‘An eleven?’

‘Or a ten.’

‘Great. We’ve just narrowed it down to eighty per cent of the adult male population.’

A few feet ahead, they found another print, this one much smaller. Possibly the victim. Noodles studied it. ‘There’s some basic ridge detail on this one,’ he said. ‘Enough maybe for a sample comparison . . . maybe . . . but the odds of discerning a brand and model are poor at best.’

‘Poor as in your chances of being voted Cop of the Year?’

‘Worse. Poor like your chances.’

Striker smiled weakly, then swore under his breath. He breathed in deeply, and the reedy stink of the river hit him.

Torture rooms. Rave girls. And vanishing suspects – this call was turning out to be the case from hell.

He was about to leave the river’s edge when something else caught his attention – something he noticed in only the first of the three footprints. He knelt down, took a pen from his pocket, and used it to point into the instep of the first footprint. There, in the dirt, was a small patch of a whitish-grey powder. In the mottled tones of sand and silt, it was almost indiscernible.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

Noodles took a long look. ‘Cement. Guy probably tracked it in from the plant yards – the stuff is everywhere.’

Striker said nothing for a moment, then nodded.

‘Analyse it anyway,’ he said.

‘If you want.’

‘I want,’ Striker said. ‘At this point we’re looking for miracles.’

Ten

Striker met Felicia back at the cement plant in the foreman’s office. The manager – a man who had run the concrete plant for twenty years without a glitch – had been called in from his Vancouver home and was now being questioned by Sergeant Rothschild in the back room.

Striker looked through the glass partition. The manager was wearing a pair of jeans and a New England Patriots jersey. He looked like he’d thrown on the first thing available upon getting the phone call. His befuddled expression also held notes of worry and shock.

He was clearly out of his comfort zone.

Felicia bumped Striker as she moved past him to the nearest work desk. She dropped a laptop down – one of the department Toughbooks – and punched in her password. Then the system known as PRIME – the Police Records Information Management Environment – initiated.

PRIME was essentially one giant police database, listing the majority of police contacts, with the obvious exception of privatized files, invisible entries, and anything attached to a sealing order set forth by the courts.

Felicia looked over at Striker. ‘You were right. Our witness was high as a kite. Paramedics were worried she could overdose right there on scene, so they rushed her off to the Children’s Hospital.’

‘Children’s?’

‘Yeah. She’s only fourteen.’

‘Jesus Christ, are you serious? I thought she was older than that.’ Striker took a moment to think of such a young girl being alone and high in a dark secluded industrial area. Thoughts of the scanty way in which she’d been dressed made him frown as his fathering instincts kicked in.

A situation like that could only lead to bad things.

And it had.

‘Anyway,’ Felicia continued. ‘The girl says she saw something on the woman’s shoulder. A tattoo of some kind.’

‘What kind of tattoo?’

‘A bird. An eagle, she thinks. Something red.’ Felicia turned back towards the laptop and resumed typing. ‘I’m running anything that’s even remotely close. But this machine is old and slow. The search keeps crashing . . . We’ll have to do a full scan at HQ.’

Striker was not surprised about the crashes. The portable laptops were notorious for failing during data searches. From what computer techs had told him, the problem was not so much a hardware issue as a software one.

Too many firewalled security checks.

Laptop issues aside, the notion of the girl spotting a tattoo on the victim’s body was troubling. A tattoo was a great lead, no doubt, but Striker wondered just how valid it was, given the girl’s mental state. He looked at Felicia. ‘What exactly did she say the victim was wearing for clothing?’

‘She didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s high, Jacob. The details were poor. Hazy at best.’

‘Yet she was clear on this tattoo?’

‘Does it matter? It’s all we got to go on. If you think you can do better—’

Striker held up his hands. ‘Hey, I’m not criticizing here, Feleesh. Just thinking out loud. For this girl to see a tattoo on the woman’s shoulder, then the victim must have been wearing something like a tank top. Or she was undressed.’

‘So you’re thinking this might be a sexual assault as well?’

A sick expression took over Striker’s face. ‘God, I hope not. I’m just talking this thing out.’ He thought of a woman being strapped to a chair in the loft of the barn. ‘Plus, it was dark in there. Plus, the woman was black.’

Felicia cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘So?’

‘So how well does red ink show up on black skin, especially in a dark environment?’

‘Probably not all that well,’ Felicia admitted.

Striker looked back through the window at the plant manager, who was still being questioned by Rothschild. The man’s New England Patriots jersey made Striker think. ‘Some sports teams have winged logos. Like the Detroit Red Wings. Heck, their logo is even red.’

Felicia typed in the data, then sent off another search.

As they waited for a return of information, Striker moved to the exit and looked outside. Across the lot, yellow police tape cordoned off all the crime scenes: the incoming road; the entrance to the cement plant; the barn with the orange exterior lamp; and the dock area below. Yellow lines were pretty much everywhere he looked, marking off a half-dozen secondary crime scenes.

It was disheartening.

‘So much forensics . . . this is going to take time we don’t have.’

He took a step outside to get some fresh air. High overhead, Air 1 still hovered. The bird had been combing the riverbanks for over an hour now, and air time was expensive. Once she landed to refuel, financial costs would come into play. Budgetary considerations.

The air search would be called off.

Striker could feel the seconds ticking by. He turned to look at the inspector. Seeing Osaka as the Road Boss still felt wrong for some reason. For anyone with ten seconds of operational experience, it was easy to see how hard the job was on the man. Terry Osaka was damn near a wizard in Investigations, and a legal genius when it came to Planning and Research.

But for all his skills off the road, he had an equal lack of ability on the road. During operations, he often was the epitome of a second-guesser, and his lack of confidence led to long bouts of dangerous hesitancy. Striker could see the stress in his eyes at every call.

‘How low is the bird on fuel?’ Striker asked.

‘You got twenty minutes, nothing more.’

‘I’ll take every one of them I got.’

Osaka looked ready to say more, but his cell went off. He raised the BlackBerry to his ear, then met Striker’s gaze and frowned. ‘Laroche,’ he whispered, then walked back towards the Road Boss car – a white unmarked sedan.

As Osaka climbed the hill, Mike Rothschild came down. The sergeant smirked and jabbed a thumb at the inspector. ‘Did you ask the Colonel about the eleven herbs and spices for our barbecue tonight?’

Striker smiled at the joke, then frowned at the remembrance.

The barbecue with Mike and the kids . . .

‘I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one,’ he said. ‘I got a feeling this call is going to be a long one.’