The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2) Read online

  Irritation sparked in her. “I’m just going to the mainland for the weekend. I’m going to visit a man who might have known me from before the cradle incident, that’s all. I’m going to ask him if I had a sister, a mother, what happened to them. As a civilian, never mind a cop. That’s my right, Maddocks.”

  He looked doubtful. “Like I said, thin ice. Because you’re not just a civilian. You’re a cop on probation. Tell me you didn’t use the fact that you are law enforcement in order to get that interview with Milo Belkin tomorrow.”

  She thunked her glass onto the table and lurched to her feet, unwilling, unable to face the aggravating logic in his words. “I need to leave. Got to try to grab a few hours’ sleep. It’s late. Ferry leaves early.” She reached for her coat, which hung on a hook by the stairs that led up to the deck.

  “Stay, Angie,” he said quietly. “Finish your drink. Stay the night, please.”

  She hesitated, her hand on her jacket.

  He set his glass down and came up behind her. Turning her around, he looked down into her face. Her chest crunched at the sight of the hot, dark emotion simmering in his gorgeous deep-blue eyes, those dense, dark lashes.

  “I can’t let you leave like this, angry.” He slid his hand under her fall of hair, cupped the back of her neck. His grip was warm. Assertive. Demanding. Again she wondered about his unusual mood, that strange energy that seemed to be simmering in him tonight. He traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. Heat rushed into her belly. Want—fierce and sharp and sudden and desperate—erupted inside her. For something beyond sex. A raw yearning for deep connection. It was a feeling she couldn’t articulate, and it was powerful and overriding and terrifying, so she resisted it, pulling up her cop coping mechanisms instead. Distance. Intellectualization. Walls that were high and cold and safe, that protected her feelings from the rest of the world.

  “I can’t,” she said coolly, ducking out from his touch and taking her coat from the hook. She shrugged into it, wincing as the motion tore at the injured tissue in her arm. “It’s almost 1:00 a.m. I need to be up at five to catch the ferry, or I won’t make it to Hansen by noon.”

  She started up the stairs. “See you Monday,” she called over her shoulder, not looking back. She pushed out of the hatch. Salt wind slapped her face with rain. As she climbed off the yacht and onto the dock, Angie felt as though she’d just crossed a threshold, taken a step away from all that was light and warm and good to embark on a journey she could only take alone. If she turned around and looked back into Maddocks’s eyes, she’d be swayed by his logic, and she’d not have the strength to do it.

  And she had to do it.

  CHAPTER 35

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 6

  Maddocks grabbed his coat and rushed up onto the deck after Angie. She was already striding along the rain-swept dock, wind whipping her hair and the hem of her coat.

  “Angie!” he called as he clambered over the side of his boat and went after her.

  She stopped, turned. Her face appeared ghost-white under the mist-haloed dock lights.

  “Phone me,” he said, nearing her. “Promise that you’ll call and let me know how it went with Belkin.”

  She hesitated. Wind lashed a strand of wet hair across her face. And she looked so alone, and he loved her—everything about this irascible, lone-wolf-rogue woman. He respected her, and he loved her. And he felt as though she was slipping away. And he was worried about her. Maddocks at heart knew that he was a rescuer—he wanted to rescue Angie as much as she didn’t want him to save her. Because she wanted to rescue herself. Yet she was having trouble doing it.

  “Okay, sure.” She turned, hesitated, and then swung back to face him. It sent a punch of relief through his stomach.

  “I never did ask how it went with Ginny—your dinner.”

  “Fine. It went good. She’s getting on with her life, doesn’t want her dad’s help and all that.” He smiled ruefully. Wind gusted and rain came down harder. He blinked against it. “So basically it’s business as usual,” he said. “Although her mother would rather she moved back home and is making damned sure I know it.”

  Something shifted in Angie’s face—a hesitancy at the mention of his ex-wife. “You didn’t tell me how the barcode case is going, either,” she said.

