The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1)

by Loreth Anne White

  “She’d been submersed in water. Usually when drowning begins, the larynx closes involuntarily, preventing both air and water from entering the lungs. In ten to twenty percent of cases, hypoxemia—a reduced concentration of oxygen in the blood—results because the larynx spasms and stays closed. This is called dry drowning. But in her case, it was wet. Her larynx released, and a small amount of water did enter her lungs.”

  Angie stared at the doc, then turned to Holgersen. “Was she was found near water?”

  “No water bodies in Ross Bay Cemetery that I know of. Just the ocean across the road at the bottom end.”

  “It wasn’t seawater,” the doc said. “The physiological mechanisms that produce hypoxemia in wet drowning are different for freshwater and saltwater. Freshwater in the lungs is pulled into pulmonary circulation by osmosis. Diluting the blood this way leads to the bursting of red blood cells. Potassium levels shoot sky-high and sodium levels plummet, which alters the electrical activity of the heart, usually causing ventricular fibrillation. This can cause cardiac arrest in two to three minutes. Saltwater, on the other hand, is hypertonic to blood. It does the opposite of fresh. Osmosis will instead pull water from the bloodstream into the lungs, thickening the blood. Which requires more work from the heart, leading to cardiac arrest in eight to ten minutes. No matter the saline content of the water, either way, technically, she could still drown,” Dr. Finlayson said.

  Angie stepped closer to the bed, and her chest tightened. Just a kid. A girl all of maybe fifteen years old. Like Allison Fernyhough. Like Sally Ritter. Except this victim was slightly on the plump side. Her hair had been wiped back from her brow and held traces of dried blood. A loose dressing covered her brow. The skin around her mouth was raw, red.

  Angie’s attention moved slowly down the body of the girl. Purplish ligature marks marred her neck and her wrists. Her nails had been ripped, a few torn right off. One of her fingers was in a metal cast. Cuts and contusions patterned her forearms. She’d fought. For her life.

  “Can I see the wound on her brow?” Angie said quietly.

  The doctor hesitated, and then her mouth tightened. Gently, she lifted the dressing.

  The wound had been cleaned and sutured. And it was in the perfect shape of a crucifix, the bottom of the cross ending right between the girl’s eyebrows.

  “Carved into her flesh with a fine-edged blade,” said Dr. Finlayson. “Like a razor or scalpel or box cutter. He pressed deep, right down to the brow bone.”

  Angie stared, feeling hot. Fernyhough and Ritter had also been marked with a cross on their foreheads. Same size and shape as this one—the base of the cross terminating between the eyebrows. But theirs had been drawn onto their foreheads with red permanent marker ink. Not sliced into flesh.

  Angie leaned forward to better examine the girl’s brow and hairline. Her pulse quickened as she found what she was looking for. “She’s had a lock of hair cut off, right at the center of her brow.”

  “Dundurn was right,” Holgersen whispered. “He’s back, and he’s escalating.”

  “If it’s him,” she snapped quickly under her breath. “I prefer to delay any speculation until we have hard evidence.”

  “I’ll just keep my ignorant observations to myself, then,” he muttered.

  “Signs of intercourse?” she said to the doctor. “This bastard leave any calling card?”

  “Semen was not immediately apparent, but it was difficult to see because of the bleeding.” She met Angie’s gaze. “Her genitals were mutilated with a blade.” The doctor hesitated. Her eyes burned brighter. “She was circumcised.”

  Angie felt blood drain from her face. “Meaning?”

  “Clitoral hood, clitoral glans, and labia minora have been excised.”

  Angie’s heart began to pound. “We’re going to need a detailed forensic exam,” she said quickly. “Photographs—”

  “We photographically documented the mutilation while in surgery, Detective. We collected the fluids. We’ve taken blood samples, vaginal swabs, saliva, scrapings from under her nails. Now you need to do your job and find her next of kin before we lose her.” Her features tightened as she spoke, and Angie recognized the emotion in the doctor’s face for what it was—a quiet and barely controlled fury. It was an emotion Angie, with her own anger management issues, understood all too well. It was the same aggressive energy that drove her. It’s what had gotten her into the special victims unit. It’s what had her gunning for a promotion to the homicide team. “Promise me,” the doc said softly, almost below audible range. “Promise me that you’ll nail this bastard.”

