Detective Sergeant Tragedy 'Dee' McMaster frowned as she wheeled her beat-up hunter green Triumph TR-6 through the smoke and dust and into the already crowded street in front of her, pulling up behind a massive fire engine before slamming it into park.
"Holy shit," she exclaimed in a husky alto to no one in particular as she peered through her windshield at the carnage stretched out beyond the emergency vehicles clustered tightly in front of her low-slung car. "Did I just drive into fucking Bosnia or what??"
Her police radio abruptly crackled to life, tearing the detective's attention away from the destruction.
"Blue 21, this is dispatch. Respond," a tinny voice hissed from the radio's quarter-sized speaker.
"Blue 21," she said into the unit's handset in response as she lifted it to her mouth. "Go ahead, dispatch."
"The rest of the taskforce is still enroute to the incident scene, detective. You are advised to stand by until significant members arrive to take charge of the situation."
Dee snorted softly as she hung the handset back onto its clip without acknowledging.
"Fuck that. If they think I'm going to sit here on my ass and wait for Simpkins to show up just so she can walk around and look important, they've got another thing coming." Kicking open the door, she stepped out, closing the door behind her as she jerked her coat, a battered leather brown bomber jacket straight over her shoulders and shoulder holster. With a sigh, she made sure her police ID was clearly visible on her belt before she stepped forward, hands in her jacket pockets, to survey the damage.
Everywhere the lean detective looked there was an emergency vehicle of some kind. There, nearly hidden behind a gaggle of black and whites from the PD were several sets of grim bloodhounds and their masters in dark blue combat fatigues, the handlers wearing heavy flak jackets and equipment belts slung over broad and brooding shoulders, looking grim as they searched in the rubble for survivors. And over there were at least five fire engines, including a ladder truck and a pumper, their hoses pulsating arteries filled with cooling water as struggling firemen, faces coated with smoke grime and dust, desperately worked to quell the surging flames that licked in a handful of still-standing buildings surrounding the scene.
Mixed liberally with the rest were the ambulances loading their morbid cargo of body bags, the attendants as dirty and desperate as the firefighters and the police officers as they perspired heavily despite the cool of late October, trying to ignore the stench of charred flesh and seared bone. Indeed it was a scene ripped from CNN's coverage of the Yugoslav wars. All they needed now was a squad of blue helmeted peacekeepers from the UN to make it picture perfect.
Even the three helicopters flying close overhead suited the scenario's grim reality, their thudding blades cutting through the air with apocalyptic regularity. One of the three was a police helicopter, another an air ambulance, waiting to carry survivors to Foothills Hospital and one from a local news station, CFCN, cameras rolling as they panned over the carnage. It didn't surprise her a bit when, at first glimpse, the cameras looked like gun pods as they swung hungrily over the burnt scene, hunting for more victims.
That sight was enough to make Dee grimace tightly. It wasn't that she hadn't ever seen such destruction. Quite the opposite, actually. Both as a former member of the RCMP and CSIS, Canada's intelligence agency, she had been in more than one situation that had gone south, resulting in bodies everywhere. But none of those situations had been on Canadian soil, and none of them had the sheer scope and starkness of what had happened here. And, damnit, it wasn't the first time she had been called to face such obliteration.
The war that seemed to have erupted on Calgary's formerly quiet and peaceful streets had quickly prompted action by local politicians. Within hours of the first incident in what would become a veritable list of battle sights, the mayor had formed a special taskforce comprised of Calgary's police department's best and brightest. Their specialties ranged from Homicide, like Dee, all the way to Vice as the mayor attempted to pool the city's finest crime solvers in an attempt to discover who was behind the wave of destruction shaking the city.
That done, the mayor had then appointed Anna Simpkins, the city councilor responsible for police activities, to head the taskforce. Dee chuckled as she thought of that, stepping around another fire engine to approach the thick line of yellow police tape forming the scene's perimeter.
Simpkins, of course, had turned out to be a complete political hack, worried about nothing other than how good she looked on TV and her political career and ambition. The taskforce had quickly gone from a functional organism to a platform for her to primp and preen on, constantly calling news conferences over the least little thing just to get her face on camera. Such maneuverings had served only to steal momentum from any investigation the taskforce attempted to launch, miring it in political manipulation and pandering. Within the first week half the taskforce deserted, returning to their regular assignments in frustration.
Dee, however, wasn't so easily put off. She had dealt with plenty of frustration in her earlier incarnations as a RCMP officer and a CSIS operative. Besides, there was something to this thing, something ... sinister. Disturbing enough to pull her to it, iron to a lodestone. She was going to find out what was going on, if it was the last thing she ever did!
