“They’re not at my residence, either. They’re off-site, in safe storage. I’ll need to retrieve them, and my hours are currently budgeted.” She snagged his card off the table, held it up to his face. “I’ll call when they’re ready to be collected.”
A wariness sharpened his eyes. His shoulders stiffened. “Those are police files in a now active investigation. Obstruction is a—”
“Those files were as good as destroyed, Officer. They were no longer VPD property. They were given to me and are now my property. I’ll get them to you as soon as possible.”
“I’ll return to collect them tomorrow,” Pietrikowski said coolly. “Do I need to come with a warrant?”
Tension twisted through her. He was probably going to put in for a warrant anyway at this rate—it had to be the reason he wasn’t forcing her hand right now. She needed to get home—copy and digitize everything tonight, save it all to her computer before morning. If the Anders Forensics techs could document the evidence and take whatever samples they needed for testing, and if they could make copies of all the lab reports, she could perhaps hand the boxes over tomorrow without having to forgo her own independent investigation. “Fine. They’ll be here. Now, if you’ll excuse me?” She reached for the door, opened it, and waited for the pair to exit, her heart slamming against her ribs.
Tranquada gathered up her bag and DNA kit, and the two departed the room. Angie followed them down the hall. Once she was certain they’d left the building, she returned quickly to her now-empty office. The others had clocked out for the day, much to her relief. Hurriedly she dialed Anders Forensics. She paced up and down in the tiny space between the desks while the phone rang.
CHAPTER 23
“There, that’s it,” Holgersen said, rolling his chair aside to show Maddocks an enlarged image of a pale-blue crab tattoo on his computer monitor. “A known symbol for a subsect of the Russian crab industry historically involved in organized criminal activity. They’ll do anything and align with anyone for profit. Rough dudes, those—like chop-your-body-parts-to-send-a-message rough. This group originated out of Vladivostok but evolved through them so-called bitch wars in Stalin’s gulags, according to that law enforcement intel.” He nodded toward the computer screen.
“Bitch wars?” Maddocks said, taking a seat beside Holgersen and pulling his chair in closer to examine the details of the tattoo.
“Yeah. Says there that powerful criminals worked their way up in them Soviet labor camps to becomes ‘thieves-in-law.’ But when ol’ Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin gots desperate for more warm bodies to fight the war, so he offered gulag inmates freedom if they joined his army.” Holgersen popped a tablet of gum into his mouth, chewed, and spoke around it. “Them thieves-in-law showed their status through a system of tattoos and symbols still used by the Ruskie mobsters today.”
Maddocks scrolled to an image of another tattoo. Same size. Same detail. This particular one had been photographed on an inmate from Montreal, incarcerated for firebombing a hair salon owned by the wife of the rival Irish Mafia in Quebec.
“Identical to the tats Sophia Tarasov described to Cass Hansen,” Maddocks said.
“That Stalin was a thug,” Holgersen said, nodding toward the monitor. “Gang database says when the war was over, just like that, he ships all them prison vollies back to gulags. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am. So those who’d refused to fight for Stalin and remained in prison, they go calling the returnees traitors—bitches—and them bitches get sent to the bottom of the prison hierarchy. Those bitches then go forming their own power bases by collaborating with prison officials. That gets them nice cozy positions on the inside, and it turns the old-school thieves-code guys even more bitter. It erupts into a series of bitch wars from ’45 to ’53 with heaps of inmates killed every day. Prison guards egg the violence on—a real easy way to get rid of inmates and free up prison cells.” He spat his gum into the wastepaper basket.
Maddocks flicked a glance up at him.
“Overdosing on the nicotine,” he said, waggling his fingers at his mouth and pulling a face.
“Go on,” Maddocks said.
“When Stalin finally kicks the bucket, around eight million gulag inmates are suddenly set free. Them who survived the bitch wars becomes a new breed of criminal no longer bound to the old thieves’ code of conduct—an every-man-for-himself bunch who cooperate with government when necessary. Black markets thrive. Then, as the Soviet Union starts to collapse in the seventies and eighties, the United States goes an’ expands immigration policies. These guys begin to leave Russia in droves for places like Israel, the United States—many popping up in an area of south Brooklyn. Brighton Beach—Little Odessa. From there Russian organized crime began to spread in the United States.”
“Good job,” Maddocks said, checking his watch and coming to his feet. He reached for his coat. “Flint contacted the RCMP gang unit on the Lower Mainland, told them about our barcodes. They immediately connected him with a lead investigator on a special integrated task force—”
“What task force?”
“Investigator wouldn’t say. Apparently he was guarded. They’re sending two members over to the island to meet with us in person tomorrow afternoon to see what we have.”
Holgersen angled his head. “What did Flint give them?”
“Only that we had six barcoded females in our custody who might have been trafficked through the Port of Vancouver from Prague with the assistance of Hells Angels. This task force is interested in cooperating.”
“Cooperating? You mean as in actually sharing the details of their ongoing investigations with us? Or just taking whats we have?”
Maddocks shrugged into his coat. “We’ll see tomorrow.”
“Whoa right there. I knows how it goes—they’s the Mounties, the feds. No doubts they’re already working with Interpol on this one, and maybe the Feebs also, given as the Amanda Rose and its brothel plied up and down the US coast. And we’s just the little ol’ metro force. My bets is they yank this carpet right out from under our asses now and takes our case lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Let’s call it a night, shall we? Deal with it tomorrow.” Maddocks clicked his fingers, calling Jack-O out from his basket under his desk. He scooped the animal up.
Holgersen reached for his own jacket. “Wanna catch a beer and a burger at the Pig?”
“Got a date with my kid. See you in the morning.”
As Maddocks strode from the room, Holgersen stood motionless, watching him. Maddocks pushed through the door, wondering again what drove the guy and just how far he could trust him. Something about the detective always felt off-center and left him uneasy.