The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  Energized, Angie bit into her brownie and called Maddocks’s number on her cell. As it rang she chewed her brownie, relishing the instant sugar and chocolate rush. Her call kicked to voicemail. Angie hit the kill button and slowly swallowed her mouthful, which was suddenly dry in her throat. He was busy on the barcode girls case. She knew that. Her case—or at least it should have been, in part. It was her and Maddocks’s work on the Baptist case that had led to the discovery and rescue of those young women with the barcode tats. A small tang of bitterness filled her mouth. She’d saved Maddocks’s life, and there he was, working one of the biggest and most intriguing investigations to hit the MVPD books in decades. And it would no doubt mushroom in scope with possible international reach. While she sat on the sidelines with her career in jeopardy.

  Angie reached for her coffee and sipped as she turned her attention to the huge brick hospital across the street. Through her own reflection on the window, she studied the building. Smeared and darkened with rain and nestled up against the ominous stone cathedral, it brought to mind some Dickensian structure, a rambling place filled with galleries and passages and terrible pain and secrets. The place where she’d been abandoned. Where her new life as Angie Pallorino had begun; where her old slate had been wiped clean of her memories. As she regarded the building, the rain outside turned into fat flakes of snow. They floated down like weightless silver leaves and settled fast on the roofs of parked cars and on the cold sidewalk.

  A surreal sensation sank through her—she was on the cusp of two identities. The child before. And the Angie after. With the sense of surreality came fear. It unfurled from somewhere deep down in the basement of her soul, from her buried past, fingering upward like a stranger into her present. She shook it. Because there was only one way forward now.

  Ironically, it meant going backward first.

  CHAPTER 4

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3

  Angie drove over the Lions Gate suspension bridge, her wipers squeaking against the soft mist of winter rain. It was 11:30 a.m., and traffic flowed smoothly. Far below the bridge the waters of the Burrard Inlet gleamed gunmetal gray. To her left, off the beaches of Kitsilano and Spanish Banks, more than twelve tankers skulked in fog, awaiting their entry to the Port of Vancouver—delayed indefinitely thanks to a longshoremen’s union strike that was now into its second week. To her right, hidden from view on days like today, lay the hazy white wedge of Mount Baker in the States. But up ahead, on the opposite shores of the Burrard, the densely forested North Shore mountains were exposed in shafts of sunlight as skeins of cloud drifted over their green flanks. Above the snowline everything was pristine white.

  The widow of deceased VPD detective Arnold Voight was expecting Angie up on the slopes of one of those mountains where she now lived in an in-law suite in her daughter’s home. Voight had been the lead detective on the ’86 cradle case.

  CBC radio played softly in the background of her Nissan Altima rental as she turned onto the off-ramp that would lead her from the bridge down onto Marine Drive. Her MVPD Crown Vic was another thing she’d had to surrender while on administrative leave. She also had to call into the department on every day that she’d normally be working—she was still being paid. Still on the clock. A suspension was not a vacation, as her superior, Sergeant Matthew Vedder, had reminded her.

  Anxiety crawled into her chest at the thought of the pending IIO review ruling. Not only could it kill her career entirely, but it could also give her a criminal record. Angie didn’t know how not to be a cop, let alone how to be a criminal.

  In an effort to distract herself, she hit the hands-free phone icon on her dash and dialed Maddocks once more. He was the only one she’d told so far about her discovery that she was the angel’s cradle child, and she wanted to share with him what she’d learned from the nurse. She’d tried calling Maddocks from the hotel last night, but each time she’d gone straight to voicemail.

  His phone rang, and yet again her call was shunted immediately to voicemail. Angie turned onto Marine Drive as she listened to Maddocks’s recorded voice. She stopped at a red light and left a message.

