The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1)

by Loreth Anne White

Dr. Reinhold Grablowski peered at the task force members with coal-black eyes set deep into sockets under thick brows. With his hooked nose, narrow face, and long neck, he reminded Angie of a vulture, a predator himself, picking at the brains of sick offenders. Her dislike for the doc was instant. But on some level, she knew that no one inside this room was much different from Grablowski. They all in one way or another tried to inhabit the brains of heinous villains in an effort to hunt and catch them. For whatever their personal reasons.

  “From the evidence,” Grablowski said with a slight Germanic accent that she couldn’t quite place, “we’re not looking for a rapist who kills his victims in order to avoid being identified, but rather a lust-based predator for whom the act of killing, and the associated ritual and sexual paraphilia, fulfills a psychosexual fantasy. In other words, these victims”—he pointed to the photos of the young women on the whiteboard—“didn’t just happen to cross his path. They’re not victims of opportunity or chance. They were chosen. Hunted, trapped, assaulted, and killed because these victims fit his psychosexual fantasy. He’s also a psychopath—sadistic and organized. Methodical, cunning. The cruelty of his act excites him, and he may engage in torturing his victims. He will usually take a souvenir from his kills—a trophy, like the locks of hair—in order to relive his fantasy until the need grows so great that he is compelled to hunt again.”

  Way to go, genius … like none of us have already deduced that … If Buziak had let her finish speaking the other day, she’d have said almost the same.

  “Statistically, the man you are looking for is likely to be of above-average intelligence, and a loner. He’s more likely than not to own a car in good condition, so he’s mobile, and he’s also likely to travel longer distances than the average person. This offender is capable of using his verbal skills to manipulate and gain control over his victims until he has them within his comfort zone. However, his colleagues, if he has them, might consider him odd or somewhat socially inept.”

  The doc reached for the glass of water on the table in front of him and took a slow, deep swallow, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing in his long neck. Again, he reminded Angie of a strange predatory bird.

  He set down the glass. “Most of his victims will share common traits. In this case, it might be physical appearance and age range. These victims”—again, he motioned to the board—“were all in their early teens at the time of their attacks. All are Caucasian and have long, dark hair. They were probably strangers to the offender, and for some reason he identified them as women he could control, either through verbal manipulation or strength. Above that, they are ‘right.’ They fit his psychosexual fantasy. Thus, victimology in these cases becomes paramount, as in: Who were these women? What was going on in their lives at the time of the event? How did they first come to the attention of their assailant? Answers to these questions, and where the information intersects, will help narrow in on the subject.”

  “Wiseass,” Leo whispered behind Angie. “Welcome to Homicide 101.”

  “All human sex is initiated through fantasies,” Grablowski said. “Mental images that involve fulfilled or unfulfilled desires. We all have what is called a paraphilic love map, and these love maps begin to develop shortly after puberty. But the sexual predator, clinically speaking, has developed a love map where his lust is attached to fantasies and practices that are either socially forbidden, disapproved of, ridiculed, or penalized. And his fantasies usually involve aggression, domination, control. He becomes aroused by mere thoughts of sexual aggression, which he reinforces by using sadistic porn or fantasy stories that feature sexual sadism. In turn, he reinforces these stories, or porn, with masturbatory activities. This eventually forms a ‘template,’ or what we refer to in law enforcement as the signature of the offender.”

  He paused, took another sip of water, his wet lips shining, and Angie’s mind went to her own love map—“love” was a dumbass word for this stuff, anyway. It should be called a lust map. There was no “love” in these sick, sadistic, violent acts of which the shrink was speaking.

  “In this offender’s case, his love map has a strong religious connection, and it was possibly formed around being punished for his own sexuality starting at puberty. In other words, sexual arousal was seen as a sin for which one had to be punished and cleansed. He likely has a Catholic background and has been baptized in the faith. He will likely be hunting his victims some distance away from his area of residence or work.” Grablowski clicked a key on his computer, and red dots appeared on the GIS map.

