The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  Alex motioned to the teapot on his table and the two cups beside it. “Tea?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Anything else before we get started?”

  She shook her head, tension winding tighter. “I want to get right to it. I still need to pack for a trip to the mainland tomorrow.” And she wanted to go by Maddocks’s yacht. She needed to see him before she left the island for the weekend, tell him about the RCMP and IDRU visit and the floating foot DNA.

  Alex seated himself opposite her. “Phone off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Comfy?”

  She took a deep breath, rested her arms on the armrests, and wiggled her socked feet, relaxing her toes. The fire crackled, and rain drummed softly against the tin awning outside. She nodded.

  Alex spoke softly, his voice deep, calm. “Close your eyes. You’re going to feel increasingly relaxed. All the tension of the day is draining out of your chest and funneling down into your arms.”

  Angie shut her eyes and sighed deeply.

  “You can feel the tension flowing down your arms. All the way down to your wrists. It’s in your hands now. In your palms. It’s leaving your body through the ends of your fingers. It’s washing from your pelvis down your legs, to your feet. It’s seeping out from beneath the soles of your feet into the carpet.”

  Angie focused on the physical sensations in her body, following his cues. Her muscles, her mind, began to relax.

  “You’re taking a deep, deep breath and releasing it all from your lungs. And again. Comfort is soft, like a warm blanket enveloping your shoulders …”

  He continued speaking in a soft monotone. Angie concentrated on his words, the reactions in her body. She felt the tightness of the day begin to blur at the edges. Her mind opened up.

  “Your brain is like a spring flower, blossoming, opening, turning its face to the warmth of sunlight. You’re drifting into the arms of that comfort, Angie. Deeper. Deeper. Into the past.”

  Time stretched. She had no sense of how long he kept talking. She felt herself sinking down, down, down to a warm place. Her eyelids fluttered.

  “Okay, now, tell me what happened the last time you went back in memory, Angie.”

  She moistened her lips. “I … was lying on a bed. In a dark room. There was someone with me in the darkness, holding my hand. A female. Her skin was cool. Soft. She was singing sweetly, gently, like a lullaby … those words about two little kittens. In Polish. Then she suddenly stopped singing. Someone had come in. I was scared. The room went blacker.” Tension curled around her throat as an image slammed back into her brain. “There … there was a man in the room on top of her. Big, big man.”

  “On top of who, Angie?”

  “I … don’t know. The lady singing. He was grunting like a dog on her, and she was crying softly. Very scared. Wasn’t nice. Horrible.”

  “Okay, okay, but then I gave you a magic key to get out of the room, remember?”

  She noticed the key suddenly in her palm. A big brass one she’d seen in a fairy-tale book. She nodded. “Yes. I remember.”

  “You unlocked the door to the room, and you went outside.”

  She nodded.

  “Let’s go back there, to that door. I will repeat what we did last time, and remember, when I count backward from four, you will start returning to my living room again. You will have your key at all times. It’s a magic key, Angie. You will always be safe. If at any time you feel stuck, just say the word ‘home,’ understand? Or use that key.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, your breathing is becoming even slower, more and more relaxed. Breathe in and then out. Slower and slower. Deeper. Air is sinking low into your lungs, deeper. You’re going down, down toward a comfortable place. Back to that door. Now open the door again with your magic key.”

  Angie was there, in the dark room. Fear started to claw at her. It smelled hot. Her breathing quickened.

  “No. Slow. Relax. Look at the key in your hand.”

  She did.

  “Use it.”

  She stuck it in the big lock that appeared in the door in front of her, and she stepped out into bright white light, just like last time.

  “Go through the door, Angie. Go outside.”

  She blinked into the blinding brightness. And once again, instead of stepping out, she turned to look back into the darkness of the room, and she held out her hand. “Come um,” she whispered. “Come playum, dum grove.”

  “What are you saying, Angie?”

  “She must come and play. She must come with me to the berry bushes in the grove and to see fish place. Bring basket.” Suddenly there was a woven basket in her hand. “Jesteśmy jagódki, czarne jagódki,” she sang.

