The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1)

by Loreth Anne White

  “You think Fitz hasn’t already done that? She doesn’t have a record.”

  Her eyes flashed. “So you and Fitz really are in bed together?”

  The only MVPD officer that I’ve been to bed with is you, Angie Pallorino … But he held his tongue and was saved by the ring of his cell phone.

  He answered. It was Buziak.

  “We got a break,” Buziak said immediately. “Highways camera captured a black Lexus, license plate BX3 99E, heading west over the Johnson Street Bridge at 5:37 p.m. Saturday. The same Lexus was captured again, heading east at 6:52 p.m. I want you to handle this lead, and I need you to tread lightly. Very lightly. Everything by the book, understand? Because that Lexus is registered to Ray Norton-Wells.”

  Maddocks’s pulse stalled, then kicked to a rapid staccato. “The husband of the assistant deputy attorney general?”

  “The same. Address 5798 Stanley Road, Uplands. Keep this quiet for now. When talking to him, focus solely on the Lexus—don’t link it to the murders yet. Just because that vehicle was seen in both places, it doesn’t prove it was involved in the Drummond abduction. Again, I cannot reiterate this firmly enough—tread extremely carefully. If this does start to go anywhere, if this case is connected in any way to the ADAG and the office of the attorney general, we’re going to need a special prosecutor on board. And that will blow sky-high in the media and political establishment. We need to have all our legal ducks in a fucking tight little row.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Gravel crunched beneath Angie’s boots as she walked with Maddocks slowly around a bronze Jaguar parked outside the front of the house. The doors to the garages at the side of the house had been left open. Rain redoubled efforts, and the wind whipped icy up from the sea into this subdivision of high-end estates. Tension still simmered hot and sexual between her and Maddocks. With it came unease, because she knew that she’d overstepped the mark, and it scared her that he was right, that he could read her like a book, that he dared say to her things no one else would. She was self-sabotaging. Like some kind of sick addict. And she couldn’t seem to stop the slide, and she didn’t know why or what was truly driving her. He was right about another thing—one word from him and her bid for homicide would be toast. She resented that he had that power over her right now.

  “This is not a house,” she said, stopping to look up at the three floors. “It’s big enough to be a small hotel.”

  Inside the garage was a little red 2016 Porsche 911 Turbo and three vacant spaces. Not surprising. It was Tuesday afternoon. House occupants would likely be at work.

  “Can I help you?” came a gruff voice from behind them.

  They spun around. A man in a raincoat over a suit, briefcase in hand, shined shoes, stood next to the Jag.

  “Ray Norton-Wells?” Maddocks said, approaching.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Detectives Maddocks and Pallorino, MVPD.” He showed his badge. Rain was dampening Norton-Wells’s hair, face.

  “What’s this about?”

  “You have a black Lexus registered in your name. I don’t see it parked here.”

  The man frowned. A movement up in a window in the left wing of the mansion caught Angie’s eye. A young male in a white T-shirt stood there. Watching them.

  “That’s because it was stolen,” said Norton-Wells.

  A ripple of interest went through Angie.

  “When?” said Maddocks.

  “About two weeks ago. Look, I need to get back to my office—”

  “Did you report the theft, Mr. Norton-Wells?” Maddocks said.

  “My son, Jayden, did. I’d given him the Lexus for his use. He’s had it for about six months now.”

  “But the insurance was in your name.”

  He irritably wiped rainwater from his brow. “Yes.”

  “But when the vehicle was stolen, you didn’t cancel it?”

  “Jayden said he’d taken care of it.”

  “Is your son home, Mr. Norton-Wells?” Angie interjected.

  “I’m going to have to ask why you’re interested in this vehicle.”

  “It might have been used in the commission of a crime,” Maddocks said.

  Norton-Wells stared at them for a beat, and then his glance flickered toward the window in the west wing. The young man was no longer standing there, and for a moment Angie thought Norton-Wells was going to lie.

