The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  Suddenly exhausted, her vision blurring, Angie glanced at the clock in her kitchen. Almost 2:00 a.m. She replaced the binder, followed by the bagged sweater and teddy bear. She snapped off and trashed her gloves. If she was lucky, she might be able steal a couple hours of sleep. She shunted the dead bolt home on her door and clicked off the lights in her living room. She went into her bedroom and took her uniform out from the back of her closet. She hung it on the outside of the closet door and sat down on the edge of her bed. She stared at it—the black pants, black shirt, the badge on the sleeve, the name tag on the left breast that said, PALLORINO.

  The last time she’d worn it was on a sweltering July day just over six months ago. For her old partner Hash Hashowsky’s funeral. Her chest tightened at the memory of the lone riderless horse with Hash’s boots hanging symbolically from the stirrups. A sea of uniformed officers, some in black, some in red Mountie serge, had followed the horse to the plaintive tune of Scottish bagpipes and the cry of gulls. The downtown part of the city had come to a stop. Emotion flooded her eyes, and she swiped it away angrily. He’d been her mentor. Her friend. She’d loved Hash like a father. At least he’d never let her down like her adoptive father had with his lies. And heaven alone knew who her real biological father was. The thought struck her—what would Hash advise her to do in the face of probation?

  He’d tell her she’d worked her ass off to become a damn fine detective, and throwing it away now over a twelve-month period of discipline would be a fool’s game. Angie inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders. She clenched her hands over her knees. And Maddocks was right—if she did swallow her discipline and stay with the MVPD, she’d have access to law enforcement databases that would otherwise be closed to her.

  She could take it one day at a time. And she didn’t have to start until 11:00 a.m. tomorrow. That gave her time enough to potentially get her evidence to a private lab before reporting for duty. At least the techs could commence working on her samples. Just the idea of pending results—new clues—would keep her going through the first day. And then when she returned home tomorrow, she could dig into Detective Voight’s case notes and other material.

  Angie brushed her teeth, crawled into bed, and clicked off her bedside lamp. As she drifted into the darkness of sleep, a faint and distant sound reached her. A female voice. Singing. Soft, like a lullaby …

  Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah,

  byly sobie kotki dwa.

  A-a-a, kotki dwa,

  szarobure, szarobure obydwa.

  Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah,

  There were once two little kittens.

  Ah-ah-ah, two little kittens,

  They were both grayish-brown.

  Ach, śpij, kochanie,

  jesli gwiazdke z nieba chcesz-dostaniesz.

  Wszystkie dzieci, nawet źle,

  pogrążone są we śnie,

  a ty jedna tylko nie.

  Oh, sleep, my darling,

  If you’d like a star from the sky, I’ll give you one.

  All children, even the bad ones,

  Are already asleep,

  Only you are not.

  She could see a dark room. A shut door. A small band of purplish light seeping through a barred window up high near the ceiling. She was lying on a bed. A hand held hers. Skin cool. Soft. It was a nice feeling. Another hand brushed hair back from her brow …

  Ach, śpij, bo wlaśnie

  księżyc ziewa i za chwilę zaśnie.

  A gdy rano przyjdzie świt

  księzycowi będzie wstyd,

  ze on zasnąl, a nie ty.

  Oh, sleep, because

  The moon is yawning, and he will soon fall asleep.

  And when the morning comes,

  He will be really ashamed,

  That he fell asleep and you did not.

  CHAPTER 15

  Kira Tranquada loved her job.

  She was the youngest identification analyst with the small identification and disaster response unit—the IDRU—at the BC Coroner’s Service, and she’d come into work the instant she’d heard about the latest floating foot discovery. That was four days ago. The lab had gotten to work immediately on the evidence brought in by the RCMP to see whether a viable DNA sample could be extracted.