  “What does that mean, Angie?”

  She began to sing the words in English now. “We are small berries, little black berries. We are small berries, black berries.”

  “Who are you singing to? Who are the berries?”

  “She must come, to play. We go to dum grove, down indum. Trees. Bring baskets. Berries. Go see fish pens. Not allowed.” All around her, huge drooping conifers loomed way up high into the sky. So high. Like skyscrapers. Green moss and orange and yellow lichens grew on rocks. And bright-yellow dandelions were scattered everywhere on lush emerald grass that grew long and tickled her bare shins. She bent down to pick some of the smiling yellow flowers, and the smell was heather and honey. She put them in her basket. A child’s laughter sounded behind her, and she whirled around, feeling the warm air on her thighs as the hem of her dress lifted like a spinning tent. Through the bushes and trees she could see docks out on the water. Several docks. A little house on one. Like she’d seen outside Anders’s lab building. Boats. Her heart began to race. “Not allowed to go to the big house with the green roof. Or go fish pens. Red man is there.”

  “Red man?”

  She shook her head wildly. “No, no, no … Must come play …”

  “Who must come play, Angie? The lady who was singing?”

  Angie’s chest tightened. Her head felt as though it was going to implode. Pressure on the inside of her skull. Noise in her ears. “She … she’s there,” Angie whispered hoarsely. “I can see her.” She began to shake.

  “Who?”

  “Me. It’s me.”

  “Your sister maybe, who looks like you?”

  Angie’s eyes burned. Fear was suddenly a noose. The little girl with long red hair and a pink frilled dress held out her hand. “Come um dum dem grove,” she said. Their language. Their own special language. And this time Angie could see the child’s face. Her gray eyes were her own eyes, and they pleaded. “Come playum … help … help me … help …” The girl began to fall backward. Her berry basket dropped. Dead dandelions all about her feet. Angie shot her hand out to catch the girl. But the girl started to fade, shattering like glass into the air. Angie screamed, spun around, then ran. And the skyscraper trees whirled like a roundabout above her head, a blur of yellow and green and black all beginning to lean inward, blocking out the blue sky, making it all black.

  Uciekaj, uciekaj! … Wskakuj do srodka, szybko! … Run, run! Get inside!

  Angie shook her head wildly from side to side. Cold now. Very cold. “I … I’ve got to go after her! She fell down. In the snow. Need to save her! The man is taking her! ” Suddenly Angie was racing through the forest after … after … she couldn’t see. Wind tore at her hair. Terror boiled in her veins. Her legs were pumping, grasses and brambles scraping her skin open. Her feet were cold as ice. She thrashed through berry bushes, going deep into the forest which became gray buildings and she was on a cold street with snow, and there were Christmas lights … and she could see the girl’s shoes … little purple high-tops … running and slipping in the snow … and the sound of Ave Mari-aaaa … bells …

  “Her shoes,” she whispered, voice hoarse. “They’re her shoes.” She shook her head from side to side, mouth open, panting. She looked down at her own feet in the snow. Same sh
oes. Matching shoes. A face flared into her mind, sharply and in focus. A man’s face. Big face.

  “I … I see someone—a man. Big man. He’s holding a box out to me. He’s smiling. He’s happy.”

  “The red man?”

  “Other man.”

  “Take the box, Angie.”

  She shook her head. “Roksana.”

  “Angie?”

  “No, Roksana.”

  “Who’s Roksana?”

  Tears spilled into her eyes. She shook her head wildly. Inside her skull everything hurt. Blood coming out of her mouth and ears and eyes.

  “Do you want to come home, Angie?”

  “Roksana,” she said again. “Want box.”

  “Are you Roksana, Angie?”

  She nodded, crying.

  “Take the box from the man, Roksana. Open it.”

  She did, ripping off the purple ribbon that bound it up in a big bow. There was tissue paper inside. Pink. She pulled it apart. “Shoes. New shoes!” She clapped her hands together at the sight of the little lilac high-tops, and suddenly they were on her feet in the snow again. But they weren’t. Left them inside. It was icy cold. Bare feet. No time. A woman’s screams cut the air.

