The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  She hung up, blew out a chestful of air. New game. New rules. This was going to be her new life. How she would fill it afterward, she didn’t know. All she could do now was go forward one step at a time. She reached down and re-engaged the gears. Checking her rearview mirror, she pulled back onto the highway. This section of road felt lonely all of a sudden on this chill winter Sunday morning. Nothing but snowy pastures, forest. Not even a cow in sight. As she descended the pass, the snow faded into brown grassland. Cowboy and cattle country. Nerves and adrenaline rustled under her skin as she caught sight of the frontier-style town nestled along a twisting spine of river. Beyond that town lay Kelvin Max Security, gray and sprawling like a scar across the earth.

  Angie took the off-ramp.

  CHAPTER 46

  Angie signed the visitor register form. She handed it back to the correctional service staffer, who then checked her police ID and handed her an official visitor card, which she pinned to her shirt. She’d left her phone in her car. Weapons were not an issue because she was not carrying. Once she’d passed through a metal detector and ION scanner for drugs, a female officer escorted her to the inmate visiting area.

  “How long has Semyon Zagorsky been in the general population wing now?” Angie asked her correctional service escort as they passed through a second set of electronic security gates. They shut behind her with a clang. Keys jangled on her escort’s hip as they walked down the corridor, fluorescent lights flickering slightly above them.

  “Four years,” the officer said. “He’s a model prisoner. Teaches woodwork and sewing. They make their own uniforms, plus jeans and lingerie for companies that contract with the prison for labor.” She opened another electronic door into the general population visiting area. It was arranged like a cafeteria, with round tables painted a primary blue and bolted to the floor. Round seats were affixed to the tables—some tables with two seats, others with four. A handful of inmates occupied various tables with their visitors. Security personnel watched from behind the mirrored glass of an observation room.

  “That’s him over there.” The officer pointed to lone male sitting with his back to the door. He wore a sweatshirt and loose-fitting pants. Broad back. Thick neck. Bald.

  Adrenaline crackled through Angie. “Thank you,” she said.

  The officer departed, the electronic security door closing behind her.

  As Angie approached the lone male, she moved her loose hair so that it hung forward over her shoulder, obscuring her visitor ID card. She stopped behind him.

  “Semyon Zagorsky?” she said.

  He turned, looked up. Bright-blue eyes met hers. A bolt of recognition slammed through her as shock twitched through Zagorsky like an electrical current.

  It’s him. Definitely him. The man who gave me the shoes in the box with the big purple bow. A voice sounded in her head as she looked into his eyes. Deep, sonorous, rising up from her buried past as if the iron door locking her childhood secrets in a subterranean basement had just creaked open. For my Mila, and a matching pair for Roksana.

  And she knew. Angie knew that Semyon Zagorsky was also seeing a ghost from his long-ago past. Just as Milo Belkin had.

  His eyes remained lasered on hers as she moved slowly around the table and took the seat facing him. Angie sat in silence, absorbing his face as bits of memories like tiny colored beads snapped and twitched along long-dormant neural pathways, forming bigger pictures, scents, sounds. The grove in the forest. The berry brambles full with ripe, juicy blackberries. The taste of them—a sweet-sour explosion in her mouth. The sound of a little girl’s laughter sending birds scattering in trees. A deer, watching them silently as they picked the berries and small yellow flowers. Glimpses of sparkling ocean through trees. The dark room with bars on a high window. A faceless woman with long dark wavy hair who smelled of grass and apples. Mother. The sound of her crying. Angie swallowed while her heart stuttered, then raced. Outwardly she struggled for cool, for composure, as she absorbed Zagorsky’s features.

  His was a pugilistic face with the broken nose of a boxer and a fighter’s brow that protected eyes set in deep sockets. And those blue eyes from her past were still as bright and keen as in her memory, despite the passing of more than thirty years. Angie lowered her gaze to his hands. Another jolt of memory sparked through her—his hands holding the box out to her. The shape of his fingers was burned into her mind.

  “Can you turn your left hand over?” she said with a voice that came out husky and didn’t seem her own.