  He hadn’t wanted to. He was still reeling over Sophia Tarasov’s murder, at having the RCMP and task force swooping in, emasculating their team. Telling Angie would have been too much on top of what she’d just endured over the last few days. Guilt pinged through Maddocks at another sudden, darker realization: Tarasov’s tongue being excised, a possible Russian organized crime hit, the secretive task force—it was all highly sensitive and confidential stuff, and maybe, just maybe, a part of him deep down inside didn’t fully trust Angie with it all right now. She still needed to see that shrink, sort a lot of things out.

  “It’s moving forward,” he said. “How ’bout I catch you up when you return Monday.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She pushed wet hair back from her face, weighing him in the dim light and mist. “You sure everything is okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  She frowned slightly, wavering again, as if torn by some inner conflict. “Thanks for listening,” she said. “I’ll come by Monday night, see if you’re home, let you know how it went.” She stepped closer, reached up, placed her palm against the side of his wet face. “And then you can catch me up on your case and … everything else.”

  He swallowed as her words churned a cocktail of conflicted emotions and desire through his gut. “Look after yourself, Angie.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, you too.” She turned and strode with renewed purpose for the gangway that led up to the marina security gate.

  “You better be back Monday!” he called impulsively after her.

  She raised her hand without turning back, and then she was gone up the gangway, through the gate, and along the walkway, where she was swallowed by a swirl of mist and darkness. A foghorn sounded out in the harbor, deep and sonorous and lonely.

  He stood there, silent in the rain, watching the mist where she’d disappeared. A chill of foreboding sank through him. But before he could probe it, the cell in his pocket rang. Maddocks spun and made for his yacht. He answered the call as he got down inside his cabin, Jack-O still sleeping, oblivious to all on the sofa.

  “Maddocks.”

  “It’s Flint. Sorry to wake you—”

  “I’m up.”

  “Good. Just got word. You’re in. You’ve got full security clearance. You’re being temporarily assigned as the sole MVPD member on the integrated task force. They want you for a full briefing in Surrey Saturday at noon. Chopper will be waiting for you at the heliport at six.”

  CHAPTER 36

  The helicopter banked and lowered through skeins of cloud that wrapped around mountains like sleeping dragons. Suddenly, beneath the clouds, to Maddocks’s right, lay the city of Vancouver, gleaming silver in the wintery light and shimmering with rain. On the opposite side of the Burrard was the Lonsdale area development marching up the flanks of the North Shore mountains. But above the snowline there was just dense, endless forest blanketed by white and stretching clean up to Alaska.

  The pilot’s voice came through his headphones. They were about to land.

  As the bird descended, a squat sea bus pulled away from its North Shore mooring and began to ply a foamy wake across water toward the city.

  The chopper angled past a white giant of a Norwegian cruise ship docked near the city’s landmark convention center and aimed for the small heliport near a railyard. The pilot brought his craft down with a neat and sudden bump dead center of a white X that marked the waterfront heliport landing.

  As Maddocks disembarked and ducked beneath the rotors, carrying his bag, he reached into his pocket for his phone. He called Flint as he made his way up the long wooden gangway that led to the small terminal building. Up ahead in the heliport parking lot, he could see a Mountie in uniform wa
iting next to a squad car—Maddocks’s transport to Surrey.

  As soon as Flint picked up, Maddocks said, “Did they agree?”

  “It took some convincing, but yes, they’ve conceded—no one on the task force interviews either Sabbonnier or Camus without you being present.”

  A bite of victory punched through him. Whether Sabbonnier or Camus would say another word to anyone was highly doubtful, but Maddocks was heading into his first briefing bearing a grudge against Sergeant Parr Takumi, the task force lead investigator, who’d failed to alert Flint and the MVPD of the potentially lethal danger facing the barcode girls. This was now personal.

  He killed the call, jogged up the steps to the lot, and approached the squad car. He introduced himself to the young Mountie, who took his bag and said that he was Constable Sammi Agarwal.

