The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1)

by Loreth Anne White

  His eyes started to water. He opened his mouth.

  The lawyer placed her hand quickly on his arm. “You don’t have to say anything, Jayden. We—”

  “That’s okay, Jayden,” Angie said, walking slowly around to Maddocks’s side. She stood beside Maddocks, her arms still folded casually. “You don’t have to talk. Like I said, we’re just waiting on that DNA warrant—your DNA will do the talking.”

  Norton-Wells’s body spasmed. His lawyer’s hand firmed on his arm. “That’s enough, detectives. We’re done here. Jayden, come with me.” She began to rise from her chair, bringing Norton-Wells to his feet with her.

  “Thing that puzzles me, though,” Angie said quickly as they started for the door, “is why you volunteered your DNA in the first place, given what you did.”

  He stilled at the door.

  “I think it’s because he didn’t kill Faith or Gracie,” Maddocks said. “He might have paid for nice gentlemanly intercourse with Faith—and we know the courts go easy on the john angle. But brutalize and slice those girls? Shove their heads under water and hold them there? Leave little Gracie with her clit cut off, bleeding, her legs splayed open on that grave like that? Carving a crucifix into her face?”

  Norton-Wells buckled at the knees, a little noise emanating from his throat.

  “Jayden, come, now,” said his lawyer. But he remained rooted to the spot, refusing to follow.

  “Well, if he doesn’t speak,” said Maddocks, “his DNA will do it for him, and if so, he’s going to go down for a double homicide—sexual serial killer Norton-Wells, wow, there’s a thing. Going straight to hell, Jayden boy.”

  “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it!”

  He pulled away from his lawyer.

  “Jayden!” She reached for his arm.

  “No, leave me—I’m going to tell them! I have to tell them. I … I can’t do this anymore. I didn’t do it—it wasn’t me.”

  “Who was it then, Jayden?” Maddocks said. “What really happened?”

  “Zach did it. Zach killed Faith.”

  CHAPTER 69

  “All I did was go to the club to have sex, pay for sex. That’s all. That’s how I met her. Gracie.”

  “What club?” said Maddocks.

  “Bacchanalian Club. On the Amanda Rose.”

  “And the logo of this club is an ornate B and a C—intertwined?” Angie said.

  He nodded, tears wetting his cheeks now. “They have little books of matches with their logo on them. It’s a private gentlemen’s club—that’s what they call it. Super high-end clientele. Gracie wrote her cell number on a book of matches for me. They’re not supposed to give out personal information, but … oh God, I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Go on, Jayden,” Maddocks said with a quick glance at Angie. “Who is ‘they’?”

  “The girls.”

  “Sex workers?”

  He nodded. “Companions, they call them. Gracie and I … we were getting close.” He sniffed and wiped his face.

  “You’re a member of the B.C.?”

  “I’m still a guest on probation. You need to qualify. Members can introduce friends as guests, and after a certain number of guest visits, and as long as all payments are cleared, and nothing goes wrong, and the girls have approved.”

  “And so, you were a guest when you met Gracie? It was a Tuesday night—Gracie wrote B.C. and Amanda R. on her calendar,” Angie said.

  “I got Gracie, yeah, on my first night. She was working PPN.”

  “What does that stand for?” Angie said.

  He put his head back, eyes rolling into their sockets. He panted in short breaths, and he was sweating, as if he was about to faint. The lawyer, who’d reseated herself beside her client, came sharply to her feet again. “I’m going to have to call an end to this, detectives. My client is in medical distress. I need some help in here.”

  Angie and Maddocks exchanged another quick glance. They needed to close this deal, fast. Angie nodded toward the two-way mirror, where she knew Fitz, Vedder, a prosecutor, and a few other investigators were observing.

  “Someone is fetching an EMT now,” she said, placing her hand gently on Jayden’s arm. “Jayden,” she said softly. “If you really just made a mistake, the more you can tell us, the better.”

  He swallowed, nodded, wiped his face.

  “Now, what is PPN?” she said.