  “You caught him on a sick day. Which isn’t unusual.” The man jerked his head toward a door on the west side. “He lives in the suite. Entrance is over there. If you’ll excuse me, I’m late.” He turned and beeped the lock on his Jag. “If you need anything else from me, call my assistant.” He folded himself into his Jag and fired the engine.

  “Seems no love lost between father and son,” Angie said as she and Maddocks walked toward the suite door.

  “No kidding,” Maddocks said as he knocked.

  The door opened slowly. A younger mirror of the man they’d just been speaking to stood before them. But his eyes were feverish and his skin sheened with perspiration. His hair was damp and as blue-black as Maddocks’s, she noted. Perspiration also stained the armpits of his fitted white tee. A gold chain disappeared into the neck of the shirt, gold watch on his wrist.

  “Jayden Norton-Wells?” Maddocks said.

  “Yeah.”

  Maddocks explained who they were and why they’d come. “Can we come inside for a moment?”

  Jayden seemed lethargic. Angie wondered if he was on medication, drugs. He opened the door, padded inside on bare feet, and slumped onto a sofa. He put his face into his hands and rubbed, then looked up. “Sorry, I’ve got a flu bug or something. Been out of sorts for a few days.”

  Angie and Maddocks remained standing. The room smelled of sweat, stale alcohol. Heat had been set on high. Windows were closed. While Maddocks handled the questions, Angie walked up to a wall of framed images. One was of a graduation certificate for Jayden Royce Norton-Wells.

  J.R. Norton-Wells? Her pulse accelerated slightly as she moved to another framed photo, this one showing a young Jayden—about eleven years old—sporting a white suit. He stood smiling with his mom, now the ADAG, his dad, and a bishop in robes. Under the photo: Jayden Royce Norton-Wells, First Holy Communion.

  “Your father says you reported the Lexus stolen?” Maddocks said.

  “I forgot to.”

  “A Lexus. And you forgot?”

  “Been really busy with law school. I … I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”

  Angie exchanged a glance with Maddocks.

  “When, exactly, was it stolen?” he said.

  Norton-Wells scratched his skull through damp hair. “I … ten days, fourteen days ago, maybe. Not sure.”

  “What day of the week was it? What were you doing? From where was it taken?”

  “I … it was a Tuesday. Yeah, I remember now—November twenty-eighth, that’s it, right at the beginning of the cold snap. We … were at a restaurant downtown, and I’d parked up the street in a pay lot. Stayed late. Had a lot to drink, so took a cab home. When I returned the next day to pick up the SUV, it was gone.”

  “Which restaurant?”

  His eyes flickered, then he said. “The Auberge.”

  “Which lot?”

  “The one a block up from the restaurant.”

  “Did you have a reservation?”

  “No.”

  “How did you pay for the meal, credit card?”

  “Yes, no … wait, I think I paid cash that night.”

  “Why?”

  The guy shrugged. “I often do.”

  “You keep the receipt?”

  “No, I did not. Look, what’s going on? Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “Your vehicle was possibly used in the commission of a crime.”

  He paled, his eyes going wide, pupils very dark. Definitely some sort of chemical in his system, thought Angie.

  “What crime?” he said.

  “I’m not
at liberty to say at this moment,” Maddocks replied. “Who was dining with you that night—you said ‘we’?”

  Norton-Wells stared at them a moment, as if trying to pull his story straight. Then he said, “I’m not going to drag my friends into this. If this vehicle was used in a crime, it’s got nothing to do with me. I’ve got nothing more to say.”

  Tread lightly. ADAG’s son …

  “That’s fine,” said Maddocks benignly. “We’ll need you to come down to the station to make a formal statement, though. Can you do that?”

  “I … as soon as I feel better. I’m really not up to leaving the house right now.”

  “Fair enough. We’ll be in touch. Soon.”

  As Maddocks and Angie made for the door, Angie swung suddenly back to face Norton-Wells as he was pushing himself up off the sofa.

  “That chain you’re wearing,” she said with a nod to his neck. “A Saint Christopher?”

  His mouth opened and hung for a beat. “Uh, yes, why?”

  “Catholic family.” She nodded to the photo of him in the white suit.

