Sleeves hadn’t been setting the bombs.
But who then?
One Hundred and One
The explosion from the car bomb had sent Inspector Terry Osaka flying over twenty feet from the scene of impact, taking off his left arm in the process. A jagged piece of aluminium, almost eight inches long, had embedded itself through the man’s left eye, leading the on-call coroner to believe that death for the inspector had been mercifully instantaneous.
With the body now removed from the scene, Striker performed a cursory search of the area. In the grass, a half-foot away from where the body had been found, were a series of – what appeared to be – fingermarks.
Claw marks in the grass.
Striker looked at them for a long moment, and he prayed that the coroner was right about Osaka’s death being instantaneous. To think that the man might have been trying to pull himself back to his house while dying was too horrific to consider.
Striker killed the thought. He refused to let grief derail his logic. The loss here was overwhelming and personal. So it was critical that he maintained a professional distance. Catching the bombers was all that mattered now, and the first step in finding them was interviewing Osaka’s wife.
Striker looked at the small rancher on the far side of the road. It was so quaint. So Mayberry. White paint, blue trim, on a small ordinary lot with a white picket fence. It was the North American dream – one that had mutated into a nightmare at sometime before five a.m. Somewhere within those walls, Mrs Osaka was in shock. In grief. And probably being counselled by the Victim Services Unit.
How the hell had it ever come to this?
With Felicia still preoccupied with the neighbourhood witnesses and the ongoing canvass, Striker headed for the front door of the Osaka house.
It was the last thing he wanted to do.
Five minutes later, Striker sat on a cushy sofa with floral patterns and glanced numbly around the living room. It was small, barely big enough to hold the sofa and loveseat, and modest. Only a few photographs decorated the room – kids that looked like grandchildren. They made Striker realize that he didn’t really know too much about Osaka’s personal life.
Across from him sat Mrs Osaka.
Pearl, as she introduced herself.
Her face was so pale that she looked Caucasian. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and her hair still looked matted and out of place – as if she had not yet had time to drag a brush through it. On the coffee table in front of her sat an untouched glass of saki, and next to it was a Princess Cruise Lines brochure, where retirees were laughing on deck.
Striker glanced at it, and Mrs Osaka noticed.
‘Terry wanted to see the Panama Canal,’ she explained. Her voice was but a whisper. ‘He’d been planning on doing it when he retired. He was just . . . just six months away.’
Striker tried to meet her stare, but the woman’s eyes remained fixated on the happy couple on the brochure. He spoke anyway. ‘I knew your husband, Pearl, for twenty years. He was a good man.’
The words seemed to wake the woman, and her eyes took on a pleading look. ‘Terry was a good man. He was a really, really good man. So why? Why?’ Her voice broke and she cupped a hand over her mouth.
Striker refused to look away. ‘That’s what I’m going to find out. You got my word on that. I’m going to catch the people responsible for this.’ He gave her a moment to gather herself, then continued. ‘Can you think of anything that might be related to this, Pearl? Anything odd that might have happened recently or even years ago? Maybe a file that went bad, or a personal vendetta someone had against him? Some threats that were made but never reported?’
Mrs Osaka straightened her back. Folded her hands in her lap. Looked down. And for a moment, Striker thought he had lost her again.
‘There is nothing,’ she finally said. ‘I can think of nothing . . . All Terry ever did was work hard and be a good cop. If anything, he worked too hard and too much – like with this case you’re on now. He’d been working on it day and night. He wasn’t able to sleep or relax. It was always with him, always. Always.’
Striker wanted to comfort the woman but wasn’t sure what to say. Just as he was searching for a proper response, his cell phone buzzed with a work email. It surprised him because he had most of the departmental sludge forwarded to his backup folder.
Only external emails found their way to his cell.
‘Is that important?’ Mrs Osaka asked.
‘I’d better just check it,’ he said.
He hit the email button. There on the screen was a message that left him cold:
You seem like good honest cops, Detectives. Not like Osaka. There’s been enough bloodshed. Please don’t make me kill you too.
The message was unsigned, but the sight of it made Striker’s pulse quicken.
‘Is everything all right, Detective?’
‘Just forensics,’ Striker said.
He put the cell away and stared at the woman before him. Her expression was one of despondency. Of pure loss. And it pained him. He wished there were something he could say to ease her grief. All he could come up with was:
‘Your husband was a dedicated man, Pearl.’
She let out a sad laugh. ‘Too dedicated . . . This job was hard on him. He was slowly breaking down from it, and he didn’t even see it.’ As the woman spoke, a sense of anger began to creep into her tone. ‘The department can’t expect a man to work morning to night every single day, Detective. Leaving at six, not getting home till two. Those are crazy hours – crazy. They make a person ill. Make them unclear. And they make mistakes.’
Striker said nothing back.
Morning to night?
Leaving at six?
The words rang untrue. Sure, they’d all been putting in tough hours this last week. And yes, Osaka had been held over on many of the calls. But on all those days, Striker hadn’t seen the inspector signed on until his shift had started. And that was at noon. He met the woman’s stare again. ‘What hours did you say your husband was working on this file?’
‘All hours. He left the house every morning before six and he sometimes didn’t get home till after one or two in the morning. It was ridiculous.’
Striker wrote this down in his notebook. ‘Did he say what part of the investigation he was working on so early? Or where he was going?’
‘Well, no, not really. Terry didn’t like to talk about his work. He thought it would worry me, and he was right about that – it did. But he did mention White Rock once or twice.’
‘White Rock?’ Striker asked. That was far out of Vancouver’s jurisdiction, almost a half-hour drive into the valley. ‘When was that?’
‘Well . . . just yesterday.’
‘Do you know what he was doing out there?’
Mrs Osaka shook her head. ‘I just remember him mentioning that because it was such a far way to go, and he was so tired.’
Striker took note of the woman’s words, and he wrote it down in his notebook, then spent another half-hour conversing with the woman, going over all other possible leads. But nothing seemed to hold any value. And when he was done, there was only one thought in his mind.
White Rock . . .
What the hell was Osaka doing way out there?
One Hundred and Two
When Striker left the Osaka house, Felicia was standing by the front kerb waiting for him. The muscles under her skin were tight, and it made her face look hard and serious. Upon seeing him, she beelined up the walk.