by Sean Slater
Billy Mercury didn’t so much as move. He stood there, out in the open, and returned fire. Bullets rained through the staircase above and below Striker, some of them shredding the wood, others plunking heavily into the stucco walls behind him.
Striker reached the first turn of the stairway. Stopped. Took quick aim.
And blasted off a shot.
A loud thunderous BOOM! filled the air, and double-odd buck exploded across the lane. Part of the spray took Billy Mercury in the legs. He spun around like a yanked puppet. The gun flew from his fingers, and he dropped forward on to the pavement.
Striker leaped off the staircase and landed on the concrete below. Gun still aimed, he raced across the parking lot to the far corner, where he used the white van for cover.
Already Billy had crawled to the gun. Reached it.
Striker took aim on the man. ‘DON’T DO IT, BILLY!’
But it was too late.
‘Fucking demons!’ the man screamed. He raised the gun—
And Striker pulled the trigger. He blasted off another round of buckshot, then racked and fired another. The first one took Billy in the shoulder; the second one tore through his chest and came out of his back.
The gun fell from his hands and landed with a soft click on the asphalt. His head dropped, then he fell. His body shuddered for a moment, then became still.
Striker raced forward and kicked the handgun far across the road, away from Billy. It was a black pistol. Not police issue. With the gun out of the way, Striker dropped one knee on top of Billy’s back, pinning him to the ground. He searched for more weapons.
All he found was a constant flow of blood.
‘. . . daemons . . .’ the man said one last time, but his voice was soft and faraway.
He was dying.
Striker jumped back to his feet and searched out Felicia. She was lying half on her stomach, half on her side, trying to get up. Her hair was draped across her face and her gun was two feet ahead of her.
She was crawling for it.
‘I got you!’ Striker yelled.
He raced over to her side. Grabbed her by the shoulders. Pulled her on to her back. And readied himself to stop the flow of blood.
But none came.
‘My ribs,’ she breathed. ‘My fucking ribs.’
He looked down at her chest, at the torn fabric of the Kevlar. He saw the twisted steel of the trauma plate, and let out a sigh of relief.
‘He tagged me,’ Felicia said in disbelief. ‘The fucker actually tagged me.’
Striker said nothing for a long moment, he just stared at her with a horrible sense of desperation flooding his chest. With Dr Ostermann proned out on the ground and sobbing, and Billy Mercury lying dead behind them, Striker pulled Felicia close and held her tight.
‘I thought I lost you,’ he said. ‘Jesus Christ, I thought I fucking lost you.’
It was all he could think of to say.
Fifty-Five
Twenty minutes later, Felicia sat in the back of an ambulance with two paramedics and Dr Ostermann. The initial assessment was not as bad as Striker had feared it was going to be: her ribs didn’t appear to be broken, but without an X-ray, there was no true way of knowing. Without a doubt they were bruised. Deeply.
As one of the paramedics palpated Felicia’s ribs, Dr Ostermann leaned back in the seat beside her. His eyes were closed and his breathing was still far too fast and uneven. He wiped his sweaty brow with his forearm. ‘I feel . . . ill,’ he said softly, then vomited into the bag the medic had given him.
Striker assessed the man. He appeared so different to how he had looked before. Weaker. Older. Fragile.
‘It’s over,’ Striker told him.
When Dr Ostermann did not respond, Striker turned to Felicia. She winced as the medic touched her ribs, but still managed to smile at him.
‘Are you okay?’ Striker asked. It was the tenth time he had asked her this.
She frowned. ‘Go check out the crime scene or something.’
‘I will when you’re—’
‘Really, Jacob. Please. Just go check out the crime scene.’
He didn’t move at first. He just stood there and looked at her.
Lost her. The notion was unthinkable, yet true. He had almost fucking lost her.
Finally, he moved back. ‘I’m gonna go check out his place,’ he said.
Felicia looked relieved. ‘Go.’