  “That’s a well-known fact.”

  She moistened her lips, turned to leave, then as if on second thought—but really just to unsettle him—she swung back to face him. “Your second name is Royce.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Jayden Royce. Anyone ever call you J.R.?”

  He hesitated. “Some.”

  “You ever give anyone a Saint Christopher engraved with Love from J.R.?”

  Blood drained from his face. “No. No, I did not. I’d like you to leave.”

  Maddocks turned out of the Norton-Wells driveway and drew the Crown Vic up under an old oak tree along the curb on the opposite side of the street. Pallorino had given him the wheel—her way of a peace offering, he surmised.

  “Good call,” he said quietly, staring at the stone gateposts. On one post a bronze plaque had been mounted with the word AKASHA, all in caps. “But a close one. Buziak ordered us to focus only on the vehicle at this point.”

  “The photo of the holy communion ceremony was in plain sight,” she said. “So was the graduation certificate with his full name. The leap was obvious—J. R. Norton-Wells, devoutly Catholic, wearing a gold chain around his neck. And magically, his Lexus goes missing. He’s clearly in a bad way. We should have asked him if he knew Drummond and Hocking.”

  “It’s how Buziak wants to play it.”

  “The ADAG’s son,” she said incredulously. “What are the odds? This could be huge.”

  As Maddocks was about to respond, the little red Porsche came roaring down the driveway and busted out of the gateposts, tires skidding as it cornered and sped down the street.

  “He’s bolting!” she said.

  Maddocks rammed the Crown Vic into gear and spun the tires in a U-turn. They took off after it.

  CHAPTER 38

  “What the—? It’s … Zach Raddison, the mayor’s aide.” Angie peered through the camera’s telephoto lens, watching as the tall dark male rapidly exited city hall with Jayden Norton-Wells. The two men stopped and began to argue in the rain, arms gesticulating. She clicked off a rapid series of shots. Norton-Wells shoved Raddison in the chest. Raddison reeled back, then lunged forward, grabbing Norton-Wells by the shoulders, holding him firmly as he spoke intently, face up close to Norton-Wells. Angie shot more frames, the digital camera firing a fast staccato of click click clicks.

  She and Maddocks were parked across the street from city hall. Norton-Wells, the guy who’d professed to be too ill to leave his house in order to come down to the station to make an official statement, had raced the Porsche straight here. He’d parked at a bad angle in an off-street parking space and run inside, wearing just his T-shirt and jeans despite the wintery cold. It was barely minutes before he exited with Raddison in tow.

  “So,” said Maddocks, “the ADAG’s son, who might have given Drummond a Saint Christopher on a chain, and whose vehicle might have been used in the commission of a crime, has some sort of volatile relationship with the manager of Jack Killion’s election campaign, Zach Raddison, who is now the mayor’s right-hand man.”

  “Like they say, we all move within six degrees of separation from one another.” Angie clicked again as Raddison gripped Norton-Wells by the upper arm and began marching him back to the badly parked Porsche.

  “So, Norton-Wells is spooked by our visit, and he rushes here, presumably straight up to the mayor’s office to find Raddison. Why?” he said.

  Norton-Wells got back into his car. Raddison slammed the door shut on him. Norton-Wells pulled out into the street, driving slowly now. Raddison stood on the sidewalk in his shirtsleeves, in the rain, watching the Porsche disappear down the road, before turning and heading back into city hall. He looked visibly rattled.

  Angie lowered the camera. “Do we follow Norton-Wells, or pay Raddison and the mayor’s office a visit?”

  Maddocks reached for the door handle. “Mayor’s office. While Raddison is still shaken.”

  Zach Raddison was by all accounts a model-handsome kinda guy, thought Angie. Dark Mediterranean-type skin, liquid black eyes, an impossibly white and quick smile. And his looks came with the kind of arrogance that money and privilege and the adoration of too many women could bring. Angie and Maddocks stood in his office, which was in a kind of antechamber off Jack Killion’s office. Rain ran in squiggles down the window behind him. He’d offered them both a seat, but they’d declined, so he perched his honed butt and tailored pants on the edge of his gleaming desk and folded his arms over his chest. He waited for them to tell him what they’d come for.

