The Girl in the Moss

by Loreth Anne White

  Angie found Miriam and Joseph Pallorino sitting alone in the glassed-in sunroom. It was darkening outside with lowering clouds, rain flecking against the windows, but logs crackled in a cast-iron fireplace in the corner, making the place warm.

  Her father glanced up as she entered. Surprise shot across his face at the sight of her. It was replaced with worry as he came abruptly to his feet, then winced, his hand going to his hip.

  “Angie? You—you okay? You look—”

  “Exhausted. I know.” She smiled and hugged him. “I’m tired but really good. How about you? That hip still hurting, huh?”

  He made a face. “Yeah. Same old. Cricks and creaks. This getting-old business is not for sissies, but it’s better than the alternative, eh?”

  “I guess.” She glanced at her mother, who was staring vacantly at her own reflection on the glass pane. “How’s Mom?” she said quietly.

  “She’s okay today. You picked a good afternoon to visit, I think. She might recognize you.”

  Angie pulled up a wicker chair and sat facing Miriam Pallorino. Her adoptive mom was a faded echo of what she’d once been, her eyes vacant, her face sagging, her once flame-red hair now blending with white to create a clownish pale-orange cloud around her features.

  Angie’s heart crunched.

  Miriam and Joseph Pallorino had kept Angie’s past a secret from her. They’d inserted her as a four-year-old into their dead daughter’s life, even giving her the same name. But it had been motivated by loss, a desperate act of grief. It was inspired by love in so many complex ways.

  Was the motivation behind the Pallorino family secret that much different from those secrets so fiercely guarded by the Tollets, the Carmanaghs, and the Jacobis in protecting Axel Tollet—one of their own?

  A whisper of unease darkened Angie’s mood as her mind returned to the Tollet and Carmanagh gang. And to the truck that had tried to run her off the road and the arrows fired at her and Claire in the grove.

  If it was them who’d done those things, it had likely been an attempt to scare her away from digging up the truth about Porter Bates’s murder.

  Still, the disquiet lingered, that sense that something was off, unfinished. That she’d missed a critical piece of evidence, and it dangled somewhere in her brain, just out of reach.

  She pushed the unease away and focused on why she’d come, on the good things she wanted to nurture in her life now. Reaching out, she took her mother’s cold, veined hands in her own.

  “Hey, Mom. How are you doing? You been watching the birds out there today? Are they happy with the new feeder I brought last time?”

  Confusion chased across Miriam’s features, and consternation furrowed into her brow. She shot a desperate look at her husband.

  “It’s Angie, love,” he said. “Our Angie.”

  Miriam began to rock her chair. “Angie,” she said, the frown deepening across her brow. “Angie. Angie. Who’s Angie?”

  Angie took out her phone. “I wanted to show you something, Mom.” She clicked open an image that Ginny had shot with her phone of Angie in the bridal gown. She held the phone out to her mother.

  With slightly trembling hands, her mother took the phone and closely studied the image. A look of wonder changed her face. She touched her fingers to the digital image.

  “A princess bride,” she whispered. “She’s so beautiful.” Miriam looked up into Angie’s eyes. “She’s you. She’s our Angie. My baby is getting married?”

  Tears sprang to Angie’s eyes. She cleared her throat. “Maybe. Remember Detective James Maddocks? I brought him here to meet you—tall man with dark hair and blue eyes?” She looked up at her dad, whose eyes glittered with emotion.

  “We’re talking about tying the knot. Would you give me away, Dad, if it all goes ahead?”

  Her father stared at her. He then turned to this wife. Blinking back the tears now leaking from the corners of his eyes, he nodded. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and soft. “Do you forgive us, then, Angie? For what we did? For the secrets we kept.”

  She came to her feet and hugged her father. He pulled her close, and he folded his arms tightly around her body. And she felt him cry. He smelled right, like his old sweater, like his aftershave, like her dad, and she buried her face against that old wool sweater with the leather patches on the elbows.

