The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2) Read online

  Bowditch’s mouth twitched. His eyes narrowed. “If the implication is that you’re withholding evidence, theories, I must—”

  “The withholding of evidence,” Maddocks said, slowly, coolly, his gaze lasering Bowditch, “is probably what cost Sophia Tarasov’s life.”

  Silence slammed thick into the room. Bowditch cleared his throat. “That’s—”

  “There are other barcode girls out there, am I correct? Tattooed sex workers your team knows about?” Maddocks said with another quick glance at Flint. “Here on North American soil. And they’ve come to harm at the hands of the Russian mob, right? Did any of them have their tongues excised? Perhaps when they tried to help law enforcement?”

  Silence.

  “You both knew exactly what kind of danger Sophia Tarasov and the other five barcode survivors were in,” Maddocks said crisply. “Instead of informing the MVPD when we were first put into contact with you, which would have dramatically altered our security protocol for those young women, you arranged this meeting”—he wagged his hand between them—“to come and see what we had while you put in motion the requisite legal steps to assume jurisdiction of our case.” He paused. Thunder rumbled in the low fog outside. Rain lashed afresh against the darkening windows, in which they were beginning to see their own reflections. “And before you could even get here, Tarasov was murdered. In what appears to be a mob hit.” Another beat of silence. “You killed her—you killed that young woman—and I can make a case for it.”

  Eden cleared her throat. She tapped the back of her pen rapidly on the table. Bowditch glowered at Maddocks, hot spots rising in the skin along his cheekbones.

  “Possibly your task force has an appetite for collateral damage in order to catch bigger international fish,” Flint said quietly. “But we don’t.”

  “We had a duty to Tarasov,” Maddocks added. “And we remain committed to seeing justice done for the local Victoria women who were hurt or murdered in connection with the Bacchanalian Club. We need local offenders successfully prosecuted for local crimes perpetrated in connection with that club. And to meet these objectives, we need to keep working on this investigation from a local angle.”

  Silence pressed heavy and simmering over the room.

  “What do you want?” Bowditch said finally, his face dark, eyes narrow.

  “Full cooperation. Same as you want.”

  Flint leaned forward. “We’d like inclusion on your task force.”

  Bowditch’s mouth opened. He glanced at Eden.

  “It’s out of the question,” Eden said.

  Maddocks reached down and shut his laptop. The image on the screen died. “Thank you for your time, Officers,” he said. “We have nothing further to discuss.” He started to leave the room. Holgersen pushed his chair back.

  “We have legitimate jurisdiction over this case,” Eden snapped, coming to her feet, her eyes shooting sparks. “You will suffer the—”

  Maddocks spun to face her. “Take it up with whatever body you wish,” he said calmly. “I’ll be happy to outline to whomever how the MVPD was undermined in the protection of Sophia Tarasov.” He pulled open the glass door. Flint remained seated. He was letting Maddocks set himself up to take the brunt of any retaliatory measures that might now boomerang their way, as had been agreed prior to the meeting. Maddocks was more than happy to suck it up. He’d hit a wall. With his kid, his marriage, his job. Angie. His leaking old boat. Caring for Jack-O. The posttraumatic effects of nearly losing Ginny in the Baptist takedown. And he was allowing it all to zero in on Sophia Tarasov. She was the last little straw. The image of her pale, thin body—that gaunt, brave face with its tongue cut out because she’d spoken to him … It was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. He was furious with these two cops at the table. And if he couldn’t hold on to a family, a wife—if he couldn’t be a good enough father or make a romantic relationship work with a woman he was coming to love—he sure as hell could fight for the Sophia Tarasovs out there.

  CHAPTER 32

  Angie left the station building at 5:00 p.m. on the nose, urgency rustling beneath her skin like a trapped live thing. She’d have to make up for her late start this morning on another day. The blog post would have to wait until Monday, too, because she’d spent the latter part of the afternoon reading the information Stacey Warrington had provided her on Milo Belkin’s arrest along with his trial transcript. She was wired on what she’d found.

