Striker glanced over at her. ‘Recognize the location?’
‘Mapleview,’ she said.
‘Exactly. He was probably there looking for Larisa. Or trying to get information.’
‘But why? Why would he care so much?’
Striker gave her a bemused look. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? Bernard doesn’t care. When was the last time you saw him put in this kind of work for any other mentally ill patient?’
‘Well, never.’
‘Exactly. Bernard just wants to be the one to save Larisa. Think about it. She’s a former employee of the Vancouver Police Department. A Victim Services worker, no less. And she’s been through hell and back. Now Bernard Hamilton – caring community cop and all-around godsend – comes along and rescues her from her mental illness. Think of how he’d spin that one.’
Felicia nodded. ‘More glory in his bid for Cop of the Year.’
‘Exactly. The worst part is he knows he’s actually putting her in greater danger – and ruining our chances of getting her back safely. But he doesn’t care. Because he wants to be the one who scores on the arrest.’ Striker felt his entire body grow tight with anger. ‘He’ll never get that award. Not ever. Because everyone knows what he’s all about. He doesn’t care about Larisa or any of them.’
‘He cares about the publicity,’ Felicia said.
‘He wants publicity, I’ll make sure he gets some,’ Striker said. ‘Starting off within the department.’
Felicia gave him a curious look, and he smiled at her darkly.
‘Later,’ he told her. ‘When the time is right.’
A half-hour later, at exactly eight o’clock, they drove back over Boundary Road municipal border and entered the City of Vancouver.
‘We’re looking at this the wrong way,’ Striker said. ‘Let’s stop trying to find out where Larisa went and find out why.’
Felicia gave him an odd look. ‘We already know why.’
‘Do we?’ he asked.
‘The medical warrant.’
He shook his head. ‘There’s something else she’s running from here, something besides the medical warrant. There has to be. Think about it. The woman emailed me and told me she believed Mandy was murdered. She also had Sarah’s name written down in her place. At the time, we thought it was all part of her mental illness. But now I wonder.’
Felicia nodded. ‘It was almost like she had proof.’
Striker thought of all the opened DVD cases they had found on the floor of Larisa’s ransacked rancher.
‘We need to find out what that proof was,’ he said.
Felicia opened up the laptop with a renewed sense of energy about her. ‘Let’s go over everything one more time.’
Striker pulled over to the side of the road. He opened up his notebook, then the file folder of all the evidence he had collected back at Larisa’s rancher. There was a ton of stuff. Stories. Articles. Newspaper clippings.
One thing stuck out more than all the rest. It was the article from the Vancouver Province newspaper about the man who committed suicide at the Regency Hotel. Someone had used a thick pen to write LIES! LIES! LIES! across it.
Striker read through the article, saw that the victim’s name was Derrick Smallboy. The man was said to have suffered from depression, addiction and fetal alcohol syndrome.
A hell of a trio.
Striker found the article intriguing, in a dark sort of way. ‘Run this name,’ he said to Felicia. ‘Derrick Smallboy. Age twenty-eight.’
She did, and after a moment the feed came back.
‘He’s deceased,’ she said.
‘I know that; he’s the guy from this article. Read up on him, tell me what you find.’
Felicia did. After a long moment, she looked up with a shocked look on her face. ‘Holy shit, Jacob, look at this. Says here that Smallboy suffered from depression, FAS, alcoholism, and schizophrenia. This guy was really messed up. He ended up throwing himself off the top of the Regency Hotel.’
‘I know all that.’
‘Be patient,’ she told him, and read on. ‘Says here he was enrolled in the EvenHealth programme, and was taking SILC classes.’
That made Striker take notice.
He leaned over and scanned through the report. As he learned the basics – that Derrick Smallboy had plummeted from the top of the Regency Hotel with no witnesses and no evidence of foul play – something else caught his eye.
A Lost Property file where Smallboy was listed as a complainant.
‘Bring up that one,’ he said.
Felicia exited the current report and brought up the Lost Property page. The synopsis was brief. Smallboy had lost several pieces of ID, namely his BC driver’s licence, his status card, and his birth certificate. He believed they had been stolen, but the author of the report hinted at paranoia.
‘Go back into Larisa’s main page again,’ Striker said.
When Felicia did, he pointed to one of the reports Larisa had made in August last year. It was listed as a Lost Property report, and when Felicia brought up the synopsis, he saw the same basic facts.
All of Larisa’s ID had been taken. Just like Smallboy’s. She also thought it had been stolen. But there was no proof of this. Not even a possible suspect. In the end, the report had been cleared as Unfounded.
Striker looked at Felicia. ‘You still have your contact at Equifax?’
‘You bet. TransUnion, too.’
‘Call them. Find out if there were any credit problems with Smallboy and Larisa.’
Felicia got on the phone and got hold of her contact at the credit bureau who could search both TransUnion and Equifax databases. The process was slow and cumbersome, but after almost twenty minutes, she hung up the phone with a curious look on her face.
‘Bad credit reports?’ Striker asked.
‘The worst. Non-payments. R3s. You name it. And it gets worse than that,’ she said. ‘Smallboy and Logan were both victims of identity theft. Full frauds. It’s all documented with the bureau. Someone damn well bankrupted them. Took out credit cards in their names, emptied their bank accounts – everything.’
Striker felt the energy of a new lead.
‘Awfully coincidental,’ he said.
‘That’s not the half of it,’ Felicia continued. ‘I also got him to check on Mandy Gill and Sarah Rose. Exact same thing. They all had their IDs stolen and they were all victims of identity theft.’
‘Did Larisa report the physical theft of the identification, or that someone was using her identity to obtain more credit?’ he clarified.
‘Both.’
Striker looked down at the date when Larisa Logan had reported the identity theft.
‘Larisa made a report of this on August third of last year,’ he noted.
Felicia nodded. ‘And three days later, she was committed.’
‘To where?’
‘Riverglen.’
‘By whose order?’ Striker asked.
‘Dr Riley M. Richter.’
Striker leaned back against the seat, his head swirling with information. Four victims of identity theft. All connected through the doctors of the EvenHealth programme. And now three of them were dead, one was missing.
The odds were astronomical.
‘It all comes back to the doctors,’ he said. ‘To Ostermann and Richter.’
He’d barely finished speaking the words when his cell phone rang. He picked it up, stuck it to his ear, and said, ‘Detective Striker, Homicide.’
The voice responding was smooth and soft. Feminine.
‘This is Dr Richter. Apparently you’ve been looking for me.’
Sixty-Eight
The address Dr Richter gave Striker was for a road named Stone Creek Slope in West Vancouver, Canada’s most expensive area of real estate. Within ten seconds of driving off the TransCanada Highway and entering the district, Striker could see why.