  “I love you, baby girl,” he whispered against her hair. “I love you so much. I am so, so sorry for not—”

  “Shh.” She pulled back and placed her hands firmly on his shoulders. Her gaze bored into his. “Don’t say it. You’re a good man, Dad.”

  A man so much better than Dr. Doug Hart. Your peer. A fellow academic of around similar age.

  “I’m lucky you found me.” She kissed his cheek.

  He stared at her. Time stretched. Rain began to drum against the sunroom panes, and the sky grew darker. “I needed to hear you say that, Ange—you have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”

  “I needed to say it, too. I love you.” She looked down at her mom, who was staring at the rain running down the window. “I love you both. With all my heart.”

  Her mother began to rock in her rocker again, and her voice rose softly in song.

  Ave Maria

  Vergin del ciel

  Sovrana di grazie e madre pia . . .

  “Maybe Mom can sing that at the wedding,” Angie said to her father.

  “Maybe.” He smiled.

  Despite her fatigue, Angie was filled with an incredible lightness of being as she drove for home. She turned down the waterfront road. Lights in the storefronts glowed warm and friendly in the cold foggy evening as bundled-up shoppers made their way along sidewalks, umbrellas leaning into the sea wind. It would be December next month. A full year since she and Holgersen had been called out to the Gracie Drummond sexual assault case. At the time she’d been dreading Christmas, as she always had, for reasons she’d not yet understood. But then she’d met James Maddocks, and he’d turned her life on its head. He’d become her partner, boss, and lover. And now, possibly, husband-to-be. The thought shimmered inside her as she stopped at a red light.

  Her phone rang while she watched pedestrians crossing. She answered via Bluetooth.

  “Angie here.”

  “Is that the private investigator, Angie Pallorino?” The voice was female. Hesitant.

  Something about the woman’s tone made Angie tense. “This is her, yes. Who’s speaking?”

  A clearing of a throat. “I’m Sophie Rosenblum. Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum. I used to be a close friend of Jasmine Gulati’s back at university. I . . . I just returned with my family from vacation. I heard the news that Jasmine’s body has been found and identified. My house sitter said you came by with questions and that she referred you to Mia.”

  “Oh, thanks for calling, Sophie.” The light turned green. Angie moved her vehicle forward. “Mia managed to help me out, thank you.”

  “I phoned Mia. She told me she’d informed you about Jasmine’s abortion.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Jasmine never went through with it.”

  Angie’s chest constricted. Her brain doubled in on itself. She hit her brakes and screeched into a loading zone. “What did you say?”

  “I accompanied Jasmine to the women’s center on the mainland, but she chickened out at the very last moment. She couldn’t go through with it that day. Jasmine never had the abortion.”

  CHAPTER 41

  “I need to pick your brain,” Angie said as she slid into a booth opposite forensic pathologist Dr. Barb O’Hagan. She placed the coroner’s preliminary report on Jasmine Gulati’s death on the table between them. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.” She raised her hand, summoning the server.

  Angie had phoned the crusty old pathologist from her car, right after Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum had dropped the pregnancy bombshell. Barb O’Hagan was more than a law enforcement colleague to Angie. She was an old friend and confidante and had jumped at
the opportunity to meet with Angie over dinner at Farrier John’s, a Tudor-style pub downtown.

  “And there I was thinking you just wanted to see my smiling face.”

  Angie laughed. The server arrived. “What’re you having, Barb, the usual?”

  “Why not. Keep the old stomach stable.”

  “No surprises when they open your tough old corpse on the morgue table one day, eh.”

  “Got that right.”

  Angie turned to the server “One Lagavulin sixteen, a double. And . . . what the hell, make that two. Mine with a block of ice. And two Guinness pies with fries and peas.” She crooked her brow at Barb to make sure. The morgue doc nodded. The server departed to fetch their drinks.

  Angie pulled a face. “My mom used to force me to eat peas, and now I’m ordering them voluntarily?”

  “And mushy ones at that.”

  “Better be good.”