  He turned his hand. The blue crab was there, on the inside of his wrist. She raised her gaze back to his face.

  “Roksana?” he whispered.

  Tears seared into her eyes, the well of emotion so sharp and sudden it scared her. The feelings that roiled together inside her were a conflicted tangle of love, fear, confusion. The bitter taste of betrayal.

  He reached his hand slightly forward across the blue table surface as if to touch her, to see if she were real in flesh, but his eyes ticked toward the mirrored glass of the observation room, and he drew it back.

  “Do I look like her?” she said. Needing to know. Desperate. “Do I look like my … mother?” She could hardly say the word. Afraid it was all a dream, that she’d come this far, was getting this close, and now it would shatter like a delicate glass ball into mere shards of memory that could never be made whole again.

  Moisture pooled in Zagorsky’s eyes. He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “Like Anastazja.”

  Angie began to shake. “Her name?”

  He nodded.

  She swiped an errant tear from her eye. “What was her last name?”

  He shook his head, staring at her as if still unbelieving. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “She never said. I never asked.”

  “What happened to her? What happened to Mila?”

  His body twitched. His eyes darted again to the mirrored glass of the observation room. He was afraid. Tension twisted through her.

  “Please, I need to know.”

  He touched his fingertips to the left side of his lips, as though to mirror her scar.

  “Did you put that there, Semyon? Did you give me that scar?”

  He closed his eyes a moment, as if the memory caused him pain, remorse. He shook his head.

  “Did Milo Belkin do it?”

  His eyes flared open wide. Now she saw terror.

  Shit. Mistake. Backtrack. Fast. Before he clams up. Before it hits him that he has a parole hearing in two days and anything he tells me could be used to charge him afresh.

  “Is she alive—my mother?” Angie said quickly, steering the conversation back again, trying to keep her voice neutral but failing.

  Subtly, slowly, he shook his head.

  “And Mila?”

  The moisture pooled in his eyes leaked down his cheeks. He did not bother to wipe it away.

  “What happened to my sister, Semyon? Who hurt her? Was it you? Did you kill that little girl and throw her body into some river or ocean like a piece of garbage? Is that why her foot floated up in Tsawwassen the other day?”

  “No.” He thumped his fist on the table, holding it there, his face turning thunderous, his jaw clenching tight, neck muscles like cording ropes. “No, I did not hurt her. I’d never have hurt her.” He ground the words out between his teeth.

  “Who did it, then?” Angie leaned forward, heart palpitating.

  He glowered at her, a thunderstorm of emotions rippling in the tension of his muscles under his skin. He was fighting himself not to talk. It was visible, visceral—he wanted to share as much as he did not.

  Angie leaned farther over the table. “You know what happened to her, Semyon.” Her gaze pinned his, the edges of reality and time blurring around her. “You cared for us once, Semy. You were fond of me and Mila.” Surprise cut through Angie at her automatic use of his abbreviated name. Another bolt of recall hit her out of left field—a woman’s voice saying his name. Semy. The same voice that had sung the lullab
y, the same voice that had screamed for her to get into the cradle and be quiet.

  “She liked you, too, Semy. Didn’t she? My mother. Anastazja.”

  His lips thinned, started to quiver.

  “You regret what happened, don’t you? You regret it deeply.”

  He lowered his head and turned his palms face up on the shiny blue table. He stared at his hands as if they did not belong to him, as if he was confused by what those hands might have done. A giant in a cage, a bear of a man. An odd spurt of sympathy went through Angie.

  “Semy.” She touched his fingers. His gaze jerked up.

  “Tell me who did it, who hurt them.”

  Again, she could see that war inside him—a growing fear of criminal repercussion fighting with a desire to share the past with her. It was raw and tangible and powerful. A desperation rose in Angie—she was losing him. He’d said all he was going to say.

  “Semy,” she said again, earnest, leaning in yet closer. “Are you the father of Roksana and Mila?”

  His mouth twisted in some kind of agony.