  “Maddocks, it’s Angie. I … give me a call, will you? I’m on my way to see the widow of Detective Arnold Voight. She lives on the North Shore. VPD has no case files.” She ended the call, a hollow feeling in her gut. She missed him, dammit, and that frustrated her. She didn’t want to miss anyone. She did not want to need anyone. Her grip tightened on the wheel. The light turned green, and she hit the gas. She’d see him later tonight anyway—they had a reservation for dinner at the King’s Head to celebrate her so-called “birthday,” which was today. The farce of it dug deep after having seen the cradle. Because no one knew when she’d really been born, or to whom. The Pallorinos had simply picked today, January 3, because they’d felt it was the start of a new life for her at the commencement of a fresh year. And, her father had said, because the date was set just slightly apart from the actual New Year’s festivities, so she could still feel “special” on her own day.

  As Angie took a left up Lonsdale, her thoughts turned to her adoptive parents—Miriam and Joseph Pallorino. They’d lived here on the North Shore while fostering her before the adoption had gone through. Her father had told her that a social worker and a child psychologist had visited them several times each week. A speech therapist had come, too, to help Angie learn to speak again, teaching her English, because by then they’d begun to suspect that she might have been raised in a foreign language before she’d been abandoned. Or not taught to speak much at all.

  Uciekaj, uciekaj! … Wskakuj do srodka, szybko! … Siedz cicho!

  She’d known instinctively that those words in her memory meant, Run, run! Get inside!

  She believed now that she’d understood some Polish as a child, and that the voice yelling those words had possibly been her mother’s, or the voice of a female caregiver.

  Angie took her vehicle up a steep hill. She rounded a corner, slowed, and checked the address on a pillar at the bottom of a precipitous driveway. The widow’s residence. She turned in, drove up to a rambling post-and-beam rancher painted pale gray, and parked outside the garage.

  Nerves, anticipation shimmered through Angie as she looked up at the house. She was about to come face-to-face with the wife of the cop who’d hunted for her family three decades ago.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Please, come in. I’m Sharon Farraday. My mum’s expecting you.” The woman who’d opened the door to Angie was slender with dark hair scrunched up into an untidy but flattering ponytail that sent soft tendrils about her narrow features. “She’s through this way.”

  Angie removed her boots and coat and followed Sharon Farraday through a living room with a wooden floor, vaulted ceiling, and a wall of glass that looked out toward the Burrard and the city down in the distance. The tops of city skyscrapers poked through a bank of dense cloud that had settled over land at sea level. A child playing on the floor amid a scattering of toys looked up as Angie entered the room—a cute tomboy of a girl around the age of three. She wore dungarees, a flannel shirt, and she sported strawberry-blonde braids.

  “Hi,” the child said, her round blue eyes inspecting Angie intently.

  “Kaylee, this is Angie Pallorino,” said Sharon. “She’s come to visit Gran.”

  “Wanna see my dinosaur?” Kaylee thrust a plastic toy toward Angie. “It’s a bronnosaurus.”

  “I see,” Angie said, bending down to take an obligatory look at the toy being offered to her.

  “I got it for Christmas. What did you get for Christmas?”

  Angie smiled as a memory washed through her—making love with Maddocks on Christmas Day, on his yacht in the wind. Rain beating against deck. “Well, I certainly didn’t get a dinosaur.”

  “It’s vicious!” Kaylee said with a grin that scrunched her freckled nose.

  “I’m sure it is.” Angie straightened up, and her attention went to a series of family portraits on the bookshelves behi
nd the child. The images depicted a happy-looking family unit consisting of mom, dad, and daughter. Another frame showed a grizzled man with thick gray hair holding a fishing rod, his arm around a slight silver-haired woman with a huge smile.

  Angie nodded toward the photo. “Is that your mom and dad?” she asked Sharon.

  “Yes—the great detective and his stay-at-home wife.”

  Angie’s gaze ticked toward Sharon. Was that a tone of resentment?

  Sharon gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t mean it like that. But you know, growing up as the child of a cop in major crimes—well, you probably don’t know. But I hardly saw him until his retirement three years ago. By then I was long grown, making a family of my own. Then eighteen months after he quit work, he died.” Hesitation entered her voice, and a darkness sifted into her eyes. “Sometimes you can spend your whole life waiting for the day you leave work, the day you’re going to start enjoying life, start living, start getting to know your family. But by then it’s over—it’s too late. You’re gone.”

