“Is Lara aware of what happened to Gracie?”
“Whole damn world knows what terrible things were done to my baby, thanks to the newspapers. So yeah, Lara knows. She called me this morning. She’s a wreck, too.”
“We’re going to have a unit come in to collect some of your daughter’s things and take them into evidence. They’ll document them properly, okay? You going to be home for the rest of the day?”
She nodded, her mouth set in a grim line.
“A latchkey kid,” Pallorino said, matching Maddocks’s stride along the hallway of the old building. He could scent food in the air. The carpets smelled damp.
“Gracie lived a full life outside of her mother’s witnessing it—buying clothes, electronics, dating,” she said.
“Or this John Jacks from the swank Oak Bay Country Club with his BMW gifted her those things,” he said.
“How often have kids used that sleepover ruse as a cover while they go do something else?”
He shot her a glance. “You have kids, Pallorino?”
Her pace faltered, the hesitation so brief it was barely noticeable. “No. But I was a teenage girl once,” she said quickly. “I’m betting Lara Pennington is going to be able to tell us a helluva lot more about Gracie Drummond than her mother could.” She then moved suddenly in front of him and trotted down the stairs at a clip. She shoved out of the building doors ahead of him.
Grateful for the blast of fresh winter air upon exit, Maddocks followed Pallorino to his vehicle, where Jack-O waited.
“A rosary is used to say prayers in penance for sins,” she said as she reached the Impala. “After confession, the priest assigns a certain number of Our Fathers and Hail Marys, depending on the severity of the so-called sin, and then the sinner uses the prayer beads to keep count.”
He beeped the locks, and she opened the passenger side door. “One of the versions of the Hail Mary goes,Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen.”
“You Catholic, Pallorino?” he said, settling into the driver’s seat and strapping on his seat belt.
“Agnostic.”
He smiled. “You like to keep your options open, then?”
“Maybe there’s a God, maybe there isn’t. I believe it can’t be proved either way.”
“Like I said, keeping options open.” He started the ignition, put his Impala in gear, and pulled into the street.
“I was raised Roman Catholic,” she said after a while. “My father’s Italian family had a strong religious background. My mother comes from Irish Catholic heritage, so it’s from both sides.”
“But it didn’t work out for you?”
She hesitated, and he shot her a questioning glance.
“I’ve said my share of Hail Marys in life. And I know the baptism ritual.” She fell silent a moment as he drove. “We just stopped going to church one day. I don’t really recall why, come to think of it.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, the nexus we’re looking for—it could be that church, that choir. We should pay the cathedral and priest a visit.”
“Pennington first,” he said. “Then the club.”
CHAPTER 25
Kjel and Leo found the woman who’d accosted them earlier shivering in a doorway not far from where they’d left her. Kjel held the mug shot flier out to her. “Do you know her? Her name’s Faith Hocking.”
She shook her head, picked at a scab on her cheek, eyes avoiding his. He judged her to be in her late twenties, although she could be much younger and just ravaged by drugs and the homeless life.
“What about this tattoo?” Leo asked, holding out his phone with the picture he’d taken of Hocking’s Medusa tat. Kjel shot his partner a hot glance.
The woman’s head snapped up. “Where’d you get that picture?”
“The morgue. Belongs to Faith Hocking. When did you last see her?”
She turned away from Leo and huddled into the corner. Kjel made a motion with his head for Leo to get out of sight. Leo scowled at him, then removed himself to a location a few doors down, where he ducked under an awning and lit another cigarette.