  As Agarwal drove through the city and onto the highway that would take them to Surrey, Maddocks watched the urban scenery unfold, and his chest grew tighter and tighter. Surrey was his old home. It was where he and Sabrina had married and where they’d started their dreams of building a family. Where Ginny had been born. Where it had all gone wrong.

  His mood turned sullen as he recalled Sabrina’s words from her recent phone call about Ginny’s missed appointment. They’d cut like a knife, ramming home all his failures, reminding him of his scuttled dreams of spending an early retirement with his wife, his naive visions of buying a yacht, sailing with her up into Desolation Sound, camping on remote islands, fishing, while Ginny went to college. Instead, Sabrina had begun her affair with Peter, an accountant with regular hours, a good paycheck, a family inheritance, weekends off, and a passion for opera. How could he beat a fucking passion for opera? And then had come the shocker—Sabrina had filed for a divorce. How’d he not seen that coming?

  Now he was back here on the mainland while Ginny was on the island, alone. While Angie was in Victoria working a desk job. While his old yacht was probably springing another leak in the windswept marina. Conflict churned through him. And as the rain and clouds pressed in, so did that odd sense of foreboding that had assailed him while he’d watched Angie disappearing into the fog. He was losing her, too.

  He checked his watch. She’d be driving out to Hansen right now. He hadn’t even asked what Vancouver hotel she’d be staying at upon her return tonight. Tension twisted through him.

  CHAPTER 37

  The guard brought the inmate into the room where Angie waited at a table. Milo Belkin was not tall—maybe five foot six—but he was broad across the chest and thighs. The fifty-six-year-old had clearly been working out in his cell or in the exercise yard. He was dressed in a prison sweatshirt, loose pants, white runners. His gray hair had been trimmed in a short buzz around his skull.

  “Milo Belkin,” she said as he stepped into the room.

  He froze as he caught sight of her. His face went white. He shot a glance at the guard, as if suddenly desperate for escape.

  Angie’s pulse quickened at his reaction.

  The guard’s features remained impassive as he took position in front of the door. The inmate turned slowly back to face Angie.

  “I’m Angie Pallorino,” she said, closely watching his face, his eyes. “I’m an officer with the Metro Victoria Police Department.” Maddocks’s voice played through her head as she said the words.

  Tell me you didn’t use the fact that you are law enforcement in order to get that interview with Milo Belkin tomorrow.

  Belkin slowly seated himself in the chair across the table from Angie, his gaze riveted on hers. His body language screamed reluctance. But he said not a word. The color of his eyes was dark brown—so dark they looked almost black. Intense eyes, set too close on either side of his big beaked nose.

  Excitement trilled through her.

  “You know why I’m here, don’t you, Milo?” she said quietly. “You recognized me the instant you walked in,” she said.

  The man swallowed. A vein bulged at his neck, which was corded with muscle and tension. He had a tattoo on the left side of that thick neck, she realized—the ink just poking into her line of vision.

  “How do you know me, Milo?”

  Silence.

  She placed a copy of the Kodak print that Jenny Marsden had given her onto the table. She pushed it toward him. “Can you tell me now?”

  He refused to glance down at the photo.

  She leaned forward and jabbed the print with her index finger. “That there is the angel’s cradle child. Janie Doe. Abandoned at Saint Peter’s Hospital, Christmas Eve 1986.” Angie waited.

  Slowly, cautiously, Belkin glanced down toward the image. He inhaled sharply. His eyes ticked back to Angie’s face.

  She touched the scar that bisected the left side of her lips. “Did you put this here, Milo? Do you perhaps remember me as Roksana?”

  He shot another glance over his shoulder at the guard, who remained impervious, sullen, staring straight ahead, one hand clasped over the other in front of him.

  “You chased a young dark-haired woman across Front Street that night in ’86, Milo. In the snow. You and at least one other man. The woman had two children with her, didn’t she? One of the children was barefoot. No coats.”