  “Plump Pussy Night.” He choked on the words. “Usually Tuesdays. Masks for the men. Robes and other costumes if they want them. Sex toys and other equipment.”

  “Equipment like ropes?” Maddocks said.

  He nodded. “It was a mistake, I swear it. I was just watching. The rope got too tight around her neck—Faith’s neck. He didn’t mean it. Then suddenly we noticed she wasn’t breathing anymore. I … we panicked, tried to untie her. I couldn’t loosen the ropes. Oh, God help me.” He spun away from them.

  “Who did you watch, Jayden?” Maddocks said.

  “Zach,” he said, voice small.

  “Zach Raddison?”

  “He’s the one who took me there.”

  “Why’d he take you there?” said Maddocks.

  “We … we’ve been friends since high school.” Norton-Wells inhaled deeply. “Zach’s always had a reputation for knocking women about a bit. He likes his sex rough.”

  “What kind of rough? Can you give me an example?” Maddocks said.

  He swallowed, rubbed his knee. “One of his favorite things is to get a woman naked and down on all fours. He uses studded dog collars, and he makes the collar really tight around her neck. He affixes a leash to the collar, and he leads the woman around, verbally mocking and debasing her.”

  “Debasing? How so?” said Angie.

  Clearing his throat, he said, “By calling them dog bitches in heat, dirty cunts, that kind of thing. And he likes to hurt them a bit, to make them cry, and then he tells them to whimper louder, like an animal, and then he takes them on all fours, mounting them from behind. Sometimes he would take a new date out for a fancy dinner and be all chivalrous and gentle, and he’d bring them home, close the door, then suddenly shove them hard up against a wall with his hand around their throats. He loved to see the raw shock in their eyes.”

  “And he’s done this since high school?”

  “Yeah.” He sniffed, wiped his nose.

  “Complaints filed?”

  He shook his head. “There was a rumor once that the father of one of the women who was putting in a complaint was offered a top position at Raddison Industries. The complaint was dropped. There were also some sexual harassment complaints at his previous job, but they were also dropped for whatever reason. When he joined Killion’s campaign, he knew he’d be in the media spotlight and that he’d have to keep it in his pants, or at least under the radar. That’s when he heard about the Bacchanalian Club—a sex club, where you could get … different things in an exclusive environment, for a price. Classy, clean girls. Excellent food and entertainment. Sadomasochistic stuff.” He wiped his mouth.

  “Zach went a few times as a guest, became a member, and then he took me. You get a bonus girl, something really special, if you bring in a new paying member.”

  “Why you?”

  “It was a birthday gift. Zach figured I wasn’t getting enough, or good enough.” A moment of silence besieged him, and when he spoke again, there was a marked shift in his tone. He sounded utterly defeated. “I think … he just liked an audience. He wanted someone who was connected with his real world to see and know what he was doing at the club. It’s the exhibitionist in him. It gives him a thrill. Sexual and ego.” He cleared his throat, glanced at the two-way mirror, hesitated, and his eyes went to the door.

  “Go on, Jayden,” Angie prompted softly, adrenaline thumping in her blood. She also glanced again at the two-way mirror. She figured Fitz or Vedder would have given Holgersen the word by now to move on Raddison and bring him in.

  Jayden
scrubbed his face with his hands. His legal counsel had an odd look on her face. “Jayden,” she said, placing her hand on his arm again.

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t care what my dad says. Or my mom. I … I need to do this. All of it. For Gracie.” He heaved out a chestful of air. “Zach took me for PPN. Members who subscribe to the B.C. notifications receive a special text alert a few days before, if PPN is to happen. The message comes from an anonymous server, all mysterious. It makes members feel like they’re part of some underground sex movement. At least that’s what Zach says. The PPN girls are young.”

  “How young?”

  “Gracie had just turned sixteen when she started. She said there are three others, at least, who are younger than she was. But those three aren’t local. They came in on the Amanda Rose. The others maybe just look very young, and they play it up with makeup and pigtails, and they dress in school uniforms with really short skirts and no panties, and wear things like dildos shaped like baby pacifiers around their necks.” He cleared his throat and stared at the table surface. “They sit around in the cabin using the pacifier dildos while some of the men watch and have drinks or whatever.” He fell silent for a few seconds. “That kind of thing.”

