The Girl in the Moss (Angie Pallorino Book 3)

by Loreth Anne White

  Tears ran copiously from her eyes now, and she did not try to hold them back. “Annelise?”

  “Serious but stable. She was also airlifted out. They took her to Vic General. Her parents are with her now. Her whole extended family is with her. You saved her, Angie. After all these months, her mother and father had all but given up hope. The odds were stacked so high statistically against her being found alive at this point. A whole media phalanx is camped outside the hospital. Including international press.”

  “Not me—Holgersen, he saved her. He was on it before I even took him up there. He was onto the possibility of Axel, Sea-Tech Freight, putting two and two together that Axel might be the driver of the van that took her from that bus shelter.”

  Maddocks seated himself beside her bed. Holding her hand, he said, “Yeah, as soon as our iMIT tech got his message this morning, she got hold of Sea-Tech admin and ran Axel Tollet’s routes and old delivery records against those cold missing persons cases Holgersen believed were linked. Tollet came up as a match—his delivery routes, the van, the logo, the dates, all of it.”

  “A serial?”

  Maddocks nodded. “I knew in my gut that Holgersen was going to be good on the cold case beat. I just knew he’d pull something out of those files. The mayor and police board are already patting themselves on the backs over the new funding and taking credit.”

  “So, Jasmine Gulati—”

  “Tollet’s first, it seems. So far, anyway. He apparently found her washed up downriver below the falls, all broken, and he ‘rescued’ her. Kept her locked up. No shoes so she couldn’t run away. He used her sexually, like a gift from his precious river. Then he found out she was pregnant. He built her that container house, covered it with dirt, and grew brambles over it in some sort of attempt to hide the place or to keep sound from getting out. We don’t know for sure yet. She gave birth in that container.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Some of it from Garrison Tollet. He came right out the gate talking and denying he had anything to do with either death. Not Porter Bates’s murder years ago. Nor Jasmine Gulati’s death.”

  “Axel killed Jasmine?”

  Maddocks snorted softly and moved a strand of hair off her face. “Yes. When she tried to escape. She had no shoes, but he’d gotten lax toward the end of her pregnancy. He’d apparently been taking her out of the container regularly to sit in the sunshine and to walk about in bare feet a bit. After she’d given birth, Jasmine became fiercely determined to get free. She’d seen the waders hanging in his shed, and she knew they were neoprene and would help keep her warm, even if they were slightly big. And they had boots attached. She made the break when her baby was two months old. Axel Tollet discovered them gone just minutes after Jasmine fled with her infant. He chased her down very quickly because she was having trouble outrunning him in those wading boots. He killed her mere minutes after she’d escaped.”

  Angie closed her eyes again, trying to process it all. Her head was still thick. She moistened her lips. They were cracked and dry. Maddocks brought a glass of water to her mouth, helped her sip. She lay back on the pillow.

  “Who killed Axel, then? Why? Who shot at me and Holgersen? Who set the place on fire?”

  “Garrison Tollet claims Wallace Carmanagh killed Axel. He said it was Wallace Carmanagh who shot arrows at you in the moss grove, too.” He paused. “Wallace had the most to lose if you found out what happened with Porter Bates because according to Garrison, Wallace killed him, drowned him. In revenge for what Porter Bates did to Axel. The twins helped by carrying Porter Bates to the quarry and standing watch. It was Garrison, however, who lured Bates onto the secluded woodland trail where the others were waiting in ambush and jumped him. They beat him and trussed him up like a rodeo calf, hauled him off to the quarry, weighted him with concrete blocks, and sank him. But after you started poking around, they came to believe Axel would talk, and that would expose them for the Bates murder.”

  “But the other missing women Holgersen linked to the Annelise Janssen case—what happened to them? How did that all play out? How—”

  “The Tollet-Carmanagh gang didn’t have a clue there’d been others, Ange. They knew only about Jasmine. They thought Jasmine was a one-off weird sex thing for poor Axel, who’d never had an intimate female relationship in his life after being sodomized by Porter Bates and his boys. They were shocked to find Annelise being held captive in that container—they learned she was in there only when they arrived to eliminate Axel and burn his place down.”

