The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1) Page 17

  “Which church did Gracie attend on Sundays, Mrs. Drummond?” Pallorino said from the other side of the room. She’d moved back to the desk and was closely examining the gold pendant and chain.

  “The Catholic cathedral downtown, same place she sings. Our family was fairly religious when Gracie was little, but we let things lapse after her father left, the divorce and all.” She inhaled shakily. “Gracie got back into the faith in a serious way after she started singing at the church. The choir is not faith-based itself, but it put her back into that environment, and she liked it.”

  “Her joining that choir, her going back into the religious fold—did this perhaps coincide with her more upbeat change of mood that you noticed?” Pallorino said.

  Drummond pushed a tangle of hair back from her brow. “Possibly. She joined the choir last June, the summer before she entered her final year of high school.”

  Pallorino held up the little medallion that had been lying on the desk. The chain was broken. “It’s a Saint Christopher,” she said. “The patron saint of travelers, often worn on a chain or a bracelet, or carried in a pocket, or placed in a vehicle to keep the owner safe on journeys.”

  “She wore that regularly. I guess she didn’t have it on Saturday night because the chain is broken.”

  “It’s engraved on the back,” Pallorino said, turning over the medallion. “It says, For Gracie, with love, J.R.” She looked up. “Who is J.R.?”

  “I … I didn’t know that. I can’t think of anyone with the initials J.R.”

  “How long has she been wearing this?”

  “A while.”

  “You don’t know exactly?”

  She shook her head. “Last several months. At least.”

  “And this wall calendar here—there’s a circle around last Tuesday. It says, Lara P., Amanda R., B.C. @ eight. She go out last Tuesday?”

  “Yes. She went to Lara’s place. She said they were going to cook dinner, catch a chick-flick—sleepover.”

  “Who’s Amanda R.?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And B.C.?”

  She shook her head.

  “I see there’s another Lara-Amanda-B.C. date marked the week before, also on Tuesday. She do that fairly often, sleep over at Lara’s?”

  “Regularly. Like I said, they go back, have been friends forever.”

  “If you recall anything about those other initials, Amanda R., B.C., or J.R., will you give us a call, Mrs. Drummond? Anything at all, okay?” Pallorino handed the mother her card, then said, “Lara got a last name, address, phone number?”

  “Pennington. She stays in an apartment right near campus.” Gracie’s mother scribbled down the address and number, handed it to Pallorino.

  “And Rick Butler?”

  “He graduated from Duneagle in June. He lives with his parents a block down from the school.” She wrote down the address.

  “Can you provide us with contact details for Kurt Shepherd as well?”

  “Why? You really don’t think—”

  “Just to cover all bases, rule out as many people as possible.”

  Lorna Drummond wrote her boyfriend’s details down, her mounting frustration evident in the sharp strokes of her pen. “I was with him,” she said, her voice becoming clipped as she handed Pallorino Shepherd’s address. “I was with my boyfriend when my daughter was raped, sodomized, and mutilated. Brutalized. He had nothing to do with it. I’m the one at fault. I should have been home.”

  “Is Lara aware of what happened to Gracie?”

  “Whole damn world knows what terrible things were done to my baby, thanks to the newspapers. So yeah, Lara knows. She called me this morning. She’s a wreck, too.”

  “We’re going to have a unit come in to collect some of your daughter’s things and take them into evidence. They’ll document them properly, okay? You going to be home for the rest of the day?”

  She nodded, her mouth set in a grim line.

  “A latchkey kid,” Pallorino said, matching Maddocks’s stride along the hallway of the old building. He could scent food in the air. The carpets smelled damp.

  “Gracie lived a full life outside of her mother’s witnessing it—buying clothes, electronics, dating,” she said.

  “Or this John Jacks from the swank Oak Bay Country Club with his BMW gifted her those things,” he said.

  “How often have kids used that sleepover ruse as a cover while they go do something else?”

  He shot her a glance. “You have kids, Pallorino?”

