Striker looked back at the numbers, and saw she was right. They took the file folder with them, left the office, and stopped at the receptionist’s desk on the way out. Pam was still sitting there, looking lost and out of place.
Striker approached her. ‘Do you have a book on Medical Service Plan codes?’
Pam blinked as if coming out of a dream. ‘Medical Service Plan? Well, no. No, we don’t. We would never have use of it.’
‘Why not? How do you bill?’
‘Because everything here is private. All the medical goes through Riverglen.’
Striker frowned at that; they would have to look the codes up later. He started to leave, then stopped.
‘Are you familiar with MSP codes?’ he asked.
The receptionist nodded. ‘At the other clinic, I do all the billing – and they’re completely covered by medical.’
Striker open the folder. He showed the list to Pam. ‘Are these Medical Service Plan codes?’ he asked.
The receptionist looked at the list for less than a few seconds. ‘Not that I recognize.’
Striker closed the file.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think so.’
Eighty-Four
Striker and Felicia pulled out of the Mapleview parking lot and headed north on Boundary Road. He drove right to the lane behind the Esso gas station on Hastings Street. It housed an On the Run coffee shop, and was a common place where Patrol grabbed coffee after their morning briefings.
‘More caffeine?’ Felicia asked.
Striker nodded. ‘I need one. It helps me think.’
They exited the vehicle, grabbed a couple of coffees, and returned to the lane. They stood outside the car, drinking in the frosty air because Striker liked it that way. The cold always invigorated him.
‘Everything we know so far about Lexa Ostermann has been a lie,’ he said. ‘From the way she presented herself as the frightened victim at her home, to the role she’s been playing at the clinic.’
Felicia sipped her coffee. ‘Hey, give the psycho credit. She was good at it. She definitely made it look like Ostermann was the one in control of their household, and it was the exact opposite.’ She shook her head. ‘My God, when I think of her lashing that poor man and him screaming out, “Red. Red! Red!” it turns my stomach.’
‘Personally, I would have picked stop for a safety word. Creates less confusion.’
Felicia laughed, and Striker continued.
‘The point is we thought we knew the woman, and she had the wool pulled over our eyes. It makes me wonder what else we don’t know about her that we think we do. The vital stuff.’
‘Like her name,’ Felicia said.
‘Exactly. Name, date of birth, place of birth – all those details.’
Felicia took out her phone. ‘I got a contact in Victoria,’ she said. ‘I’ll look into her maiden names.’
Striker was glad to hear it. Victoria was the central location for the Vital Statistics Agency, the place where legal name changes and marriage records were kept for all of British Columbia.
‘Check the marriage records, too,’ he suggested.
She gave him one of her I’m not an idiot stares and waited for the call to be answered.
Striker let her be. Dealing with any form of the Canadian government, be it Stats Canada, Canada Revenue, or the Vital Statistics Agency, was always an exercise in frustration. Furthermore, he needed Felicia to do it, because he didn’t have any contacts there. To make use of his time while he waited, he called Central Dispatch once more to see if there had been any hits on the Ostermann family.
Sue gave him her trademark response. ‘Have I called you?’
‘No.’
‘Then there’s your answer.’
Sue Rhaemer was more on top of things than a cherry on a sundae, and she had never let him down once. He could tell by her tone she was irritated he was even questioning her.
‘Thanks, Sue,’ he said. ‘I’m just desperate here, is all.’
‘You owe me a Coke.’
‘Over ice,’ he said.
He hung up the phone and looked at Felicia. She was still dealing with her contact at the Vital Statistics Agency, and the look on her face was one of tentative hope. When she began writing information down in her notebook, Striker felt a glimmer of optimism. She hung up and smiled at him.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Anytime you need info, you just come to momma, darling.’
Striker laughed. ‘I’ve heard that before. Come on, Feleesh.’
‘Fine, fine. But get this: Lexa married Dr Ostermann exactly ten years ago this month.’
‘Ten years ago?’ Striker asked. He thought it over. ‘That would mean that Gabriel was only eight when they got married, and Dalia was five. So the kids were either born out of wedlock, or—’
‘They’re not siblings,’ Felicia finished. ‘At least not by blood. I verified it through Vital Stats. Gabriel was born a lone child to Wilma and Erich Ostermann eighteen years ago. Wilma died of cancer six years later, and barely two years after that, Erich remarried to Lexa.’
‘What was Lexa’s maiden name at the time?’
‘Smith.’
Striker found that unsurprising. After Lee, Smith was the most common surname in all of North America – definitely the most common among Caucasians. It made searching information on her more of a hassle, and he doubted the validity of the name anyway.
‘Is the name legit?’ he asked.
Felicia shook her head. ‘Phoney as a three-dollar bill. If you go farther back into the name records, she was originally named Jarvis from a previous marriage that lasted only three years – but that marriage took place fifteen years ago.’
‘Which would match Dalia’s age.’
Felicia nodded. ‘Exactly. Lexa has had a list of names over the years. And it doesn’t stop there. She had requested a previous name change even before that – when she first came to Canada by way of Toronto. Her immigrant name was Novak.’
‘Novak?’ Striker said. He thought of the name for a brief moment, then brought out his iPhone. ‘I don’t know a whole lot of Czech names, but I do recognize Novak.’ He punched the name into the Google search engine, then nodded when he saw the result. ‘Big surprise. Smith is the most popular name in Canada, Novak is the most common name in the Czech Republic. Where did she emigrate from?’
‘Berlin,’ Felicia said.
‘Yet the receptionist back at Mapleview said Lexa was from Prague.’
‘And Lexa was none-too-happy about her knowing.’
Striker Googled Charles University, and got the number. He looked at his watch and saw it was slowly approaching noon in Vancouver. It would be around 8 p.m. there.
He called up the Information and Advisory section of Charles University and was relieved to find a person who was fluent in English. Less than ten minutes later, he got off the phone and gave Felicia a hard stare.
‘She went there all right, under the name Novak – and for eight years.’
‘Why so long? Did she change her programme?’
Striker offered a grave stare. ‘She didn’t go there for a nursing degree, she’s a friggin’ doctor. She minored in psychology.’
Felicia’s face took on a stunned look, but then she nodded. ‘It actually makes sense, when you put it all together. Lexa gets her medical degree over there, and comes to Canada.’
‘But not all her courses are transferable,’ Striker pointed out.
‘So she finds a man who’s also a forensic psychiatrist.’
‘Erich Ostermann. Who just happens to own his own clinic.’
‘Where she’ll have access to all the patients she wants.’
‘Not patients,’ Striker said. ‘Victims.’
Felicia thought this over for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘There’s one small problem here. Why not just take the extra courses required to make her degree recognized over here? I mean, think of it, she put in eight years towards it. Why downgrade to nursing after all that?’