Someone had dredged up and was broadcasting a file photo of her taken last July—on a steamy evening. In the image she was carrying a limp and bleeding and dead toddler in her arms, her own face a twisted study of anguish. Blood covered her clothes, her hands ... It was the evening Hash had died.
Angie set her plate down slowly and moved woodenly toward the TV. She grabbed the remote, bumped up the sound.
It was MVPD Detective Angela Pallorino and her new partner, Kjel Holgersen, who responded to the Ross Bay Cemetery attack last night, where Duneagle student Gracie Marie Drummond was found unconscious and bleeding. Drummond, sixteen, had been sexually assaulted and mutilated ... Pallorino, who last made news when ...
Rage slammed through Angie. She killed the feed. What in the hell did they need to do that for—drag up the thing with Hash? Fucking twenty-four-hour news, the need to feed the round-the-clock beast—that’s what this was about. Reporters desperate to find material, mucking about and putting out old shit, trying to build a story out of blocks that were not connected at all. Vedder was right. Shewasgoing to look like the poster child for disaster at the MVPD if this continued.
Already there was the problem with the serious leak of what was supposed to be holdback information onhercase.
She sucked back her vodka and poured a double. Carrying her dinner and drink to her computer, Angie’s thoughts about the leak shifted to Holgersen—the phone call she was convinced she’d seen him making inside Starbucks, his denial, him suggesting that Merry Winston had picked up the cemetery call on a scanner:She’s kinda cute ... all that spiky black hair, pale skin ... seen her around ...
Distaste filled Angie’s mouth. She did not want to doubt her fellow officers, let alone her own partner. She preferred to believe the Drummond case leak came from the paramedics or hospital staff or one of their family members—but it had knocked them all off ease at the MVPD, and it was breeding a simmering sense of mistrust, suspicion—the last thing they all needed right now with Killion and his team taking aim at the force.
She was going to have to watch her back.
Booting up her desktop, she delivered a forkful of pasta to her mouth and chewed while her emails loaded. She clicked through them. Nothing of interest.
She then googled Gracie Marie Drummond, found a social media page for the teen. Smart girl had activated her privacy settings. Angie couldn’t see her posts, nor who her friends were. They’d need the techs to get on that. On impulse, she ran a quick Internet search for “Sergeant James Maddocks.”
A few images and several news pieces came up—Maddocks at press conferences, Maddocks outside the RCMP station in Surrey, Maddocks in formal red serge at the funeral of a colleague, looking dapper in his Stetson and high brown Strathcona boots with spurs. She scrolled through the stories as she sipped her drink. He’d clearly been a big shot with the integrated homicide investigations team on the mainland—roughly Buziak’s equivalent in rank and position. His experience prior to joining iHit appeared to have included working on the large interagency task force that finally resulted in the arrest of Vancouver’s most infamous serial killer—pig farmer Robert Pickton. Angie’s curiosity was further piqued—so hewasfamiliar with major serial crimes. Now here he was with the MVPD, a smaller jurisdiction, working in the trenches under Buziak. His move to Metro PD was a step down by all appearances.
She finished her food as she studied the image of him in formal dress, irked that she found him appealing. Irritably she clicked the page shut, then checked the messages on her landline.
There was one. From her dad. She hitPLAY.
“Angie, I’ve been trying your cell all day. Maybe you’ll get this message when you get home. You need to visit your mom. Soon.” A pause. “She ... uh ... sheneeds to see you. She’s having a real hard time settling in, and the nurses ... Just try and visit her tomorrow, okay?” A clearing of the throat. “Please.” Then a click as her father hung up.
Self-recrimination washed hot through her chest. She rubbed her brow. It was almost midnight. Too late to call him back. She hoped her mother was okay. Her attention went to the box of her mother’s things that she’d left by the door before heading out to the club.
It seemed like ages ago.
She got up, lifted the photo album off the top, carried it to the sofa. Curling her socked feet under her, she sat and opened the leather-bound book of memories to the photographs of her first birthday. She then skipped forward a few more pages to the images shot in Italy, the year of her father’s sabbatical. She turned to the photo of the three of them—their little family unit sitting in front of a decorated tree, the one her father had been studying earlier. It was taken their first Christmas after the car accident that had marred her face.
She touched her fingertip to the scar on her mouth as she studied the picture. A sudden flash of red exploded through her mind, and pain sliced across her mouth. She heard tires screech, the crunch of metal. She tasted blood. Angie sucked air in sharply—the visions, the sensations, were so sharp, so visceral they felt real. Pulse pounding, she got up, paced. Was that a memory? Was she remembering the accident? She had not recalled anything of the car smash until this very moment. Was she beginning to have some recall—possibly triggered by losing Hash and the toddler five months ago? Or was she extrapolating images and sensations from that terrible incident with Hash and imposing them on the photographs and the stories of her past that she’d been told? Arms wrapped around herself, shivering despite the fact the heat in her apartment was cranked up, Angie went to the mirror by the door. She stared at her reflection. Again, she touched her scar with her fingertips. An old rhyme came to mind ...
Fractured face
in the mirror,
you are my disgrace ...
a sinner ...
Then other words, sounds, images, smashed through her brain.
Run ... Run! ... Uciekaj, uciekaj! ... a shrill scream ... fighting. Dark. Cold. Snowflakes. A woman ... a familiar woman ... Wskakuj do srodka, szybko! She yelled ... A flash of silver ... then blackness ...
Angie’s breaths came shallow, rapid. What the ...? Was this what PTSD looked like from the inside? Or worse, was she falling mentally ill? Genetics taking their toll?
She returned to the album and shut it. But as she did, one of the Italy photos slid out from under the protective plastic sheet on the page and wafted to the hardwood floor. Angie picked it up, started to reinsert it into the book, but then she noticed the tiny scrawl of her mother’s hand on the back.
Rome. Jan. 1984.
Angie frowned. She peeled back the plastic sheet covering the Christmas photo—the one taken the December after the car accident, after they’d returned from Europe. She dislodged it from the page, turned it over.
Christmas 1987. Victoria.
That couldn’t be right. She’d been told it was ’86 that they were in Italy; 1986 was the year of her dad’s sabbatical. March ’86 was when the car accident occurred, when her mouth had been slashed open. The year she’d been four going on five. As far as she knew, they’d returned to Canada before Christmas. This photo should be dated “Christmas 1986.” She removed another of the Italy photos and flipped it over.