  Wskakuj do srodka, szybko! … Siedz cicho! … Get inside! Stay quiet!

  Bells. So loud. Loud! She put her hands tightly over her ears. She was panting, hyperventilating. Banging.

  “Tell me, Roksana,” Alex said. “What are you doing?”

  “Inside. Get inside. Bells.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe. “The knife is coming. Big shiny knife …” She screamed. Pain sliced over her face. Blood! Everywhere. Banging from the guns. “Mila!” she screamed. “Gone. Mila!” She began to sob. “Home, home, home!” She searched wildly for the key. Key gone. Gone …

  Vaguely she heard a word. Four. Three. Then louder. Three!

  Two.

  One.

  “You’re coming up, Angie. You’re safe. Warm. You’re back. Safe. In a comfortable chair, back in Alex Strauss’s house, my house. Safe. All safe.”

  Her eyes flared open. Her gaze shot to her palms. No blood. She felt her mouth, her scar, her ears. No stickiness. No hot blood. No coppery smell. Her entire body was shaking, and her face was wet with tears.

  CHAPTER 34

  After her session with Alex, Angie drove straight to the marina to find Maddocks, but he was not at his yacht. So she’d gone home, showered and changed out of her cop uniform, and grabbed something to eat at Mario’s—her favorite little Italian restaurant in old Victoria. She found Maddocks home when she returned to the marina closer to midnight.

  They now sat on the sofa in his cabin, dog at their side, sipping a fine whiskey as waves slapped and chuckled at the wooden hull of his old schooner and halyards chinked against masts outside. Maddocks absently ruffled Jack-O’s ears as he listened in heavy silence to Angie’s account of the day’s events—everything from Jacob Anders and his lab, to the floating foot DNA bomb Pietrikowski and Tranquada had dropped on her, to Milo Belkin and the hit on his prints, to Grablowski and his threats, and how his mention of twin-speak had driven her to a shocking hypnosis session with Alex. How she’d heard the names Mila and Roksana and seen a man’s face clearly in her mind. A man who’d gifted her shoes in a prettily wrapped box, just like the little shoe that had washed up in Tsawwassen containing her DNA profile.

  She drew her socked feet up under her butt and curled into the warmth of Maddocks’s body as she spoke. His solid comfort, the feeling of having an ally, reminded her of all the reasons she did love having him in her life and why she did want to fight to keep him there. Yet she still felt as though something was slipping away—like fine hourglass sand through clenched fingers. And his mood was different tonight—she hadn’t seen him like this before. Something was simmering hot and fierce just beneath his very controlled and cool exterior.

  “You okay?” she said, looking up at him.

  He nodded. “How about you? How’re you handling this? How do you feel?”

  She gave a snort. “Like the truth is locked inside me, and I can’t quite get it out. I … I self-identified as Roksana in my memory,” she said. “Alex and I looked up the name afterward—it is Polish in origin. And I screamed the word Mila. It’s also a Polish girl’s name. I saw more of my surroundings this time. I—we—Mila and I, I think—were in a clearing in a forest. Surrounded by exceptionally tall trees. Wide trunks. Way wider than my outreached arms. Cedars, I figure, in retrospect—droopy branches with reddish bark that looked stripped into shreds. A big ancient cedar grove. Moss, lichen, dandelions. A clearing where berry bushes grew—blackberries. There was water, ocean beyond the forest. A big building with a green roof where a red man lived. Docks. Several, making square shapes in the water. One with a building on it. I thought of them as fish pens.”

  “Red man?”

  She looked up at him. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “And the docks?”

  “A fish farm maybe? They reminded me of the docks outside Jacob Anders’s lab buildings.”

  “The trees could have seemed extra tall because you were small in the memory,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. “Sometimes when you return to places of childhood, something like an old family house that once appeared so large can seem tiny, shrunken.”

