The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  Maddocks rubbed his jaw as he watched. “Something,” he said. “Something is just off-center with his gait.”

  “Figure that’s a wig he’s wearing?” Holgersen said, hunched over and peering at the image like a cat watches a mouse.

  “Could be,” Maddocks said quietly. “So far no wigs have been found in the dumpster, but if he’s a professional, he took that with him. We’d stand a good chance of getting DNA off that. Still could get some off the coat.”

  “There!” A security guard pointed to another camera. “1:25 a.m. He’s exiting out the back of the building. He’s carrying the lab coat.”

  They watched in silence as their suspect opened the dumpster and tossed the coat inside. He kept his face turned from cameras.

  “Why?” said Maddocks. “Why not just take it with him? We could still get something off it …” His voice trailed as it really hit him. This was not their case. Not anymore.

  “Because he’s not hiding,” said Holgersen. “He knows there’s cameras on him. Maybe he thinks any DNA trace on the coat will be compromised because it’s gonna be mixed with the owner of the coat’s DNA and the blood from Tarasov? Or he doesn’t care. He’s sending a message not only to the girls but also maybe to us, and he’s staying just this side of safe, ’cause look how he keeps his head turned away from the camera at all times. He sure as hell knows exactly where them cameras are.”

  Maddocks said nothing, just watched, absorbing everything he could as the man walked away from the camera toward the back parking lot where the light grew dim. There was definitely a very slight lilt to his stride. It’s one thing people in disguise had a tough time hiding—the way they walk. The man disappeared into shadow.

  “He come up on any other cameras?” Holgersen said.

  “We need to stop right there,” Maddocks said quietly. He turned to the security guys. “We’re going to need all that footage. There’ll be an RCMP team in shortly to take possession.”

  “What?” Holgersen came to his feet. “What you mean, boss?”

  Maddocks jerked his head toward the door, indicating that Holgersen should step out. Once outside in the corridor, he lowered his voice and said, “That integrated task force is taking over. It’s no longer ours. We’ve been ordered to stand down, stat.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? I … shit … this … they needs us—we needs to work together on this. We’ve done all the groundwork all the ways back to the Amanda Rose takedown, the Zaedeen Camus plea bargain, Sophia Tarasov’s statement. Like what about all that shit now? We just sits down and they interrogate us, takes all our files? No, no fucking way.” He pointed his finger at Maddocks. “What I tell you? Huh? They’s assholes. Dickheads. Fucking feds.”

  “Go outside, Holgersen, have a smoke. Take a nice deep breath of tobacco and cool off. I’ll meet you at the vehicle.”

  “What you going to do?”

  “Wrap up here.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “It’s all in there,” Angie told Officer Pietrikowski as he stood in the MVPD reception area holding her boxes one atop the other. “I had to retrieve them from a private lab. I’d started having my own tests run on the old evidence.”

  He opened his mouth, but her hand shot up, palm facing him.

  “Before you go telling me I’ve compromised anything, those boxes came out of home storage where they’d been opened and reopened. The lab I used is experienced in forensics. If there is anything compromised, it did not come from the lab or me. And you have my DNA profile should you need to rule me out. Or in.”

  Pietrikowski was not impressed. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, mouth grim as he left the reception area and shouldered open the exit door. As soon as he’d vacated the building, Angie hurried back to her desk and picked up her phone. It was lunch hour, and the public affairs office was empty. She hit the extension for Stacey Warrington, the ViCLAS—Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System—tech in sex crimes. She’d always been Angie’s go-to person for anything database oriented.

  “Stacey, I’m sending some files to your computer—prints. Can you do me a favor and have them run them for me?”

  “Hey, Angie, I thought they had you on the cushy social media desk job for a while,” Stacey said.

  “They do. This is for an old case I’m still working—the prints are from over thirty years back. I had a lab digitize images of friction ridge detail taken of bloodied patents left at a scene. When you have time,” she said. “As a favor. I’ll owe you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, right. Send them now. I’ve got a hole in my schedule. I can get on it right away.”

