The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1)

by Loreth Anne White

  She shook her head. “Locked.” Her breaths came faster. “Go away.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m going to give you a magic key. I want you to use that key to open that door, and I want you to go through it.”

  Angie took the key that was suddenly in her hand. A big bronze key like the one in the picture of her fairytale book. She turned it in the lock and creaked open the big door. Light—so white it was blinding—came through the opening.

  “Go through the door, Angie.”

  But she turned instead, looking back into the darkness of the room, and she held out her hand. “Come,” she whispered.

  “Come playum, dum grove.” Suddenly there was a basket in her other hand. “Jesteśmy jagódki, czarne jagódki,” she said.

  “What does that mean, Angie?”

  She began to sing. “We are small berries, little black berries … We are small berries, black berries.”

  “Who are you singing to?”

  “She must come, to play. We go to dum grove, down indum trees. Bring baskets. Berries.”

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

  No, no, no … Angie’s chest tightened. Her head felt as though it was going to explode. She shook it from side to side, getting more and more violent. Her legs were pumping, grasses and brambles scraping her skin open. She thrashed through the bushes, into the trees, then onto a cold street with snow, and there were Christmas lights … flee, run, run! Snowing. She began to pant rapidly.

  “What’s happening?”

  “He’s coming. The big red man and the other ones. Chasing.”

  “Where are you running to?”

  “Dark. It’s dark. Go. Get inside! I have to get inside and stay quiet like a mouse!”

  “Okay, get inside, and tell me what you are getting into.”

  She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks now. She couldn’t breathe. “A big shiny silver knife—he’s got a knife …”

  She screamed. Her hands went over her ears. Pain sliced across her face. “Blood! Everywhere—blood!”

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

  Two.

  One.

  “You’re coming up, Angie,” he said. “Waking up. Nice and easy. Comfy in the chair. You’re in Alex Strauss’s house. Safe. All safe.”

  Her eyes flared open. She stared at her hands. And the blood that had covered them all sticky and hot and wet was suddenly no longer there. Slowly, she glanced up at Alex.

  He looked shaken.

  Her hand went to her lip. “My mouth,” she said. “I was cut. By a knife.”

  “Who?” he said quietly. “Who cut you?”

  Her breath was shaky. Perspiration dampened her upper lip. “I don’t know, Alex. I don’t know what’s going on. I was always told I was cut in the car accident.”

  He made more tea. She sat for a while, staring at the dance of the flames in the fireplace, feeling exhausted, trying to make sense of what had just happened, where she had gone in her mind.

  “You’ve had no memories like this before?” he said, handing her another cup.

  “Just that little girl. But it was more like an hallucination than a memory.”

  “And the woman, the songs?”

  She shook her head. “Only those Polish words that come into my head when I see the girl in pink.”

  “Something happened, Angie. Something when you were a child, the same age as that girl you are seeing in a pink dress.”

  Her gaze snapped onto his. “You think my parents lied to me? About the accident?”

  “Like I said, we construct our autobiographical memories anew each time we try to recall an event from the past, and sometimes false stories can be implanted, resulting in a false life narrative.” He paused. “And cognitive dissonance.”

  She wiped her upper lip. Her hands shook slightly.

  “We could always schedule another session, if you’d like. We could try to go deeper, for longer. But I did need to snap you out when I did. You were going into distress.”

  Absently, she sipped her tea, thinking of what she’d been told of the car accident. Of Italy. Her mind went to the dates on the backs of the photos in the album. The uneasiness that she’d witnessed in her father’s features when she’d raised the discrepancies. Her mother’s strange words in that hospital.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I’d always thought my childhood was normal. And if this is happening, why now?”

  “Like I said, PTSD from the Hash and Tiffany tragedy could have been a trigger. Or it might all just have been building over time, increasingly exacerbated by the daily stresses of working in sex crimes.”

