Striker felt like he’d been slapped. ‘Mike? What – are you kidding me? He would never get involved in anything like this. I trust that guy with my life. I’d stake my entire career on it.’

‘Well good. Because you might have to.’ She turned her body to face him. ‘There’s something wrong here, Jacob. There has to be. And you’re letting your friendship with Mike Rothschild cloud your vision.’

He laughed. ‘You don’t seriously think that Mike—’

‘All I’m saying is that everyone needs to be fully investigated, even if it’s just to clear their name. Think about it. Rothschild used to be on Koda’s squad, both in Patrol and ERT. And we also know that the bomber was inside his old house – he missed them by only two days. The question is why.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘We got too many connections here with drugs and bikers. I say we call Gangs.’

Striker tapped the empty Coke bottle against his palm. ‘We already have. Del’s the best, and he told us everything he knows.’

‘Not the Gang Crime Unit,’ Felicia explained. ‘IGTF.’

IGTF was the Integrated Gang Task Force. They were composed of municipal and federal cops, and had a much broader scope than the Gang Crime Unit. Where the GCU typically dealt with local targets, IGTF worked all across the country.

Even back east to where Sleeves was from.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Striker said. ‘You got any contacts there?’

For the first time in hours, Felicia smiled. ‘Whenever you need information, baby, you just come to momma.’ She picked up her cell and started dialling her contact, a detective by the name of Jimmy Sang. Five minutes into the conversation, Felicia’s face brightened and she hung up.

Striker could see the excitement in her eyes. ‘Well, what you find?’

‘Carlos Chipotle is the name of another Prowler thug.’

‘He was the guy working with Sleeves at the incinerator.’

Felicia nodded. ‘Sang says to come down to IGTF right away’

‘He got something good for us?’

Felicia raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not really sure. All he said is, “You’re not going to like it”.’

Seventy-Six

Detective Jimmy Sang was taking a course on human trafficking at the main detachment on Heather Street. That was good news to Striker and Felicia, and they went to meet him. Once in the cafeteria, Striker grabbed a table while Felicia purchased three coffees.

Not five minutes later, the detective joined them.

‘Thanks for seeing us,’ Striker said. After the basic introductions were done, he opened the police laptop and got right to the meat of the conversation. ‘So what’s this information we don’t want to hear?’

Sang met Striker’s and Felicia’s stares. ‘Sleeves is suspected in more than just one child death,’ he said. ‘Ten years ago, one of his bombs killed two little girls and their mother. The children were just nine and twelve years old.’

‘In Toronto?’ Felicia asked.

‘No. Right here in the Lower Mainland.’

The news stunned Striker. He had never heard of this.

He thought back to ten years ago. That was right about the time he’d taken one of his leaves of absence from the police department in order to deal with his wife Amanda’s growing depression problems. They’d left town for a bit. Gone down to Arizona for some family support.

Recollections of a bombing just didn’t come to mind.

He looked back at Sang and shook his head. ‘This file just gets stranger and stranger by the minute.’

‘You haven’t heard the strangest part yet. The woman and her daughters that Sleeves killed – they were Chipotle’s family.’

Upon hearing the news, Striker sat back in his chair and stared at nothing in particular. He closed his eyes and tried to process the ramifications of what Sang had just told him. Finally he sat forward again. ‘I’m a bit confused here. I looked all through Sleeves’ history and he’s never been charged with any of these murders.’

Sang took one of the coffees, added four sugars.

‘There’s a reason for that,’ he said. ‘Almost no one talks in the biker world, so getting witness statements is damn near impossible. The bomb that went off at Chipotle’s house and killed the wife and daughters, it was planted by Sleeves.’

‘But how do you know?’ Felicia asked.

Sang made an uncomfortable face before saying, ‘Intel from one of our own. We managed to get a guy inside. On a different matter entirely. But this is what he heard, the talk around the club.’

Striker didn’t question the agent’s identity. That was information Sang would never divulge.

Felicia pointed to the dates on the computer screen. ‘Ten years ago, huh? Interesting. Right after the bombing, Sleeves disappears for almost an entire year – he goes right off the radar.’

Striker suggested, ‘Maybe the gang told him to lay low. Maybe he went into hiding.’

But Sang shook his head. ‘No. The reason he disappeared is because he blew himself up in the explosion. Pretty bad too. Scars all over his hips and back and arms. Damn near obliterated himself.’

‘Too bad he didn’t finish the job,’ Felicia said.

Striker pulled the laptop over and ran Carlos Chipotle through the system. He frowned at what he saw.

‘The bomb call’s not in here.’

Sang nodded. ‘It happened just across the Vancouver border in Burnaby. So it’ll be a federal file. The RCMP. Mounties.’

Striker ground his teeth because it was just so typical. The biggest problem with modern-day policing was the lack of free and open communication – different databases, privatized cases, invisible files. Hell, some reports existed only on paper.

For an investigator, it could be maddening at times.

Striker looked at Sang. ‘You’ve got access to Fed paper, right? Can you do a search for us? Get us a copy of the murder file on the Chipotle family?’

Sang stood up from the table. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

Striker and Felicia waited. Soon, ten minutes turned into twenty, and twenty turned into thirty. But Sang eventually returned. In his hands was a hard copy of the report. To Striker, it looked like the holy grail. And upon seeing it, a few drops of his frustration ebbed away.

‘Thank God,’ Felicia said.

‘This is just the investigative summary,’ Sang warned. ‘It’s brief.’

Striker didn’t care; he was happy to have anything. He took the report from Sang, and he and Felicia began poring over it.

The file was straightforward. The murder of the Chipotle family was believed to be a gang-sanctioned killing. A bomb had gone off in the Chipotle basement, killing the wife and two daughters. Carlos – the obvious target – had been in the garage at the time, and as such, had narrowly escaped a fiery death.

Then he had gone missing.

In the report, two things caught Striker’s eye. One, Sleeves was never mentioned. In fact, he was not even entered as an entity, much less a suspect in the bombing. And his name did not appear in any of the text pages.

Second, and almost impossible to ignore, was the associated file number at the bottom of the last page. It was a Vancouver Police Department file number – for an investigation into the police-involved shooting death of Carlos Chipotle, which had happened sometime later the same day.

Felicia looked at the number. ‘Well, Chipotle didn’t go missing for very long.’

Striker said nothing. Carlos Chipotle must have fled the scene, he rationalized, and gotten into a gunfight with police. But where and when and how? Striker read the date and realized that the homicide report would likely be in paper form only. He felt a strange swirl of excitement and frustration all at once.