  It wasn’t the first dismembered foot she’d worked with. Determining the origin and identity of these notorious floating feet was complicated. Ocean currents could carry the dismembered body parts as far as sixteen hundred kilometers—or around one thousand miles—and the currents in the Strait of Georgia where the majority of the feet had been found were highly unpredictable. Human feet also had a tendency to produce adipocere, a soaplike substance formed from body fat, which could conceal the scientific clues that helped determine postmortem interval. Under optimal conditions, a human body might remain intact in water for as long as three decades, meaning that the feet could have been floating around for years. But that length of time in water could also degrade DNA.

  The driving force in aquatic taphonomic patterns—the rate at which a body decomposes in water—is oxygen. In highly oxygenated water, a corpse can be reduced to a skeleton within half an hour to a few days, consumed by scavengers ranging from sharks to smaller fish and squat lobsters, Alaskan prawns, Dungeness crabs, and small amphipods commonly called sea lice, plus other organisms. In those instances, feet encased in protective shoes would disarticulate from the skeleton, and if there was air in the soles, they’d float to the surface pretty fast. But for a body lying in an anoxic underwater area, for example in a deep gulley full of silt and sediment, anthropophagy—the consumption of a corpse by organisms and predators—would be virtually nonexistent. This, plus an alkaline pH and anaerobic bacteria, would be ideal for the formation of adipocere from body fat—more frequent in a child. And while adipocere, which is sometimes referred to as grave wax, could make determining postmortem interval very difficult, it did preserve other forensic evidence. Bottom line, Kira and her team had managed to get viable nuclear DNA from this little foot without using terribly lengthy or complicated procedures. She now had a profile, and it was being run through their geographic information system.

  “It’s not going to go any faster if you hang over my shoulder like that, Tranquada,” Ricky Gorman muttered as he tapped at his keyboard. “Why don’t you go get me a coffee or something and chill?”

  Kira punched Ricky in the shoulder in mock rebuke. He was the IDRU’s GIS whiz. Most armchair crime aficionados tended to associate GIS with the geographic profiling of the hunting habits of serial killers, but Ricky’s expertise lay in the compilation of a multifaceted database of unidentified human remains and missing persons reports from around the province. And BC had the highest number of unidentified bodies in the country. This was partly due to the wild, mountainous terrain, the raging rivers, the miles of shoreline riddled with coves and islands, hostile weather, and sheer size—uninhabited for the most part—with borders that stretched from the Washington to Alaska and the territories. It was why the IDRU had been formed under the Coroner’s Service umbrella in 2006, and they consistently had about two hundred files under open investigation, with more added as others were solved.

  Ricky was among the first to have created a GIS program that specifically used Google maps for human remains investigations, and his systems had helped find an identity match for many of the floating feet, which had made headlines around the world.

  “Sugar and cream?” Kira said.

  “Hmm.”

  Kira went over to the coffeepot. She poured two mugs of fresh brew. It was the second pot she’d put on since coming into the office at 6:00 a.m. It was now almost 9:00 a.m.

  “What did the anthropologist say?” Ricky said as she brought the two mugs over to his desk.

  “Left foot bones of a three-or four-year-old child. No sign that it was removed by mechanical means—no tool marks like a knife or a saw.” She set Ricky’s mug down beside him. “Grave wax makes it tough to tell how long the foot has been out there, bu
t the CBC news appears to have been on the mark with the manufacture period for that brand of shoe.” She sipped from her mug, watching Ricky’s bank of monitors. “That ROOAirPocket-Zero high-top model was produced only between 1984 and 1986 before it was discontinued.”

  “Doesn’t mean the kid went into the water then,” Ricky said, reaching for his mug.

  “No.” Kira took another sip and nodded toward the monitors. “I met a cop the other night who still thinks this GIS stuff is a crock. He figures there’s not much more you can do with GIS that he can’t do with a big ol’ map and pushpins. He said smart cops have been doing the pushpin thing for years—they figure out patterns in their brains.”