First there was that office explosion downtown, the one that Forensics and the fire department both claimed must have been set off by a gas leak of some kind, judging by the amount of destruction and the plotted trajectory of the blast fragments. Of course, that explosion matched a rash of similar explosions that apparently happened within a half hour of each other all over the city. Unfortunately the subsequent investigation couldn't uncover the exact cause since the destruction of the floors in question was so heavy that no telltale clues had been left behind to point the finger in any one direction.
That prompted the formation of the taskforce, which quickly uncovered a scene of devastation at the Alec Arms hotel, within easy striking distance of the downtown office building, its destruction apparently coming a few minutes before the string of explosions that subsequently rocked the city. Further digging had yielded ghost files on a number of other incidents that had taken place before the hotel and the office, their contents, including crime scene photographs, oddly missing.
While the taskforce contemplated the strangeness of the ghost files, cross-referenced with fire department reports and Forensic Crime Scene Investigation reports, the next big incident occurred, resulting in heavy destruction in a house in the southeast quadrant of the city. The house that was completely leveled by what looked like yet another gas explosion.
No bodies this time, unlike the office building which had nearly fifty. The thing that had stuck in Dee's mind, however, wasn't the lack of bodies. It was the fact that the building's shell had somehow remained relatively intact, as if the walls themselves had managed to contain the explosion that had completely devastated the interior.
After the house, there had been a relative lull in big time destruction, as if the arsonist, terrorist or whomever was responsible for the explosions decided to take a bit of a break. And Dee was thoroughly convinced that no gas explosion was responsible for any of the destruction that she had seen.
Of course, this was also the point in the taskforce's existence that it began to fall apart, as its members became more and more frustrated with Simpkins' posturing and political maneuvering. As smaller incidents, more reflective of gang-like violence, continued to show up on police and fire department investigative blotters, the taskforce lost direction and drive.
But Dee didn't. And so she was perfectly positioned to jump back into the fray when the penthouse floor of the downtown Sheraton was obliterated nearly two months after the destruction of the house. She was still sorting through the mountain of physical evidence Forensics had gathered there, including a number of rather badly damaged bodies, when, a mere 24 hours later, this happened. Dee slowly shook her head.
"Looks like the war is back on," she mused to herself with a frown, taking the line of police tape in one hand to lift it out of the way.
But before she could hoist the thick yellow plastic up and out of her path, a man's voice called out from behind her.
"Detective McMaster?"
She paused and looked over her shoulder to find a uniformed officer, clad in the swat combat gear that all of the onsite officers were wearing, complete with flak jacket, dark blue combat fatigues and automatic rifle. The name patch on his left breast read 'Peters', the insignia on his sleeve marking him as a constable in the PD.
"Yes, constable?" she replied, slowly easing the tape back into place as she turned to face the uniformed officer.
Peters pulled his heavy helmet off, along with its fireproof inner lining that had covered his head and neck and most of his face. He then flashed her a quick smile before he drew a heavy notebook from a utility pouch on his belt.
"I'm Constable Harry Peters, commander of the rapid response team that first arrived on the scene. I'm assuming by your presence, ma'am, that the mayor's taskforce is about to descend on this crime scene and take possession of it. Would you like what CSI and the onsite officers have gathered so far?"
"Hmmm," Dee said in the way of a reply as she swung her eyes back over what could only be described as a battle scene. The constable was right; the taskforce were coming in here to take this thing over from them. Although not for the benefit of the investigation.
"Yeah," she said after a moment's thought. To hell with Simpkins and her bunch of sycophants. "Why don't you give me what you fellas have found so far, Harry?" A light grin touched her face. "Although I suspect somebody's going to tell me that it's another one of those so-called 'gas explosions'."
Peters grinned tightly as he flipped open his notebook, already filled with several pages of cramped notes.
"Yeah, so says the FD." The grin evaporated as he looked down at his notebook. "But, this time, not only do we have officers that arrived on the scene to catch the last few minutes of the incident, we actually have civilian eyewitnesses. Witnesses that say some sort of fire fight ripped this place apart about a half hour or so ago."
"Fire fight, huh?" Dee couldn't help but smile fiercely. It was in complete confirmation of every suspicion she had about this whole damn affair! Finally, a little hard data that they could rely on. And some gosh damn witnesses to boot!
"I'll need to talk to both the officers and your witnesses. Where are they?"
"The witnesses are over there, with a couple of constables." Peters pointed to a knot of uniformed officers standing closely to a trio of obviously terrified people being looked at by a pair of paramedics. There were two elderly Asians, a man and a woman, and a young white man, maybe in his late teens or early twenties. As Dee let her eyes scan over them, she could see that the young man was literally trembling with reaction as the paramedic looking him over took his blood pressure.
"The couple own a corner store right over there." Again Peters' pointing finger captured Dee's attention as he indicated one of the shops lining the street, its windows shattered, glass liberally spread all over the sidewalk in front of the tiny store as smoke lazily curled out of the seared interior.
