The Girl in the Moss Read online

  He sucked in another deep chestful of smoke, exhaled slowly, and checked his watch. This was his fifth night in a row with no sleep, so he’d come here at this hour to focus on his case. It was either that or wander the dark streets looking into doorways for the familiar, ravaged face of his father, searching for a way to stay one step ahead of his memories, his guilt.

  He and Leo had gotten a tip via the social media blurb that Kjel had asked to be posted on Annelise Janssen in an effort to revive her missing persons case.

  A male had called into the soc media desk shortly before Kjel and Leo had punched out for the day. The man claimed he’d seen Annelise at this bus shelter on the night she’d disappeared. Kjel had asked him to come into the station to make a proper statement. The guy claimed to have been leaving one of these small houses behind this bus shelter around 3:00 a.m. last December—a full ten hours after Annelise Janssen was believed to have last been seen on the university campus.

  The man said he’d seen the young woman huddled in this bus shelter. She’d been soaked, he’d said, and looked drunk. No coat. It had been extremely cold that December night. While he’d watched, debating whether to approach her, a white Mercedes van had come up the road. It had pulled up to the shelter, stopped. The van had a logo on the side—maybe dark blue or black or olive green. The witness couldn’t be certain given the rain and mist and the dull street lighting. But he’d described the logo as a simplistic, blocky graphic, like First Nations art. The design had reminded him of a stylized animal, like something you’d find on top of a totem pole. The woman had climbed into that van. It had been headed north, he’d said.

  Kjel looked northward up the glistening, deserted street, trying to bring the scene to life in his mind in these similar conditions. Once that van had reached the top of this road, it would have hit a traffic circle. From there it could have traveled in any of three opposing directions.

  Kjel killed his smoke and yanked up his collar. The self-proclaimed witness maintained the reason he’d not come forward until this time was because he’d been having an affair and had been sneaking out of his lover’s house that night. He hadn’t wanted his wife to find out where he’d been. But he was divorced now, so it no longer mattered what his ex knew. Kjel had checked. The man’s ex had corroborated the affair and divorce. Kjel had then run this new Annelise Janssen information through the crime analyst, and something very interesting had popped up. It was possible they’d scored a major break on more than just the Annelise Janssen cold case. This case could be linked to others.

  Ducking out of the shelter, Kjel made for his vehicle parked a short way up the road. His plan was to grab a coffee at the twenty-four-hour Tim’s, maybe a couple of jelly doughnuts. And wait until it was a decent enough hour to call Pallorino. His reason was twofold—to check on her for Maddocks, and to sound his theory out on her, because one of those potentially linked cold cases had been hers.

  But as he drove toward the Tim Hortons, Kjel found himself near the bottom end of the city by the water. Wipers going, he slowed his vehicle to a crawl as he peered into the shadowed doorways and alleys. Searching. Always searching. For the man he’d once believed he’d find on these streets. That belief was wearing thin like tired, ragged cloth.

  He hit the brakes as something caught his eye. He reversed, stopped. It was nothing.

  Just wet cardboard flapping in the wind.

  A persistent buzzing entered Angie’s consciousness. She yanked a pillow over her head, trying to muffle the noise. Her brain was pounding. Then it struck her as she became more aware—the intercom. Someone was calling up for her. She sat bolt upright in her bed.

  Maddocks?

  She swung her feet over the side of the bed and stumbled blindly to her front door before it dawned on her that Maddocks would have used his key. Frowning, she grabbed her phone from the wall near the door. “Yeah, who is it?”

  “Heya, top-o-the mornin’ to ya, Palloreeeno.”

  She shut her eyes, cursed, and shoved a tangle of hair off her face. Holding her hair in place on the top of her head, she glanced at the clock in the kitchen. “What do you want, Holgersen? Everything okay?”

  “For sures. Wanna go grabba jabba? I needs to pick your brain on a case that crossed your desk last winter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, I needs to pick your brain.”

