The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1)
Page 41
She wasn’t here.
Maddocks rushed back to the table, opened her purse, rummaged through it. Her apartment keys, wallet, ID, everything still there. A sick, cold feeling dropped like a stone into his bowels. He spun around. And that’s when he saw it.
A note. Written in black marker. On the kitchen counter. Beside it, a lock of dark-brown hair. A spear of dread sliced his heart.
Maddocks lunged for the note.
Come alone,
And you might have time …
To say goodbye …
To watch her die …
Old rail trestle at Skookum Gorge.
Tick tocks … Detective Maddocks
See you there, or be square.
Johnny the Baptist
Oh God, please, no. Had he already assaulted her? Mutilated her? That was his modus operandi—to sexually assault first, baptize, then take his trophy. He stared at the lock of his daughter’s hair.
Breathe. Focus. Think.
He scanned the note again.
… you might have time … to say goodbye …
Time. Spencer Addams had taken a rifle, spare ammunition. He was luring Maddocks, using his own daughter as bait. Why? Because he wanted a confrontation? He wanted to kill one of the cops hunting him? Because they’d cornered him, and now he was devolving into something else—entering some kind of spree phase? Or was this going to be a negotiating tool to escape? Maddocks had to believe this—that Ginny was okay—that she was going to be okay. He just had to reach her in time.
He dialed Angie’s number as he made rapidly for the door.
She answered right away.
“He’s got her—Spencer Addams has taken Ginny to the old trestle bridge over Skookum Gorge. He left a note in her apartment.” Maddocks ran down the stairs and got into the unmarked vehicle, firing the ignition as he spoke.
“It’s a trap, Maddocks,” she said. “He’s luring you into a trap—”
“I know. Get another SWAT team—everyone out there. We’re thin on the ground right now with the yacht and James Bay house takedowns, so bring in neighboring jurisdictions, military if we have to. Medical backup. This is not just about my daughter, Angie,” he said, swerving out into the street and hitting the gas. “This is an armed and dangerous serial offender who’s killed and attacked women in several countries.” He blew through a red light and swerved onto a main street, tires skidding. Horns blared and brakes screeched as he narrowly missed oncoming traffic. Even at high speed and on an empty highway it would still take over half an hour to reach Skookum by vehicle.
“I’m coming—”
“No! And that’s an order, Pallorino. Remain with the forensics unit at the Addams house. Help me by coordinating response from your end—the ERT teams will come into Skookum via chopper. They’ll reach the inlet well before you could, and do far more. Use your time, nail this bastard from the evidence end.” He killed the call, flicked on his siren and lights, and floored the accelerator, both hands tight on the wheel. He was not putting Angie in jeopardy as well.
Please, please … don’t let him have time to hurt her, to rape her, to mutilate her like those young naked female bodies on the morgue slab …
He finally hit the exit that fed off the highway and onto the narrow, twisty, darker road hemmed in with huge, dripping, moss-covered trees. It was the only route along the coast to Skookum Gorge, an inlet famous for its roaring rapids and whirlpools caused each day as tides forced massive amounts of seawater through the narrows, raising the water level more than ten feet within minutes and creating currents that could exceed sixteen knots. The Skookum tidal rapids were famous.
For drownings.
Angie made the calls. Rapid-response action was being mobilized in coordination with various jurisdictions. She’d taken eight minutes to set things in motion, and she was now on the line with Fitz, updating him on the Addams house crime scene—the dismembered body of a woman who appeared to be Beulah Addams in the freezer. Pathologist Barb O’Hagan and coroner Charlie Alphonse were en route. “We found more photos in the basement,” she said, her mind cleft between this house of horrors and Maddocks racing toward his daughter and into a trap. She glanced at her watch. Nine minutes now since Maddocks had called.
