It would speed up their attacks.
‘You see this, Mike?’ he asked.
‘What? Yeah, sure.’
Striker looked up and saw that Rothschild had wandered down to the roadside, where he was enjoying his smoke and watching the sun rising in the east. Next to him was a marked cruiser, and inside it was the patrol cop on guard.
Striker looked farther down the road.
Ten feet away was another car – an old Honda Civic, parked by the kerb. The vehicle was covered with leaves and the right front tyre looked half flat. Striker had never seen the car before, and something about it bothered him.
‘Hey Mike, move over here.’
‘Huh?’
‘Get away from that car.’
Before Rothschild could so much as respond, Striker realized what was bothering him. It was the maple leaves on the hood – they didn’t match the cherry blossoms of the tree above it. On autopilot, Striker swept his hand down to his gun, felt nothing – not even a holster – and realized he hadn’t geared up yet. He felt naked without the gun. Exposed.
He started down the porch steps.
‘Get away from that goddam car!’
Ninety-Seven
Tiny, invisible strings pulled at the bomber’s consciousness as he waited, hidden in the dark crevice of the observation point. Like a slowly coming night, the darkness was pressing in on him, forcing out the light. And his body was weakening as fast as his mind. Thoughts of the big homicide cop kept charging into his mind, and he found that oddly intriguing.
Jacob Striker was the one cop he had no desire to kill. But desire or not, some things were unavoidable.
Collateral damage was often necessary.
He stood there with so many thoughts rampaging through his head. And he fought to stay alert. It was hard. His mind felt off. Like he was losing control. Like he was slip . . . slip . . . slipping away into a semiconscious state . . .
And then the haze cleared.
And Target 4 was spotted.
There, coming down the walk.
The goddam cop.
The bomber took a quick look at the sedan. At the little wooden duck with the red number 4 painted on its chest. It was sitting on the hood. He willed his fingers to relax on the remote detonator, tried to calm his nerves. The plastic device was slippery in his sweaty grip, and his fingers felt clumsy. He flicked the switch. Armed the bomb. And the wheels became hot.
The cop came. Ten feet.
Five feet.
Two.
One.
And the bomber pushed the activation button:
Click – spark – combustion.
The driver’s side of the car exploded in a fountain of flame and light and smoke, showering the cop with metal shrapnel and sending him reeling twenty feet from the percussive blast.
It was done.
Target 4 was eliminated.
Ninety-Eight
Striker and Rothschild stood on the front porch, Striker drinking his coffee and Rothschild sucking back a second smoke.
‘Man, you really need to relax a little,’ Rothschild said. ‘You really scared the shit out of me back there.’
‘I needed you to get away from that car. And fast.’
‘It’s your neighbour’s car.’
‘Well something looked off about it. The leaves on the hood.’
‘The leaves?’ Rothschild let out a soft laugh that was filled with cigarillo smoke, and shook his head. ‘Look thirty metres down – there’s a maple right there. The owner just moved the car a little, probably because it’s got a flat . . . The stress is making you paranoid, man.’
Striker was about to respond to the comment when his cell went off. Being five-thirty in the morning, Striker felt an immediate concern. A call at this time likely meant one of two things – it was a call from Courtney in Ireland, where it was now one-thirty in the afternoon, or it was more bad news from work. Without looking at the caller ID, Striker stuck the phone to his ear. Listened. And all the wind left his lungs.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ the patrolman told him.
‘Are you one hundred per cent positive?’ he asked a second time.
‘Yes,’ came the answer again.
Striker nodded and said, ‘Get the drains screened . . . we’ll be right down.’
When he hung up the phone and turned around, Rothschild was staring at him, frozen to the spot. The cigarillo dangled precariously from his lips and a wary look smeared his face.
‘What the hell’s going on now?’ he asked.
Striker spoke the words almost mechanically. ‘Terry Osaka was killed this morning.’
‘What?’
‘Ten minutes ago. Just outside his house . . . Another bomb.’
Rothschild looked stunned. For a moment he just stood there and stared. Then he shook his head, threw down his cigarillo, and said, ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Striker said. ‘You stay here with the kids. They need you now more than ever. I’ll let you know what we find.’
‘I really should—’
‘You can’t, Mike. Not even if you want to. Not until we know how you’re connected in all of this. Until then it’s a conflict of interest.’
Rothschild’s face took on an almost hurt look, but he nodded. Striker gave the man no time to argue. He spun about and beelined back inside the house to gear up and wake Felicia. They needed to get down to that crime scene before the fire trucks did. This time it had to be processed right.
Terry Osaka had not only been a workmate, but a man Striker considered a friend. To think of him dead was too much to process at the moment, so Striker buried the grief swelling up inside of him and focused on what needed to be done.
Go after the man’s killers.
It was the right thing to do. The only thing to do.
Terry would have wanted it that way.
Ninety-Nine
It was just six a.m. when Striker and Felicia arrived on scene at Rosemont Drive, and the sight shocked them. Already, neighbours had spilled out into the street and the fronts of their yards to witness the spectacle of the burning car. The press was also already there, standing flush with the single strip of yellow police tape that blocked off the entire road. One of the reporters, a tall African-American woman with wild, star-shaped hair, recognized him.
‘Detective Striker, Detective Striker!’ she called.
‘No comment,’ he said, and pushed past her.
To his dismay, the firefighters had beaten them to the scene and were busy hosing down the smouldering wreckage of Osaka’s personal vehicle – some type of a sedan, impossible to recognize now. They had used their fire engine to block video coverage from the opposite end of the street.
Striker appreciated that.
In between the smouldering wreck and the fire engine was a soaked white sheet, under which lay an unidentifiable lump. As Striker got closer, he could see two feet sticking out. One of them was wearing a dress shoe, the other only a sock.
‘Osaka,’ Felicia said softly.
The sight hit Striker hard. Deep in his belly, a sickness developed, a feeling he couldn’t quite define. Something between degrees of rage and loss.
‘This should never have happened,’ he said.
To the left of the fire engine, the reporter with the star-shaped afro snuck through the police tape. Felicia swore out loud, then ran over to deal with the woman. Striker watched her go. When Striker saw that she had the situation well in hand, he turned his attention back on the crime scene.