TUESDAY, OCTOBER30
Angie pulled into the lot and parked in front of a two-story brick-faced building. It was 8:55 a.m. She sat in her car, letting the engine run, keeping the air warm as she regarded the nondescript structure through rain-streaked windows. The sign on the glass door saidCOASTALINVESTIGATIONS(CI). The building was flanked by a Howard Johnson inn on the left and a twenty-four-hour Tim Hortons restaurant on the right. The Tim Hortons was a magnet for after-hours police incidents, Angie knew from her time with the MVPD.
She dragged her hands over her hair, tightened her ponytail, and got out of her car to face the music.
On their way home from the Nahamish River, she and Maddocks had run into a serious logging truck accident on the highway. There’d been two deaths. Logs had spilled across all the lanes. Traffic along the Malahat pass had been stopped in both directions for over five hours while survivors had been medevaced out and police had gathered evidence. She’d called Jock Brixton to explain she wouldn’t make the airport in time. He’d instructed her to be in his office by nine the following morning. Angie expected the worst.
She entered the building, climbed the wooden stairs to the second floor, and opened the door to the bullpen office. Most of the desks were still empty at this hour, but she found Jock Brixton’s door ajar. Angie knocked on the treated glass.
“Enter!”
She pushed open the door. The interior was small and warm. It smelled of coffee and sweet pastry. A Tim Hortons bag rested on Brixton’s desk. He stood silhouetted against the gray window, holding a take-out cup of coffee, watching the rain against his windowpane. The ex-cop was an inch or so shorter than Angie, but he was broad in the shoulders with a hard, protruding belly that stretched his shirts at the seams. Jock Brixton liked his drink. He liked junk food. And he liked cheap women. The irony was not lost on Angie—the adulterer who made his living trapping other adulterers was himself married. Angie kept tally. One never knew when chips might need to be called in.
On his desk next to the Tim Hortons bag lay a copy of theTimes Colonistnewspaper. Beside that newspaper was a white envelope with her name on it in bold caps.
“Sit,” he said without facing her.
She remained standing. He turned, reached for the envelope, and tossed it closer to her. She made no move to pick it up.
“What is that?” she said.
“Letter of termination.”
Her pulse kicked up a notch. “You can’t fire me because a logging truck lost its load into oncoming traffic, Jock. There was no way we could get through. Half the city was backed up along that highway when it shut down yesterday afternoon. By the time the road reopened, it was 6:45 p.m. and one lane only.”
He set his coffee down and spun the newspaper around to face her. He jabbed his fat finger on the big black headline.
Human Remains Found in Clandestine Grave
Beneath the headline, above the fold, was a photograph of Angie looking bedraggled and haunted in the mist along the Nahamish riverbank. Gingerly, she reached out, drew the paper closer, and read the cutline.
Ex-MVPD cop Angie Pallorino and MVPD Detective James Maddocks guarded the grave site through the night. Pallorino, who was recently fired from the MVPD in connection with the shooting death of serial killer Spencer Addams, a.k.a. the Baptist, has also made media for being the angel’s cradle child—
“I told you to keep a low profile,” he said.
Anger tightened her face. She looked up. “I didn’t even find the damn body. My fiancé is a major crimes detective. He took the initiative to protect the integrity of a scene that a mushroom picker stumbled across. Asyouwould have wereyoustill on the job, Jock. As any detective would. I was just there—”
“My point,” he said, his face darkening at Angie’s underscoring his own ex-detective status. “You can’t scratch your damn butt without someone taking a photo and printing headlines, Pallorino. It’s what happens to famous—or rather, infamous—people. Not only that, but you’re also dating the city’s top cop, a guy who’s just been put in charge of a high-profile new unit being micromanaged by our new mayor and police board. All eyes are on James Maddocks and his major incident team right now and watching to see how he cooperates with the other jurisdictions. This makesyou”—he poked his finger toward her—“a liability tome.”
“You hired me knowing who I am.”
“With reservation, and I told you so. I warned you to lay low, to try to keep under the media radar.”
“I didn’tdoanything, for Chrissakes.”
“You don’t have to. That’s the shitty deal with being infamous. Like Angelina-fucking-Jolie, everything a celeb touches becomes a fucking front-page story. You’re a local notoriety. This is a small city, not a terribly heavily populated island, so I appreciate your struggles in getting around incognito—but this island is alsomyjurisdiction. It’s Coastal Investigations’ livelihood. My entire staff depends on this livelihood. The CI motto is ‘Discreet, confidential.’” He pointed. “It’s written right on the door. These are the cornerstones of my firm. Good luck to your boyfriend and iMIT, because he and his team are going to be dragged through the media circus behind you wherever you go.”
Her voice turned low, quiet, cool. “You know about that media circus, don’t you, Jock? Because you’ve been there, too.”
It was as though she’d dropped an invisible electromagnetic pulse bomb into the small office. Angie could feel the waves of hot energy radiating off him.
“What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”
Mistake. Back up. I need this job. Flatter him. He likes to be flattered.
“I’m just saying that you overcame a hot run in the media yourself. And look at what you’ve built with CI in spite of it. Please, let me try. Give me one last chance. Just one.”
His eyes flickered.