  “A DNA test will tell, Semy. Your profile is already in the system. It’ll be a simple—”

  “I’m not your father, Roksana,” he whispered. “But I was more a father to you two than he was.”

  Bam.

  “Who was?”

  He inhaled deeply and glanced at the windows behind which the officers watched. He turned to look at the door. He was seeking escape. From her, from her questions, from the past. From guilt, maybe. From himself.

  “Did you love her? Did you love Anastazja?”

  He made a move to get up.

  She gripped his arm. “Please, don’t go. Not yet. You gave me and Mila those shoes—little high-tops. Lilac. You wrapped them in boxes with purple bows. We liked you, Semy, I remember. Yet you chased us with guns and knives across that street in Vancouver. You took my mother and sister—”

  “I was a guardian,” he said very quietly, his eyes still tracking around the room, watching everything. Worried. “Your protector. It was not supposed to go that way. She made it happen. It was her fault that she and Mila were killed. After that … there was nothing I could do to save her or Mila.” He paused, then said almost in a whisper, “You were the lucky one, Roksi—the one who got away from him. Ana could save only one of you that night. And it was close. Too close. She almost lost you both. It was a stupid move.” He pushed himself to his feet, looked down at her. “Now go home, please, and stop looking. Because if he knows that you came here, and that you are searching for him, he will kill you.” He turned to leave.

  “No, wait!” She leaped up and grabbed his arm. A guard stepped out of the observation room. Angie quickly withdrew her hand. The guard held back. “Who will kill me?”

  He looked down into her face—he was very tall, a colossus of a man. Russian in genetics and culture perhaps, but not in accent. Her brain raced. She had to run background checks on Semy, look for any information she could find on this man—his past residences, acquaintances, friends, family. She needed to find them all, talk to them.

  “You have to stop,” he repeated. “Promise me you will stop looking.”

  “I will not. I can’t. I will find him, Semy—whoever he is—with or without you. Because I’m starting to remember things that are guiding me forward,” she said. “I remember you. I recall you giving us those shoes. I remember the look in your eyes when you handed me the box—it was kind, gentle. It made me happy inside. And now one of those little lilac shoes you gave us has floated up with the remains of Mila’s foot inside. The RCMP have opened an investigation, and they’ve already tied it to the cradle case in ’86 and to me. They know my DNA matches Mila’s, that she had a twin. Which means the cradle case has been reopened, and the old evidence from that case is being retested using new science. The fingerprints from the case have already led me to Milo Belkin, and the RCMP are close behind. So don’t think your people on the outside can shut me up by firebombing my house and burning me to death like they did with your victim, Stirling Harrison—”

  He blanched. Angie bit back the rest of her words as it struck her.

  He doesn’t know. Shit! I should have kept my mouth shut. The mob connection to the Harrison fire is privileged. It came from Maddocks.

  Angie immediately tried to switch direction. “And if you didn’t kill my mother and sister, you better say who did, or you will go down for it. Murder times two. Two consecutive life sentences. You might as well write off that imminent probation hearing, because you’re going to die in here, Semy.”

  He leaned down, bringing his mouth close to her ear. “Be careful, Roksi. Be very careful,” he whispered. Then he turned and made for the door. “Guard! Get me out of here!”

  “Who is he?” Angie yelled after him. “Who wants to kill me?” The guard who’d stepped out of the observation room earlier went forward to assist the inmate demanding to leave the visiting area. “Who was my father, goddammit!”

  He exited.

  The door shut behind him.

  A female officer appeared from the observation room and came to her assistance. Angie was shaking.

  The man who killed my mother and Mila is alive. He is out there.

  And he doesn’t want me looking.

  CHAPTER 47

  Semyon Zagorsky dials a number from the inmates’ phone at the bottom of the stairs in the medium-security range. As he waits for his call to pick up, that cold, coiled thing that he felt awakening from hibernation when he saw the little ROOAirPocket on TV rises inside his belly like a cobra ready to strike.

  It isn’t a coincidence.

  It’s real.

  The past has come back to claim me, and now I face a terrible choice.