  “Luddite.” Ricky set his mug back down beside him without taking his eyes off his work. “Old-school law enforcement said the same thing about Vancouver cop Kim Rossmo. He went on to become the first officer in Canada to obtain a doctorate in criminology, and his dissertation resulted in the geographic profiling methodology and software now being used by the FBI.”

  “Yeah, I told him. I also explained that if a plane crashes and there’re no bodies found, but we know that there were passengers and a pilot on that plane, our system keeps track of that, too. If a foot washes up fifteen years down the road, or a piece of finger bone is found in fishnet a decade later, we’re going to be able to tell right away if it came from that crash. Just like that body that was pulled from the Fraser River in Coquitlam a quarter century ago,” she said, taking another sip. “It was identified as a Prince George man whose corpse floated downstream nearly eight hundred kilometers. No one had even thought to look for a match against missing males that far north—investigators were shocked.”

  Ricky froze. “Shit,” he muttered. He leaned forward sharply, hitting his keys. “We got it. We got a cold fucking hit!”

  Chills raced down her spine as she peered over his shoulder. “Holy—” She grabbed the phone on the desk, hit the number for the head of the IDRU. “Dr. Colbourne, you’re going to want to see this. We got a direct cold hit on the kid’s foot.” She spoke fast, her gaze riveted on the information being displayed on Ricky’s monitor. “And the person is not missing.” She paused as new information populated Ricky’s screen. “Not deceased, either. She’s very much alive.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Maddocks received the call at 8:18 a.m. Thursday—one of the barcode girls had agreed to speak to him. She appeared to understand some English and had indicated to their victim services counselor that she was Russian. Maddocks had immediately contacted a female interpreter and arranged for her to meet him at the hospital where the girls were being held. He and Holgersen had driven over, stat.

  Maddocks and Holgersen now strode alongside the victim services counselor and the interpreter toward the room in the wing where the girls were being treated.

  “She’s the oldest one?” Maddocks asked, thinking of the girl who’d been poking at her plate of food while the others sat listless.

  “She appears to be,” the counselor said, leading the way. “And she’s definitely the strongest mentally.” She came up to a closed door, stopped, and turned to face the detectives and interpreter. “She’s waiting inside with a female orderly. I’ll sit in on the interview. The orderly will not. If at any time I feel that our survivor is coming under stress, I will call the interview to a halt. Is that understood?”

  “Loud and clear,” said Maddocks.

  She hesitated. “Possibly two males interrogating her might be too much.”

  Maddocks turned to Holgersen. “Why don’t you go hang in the cafeteria until I need you?”

  “Anything you says, boss.” He turned and loped away, fiddling in his jacket for his nicotine gum as he went. Maddocks inhaled, mentally preparing himself, striving for a calm, nonthreatening demeanor from the outset. Ideally, he’d have liked to have had Angie conducting this interview. But there were no other females on the task force right now who were qualified to handle this delicate situation, and the last thing Maddocks wanted was to wait and have their victim to clam up again.

  The counselor reached for the door handle but paused once more. “She’s still twitchy—still being weaned off the narcotics they were giving her.”

  “Understood,” said Maddocks.

  They entered. The girl sat with a nurse at a small round table under a long window that cast them in a wintery light. It was the one who’d been poking at her food. Her dark hair was once again scraped back. No makeup. Today she wore a simple gray hoodie over a white T-shirt, yoga pants, and slippers that someone must have brought for her. Maddocks felt a clutch in his chest—in this light she looked much younger than his Ginny. Barely sixteen. That she was the oldest of the six sliced even deeper.

  The nurse placed her hand over the girl’s and then got up and left the room. The interpreter took the nurse’s seat and introduced herself to the girl in Russian, explaining why they were here.

  Maddocks placed his file and notebook on the table. “I’m Detective James Maddocks,” he said. “Do you mind if I remove my jacket and take a seat?”

  The interpreter relayed his words in Russian.

