The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2) Page 17

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  Maddocks exited the elevator and made hurriedly for Flint’s office, his shock morphing quickly into white-hot anger. He rapped on the door, opened it.

  Flint glanced up sharply from his desk, his eyes flicking to the animal hooked under Maddocks’s arm.

  “Sophia Tarasov,” Maddocks said. “She was found dead in a pool of blood in her hospital bed this morning. No one saw a goddamn thing. I’m on my way there now with Holgersen.”

  Flint blinked and came abruptly to his feet with his typical bearing that screamed military background. He hid his surprise well. “Keep me updated from the scene. And work fast. This isn’t going to last long in our hands—we need to gather whatever we can if we want to follow through on our own successful prosecution of our local cases.”

  Maddocks held his boss’s steely eyes. “The investigator from the mainland you spoke to yesterday,” Maddocks said, “from the integrated task force—”

  “Yeah. They know something they’re not sharing, at least not over the phone.” His boss’s faced tightened as he spoke.

  “Could that knowledge have prevented this?”

  Flint met Maddocks’s glare. The man’s mouth flattened, and his eyes turned cold and hard. “I hope to hell not. But my gut is screaming maybe.”

  Shit.

  “I’ll let you know what I find on scene,” Maddocks said, turning to go.

  Outside, Maddocks found Holgersen smoking and pacing like a caged cheetah next to the Impala. Holgersen flicked his butt aside as soon as Maddocks neared and beeped open the lock. They drove with the siren going and wipers doing double time as rain deluged the city and flooded parts of the streets. They arrived at the hospital within fifteen minutes.

  Pulling in outside the entrance, Maddocks parked tightly behind the coroner’s van.

  “Looks like Doc O’Hagan and company are already here,” Holgersen said with a tilt of his chin toward the van. They exited the car, leaving Jack-O inside, windows down slightly. A uniform at the hospital doors checked their badges and entered their names on a crime scene log. Maddocks and Holgersen strode fast down the corridor toward the ward.

  Outside the door a male doctor conversed quietly with the victim services counselor, who was white-faced and hollow-eyed with shock. A uniformed cop stood off to the side.

  “How could this happen?” the counselor said as soon as Maddocks approached. “There was a guard, for heaven’s sake—an armed MVPD officer posted outside their door. Why? Who would do this?”

  “Where are the other girls?” Maddocks said to the counselor as he reached into his pocket for a pair of nitrile gloves.

  “The first responding officers took them to another room. I’ve got a psychologist in with them now.”

  “The interpreter arrive?”

  “No,” said the counselor.

  Maddocks spoke to Holgersen as he snapped on the gloves. “Call Dundurn or Smith—get one of them in there with the girls.” Holgersen stepped aside to call the sex crimes detectives. “And chase up that interpreter.”

  Maddocks turned to the man in the white lab coat. “Who are you?”

  “Dr. Tim McDermid. These patients have been under my care—”

  “When did you last see your patients?”

  “I checked in before I left for the night yesterday—around 9:00 p.m.”

  “How were they?”

  “Fine. Alive. Sophia was better than she’d been since she was first admitted. I … I thought she might be one of the lucky ones who would be able to pull through what she’d endured to regain some semblance of a normal life. She was so young, just a teen.” Emotion glittered in the man’s eyes.

  Maddocks firmed his jaw. “Was there a nurse on duty last night?” he said.

  “On call for this ward—the patients had progressed to a point they were sleeping through the night.”

  “I want a list of everyone on duty last night. Can you go get that for me?”

  “I … yes, yes of course.”

  “When you’ve got it—” Maddocks raised his gloved hand high and summoned a uniform over from down the corridor. She hurried over.

  “Sir?”

  He glanced at her name tag. “Tonner, accompany Dr. McDermid here—get the names of everyone who was working in this hospital yesterday. Start calling them into the cafeteria. Seal off that area. And find someone to cordon off this wing.”

  “Sir.”

  Holgersen came forward, snapping on his own gloves. “Dundurn is on his way. No word from the interpreter yet—not answering her phone.”

