The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2) Read online

  She wavered. “I … I am the child who was found in the cradle, but I have no recollection of the event, nor of my life preceding the event.”

  He didn’t blink. Not a thing changed in his face. It gave her an odd rush of relief at having gotten it off her chest, as if handing this information over to him lifted some of the dark weight she’d been shouldering in secret. This had to be how her suspects felt on the other end of her interrogation table when they finally confessed to what they’d been trying to hide from police.

  “And you’re certain?”

  Angie blinked. “You mean, am I certain that I am the cradle kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “I … from what I understand, from what I’ve been told, yes.” Her brain reeled in a totally new direction. This was something she had not thought of.

  “And you say that the cradle child’s DNA is likely in this box?”

  She nodded. “Her blood is on the teddy bear and the dress. There could be hairs, too. She had—has—the same color hair as me. I mean, if it was me, it’s my hair. And I have the scar on my mouth—same as in the photos.”

  “To be a hundred percent certain, we should take a fresh biological sample from you before you leave. We’ll compare it against the DNA contained in the evidence. Is this acceptable to you? I can have my tech provide you with our contract, which includes a full disclosure statement and the relevant privacy clauses.”

  Anxiety twisted through her belly. “Yeah. Sure, yes. I do want to be certain.” A shadow moved in the corner of her eye. Angie’s attention shot to the monitor on the wall that showed the underwater footage. She stared as an elastic, amorphous thing stirred up a cloud of silt and grainy detritus, expanding to smother the cage, making it disappear from view. Tentacles came into view as it then contracted to squeeze itself through one of the small square gaps in the cage wiring. Octopus. Once inside the cage it expanded again, and a cloud of white maggotlike organisms erupted and squiggled wildly away. The octopus smothered the white object inside like a blanket.

  She leaned sharply forward. “What is that?”

  He turned to the screen. “Ah.” He smiled as he wheeled closer to the monitor. “Giant Pacific octopus. Come to feed on the porcine flesh being secured to the seabed by the cage. This is part of our underwater taphonomy study being conducted in conjunction with Dr. Karen Schelling at Simon Fraser University.” He turned to face Angie. “She’s an entomologist who—”

  “I know who Dr. Schelling is. She often gives talks to law enforcement. I’ve been to one of her lectures on what insects do to corpses.”

  “Well, she’s trying to learn more about the rates of decomposition in various marine environments. This is her equivalent of an underwater body farm. Except we can’t put human donors out there in the open water, so we use pigs fresh from the butcher to approximate decomp rates on human bodies. Underwater taphonomy is a field a lot less studied than taphonomy on land, and there are so many more variables.”

  “So this is a live feed? From out there?” Angie tilted her chin toward the bay beyond his window where a series of docks led out into the water. At the end of one of the longer docks was a small building being lashed by wind and rain.

  “Correct. Karen, however, is based at SFU on the mainland, but she can operate her underwater cameras remotely from anywhere in the world. I have a feed here, but anyone can log on to the project via the Internet and watch live.”

  A chill crept into Angie’s bones as she regarded the octopus now feeding on the dead pig trapped underwater in the cage. She thought of that little shoe on the news and imagined a child lying on that seabed instead, being consumed by sea lice and crabs and octopuses and fish. The chill in her bones turned to ice, and a strange pressure filled her lungs. Clearing her throat, she said, “I … I should probably get back to work. I apologize for the rush, but I’m on a fixed schedule at the moment.”

  His gaze ticked briefly to her uniform. “Understood.” He reached across his desk to press an intercom button on his phone. “Maryanne, could you bring Officer Pallorino one of our contracts to sign and take her through to the lab for a buccal swab and blood sample.”

  “On my way,” came a woman’s voice.

  Jacob Anders released the button and said to Angie, “When did you learn that you were the cradle child?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  Something acute and unreadable entered his eyes, as if he were seeing her anew, recalibrating his initial assessments of her. It made her uneasy. He was probably going to run his own background check on her as soon as the door shut behind her.

  “How soon might we have results?” she said.