“Several of those photographs show the frozen female corpse propped in the wingback chair in the basement,” she told Fitz. “He used ropes from a support beam to string her into place, to make it appear as though she’s sitting there of her own volition, her frozen legs balanced against the base of the chair.” Angie nodded to a tech and pointed him toward the basement door. She was upstairs in Addams’s living room now.
“It appears he took her out of the freezer and propped her there for company as he seated himself on the metal chair opposite her, from where he could watch footage he’d shot from his peepholes into the Bacchanalian Club cabins.”
From the living room window, Angie saw the coroner’s van pulling up under the streetlight. The entire block had been cordoned off. News choppers thucked overhead in the dark hours of this early morning.
Nine and a half minutes since Maddocks had called …
“Pallorino,” Fitz said quietly, his reedy tone shifting in a way that made her tense. “I want you to stay away from the Skookum narrows, understood? Remain on scene.”
She held the phone tighter. He’d read something between her and Maddocks. Probably everyone had. He was anticipating what she might do now—rush out there, guns blazing—anything in order to not lose another partner for whom she was beginning to care.
“What is the ERT ETA?” she said. “What time did they get up into the air?”
“Pallorino—”
“They haven’t taken off yet, have they?”
“Back off. Do your job.”
“Sir.” She killed the call and folded her arms tightly over her chest, clutching her cell as she watched O’Hagan and Alphonse coming up the path toward the house in their black jackets with the word CORONER emblazoned in yellow across their backs.
They seemed to be moving in slow motion under the glare of the portable lighting that had been brought in. Everything around her felt slowed. Even sound was reaching her brain in low, long, distorted tones.
Sometimes, Angie thought once again, the difference between heaven and hell was people. Sometimes, no matter how hard you tried, you made no difference at all. Her mind turned to Gracie Drummond and the anguish on her mother’s face.
You think you have all the time in the world, and then … then you wish …
Then you wish you’d done something.
Outside, branches wagged in mounting wind, and a fog was blowing in, making halos around the lighting—another huge weather front roiling in from the sea. A chopper was going to have trouble in this.
She knew Skookum Provincial Park, too. She’d hiked and camped there throughout her college years. There was nowhere to land a helicopter near that trestle bridge. Not unless the pilot tried to balance his skids on the ancient wood and stone structure itself, while still managing to keep rotors free of old-growth trees and cliffs hemming in on either side. It would require incredible skill in good weather, let alone bad. Trying to get there in fog would mean potentially risking the lives of all members on board—a call the team captain would have to make. Alternatively, members could be lowered in by long line. Again, that would be delicate and require exceptional skill from all parties, especially in dense fog.
And it would take time.
Time Maddocks and his daughter might not have.
Outside more vehicles were pulling up. Holgersen and Leo climbed out of one. Both looked toward the house. Fitz got out of another vehicle with two veteran homicide detectives from the Operation Limpet force. A uniformed officer pointed them to the Addams residence. Angie sucked in a deep breath.
He was her partner. He was alone out there. No one was coming. Not with this weather.
She checked her watch. Eleven minutes since Maddocks had called.
In a split-second decision, Angie spun and hurried toward the back entrance of the house.
She ran down the stairs into the yard, crossed the lawn, and ducked out via the back alley.
I want you to stay away from the Skookum narrows, understood? Remain on scene …
“Fuck it,” she muttered to herself. Maddocks had laid everything on the line for her. What would that be worth if he lost his life now? Or if he lost his daughter? She broke into a sprint when she hit the sidewalk, aiming for her vehicle parked farther along the side of the road.
Thirteen minutes after he’d called, Angie was gunning along the highway, one thing on her mind.
Help her partner. Her lover.
CHAPTER 73
Maddocks’s tires crackled on the wet paving as he drove as close as he could to the trailhead that led to the narrows. His wipers struggled to keep the windshield clear of the gelatinous slush now falling. Mist drifted thick among the old-growth trees.
The Skookum Provincial Park lot was large enough to accommodate busloads of tourists who came in to watch the salmon spawn from viewing platforms built high on the rock cliffs above the rapids. It was now deserted and desolate.