  Her pace faltered, the hesitation so brief it was barely noticeable. “No. But I was a teenage girl once,” she said quickly. “I’m betting Lara Pennington is going to be able to tell us a helluva lot more about Gracie Drummond than her mother could.” She then moved suddenly in front of him and trotted down the stairs at a clip. She shoved out of the building doors ahead of him.

  Grateful for the blast of fresh winter air upon exit, Maddocks followed Pallorino to his vehicle, where Jack-O waited.

  “A rosary is used to say prayers in penance for sins,” she said as she reached the Impala. “After confession, the priest assigns a certain number of Our Fathers and Hail Marys, depending on the severity of the so-called sin, and then the sinner uses the prayer beads to keep count.”

  He beeped the locks, and she opened the passenger side door. “One of the versions of the Hail Mary goes, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen.”

  “You Catholic, Pallorino?” he said, settling into the driver’s seat and strapping on his seat belt.

  “Agnostic.”

  He smiled. “You like to keep your options open, then?”

  “Maybe there’s a God, maybe there isn’t. I believe it can’t be proved either way.”

  “Like I said, keeping options open.” He started the ignition, put his Impala in gear, and pulled into the street.

  “I was raised Roman Catholic,” she said after a while. “My father’s Italian family had a strong religious background. My mother comes from Irish Catholic heritage, so it’s from both sides.”

  “But it didn’t work out for you?”

  She hesitated, and he shot her a questioning glance.

  “I’ve said my share of Hail Marys in life. And I know the baptism ritual.” She fell silent a moment as he drove. “We just stopped going to church one day. I don’t really recall why, come to think of it.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, the nexus we’re looking for—it could be that church, that choir. We should pay the cathedral and priest a visit.”

  “Pennington first,” he said. “Then the club.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Kjel and Leo found the woman who’d accosted them earlier shivering in a doorway not far from where they’d left her. Kjel held the mug shot flier out to her. “Do you know her? Her name’s Faith Hocking.”

  She shook her head, picked at a scab on her cheek, eyes avoiding his. He judged her to be in her late twenties, although she could be much younger and just ravaged by drugs and the homeless life.

  “What about this tattoo?” Leo asked, holding out his phone with the picture he’d taken of Hocking’s Medusa tat. Kjel shot his partner a hot glance.

  The woman’s head snapped up. “Where’d you get that picture?”

  “The morgue. Belongs to Faith Hocking. When did you last see her?”

  She turned away from Leo and huddled into the corner. Kjel made a motion with his head for Leo to get out of sight. Leo scowled at him, then removed himself to a location a few doors down, where he ducked under an awning and lit another cigarette.

  Kjel removed his pack of smokes from his breast pocket and tapped one out. “That was rough. I’m sorry. But see? I know yous seen that tat before, because I’s seen those photos back at Harbor House of you and Faith, looking all buddy-buddies. One was taken pretty recently, too, with alls her new pearly whites and her nice new hairdo and sharp clothes.” He offered her a cigarette as he spoke. She glanced up at h
im, then took the smoke. Cupping the flame with shaking hands, she allowed Kjel to light it for her. Shivering, she dragged hard on the cigarette and then blew out a long stream of smoke, relaxing just a fraction. Leo was on the money. She smelled rank. She was wet, too thin, obviously cold, and probably in need of medical attention.

  “When did you last see Faith?” he said softly.

  She sucked deeply on her smoke again, as if it were a lifeline. Her gaze returned to the mug shot. “What’s in it for me?” she said.

  “We don’t bust your skinny ass,” Kjel said.

  “Go to hell, PoPo.” She jabbed her cigarette toward him. “You don’t got shit to bust me on.”

  “Okay, okay.” He held up both hands, the pack of smokes still in one. “You gots me. I’m gonna leave now.”

  She eyed the pack of smokes in his hand. He turned as if to go. “Hey, you guys still, like, you know, pay CIs for info?”

  “You wanna be a confidential informant, you gotta come down to the station so we can set up some paperwork. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Nina.”