  Angie’s mouth turned dry. And it tasted bad—sour from the vodka she’d consumed earlier in the night.

  The door behind them slid suddenly open, and a nurse poked her head into the room. “Dr. Finlayson, Dr. Nassim needs an urgent word.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” the doctor said.

  Angie and Holgersen nodded, and Dr. Finlayson exited the room.

  Angie returned her attention to their Jane Doe. Gently, she touched the girl’s hand. Her skin was ice-cold. Angie turned over the hand. Defensive wounds were evident on her palm and forearm—looked like they’d been made with a blade, sharp. The deeper cuts had been sutured.

  Who did this to you, sweetheart? How did you end up here? What were you doing in the cemetery on this stormy night?

  “What’s left of her nails shows a gel manicure,” Holgersen said at her side. “Highlights in her hair are recent. She takes care of herself, has pride. And those boots of hers—Francesco Milanos—those’ll set you back over a grand a pop.”

  Angie glanced up at him. “How do you know that?”

  “I know stuff, Pallorino.”

  She studied him. His goatee. The pale, sunken hollows under his cheekbones. Haunted eyes. How much do we know anybody? How much can we know anyone?

  “Alls I’m saying,” he said, “is our girl has some mega-expensive taste. And a means to indulge it. This is not some homeless junkie. Somebody’s gonna be missing her.”

  Angie nodded, turned, and made for the door.

  “We going somewhere, Pallorino?” he said, following her out into the hall.

  She took her phone from her pocket. As soon as she pushed through the doors exiting the ICU ward, she dialed the station. Tonner still waited down the corridor by the chairs. Angie strode toward the female cop, phone pressed to her ear.

  “Pallorino!” Holgersen called behind her. “Hey, wassup with this—where are we going?”

  “Cemetery,” she snapped over her shoulder. “I want a forensics team out there.”

  “In the dark?” he said, catching up to her, matching her stride.

  “To be ready first light. The longer we wait, the more this weather will destroy any trace evidence.” While waiting for her call to connect, she addressed Tonner. “Get those evidence bags to the lab stat,” she said. “Log it properly. Watch that chain of custody—” Her call picked up.

  She ordered a forensics ident team to meet them at the Ross Bay Cemetery ASAP. She then placed a call to the Metro PD’s missing persons unit, leaving a message that gave a description of their Jane Doe, and asking if anyone matching their victim had been reported yet. She then left a message for the sergeant in charge of Metro’s high-risk offender unit, asking if any new sex offenders had moved into the area. If this was the same perpetrator from her and Hash’s crucifix rape cases, he’d been lying low for the past three years, or, possibly, his assaults had gone unreported. When she returned to the station, she’d have this MO run through ViCLAS again—the country’s violent crime linkage system—to see if there had been similar attacks elsewhere. She strode toward the elevator as she spoke into her phone, the heels of her biker boots echoing down the sterile hospital corridor. Adrenaline and bottled rage fueled her.

  She was going to get him this time. She’d nail this bastard’s ass to the wall. She’d do it for Hash. For the doc. For all the Jane Does out there. She jabbed the e
levator button.

  “So, we’re still like partners here, Pallorino?” Holgersen said, coming up beside her.

  “What?” The door opened.

  She stepped inside, but Holgersen clamped his hand over the door, holding it open. “We still partners, right?”

  “You coming, or what?”

  He ran his gaze over her outfit, then stepped slowly into the elevator, allowing the doors to slide shut behind him.

  He watched the floor buttons lighting up in succession as they descended, and he said, “Your mascara—it’s still smudged.” A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth. “Alice Cooper lite—suits you. ’Specially for a graveyard visit. Dark side and all that.” He turned and looked down at her. “We all have a ghost in the mirror, don’t we, Pallorino?”