  “Ritter was attacked here.” He pointed to a dot. “Fernyhough over here. Drummond appears to have been abducted here. All areas west of the city, and the Gorge. Hocking, we don’t know yet where she was attacked. But going by what we have so far, your area of peak probability of finding this offender’s place of residence is here.” He tapped a key, and an area on the map washed yellow. It covered the suburbs abutting the city to the east. “His hunting zone is where his desire for anonymity and his desire to operate within his comfort zone meet. Which means his next victim is likely to be found in this area.” He hit another key, and the map to the west of the Gorge went red.

  Great help there, Doc …

  “Given the timing of the recent two cases, he’s likely to have recently experienced a major psychological trigger in his life, and this is causing him to devolve fast. He will kill again, and soon in my opinion. Bear in mind, also, that he’s fully cognizant of the criminality of his acts. He takes pride in his ability to thwart police. He will be aware of investigative procedures and will avoid leaving behind evidence where he can help it. He will bring his own weapons and other tools of restraint, and he will attend funerals and other public events associated with his work. He is also likely to be closely following the course of this investigation via the media. Media coverage might make him change his patterns to avoid capture.”

  “Like we needed a fucking head shrink to tell us that,” Leo mumbled behind Angie. And yeah, for once she agreed with the old misogynist.

  Fitz stood up and crossed to the center of the room. Silence pressed down on the group as he started to speak in his strangely high, creaky voice.

  “Considering our unidentified subject is likely following media coverage and being tipped off as to what we know, the consequences of these suspected internal leaks to the press are grave. Untenable. And they must be stopped. To that end, I’m informing you all that I have brought in an internal investigations team. Please be forewarned that no one is above scrutiny, and that each and every one of you could be under surveillance, or brought in for questioning, at any time.” He paused, making eye-to-eye contact with each member of the task force in turn. His gaze lingered a fraction longer on Angie. “We will find you. And we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

  CHAPTER 33

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12

  “Angie,” her father said as he opened the door. “What are you doing here so early? You look terrible—you okay?”

  “I went to see Mom yesterday,” she said.

  “Come inside. Want some coffee? I got a pot on.”

  “I’d kill for some.” She left her boots at the door and followed her dad in his checkered flannel housecoat into the kitchen, the underfloor heating warm beneath her socked feet. She set the photo album that she’d brought on the kitchen table and scooted a stool up to the counter. She perched atop the stool and watched her dad pour coffees. She felt beat. When she’d finally drifted into sleep last night, she’d woken in a cold sweat with a sense of a presence in her room. In the gloom she’d seen the child standing at the bottom of her bed in a soft pinkish glow, watching her. Then the girl had put her index finger to her lips and hissed the words …

  Siedz cicho! … Stay quiet!

  … or had it been the shush of the wind coming through a crack in her drapeless bedroom window?

  She’d gotten out of bed and flipped on all the lights. Of course there’d been no child in her apartm
ent. She’d self-medicated by drinking more vodka and googling the foreign-sounding words as best she could phonetically—guessing at spellings. She’d come up with various Eastern European and Russian sites and expressions, but nothing made sense. Then she’d reverse-typed into a translator site the English words which she believed held meaning for the foreign ones she’d heard inside her head: Stay quiet!

  One by one she’d tried translating Stay quiet into the various Slavic languages. When she’d clicked on TRANSLATE INTO POLISH, she got a hit. Siedz cicho!

  Knowing the Google translator’s limits, before she’d come to see her dad this morning, she’d phoned and woken an old Polish friend from her college days, and she’d asked her friend to translate into Polish the phrases: Run, run! Get inside! Stay quiet!

  The friend had confirmed what Angie was starting to believe. The words: Uciekaj, uciekaj! Wskakuj do srodka, szybko! Siedz cicho! meant: Run, run! Get inside!—in the context of getting into a car, or a box, or a bus. And, Stay quiet!