  Angie opened up her personal laptop, which she’d brought with her to work. She plugged the memory stick into a USB port and uploaded the files from Anders. She attached the first set of images and hit SEND. “Sending as we speak.”

  Officer Pepper entered the office, taking off her coat. “How’s that blog post coming?” she said as she hung it up.

  “Great.” Angie attached the next set of files, sent those, too.

  “Need a hand? Any questions?”

  “I’m good, thanks,” Angie said without looking up.

  “It needs to go live before the end of the day—needs to be out there for the weekend.”

  “Yeah, I got it.” Like anyone cares if an MVPD blog post goes live on Monday instead of Friday. Nevertheless, Angie shut down her files as soon as the images had gone through. She switched computers and reopened the document containing her blog-in-progress. She tried to focus on finishing off her blog post, but anticipation hummed in her blood.

  It was 3:23 p.m. when the phone her desk buzzed. Internal call. She lunged for the receiver.

  “Angie, it’s Stacey. We got a hit. He’s in the system.”

  “Serious?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “No. No.” Chills raced over her skin. “It’s a he? The patents belong to a male?”

  “The one set, yes.”

  Angie shot a glance at Officer Pepper, who was casting a watchful eye her way. “Who is he?” Angie said quietly.

  “Name’s Milo Belkin.”

  “So he’s got a record—he’s alive?”

  “And kicking. On the inside. He’s doing time at Hansen Correctional Centre for a series of charges ranging from criminal negligence causing death, to possession of an illegal firearm, to possession of narcotics with intent to traffic. He’s got another six months remaining on his sentence. Seems like he’s going right to his WED date.”

  “Can you forward me the details—and whatever else you can dig up on his arrest, charges, anything and everything?”

  “Gotcha. Looks like he was charged prior, too—for sexual assault and battery. But he was acquitted when the complainant suddenly refused to testify and dropped all charges.”

  Excitement exploded through Angie. One of the men who’d chased the woman into the alley. Alive. And not going anywhere for at least another six months. This was it. This was her breakthrough. She ran her hand over her hair, almost unable to sit still. “Okay, thank you—and anything else you can dig up on those prior charges, too.”

  “No problem.”

  She hung up and made a fist pump.

  “The blog post going well, is it?” Pepper said.

  “Oh yeah,” Angie said with a smile. Almost shaking with excitement, she located the number of Hansen Correctional Center and called to confirm that an inmate named Milo Belkin was indeed incarcerated there. She set up a visit with Belkin for noon tomorrow. The Hansen institution was on the Lower Mainland. It was the weekend tomorrow. She could be on a ferry tonight, stay in a Vancouver hotel, drive out to Hansen first thing in the morning.

  This—this was why she needed to keep this social media desk job. She had weekends off, and she could still play the police card when she interrogated her suspect. And if this Belkin was serving his criminal sentence right up to the warrant expiry, or WED date, he clearly hadn’t been meeting requirements for early parole—he was mak
ing someone unhappy.

  And now she was going to repay Milo Belkin the favor.

  CHAPTER 31

  Maddocks carried his laptop under his arm as he and Holgersen strode with Inspector Martin Flint toward the conference room at the end of the top floor corridor. Maddocks cast Holgersen a quick glance. The guy loped with his shoulders hunched into his scruffy jacket, chin jutted forward, his hands digging deep into the pockets of his gray jeans. His combat-style boots were scuffed and spotted with muck from the streets. He looked like a scrappy junkyard dog jonesing for a fight.

  Flint, by contrast, was all spit and polish in a white uniform shirt with lapel insignia, tie secured with a gold tie pin, pressed black pants—his military history evident in his deportment and fastidious attention to detail. Ordinarily Flint functioned as the MVPD’s head of special investigations, which fell under the major crimes umbrella, but he was currently standing in as the major crimes boss until someone was officially hired to replace disgraced Inspector Frank Fitzsimmons, who’d been leaking sensitive MVPD information to the media during the Baptist investigation in an effort to unseat the chief. Flint was also temporarily overseeing the homicide unit, which also fell under the major crimes umbrella. This was a hole left by Jake Buziak, whose online gambling habit using MVPD equipment had been revealed during an internal investigation into the MVPD leak. Maddocks had taken over the Baptist task force from Buziak shortly after he was hired, and it was being made clear to Maddocks that he remained number one in line for Buziak’s job as head of homicide once the barcode girls investigation was wrapped.