  “Got a little wet, I see,” Maddocks said with a jerk of his chin to the rain marks on Raddison’s crisp white shirt and royal-blue tie.

  Raddison smiled, not missing a beat. “We have an inaugural council meeting tonight where Jack Killion will officially be sworn in as the new mayor of this city. If you could get to the point, detectives, I can return to my business.”

  Angie did her meandering around the office thing, looking at his art, what was on his shelves, while Maddocks engaged the subject up close and personal. She burned to ask Raddison directly about Drummond and Hocking, but they had their orders from Buziak—stick with the Lexus. And she needed to play by the book for a while after her blowup with her senior partner.

  “Do you know Jayden Norton-Wells?” Maddocks said.

  Again, Raddison didn’t hesitate. “He’s a friend of mine. We go back to high school days. Our parents are well acquainted.”

  “Private school?”

  “And this is going where?”

  Angie came to a ceramic bowl on the shelf near the door—painted with some kind of First Nations art. It contained business cards and a few books of matches. She touched her fingers to the assortment, moving some of the cards aside, and she picked up a matchbook. Her pulse quickened.

  “Could you not touch anything, Detective? Please. Thank you,” Raddison called out over Maddocks’s shoulder. Ah, she was finally hearing the beginnings of an edge in his voice.

  “Sure.” She replaced the matchbook and came to Maddocks’s side, putting her hands into her coat pocket.

  “Were you perhaps dining with Jayden at the Auberge on Tuesday, November twenty-eighth?” said her partner.

  A quick flicker ran through his eyes. “No, why?”

  “Apparently Jayden was eating there with friends, imbibed a bit much, left his Lexus parked in town, and it disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “He claims it was stolen.”

  Raddison’s brows lowered. “You don’t believe him?”

  “Did you know that it was stolen?”

  “Of course. He told me.”

  “Outside, a few seconds ago?”

  Silence. His Adam’s apple moved. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Bingo.

  “What did Jayden come and see you about? He looked a little … upset.”

  Raddison crossed his arms over his chest. �
��It was personal,” he said quietly.

  “Anything to do with the Lexus?”

  “Like I said, it was a personal issue.”

  “Just as a matter of interest, Mr. Raddison, where were you on the night of Tuesday, November twenty-eighth?”

  He wavered for the first time. “Look, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but frankly you’re wasting my time. And consequently, the mayor’s. So if you don’t have—”

  “What do the initials B.C. stand for?” Angie interjected.

  “Excuse me?”

  The door to the mayor’s office suddenly opened wide, and Jack Killion himself appeared. “Zach—a moment of your time, please.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Killion glanced at Maddocks, then Angie, then raised his brows at his aide.

  “Metro’s finest,” offered Raddison.

  The mayor’s gaze narrowed as he measured them in greater detail. “About what?”

  “They haven’t told me yet.”

  The mayor hesitated, then said to Maddocks and Angie, “We have an inaugural meeting to prepare for, officers. I need my man. If you could speed things up?” He disappeared. The door shut.

  Fuckhead, thought Angie, suddenly feeling much more kindly toward Chief Gunnar. If this was the new regime, it spelled trouble.

  Raddison pushed off his desk and sauntered toward the door. He extended his arm toward the exit. “If you decide what it is that you wanted, or if you have any further questions, please do feel free to make an appointment with my secretary.”

  Angie stood her ground. “B.C.,” she said again. “What do those initials stand for?”

  “I have no idea … Before Christ? British Columbia? Bacon and cheese? One hundred other things?”

  She lifted an open matchbook out of the bowl, the one she’d been examining earlier, and held it out to Raddison—a plain white cover with two curlicue letters intertwined—a B and a C.

  He stared at it, shoved his hands into his tailored pants pockets and pursed his pretty-boy lips, then shook his head slowly. “Sorry, no idea. People drop business cards in there mostly. Looks like some matchbooks, too. Could have been left by anyone.”