  “Trust me, best meal you’ll have had in a long while. So how you doing, Ange? I heard you scored big on that Gulati investigation for old Jukebox Jilly. Who’d have thought—a fourteen-year-old female? Fascinating pathology there. That’s going to be one for the psych students. Then again, I’ve been in this business long enough that nothing should surprise me.”

  “Who’d you hear this from? Leo?”

  O’Hagan cackled, showing the gap between her front teeth. “No, in this case, Holgersen. He came by to speak to me today about some cold cases Maddocks had assigned him and Leo. They’re working in some new unit formed under the iMIT umbrella. Includes the Annelise Janssen missing persons file. Such an oddball, that Holgersen. He said the department was all abuzz with the fact you’d dug a possible serial out of that Nahamish body case and that filmmaker Rachel Hart was giving a full confession to the RCMP, exposing her own kid as Gulati’s killer. Well done.”

  “I don’t think it’s done, Barb.”

  The doc’s smiled faded at the tone in Angie’s voice. Drinks arrived. They fell silent as the server set their glasses on coasters.

  “Food will be up shortly,” the server said.

  Angie reached for her glass. “Cheers.” She took a sip. The hot burn that branched into her chest gave an immediate punch of relaxation. She inhaled deeply, relishing it for a moment. A scalding shower and a visit to Maddocks would have to wait, but this drink and some hot food would suffice in the interim. She put down her glass and opened the folder.

  “I just received some additional information from an old friend of Gulati’s, and it doesn’t add up. I need your opinion. Nothing formal, just need to brainstorm some possibilities.” She opened to the page with the images of the post parturition scars on Jasmine Gulati’s pelvis. She slid the file over to the doc and tapped on an image. “In your opinion, how reliable is this parturition scarring as evidence of a pregnancy?”

  “Nice ring,” O’Hagan said, noting the solitaire on Angie’s hand. “You and Maddocks making it official, then?”

  Angie glanced up as her stomach tightened with a sudden burst of both nerves and anticipation. She hadn’t taken it off, and she wondered if she should before she went to see Maddocks. Or whether he’d see it as a sign of her will to make this happen if she showed up at his yacht wearing it. Conflict twisted through her chest. There should be a manual for this stuff because it was way out of her realm of experience. “Uh, yeah, maybe. I . . . I’ll come back to that.”

  Barb raised her brows. An odd little smile tugged at her lips. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you two.” She drew the report closer, took a sip of whiskey, and set her tumbler down. She fished her small reading glasses out of her breast pocket and perched them atop her nose. O’Hagan fell silent as she studied the pathologist’s report, peering closely at the pics.

  “Definitely pits, cavities, some depressions located on the dorsal surface of the pubic symphysis,” O’Hagan said, leaning in even closer. “Historically, this kind of scarring has indeed been attributed to the trauma of parturition, especially when coupled with reliable information on the decedent’s obstetrical history.” She glanced up. “But without the individual’s particular obstetric history—” She shook her head. “The jury is still out on whether these can be a reliable indicator of childbirth.”

  “But they could be an indication of pregnancy—”

  “Not of pregnancy per se, but of having carried a child to term and given a natural vaginal birth. Pregnancy alone does not modify a woman’s bones. However, during childbirth, the pubic bones separate to allow an infant to pass through the birth canal. The ligaments connecting the pubic bones must stretch, and they can tear and cause bleeding where they attach to bone. Later, bone remodeling at these sites can leave these small circular or linear grooves on the inside surface of the pubic bones.”

  She tapped the images of Jasmine Gulati’s pelvis. “These parturition pits show that a female may have given birth vaginally. But in more recent studies, medium to large ‘birth scarring’ has also been demonstrated on male pelvic bones and on the pelvises of females known to have not had children.” She took another sip of her drink. “Bottom line, these bony changes are being reexamined as an indicator of childbirth, and this is what the pathologist has noted in his report here.”

  Angie stared at the doc, Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum’s words looping around and around in her brain.

  She couldn’t go through with it that day. Jasmine never had the abortion.

  “Do you perhaps have access to this decedent’s obstetric history?” O’Hagan said.