  “Wanna play?” Kaylee interrupted. “I got a tyrasaurus for you.”

  Angie broke her gaze with the woman and glanced at the child on the floor. She was around the same age as Angie would have been when she’d been stuffed bleeding into that cradle. Same age as the little girl in pink who’d been haunting her in her hallucinations. A chill crawled down her spine. She shook the odd emotion. “Not now, Kaylee, thank you. I need to see your gran.”

  Sharon pointed Angie toward a staircase. “My mom’s suite is downstairs.” She lowered her voice and said, “Her memory is not quite what it used to be—she gets confused sometimes. And frustrated if pushed to recall things. Please, whatever it is that you’ve come for, go on easy on her.”

  Angie’s heart sank a little. “Of course.” She started down the wooden stairs. Behind her Sharon called out, “I hope you like scones—I could smell her baking all morning.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, a door hung ajar. Angie knocked, then edged the door open a little wider. “Hello? Mrs. Voight—are you here?”

  The tiny silver-haired woman from the photo popped out from around the wall. She wore an orange apron that was covered with giant purple eggplants.

  “I’m Angie,” she said, stepping into the open-plan living area.

  “Wanda. It’s good to meet you.” The woman offered Angie her hand. There was a hint of England in her accent, and her hand felt cold and frail, like the bones of a little bird. “Arnold would have been so thrilled at your interest in his old case. That mystery of the cradle child really got to him.” She undid her apron ties as she spoke.

  “Do you know much about it?”

  “Not really. Arnold didn’t discuss the details of his cases with me. He liked to keep me separate from all that dark stuff that went on at his work. I made you tea—do you like tea? Please, sit down.” Wanda Voight gestured toward a round table abutting a window that looked out over a small garden. On the table was a colorful cloth, atop which sat a teapot covered with a quilted cozy. Beside it was a plate of scones, jars of jam and cream, and a set of matching cups, saucers, and plates.

  “I love tea, thanks.” Angie seated herself at the table. “You have a nice view from downstairs, too,” she said, taking in the pretty little envelope of lawn outside with its neatly trimmed edges, shrub border. A drooping yellow cedar stood sentinel over it all. Once a few pleasantries had been exchanged and tea had been poured and a hot buttered scone and jam had been set in front of Angie, she steered the conversation back to the topic of her visit, remaining careful not to angle in too directly—senior citizens did require a different level of tact when it came to interviews. They’d witnessed life in a different era. They generally needed to be made to feel relaxed, comfortable, warmed up with common interests. Angie explained again why she’d come. “As I mentioned on the phone, I’m looking into that cradle case for a close friend.”

  “Are you a private investigator, then?” said Wanda.

  “In a manner. At least in this capacity.” Angie set her cup on its saucer and leaned forward. “That case made the media. Ads and posters were sent out, yet no one came forward to claim the child, no distant relative, nothing. It must have been high-profile for a while?”

  Wanda sipped her tea, thinking. “You know, it was the top of the news for a week or so, but then there was that big earthquake up in Alaska, and the angel’s cradle child story sort of got swept away by it all. On top of the quake, news broke about that Boeing going down in the Pacific. There was a team of Calgary hockey players on that plane, and it was all everyone was talking about.” She took another sip of her tea, then shook her head. “Arnie had nightmares about the cradle case. And when no one came for that little girl, and Arnie could do nothing more to find out where she’d come from … well, he had trouble letting it go. He was disturbed by his own inability to solve the mystery.”

  “He was the lead investigator, I understand.”

  “Yes. His partner at the time was Rufus Stander. They worked it together. Eventually they had to put the case aside for more pressing things.”

  “What happened to Rufus Stander?” Angie asked. “When I visited the VPD yesterday, they told me he was also deceased.” And I got a feeling there was more to it than that.