  “Have you seen the time? It’s not even six thirty.”

  “Figured I didn’t wanna miss you or nothing.”

  She swore again and almost told him to beat it, but intrigue won. “What case?”

  “UVic student who went missing last December. Annelise Janssen.”

  “That wasn’t mine.”

  “Yeah, but she might be linked to one of your old ones. Can we talk?”

  Damn him. He’d hooked her, and he was reeling her in. Had to give the guy credit where it was due.

  “I’ll be down in fifteen. Coffee shop on the corner—it opens early. Order me the full breakfast when you get there, okay? On your dime.” She hung up and eyed her computer. She needed coffee and food anyway. She’d find out what Holgersen wanted and then come back here to transfer the rest of her files to her laptop and pack while she tried to set up appointments in Port Ferris and, along the way, Ladysmith, because that’s where Kathi Daly lived. Before going to bed, she’d made a list of “persons of interest” in the Jasmine Gulati case.

  If all went to plan, she could be checked in at the Port Ferris motel by late this afternoon and doing her first interviews this evening. Once she’d packed she’d swing by Mia Monroe’s clothing boutique, Candescence, and see what Mia had to say about her long-term friendship with Jasmine and why they’d fallen out shortly before Jasmine’s river trip. Then she’d drop by Mayang Photo Place and pick up any other files Daniel might have managed to salvage for her.

  Angie sat at a small table opposite Holgersen and watched him breaking the poached egg atop his vegetarian “ninja bowl,” which had set him back almost twenty-five bucks.

  “So how’s you doing?” he said as he delivered a spoonful of eggs, brown rice, sriracha, bok choy, and kale to his mouth. “Getting a buncha work from that Brixton at Coastal?”

  Angie bit into her breakfast croissant and chewed as she watched Holgersen’s eyes. His gaze darted everywhere except to meet hers. He was hiding something. Or he was more buzzed on caffeine and nicotine and lack of sleep than usual.

  “Yeah.” She swallowed and reached for her coffee. “A bunch of work.” She sipped, relishing the hot hit of caffeine and the flavor of a good medium-roast single-source grind.

  “So whatcha working on now, exactly? By the way, nice ring you gots around your neck there, Pallorino.”

  She weighed him, suspicion deepening. “Did Maddocks send you to check on me?”

  He finally met her eyes. “Why would he do that? You not seeing him no more or what?”

  Touché.

  He waited.

  She considered carefully what she was going to say, then figured she’d like Maddocks to know what she was doing and to not worry about her being at loose ends while she figured a few things out. She was also warmed by the fact he still cared enough to send the goofball here to check on her. “I got the Moss Girl case. You know the remains that mushroom picker found up at the Nahamish?”

  He stilled chewing, lowered his utensils. “Yeah?”

  “Body was identified as Jasmine Gulati, granddaughter of retired Supreme Court justice Jilly Monaghan. Coroner is ruling her death as an accidental drowning, but the judge wants me to paint a picture of Gulati’s life in the lead-up to the accident and to answer a few questions.”

  “Shit. For reals?”

  She snorted and finished the rest of her croissant. She was hungry for a change and actually looking forward to driving up to Port Ferris and sinking her teeth into some interviews.

  “So,” Angie said as she swallowed and reached for her mug. “When you do report back to Maddocks, you can tell
him I’m going to Port Ferris for a while.”

  “Fine, you wins. He asked me if I’d seen you around, and I told him that I’d stop by. But I’s also got questions of my own for you. Regarding an old sexual assault you worked. So two stones with one bird.”

  “Two birds with one stone.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the saying—killing two birds with one stone.”

  “Yeah, sure, whatevers.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photograph. He slid the picture across the table. “Remember her?”

  Angie frowned at the mug shot. “Molly Collins. Yes, I remember her. Vulnerable kid from a broken home, her mother known to police. Collins left her home after a fight with her mother one night about three years ago, September 2015. She went to buy drugs from her dealer at a gas station down the road from her house; next thing she was found lying concussed in the middle of the road near the waterfront at around 4:00 a.m. She’d been violently sexually assaulted.”