  “I can expedite things if it’s urgent, but it will depend on how well that evidence was packaged and stored. While DNA is incredibly resilient and can last thousands of years if buried a few feet below ground, or even a few hundred thousand years if frozen in ice, any exposure to heat, sunlight, water, or oxygen will have degraded it. And the more degraded the DNA, the more complicated and lengthy the lab work. Sometimes the decay makes it unworkable. I’ll give you a call and an idea of timelines once we’ve made a full assessment of the evidence.”

  “Fair enough.”

  A knock sounded the door. It opened, and in came the purple-haired pixie, a file clutched in her hand. Angie got to her feet.

  “Thank you again, Dr. Anders, for—”

  “That’s Jacob to you,” he said with a smile as he wheeled out from behind his desk. He offered his hand.

  Angie shook it, sensing once more that peculiar combination of power and finesse in his grip.

  “My pleasure.” His smile deepened. It exposed his incisors. It put light into his pale-gray eyes. And those eyes reminded her of a wolf. Cunning and watchful.

  CHAPTER 19

  Driving back to the station, Maddocks replayed for Holgersen the interview with Sophia Tarasov. Holgersen fiddled to free a nicotine gum chiclet from its packaging as he listened. Once he’d liberated his tablet of gum, he popped it into his mouth and said, “So, Vladivostok, eh? Jeezus, you sure I can’t smoke in here, boss?”

  “When are you going to stop asking?”

  He grinned around the green wad of gum between his teeth. “When it stops annoying you.”

  “What do you know about Vladivostok?”

  “It’s about eighty klicks north of the North Korean border—a hub for secondhand Jap cars. And Ruskie king crab, most of it poached and sold via South Korea and China to the US market.”

  Maddocks shot Holgersen a hot, fast look.

  “What? Jeezus, you’s like Pallorino. Thinks I knows nothing. I knows stuff, okay? I got interests.”

  Maddocks eyed him a second longer before returning his attention to the wet road and traffic. “Go on.”

  “I’s also seen a picture of ink like Tarasov described—a light-blue crab. It’s a thing for a group of the Ruskie crab Mafia.

  “Crab Mafia? That’s a thing?”

  “Sure it’s a thing. Everyone knows.”

  “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

  Holgersen shrugged. “Anyone who’s in the seafood industry or who invests in it knows. I’s from fishing folk—my folk all know. My great-gramps fought with the Ruskies in the Resistance during World War II, when the Krauts occupied the far north of Norway. See?” He made as if his hands were scales weighing a balance between the two. “Fishing, criminals. Ruskies. Like I says, I got interests—parta my background.”

  Maddocks threw Holgersen another look. “Your great-grandfather was Norwegian?”

  “Yep.”

  “Guess that explains the name Kjel Holgersen.”

  “Yep.” Holgersen turned to look out of the rain-streaked window and drummed his fingers on his bony knee. “My gramps and pops was both direct from Norway. They came over to Canada after my gramma died—they had relatives in what used to be a Norwegian fishing community way up the north coast, above Bella Bella, just shy of the Alaskan border. Wanted to start
over and all that. I remember my gramps from when I was little. He told us stories about the Ruskies up near Lapland—guess I’s been interested since then. Fishing. Ruskies.”

  “Who was us?”

  “What?”

  “You said he ‘told us’ stories.”

  “Oh … no, just me I guess,” he said quickly. “And my pops. The moms wasn’t real interested.”

  Maddocks detected the almost imperceptible shift in Holgersen’s tone and body language—he’d let slip something and was covering up. It piqued Maddocks’s curiosity—if you understood the motive, you understood the man. “So that’s where you’re from, then, north of Bella Bella?” he prodded.

  His partner opened the window to a sudden blast of cold air, spat his gum out into the street, and wound up the window. A diversion tactic.