  “They had no idea at all?”

  “Not according to what Garrison is saying. The gang had been going to attempt to make it all look like an accidental fire to hide the murder and to make sure they eliminated any old traces that might have been around from when he’d kept Jasmine. But then you and Holgersen arrived, and everything went sideways. From the detective I’ve spoken with, the RCMP figure Axel Tollet happened upon Jasmine just after she washed up. A crime of opportunity. But he learned from his experience with Jasmine that he liked female companionship, and he wanted more. He learned that capturing and keeping a woman for a period of time was a way to obtain sex.”

  “What happened to his other victims? How many were there?”

  “No one knows yet. Maybe we’ll never know. This investigation will take time. They’ve got a huge forensic ident crew starting to work on that homestead. Bottom line, the four men—Garrison, Joey, Beau, and Wallace—were all up at Axel’s place when you arrived. They’d come in two vehicles, but they all chased you in the one truck. Wallace has a dog, which they used to track you down before you and Annelise went into the river. But Darnell Jacobi and Claire Tollet were already on it from the other side.”

  He gave her another sip of water and set the glass down again.

  “Jacobi had called for reinforcements, which were already on their way. Jacobi and Claire Tollet were driving toward the boat put-out below the falls to go across in the jet craft—they had it on the trailer. They saw you from the road going into the water. Claire got that boat into the river pretty damn fast. Thanks to her SAR training, her swift-water skills, she and Jacobi hauled both you and Annelise out of that water in remarkable time. Jacobi radioed for medical assistance while they both worked to stabilize you guys.” He paused. “You owe Claire and Jacobi your lives. You’d have both gone over those falls like Jasmine did.”

  Angie inhaled deeply. She hadn’t been sure where the young woman’s allegiances lay. But she’d read Claire correctly. She was an empathetic young woman with a solid conscience. She was just. But now Claire had to face the fact her father had done some very bad things. Poor woman. Poor Shelley. Life in that lodge as that family knew it was over.

  He watched her intently as she digested it all.

  “Maddocks,” she said suddenly, “what happened to Jasmine’s infant?”

  He held her gaze and took her hand. Tension twisted inside Angie. Something about the look in his eyes made her brace for awful news.

  “When Jasmine fled captivity,” he said very quietly, “she took her baby all bundled up in a makeshift papoose. When Axel caught up to them in that grove where we found her remains, she set the little papoose onto the mossy ground and spun around to fight him, trying to swing at him with a wrench she’d taken from the shed. But he caught hold of her wrist. She tried to twist free.”

  Barb O’Hagan’s words ran through Angie’s mind.

  I’ve seen those spiral arm fractures before, primarily at a mass grave site in Burundi. The women in a village were raped by soldiers and then killed. Some had tried to escape by wrenching so hard against the hold of their captors on their arms that they broke their arms, resulting in this torque-type fracture.

  “The spiral fracture on her arm?”

  He nodded. “Most likely.”

  She frowned. “Garrison told you this, too?”

  “He told the RCMP. They have him in custody, and he’s cooperating fully, hoping for lenie
ncy in giving up Wallace and the others. Apparently Axel had described to Garrison how Jasmine died, and it fits the pattern from her postmortem results so far. The shoulder injury was from her tumble over the falls. She never received medical treatment for that. And the wrenching fracture occurred perimortem. While Jasmine was struggling to free herself from Axel and screaming at the top of her lungs, Axel brought the wrench down on her skull. He wanted to make her quiet. He didn’t aim to kill her but was panicking and desperate to silence her screams. That blow killed her right there.”

  Angie thought of the skull lying in the dirt, the soil in the eye socket. A chill rippled over her skin.

  Maddocks said, “Garrison told the RCMP that Axel didn’t like killing things unnecessarily. He was seriously distressed to have murdered Jasmine.”

  Angie stared at Maddocks, recalling her conversation with Claire in the mossy grove.

