘Which provider?’

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