  Belkin had been arrested in Vancouver’s east side in 1993—twenty-five years ago—when Vancouver police acting on a tip had stopped a white commercial cube truck in which Belkin was traveling with three other males. A gun battle had ensued. A VPD cop took a .45 slug in the skull and died en route to the hospital. A ricocheting .22 bullet had struck an innocent bystander in his lower back, rendering him a paraplegic. Belkin—who’d been shooting a 9-millimeter handgun at the scene—was arrested with a man named Semyon Zagorsky—who’d been firing a .22 pistol. The two other male accomplices had fled toward an unidentified black Chevrolet van that had drawn up behind the side street where the shoot-out was occurring. The two men escaped the scene in that Chevrolet van.

  Inside the white cube truck in which Belkin had been traveling was a flower delivery. Stashed among the flowers, cops found 50.5 kilograms of cocaine, 14.1 kilos of heroin, and 6 kilos of hashish. The drugs were estimated to have had a street value of almost $9 million.

  Angie now knew why Voight had saved those two newspaper articles. According to those old clippings, five years after the drug bust and shoot-out, a Colt .45 had been found in the glove compartment of a burned-out black Chevrolet van in a railyard.

  Voight had suspected the burned-out Chevy van and Colt .45 were linked to the Milo Belkin shoot-out and drug bust with its getaway van and the .45 slug that killed the VPD officer. Voight must have also suspected Belkin and his accomplices were somehow linked to the 1986 cradle case with its getaway van.

  Had that Colt .45 found inside the gutted van been the weapon fired outside Saint Peter’s Hospital that Christmas Eve? Had the two men escaped with Angie’s mother and twin in that black Chevy van? Had one of the men been Milo Belkin?

  But if Voight had suspected this, he’d not been able to link Milo Belkin directly to the cradle case as Angie had just done, because the fingerprint comparison technology had not yet been in place.

  Darkness was complete as Angie headed for her car, lights reflecting in puddles. Rain blew sideways in the wind, and thunder rumbled up in the clouds. Bits of tree debris pelted her as she neared her vehicle in the lot. Abruptly, a shadow cut in front of her.

  She caught her breath and stepped back, her hand instinctively moving toward the sidearm in her holster—but her weapon was no longer there.

  “Detective Pallorino,” came a deep German-accented voice. “How are you?”

  She squinted into the dark. “Grablowski? Is that you?”

  “Can we talk?” the profiler said, stepping into view, the light from the parking lot lamp standard catching his face. He wore a long double-breasted raincoat with deep pockets, wide belt. His customary herringbone cap protected his head from rain. His round glasses glinted in the dark.

  “What about?” she said, suddenly uneasy. “Were you waiting for me out here?”

  “I know that you knock off at five now—demotion and all,” he said. “Could I tempt you with a drink at the Pig down the road? We can talk there.”

  “Look, I’m in a rush.” She proceeded toward her Nissan. “I need to be on the last ferry to Vancouver tonight. It’ll have to wait.”

  “I don’t think you’ll want it to wait.”

  There was an edge to his voice. Caution whispered through Angie, along with curiosity. She stopped, turned to face him. Whatever the forensic shrink had to say to her, she didn’t trust him—there was something sinister about this man who delved into the minds of monsters for a living and who was eager to profit off them in search of his own academic acclaim.

 
Thunder clapped, then grumbled away into the distance. “Want to wait for what?” she said quietly.

  “I know that you are the angel’s cradle Jane Doe.”

  Something dropped like a cold stone through her stomach. Ringing began in her ears. “I … don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned back toward her Nissan, key fob in hand, a kind of panic rising inside her. How could he know? Someone had to have told him. But who? Why?

  She beeped her lock. He came up behind her. “I also know that your DNA matches that tiny little child’s foot that floated all alone up onto that beach in Tsawwassen.

  She froze.

  Her heart began to jackhammer.

  Jacob Anders? Maddocks? Jenny Marsden? She hadn’t told anyone else that she was the cradle child. And she’d told no one about her DNA match to the foot—only Jacob Anders. She spun to face Grablowski. “Where did you hear this?”