  He’d rather kill his own meat humanely than support an industry that slaughters terrified animals in an abattoir. And he prefers bow and arrows because it’s more of a challenge one-on-one with the animal … won’t even sell Dad meat for guests at the lodge. He says each man should hunt for his own.

  “What happened to the baby, Maddocks? It wouldn’t have been in him to kill an infant.”

  “You’re right. It wasn’t in him. Axel took the tiny infant in its papoose up to Garrison and Shelley at the lodge. He didn’t know what else to do with it. He begged for their help in taking it somewhere, finding it a home. They were shocked, of course, to learn Jasmine had survived the river and where the baby had come from. Shelley started feeding and caring for the infant. Garrison helped Axel bury Jasmine in the grove. Garrison figured it would be okay after that—everyone thought Jasmine long dead already. And—”

  “And he and Shelley had been trying for a child,” Angie whispered. “Shelley had had a couple of miscarriages and was struggling emotionally.” Garrison’s words flooded through her brain.

  We’d just taken over the lodge from my dad, and we were trying to expand the guiding and tourism side of the business. But we were short on cash. We’d also been trying for kids for a long, long time. Shelley had suffered two miscarriages, and she’d collapsed into herself. She’d become distant. She no longer enjoyed physical intimacy.

  “Claire?” she whispered as the horror sank into her. “Claire is that baby?”

  He nodded.

  Angie’s heart beat faster, tension and adrenaline rising hot inside her. It wasn’t the Tollet genes that showed so strongly in Claire, as Angie had believed. Claire’s luxurious mane of black hair—it came from her mother’s genes. Dr. Douglas Hart was Claire Tollet’s biological father. Both Jasmine and Doug Hart must have been carriers of a green eye gene. Claire had technically been kidnapped as a child and raised by another family as their own.

  “Shelley couldn’t give the infant up, Ange,” Maddocks said. “Even if she had wanted to, showing up with a tiny baby in Port Ferris was going to create problems. It would force questions that would tie back to Axel and his abduction of Jasmine. Authorities would have traced things all the way back to the Porter Bates murder. Bottom line, those men were bound to one another for life through that murder. Their secret was only as strong as their weakest link. That link was Axel.”

  “Bates’s victim.”

  “Yeah. By helping Axel, Garrison effectively tied the whole gang to his crime, because Axel had threatened to tell all if Garrison and Shelley did not help him with the baby. So Shelley stayed away from town the following winter. She emerged in spring with the child. They registered the baby as their own, claiming it was a home birth. All their friends knew they’d been trying for a child. And that family had a history of keeping to themselves and looking after themselves in the woods, especially through the long winters when the roads into the mountains became a challenge. No one questioned it.”

  Maddocks reached down to a briefcase on the floor. From it he took a plastic sleeve containing papers.

  “I made copies for you.” He removed the papers from the sleeve and handed them to Angie. They were scans of pages filled with the tiniest cursive writing in tight lines, as if paper had been a scarce commodity and words plentiful.

  “What’s this?”

  “Jasmine Gulati was a journal keeper. She wrote it all down on tiny scraps, and she kept it all stuffed under one of the wooden slats beneath the bed Axel had made for her. In those pages she detailed the events after Axel had found her—her early days in captivity, her pregnancy, giving birth. Annelise found Jasmine’s pages under the bed slats. She learned from them that she was not the only one who’d been kept in there. She found comfort in those words from Jasmine. Annelise told the RCMP that Jasmine’s words had given her hope, had made her feel less alone, had kept her going, because when she read them she believed—or needed to believe—that Jasmine had managed to escape.”

  “These scans—they’re from those crumpled pages on the table that Annelise had stuffed down her dress?”

  He nodded. “We found them in the glove compartment of the Subaru wreck. Annelise had kept them well hidden from Axel. She took them out when the fire started. She wanted to save them.”

  Angie blew out a heavy breath of air. She looked at the pages in her hands. One sentence had been highlighted.

  In captivity I gave birth to You. A tiny baby girl. I survived for You, and I named You Claire.

  Emotion filled her eyes. She looked up slowly. “Does Claire know?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that Dr. Doug Hart is her father?”