  He’s a man being led to the gallows as his call is connected.

  “Mila?” he says quietly into the receiver at the sound of his daughter’s voice. His head bends in toward the phone booth so others won’t hear him. “Can you put Livvy on to talk to me?”

  He just wants to hear his four-year-old granddaughter’s voice. Hearing her sweet, innocent voice will enable him to make the decision he knows he must but can’t. Just can’t.

  “Gampy!”

  Emotion sparks through Semy’s chest. He closes his eyes, fisting the receiver. His brow touches against the metal box that shields the phone. He takes a moment to marshal control of his body.

  “Livvy—” His voice cracks nevertheless. In his mind he can see them—the twins—as if it were yesterday. Two little kittens, Ana called them, running, running down to the clearing in the forest, their laughter a rare slice of sunshine that tinkled like the pure sound of freedom and goodness itself. The little shoes … little lilac shoes running through the snow. The other one with bare feet. Ana had no time to put on Roksana’s shoes. She’d fled with Roksi on her hip, her free hand gripping onto Mila, whom she’d dragged behind her. Her sweater was marked with cum from the two men she’d let use her so that she could lull them into complacency, escape to that cradle another sex worker had told her was down the alley between the hospital and the cathedral.

  He sent Livvy—his own granddaughter—shoes for her fourth birthday. He can’t say why. He can’t say why he named his own daughter Mila, either. Possibly it was a desperate attempt to keep little Mila’s memory alive, to honor the child who’d been murdered in front of his very eyes. Possibly it was because of the guilt that haunted him like his own shadow. If he hadn’t cared so much for Ana, she wouldn’t have been able to dupe them all with her attempt to escape that night—her desperate bid to save her children from her own fate, from working as sex slaves for the rest of their lives.

  Roksana was right. He’d loved the twins. Like a father. It was him who made sure they got out sometimes to play in the sunlight and sea air. It was him who sneaked Ana out of the room when the twins’ father was away.

  “Did … did you get your present, Livvy?” he managed to say.

  “Uh-huh.”

&nbs
p; “Do you like them?”

  “Make me run fast, Gampy!”

  Not fast enough. Little Mila’s lilac high-tops did not move her fast enough that Christmas Eve. They did not save her while her sister screamed in pain and terror as her face was cut in the struggle to tear her away from the cradle.

  “Are you going to come out and visit us soon, Gampy? Mommy says you might come one day soon now.”

  He swallows hard.

  “Yes, Livvy, maybe. Soon.” But it will never happen now.

  His mind goes to his pending parole board hearing and what Roksana told him about Stirling Harrison’s death. He’s been set up—his chance of parole is doomed. They’ll tie Harrison’s death to the mob. The parole board will say that Zagorsky remains a threat, that he’s still connected to criminals on the outside. Semy has always been suspicious of where the tip came from that led to his and Milo’s arrests in that drug bust. Now, after Roksana’s news that the paraplegic and his wife have been burned to death, he’s certain. Oly.

  Oly tipped off the cops and put him in here.

  Oly ordered the death of Stirling Harrison. Which means Oly intends for him to remain here.

  Oly is also the one providing protection on the outside for Semy’s wife and his daughter, Mila, and his little Livvy. Oly bought them big houses side by side on the mountainside overlooking the city. He provides them with bodyguards, security cameras, servants—they want for nothing.

  We always take care of family, he’d said. Right, Semy? The implication being, Do not talk, and all will be fine with your wife and your progeny on the outside. Oly is probably also screwing his wife. Bile rises up the back of Semy’s throat as something else strikes him—maybe the bastard is fucking his daughter, too. That would be his style. That would be his revenge for Ana and the twins—for Semy letting one escape. Inhaling deeply, he says, “Everything is happy at home? And safe?”

  “Yes, Gampy!” At the sound of that spirited little voice, his mind is made up. He must do what he is about to do so that Livvy can continue to grow up safe. Or she will be killed. Like Mila. Like Ana. Like Roksi will if she does not stop hunting. For his red “brother” is ruthless.