  “My source is reliable.”

  “Who? Tell me!”

  He stepped backward, raising both hands, palms out in self-defense. “No need to get aggressive, Detective. We all know of your proclivity toward violence. I simply have a proposition in the face of this breaking news. Give me the exclusive on your story—allow me to interview you as the RCMP investigation continues to unfold. It will make for gripping true crime drama. It has all the feels—might even secure us a movie deal.”

  Us?

  Fury lashed up inside her. She stepped toe to toe and eye to eye with the forensic shrink. “A proposition? So you can make money off my life? When you won’t even tell me where you got this information? Fuck you, Grablowski.” She whirled back to her car and yanked open the driver’s door. He clamped his left hand on top of the door.

  “We split the profits. Fifty-fifty.”

  “Get your hand off my car before I break all your fucking fingers,” she growled through gritted teeth. Her eyes were burning. “And if you go public with this, I’ll sue your shrink ass off.”

  “I’m not the only one with this information, Detective. But I’ll hold off on going to the media if you agree to work with me on the book. And then once the story breaks, the publicity will be advantageous to sales, of course. Think about it.” He panned his right hand out into the darkness as if to denote a billboard up in lights. “The mystery angel’s cradle baby is separated from her twin at age four. Unaware of her past, she grows up to become an aggressive sex crimes cop, unrelenting, fierce in her drive to save all the broken women and children out there without realizing what propelled her to into policing in the first place, and possibly into the sex unit specifically. Her temper is lightning quick. She’s uncompromising. She is the as-yet-unnamed MVPD officer who hunted down and violently shot to death a heinous lust-based serial killer. Whom I, the author, profiled. And then she finds out that she has—or had—a twin. What happened to that twin, Detective Pallorino? What happened to you prior to Christmas Eve 1986? This is the journey we shall take our readers on.”

  Inside her belly she began to shake. “Is that a threat? You’re going to name me in the press as the Baptist’s shooter—because not even the IIO publicly named me? You’re going to break the personal story of my past?”

  He said nothing. She couldn’t read his eyes behind the shine of his spectacles in the darkness. But his silence held her paralyzed. She was doomed. Whether she cooperated with him or not—this was all going to get out there, one way or another.

  “Sleep on it for a day or two, why don’t you?” He paused. “And consider this—I can do this story justice. I have a specific interest in twins. It’s been an area of academic expertise for me. Look up the old papers I wrote on cryptophasia.”

  “What?”

  “Twin talk. It’s an idioglossia—an idiosyncratic, private language invented and spoken by only one person, or between very few people, usually children. When it’s spoken solely between twins, it’s referred to as cryptophasia. It can grow out of delayed childhood development or reduced verbal stimulation and interaction with adult language models. Perhaps you even had a special language with your twin, Detective.”

  A memory sliced through her.

  Come playum dum grove … Come down dem …

  Angie could see her suddenly, the little girl from her earlier hallucinations, awash in a luminous glow of pale pink, no discernible face, long red hair, her small white hand reaching out, beckoning … A singsongy voice filled Angie’s ears …

  Two little kittens … two little kittens …

  The childish, tinky-tonk tune crashed and died in a horrible cacophony, like piano keys all being smashed at once.

  She shook herself, cleared her throat. Very quietly, she said, “I’m going to ask you one last time—who told you?”

  “You’ve got my number.” He adjusted the bill of his sodden hat. “Take care, Detective Pallorino.”

  She glared after him as his shadow merged into the dark, rainy mist. She was shaking. Cold. Wet. She got into her car and rubbed her hands hard over her damp face. She’d kill whoever had spilled her personal news to that creep. And now that it was out, there was no way that she was going to be able to cram that genie back into the bottle.

  Even more troubling was who in her very close circle of trusted confidants would have done this to her?