  “Nina who?”

  “Just Nina.”

  “Tell me when you last saw Faith, just Nina.”

  “She’s really dead? You really get that tat photo in the morgue?”

  Silence.

  She looked down, shifted from foot to foot. “Where’d you find her?”

  “Floating in the Gorge.”

  “Fuck, man, fuck. Fuck, no …” She rocked backward and forward, wrapping an arm over her chest, then she kicked at the curb, eyes glittering. “The Cemetery Girl also drowned. Was the same done to Faith as to that cemetery girl?”

  Kjel eyed her for a moment but didn’t reply.

  “Fuck. Fuck it. Fuck.”

  “We need to find her friends, family, tell the people who cared about her what happened. And we need to find the guy who did that to her.”

  Fear flashed into her eyes. “She don’t got no family. No one that I know who cares.”

  “No one who cares, eh? So Faith makes this big-ass jump from meth-head and street pro to fast-food chain worker all on her own? Then suddenly she’s sporting these real pretty chompers, capped all nice and pearly white, no more meth mouth. Where’d she get those teeth done, huh? How’d she fund fixing them chompers?” He tucked two twenty-buck notes into the box of cigarettes as he spoke, his back to Leo, ensuring his action went unobserved by his partner.

  She wild-eyed the box, the money sticking out, and she scratched at her sleeve. “Pastor Markus helped Faith detox. Helped her get a regular job, like he did with some others.”

  “Pastor Markus help pay for her new teeth, too?”

  “Don’t know where she got dough for that. I ain’t seen her in a while.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know. Lose track of time.”

  He nodded, handed her the box of smokes. She snatched it and squirreled it away inside her grubby denim. Her gaze jerked nervously up and down the street, as if someone might come and steal her score off her.

  “Here’s the thing, Nina,” Kjel said. “If we want to get this killer dude off the streets, we need to know more about Faith—like where she was living, who she was hanging out with. You can help us. You can help Faith get justice.”

  Conflict warred in her face—raw fear, street loyalty, a desperate drive to score cash for more drugs fighting with an urge for justice for her friend. Kjel could read it all. He knew it.

  “She stays in an apartment.”

  Adrenaline spiked in him. “Where?”

  “Esquimalt. A block up from the water, place called MontBlanc Apartments—can see the mountains across the water from there.” Sadness washed over her face. “Real nice.”

  “You been there?”

  “I heard.”

  “From who?”

  She looked away.

  “Pastor Markus, he tell you?” Some guys were approaching down the street. It made her even more squirrelly.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Was it some john setting her up in a love crib—all for himself?”

  “I gotta go.”

  Kjel watched her scurry off into the rain, Christmas lights flicking in the thrift store nearby. Wind gusted, and the sky darkened with lowering cloud. Daylight hours were short this time of year. Life on the streets could be real rough. Cold. Not like rest-of-country-cold, but nevertheless.

  Leo rejoined him, and Kjel filled his partner in as they retraced their route to their vehicle.

  “What did she mean when she said that she’s seen your ass around?” Kjel asked as he opened the driver’s door. Pallorino might never have relinquished the wheel, but Leo was happy to sit back in the passenger seat and let him drive. He kinda liked that.

  Leo met his gaze over the roof of the sedan. “I’m a cop. I’m around.”

  “She got something on you?”

  Leo held his eyes. “What the fuck are you asking? You want to know if I come down here for a blow job? What is wrong with you?”

  “Wanna call it in—tell Buziak we got us a domicile for our vic?” Kjel said, getting into the car.

  In silence they drove to Esquimalt, to MontBlanc Apartments.

  From the shadows, Nina, shivering, watched the detectives drive off. She needed to find her supplier, score now that she had some cash. But she was scared. She’d seen the newspapers in Harbor House, and she knew what had been done to the girl in the cemetery. The rape. The crucifix. Merry Winston’s byline was on that story. She’d also heard about the female floater in the Gorge. Faith? Christ.