  Angie’s thoughts turned to Grablowski and his words about the development of paraphilic love maps and sexual deviance. Was there something in her own prepubescent past that would explain her issues around sex and control? Her resistance to—fear of—love? The emotional walls she’d been erecting around herself over the years of being a cop?

  Could it explain why she’d often felt so oddly distant from her parents and why she’d felt Hash had been more of a mentor and father figure in her life than her real dad had?

  “I need to talk to my father again,” she said quietly.

  Alex nodded. “And here’s another thing I can offer you. Something bad happened to that little girl in the past you’ve blocked out, and I suspect that subconsciously you’ve been spending your entire adult life trying to fix whatever it was. To save her. To make it right. I think it’s why you became a cop.” He paused. “And why you chose to work sex crimes in particular.”

  A chill trickled down the length of Angie’s spine. Her thoughts wheeled to what she’d told Merry Winston, about how she cared. For that nine-year-old who’d slept with a knife under her pillow. For the little girl she’d seen at the gas station, carrying her doll. For Tiffy Bennett, abused and killed by her own father. The words had just poured from her mouth in a quietly passionate outburst. And she realized Alex Strauss might be right.

  In everything she’d ever done as an officer, she was trying to save that little girl in pink with the long red hair.

  And in losing Hash, she’d lost a father figure who was a true friend. In losing Tiffy, she’d failed the little girl in pink. And now that little girl wasn’t going to hide inside Angie anymore. She wanted her place in the world.

  CHAPTER 58

  “What the fuck—are you following me? I don’t have to talk to you guys anymore. I don’t have anything to say. My dad’s lawyers—”

  “Oh, we think you have something to say, Jayden,” Maddocks said as he and Holgersen reached Norton-Wells.

  “This is harassment.” Norton-Wells’s pupils were already dilating as Maddocks and Holgersen hemmed in on either side of him, leaning in, and kept inching him backward toward the wall until he was backed into a corner.

  The kid’s gaze twitched in desperation toward other students exiting the law building, as if seeking a lifeline from one of them.

  “Jayden!” a guy called, coming toward them.

  “I … I gotta go—” Norton-Wells started saying.

  But Holgersen stepped in front of Norton-Wells, blocking his line of sight to the approaching guy.

  “Yous didn’t come down to the station to make a statement about the stolen vehicle,” Holgersen said, towering over Norton-Wells. “You says you was sick, but you looks all better to me, what you say, Maddocks?”

  “He didn’t come down because the Lexus wasn’t stolen, now was it, Jayden?” Maddocks said.

  “Jay?” said the male student as he neared. “You okay?”

  “You want all your legal colleagues of the future to see you being arrested, Jayden?” Maddocks said.

  Norton-Wells paled. He was starting to sweat—signs of stress, cortisol dumping into his system. “What do you mean?”

  “For the rape and murder and mutilation of Gracie Drummond.”

  His eyes widened. “Go ahead,” he yelled to his f
riend. “I … I’m good. I’ll catch up with you guys.”

  The student hesitated.

  “Go. I’m fine.”

  The other guy wavered a moment, then turned and left. Norton-Wells swallowed, his mouth clearly going dry. More stress. Good, thought Maddocks.

  “We knows you were not at the Auberge—you know about CCTV, Mr. Law Boy?”

  “They don’t have—”

  Holgersen laughed. “He thinks they don’t have surveillance cameras, Maddocks, you hear that?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Cameras everywhere these days. Restaurants. Overlooking parking lots up the streets. Can tell on what day, what people, drove what car. Or didn’t. Like on the iron bridge—a Lexus went over the bridge just before Gracie was taken and back again just after.” Holgersen stuck his mug right in Norton-Wells’s face. “Your Lexus, Law-Boy. That was never taken from that lot.”

  Norton-Wells bumped up against the wall, legs giving out slightly, his face going white, his breaths becoming short and shallow. “Is … is that what you meant by … it was used in the commission of a crime?”

  “Bingo,” he whispered, wagging the card in Leo’s face. “I think we might have found us the dentist who fixed up Hocking’s nice new pearly whites.” He grinned. “Follow the money, I always says. Bet she didn’t pay him in cash.”