Striker closed the ambulance doors. Before moving, he turned his head and stared at the body of Billy Mercury, lying in the very centre of the laneway. Blood had pooled all around him in a distorted, oval shape, and the skin of his face and arms looked terribly pale. Bloodless.
Striker moved up to him. He bent down on one knee and studied the man’s face. Even in death, Billy Mercury looked ill. More than ill, he looked downright insane. His lips curled back, exposing uneven yellow teeth, and his pupils were black and way too large. Like a doll’s eyes.
Demons, the man had said.
Striker shook his head at this. It was a sad statement on the state of this world that Billy Mercury was a war vet. He’d been through combat. And he had broken down because of it. The numerous mental health problems he suffered were in no way his fault. Demons; there had been many of those in Billy Mercury’s life.
But it was all over now.
Striker looked up at the cop guarding the body. A young woman who looked no more than twenty-three.
‘Who took the gun?’ he asked.
‘Sergeant Rothschild, Detective.’
He nodded. Rothschild had seized the shotgun, too. Good. That meant they were in good hands.
Striker looked back at the woman. ‘When Jim Banner from Ident gets here, tell him I’m already up in the suite.’
The cop said she would, and Striker left the dead body of Billy Mercury lying in the middle of the lane. He walked to the parking lot and took note of the licence plates of the vehicles left in the lot – the Toyota Tercel and the old van. Neither came back to Billy Mercury, and within minutes, both the owners were located as living in one of the bottom suites.
Disappointing, Striker thought.
He had hoped for a lead.
He left the vehicles behind and slowly started back towards Safe Haven Suites. The wooden stairs creaked loudly as he walked them, as if warning him once more. But he continued on.
Pandora’s Box had already been opened. He might as well see what was inside.
The door to Billy Mercury’s unit was painted dark brown and had been labelled not with a proper sign but a thick smear of white paint:
103.
The door was already open, though just a few inches.
Striker stopped in the entranceway and took out his flashlight. This was one part of the investigation he was not going to rush. Billy had been excessively paranoid, and Striker was worried about encountering IEDs – improvised explosive devices – in the suite.
Booby-traps.
Without opening the door any further, Striker shone his flashlight inside the apartment. He looked all around the edge of the door and saw no signs of tampering – no wires or snares or flip-switches. Satisfied, he gloved up with fresh blue latex, grimacing as it snapped against his burned hand. He pushed on the door lightly. It glided open effortlessly and soundlessly, revealing the apartment inside.
All the lights were out. Only the rear window offered some natural light. Striker scanned the suite. What he saw was surprising.
The place was damn near empty. The apartment owned nothing but two wooden chairs and a small table in the far corner of the room. On it was an old desktop computer and a mouse with keyboard, along with some papers and pill bottles.
Striker turned his eyes from the computer to the rest of the tiny apartment. Like any Single Room Occupancy dump, it was an all-in-one – a kitchen, washroom, and a common room, which also served as a bedroom.
The place was almost empty of furniture. No bed sat in the corner, just a blanket and a pillow on the gr
ound. But at least the floor was clean. The blanket had been spread out into a perfect creaseless rectangle. Billy Mercury had made his bed after getting up in the morning.
Striker found that odd. It didn’t seem to go with his psychosis.
In the same corner of the room was a pile of clothes. Striker inspected them. All were freshly laundered, ironed and folded precisely.
Striker noted that, too.
He looked briefly around the kitchenette. The plates had been washed and set in the drying tray; the counters were clean; and when he opened up the cupboards and fridge, there was plenty of food. Basic stuff. Peanut butter and jam. Bread. Coffee and cream. Some Raisin Bran cereal.
None of it was expired.
Striker checked out the washroom and saw that there was deodorant, toothpaste, dental floss and soap. The only towel in the room had been hung up to dry. So had the floor mat.
Everything was clean and well cared for.