  She ducked back into the rain and made her way quickly through the city streets to the stone building near the inner harbor that housed the Sun. Heavy fog roiled off the water and fingered into the cobbled streets and brick alleys. Foghorns sounded out at sea. She pushed through the revolving glass door and made her way over the gleaming marble floor to the reception desk.

  The woman behind the desk told her to get lost or she’d call the cops.

  “I got information. For a story,” Nina replied, scratching her arm nervously. “Gotta see that reporter, the one who wrote the story on the Cemetery Girl.”

  The receptionist looked doubtful but paged Merry.

  Merry came down. Shock registered on her face. “Nina? What the fuck? What’re you doing here?”

  Nina’s eyes flickered around. She had noise in her head suddenly. She pressed her hands to her temples.

  “Come, I’m going to get some coffee and hot food into you. Let me fetch my coat.”

  Merry came back downstairs with her coat on and a spare jacket in her hand. “Get that wet denim off you and put this thing on.”

  Nina acquiesced. The jacket was dry and warm, filled with padding, and she was grateful. “You can keep it,” Merry said as she took her around the corner to the entrance of a little pub.

  “I don’t want to go in there.”

  Merry weighed her, then nodded. She understood.

  “Come, I know somewhere.”

  “No … I need to go. I need to score some Crissy. Had to see you first.”

  Merry’s face changed, her eyes filling with empathy, pity. Nina hated it, hated who she was. Hated how people saw her.

  “Don’t fucking judge me, okay, Merry, just because you got out. We go back, you and me.”

  “I’m not. I’m not judging you at all. What’s the matter? Why’d you come?”

  “It’s Faith.”

  “What do you mean, Faith? What are you talking about?”

  “She’s dead. Drowned. It was her they found in the Gorge. Some cops was around Harbor House talking to Pastor Markus, asking about Faith’s family, who to tell that she was dead.” Her gaze snapped down the street. She was nervous that maybe the cop had followed her or something. “She was killed, Merry, and rolled up in plastic, dumped in the sea.”

  Blood drained from Merry’s face. “You sure?”

  “Cop showed me a photo of her b
ody in the morgue—her tattoo. What if he’s back? What if it was him? I read what was done to that Cemetery Girl—it’s him. Gotta be him.”

  Merry looked waxen. She grabbed Nina by the shoulders, eyes shining. “Did that cop say anything about a crucifix on Faith?”

  She shook her head. “But it could be him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “’Cause I asked that cop if the same was done to her as to the Cemetery Girl, and he looked at me weird, and he didn’t deny it.”

  “Listen to me. When did you last actually see Faith?”

  Nina scratched at the scabs on her face. “Like a while ago. Maybe five to eight months. She was with that pimp of hers from way back, Damián, and some other blond guy—rich prick who was driving a small, black BMW. Young, like in his twenties.”

  “You sure it was a Bimmer?”

  “Christ, I know cars. I know where my best scores come from.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “Like I said, we had a month-to-month lease, and the tenant gave notice at the end of November—eleven days ago. It was a Thursday. Her movers arrived the next day with cash from her, so she’s paid up for December.”

  Kjel walked slowly across the bare hardwood floors to the window. Dust spots and darker areas marked the wood where rugs and furniture had rested. The view looked out over new construction toward the water. They’d located the property manager and had showed him Hocking’s mug shot. He’d recognized her and said she’d lived here almost two years. Always paid cash. Now her place was cleaned out.

  “She give the notice herself?” Leo said as Kjel continued to stare out at the view, his brain running through the possibilities.

  “She phoned it in.”

  “You certain it was her?”

  “Female voice. I had no reason to doubt it.”

  “What moving company did she use?” Leo said.

  “I don’t know. There was a truck here, white, but no company logo or anything on the sides.”

  “And the guy who gave you the money for her last month’s rent—he give you a name?”

  “No.”

  “What he look like?”

  “Dark hair, average height, I dunno, maybe in his thirties. Ordinary guy.”