  Holgersen snorted. “Someone bundled Gracie’s body into that Lexus. We got you, Law-Boy.” He lifted the medallion around Norton-Wells’s neck. “Ah. Nice. Saint Chris. Just like Gracie’s, right, Maddocks?”

  “Just like it.”

  Holgersen flipped over the gold medallion in his hand. “’Cept on the back of Gracie’s it says, With love from J.R.” He tutted his tongue. “He gave her a saint to watch over her, Maddocks. Now why would he do that? And then go grab her, and tie her up, and stick her head under water, and rape and sodomize and cut out all those pieces of her sweet pussy that make her want men over and over and over again … her clit, her—”

  “Stop! Oh God, please … please … just stop.” Tears filled Norton-Wells’s eyes, and he leaned his head back against the wall.

  Maddocks was watching closely, allowing Holgersen to go just so far, and they were getting there faster than he’d anticipated, because clearly it was a raw shock to Norton-Wells that his Lexus might have been used to help kill a woman he cared about.

  “I tell you whys you did it,” Holgersen said quietly. “Rage. Blinding rage. Because maybe you gots wind that your Gracie Girl likes to sleep around, eh? Like a lots. And you catched her with Mr. Blond and his Bimmer, or maybe City-Mayor-Boy Zach Raddison, eh? And you gets as mad as all hell, and you—”

  “No!” He panted lightly. “No,” he said again, so softly they barely heard. “It wasn’t like that—I didn’t do that.” He gagged, shook his head. “I would never hurt Gracie. I loved Gracie.”

  Bingo!

  Maddocks and Holgersen exchanged a fast glance.

  “Right, right,” said Holgersen. “We knows you knew her. And cared for her. So you didn’t do it? Kill Gracie, slice and dice her up?”

  He shook his head.

  “So here’s the thing. We make your life real tough … arrest you, say, for obstruction of justice in a double homicide because you lied about the Auberge and the parking lot and the stolen Lexus, and it gets all in the papers … your moms and pops get all twisty up, lawyers … or we can eliminate you. And here’s how—you come with us to the station now, and you voluntarily give a DNA sample to a qualified peace officer. Easy peasy. Okay?”

  He nodded. “Okay … okay … I’ll do it.” He heaved out a chestful of air. He was crying copiously.

  “Do what?”

  “I’ll give a voluntary DNA sample.”

  The detectives exchanged another glance.

  “Now, there’s a boy.” Holgersen put his arm comfortingly around Norton-Wells. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Angie rummaged hurriedly through her dad’s drawers, looking for the keys to his fire safe, in which he kept all his important documents. Wind was picking up outside, clouds boiling black across the water toward the house, trees bending along the shore, the sky darkening. Her phone beeped—yet another call, another message, and yet again she didn’t care.

  Her dad was not home, so she’d let herself into the house and come into his office. She was looking for papers, information, anything about her childhood. Italy. The accident. His sabbatical. Something … that might confirm dates.

  I am not mad. I am not hallucinating. Memory. It’s memory …

  She clicked on the desk lamp as the light inside the office grew dim. Finally, she found the keys under a tray that held pencils in the bottom drawer of his desk. Angie grabbed them and moved to the closet below the bookshelves where her dad had always kept the small fire safe. She unlocked it. Putting on another lamp, she sat on the floor and began to empty the papers out over the carpet. She sifted through passports, insurance documents, copies and revisions of her parents’ will, their antenuptial marriage contract, house purchase papers, medical bills … She stilled suddenly—a newspaper clipping. In Italian. Tucked into a plastic sleeve.

  Across the top of the text was a black-and-white photo of a mangled white sedan that had rolled down an embankment. And up on the road above the wreck, an ambulance and a fire truck were parked. Emergency personnel stood beside the vehicles. They were looking down at the smashed car. Angie read the cutline beneath the photo.