  The officer stationed outside the door logged Maddocks and Holgersen into the room and handed them each a set of booties.

  Once their shoes were encased in the booties, Maddocks turned toward the door, inhaled, and entered. Holgersen, uncharacteristically silent, followed behind him.

  A forensic tech was taking photos inside. Another was dusting for prints. Pathologist Barb O’Hagan was beside the bed upon which Sophia Tarasov’s body lay. A sheet covered Tarasov’s body from the waist down. She wore a simple white nightgown. Her arm hung over the side of the bed, palm up. Her face was turned toward the door. Blood covered her open mouth and ran onto her white pillow. Her eyes were wide and sightless. The white hospital sheets were drenched almost black with her blood. It had dripped to the sterile tile floor. A tech had placed yellow crime scene markers where the drips had fallen.

  The doc looked up. “Morning, Sarge. How are we this fine day?”

  “Doc,” Maddocks said, standing still, absorbing the scene.

  The room was warm. A white drape billowed slightly over a heating vent. Rain fell outside. The other beds were empty with untidy sheets. One bed looked as though it had been wet.

  “Jesus fuck,” whispered Holgersen. “How in the hell could this happen? With five other girls in the room and a uni outside, and no one hears or does a thing?” He went over to the wet bed, sniffed. He glanced at Maddocks. “They were terrified. One of them peed their bed. Maybe they saw who did it?”

  “Even if they did witness the act, they were too afraid to call staff until someone came to do the rounds in this room at 7:30 a.m.”

  Holgersen swore softly again. “If they’s wasn’t talking before, they sure as hell ain’t gonna be talking now.”

  Maddocks went over to the body. O’Hagan was peering at her thermometer over the top of her glasses.

  “Alphonse sends his regards,” she said, recording the temp in her notepad. “He left me here while he had to attend another call.”

  Charlie Alphonse was the region’s coroner. Barb O’Hagan worked as one of his forensic pathologists—a crusty older woman with a passion for speaking for the dead. Maddocks had gotten to know O’Hagan well during the Addams investigation. She and Angie were pretty tight, and they both shared a dislike for Harvey Leo.

  “What you got, Doc?”

  “Didn’t want to pull back the sheeting until you got a look at her in situ, but I took a reading from under her arm. Rigor is not complete. Given her temperature and the warmth in this room, I’m going to say postmortem interval is anything between six to nine hours.”

  He checked his watch. It was 8:11 a.m. “Which would put time of death somewhere between 11:00 p.m. yesterday and 2:00 a.m. this morning.”

  “Sounds about right,” she said, returning her thermometer to the bag on the table at her side. She picked up a small flashlight. “There’s something you need to see.”

  She shone her light on the decedent’s mouth and used a wooden spatula to clear aside some of the blood pooled inside the cavity.

  “Take a look inside,” she said.

  Maddocks leaned forward and peered into the mouth. Shock jerked through his body. His gaze flared to the doc.

  “She’s got no tongue,” he said. Just a bloody stub of muscle, sliced clean through.

  “It’s been excised.”

  “Where’s the rest of it?” Holgersen said from behind him.


  “Don’t know yet,” said O’Hagan.

  Maddocks stared at Sophia Tarasov’s face, the open maw pooled with blood. Shit.

  “You think that’s what killed her?” Holgersen said. “Exsanguination from an excised tongue?”

  “She could conceivably have choked—drowned—in her own blood with her head tilted back like that. I’ll know more once I get her up on the table,” O’Hagan said.

  The unspoken hung thick and dark in the room as Tarasov’s words snaked through Maddocks’s brain.

  When I ask her question, she say in Russian that they will cut my tongue out if I talk. Like they told us in Prague they would do if we ever speak to anyone about men who brought us there. In Prague there was woman with no tongue.

  “A warning,” whispered Maddocks. “Sophia Tarasov crossed the line, disobeyed the rules. And someone hunted her down to send a message.”

  “How in the fuck did they find her, get in here? How would they even know she talked?”