  “No. The hospital is not obliged to keep records after sixteen years, and it’s been far longer than that. But the decedent’s closest friends at the time and her only remaining family all said there was no way Jasmine Gulati could have had a baby.” Angie reached for her glass and sipped, thinking.

  “But hell knows, all families have secrets. Maybe a past pregnancy was just very well concealed. But the thing is—” She set her glass down. “Jasmine Gulati was pregnant when she drowned, according to her friend. Yet there was no sign of a fetus found with her remains. If there had been a fetus, there would be evidence, right?”

  Barb O’Hagan’s eyes gleamed with interest. The doc loved a good puzzle as much as Angie did. “After almost two decades? Part of that time spent underwater, the rest of the time buried in shallow earth?” The doc shook her head. “It’s a long period and so many variables. The remains could have become scattered over an incredibly wide area, both in the river and on land. Animal predation could account for missing body parts. The soft parts of the stomach are the first—”

  “Look here.” Angie turned the page, showing Barb O’Hagan the image of Jasmine Gulati’s remains in situ, her skeleton inside the waders exposed by careful excavation of the top layer of soil. “She was fully intact. All her bones accounted for. She was still inside the chest-high neoprene waders that she was wearing when she went over the falls that day. Her engagement ring was still on the bones of her ring finger. So was a cuff bracelet.”

  The doc whistled softly. “That is . . . indeed interesting. It would be unusual, then, not to find evidence of a fetus if she was in this kind of condition.” She looked up. “You’re certain she was pregnant?”

  “Her friends said she was. She’d scheduled an abortion but apparently chickened out at the last minute before going on the river trip. She’d also written in her journal that she was carrying Dr. Hart’s child. But it’s all circumstantial, no unequivocal proof. Plus, there is indication that the decedent could have had pathological issues herself—she could have been fabricating the whole pregnancy thing. However, she did have the ring, and Doug Hart has confessed to buying it for her—” Angie stilled as she caught sight of two familiar figures entering the dimly lit Tudor pub.

  “Oh great,” she whispered. “Look who’s just come in the door. It’s Holgersen and that young female officer Maddocks hired recently.”

  Doc O’Hagan turned to see. She grinned. “Hardly surprising. This pub is just down the block from the
station—you don’t expect him to take his date to the Pig, do you? It’s Saturday night. Of course the guy is going out for a drink.”

  “You kidding me? Holgersen doesn’t date.” Angie watched the pair disappearing into the cluster of patrons gathered around the bar counter. “He’s been celibate for I don’t know how long.”

  “Or so he claims.” Barb chuckled. “Everyone falls off the wagon now and then, no matter the vice.”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “My concern, my question, is why would Holgersen feel that sex for him is a vice?”

  O’Hagan watched Angie’s face, then tapped the file with her fingers. “Hey, don’t leave me in suspense, Pallorino. Talk to me. The case.”

  “Yeah,” she said again, thinking as her gaze lingered a moment longer on Holgersen’s head sticking above the crowd. She returned her attention to O’Hagan. “I went back and reread the entries in the decedent’s journal. Gulati made a notation of the abortion date but never mentioned anything about the termination after that entry. There was a period around the termination date where she went silent in her journal, but she picked up again with entries about the river trip. No mention of the pregnancy. At first I’d assumed the silence was because it might have been too raw, the termination too recent, and she’d needed time to process. On top of that, Jasmine drank heavily on the trip, and she was promiscuous—slept with her guide. To my mind these were not markers of someone engaged to be married or someone who might still be carrying her husband-to-be’s baby. So I assumed there was no fetus.”

  Angie took another sip of her scotch and gave a rueful grin. “Never assume, huh? I should know better. Because Jasmine’s other college confidante, Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum, now tells me that while she went with Jasmine to have the abortion, Jasmine backed out at the very last moment. So where is the fetus?”

  O’Hagan paged carefully through the pathologist’s report. “If the decedent was indeed pregnant, plus the fact she’s exhibiting these scars—”