  She reached for her ignition, started her vehicle. And it struck her—she had to go tell her dad. About her DNA and the child’s foot. If this was all going to blow up in the news, her father needed to prep himself. Reporters would hound him. The secret that he and her adoptive mother had been harboring all these years would be exposed to his friends, his colleagues at the university. He’d also have to find a way to protect her mom, who—in her schizophrenic-dementia state—could find it all terribly disturbing. Especially if reporters tried to get to her.

  Angie rammed her car into gear and spun out of the parking lot, tires squealing as she hit the road. Shitshitshit. She smacked the wheel in hot frustration. What would this mean for her social media position now? Her probation? If it got out that she was the MVPD cop who’d been under IIO investigation. That it was her who’d emptied her clip into Spencer Addams’s face in some blackout rage. It wasn’t exactly the smiling face of an Officer Friendly on the social media desk.

  Perhaps you even had a special language with your twin, Detective?

  She punched a button on her console, connecting her phone via Bluetooth. She drew to a stop at a red traffic light, hit Alex Strauss’s number.

  The instant her old psychologist friend and mentor answered, she said, “Alex, it’s me, Angie. I need you to put me under again—take me back in time with hypnosis. Tonight if you can, because I need to be in Vancouver early tomorrow morning.” She realized if she went past her father’s house now and spoke to him before going to meet Alex, she wouldn’t make it home in time to gather up her things and drive up the peninsula to catch the last ferry. She’d have to rise at 5:00 a.m. Saturday instead and catch the first ferry out. It would still give her time—just—to reach Hansen Correctional Centre by noon tomorrow.

  “Are you certain, Angie?” Alex said.

  “Dead certain.”

  “It could be risky—you went into distress last time. I had to bring you out early, remember? And you did not come back easily.”

  She smoothed her hand over her wet hair, recalling the terror of being in that dark place in her mind where Alex had taken her. Edginess nipped at her nerves. She had to do it. Everything she’d experienced, everything she’d felt and seen and remembered, now took on a different context with the bombshell that Tranquada, the IDRU woman, had dropped on her.

  Come playum dum grove … Come down dem …

  It could be her sister, calling from beyond a watery grave. For help—to come find her. In a special language only the two of them had used to communicate. Angie’s eyes filled with sharp emotion.

  “I need to go back again, Alex. Deeper. And it’s not just for me—”

  Now she was doing this for someone else—a
little girl who was finally taking shape. It changed everything.

  “It’s for my twin.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “Come on in,” Alex Strauss said, stepping back and holding the door open wide for Angie.

  “Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,” she said, shucking off her uniform jacket as she entered. He took her wet jacket and hung it on a hook near the door while she sat on the mudroom bench and removed her boots.

  “I confess you had me at twin,” he said. “Uniform looks good on you, Angie.” He nodded toward her gear.

  “Yeah, right.” She came to her feet. “I’d have changed but had to go see my dad right away, tell him this story could break. He’s going to have to face friends and colleagues and prepare my mom somehow for when the story of my life goes public. Media will hound them both, and I don’t suspect reporters will go easy on either of them for having hidden my past from me.”

  “How’d he handle the news of a possible sibling—the little foot?” Alex said, leading the way into his living room.

  She followed him. Nerves nipped as she caught sight the big old wingback in which she’d sat for her previous hypnosis session with him. “It hit him hard.” She blew out a stream of breath and carefully seated herself in the chair. Alex had a wood fire burning, and his living room was warm. He dimmed the lights.

  “It was bad enough with them pretending I was their dead kid, trying to insert me into their deceased toddler’s life. The fact I could have a dead biological double just drives it all in deeper and weirder. He wants answers, too, about that little foot.”

  “Have you considered that media coverage might be advantageous? Someone might recall something, come forward.”

  “It would also expose me as the cop who killed Spencer Addams should Grablowski make good on his threat. Nothing good can come of that. And it could also have an adverse effect in that it might tip off persons involved in the old crimes, send them further into hiding. I just want to move as quickly as possible with my own investigation to see how far I can get before all the shit hits the media fan and before the RCMP ties my hands and cuts off my access to potential sources.”