  Maddocks shook his head. “I don’t know. A leak. Or maybe they didn’t know that she talked, but they were aware that we had them and wanted to be sure no one did speak.”

  “And they just picked Tarasov? Coincidence like?”

  “Maybe she’s given them trouble before—the others are younger, more frightened. And killing them all—maybe there just wasn’t enough time.”

  “But those surviving girls witnessed it,” Holgersen said, glancing back at the bed that had been wet. “And now they believes they can be tracked down anywhere.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “He entered the ward shortly before 1:00 a.m. I … thought he was a doctor,” said the wan-faced officer who’d been stationed outside the door when the suspect had entered. “The docs did rounds at night when the vics were first brought in. It wasn’t that unusual to see a doctor or nurse enter at that hour.”

  Maddocks was seated opposite the officer in a small room that the hospital had made available to the MVPD for their investigation. Meanwhile, Holgersen was going through closed-camera security footage with hospital security. Other employees who’d been on duty last night were being interviewed in the cafeteria. The decedent’s body had been taken to the morgue. The postmortem would commence this afternoon. Maddocks had every intention of being present when O’Hagan got Tarasov up onto that table.

  “Description of the male?” Maddocks said coolly.

  “He was average. Average height—about five ten. Caucasian. Maybe in his thirties. Or forties. Average complexion.”

  Christ.

  “Hair? Don’t tell me—average, too?”

  The young cop wiped a sheen of perspiration from his brow. He smelled bad in these close quarters. Of fear and possibly a few too many drinks the night before. A hangover could have lulled him into complacency, Maddocks thought.

  “Dark-brown hair,” the officer said. “Cut short—a conservative cut. Thick hair.” He wiped his face again. “I didn’t know the girls were at risk like that. We should have had better security protocol. We should have been checking the IDs of all doctors who went in and out from the get-go. That wasn’t my brief.”

  Maddocks tightened his jaw. He hadn’t known the extent of the risk that the young barcode survivors faced, either. All the suspects found aboard the Amanda Rose had been taken into custody—there was no threat from them. The barcode tattoo detail had never made it into the press. Nor had the location where the girls were being treated been disclosed. But given Tarasov’s and Camus’s statements, and Holgersen’s trafficking route theory, this could be the work of the Russian mob. Whoever had sold the so-called merchandise would have known that these specific girls had gone to Madame Vee and were aboard the Amanda Rose. And when the traffickers had learned in the news about the MVPD takedown of the yacht and the Bacchanalian Club, the mob would have put two and two together. Possibly they came to reclaim their merchandise. Or at least stop the girls from testifying. And perhaps to send a warning to others. But which others? More girls like this? Here in BC? The rest of Canada? The United States?

  He kicked himself for not having initiated a tighter security protocol from day one, nevertheless. He’d bet his last dollar that this integrated task force investigator who was so keen for members of his team to meet with Maddocks had known the risks. Yet the lead investigator’s secrecy, his refusal to give Flint a heads-up right away as to what they might be dealing with—it could have cost Sophia Tarasov her life. Anger curled thin and hot through Maddocks’s blood.

  “Build?”

  “Average build. Not thin, not fat, not overly athletic. Confident walk.”

  “What about eye color?”

  “I … I don’t recall.”

  Maddocks heaved out a breath. “We’ll get you in with a sketch artist. And you heard nothing while the suspect was in there? No scuffles, screams?”

  “Nothing. He was inside for about twenty minutes. When he came out, he looked as normal as he did when he went in, wearing his lab coat, no blood on him, nothing.”

  A knock sounded on the door. It swung open wide. A red-faced uniformed officer entered and held up a bag with a white garment inside. “Sarge, sorry for the interruption. Found this in the dumpster outside—lab coat,” he said. “Blood on the inside and a stethoscope and security badge for a Dr. Martha Taluswood in the pocket. Dr. Taluswood reported a vehicle breakin to security yesterday evening. It happened sometime between 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. She said her coat, stethoscope, and badge were on the passenger seat of her car, along with a security card. They were gone when she returned to her vehicle.”