  As they approached the room, through the glass walls Maddocks saw a male and a female seated at the long conference table. Behind them a bank of windows looked out over the city. Clouds boiled puce along the horizon. Rain spat against the panes.

  Flint pulled open the glass door. They entered, and Flint made brief introductions while Maddocks went to the head of the conference table. He connected his laptop to a large smart screen at the end of the room.

  The male cop at the table introduced himself as Sergeant Thomas Bowditch, an RCMP officer with a long history of investigating organized crime and human trafficking in the Lower Mainland. The female, Constable Vicky Eden, had most recently worked with the RCMP’s international operations in Europe before being detailed to the task force. Both veterans bore guarded features and expressionless eyes. They’d been sent by task force lead investigator Sergeant Parr Takumi, who was stationed in Surrey on the mainland and had been appointed to head up the team. Takumi’s prior post had been in Quebec, where he’d earned accolades for investigations into the Irish West End Gang, the Montreal Mafia, Hells Angels, and Colombian cartels.

  Holgersen slumped into a chair across the table from the pair and folded his arms over his chest. He glowered at them. Maddocks remained standing at the head of the boardroom table. Outside the windows the late-afternoon sky was darkening and fog was blowing in.

  Bowditch got right to it without preamble. “Everything you’ve got on your barcode case to date, we need it. And we’d like you to give us an overview now.”

  Flint nodded to Maddocks, who pulled up his computer file and hit a key, bringing the smart screen to life. The group listened in taut silence as he gave them a bare-bones briefing on their investigation. Rain ticked against the windows as wind gusted wickedly around the outside corners and crevices of the concrete building. The distant sound of a foghorn reached them. Another storm front was closing in.

  Maddocks pointed at the row of mug shots displayed across the screen. “These are the six barcoded females who were forcibly confined aboard the Amanda Rose.” All were thin. Haunted looking. All dark-haired, save for the one blonde. Below their faces were images of their respective barcode tattoos.

  “Sophia Tarasov.” Maddocks pointed to the first image. “Killed last night around 1:00 a.m. COD as yet unknown. Postmortem pending. Her tongue was excised. Originally from Novgorod. The only one who has given us a statement so far. According to Tarasov, the girls were threatened with having their tongues cut out if they spoke.”

  Eden and Bowditch exchanged a fast glance, tension evident in their bodies.

  Maddocks hit another laptop key, and a large map filled the screen. “From Tarasov’s statement, this is a possible route taken by the six barcoded victims into the country.” With his finger, Maddocks drew a line across the smart screen between Prague and Vladivostok, which lay just above the North Korean border. “From Vladivostok, twenty young women were transported in a crab fishing vessel. Somewhere in international waters they were transferred to a cargo ship flying the South Korean flag.” He moved his finger across the map, drawing a line down to South Korea. “Tarasov said one of the women died at sea, leaving nineteen. They docked in what she thought could have been a city in South Korea, possibly Pusan. She believed they were then taken to China and then across the Pacific”—he drew a long line over the ocean—“to the Port of Vancouver here on the North American coast.” He paused.

  “One helluva trip,” muttered Holgersen.

  Maddocks said, “Detective Holgersen has noted that this journey coincides with traditional Russian king crab import routes—both legal and illegal harvests from the Russian far east. It’s an industry that has traditionally been dominated by organized crime—the so-called crab Mafia—which has deep roots in Russian government organizations.” He hit another key, and the image of the pale-blue crab tattoo filled the screen.

