“Hey, Angie, I thought they had you on the cushy social media desk job for a while,” Stacey said.
“They do. This is for an old case I’m still working—the prints are from over thirty years back. I had a lab digitize images of friction ridge detail taken of bloodied patents left at a scene. When you have time,” she said. “As a favor. I’ll owe you.”
“Yeah, yeah, right. Send them now. I’ve got a hole in my schedule. I can get on it right away.”
Angie opened up her personal laptop, which she’d brought with her to work. She plugged the memory stick into a USB port and uploaded the files from Anders. She attached the first set of images and hit SEND. “Sending as we speak.”
Officer Pepper entered the office, taking off her coat. “How’s that blog post coming?” she said as she hung it up.
“Great.” Angie attached the next set of files, sent those, too.
“Need a hand? Any questions?”
“I’m good, thanks,” Angie said without looking up.
“It needs to go live before the end of the day—needs to be out there for the weekend.”
“Yeah, I got it.” Like anyone cares if an MVPD blog post goes live on Monday instead of Friday. Nevertheless, Angie shut down her files as soon as the images had gone through. She switched computers and reopened the document containing her blog-in-progress. She tried to focus on finishing off her blog post, but anticipation hummed in her blood.
It was 3:23 p.m. when the phone her desk buzzed. Internal call. She lunged for the receiver.
“Angie, it’s Stacey. We got a hit. He’s in the system.”
“Serious?”
“You sound surprised.”
“No. No.” Chills raced over her skin. “It’s a he? The patents belong to a male?”
“The one set, yes.”
Angie shot a glance at Officer Pepper, who was casting a watchful eye her way. “Who is he?” Angie said quietly.
“Name’s Milo Belkin.”
“So he’s got a record—he’s alive?”
“And kicking. On the inside. He’s doing time at Hansen Correctional Centre for a series of charges ranging from criminal negligence causing death, to possession of an illegal firearm, to possession of narcotics with intent to traffic. He’s got another six months remaining on his sentence. Seems like he’s going right to his WED date.”
“Can you forward me the details—and whatever else you can dig up on his arrest, charges, anything and everything?”
“Gotcha. Looks like he was charged prior, too—for sexual assault and battery. But he was acquitted when the complainant suddenly refused to testify and dropped all charges.”
Excitement exploded through Angie. One of the men who’d chased the woman into the alley. Alive. And not going anywhere for at least another six months. This was it. This was her breakthrough. She ran her hand over her hair, almost unable to sit still. “Okay, thank you—and anything else you can dig up on those prior charges, too.”
“No problem.”
She hung up and made a fist pump.
“The blog post going well, is it?” Pepper said.
“Oh yeah,” Angie said with a smile. Almost shaking with excitement, she located the number of Hansen Correctional Center and called to confirm that an inmate named Milo Belkin was indeed incarcerated there. She set up a visit with Belkin for noon tomorrow. The Hansen institution was on the Lower Mainland. It was the weekend tomorrow. She could be on a ferry tonight, stay in a Vancouver hotel, drive out to Hansen first thing in the morning.
This—this was why she needed to keep this social media desk job. She had weekends off, and she could still play the police card when she interrogated her suspect. And if this Belkin was serving his criminal sentence right up to the warrant expiry, or WED date, he clearly hadn’t been meeting requirements for early parole—he was making someone unhappy.
And now she was going to repay Milo Belkin the favor.
CHAPTER 31
Maddocks carried his laptop under his arm as he and Holgersen strode with Inspector Martin Flint toward the conference room at the end of the top floor corridor. Maddocks cast Holgersen a quick glance. The guy loped with his shoulders hunched into his scruffy jacket, chin jutted forward, his hands digging deep into the pockets of his gray jeans. His combat-style boots were scuffed and spotted with muck from the streets. He looked like a scrappy junkyard dog jonesing for a fight.
Flint, by contrast, was all spit and polish in a white uniform shirt with lapel insignia, tie secured with a gold tie pin, pressed black pants—his military history evident in his deportment and fastidious attention to detail. Ordinarily Flint functioned as the MVPD’s head of special investigations, which fell under the major crimes umbrella, but he was currently standing in as the major crimes boss until someone was officially hired to replace disgraced Inspector Frank Fitzsimmons, who’d been leaking sensitive MVPD information to the media during the Baptist investigation in an effort to unseat the chief. Flint was also temporarily overseeing the homicide unit, which also fell under the major crimes umbrella. This was a hole left by Jake Buziak, whose online gambling habit using MVPD equipment had been revealed during an internal investigation into the MVPD leak. Maddocks had taken over the Baptist task force from Buziak shortly after he was hired, and it was being made clear to Maddocks that he remained number one in line for Buziak’s job as head of homicide once the barcode girls investigation was wrapped.
As they approached the room, through the glass walls Maddocks saw a male and a female seated at the long conference table. Behind them a bank of windows looked out over the city. Clouds boiled puce along the horizon. Rain spat against the panes.
Flint pulled open the glass door. They entered, and Flint made brief introductions while Maddocks went to the head of the conference table. He connected his laptop to a large smart screen at the end of the room.
The male cop at the table introduced himself as Sergeant Thomas Bowditch, an RCMP officer with a long history of investigating organized crime and human trafficking in the Lower Mainland. The female, Constable Vicky Eden, had most recently worked with the RCMP’s international operations in Europe before being detailed to the task force. Both veterans bore guarded features and expressionless eyes. They’d been sent by task force lead investigator Sergeant Parr Takumi, who was stationed in Surrey on the mainland and had been appointed to head up the team. Takumi’s prior post had been in Quebec, where he’d earned accolades for investigations into the Irish West End Gang, the Montreal Mafia, Hells Angels, and Colombian cartels.
Holgersen slumped into a chair across the table from the pair and folded his arms over his chest. He glowered at them. Maddocks remained standing at the head of the boardroom table. Outside the windows the late-afternoon sky was darkening and fog was blowing in.