  His brows crooked up. “You, like, remember dates and faces of alls your cases and everything?”

  “I wish I didn’t.”

  “MVPD never nailed the guy,” he said.

  Angie studied the image of Molly Collins, her mood darkening. “No,” she said quietly. “We never arrested anyone. Collins had been high at the time of her attack. She recalled little to nothing once she sobered up and came round fully. The only information she could provide was that her attacker was big and had been wearing coveralls with some kind of company logo on the chest pocket. He drove a white van with the same company logo on the side. She was assaulted in the back of the van, and when her attacker started to drive off, she somehow managed to get out of the back doors while the van was moving. Six months after that incident, she was found dead from an overdose.” Angie paused. “Why the questions?”

  “Last December Annelise Janssen allegedly vanished from the university campus.”

  “Allegedly? It was where she was last seen.”

  “Until a call comes into the station yesterday. Some dude says he thinks he saw Janssen around 3:00 a.m.—a full ten hours after the campus sighting.”

  Angie listened intently as Holgersen described what the new witness had claimed.

  “And now that this dude’s wife has left him anyways,” Holgersen said, “he came forward because what he saw has been haunting him all these months. He feels sick about the idea that had he come forward and said something at the time, it might have helped us find Janssen. Maybe alive.”

  “No fucking kidding. You . . . think these are connected—Annelise Janssen’s disappearance and the Molly Collins assault?”

  Holgersen scraped up the last morsels from his ninja bowl and delivered the dregs to his mouth. “Could be,” he said around his food. “Given the white Mercedes van.”

  “There’s a white Mercedes delivery van on every second street corner, Holgersen.”

  “Yeah, but there was this other case on the mainland in November 2002. A young woman vanishes off the streets in the Downtown Eastside. Some street worker thinks she saw this woman getting into a white Merc van with a logo on the side. Then in 2009 a young woman vanishes near Blaine in Washington State. Her car had broken down on the highway. The working hypothesis at the time was that she probably flagged down a vehicle for help and was abducted. She was never seen again. Big call for information went out. Cops handed out flyers at road stops. Posters were put up at the border on both the American and Canadian sides. Finally someone who drives that border route regularly comes forward and says he saw the breakdown, and he saw a woman waving down a white van. The vehicle was stopping, so he drove on, thinking she had help. The van model was a Merc, and it had a graphic on the side. The witness thinks it had BC plates.”

  Angie regarded him steadily, a familiar hot rush rising in her chest. “A serial?” she said.

  “Maybe.”

  “How’d you realize a white Mercedes van was involved in those other unsolved cases?”

  “Ran the new Janssen information by our crime analyst. White van pops up as a link. The shit them computers can do these days.”

  “You’ve got an analyst?”

  “Boss man brought one in to help us look at a bunch of cold cases. Janssen was one of the files I picked up first.”

  “So Maddocks has you working cold cases?”

  “New focus or something. Part of iMIT. He’s got me and Leo in our own little unit looking at a whole bunch of unsolved shit. The directive comes from brass and police board, and there’s new money for it, apparently. They wants to ramp solve rates. Janssen’s father has also been laying pressure on the new mayor. Daddy Janssen’s got clout.”

  “Yeah, money has clout. Fuck all the less privileged women who’ve gone missing. I don’t see why you brought this to me. Apart from being an excuse to check on me.”

  And remind me I’m no longer part of the team.

  “You remember anything else about the Molly Collins case?”

  “I filed all my reports. My notes are there, too. You have access to everything there is at the station.” She pushed her chair back, irritated now because the bug had bitten her, and her hands were tied—she could do nothing about this case. It was like dangling a carrot in front of her nose, just out of reach, before yanking it away again. Just to remind her she once was a cop, and now she was not.

