Ginny glowered at him.
“Maddocks,” he said quietly into his phone.
“It’s Jack Buziak,” came the voice. “Sorry to disturb your Sunday, but homicide has just caught a case, and it has the potential to blow politically, considering the new mayor-elect’s posturing. I’d like you as lead on this one from the get-go.”
He glanced at his daughter. She was watching him intently. “What have you got?” Maddocks said.
“Floater. In the Gorge under the Johnson Street Bridge. Looks like a female. They’re pulling her out now—coroner, pathologist, and indent crew is on scene with Detective Harvey Leo. We’ve got uniforms securing the area—” A pause as Buziak spoke to someone else, then came back on line. “Looks like our DB has been in seawater for some time. There’s speculation that she could be the missing UVic student, Annelise Janssen. Can you get down there? Can I let Leo know to expect you? I’ve told him you’re the primary on this.”
The food arrived. “Ranch benny?” the waitress said, holding the heavy white plates. Maddocks turned his back to her slightly, lowering his voice further. “Where exactly?”
“Johnson Street Wharf, right under the bridge off Wharf Street.”
“Be there in ten.”
“You’re not going to leave, are you?” Ginny said as he killed the call.
“Ginn. I ... I’m sorry. We can do this again some other time.”
The waitress was still standing there. “Ranch benny,” she said, louder.
“Why don’t you stay, finish your breakfast—”
“Forget it.” Ginny turned to the waitress. “Take it away. We don’t want it.”
“Would ... you like me to bag it for you?” the server said.
“No,” Ginny snapped, pushing her chair back, bumping the woman seated behind her. She grabbed her coat. “This—see?Thisis why Mom couldn’t stand it. Whenever she tried to make family time, someone went and got themselves murdered. It’s your fault that Peter is in her life—your fault she’s taken a boyfriend. You care more about dead people than your own family!”
The patrons around them fell quiet.
She punched her arms into her jacket, yanked her sling bag over her shoulder, and made for the door. She shoved through it. Maddocks quickly dumped a wad of cash on the table, grabbed his coat, and hurried outside after her.
“Ginny!” he called. “I’ll give you a ride—”
“I don’t want a ride. I’m going to see a friend.”
He watched his daughter stride up the sidewalk slick with dead leaves. The wind tore at her coat. She rounded the corner where a lamp standard was still plastered with an old election poster. He inhaled deeply, stuffed his hands into his own coat pockets, and made for his vehicle.
Maddocks unlocked the car and opened the driver’s side door. The stench of dog pee was instant.
“Oh, Jack-O, what in the hell?”
The old Jack Russell sleeping on the backseat lifted his head and stared benignly at him, the scar from where his back leg had been amputated still pink from a more-recent second operation. The dog had gone and peed on the newspaper lying on the floor of the front passenger side. Maddocks swore, climbed into his vehicle, and wound down the windows in spite of the sleet and cold. He didn’t have time to find a place to dispose of the wet newspaper right now. He put his car into reverse. “You couldn’t have waited another second or two, Jack-O boy?”
The dog gave a little sigh, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep on his blanket.
And Maddocks drove to a murder.
CHAPTER 8
The Metro PD sex crimes unit operated out of a large cubicle that had been partitioned into four smaller work areas through the arrangement of metal desks. Adjustable shelving units around the periphery of their cubicle housed their case binders and files. Angie was one of the sixteen detectives in sex crimes, and they were divided into teams of four. The detectives, along with a training officer, a ViCLAS coordinator, an analyst, and two project assistants, worked under Sergeant Matt Vedder, whose glass-walled office was one of several in a corridor that ran down the sides of the various bullpens.
The place was empty when Angie entered her work area. Dundurn and Smith—the other two in her and Holgersen’s team of four—had punched out from their night shift. She hung up her coat, palmed off her wet hat, tossed it onto her desk, and made straight for the shelf with the Fernyhough and Ritter case files. She located the file box, hefted it onto her desk, and opened it.
“Pallorino!”
She glanced up. Sarge Vedder, her superior, was standing in his office doorway, a newspaper in his hand.