  “And those young girls who are not local—where do they come from?”

  “I don’t know. They live on the yacht, I think. The Amanda Rose only stays in port for about three months at a time. She returns annually for what the B.C. club calls the Victoria Season. The previous stop was Vancouver, and before that it was Portland, I think. The Amanda Rose was off South America prior to entering US waters, according to Gracie. Those other young girls could have been picked up in any one of those ports. I never saw or spoke to those three.”

  “What about the local women who work on the yacht?”

  “There was Gracie.” He inhaled deeply and blew out a heavy breath. “Lara. Eva—I don’t know if those were real names, but they’re the two Gracie mentioned to me. She helped bring Lara and Eva in. She got a lot of money for that.”

  “And why did Gracie tell you all these things, Jayden?”

  His mouth tightened, he gagged, and for a moment it seemed as though he was going to throw up.

  “Like … I said, I … I was given Gracie that first night I went with Zach. We made love. I—”

  “You didn’t make love, Jayden,” Angie snapped. “You paid for sex.”

  Maddocks shot her a hot glance. She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulder.

  “It felt special. I … I returned with Zach the following week. For Gracie. And then every week that PPN was held, only for her. She liked me. We got talking. She saw my Saint Christopher and asked about my faith, and she told me about her own rekindled faith. Her choir. Some nights I paid and we just talked. She liked that.” He looked down and began to trace little circles on the table with his index finger. “We began to talk about … after.”

  “After?”

  “The future. After she quit the B.C. After she’d made enough money. We spoke about traveling, living abroad. The cities she wanted to visit. How we could go together once I’d finished my degree.” He hesitated, looked up. “I wanted her to stop. To be with me. I told her I’d support her financially if she quit.”

  “You ever get jealous of her being with other men?”

  “She was better than the job, and I told her so. She deserved more. I could have given her more.”

  “But she didn’t trust you, did she, Jayden?” Angie said. “You were just another john.”

  “We were special.”

  Yeah, right. Nothing like an orgasm as reinforcement to make you think it was love.

  “She did want to get out. But it wasn’t so easy.” His hands began to shake, and his voice quavered. “She was getting scared, because the B.C. was becoming more controlling, and it was being made clear that if she did speak, or violate their confidentially agreement in any way, she’d be dead.”

  “What did they mean, ‘be dead’?” Maddocks said.

  “I … I got the sense she felt they would hurt her.”

  “You mean, kill her?”

  He nodded. “There was also talk about taking her overseas. They were really selling to her how lucrative it would be …” His voice choked on his emotions. He coughed. “That’s why I gave her a Saint Christopher. To keep her safe as she negotiated this part of her … journey.”

  “How was Gracie introduced to the Bacchanalian Club? Did she tell you?” Maddocks said.

  “Her boyfriend, or at least she thought he was her boyfriend at the time. A guy she called J.J.”

  Angie’s gaze flashed to the recording light, just to be sure they were getting this.

  “Jon Jacques?” Maddocks said.

  “I think that was his name. He apparently met her at some tennis club where her old boyfriend from school practiced. After she broke up with her old boyfriend, this new guy dated her, gave her stuff, money. Lots of it. She said that he took her fancy places, made her feel really special. Then one night he brought a friend on one of their dates. He took her and this guy to a hotel. It turns out this friend was Damián. He—”

  “Damián who?” Maddocks said. “For the record.”

  “Damián Yorick. Gracie’s boyfriend wanted her to have sex with Damián while he watched. She didn’t want to do it, but this J.J. coerced her into it, saying she’d be doing it for him, and it would show how much she loved and trusted him. So she did. Then she ended up having sex with them both. The next time she resisted, but J.J. knocked her about until she cried and gave in. And then he brought her huge gifts and was so sweet and all that. This happened a few more times. Then Damián took them both to the Amanda Rose, where J.J. plied Gracie with drinks—spiked—and he asked her to have sex in the lounge with one of the club members while a few men watched. He said it was a special nightclub. The club member paid her a huge sum, and the guys who watched paid, too. After that, J.J. and Damián treated her like a princess. Then they brought her back the following Tuesday to be with two more club members.”

