‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you so much.’
Harry started to shake because he knew now what he had to do. For his other son. For Ethan. The Boy Who Still Lived. And that meant he would probably never be back here again.
This was the final goodbye.
Harry wiped his eyes. He knelt down. He kissed the headstone. And then he got up and left the graveyard.
He never looked back.
One Hundred and Forty-One
It was exactly twelve-thirty, and Striker and Felicia had just grabbed a couple of green apple & cheddar sandwiches from the Kit’s Coffee House on Broadway. He sat back in one of the outdoor patio chairs, unwrapped the cellophane and took a bite. The flavours were odd but good, and as he swallowed, his cell rang. He looked down at the screen and saw Rothschild’s name.
He answered. ‘What’s up, Mike?’
‘They’re gone, they’re fucking gone, he took my kids!’
Striker’s throat clenched and the world around him ceased to exist. He dropped the sandwich and jumped to his feet.
‘Where are you?’
‘Your house. My kids, Striker – he’s got my fucking kids!’
‘Just calm down, Mike, calm down. How do you know—’
‘I went out for a smoke. Ten minutes – just ten fucking minutes.’
Striker tried to keep his voice steady. ‘Mike, listen to me. There’s a patrol cop out front. Go out there and talk to—’
‘The car’s down the road . . . they’re dead, the cops are dead, they’re all fucking dead!’
Striker’s blood turned ice cold. ‘Call it in.’
‘No!’ Rothschild screamed. ‘Do not call it in.’
‘Mike, you have to—’
‘He’ll kill them, he said he’ll kill them.’
‘You talked to him?’
‘He called, he fucking called.’
Striker felt the world collapsing all around him, and suddenly he was racing back to the cruiser with Felicia running after him. ‘Don’t move, Mike – we’re coming right now!’
But the line was already dead.
One Hundred and Forty-Two
With Felicia providing cover, Striker raced up the steps of his porch, kicked open the front door, and moved inside.
Too late. The house was empty.
Rothschild and the children were gone.
‘We have to call this in,’ Felicia said. Her voice was unusually high and tremor-filled.
‘Just give me a goddam second,’ Striker said.
He stood in the horrible stillness of the den and fought not to grip his gun too tightly. Behind him, the sound of Felicia’s heavy gasps filled the room, broken by only the deep steady tocks of the grandfather clock – each one a reminder that precious seconds were being lost.
Striker paced the room, tried to think.
In here. In my house . . .
He took the children from my own house . . .
He stopped pacing, scanned his surroundings, looked for any evidence left behind. When he saw nothing, he walked back outside and looked there. On the welcome mat, trapped in the rough wool-like tendrils, was another dusting of that same whitish powdery substance he had seen in the mud by the docks and again on the window ledge at Rothschild’s former home.
Striker knelt down, studied it.
Once again, it looked like concrete. But greyer. With tiny bits of white in it. He reached down, picked some of it up, rubbed it between his fingers. It looked and felt like nothing more than dirt and dust.
He took out his cell phone and called Noodles.
‘Did you get an answer yet – from the lab?’
The man was lost. ‘Huh? On what?’
‘That goddam white substance!’
‘The powder, oh yeah, we got the results.’
‘Well, why the hell didn’t you call then?’
‘Because it was nothing.’ Noodles made an exasperated sound. ‘Jesus Christ, Shipwreck, it’s just fucking dust. Dust. That’s it. What the hell is up your ass today?’
‘It’s not like any dust I’ve ever seen before. What else did they tell you?’
‘Nothing, that’s it – just dust.’
Striker hung up on Noodles and dialled the lab himself. Being Saturday, they were still open, but the technician who had done the actual testing was not available. Striker managed to get hold of the head boss. He explained the direness of the situation, and within sixty seconds, received a phone call back from the primary technician. The woman seemed perplexed by the severity of the situation.
‘It was just ordinary dust,’ she explained.
‘Then why the strange white-grey colour?’
‘Well, that’s because it’s been exposed to quite a high heat, and for a long time, I would say – it’s all in the report we forwarded yesterday.’
‘We don’t have that report yet,’ Striker said. ‘And minutes are critical. Now what kind of heat and what kind of times?’
The woman made an uncomfortable sound. ‘That, I can’t really tell you with any certainty. But it would have to be quite hot.’
‘How hot? Like as hot as a foundry or something like that?’
‘I wouldn’t think so. Some of those foundries can reach sixteen hundred degrees Celsius. That would be exceedingly hot. Plus, you would then find contaminants within the dust – bronze or magnesium, copper or tin, steel or—’
‘I get it,’ Striker said. ‘Then where?’
The tech made a frustrated sound. ‘Well, any factory setting where industrial machines are hard at work, especially ones that have boilers or an ongoing distillation process – oil refineries; garbage incinerators; recycling plants; heck, even some food processing plants. The list is really endless.’
Striker felt his hopes deflating, felt the seconds ticking away. ‘I’ll call you back – stay by the phone.’ He hung up and turned to Felicia. ‘Location-wise, if you had to make a guess, where would you think this guy would be hiding out?’
‘Geographically speaking?’ She turned silent for a moment. ‘It would have to be somewhere relatively close by. He’s hurt. He’s got two little kids with him. And his sole focus lies here in Vancouver.’
Striker nodded. ‘I agree completely.’
Felicia flipped back through her notebook pages. ‘That Alpha unit had a white van take off on them just ten minutes after the Osaka bombing, remember? It was racing west on Southwest Marine Drive. From Collingwood Street.’
Striker mapped out the area in his head. ‘There’s nothing west of there but the Shaughnessy Golf Club, the Musqueam Reserve, and the university grounds. After that, it’s all ocean.’
‘And I don’t recall there being any factories on the reserve,’ Felicia said. ‘Same thing goes for the golf club.’
Striker nodded. ‘But there are some on the university grounds.’
Felicia continued flipping back through her notes. ‘And wasn’t that the way the bomber fled from Rothschild’s house? On Thursday morning? He ran into Pacific Spirit – that park is how big?’
‘Seven hundred acres,’ Striker said. ‘And he did so without a getaway vehicle.’
‘So either he hid in the woods and waited us out – which seems highly unlikely given that we had police dogs tracking him – or . . .’
‘He’s hiding out somewhere on the university grounds.’