  Either she was going mad, or she was remembering something in Polish.

  Her dad cast a quick glance at her, and then his gaze touched briefly on the album resting upon the table. “How was she?”

  “Not good.” Angie accepted the mug he was handing her and took a sip. Steam warmed her face. “She didn’t recognize me, and she said some weird things.”

  “She was in a really bad way yesterday. Hallucinating. They sedated her, and she was on other medication as well.”

  “I know, but …” She hesitated, set her mug down, and cradled her hands around its pottery warmth. “She told me that she had a little daughter once named Angie.”

  He smiled sadly. “She did. You were little once.”

  “But then she said her daughter was gone, just like that. Taken by angels. However, her daughter didn’t belong in Italy, or in heaven, so she was brought back. Mom said she was returned at Christmas. It was snowing and she’d been singing at the cathedral.” Angie paused. “Then she began to sing ‘Ave Maria.’”

  Her father’s face changed. Slowly, he set his mug down on the granite counter. “Angie, we almost lost you in that car accident in Italy. Maybe that’s what she meant. You … were unconscious, face cut, lost so much blood.”

  She held his gaze and saw something odd in his features. He was lying. She felt it in her gut, knew the tell signs. Being a cop for so long, you got a feel for a lie, or a cover-up, the various tics and other displacement behaviors when people were avoiding the truth.

  “What about her mention of Christmas then, and snow? The accident was in March.”

  He dragged his big hand over his thick gray hair, looked away for a moment. “Maybe because you were only really fully on the mend come the following Christmas? You’d had the first cosmetic surgery to your mouth, and it looked like a second operation would finally get you back to almost normal, and we were home by then, and she was getting over it.”

  “Did Mom ever sing, in a choir, at a church?”

  “What is this, Angie?”

  She reached for the album, opened it, and took out the photos from Italy. She turned them over, showing her dad the tiny scrawl of her mother’s hand on the backs.

  “Look—it says, Rome. Jan. 1984. Then this one from Naples, which also says 1984. However, in this photo, taken in front of the Christmas tree, my mouth still needing the second surgery, it says, Christmas 1987. Victoria.” She looked up. “There’s missing time between the Italy pics and that Christmas. That Christmas photo was shot in 1986, wasn’t it?”

  “Like I said, your mother probably just made a mistake—the early signs of confusion—”

  “Did anyone we know speak Polish to me when I was young?”

  He frowned. “That’s a strange question … I don’t think so. But there could have been someone. Angie, please, tell me what this is all about?”

  She replaced the photos. None of the others in the album had any dates on the backs. She’d dismantled the whole album last night. And she did not want to inform her dad that she was hallucinating, seeing a little girl in pink—no one was going to know that. Even just vocalizing it would put it out there into the air, make tangible and real the possibility that she was showing the same symptoms as her mother, genetically predisposed. She was searching for an easier answer, a way to explain it away. “I was just wondering, after what Mom said in that hospital. I always feel so awful around Christmas, around the sound of hymns and carols, the cold. Snow. Just … wondering.”

  His features softened, and he placed his big hand over hers. “You dig too much, Ange, your job, always looking to find something bad. You should take a rest, and yeah, especially after what happened in July, with that toddler and Hashowsky.”

  She got up, leaving the rest of her coffee. “Yeah, maybe. I should go. Long day ahead.”

  Driving to the station, Angie checked the time on the dash—it was just past the top of the hour—and she clicked on the radio to catch what was left of the news.

  As she listened, a segment on real estate prices was cut short. “We have late-breaking developments in the story on the two gruesome murders that have rocked Victoria—” Her heart quickened. She reached over and turned up the sound. “City Sun reporter and crime blogger Merry Winston is reporting on her website that the recent sex killings are linked to several religious-oriented and violent sexual assaults over the last five years. She claims that there have been at least three, possibly more, local incidents where victims were raped and sodomized before crucifixes were drawn in red ink on their foreheads. Locks of hair were cut from all the victims from the same location on their heads. We’ll have more on the story as it develops through the day. And following the news, Granger Paton will be talking with professor of criminology Dave Biggs, who asks: Do we have on our hands a local serial rapist who has now escalated to serial killing? And are other young women in danger?”