  “Thank Maddocks for breakfast,” she said as she came to her feet. She unhooked her coat from the back of her chair and shrugged into it. But as she began to walk away, Angie paused. She turned back to face Holgersen. “Did anyone else give a description of this logo? Was it the same on the other vans?”

  “It was a dark, kinda boxy, stylized image is alls I gots. That much seemed consistent. Obviously nothing immediately recognizable like a Coca-Cola or MacD’s logo or anything.”

  She held his eyes for a moment. “Good luck, Holgersen. And get some sleep. You look like shit.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, you toos, Pallorino.”

  As Angie exited the bistro and headed past the window, she saw Holgersen on his phone inside. She reckoned he was calling Maddocks to report she was busy on the Jasmine Gulati case.

  That suited Angie fine. She knew it would put him at rest. He’d know she wasn’t taking that close-protection job. The fact he’d sent Holgersen nosing around after her put a flare of hope in her heart.

  She was going to make this work.

  CHAPTER 22

  Angie walked into the teeth of the wind, and as she rounded a corner near the Chinatown area of Victoria, she caught sight of the boutique sign.

  Candescence.

  She stalled in her tracks and stared up at the hand-painted word. Slowly, she lowered her gaze to the dresses displayed in the bay windows of the heritage building. White lace. Sheer silk. Some designs frothy. Others sleek. Pink and white flowers everywhere.

  A bridal boutique? You have got to be kidding me.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. A bell tinkled. The interior was small and had been refurbished to highlight the historic architecture of the building. Plaster had been stripped from walls to expose swaths of the original brick. Knotted pine floors had been burnished to a gleam. A wooden staircase with a balustrade painted with black enamel curved to a downstairs area. A glass showcase held tiaras and glittery necklaces and earrings with pearls and diamonds. Music was soft, a female vocalist crooning a song that sounded an awful lot like the one “Jukebox Jill” Monaghan had belted out when Angie went to meet her. Bridal dresses lined racks. Several gowns had been pinned into display alcoves set into the brick walls.

  There was no one in sight.

  Angie stepped forward cautiously, her biker boots clumping on the wooden floor. “Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”

  A woman’s head popped out from behind a drape that partially screened a dressing room area decorated with Louis XV–style chairs upholstered in gentle florals. The woman, a blonde, removed pins she’d been holding
between her lips. “Over here. Come on through.”

  Angie stepped into the dressing area, immediately catching sight of her reflection being bounced back by a myriad of mirrors. In her black leather jacket, skinny jeans, biker boots, red hair scraped back into a functional ponytail, she couldn’t have looked more out of place against all this femininity and softness.

  “I was just pinning up a hem for alterations,” the woman said as she smoothed down her dusky-pink skirt and draped silk blouse. She looked like a model out of some Calvin Klein ad. A hesitancy crossed her delicate features as she absorbed Angie, apparently coming to the conclusion that Angie was here for something other than a wedding gown.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Mia Monroe.”

  Concern shifted into her eyes. “That’s me.”

  “My name is Angie Pallorino,” she said, digging into her pocket for a card. She handed it to the woman. “I’m looking into a cold case from twenty-four years ago involving an old friend of yours, and I think you might be able to help me. Do you have a moment? Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  Mia studied the card in her hands. Time had been kind to this friend of Jasmine’s. She’d aged remarkably well. Or perhaps Mia had been kind to Mia. Maybe her looks came from eating carefully, sleeping, and exercising well. Maybe it was working with blushing young brides full with the promise of life that kept one peachy.

  She glanced up from the card. “Which friend?”

  “Perhaps we could sit down?” Angie didn’t want to dump the news on this woman that the body recently found on the Nahamish had been identified as her close school friend.

  Mia’s attention went to the door. “Sure. My first appointment is in only fifteen minutes. And my assistant will be back any second to take over the front. She just stepped out for coffees.” She hesitated. “Shall I call and ask her to bring extra coffee?”