  “Tarasov described this tattoo to a forensic artist. It matches the tattoo used as an insignia by a subsect of the crab Mafia. Tarasov witnessed identical ink on one of her male captors in Prague, on one of the crab fisherman out of Vladivostok, and on her captor-pimp in what we think is a remote BC coastal location where nine of the girls trafficked from Vladivostok were held for maybe a month. From this holding location, it appears six of the nine girls were sold—or hired out—to Veronique Sabbonnier, owner-manager of the Bacchanalian Club brothel, which she ran aboard the Amanda Rose. Sabbonnier brought the six barcoded women here, to Victoria.”

  The female officer—Eden—jotted a note on the pad in front of her. Bowditch typed a text on his phone and sent it. Maddocks waited for the cop to finish texting. Bowditch looked up, his features studiously benign, but Maddocks could read sharpened interest—excitement even—in the eyes of both officers.

  Eden cleared her throat and leaned forward. “Did Tarasov say how they got from the Port of Vancouver to this remote coastal location?”

  Maddocks inhaled deeply. He glanced at Holgersen, then Flint, and then he skirted the question. “We got a statement—as part of a plea bargain—from Sabbonnier’s assistant, Zaedeen Camus. Camus, who self-identifies as female, said the Russian traffickers were collaborating with Hells Angels members entrenched as longshoremen at the Port of Vancouver. The Hells Angels members facilitated the girls’ removal from the cargo container, and they apparently initiated transport of the girls from the dock to this remote coastal location.”

  Both Eden and Bowditch stiffened. They exchanged a hot, quick glance. “We’ll need to interview Camus ourselves,” she said. “And as agreed, we’ll need all written statements, recorded interviews, logged evidence, everything. We’ll take possession of the remaining barcoded women, and—”

  “Camus is being transferred to a Lower Mainland pretrial facility,” Flint said. “The information she has given to date is part of a plea bargain that includes the transfer.” He paused. “The legal arrangement with her counsel is in connection with local crimes that we’re prosecuting locally.”

  “We can handle it all from here,” Bowditch said, starting to push his chair back.

  “Your task force—what is the scope?” Maddocks said, leaning forward and pressing his knuckles onto the table. His eyes lanced Bowditch’s and then Eden’s. “What is the purview of this?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to share this information without the necessary security clearance,” Bowditch said.
“It’s a highly sensitive interagency operation involving international and national agencies as well as specialized local units. It’s drawn under one umbrella several investigations that have been years in the making, and it includes deep-cover detail that cannot be compromised, for the safety of our UC officers.”

  Maddocks bristled, tension building hot and low in his belly as the image of Sophia Tarasov’s body washed back into his mind. Tarasov’s image morphed suddenly into his memory of Ginny trussed up in that polyethylene tarp, bloodied and swinging by a rope hung from the trestle bridge. He recalled the mutilated bodies of Faith Hocking and Gracie Drummond on O’Hagan’s autopsy table. Both young women, Victoria locals, had worked as prostitutes through the Bacchanalian Club, where they’d come to the deadly attention of the Baptist—a man who was harbored by Veronique Sabbonnier and Zaedeen Camus. Those two had made the Baptist’s crimes possible.

  Sometimes, Maddocks thought as he met the gazes of the two veteran officers, it wasn’t just bad guys who hurt young girls, it was bureaucracy. Pride. Territorialism. Because if he let this out of MVPD hands now, there was no doubt in his mind that Gracie Drummond’s and Faith Hocking’s families would not see justice done at a local level. The local johns involved with the Bacchanalian Club and the strangulation death of Faith Hocking would not be prosecuted. These two cops had bigger fish to fry. The MVPD case to which Maddocks and his colleagues had given so many hours of their lives, to which Angie might have sacrificed her career, which had almost cost the life of his daughter, would end up mere collateral damage, swept under the rug in some plea deal.

  Voice low, he said, “We can help you in more detail if we can understand the parameters of your investigation.”

  “Yeah,” Holgersen said, moving his gum from one side of his mouth to the other. “Like, maybe we has theories that don’t quite add up, but if we knew more, ka-ching, the bits an’ pieces that might not be in them case files you’re getting—they suddenly slots into place.”