It was 6:00 p.m. Tuesday night when Jack, followed by Laura, drove past Linquist’s house. Halfway down the block, Jack saw Alicia sitting in the blue Chevy hatchback and groaned as he grabbed his phone and dialed. “Get the hell out of there!” He caught her startled look through the window as he drove past. “Follow me, we need to talk.”
Moments later, they were all parking at a convenience store. Laura got in the back of Jack’s SUV, gesturing for Alicia to get in the front.
“What’s going on?” Alicia looked at Jack. “You’re angry. What did I do?”
Jack sighed. “I’m not angry at you. I’m ticked off at myself. I should’ve known you wouldn’t know how to do surveillance.”
“What’re you talking about?” Alicia glanced down at her clothes. “I know how to fit in. I’m a trained undercover operator. I completed the course last month.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t teach you how to do surveillance. You were far too obvious back there.”
“No way I look like a cop! On the course in Halifax I made more dope buys than anyone —”
Jack put up his hand for her to stop. “No, you don’t look like a cop. Far from it — but that doesn’t matter to these guys. They’ve been around long enough not to go by anyone’s appearance. Telling me you know surveillance because you completed the undercover course is like saying you took a first-aid course so you’re qualified to do surgery. There’s a lot to learn, especially when it comes to the professional criminals we work on. Sitting in a car halfway down the block makes you stand out like a sore thumb. The least you could’ve done was slide over to the passenger seat to make it look like you were waiting for someone.”
Alicia looked crestfallen. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“How long were you there before we arrived?”
“Uh, about an hour. Maybe a bit more.”
“Sitting that long in the passenger seat wouldn’t have worked, regardless.” He caught Laura’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Linquist will be heated up. We better leave him alone for a couple of weeks.”
“For sure,” Laura agreed.
Alicia frowned.
“It’s okay,” Jack assured her. “Linquist isn’t an important target. He may even be clean at the moment. There’s lots of others I’d like to take a look at before deciding who to really go after.”
“You seem pretty certain that I was seen.”
“Not a hundred percent, but he’s been well schooled to watch for police surveillance. Everyone in Satans Wrath is heat conscious. If he did see you, he’ll be extra paranoid. It’s not worth the chance he’ll burn Laura’s or my vehicle, too. It’s better for us to select another target. Don’t worry, we have lots to choose from.”
“I’m sorry,” Alicia said, upset.
“You’ll learn,” Jack said, trying to sound upbeat.
“We all had to,” Laura added.
“To start with, you’re going to have to change your way of thinking,” Jack said. “You’re coming from a reactive section, where the crime has already happened. I don’t imagine you did much surveillance.”
“I’ve done some.”
“Laura and I do a lot. You need to look at things from a criminal’s point of view. Imagine you’re a criminal and you’re worried about being busted. Someone sitting in a car where they can see your house will make you suspicious. Same thing if a van starts parking on the street. Imagine that you take a walk around the neighbourhood or send out one of your kids to do it. You see someone in a car and glance in and see ballpoint pens stuck in the sun visor or takeout food containers on the back seat. What would you think?”
“I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure out you’ve got heat,” Alicia said.
“Exactly. You need to consider what you do through the criminal mindset.”
“It doesn’t help that the car you gave me is so plain,” Alicia said, glancing at the hatchback.
“That’s the idea,” Jack responded.
“In MCU we had a station wagon with a toddler seat and a sign on the back window that said Baby on Board.”
“That might be okay if it was only seen once,” Jack replied. “But the sign would stick in people’s minds. It’d be better without it.”
Alicia thought for a moment, then looked at Jack. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I feel stupid.”
He saw her eyes water. “It’s no big deal,” he said gruffly. “Like I said, we’ll go back to the office and select a new target.” But he couldn’t help thinking that if she cried so easily over one little mistake, she probably shouldn’t be working with them.
“You don’t understand,” Alicia sniffled. “Two years ago I blew another surveillance. Because of me, an eight-yearold kid had four of his fingers chopped off. That was the kidnapping I mentioned last night. The one that’s still unsolved.”
Okay, maybe I was wrong. This is a big deal.
“What happened?” Laura asked.