  Angie met his eyes, and a subtle sense of challenge swelled between them.

  “Our survivor goes and drowns, then what?” he said. “This shunts over to homicide?”

  She said nothing.

  “So far as I knows, where death is imminent, it’s attempted murder, and hom—”

  “This is ours,” she snapped. “The doc did not say death was imminent. She said only that the next twenty-four hours would be telling, that’s all.”

  The elevator hummed, then bumped to a standstill.

  “This is ours,” she said again.

  He regarded her for a beat. “Why do I feel working with you is not going to be a win-win situation?”

  A bright flare of light turned snowflakes silver, blinding both Angie and Holgersen as they exited the hospital. Then came another flash.

  “Shit,” said Holgersen, shading his eyes as an elfin woman in a voluminous raincoat emerged from the shadows carrying a large camera. “It’s that little pit bull from that tabloid trash of a newspaper.”

  “Detectives,” the woman said, breathless, her cheeks pinked, her face wet from snow under the bill of her black ball cap. “Merry Winston, City Sun crime repor—”

  “What do you want?” said Holgersen.

  She raised her camera lens, clicked again.

  “Jesus,” Holgersen said, shoving her camera away from his face. “Where do you people get off?”

  “You have a young female who was admitted to Saint Jude’s—the victim of a violent sexual assault, I understand. She was found nonresponsive in Ross Bay Cemetery earlier tonight. Can you give me any details?”

  Angie and Holgersen exchanged a fast glance.

  “And you, what? Just happened to be sitting around listening to the scanner at three a.m. on a Sunday morning?” Holgersen said. “You ain’t got no life, or what?”

  “I drove to Ross Bay, saw the ambulance, saw the paramedics treating a woman, then a Metro PD cruiser arrived, and I saw two uniformed cops talking to one of those ghost tour groups. I got photos. I know the victim was brought here. Now you guys arrive—sex crimes. Do you have an ID? How old is she? What happened? Is the perpetrator still at large? Are others in danger?”

  Angie glared at her, then turned and stalked toward her vehicle.

  “What is her status?” the woman called after her. “She was alive, from the way the paramedics were working on her! What was she doing in the cemetery? Any suspects? Any words for the new mayor on how another sexual assault will impact the city and his new tough-on-crime mandate?”

  Angie reached her Crown Vic, beeped the lock.

  Merry Winston came scurrying after them. “Look, I’m going to run with what I do have, so—”

  Angie whirled around and took a fast step toward the woman. The reporter fell silent, stepped backward.

  “Hold your photos,” Angie said quietly, up real close and in the woman’s face. “Hold your story, okay? Do that, and … we’ll give you an exclusive.”

  “Hold until when?”

  “Until we’ve notified next of kin. At least.”

  “So you do have an ID on her?”

  “Yeah,” Angie lied.

  “Is she Annelise Janssen, the student who’s been missing for two weeks?”

  “You coming, Holgersen?” Angie got into her vehicle, slammed the door, and palmed off her wet skullcap. Holgersen slid into the passenger seat beside her and swore as he shut his door.

  “Freaking ambulance chaser. D’you think she’ll hold off on the story?”

  “No.” Angie engaged the ignition, shoved the car into gear. She pulled out of her parking space.

  “Well, our Jane Doe is no match to the photos and description of Annelise Janssen, that’s for sures—you could have said that much.”

  “I don’t talk to the press.”

  “You just told her we had an ID and that she’ll get an exclusive.”

  “To shut her the fuck up.”

  Holgersen cursed and put his head back as Angie drove, wipers squeaking. After a while he said, “She’s kinda cute, though, all that spiky black hair, pale skin, if not for those bad teeth and all.”

  Angie shot him a glance. “How would you know about spiky hair? She was wearing a ball cap.”

  “Seen her around.”

  “Didn’t know you had a type, Holgersen.”

  “Ooh, Pallorino’s getting nosy now.”

  Irritation tightened her hands on the wheel. “Someone’s been tipping that woman off. No way she could get the stuff she does without a source on the inside.”

