The woman made a weary sound. ‘Mr Mercury is not Dr Ostermann’s only patient, I’m afraid, though he does seem to take up the bulk of his time. Dr Ostermann will be seeing him at the clinic.’
Striker cast Felicia a disbelieving glance. When he spoke again, it was difficult to keep the agitation out of his voice. ‘Hold on a second, are you telling me that Billy Mercury is not already at Riverglen? I thought he’d been institutionalized.’
‘He has been, and he will be here – after Dr Ostermann is finished seeing him.’
‘In a private clinic? I’m not comfortable with that.’
The woman let out a long breath, as if to express how tired she was of the conversation. ‘We have armed guards, Detective. We deal with a lot of violent patients. We do it all the time. And we do it quite well. There is nothing for you – or anyone else, for that matter – to be concerned about.’
Striker felt his fingers tighten on the cell. ‘You might think differently if it was your house he just burned down. Now which clinic is Dr Ostermann seeing Billy at?’
‘That’s confidential information.’
Striker had had enough. ‘I’ll put it to you this way: right now I’m dealing with an important investigation and I need to speak to Dr Ostermann as quickly as possible. If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll charge you with Obstruction. And I’ll take the time to drive out there right now and arrest you myself. You got that? Now where the hell is he?’
The receptionist’s tone didn’t change, but she coughed up the information. ‘Dr Ostermann is where he always is on Thursday afternoons. He’s working with the EvenHealth programme.’
‘Which branch?’
‘It’s at Boundary and Adanac.’
Striker hung up the phone. When he turned to face Felicia, he saw a dark curiosity in her expression.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Where the hell is he?’
‘Mapleview,’ Striker said. He put the car into Drive, hit the gas and drove down Broadway.
The clinic was only twenty minutes away.
Fifty-Two
Striker and Felicia drove down Broadway. East Pender Street was less than five miles away, so Striker expected to be on scene in minutes. But he had barely gone five blocks when the emergency tone went off on the radio. The dispatcher, Sue Rhaemer, came across the air, and it was the first time in Striker’s memory that he had ever heard the woman rattled:
‘All units, all units, we have an officer down. Repeat: an officer down. Thirty-six hundred block of East Hastings Street.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Felicia said.
Striker said nothing; he just hit the gas. Before he could respond verbally, the road sergeant, Mike Rothschild, came across the air.
‘Who’s calling this in?’ Rothschild demanded.
‘We’re getting it second-hand from Ambulance,’ the dispatcher replied.
‘Where is the nearest unit?’
Striker grabbed the radio and gave their location. ‘Detective Striker, Broadway and Nanaimo.’
The moment he let go of the plunger, another unit came on the air: ‘Charlie-21, we’re already at Hastings and Windermere. Ten blocks out.’
Felicia looked at Striker. ‘They’re way closer,’ she said, relieved.
Sgt Rothschild gave the order: ‘That unit is authorized. Code 3.’ Then he directed his question back to the dispatcher. ‘Which unit is supposed to be riding with the ambulance?’
The dispatcher paused for barely a second. ‘Alpha-13 . . . but they’re not answering their radio and their emergency button’s been pressed.’
Rothschild: ‘Do we know the nature of the injury?’
‘Unknown,’ the dispatcher replied. ‘We can’t raise the ambulance crew either.’
Striker pressed the radio plunger one more time. ‘Mike,’ he said. ‘They were transporting Billy Mercury, the war vet who just tried to burn us down in the complex.’
Rothschild heard that and wasted no time. ‘Does Burnaby have any units closer?’ he asked.
‘Burnaby is negative for units,’ the dispatcher replied.
‘We’re on scene,’ Charlie-21 broke in. ‘Mercury has escaped. Repeat: Billy Mercury has escaped.’
Rothschild made a frustrated sound. ‘Give them the air. Charlie-21, update their status when you can.’
The radio went quiet for almost a half-minute; the seconds were excruciating. And when Charlie-21 got back on the air, the man’s voice was jittery.
‘Jesus, we got two paramedics down on scene. And two officers, too. One of their guns is gone!’
‘I want more units there now,’ Rothschild ordered.
Bravo-15 broke in: ‘We’re already on scene, Mike. So is Bravo-73.’
Charlie-21 took control of the air one more time, and the voice was fast and frantic:
‘Oh Christ, both cops . . . both medics . . . they’re dead, they’re dead. They’re ALL DEAD.’
Fifty-Three
Striker hammered the gas and raced north on Boundary Road. By the time they’d passed 1st Avenue, the Taurus was nearing one hundred and forty kilometres per hour. By the time they reached Napier Street – and Striker heard there were now more than six patrol units on scene – he hit the brakes and slowed down. Far up the road, a mass of blue and red emergency lights flashed in the daylight.
‘Go,’ Felicia said. ‘What are you doing? Go. Let’s get there!’
But Striker did the exact opposite. He pressed his foot even harder down on the brake and swerved over towards the grassy meridian. Once there, he drove into the middle of it and stopped.
‘Jacob, what are you doing?’
He ignored her question and grabbed the radio mike. ‘Do we have a direction of travel?’ he broadcast.
When units on scene replied, ‘Negative’ and dispatch also replied, ‘Negative,’ Striker scanned the road ahead of them. The intersection where the ambulance had crashed was only a mile or two up the road. Striker’s heart told him to race to the scene with every kilometre of speed the cruiser was capable of.
But his instincts told him otherwise. Billy Mercury was fit. And their location was within running distance for the man.
‘Jacob?’ Felicia asked again.
‘They got tons of units on scene,’ he explained. ‘Mercury was being escorted by police and ambulance back to Riverglen. So when he escaped, there’s only two places he’s gonna run to.’ He pointed ahead, northwest. ‘Mapleview Clinic is right there on the left side. And six blocks behind it, in the north lane of Pender, is where Mercury lives.’
‘That close?’
‘That close. We need to cover both of them. If Mercury’s got any brains, he’ll run in the opposite direction, but I doubt that. Not in the state of mind he’s in. My bet is he ran right for his nearest place of comfort – and that would mean he’s barricaded himself in his apartment.’
Felicia already had her gun in her hand and was scanning the roads ahead, looking for any sign of movement. ‘He’s awfully close to the clinic, too,’ she worried. ‘The doctors need to be warned; the place needs to be shut down.’
Striker agreed. He hit the gas and peeled off the meridian, tearing up the earth and sending waves of dirt and grass into the air.
Destination: Mapleview.
Even though the address of the Mapleview Clinic was in the thirty-six hundred block of Adanac Street, the only entrance to the facility was off the main stretch of Boundary Road. The building sat way back from the roadside, nestled behind a large cement roundabout, which was filled with flowers and barren trees. Flanking the facility grounds was a wooded park to the south and an old folks’ home to the north.