Chapter Five
Eric
Six hours. He’d spoken to Bree for the first time in months six hours ago. Now his stomach was a mass of knots, and he had a headache that could conquer New York. Eric washed a handful of aspirin and antacids down with a mouthful of warm coffee and said a prayer for relief. He used to enjoy the headaches Bree gave him, the way she’d turn his entire world upside-down and then right it with a burst of laughter. But opportunities to use that remedy were long gone.
The squad room was relatively empty. Adam Collingswood was conferring with Sergeant Oliver Mackie in Sex Crimes about a rape case that would be transferred to Homicide if the victim didn’t make it. It didn’t look good. They didn’t even have a name for her; she was officially listed as Jane Doe. Her assault in March matched two others that had occurred in the city since the new year started, on the twenty-first of each month. The only difference was Jane Doe had survived the initial encounter. April’s victim, Rayna Nash, had been found on the banks of the Red River. As terrible as another victim was, they were hoping she’d have some trace evidence that would help with the other three cases.
Maybe he was getting old. The very nature of his job wore at him. Not the serve and protect part; he’d do that as long as he was breathing. It was in his blood. But when he wasn’t in time to stop the beating, or the rape, or the attack, each case pinned itself to him like an invisible weight. It was getting harder to rise above the never-ending tide of shit.
Bree had been good for that too. For helping him take off the day and leave it at the office. For celebrating the victories, like when he could tell the victim the bad guy was caught and was never going to hurt anybody again, and for taking some of the sting out of the days when the villain of the piece walked away.
Eric gulped his coffee, hoping the burn would get his mind off Bree so he could concentrate. He had no idea what Forrester was doing, or why he’d need to get a message to Homicide. The vice-president of the Ice Road Warriors had just made overtures to the cops. The fact he’d done so in public—relatively speaking—was both scary and impressive.
Manitoba was a big territory with a small number of players. The number dropped substantially after the Nasty Boyz went down. Zane had gotten sloppy, and left a trail of evidence leading to his associates and everybody involved with them. Eric had been surprised to hear the Warriors weren’t implicated. Perhaps they were smarter than he gave them credit for.
The Ice Road Warriors weren’t the biggest boys on the block, but they filled the gaps the nationwide clubs missed. They’d seen their opening, and they took it. Bloodily. And they were holding it. Everybody knew there would be a time when the big boys pushed back. Nobody was looking forward to it, not in the WPS or the RCMP gangs unit, which coordinated with them when club activity occurred outside the city limits.
Adam was flipping through the surveillance photos when Eric came up behind him. “What are you looking for?” Eric asked.
“I got your text. You spoke to Bree? What happened? How is she?” Adam asked.
So much for not thinking of Bree anymore. Eric had set Bree aside to keep her out of his investigation. Adam had done it to support his partner. It was another black mark on Eric’s conscience. He’d alienated her from her family too. “She’s fine. She looked little tired.” She didn’t look sick, though. Maybe the meeting at CancerCare wasn’t about her. “Has she reconciled with your folks? Are they speaking again?” Eric asked. Surely his own partner would have told him if one of his parents was sick.
Adam shook his head. “No. They cut contact after things went down. You know my dad chose sides, and my mom went along for the ride. Bree sends birthday and holiday cards but they haven’t reached out once.”
“Shit,” Eric said. As a firefighter, Adam and Bree’s father was all about the brotherhood. Eric had suffered through more than one game day with John Sr., and even a slightly-positive comment about the opposition had resulted in a lecture about loyalty. When Eric and Bree had broken up, John Senior had blamed his daughter without knowing any of the details.
“Why?” Adam asked. “Did she say something about them?”
If it wasn’t a family matter Adam knew about, it should be up to Bree to share. “You need talk to her.”
“Shit, Parker, what did she say?”
“Call her, man.”
“Tell me!”
“She said she had a meeting at CancerCare.” The biggest cancer treatment facility in the province.
Then Adam smiled. “Is there something funny about this?” Eric asked.
His partner had the good sense to bring his expression back to neutral. “No, nothing’s funny. In fact, it is sad, but it’s not about Bree. Do you remember Allison Grey?” Adam asked.
That name was a blast from the past. Allison and Eric hadn’t crossed paths much since Bree had left him. She and Allison had met as freshmen and were still best friends. Rumour had it Allison had backed away from criminal stuff and was concentrating more on family law these days. Eric worked with her husband, Tyson, often though. “Why?”
“She has brain cancer. Tyson was on my hockey team this past winter. He told me. If Bree is helping, she’d call Allie family. Shit, if she is helping, it can’t be good.” Adam’s smile disappeared completely.
“So we’ll know where to find your sister if we need her,” Eric said.
“Why would we need her?”
Evidently Adam hadn’t gotten to the interesting photos yet. “Keep flipping.”
He knew when Adam got there. Eric saw it in his eyes before the cursing started. “Why the fuck is Forrester hitting on my sister? Is she okay?”
In his office, Dutch hung up the phone and came to the door. “What’s up with Forrester and Bree?”
“I don’t know,” Eric told his boss. “According to Bree, he approached her to get a message to Homicide. She said she wasn’t in contact with anybody in the unit anymore, and he believed her.” As he said it aloud, it became even more worrisome. Forrester had no reason to contact them. There was no way a motorcycle club would invite the police into their business. They’d handle anything that came up on their own. On the infinitesimal chance Forrester was thinking of informing on his club, he wouldn’t have done it in such a clumsy way.
“This makes it complicated,” Dutch said.
“What’s complicated? We find him and tell him to leave Bree alone,” Adam argued.
“How do we explain how we found out he contacted Bree without making her out to be a liar? Do we want to put her in that situation with the Warriors? Or do we want to tell him what kind of surveillance he’s been under?” It was a surprising stand for the inspector to take. He had a stack of open cases suspected to lead back to the biker club, but no definitive proof to tie them to anything. If it had been anybody else, Eric could see him using Bree as a wedge to get in there. But not with her history with them.
“What are we going to do then?” Adam asked.
They ended up doing nothing. Dutch got a call from Sergeant Mackie, telling him Jane Doe had succumbed to her injuries. Moments later the forensics lab called in, linking trace evidence on Rayna Nash to both the first murdered woman in January and Jane Doe.
They officially had a serial killer in Winnipeg.