  The girl nodded. Her hooded black eyes flicked nervously around the room, and she fidgeted with her nails in her lap. They were chewed to the quick. Visible around the thin column of her neck were fading bruises. A taste of bile rose up the back of his throat as he recalled his interview with Zaedeen Camus.

  What do these tattoos denote? Expiry date? Ownership?

  Ownership. The origin and age of the merchandise. And the date a girl was first put into service. The tattoos have been scanned into a computerized database for tracking. The girls go out for a fee, generally for a period of two years. They can be returned for new ones after that period, if so desired.

  He draped his jacket carefully over the back of the chair and seated himself. “You’re a long way from home,” he said.

  Again, the translator conveyed his words.

  The girl nodded.

  Maddocks said, “I want you to know that you can stop talking whenever you want to, okay? Just let me know. You can raise your hand like this.” He raised his hand, palm facing the girl.

  She listened to the interpreter, then nodded.

  “Are you okay that we record this interview?”

  Fear darkened her eyes as the interpreter explained the question.

  Maddocks leaned forward, kept his voice calm, quiet. “I want you to know that we will do everything we can to protect you, and the more information you can give us, the better we will know who to protect you and the others from. Recording this interview will go a long way toward helping put them away. Are you okay with that?”

  She said something in Russian to the interpreter, who in turn said, “She wants to know if she will have to face the men in court if she speaks about them on tape.”

  “We can make sure that doesn’t have to happen. We can protect your identities,” he said. “Okay?”

  The girl nodded. Only then did Maddocks place the recording equipment on the table. He pressed the button, and the red light came on. She stared at it.

  “Can you tell me what your name is?”

  She listened to the interpreter, then glanced at the victim services counselor, who nodded.

  “Sophia Tarasov.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen this month.”

  “And where is home, Sophia?”

  “Novgorod in Russia.”

  “Do you have family in Novgorod?”

  She glanced down and shook her head.

  “How about somewhere else? Is there someone we can inform that you’re all right?”

  She shook her head harder.

  Maddocks nodded. Not only was she afraid, but she was also embarrassed perhaps. He’d come back at that angle later, because someone had to be missing and worried about this teen. “Can you tell me how you came to be on the yacht called the Amanda Rose?”

  She inhaled deeply and began to spea
k while staring at a crack in the table. The interpreter relayed Sophia Tarasov’s story in Russian-accented English.

  “I answered an Internet advertisement for modeling. I phoned the number. They told me to come to an address in Novgorod. A man took pictures of me and gave me food, something to drink. He seemed nice. And then I woke up inside some kind of van. I was hurt. They had raped me. I was bleeding. They gave me water, and there must have been drugs in it because I passed out again and remember nothing. I don’t know how many days I was in the van. Taken to Prague. I only knew it was Prague from something one of the men said. In an apartment in Prague, I was beaten and raped many times over by different men. And I was drugged. I was kept chained to a mattress on the floor, no clothes.”

  Maddocks swallowed. “There were other girls in this apartment?”

  “In my room, yes. Three more on mattresses. And in the other rooms. I heard them. Crying. Sometimes they screamed. I don’t know how many days it was, maybe a month, and then they took twenty of us in a truck. It was a long journey.”

  “The same men who brought you to Prague?”

  “Different men. They spoke a Russian dialect.”

  “Would you be able to describe any of these men?”

  “I don’t know.” She was silent for a while, then said, “One man had a blue crab, here, a tattoo, on his arm.” She patted her forearm. “They took us to city with port. They put us on boat.”

  “Do you know which city?”

  “It was Russian. Maybe Vladivostok—I heard this name when the men talked quietly when they thought I was knocked out from the drugs.” This answer came from Sophia directly, in broken English. The interpreter glanced at Maddocks in surprise.

  “Jump in if and when you need to,” he said quietly to the interpreter, then turned back to Sophia.

  “You speak English?”

  She nodded. “Bit. I learn at school.”

  “What kind of a boat?”