"They had a clear view of the entire intersection and watched the whole thing." The pointing finger dropped. "The kid claims he was just passing through and caught the last bit of it, before the wall of fire appeared and wiped everything out."
Dee's eyebrow climbed at that as she looked over the notes that Peters had just handed her.
"Wall of fire?" She looked up at him. "And the FD is good with that?"
Peters shrugged.
"My guys saw the same thing. But the FD won't confirm ..."
"Or deny." Dee finished his sentence with a tight grimace. "Shit, what a surprise that is. Body count?"
"Pegged at fifty, for now." Peters looked back over his shoulder at the ambulances and their soot-covered attendants who were lugging their grim burdens out of the blast area. "Some of the bodies were so charred by this 'wall of fire', they were barely recognizable as human." He frowned. "But a number of them showed massive blunt force trauma, like something big and fast-moving smashed into them before they could get out of the way."
Again the pointing finger indicated one of the buildings surrounding the intersection, its southern face completely caved in by something huge that jutted its blackened bulk out of the rubble.
"The remains of two cars, according to some of the Forensics guys, twisted into what could only be described as some sort of metal giant, complete with legs and arms." Peters shook his head in disbelief. "They've already recovered hair and skin samples from both arm ends. And, if that doesn't take the cake, a handful of the bodies were literally sliced into segments, as if a giant butcher's knife had carved them up as neat as you please, before they could get out of the way. No gas explosion can do that!"
"Not one that I've seen." Dee jutted out her low jaw as she mulled the facts over in her mind, combining them with and comparing them to the information they had already gathered from the first explosions.
"I want a copy of your notes, constable," she then said, handing the notebook back to Peters. "And to talk to members of your unit that saw the tail-end of this fur ball ASAP. In the meantime, I want to talk to any other investigators that might be on the scene before their memory gets cold. Any other detectives on site?"
"Yeah." Peters nodded as he slid the notebook back into its pouch. "Detectives Winters and Millet. Got here just about five minutes before you did."
"Huh?" Dee's frown deepened. "Vice detectives? What the hell are they ...? Never mind. Where are they?"
"Over there, talking to those paramedics."
"Great. Good work, Peters. I'll chat with you and your men in a sec." She reached up and gave the constable a quick slap on the arm before slipping past him to lift up the police tape and step beneath it. She then pulled on a pair of latex gloves as she strode towards the two detectives Peters had pointed out.
The taller of the two, a gray-haired 14 year veteran of the Calgary PD by the name of Hank Millet, was frowning as one of the paramedics explained the difference between flash burns and hot metal burns when Dee stepped in behind him, clearing her throat.
"You boys are a bit off the beaten track, aren't you?" she asked lightly and both Vice detectives looked up with expressions of surprise.
"Oh. McMaster," the gray-haired detective replied before he turned to look over the devastation. "You know, I'd swear that if I didn't know the military had moved the PPCLI out of Fort Calgary, I'd say a couple of their artillery shells did this. Sounds more like something the RCMP should be looking into, don't you think?"
"Yeah," the other Vice officer, a detective by the name of Mack Winters, agreed with a frown on his craggy face. "I think even the mayor's taskforce is out of their league on this one!" His stylishly combed hair was still blonde, despite being somewhere lost in his forties and he was immaculately dressed in a dark double-breasted Italian suit, as always.
Dee looked from Winters back to Millet before shrugging non-committedly.
"Hey, you know none of us make the call on these sorts of things, gents. I just go where Dispatch tells me to." Her eyes narrowed. "However, why the hell is Vice here? Surely you don't suspect Prostitution might be involved, do you?"
"Ha, ha." Millet grimaced. "And who said Homicide had no sense of humor? Actually one of the witnesses is one of ours. The kid: he's a small time dealer in weed and crack, with a bit of crank on the side. He was on his way to a custom sell when he found your little war zone here. We were on his tail when all hell broke loose."
Then it was Millet's turn to narrow his eyes.
"Speaking of which, where's Duff? Drinking his way through another shift? I'm tellin' ya, Mac, you should get your partner to just do the stuff intravenously. He'd kill himself a helluva lot faster that way!"
Dee sighed. It was a well-known fact around the squad room and across the department that the hatchet-faced detective assigned as her partner was a raving alcoholic. Despite having his brains virtually pickled, however, Cal Duffy was easily one of the best detectives in all of Western Canada. Hence his presence along with his partner on the taskforce. It was said that he could, even two sheets to the wind, figure out what a criminal mastermind was going to do even before the criminal did!
Unfortunately for both Dee and the department, Duffy spent a good deal of time firmly in the bottom of a bottle, off-duty or on. If he had just an iota less skill in solving crime, he would've been fired a long time ago!