  “Yeah, so, Vladivostok,” he continued as if the personal exchange had never occurred. “Going to Vladivostok to ask about poached crab is like going to Colombia to ask about cocaine. You gets your head chopped off, or your house is firebombed, or you gets gunned down in the street. You got all these abandoned and illegal pirate boats in the harbor there. Some is used for the gray fishing fleet—full of forged documentation and shit but condoned by Soviet authorities as legit, or the Ruskie officials turn a blind eye for some good vodka and a few hookers. But the black fleet—now thems the real pirates. Crew could be from anywheres—Indonesia, China, Russia, Sudan. The black ships are registered in places like Cambodia, Somalia. But both the black and the gray crab harvests go the same route, basically. Live crab hauled from the Sea of Japan is transferred from a fishing vessel to a legit cargo vessel and taken to South Korea.”

  He groped again in his pocket for his gum. The guy never stopped fidgeting. Like it was physically impossible for him to be still. Holgersen cursed as his green gum wad popped from its packaging to the floor. He bent around his seat belt, groping on the floor of the passenger side.

  “Hah! Bastards, these packages.” He wiped the wad with his thumb and stuck it in his mouth.

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Maddocks said. “That the barcode girls could have traveled the same route as poached crab? They were smuggled with seafood imports?”

  “Sounds like, from what Tarasov told you. A while back there was a bust in Seattle—a US seafood distributor was found with a warehouse filled with king crab marked as having come from China. But it was illegal Russian crab, routed via South Korea and then through China, where it was repackaged and got a from-China stamp. The US seafood distributor claimed he didn’t know the crab’s origin, and the prosecutor had nothing on him. Whole thing was dropped. Happens all the time.” He scratched his head and chuckled. “Crab laundering. Through China.”

  Maddocks said nothing. His brain was racing. It actually did fit with the route Tarasov had described. He pulled up at a red light.

  “Like money laundering,” Holgersen reiterated. “You get it?”

  “Yes, for Chrissakes, I get it. We need to run the crab tat that Hansen sketched for us through the gang insignia databases.”

  “Yeah. My bet is if we start looking at what crab or seafood imports came into the Port of Vancouver from China or South Korea over the past coupla years, we might nail our ship. But tracing back—now that’s gonna be a big international kinda job, and those Ruskies are full of fake documents from nonexistent government entities. They don’t even have a definition for organized Russian crime, it’s so tangled into government.”

  “Your father still in the fishing business?” Maddocks said, circling back to whatever Holgersen might have been hiding with his slip earlier.

  Holgersen measured Maddocks with his gaze. “No,” he said slowly. “You knows how it goes with them old resource-based communities—fishing industry in my hometown was decimated by international fishing practices and open-water salmon farms. My pops lost his job. Whole fucking place died. Virtually everyone took off—like a ghost town up there now.”

  “Where’s your dad now—the rest of your family?”

  Holgersen gave a dismissive shrug and changed the subject. “Rounds and about. And you know what else? Tarasov just handed us Sabbonnier and Camus on a plate. If Tarasov testifies that Camus and Sabbonnier was witnessed in this holding place, and that’s where they procured the six girls from that big hooded dude, then that pimp bitch and her bodyguard are going so dooooown, man.” He made a sliding motion with his hand.

  Maddocks turned into the station lot. “She’s not testifying. But we do have her statement. We can use that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told her she wouldn’t have to testify.” He parked, checked his watch. Almost 10:30 a.m.

  Was Angie going to swallow her probation and come into work at eleven?

  The thought made him edgy. But right now he needed to brief Flint on the breakthrough with Sophia Tarasov. Holgersen’s theory about the crab was also worth running up the flagpole. If there was anything to it, and given Camus’s allegations about a Russian link to the Hells Angels, this case wasn’t going to last long in the MVPD’s hands. Whatever agency asserted jurisdiction, Maddocks was determined to keep his finger in. For the girls, all younger than his own daughter.

  For Sophia Tarasov, who was so damn brave.

  And yeah, for Ginny. Maybe this was slightly misplaced, but Maddocks needed justice, retribution, for his kid. In his mind it would balance the scales—he owed his daughter after the Baptist case had nearly cost her life. This is where the Baptist case had led him. He was going to see it all the way through.