  Shit!

  She quickly pulled over onto the verge and scrubbed her hands hard over her face. Shit shit shit. She reached for her phone, dialed her partner.

  “Maddocks, you heard the news?”

  “Not yet. I—”

  “Winston is apparently reporting on her blog that the Hocking and Drummond homicides are linked to earlier rapes. She’s mentioned the red Sharpie crucifixes and the locks of hair. How the fuck does this stuff get out? From a closed task force? And she claims that there were three, maybe more, sexual assaults, and she’s dating them back five years—Hash and I only had two. The first we knew of was four years back. Who in the hell were the others? Is this even for real?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I’m going to see her myself.”

  “No, wait, Pallorino! Don’t do it. Brass is dealing directly with the City Sun publishers. They’re getting legal involved. Don’t undercut—”

  “This is not the Sun. It’s Winston on her personal crime blog.”

  “That’s just a back door for the Sun. They know full well what their crime reporter is doing.”

  Something struck her suddenly. “How do you know that brass is speaking with the publisher and bringing in legal?”

  A beat of silence. “Fitzsimmons told me.”

  “Fitz? You’re in bed with Fitz now? When did he tell you?”

  “We met over another issue. It came up.”

  “Another issue? You mean the internal investigation into the leak?”

  “Angie—”

  “It’s Pallorino. And I’m going to talk to Winston. They’re going to look at me for this leak anyway. Leo’s already angling for it, and you know he is. If there are more incidents that this woman knows about, I want to know about them, too.”

  “Don’t. That’s an order.”

  She hung up and shoved her vehicle into drive.

  CHAPTER 34

  “What did you mean, three, maybe more assaults?” Angie said, trying to keep her voice low, level. She and Winston were tucked into a cubicle in a tiny English pub downstairs and around the corner
from the City Sun offices. Benches with dark wood and high backs cushioned acoustics, keeping them private from other patrons clacking their knives and forks over full English breakfasts.

  Winston eyeballed her over the rim of her coffee mug, assessing. Irritation sparked through Angie, like tiny bees bouncing against the inside of her skull, trying to get out. “You don’t actually have anything, do you?”

  “I have Allison Fernyhough and Sally Ritter,” she said in barely a whisper. “Those were your two cases—ones you never closed. And there is at least one other confirmed incident that I can’t name for you.”

  Every muscle inside Angie twitched. “Can’t, or won’t?” she said quietly.

  “It’s my scoop,” she said.

  “Where did you get this information?”

  “I found and spoke to Allison Fernyhough last night. She told me what happened to her, the red crucifix, everything, how the cops—you—did nothing to catch the bad guy. Then she told me how Sally Ritter had been raped the year before, and how you’d informed Allison that it was the same rapist. Same MO. She told me she’d heard on the streets that there could have been others.”

  “How’d you find Fernyhough—who told you about her?”

  “I’m a good reporter, whether you want to believe it or not.” Defensiveness crackled in her posture, her features.

  Angie eyed Winston. Her bad teeth. Her constant twitchiness. The way her hands trembled ever so slightly. Her mind went to Faith Hocking’s teeth. The effects of prolonged drug use.

  Focus, Pallorino. Use what’s in front of you …

  She softened her voice. “Who is the other ‘confirmed’ victim, Merry?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Look, I’m not even going to print Allison and Sally’s names. I made Allison that promise before she’d talk to me. I honor my promises, my sources.”

  Angie gave a soft snort. “Merry Winston has honor?”

  Anger darted through the young reporter’s eyes. “I know for a fact what happened to Allison and Sally, and my sources are one hundred percent good on the other victim.”