  “What? It’s not me who’s tipping her off—you heard her. She got the scoop from the scanner.”

  “I heard you say she was listening to a scanner.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

  One of the uniforms handed Angie a coffee from the 7-Eleven across the street.

  “Cream, no sugar,” the officer said.

  She took it and absently sipped while trying to form a mental picture of what had happened here last night. The day was dawning dark and bitterly cold, low with cloud and mist blowing up from the sea and sifting through the gnarled graveyard trees. Yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the various cemetery entrances and flapped in the icy wind.

  The Ross Bay Cemetery, opened in the late eighteen hundreds, had the oldest surviving formal landscape design in the province. Angie knew this from her father. It was, he’d told her, a prime example of a Victorian-era burial ground with its winding carriageways, unusual flora, and intriguing marble, sandstone, and granite monuments, all standing sentinel over the dead.

  She’d ordered a covered staging area to be set up right outside the stone perimeter walls. It would serve as a consultation space for the crime scene techs and other personnel, and for their equipment.

  She’d also established a secure temporary storage area for any evidence that might be found, in accordance with chain of custody protocol. She was the primary investigator on this case, and she was working fast to put her stamp on this. As Holgersen had so succinctly noted, this could turn into a full-blown homicide investigation, and if so, she was going to push to stay on the case.

  Angie had called her sergeant in charge of the sex crimes unit, Matthew Vedder, at his home, and she’d given him the rundown. He’d okayed her request for overtime if necessary, and allowed her as many uniformed officers as she might need. He wanted a full briefing when she returned to the station in a few hours. Already she’d sent patrol cops out with questionnaires to start canvassing residents who lived adjacent to the cemetery. Most of the stores in the shopping complex across the street behind her were still closed, but she’d have officers in there as soon as they opened. Depending on their business hours, someone might have seen something last night. A person behaving oddly. A vehicle. A man carrying a heavy load. Perhaps someone heard something—a woman’s screams. She also had a uniform inquiring about the closed-circuit surveillance system at the 7-Eleven. She’d noted a camera outside the store, and there was a chance it had picked up something along this road.

  Holgersen was on his phone with the hospital, checking on their Jane Doe’s
condition. He killed his call and came over.

  “Not looking good,” he said. “Still unconscious and vitals going downhill.”

  Damn. She didn’t want Jane Doe to die yet. Not until she had her claws firmly into this case.

  “And still no ID?” she said.

  “Nah. No active missing persons cases match, either, and no new reports have come through. Her prints and DNA are not going to be much use unless she’s in the system. Same with dental records—pretty damn useless unless yous gots something to match them with.”

  “It’s still early,” she said. “Parents, friends, might not have noticed her absence yet. By the time schools open and the day gets under way, we could start getting calls.”

  “Or when news of our mutilated, comatose cemetery girl hits the front page of the City Sun.”

  She glanced sharply up at him, then checked her watch, urgency twisting through her. One of the forensics techs approached them. “We’ve established a path of entry,” he said. “You ready for a walk-through?”

  “Let’s do it.” She handed her unfinished coffee to a uniform, tugged on crime scene booties, and turned her collar up against the cold. They stepped out from under the makeshift cover and she walked alongside Holgersen into the teeth of the frigid salt wind, grateful that she lived downtown and that she’d managed to swing by her apartment for a change of clothing. She’d also quickly scrubbed off her makeup.

  Constable Hickey—the patrol officer who’d responded with Tonner—met them at the stone entrance. He stood shivering in his waterproof poncho, which flapped in the wind. He wore a plastic cover over his hat. The young man had been out in the cold most of the night. Angie had already interviewed him, as well as the EMTs. The ghost walkers and their tour guide, Edwin Liszt, would be coming into the station later.

  They signed the crime scene sheet offered to them by a patrol officer and entered the cemetery grounds, Hickey and the tech leading them down the path. A fine layer of snow crunched beneath their covered boots. They passed white marble cherubs on plinths, the milky eyes of the statues seemingly tracking their progress among the gravestones.