  She swirled her whiskey glass, watching the play of yellow against gold in the liquid. “I know. The man who gave me the shoe box was also huge. And I saw his features clear as day—they’re burned into my brain now. I’ll never forget them. A roundish face. But not a flabby round—strong. A wide, aggressive brow. A nose that looked as though it had been broken a few times. Eyes set deep under that ledge of brow. Dark-blond hair cut military short. Very bright blue eyes, all twinkly bright.”

  “So he wasn’t the red man?”

  “I didn’t get the sense that he was. The red man … I felt the red man was bad. The man with the shoe box was nice.”

  “Twinkly? As though you liked him?

  “I don’t know.”

  “To describe eyes as twinkly—that’s not a perception born out of fear or of someone dark and nasty.”

  “I guess not. But then after I took the shoes from him, my memory flipped right into a black and negative nightmare. The terror I felt was real. I had a sense it could have been him after us in the snow.”

  Maddocks inhaled a deep, slow breath of air. “This is heavy stuff, Ange. But maybe you’re also extrapolating—having seen photos of the ROOAirPocket high-top, having received news of the possible DNA match, and after having seen Anders’s docks, you might be inserting this into your other memories. That DNA match still has to be proved—it could still be an error.”

  She shook her head. “I saw her, Maddocks. My twin. It had to be her. A mirror image of myself. Me but not me. I now feel in my bones, with every molecule of my being, that the DNA test will come back positive. And seen through this new paradigm, I believe that my memories are all starting to make some logical sense now. I feel less crazy. And if one of the DNA profiles on those semen stains or the hairs also comes back as a match to Milo Belkin, we’ve got him right there. DNA and prints. We can use this to crack him wide open—make him talk, make him tell me what happened that night, who that other man might be.” She paused. “Who my parents were.”

  “So it wasn’t Belkin himself you saw in your memory?”

  “No. I’ve seen Belkin’s mug shot. It wasn’t him. I’ve got a meeting with Belkin at noon tomorrow at the Hansen Correctional Centre.”

  Maddocks’s gaze flared to hers. “Is that wise?”

  “How can I not?”

  He held her gaze, long and steady. In his eyes she read worry, and she hated seeing it there.

  “The RCMP is not going to be pleased with you hitting their persons of interest first,” he said quietly. “Because it’s just a matter of time before Pietrikowski gets the same hit on the bloody patents that you did. They’re going to want to be
the ones interrogating Belkin in connection with their floating foot case.”

  “Their case is my life. And any civilian has the right to go visit an inmate.”

  He held her gaze. “Thin ice.”

  “I’ve got to do this, Maddocks. You know I do. The RCMP investigators are not going to loop me in the way that I need to be—”

  “Or want to be”

  “Need. Okay? I need this. This is my sister. My other half. My DNA.”

  “Maybe,” he cautioned. “It must still be confirmed.” He got up, went to the counter in his small galley, and snagged the bottle of whiskey. He held it up. “Another?”

  She shook her head. He poured himself a second tot. He was quiet as he recorked the bottle. Oddly so. He turned and looked out of the portlight above the sink as he took a sip. It was black as pitch out, rain tapping against the pane as the yacht rocked gently in the wind.

  “Maddocks?”

  With his back still to her, he said, “You could leave it all in the RCMP’s hands, you know, Angie. Offer them what you have so far. Your memories, what you got from the hypnosis sessions—do an identikit of the blue-eyed man you saw or use a forensic artist. If the cradle case is solvable, they can and will solve it without your active involvement.” He turned to look at her. “You don’t have to do this yourself—maybe you shouldn’t.”

  She did not like the feeling that the look in his eyes—or his words—put into her stomach. Just the thought of dropping this case now filled her with dread, claustrophobia. She could not tolerate sitting at that social media desk, twiddling her thumbs, if she did not have this case to occupy her. She needed to do something, anything, before Grablowski went to the media and the story broke all around her. She would not be a sitting, reactive victim. She had to act.

  “It’s going to hurt your probation,” he said quietly. “Messing in the RCMP’s case. How long do you think it’ll be before they contact Vedder about it? You already cut it fine holding back that evidence. You’re lucky Pietrikowski did not slap you with a warrant. You need to stay clean if you want a future as a cop, Angie.”