  A shadow crept into the elderly woman’s eyes. Carefully, with two hands, she set her cup on the saucer. She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Arnie and Rufus had a particularly difficult case several years after the angel’s cradle one. An eight-year-old boy went missing from Stanley Park. Clean vanished into thin air. Arnie and Rufus were part of the team tasked with the search. And they were the ones who found him. Just one block down from the park where he disappeared. They were searching the rental unit of a man who’d apparently been seen talking with the boy in the park shortly before the boy vanished. The man was not at home—the landlord let Arnie and Rufus into the unit. Apparently, the landlord said the tenant had not been seen since the day the boy went missing. While Arnie was talking to the landlord, Rufus opened the fridge door, to see what was in there—to judge how long the man might have been gone and whether he might be returning …” Her voice faded. She shook herself.

  “A garbage bag came tumbling out and thudded onto the floor. The boy had been stuffed into the bag and crammed into the fridge. Rufus told Arnie later that it was the garbage bag that really got to him—the fact that someone’s kid had been put into a trash bag like that. Just some rubbish to be thrown away. Why stick the child in that bag, he said, if you’re going to put him in the fridge?” A long pause. Rain began to fall harder outside. The boughs of the yellow cedar sulked lower as they dripped water.

  “Rufus never got over it, I think,” Wanda said, her voice going raspy with emotion. “That and all the other stuff those city cops had to deal with. Years later he tidied up his affairs. Washed all his clothes. Laid all his shoes out neatly in his cupboard and in the boot room, side by side. Then he went and lay down on the railway tracks. At the bottom of North Van.” Another break of heavy silence descended over Wanda. She cleared her throat. “That’s when Arnie finally put in for his retirement. People don’t understand the toll that job can take on a police officer or his family. They don’t know how we all have to tiptoe around the ugly side of the job, the mood swings, the depression, the drinking.” She looked out of the window, her gaze going distant. “Sometimes when Arnie came home after a bad shift, I couldn’t talk to him for hours. I just had to let him lay on the couch and watch mindless television and have a couple of beers, and then he’d finally come around and be himself again. It wasn’t easy being married to him. But I loved him.” She returned her gaze to Angie. “I miss him.”

  Angie’s chest clutched at the rawness in Wanda Voight’s eyes. She hesitated, then awkwardly she forced herself to cover the woman’s hand with her own. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Wanda inhaled deeply. “No, I’m sorry. This was not supposed to be about me.” She extracted her hand
, fumbled for a handkerchief in her pocket, blew her nose, and then came to her feet. “I asked Sharon to bring Arnie’s boxes up out of the basement. She put them by the sliding door for you.”

  “What boxes?”

  “They’re over here,” Wanda said as she got up and made for the glass slider.

  Angie lurched to her feet and followed, her pulse suddenly racing.

  Wanda pointed to two cardboard file boxes that rested side by side on the floor behind a sofa. They were sealed with yellow tape. In fat black Sharpie along the side of the front box, someone had scrawled the words BOX 01 JANE DOE SAINT PETERS #930155697–2.

  Shock slammed through Angie. She bent down and moved the first box aside.

  BOX 02 JANE DOE SAINT PETERS #930155697–2

  Her gaze ticked up to Wanda. “Are these the angel’s cradle case files?”

  “Like I said, it got to Arnie. He never did stop looking in his own way. He always wondered if that child might return one day as a grown woman to ask him questions. He knew she’d been adopted. He knew that she’d been taken in by a good, kind family. He even called the child’s adoptive father a few times to check on the child and to see if she might have remembered anything about that day, or about her life before. Or whether the adoptive family had ever been contacted by anyone suspicious. Arnie also thought that maybe a relative might eventually come to him in search of the child. But no one did. He never did find her family, nor the men who’d fired the guns outside the church that night. When he learned that the evidence was going to be destroyed, he went and got these boxes. He wasn’t supposed to. They used to incinerate anything in evidence that was to be destroyed, with witnesses watching. Sometimes they’d return property to families if they could find them. In this case, since there was nothing valuable in there, no weapons or anything, they let Arnie take it. He told them he was going to keep working it on his own. He brought the boxes home.”