  Which reminded him—he had to take Ginn to her appointment this afternoon, and he’d promised her a dinner date after. He exited the vehicle with Holgersen, beeped the lock. Drawing his collar up against the blowing rain, he strode toward the station building, his partner’s long legs easily matching his gait.

  “If them other barcode girls start talking, too,” Holgersen said, “we might still be able to convince Tarasov to testify down the road.”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you start running the sketch of that crab ink through the databases, see if we can positively ID it as Russian crab Mafia insignia.” Maddocks reached for the door handle. “And check out the gang intelligence databases—see what else you can dig up on the Vladivostok connection. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I’ve looped Flint in.”

  As Maddocks entered the station, Holgersen hung back, stepping under the eaves for a proper smoke. Maddocks was once more assailed by the notion that the odd detective was studying and judging him, using his speech and nicotine habit as a smokescreen. And a buffer to whatever he was hiding.

  CHAPTER 20

  Angie bought a coffee down the road from the station, and after pulling into the MVPD parking lot, she sat in her car for a moment, gathering up her spine to run the gauntlet, because she could see Holgersen and Harvey Leo from homicide taking a smoke break outside the entrance along with some junior detective whose name she could not recall. She checked her watch—10:56 a.m. She couldn’t delay any longer.

  Day one, Pallorino.

  Only three hundred and sixty-four more to go.

  Stick it out, and you can avail yourself of exclusive law enforcement databases.

  Flipping down the visor mirror, she smoothed her hair back, tightened the bun at the nape of her neck, and reached for her coffee. She got out of the Nissan and shut the door, forgetting her uniform hat. Irritated, she opened the back door, snagged the hat off the back seat, and swung her door closed. Hat in one hand, coffee in the other, she strode purposefully toward the MVPD entrance, wind cool against her face, determination fierce in her stomach.

  “Palloreeeno, hey, how goes?” Holgersen said, coming forward from under the eaves with a big smile that showed the gap between his front teeth. “Welcome back. I tried to call yous—left a coupla messages—”

  “Sorry. Been busy.” She returned his smile with a grimace of her own. All she could think about was how he’d taken her r
ole on the barcode girls investigation, how he’d briefly been her junior partner in sex crimes and was now working hand in hand with Maddocks, who was being positioned for a management role in homicide. It rankled. She shot a quick nod toward Detective Leo and to the young plainclothes with him.

  “Nice duds there, Pallorino,” Leo said, taking a long drag on his cigarette and blowing out a stream of smoke. “You look just the same as you did on your first day as a rookie.” He took another slow drag, his eyes holding hers. “Well, almost the same. Too bad we can’t turn back time and erase the wrinkles to match the beat cop outfit, eh? Wonder if mine would still fit me. So where they got you working now? Traffic control? Parking tickets?”

  “Missed you, too, Leo,” Angie ground out through gritted teeth. “And I doubt you’d fit into yours—you’ve put a few kilos around that girth since you wore it to Hash’s funeral. Guess it’s the whiskey, eh?” She turned her back on him and reached for the handle of the glass door.

  “Social media.” He chuckled darkly. “Now there’s a thing. Lone-horse, hot-headed Pallorino who doesn’t play nice with others is now the sweet smiling face of the MVPD, bridging gaps with the public, helping da boys in blue be social?”

  She stalled dead in her tracks, then spun abruptly and took two fast strides toward the old detective. The steel toe of her boot caught against a piece of paving. She stumbled, flailing toward Leo as she tried to regain her balance. Her latte burst the lid off the takeout cup and gushed hot, creamy, brown liquid onto Leo’s crotch and down the front of his thighs. He lurched back in shock, his butt hitting the wall. “What the fuck!”

  “Oh my goodness,” Angie said sweetly. “I am so sorry, Detective.” She stabbed her hand into her pocket and grabbed the napkin she’d put there when she’d purchased her coffee. She started to dab the napkin at Leo’s wet crotch. “Holgersen, you got another Kleenex for me there?”

  Holgersen bent double with laughter, slapping his bony knee like a cartoon.

  “Get your fucking hands off my groin.” Leo slapped her arm away, unable to back out of her reach because Angie had cornered him up against the wet concrete wall.