"Working on his one hundredth martini down at Callahan's, I suspect," she answered flatly, looking past the two Vice detectives at another string of body bags that were making their way out of the war zone and towards the ambulances.
"Seriously, Mac, you need to dump that guy," Winters bluntly suggested with a shake of his head. "He's just going to end up sinking your career along with his, you know. Apply for another fucking partner, for shit's sake! This Lone Ranger bullshit is going to get you seriously dead one of these days."
"And you're telling me something that I don't already know?" Dee deadpanned, looking back at Winters before sighing again. "My application went in at the end of last week. Hopefully something will shake loose pretty soon." She shrugged. "But I'm not holding my breath. With all the shit that's been hitting the fan recently, the taskforce is stretched pretty thin. With the Triads moving into town and now all this ..."
Without warning she was interrupted by a rather surprised shout from one of the paramedics that was standing over what, at first, had looked like a couple of bodies burned together. With nothing less than stunned amazement on his face, he looked over his shoulder at his colleagues.
"Holy shit! We've got a survivor here!"
Dee frowned as she looked over the shoulders of the three paramedics that worked frantically on the man on the ground, still curled into the fetal position they had found him in. From the blood that still oozed from his ears and nose, they had diagnosed some sort of brain injury. But, miraculously, that seemed to be the only thing that was wrong with the guy, unlike the charred remains that still lay scattered all around him. It was almost as if the wall of fire that had burned the others had managed to avoid him completely.
"He doesn't look so good," Millet observed wryly from where he was standing just behind Dee, looking over her shoulder as she looked over the paramedics'.
"Helluva lot better than all his crispy buddies," Dee pointed out, a frown on her face. Both Millet and Winters snorted at her dry observation.
But before either of them could add to it, a second shout rang through the air, a third directly on its heels. The second came from another knot of paramedics, one of them standing as she waved a trolley over, a second survivor laying at their feet as the paramedics worked over it.
The third came from a group of firemen in rescue gear that had been working through one of the collapsed buildings. As several of them levered chunks of rubble and debris out of the way, the rest worked frantically to extricate what looked to be a third survivor, impossibly protected from the wall of fire by the collapse of the building around it. The shout had been a call for the paramedics.
"Well, I'll be damned!" Millet muttered as the air ambulance that had been hovering expectantly overhead, abruptly began to descend in response to a radioed summons by the paramedics on the ground. "More survivors!"
It took the better part of an hour for the fire department's rescue team to completely dig the last survivor free, a young woman that looked like she had been put through a meat grinder, her visible skin covered with a multitude of cuts and bruises. That would be consistent with how it appeared she had been trapped in the building.
According to the PD's CSI and Forensics, as well as the fire department's arson and projectiles investigation team, it looked like the force of whatever explosion triggered the fireball that swept the intersection had literally punched her back through the building's outside wall. The wall had then collapsed on top of her after she came to a rather abrupt rest on the inside.
Somehow none of the big chunks from the falling wall had tumbled in onto her. Despite her overall battered appearance, she was relatively unhurt, sporting only a couple of broken ribs, the contusions and cuts making up the bulk of her injuries.
The second survivor, a tall, rather powerful-looking man, was found lying face down on the ground unconscious, also bleeding from the nose and ears. Again that seemed to testify to some sort of head injury. Until the paramedics could get him to Calgary General, or Foothills and get some CAT scans, MRIs or x-rays to see the extent of the internal damage, it would be hard to tell. But, like the curled-up man, other than the blood there didn't seem to be any other injury.
Regardless they weren't getting anything out of any of them until they regained consciousness. If ever and that was a pretty big if! In the meantime, Dee had three witnesses to interrogate, having chatted with Peters' men during the time the FD dug out survivor number three.
"Millet," she said as she rejoined the two Vice detectives as they conferred with a number of uniformed officers that had just arrived a few minutes ago to transfer the witnesses back to the station house.
"I'm going to take your boy downtown with the Asian couple and run him through the ringer, if you don't mind. I want to see if we can shake something loose on the actual start of the explosion." She looked up from her notebook to look at the gray-haired detective.
"Fair enough." Millet nodded. "Just hand him over to Vice and Narcotics when you're done. We pulled enough BC's best and home-cooked crank off the kid to put him away for a very long time. I just want to put the final nail in the coffin and see if we can get a confession out of him."
"No worries." A half smile appeared on her face. "By the expression on his face, the guy must have unloaded in his shorts. Just mention bringing him back here to make some identifications and I think you'll find that he'll cooperate to the fullest extent of his capabilities in exchange for not actually bringing him back here."
"Nice." Both Millet and Winters grinned at the suggestion. "That'll work for sure. And you'll have our report on what we saw as well, first thing in the morning."
"Great. Thanks, fellas." Dee turned away as the two Vice detectives moved off, intent on returning to their vehicle. "Now, to get that kid down to the station!"