Way to inform next of kin, Merry Winston ...
“What bakery?” Angie said, voice clipped.
“Blue Badger. Other side of Johnson Street Bridge. Staff say the kid never showed up for work and never answered her cell when they called to check on her.”
Angie pushed quickly past the uniform and exited Vedder’s office. “Holgersen!” she yelled out over the cubicle partitions as she grabbed her coat from the hook near her desk. “Where in the hell’s Holgersen?” she called out loudly as she punched her arms into her sleeves and grabbed her sling bag.
“He was outside having a smoke,” came a male voice from the other side of a cubicle.
Dammit.She checked her watch, turned to the uniform. “If you see him, tell him to meet me at Saint Jude’s.”
She left the building without her partner. As she got into her vehicle her phone rang. She answered it on the hands-free as she put her car into gear.
“Pallorino,” she barked, reversing.
“Angie?”
Her father.Shit. She’d forgotten—they were going to move the rest of her mom’s things today. She was supposed to have been there an hour ago.
“Dad, I ... I can’t make it today, I really can’t. Just landed a big case—”
“Right, right,” he said. “I didn’t think you would come. Running. Always running from something, Angie.”
He hung up.
Her eyes burned as she pulled into the street.
CHAPTER 9
Maddocks drew up to the police barriers and wound down his window.
Metro PD cruisers lined the length of Wharf Street, bar lights flashing. Sleet was coming down hard as cops in bright-yellow visi jackets diverted traffic away from the waterfront and up into town. A crowd of onlookers was gathering along the barricades.
He showed the patrol officer his new Metro PD badge, which he’d picked up when he’d signed the official HR paperwork last week. Jack-O barked. The officer peered inside at the dog.
“New K-9 reporting for duty, sir?”
“Mascot. ’Scuse the pee smell.”
The officer gave an unsure smile, stepped back, and moved the barrier aside. “Down that way, sir.” He pointed. “That small lot just before the Johnson Street turnoff—it’s been cordoned off for crime scene personnel. The wharf access is down the embankment behind those brick buildings.”
At the parking lot barricade, Maddocks flashed his badge again, and another officer entered his name into a crime scene log. He parked behind a forensics van and glanced at Jack-O.
“You be good now. I’ll come and let you out in a bit, okay? Tomorrow you’ll have a sitter.”
No response.
Leaving the windows open slightly for the animal, Maddocks dug into his glove box for a ball cap—he’d forgotten his umbrella in the stand at the Blue Badger. He tugged on the cap, exited his vehicle. Wind tore instantly at his coat. Sleet slashed cold against his cheeks. He walked past a dark sedan with aCORONER ONDUTYsign displayed on the dash alongside an open box of half-eaten Tim Bits—fried doughnut holes. Breakfast of champions. They reminded him he hadn’t eaten. So much for the ranch benny and a date with his kid.
He made his way around the brick buildings. They were abandoned—boarded-up windows, moss smothering the walls, graffiti, bigFORLEASEsigns. Detritus of the homeless littered the recessed doorways—broken glass, an empty vodka bottle, beer cans, cigarette stumps, cardboard, a piece of unidentifiable clothing.
He paused a moment in front of the buildings, absorbing the scene in the choppy Gorge waters below. Two Metro fire-rescue vessels—bright yellow with rigid black hulls—bobbed on the far side of an L-shaped dock that jutted out into the water. Officers in all-weather gear and ball caps hung over the gunwales, fishing for something with grappling hooks. Another officer appeared to be working a line that fed into the water—he had a dive partner down there, Maddocks guessed. On the shore side of the dock, logs jostled in a boom floating upon calmer water.
The big blue Johnson Street Bridge loomed over the whole scene like an iron leviathan rising into the mist. Traffic hummed and clunked over it.
A tall, slender male and a squat woman—both in black jackets markedCoroner—stood on the dock, also wearing ball caps against the sleet, which was now turning to heavy, gelatinous rain. Beside them hunkered a sturdy man, his hands in his coat pockets, a shock of white hair atop a square head. Detective Harvey Leo, Maddocks figured.
The grass growing on the bank that sloped steeply to the water was slick underfoot as Maddocks started to make his way down to the water’s edge. A foghorn sounded. A large vessel piled high with scrap metal churned under the bridge, sending a succession of swells surging toward the dock. The dock swayed as the swells hit, and the logs in the boom rolled and bumped against one another. Water slapped along the shore.