Alicia’s voice was shaky as she outlined the Chung kidnapping, including how the kidnappers had identified her vehicle.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said when she’d finished. “Until you mentioned it, I’d never heard about the kidnapping.”
“It never made the news, and the parents didn’t want anyone to know. They were under enough stress.”
“What a horrible thing for you to have to live with,” Laura said softly.
“I think about it every day,” Alicia admitted. “I keep the file box under my desk and I’ve read the reports and statements so many times … but I always hit the same dead ends. Same thing for all the footage I obtained. Traffic cameras aren’t allowed to record because of privacy laws, but I was lucky enough to find a couple of businesses with CCTV cameras where the plates on passing cars were visible. We identified some drivers as having criminal records, but none of those leads panned out.”
“During the kidnapping, didn’t you have Special O?” Jack asked. “They’re an elite unit that specializes in surveillance. Drug Section uses them a lot, so —”
“Yes, I know what Special O is. We did use them that day, but even they didn’t have the resources to cover what we needed. It started off in Queen Elizabeth Park. There are at least thirty-two exits vehicles could take leaving the park, never mind places where you could walk out on foot. We ended up using air surveillance, so everyone stayed back.” Her face soured. “Including me … but it was my car the bad guys saw.”
And you’ll live with that for the rest of your life. Jack changed the subject. “Last night when you were reading through our files, you looked like you were going to ask a question, but changed your mind. Was it about this case?”
“Uh, yes, but I was afraid of overstepping my bounds.”
“You want to compare the names you’ve collected to the names in our database?” Jack asked.
“Right, but after what you told me about the special access security clearance and protecting informants, I didn’t want to come across as obtuse. I thought I’d wait until we knew each other a little better.”
“My name’s Jack. My wife’s name is Natasha and we have two sons, Mike and Steve. If you feel you know me well enough, grab your file box and meet us at our office.”
Forty-five minutes later, Alicia walked into the Intelligence Unit carrying two large file boxes.
“Two?” Jack questioned. “I thought you said one.”
“One is mostly reports, statements from possible suspects with alibis, and alphabetical lists of every name we could collect. The other is maps of the areas we were in, including the owners of nearby houses, and USB flash drives with CCTV footage, as well as comparison footage.”
“Comparison footage?” Laura asked.
“It was rush hour when they had Mr. Chung going through the hoops. I wanted to see which vehicles regularly appeared in the vicinity at around that time each day so I could identify any ones that only showed up on the day I was burned.”
“Time consuming, but a good idea,” Jack said.
“Good idea, maybe, but nothing came of it,” she responded.
“I’ll sign in to a computer with my password to give you access to our database,” Jack said. “How many names do you have to check?”
“About seven thousand.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jack asked.
“No. Like I said, it was rush hour. I found one camera that caught plates on cars heading east onto the Trans-Canada. Not only that, we had a lot of surveillance teams, and I wanted to check out the areas where they’d parked. That included houses and apartment buildings. And particularly the area I was detailed to watch from,” she added glumly. “When you think about it, seven thousand is only a fraction of the number of people who would’ve been in all the different areas.”
Jack exhaled audibly. “Don’t get your hopes up. Odds are we’ll match some names, but they may not fit the profile you want.”
“I’m used to that,” Alicia replied. “We’d already identified several dozen people with criminal records, and none of those checked out, either.”
“One more reminder. If someone does match your list, you’ll still need to clear it with me before telling anyone or taking any action. Understood?”
“I understand.”
“You a good typist?”
“I can hold my own.”
“We should each be able to check about two names a minute, which works out to 360 names an hour. Divide that into seven thousand and it’ll take about twenty hours.”
“Ouch. I hadn’t done the math,” Alicia responded.
“You still have your day shifts to put in at MCU.” Jack paused. “Laura and I’ll keep working on it while you’re doing that. I’ll also have our secretary help.” He glanced around. “Let’s get started. We should be able to wrap it up by Thursday.”
“I — I don’t know what to say,” Alicia said. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank us for trying to put bad guys away,” Laura said. “It’s our job, same as yours. We’re on the same team.”
And a monster who chops off a kid’s fingers … I really want to put him away. Away someplace deep underground.