  “And what about Zach? He liked Faith?”

  “Yeah. She was up for the rougher stuff, for a price.”

  “He hurt her, then, like his others?”

  “Slapped her around. Split her lip one time. Did his dog collar and leash thing. He used the equipment in a special room the B.C. provided. Whips. Ropes. Cuffs. Straps. Spikes—other sex toys that he said hurt her. He was trying to shock me with the details. Enjoyed it—watching my face when he recounted everything he’d done.”

  “The B.C. management okay with what he did?”

  He fiddled with his thumbnail. “I guess. I mean, they gave him Faith, who was supposed to be up for it.”

  “Who’s in charge of this club?”

  “Madame. And her assistant.”

  “Madame?”

  “Madame Vee. That’s all I know. And her assistant, Zina—a big cross-gender person. Like seven feet tall. Funny skin color—sort of ash white. Colorless eyes. Hair dyed silver.”

  “This Madame Vee—old, young? Nationality? Accent?”

  “I never saw her or her assistant until the night Faith stopped breathing. When that happened, Zina came in to clean things up, and he—I mean, they—sent us to Madame’s office, where she made sure that we were going to be okay.”

  “How sweet,” said Angie.

  He glanced up at her. “I mean, okay to not tell the police.”

  “Ah, like a debriefing,” she said. “As in, If you tell, you go to prison for murder, that kind of thing?”

  He looked down at the table.

  “Tell me about the night Faith was killed,” Maddocks said. “When was that?”

  “Tuesday, November twenty-eighth.”

  “What happened exactly?”

  “Zach asked me into the cabin to watch him with Faith. He’d snorted coke and was high. He got off on being watched and said I might learn a thing or two. He hogtied her and had sex with her, and the ropes kept getting tighter.
She tried to tell him to stop, and she started sobbing, and … and he kind of went berserkers. I yelled at him to stop. I swear, I did, but he grabbed a steak knife and made like he was going to hurt her if I came close enough to stop them. It was part of his game, his fantasy, I guess. And … next thing she wasn’t breathing. He thought she was messing with him. Then he saw it was for real, and he panicked and tried to get the rope off her neck with the steak knife, but it just frayed the strands, and I tried to help him.” Norton-Wells struggled for a deep, steadying breath. “Then we called for help.”

  “Steak knives?”

  “From some fancy beef they’d served that night with black truffles. I …” He gagged suddenly at the memory, closed his eyes, sat in silence, trying to get past his nausea.

  “So you handled the ropes?” Maddocks said, coaxing him before they lost him.

  He nodded. “And again when Zina came in. Zina assessed the place and then told us to go to Madame’s office up on the mid deck and to not say a word to anyone.”

  “What transpired in Madame Vee’s office?”

  “She gave us brandy from her special collection and kept us for over an hour, saying there was nothing to worry about. They’d handled situations like this before. And by the time we got home, it would all be cleaned up and long gone into the past, swept under the rug. And she said that maybe we should just lay low and take it easy awhile. Not return for a bit.”

  “And then?”

  “We left.”

  “Straight home?”

  “No. Zach and I reached the marina parking lot, and I started flipping out, saying that maybe we should report it. I … I was a mess. I was scared. He told me that I was being an idiot, that we’d both end up in prison. I tried to get into my Lexus, which was parked right beside Zach’s Acura, and he grabbed me, worried I was going to drive straight to the cops, and we wrestled until he punched me in the jaw, and I just kinda broke down and cried. We sat in Zach’s vehicle. I don’t know for how long. Engine running. Drinking whiskey—he had a hip flask. It was cold, had started to snow. That arctic front was moving in. Snow was settling on the windshield, and the windows were misting up. Then suddenly Zach kinda … screamed. There was a face looking into the driver’s side window, right up against the glass, just staring.” He cleared his throat, and Maddocks pushed a cup of water toward him. He sipped.