  “Where was she parked?”

  “Staff lot E—a silver Toyota RAV4, plate NT3–87B.”

  Maddocks cursed and lurched to his feet. “Log that evidence. Get it to the lab, stat.” He turned to the officer he’d been interrogating. “You, wait here. I’m going to get someone to help you with an identikit.”

  Maddocks left the room and strode down the hall, making for the security room. He jabbed the elevator button and called Holgersen at the same time. The elevator doors slid open. He stepped in. Holgersen answered.

  “Yo, boss.”

  “I’m on my way up. We’re looking for footage that covers the dumpsters outside and the staff parking lot E from around 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. Our suspect broke into a doc’s vehicle during that time frame and took her coat and security clearance to gain access to the hospital. Looks like the coat was left in a dumpster outside the hospital. Given the blood found on the inside of the coat, the suspect could have removed the lab coat to assault Tarasov, then recovered himself with the coat after he was done, hiding any blood that he’d gotten on his clothes so he didn’t attract undue attention while exiting the building.” Maddocks watched the elevator buttons light up in succession as he spoke. “This guy is organized. Calm. This is no neophyte.”

  “Hit man,” said Holgersen. “For the mob.”

  The elevator doors opened. Maddocks stepped out. “Yeah, possible.” He stopped, turned around in the corridor. “Where is the security office located? I’m on the fourth floor.”

  “West wing. Far end.”

  “Did you get hold of the interpreter?”

  “Negative, boss. Called her office direct. They said she phoned in late yesterday afternoon to say that she was taking an impromptu long weekend trip across the island to go winter storm watching. She’s due back Monday.”

  “Find someone else, then.” Maddocks killed the call and strode westward down the sterile-smelling corridor, his brain churning. None of the surviving five girls were speaking, as expected—wouldn’t even look a female officer in the eye. They were terrified and in medical distress from the trauma.

  His phone rang as he neared the security office, which he could see up ahead—glass walls, banks of monitors showing closed-circuit surveillance footage. Maddocks connected the call, put his phone to his ear as he walked.

  “Maddocks,” he said.

  “It’s Flint. We’ve got a problem. You ne
ed to stand down.”

  Maddocks stopped dead in his tracks. “What?”

  “The integrated task force, which includes the RCMP, has asserted jurisdiction over the Tarasov murder and the surviving barcodes.”

  “They have the authority?”

  “They do. The order just came down. They’re sending RCMP members from the island division to temporarily secure and take over the scene. They’ll be bringing in their own crime scene techs and will take possession of the decedent’s body to conduct their own postmortem. You need to stop everything you’re doing, Sergeant. Pull everyone back. Stat.”

  Fuck.

  “I want you and Holgersen back at the station this afternoon for that meeting we still have scheduled with two members of the task force. They’ll be wanting a full debrief.”

  Heart pumping, Maddocks killed Flint’s call and entered the security room, where Holgersen was sitting with two uniformed members of the hospital security team. They were watching grainy grayscale footage on the banks of monitors. Holgersen glanced up as Maddocks entered. He pointed to one screen. “Take a look.”

  Maddocks leaned forward, watching over Holgersen’s shoulder. A male in a white lab coat. Walking toward the hospital entrance from the parking lot. The time stamp showed 12:45 a.m. Adrenaline thumped into his veins, burning the image of the man into his brain—his stride, the way he held his head, the angle of his neck, the roll of his shoulders, the swing of his arms. As the uniformed officer had said—average. Not remarkably thin nor overly built. Neither tall nor short. He kept his face turned away from cameras as he entered the hospital. Sure, direct. Like he belonged. Like he knew where the cameras were located.

  “Stop. Stop right there. Back it up,” said Maddocks.

  The security guy did as he asked.

  “There.” Maddocks pointed. “Watch carefully—see how he walks.”

  Holgersen stuck his nose up close to the monitor. He gave a soft whistle. “He’s gots a slight limp … like his left leg is maybe a tiny bit shorter than the right?”