Striker took out his notebook and wrote down the details. When he put it away, he looked up and saw that the far wall was covered by two large maps. One of Kandahar, and one of the Lower Mainland – which constituted Vancouver and all the surrounding subsections. All across the Kandahar map were small red X-marks and the word: Daemon. Daemon. Daemon. Daemon.
Striker turned his eyes to the second map – the one of the Lower Mainland. On it were no scribblings, only a series of X-marks. Striker looked at them all and felt a cold sensation spread through his core.
Union Street and Gore Avenue. Hermon Drive and East 5th. The thirty-eight hundred block of Adanac Street in Burnaby – they matched the residences of Mandy Gill, Sarah Rose, and Larisa Logan.
The thought made Striker check his iPhone again, to see if there were any more messages from Larisa. But once again he was let down. None had been received.
He looked at the torn-up notebook pages on the table. All were the same, filled with barely legible scribblings. Words like Daemons, and Shadow men, and Succubus. Next to the collection of papers was a row of pill bottles. They were lined up perfectly.
Striker looked at them.
The bottles were all from Mapleview Clinic, and they each had Dr Ostermann’s name and what appeared to be a prescription number on the label. There were three different types of medication: Effexor and Lexapro were medications Striker was familiar with, but the last one – Risperidone – he had never heard of before. He took out his iPhone and Googled the medication. When he found a webpage listing, one word caught his attention:
Antipsychotic.
He put his iPhone away, moved up to the computer and grabbed the mouse. The moment he moved it the black screen of the monitor disappeared and was replaced by the white and blue page of MyShrine:
I saw them first in Afghanistan and Kandahar. In human form. They came in rows, wave after wave of masks.
But I KNEW what they were. The other soldiers may have been blind, but not me. I saw through the shells. And I took them all down. A soldier. An emissary. The HAMMER OF GOD!!!
Then I was, as I am today.
There is only one way to kill a daemon. A goddam Succubus. And that is through the heart.
The words made Striker pause.
A daemon – evil.
A succubus – the female.
Through the heart – the target area where the bullet had struck Felicia.
Striker leaned back against the wall as he realized this. ‘He warned me,’ he said softly. ‘Jesus Christ, he fucking warned me, right there in the wording. And I never saw it.’
Thoughts of Felicia taking that bullet flooded him and left him nauseous. He should have known. He should have seen it coming. But he hadn’t, and it had almost cost Felicia her life.
He would never forgive himself for that.
The thought remained heavy in his head, even when he turned away from the computer and spotted the landline telephone on the kitchen counter. He walked over and picked it up. Hit Redial. The call was picked up by a woman.
‘EvenHealth,’ she said. ‘How may I direct your call?’
‘Sorry, wrong number,’ Striker said, and hung up.
He scrolled back through the incoming calls and saw that the most recent two calls were blocked. Blocked calls were nothing out of the ordinary, but Striker didn’t like the timing. He called up his contact at the Bell, a guy named Clyde Hall, and asked him to run the incoming calls for Billy Mercury’s telephone number.
‘Off the record, of course,’ Striker added.
Clyde got back to him in less than thirty seconds. ‘Only two calls exist for today.’
Striker nodded as if the man could see him. ‘Numbers and times, Clyde.’
‘No problem.’
Clyde gave him the information, and Striker took it down. After thanking the man and hanging up, he looked at the data and frowned.
There was a correlation here.
Someone had called Billy Mercury’s telephone from an untraceable prepaid cell at exactly 1517 hours. This matched the time they left Mapleview Clinic. And then someone from the same untraceable cell had called again, just three minutes later – the time that they had arrived on scene at Billy’s.
A warning? Striker thought. A tip-off?
Or someone giving instructions?
He looked at the crazy writings on the table and at the delusional message on the MyShrine page, then he looked over at the folded clothes on the chair and the smoothed-out creaseless blanket in the corner of the room. Everything in this place spoke of madness and yet logic, delusions and yet clear, concise thought. And no matter where he looked, he saw no video recording equipment.