  “Yes. She’s been told.”

  “And you’re certain he’s the father? I mean, is there any chance Garrison or Axel could actually be—”

  “She gave a DNA sample. So did Doug Hart. The RCMP ran an expedited paternity test. She’s Doug Hart’s child. Jasmine is her mother.”

  “I want to see her.”

  “She’s not seeing anyone, Angie. She’s not talking to anyone. She doesn’t want to see you, especially.”

  Angie closed her eyes. Her world spun sickeningly. “I know how she feels, Maddocks. I … I know how she feels after learning her entire life, her whole world, was a lie. I’ve been there. I can help her. I need to speak to her.”

  He stroked the back of her hand. “Don’t push it, Ange. She’s hurting. Bad. She’s been robbed of family. The people she thought were her parents are her kidnappers. Her uncle killed her birth mother. The man she believed was her father helped bury her birth mother. Her half sister—as it turns out—pushed her birth mother into the Nahamish, tried to both kill her and drown the unborn child. Claire knows you did this—you exposed it. She might never take kindly to you. She blames you right now.”

  A knock sounded. Ginny appeared at the door in her black wool coat, a red scarf around her neck. In her arms she held Jack-O.

  “Angie,” she whispered. She hurried forward, and Maddocks took Jack-O. Ginny kissed and hugged Angie. “Oh God, thank God you’re all right.” She flashed a glance at her dad, a look of guilt and worry on her face.

  “Ange, I’m sorry. I had to tell him. About the dress. I told him on the drive up. After we got the news that you were in hospital—we didn’t know if you were going to …” Her voice caught. She flicked another look at her father. “We didn’t know if you were going to be okay. Dad was so worried. It … it was the only thing that kept him going on that interminable drive up the island to see you and until you started coming round. I told him about Father Simon, the church, how my choir wanted to sing at your wedding. I mean—” Her eyes flashed worriedly to her dad. “That is, if you guys are … I … If—”

  “Gin, Ginny, stop.” Angie reached for the girl’s hand as emotion pricked in her eyes all over again. “I love you, Ginny. It’s okay. It’s fine. I understand.” She glanced at Maddocks, nerves suddenly nipping at her own heart at the strange look on his face. “I love you all so much,” she whispered. “Including that butt-ugly mutt.” She sniffed, wiped her nos
e, struggling to contain her sudden overwhelming emotions at just being alive, at having these two and that dog with her now. “I never want to be without you guys.”

  Maddocks regarded her. Angie swallowed.

  “Marry me, James Maddocks.”

  “Dad,” Ginny said, reaching for Jack-O, “I need to step out for a minute. I think Jack-O needs to go pee.”

  He let his daughter take the dog from his arms. Ginny cast her father a worried look, then turned to Angie. “It’s going to be fine.”

  When Ginny had exited, Angie said, “Talk to me, Maddocks. You’re making me nervous.”

  He took her hand, fingered the ring again. “You had it resized.”

  She nodded.

  His eyes began to gleam with emotion. It twisted his face, as if he was trying to control a tsunami of feelings inside.

  “What changed, Angie?” he said. “Has anything really changed? Because maybe it’s just the heat of this moment, the euphoria from having survived. Maybe—”

  “I did not get that ring resized in some heat of the moment, Maddocks. I … realized something over the past few weeks. I always wanted this. You. Me. Together. I thought I’d dealt with my fear.”

  “Fear of commitment?”

  “Fear of being abandoned again. Admitting how much I love you and need you, and then having you walk out on me.”

  “Angie—”

  “No. I need to say it. I thought I’d dealt with it. I really did. But when I lost my policing job, I lost my independence, my sense of self, which was shaky to begin with after learning my past. I was coming to our commitment from an incredibly vulnerable place, and … and, yes, it was a scary place. My independence, being able to provide for myself, own my own accommodation, be respected for my job, it was all suddenly gone. I hadn’t realized what a deep, subterranean driver that sense of independence and self-control was to me. My PI work was shaky at best, and then I lost that.”