  La bambina di due cittadini Canadesi Miriam e Joseph Pallorino è morta Mercoledì in un incidente stradale nella Toscana. La bambina, Angela Pallorino, aveva quattro anni …

  She frowned at the word morta.

  Embedded into the text, lower down in the story, was a picture of a toddler. The caption beneath this image read: Angela Pallorino (4).

  The article was dated March 1984.

  Angie’s mouth went dry—1986 was when she’d been four going on five. Whatever this was—the date, the age of the child at the time—it didn’t make sense. Wind smacked a branch against the big windows and she jumped. Rain started drumming on the metal roof. Angie reached into her pocket for her phone. She dialed the number for her favorite Italian restaurant where she regularly bought takeout. She asked for Mario, the owner.

  He picked up.

  “Hullo!” he yelled. She could hear the clatter of pots and kitchen pans and voices in the background.

  “Mario.” She spoke loud and fast and clear. “It’s Angie Pallorino. I have a big, big favor, and I’m in a rush. Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Hang on, Angie, I’m going to take this in my office.”

  When he came back onto the phone, the background noise was quieter, and there was no longer a need for him to yell.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I need a translation from Italian into English—an old newspaper story.”

  “Ah, no problemo. You want to fax it over?”

  “I … do you have a smartphone or an address where I could forward a photo of the article?”

  He gave her an email address.

  “And … Mario, it’s personal. If—”

  “No worries, Angie. No worries. What happens with Mario stays with Mario.”

  She smiled. “Okay. Hang on.”

  With the phone, she shot a close-up of the article and sent the image to him. She paced in her dad’s office while she waited for him to read it, then tensed when her phone rang. She connected the call.

  “This is really weird, Angie. What is this?”

  “What does it say, Mario? Just tell me what it says.”

  “It says, The child of Canadian citizens Miriam and Joseph Pallorino was killed in a car accident in Tuscany. The child, Angela Pallorino, was four years old.” He paused. “It says the dead child’s name was Angela Pallorino,” he repeated. “Is this some mistake?”

  A chill washed over her skin. She fell silent. Her brain swirled into a vortex, spinning eve
rything she knew to be true into a wild whorl of color, and like water it was being sucked down a drain.

  “Angie?”

  “The … the date … when does it say the accident happened?”

  “March 12, 1984.”

  “Mario, can you keep this to yourself? It’s … very personal. And I … I need to figure it out.”

  “Of course, Angie. Like I said, what happens with Mario—”

  “Thank you. I owe you.” She hung up and stared blankly at the rain-streaked windows, at her own distorted reflection.

  Angie Pallorino. Died. Age four. According to that news cutting.

  That had to be a mistake, surely? Or whose reflection was she staring at?

  Time ticked on, and still she stared, unable to fully compute this. She’d thought she’d begun to remember the accident—the pain on her mouth, trying to escape the crashing, mangling wreck. Were those memories false? What about the places her mind had gone with Alex during hypnosis—the men, the knife? What the fuck did this mean?

  She lunged back down to the papers scattered across the carpet. On her knees, Angie rummaged through them until she finally found what she was searching for. Her birth certificate. She read the date.

  February 14, 1980.

  A sick sensation dropped like a cold, hard stone into the bottom of her stomach. This wasn’t her birth certificate at all …

  The door opened behind her. Angie swung around, startled.

  Her dad stood in the doorway. White-faced, he stared at what was in her hands, the pile of documents littered across the floor.

  “Angie?”

  “Who was she?” Angie demanded. “Whose birth certificate is this, and who was the baby girl who died in the car accident? Why do I have the same name as her? Who in the hell am I?”

  CHAPTER 60

  Law-Boy, face as white as a sheet, opened his mouth wide. He winced as a police officer trained to collect bodily substances stuck a foam applicator into it and rubbed the inside of his cheek to collect skin cells. Kjel, who stood beside his new boss, felt a quiet implosion of relief as the officer finally placed the buccal swab carefully into an approved DNA Data Bank sample collection kit and labeled it.