He didn’t like it. A bad feeling hung heavy in his chest. His instincts kicked in, and they were the one thing Striker never ignored. Something was wrong here.
They were missing something.
Fifty-Six
When Striker walked down the old wooden staircase to the north lane of Pender Street, directly behind Billy’s apartment, he saw that Car 10 had arrived. It was hard not to notice the man. Inspector Laroche was being his usual overbearing self.
Striker stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked around the scene. Both ends of the block had been taped off with big yellow smears of police tape, and news crews had already huddled at each end – BCTV to the east; CBC to the west. They had probably all driven up after the Hermon Drive fire. High overhead, the Chopper 9 news crew floated about beneath the clouds, its omniscient eye taking in the full scene.
Striker refused to look up.
Already, Noodles had arrived and was standing centre stage in this drama, by the body of Billy Mercury. The Ident technician had already taped off the surrounding area, set up cones, and was busy taking photographs. Click-click-click.
Striker approached the man, got to within twenty feet, and was cut off by the inspector. Laroche’s normally pale face was flushed red and his hands were balled into fists and resting on his hips.
‘Jesus Christ, Striker,’ he said. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’
Striker blinked. ‘What? What was I thinking?’
‘You’re damn right, what were you thinking. You just gunned down a mentally ill man – and you’re supposed to be on medical leave!’
Striker couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He felt his jaw tighten. Billy Mercury had just killed two cops. And two paramedics, too. Mentally ill, he might have been. But so what?
‘He was a cop-killer.’
Laroche’s face remained tight. ‘He was a man who thought he was saving the world from demons.’ Laroche threw his hands in the air. ‘Oh Christ, it’s all over the radio, every thirty seconds: a mentally ill man, who was in our custody, is now dead along with four emergency workers.’ Laroche looked around the area, then shook his head as if bewildered. ‘You should have waited for cover, Striker! For the Emergency Response Team. And the mental health car. A negotiator. Christ, you didn’t even have a less lethal unit on scene!’
Less lethal – a beanbag shotgun or a
Taser. Or, if the Emergency Response Team was around, an Arwen gun.
Striker frowned at that. He stepped forward into the inspector’s personal space and lowered his voice. ‘All other units were already searching other areas or stuck in containment. ERT was out at the range and too far away. And the doctor was our negotiator,’ he said. ‘I also had a Taser on the way. They just didn’t make it here in time because there was no time. He ambushed us.’
Laroche was unwavering. ‘Of course he did. What did you expect? You corner a dog and he’ll bite, Striker. Every single time.’
‘I did what was necessary.’
‘No, what you did was create a situation here where there was no way out for anyone involved – not unless someone got shot. It’s called Officer-Created Jeopardy. And make no mistake about it, that’s exactly how the press will view this thing. Every goddam newspaper and newsreel’s gonna have the Big Story, and it’ll go on for weeks, if not months. It’s gonna rain down on us now.’
Striker looked down at Laroche and felt like grabbing him and twisting him into a pretzel. ‘You think I give two shits about the friggin’ media?’ he asked. ‘Felicia took one in the chest, and you’re worried about how this will look on the friggin’ news?’
Laroche raised a finger and pointed it in Striker’s chest. ‘No one would’ve been shot period if you had followed proper procedure.’
‘It was a dynamic situation.’
‘Because you made it that way. You’re just lucky that Dr Ostermann wasn’t hurt or killed in the process.’ Laroche shook his head. He took in a long breath, then seemed to deflate a bit. ‘Look, don’t get me wrong, Striker. I’m glad you’re okay. And Felicia, too. But you guys royally fucked this one. And I’ll be sending my findings to the Police Board for review.’
‘You do that,’ Striker said. ‘Be sure to include the part about how I warned you this would happen back on Hermon Drive, when you refused to charge Mercury and send him to jail. When you let him be transported in an ambulance instead of a police wagon, despite the fact he had just tried to burn up two cops. Make sure you include all of that – because I most certainly will when I write up my response through the Union.’