  His Adam’s apple moved in his throat as he swallowed hard. She pushed a Styrofoam cup of water toward him.

  “Dry mouth?” she said. “Can be a sign of stress. Does my presence stress you, Milo?”

  He said nothing, did not reach for the water. Instead his attention returned slowly to the photo. He stared at it. Angie’s heart beat even faster—he had not denied that there were two children present. Or that he might know her as Roksana.

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “What did you do to that woman and the other child, Milo, the little girl who did not make it into the angel’s cradle?”

  Silence pressed thick and heavy into the room. She could smell him—sweat tinged with the unique stink of fear. She waited. But still he remained mute.

  “The other little girl, her name was Mila, wasn’t it?”

  Tiny pinpricks of moisture beaded his upper lip as he continued to stare at the photo.

  “Why do I scare you so much, Milo Belkin?”

  He refused to make eye contact again. He was going to wait her out, possibly hoping she’d leave sooner than later. This felon was six months out from his WED date. And once he was released after he had served out the very last day and hour of his sentence, not even the parole board would have jurisdiction over him. He could disappear into the ether a free man. There was no way in hell he was going to say anything that would incriminate him in a crime that would garner him a whole other set of new charges. And fresh prison time.

  Angie leaned farther forward, forcing him to look directly into her eyes again. “See, Milo, here’s what I’m thinking—when you walked into this room, you just about wet yourself. Because I look just like someone you used to know, isn’t that right?”

  A muscle began to twitch in the corner of his left eye. Adrenaline pumped into Angie’s blood. She kept her voice low, calm. “I resemble that woman you chased across the street, except for coloring maybe. The hair—hers was dark brown. Mine is red. Like the twins.”

  Her words seemed to make the last of the color drain completely from his face. The pace of the twitch at the corner of his eye doubled. He broke eye contact, stared hard at the table.

  “And then when you saw this scar across my mouth, you knew, didn’t you, exactly who I was. When you walked into this room, you looked like you’d seen a ghost, and you had. Because I’ve come back to haunt you, Milo Belkin. With this—”

  She placed onto the table a printed copy of the crime scene photograph showing the blood-smeared outside door of the cradle. Beside it she placed another photograph—this one a close-up of a palm smear and clear bloody fingerprints on the door.

  “This, Milo.” She slid both prints right under his nose. “Whether you want to tell me what happened or not, this is proof that you were there
that night in ’86. You chased that woman and her children. You struggled with the woman outside that cradle as she fought to put both her girls inside where they would be safe. You fired shots—a Colt .45 maybe. You escaped in a black Chevrolet van.”

  His eyes darted back to her face.

  Excitement cracked through her. “You cut my mouth, because my blood was on your hands when you touched those cradle doors as you battled to get me out of the bassinet. But then the church bells started ringing, and people began exiting the church across the alley. Maybe you heard sirens coming, too. And you grabbed the woman and the other child and ran. To the Chevy van waiting at the top of the alley on the back side of the hospital, and you fled the scene.”

  He lifted his hand and slowly wiped the perspiration from above his lip.

  “All the old evidence from that crime scene is now being retested using new science,” she said quietly. “That’s how we got a hit on your prints left in that blood on the cradle door. That’s how I found you, because your prints are in the system as a convicted felon. In a few days we’ll also have DNA results from semen on a purple sweater that was found inside the cradle with the child. When that semen stain comes up as a match to your DNA profile, which will also be filed in the national DNA database for convicted offenders, you’re going to be charged all over again, Milo Belkin. And this time”—she pushed her last photo toward him, the little lilac high-top that had washed up on the beach—“it’ll be for murder.” She paused. “Life.”

  His gaze darted to the photograph. His eyes widened. His lips parted. His breathing quickened.

  “That’s the remains of my sister’s foot still in that shoe. You know exactly what happened to her. And to our young mother.”

  His eyes watered as he continued to stare at the image of the dirty little high-top. And he did not deny that the dark-haired woman was the mother of the two children. This set a fire under Angie.