On a mid-May Monday morning, Alicia walked into the Major Crimes Unit and sat down.
“Hey, you’re back,” Bradley noted. “How was it? Are you officially a trained undercover operator?”
Alicia had been away for six weeks. “Yup, I made it. One of the toughest and most gruelling courses I’ve ever had. They worked us day and night. Hardly got any sleep. The course ended Friday, and I flew back from Halifax on Saturday.”
“Welcome back. Although I expect I-HIT will scoop you up now so you won’t be around, regardless.”
“That’s a possibility,” Alicia replied.
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team was part of the Major Crimes Section. Up until now there had been only one trained undercover operative in the entire office. That was Constable Barry Short. He was good at what he did, so he was seconded by I-HIT to work on priority cases. This resulted in his spending most of his time testifying in court, leaving their office shorthanded.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad with two operators … providing I-HIT doesn’t get you transferred over to their unit entirely.”
“Maybe,” Alicia responded.
“Speaking of I-HIT, did you hear Connie Crane got her third stripe?”
“I didn’t know. So it’s Sergeant Crane now. That’s great! I’m happy for her.”
“A bunch of promotions came through last week,” Bradley said as he walked away.
Alicia entered Connie’s office a minute later. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
Connie smiled. “Thanks. You missed the party, but I’d be glad to buy you a beer.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
“How was the course?” Connie sang part of the Secret Agent Man theme song.
Alicia giggled. It was actually true; to protect the identity of undercover operatives, headquarters assigned them numbers to be used instead of their real names in all reports. “Yes, I’m officially an HQ number. A bona fide secret agent.”
“Congrats to you, too! We’ll catch up over that beer later in the week.”
As Alicia turned to leave, Connie again started signing.
“Ooh, don’t quit your day job, Connie,” Alicia teased.
“You witch! There’ll be no beer for you!” Connie said, grinning.
Back at her own desk Alicia nodded a polite hello to a colleague at the next desk who was talking on the phone, then pulled out a well-worn file box from under her desk and sifted through its contents.
It’ll be two years tomorrow, and we’re still no closer to solving it.
Alicia came to Tommy’s statement. She knew it by heart. Not a day went by that she didn’t think about it.
He’d been hog-tied with tape the whole time, including over his eyes and mouth. He guessed that he’d been driven for an hour or more in the van, including a long stretch of time without stopping, the only noise the sound of cars and trucks.
Highway 99, or maybe the Trans-Canada? Those are only two of several possibilities, she thought, asking the same questions she’d asked herself repeatedly until her brain begged for them to be expunged, if only temporarily.
Once they’d arrived at their destination, Tommy was led into a building and put inside a trunk — he’d remembered hearing a lock snap shut. He wasn’t given any food or water. Nobody spoke to him, but he sometimes heard a dog barking. It sounded like a big dog. He’d lain there in his own urine and feces until he was taken out.
God, how could they have done what they did to an innocent eight-year-old kid? She went over it again in her mind. Blindfolded, he was led down a porch, across a yard and into another building. He was told to hold on to a bench, with his thumb underneath the surface. He remembered the sound of crunching bone and the pain that followed as he tried to scream. He’d obviously lost consciousness, because his next memory was of being back in the van. When it stopped, someone cut the tape from his ankles, then tossed him onto the road.
Forensics matched paint and scratch marks on the back of Jia’s car to a white Ford cargo van that had been stolen and abandoned. The interior had also been torched, so Forensics found nothing that could identify the culprits.
Alicia had also obtained copies of security footage from closed-circuit television cameras in the numerous locations where David had been sent with the ransom. Thousands of licence plates that appeared in the footage were checked out, as well as hundreds of pedestrians. Some had criminal records, but those leads eventually came to dead ends. Some pedestrians — who didn’t have criminal records — could be seen talking on cellphones. Could they have been doing countersurveillance? Most of them, too, were eventually cleared.
The unmarked station wagon she’d been driving was visible in some of the footage, though never close to where David was. Still, she cringed at the thought of having being spotted.
She appreciated the support Hawkins had given her. An internal investigation into the handling of the case had focused on possible ineptitude or overzealousness on her part, but Hawkins’s report had made it clear that Alicia was an extremely forthright, honest officer who followed policy as if it were gospel. Furthermore, he stated that he’d had a bird’s-eye view of all the surveillance vehicles and was absolutely certain that everyone had followed his orders explicitly. He also noted that the kidnappers had referred to the driver of the station wagon as male. Hawkins suggested that they had seen someone in a similar car and that Alicia was being falsely accused.
It was good of him to say this, but in all the camera footage there wasn’t another car that looked like the one Alicia had been driving. It had to be me. I know it … and so do David and Jia.
There was another issue that haunted Alicia. The kidnappers had told David they were making an example of him. An example to whom? Are they planning on doing more kidnappings? Maybe they intend to put other victims in touch with David to find out what would happen if they went to the police?
Alicia had hoped to make amends with David and Jia and tell them of her concern that the parents of other kidnapped kids might be coming to their door, but they had refused to talk to her or any other investigators.
Later she had been notified by Internal Affairs that the Chungs were suing the Force, and they had named her in particular. All investigators had then been ordered to stay clear of them.
Tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap. The noise repeated.
Alicia glared at her colleague. He was still holding the phone to his ear, but he appeared to be on hold; he was absentmindedly drumming his fingers on the desk.
“Cut that out!” Alicia snapped.
He looked at her in surprise.
“I can’t focus with you doing that!” she added.
The sight of my own whole, unmutilated fingers makes me lose focus — I sure as heck don’t need yours to remind me of my failure, too.