A lone vehicle was parked at the trailhead—his beams hit it as he turned the corner. Lexus. The plate read BX3 99E. Addams was here.
Anxiety balled in Maddocks’s throat as he swerved to a stop alongside the Lexus. He checked his sidearm, then popped the trunk. He got out of the vehicle. Sleet pummeled down on his head. He could hear the distant roar of surf—waves crashing against rocks as the tide surged. With the moon on the wax, the tide would be pushing even higher than normal. He found a flashlight and a rifle and ammunition in the trunk. He loaded the gun and pocketed the flashlight and spare ammunition. He slung the rifle across his back.
He was already wearing his bullet-suppression vest from the Amanda Rose takedown. Before heading down the trail, he checked the Lexus. Locked. He shone his beam inside. Empty, apart from coils of rope and some other tools.
Guided by the powerful beam of his flashlight, he entered the woods and moved fast down the narrow hiking trail, his boots sucking in thick mud and slipping over areas of wet, moss-covered rock. The scent was of soil and pine and old-fall detritus and the brine of the ocean. There was evidence of tracks in the mud, but it was hard to tell anything from them in the dark and wet.
He moved faster.
As he ran, his beam bounced off trees. Shadows loomed and ducked and darted. Mist sifted through the trunks like tattered wraiths, alive, grasping for him, then retreating. A sense of the vastness of this place—the sheer size and scope of this old-growth forest—pressed down on him. No humanity for miles and miles. The trail started to rise, the incline becoming severe as he reached a rock knoll. The sound of surf grew louder.
Maddocks scrambled to the top of the knoll and came out onto a wooden viewing platform. A metal railing ran along the perimeter. Beyond the railing the earth dropped sheer away to the water. Far below him, the tide had started its push with white-capped, rolling waves marching insidiously forward, as if in a series of stairs, toward the narrow cliffs that formed a gateway to the estuary that fanned out beyond. Wind hit Maddocks as he crossed to the far railing. To his right, through the mist, he could make out the shape of the old railway trestle bridge crossing from cliff to cliff at the narrowest choke in the waterway.
Then he saw it—a small light bobbing in and out of the trees along the clifftop on the opposite side of the water. Quickly, he clicked off his own flashlight. Addams was armed with a .22 rifle at the very least. He took his own rifle from his back, chambered a round, and using railings to guide himself as his eyes adjusted to the dark, Maddocks moved slowly along the platform, changing from his last spotted position in case Addams fired blind.
He peered into the darkness and fog, trying to catch another glimpse of the light. But it was gone. Another movement caught his eye. His gaze shot down to the water below the bridge where foam on the waves glowed white with fluorescence. As mist parted, he saw a shape above the water.
His brain scrambled, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, then suddenly his blood turned to ice. Addams had used ropes. Like he had on Thetisby Island, like he had in the basement of his house—he’d wrapped Ginny up in a tarp and strung her down from the rotting bridge so that she hung just above the water. The tide was rising fast to meet her.
And he’d brought Maddocks here to watch her drown.
CHAPTER 74
Maddocks moved in a crouch to the north end of the platform. From here, an almost vertical path appeared to lead down the cliff. It looked as though another trail cut back a short way into the forest, and it possibly led around to the trestle bridge.
But as Maddocks moved toward that trail, a shot cracked through the air. He ducked. A bullet whirred past him and thunked into a tree behind him. Bark exploded. His heart pounded. So this was the trap.
If he tried to access the bridge to rescue his daughter hanging below, he’d be picked off from the other side of the narrows. He’d be shot dead, and Ginny would drown.
Or he could sit here safely and watch her drown anyway.
And he had to believe that she was still alive.
His brain raced. He checked his watch. Had Angie managed to mobilize response teams? He was running out of time. The tide was rising. Time and tide—it waited for no man. It could never have felt more true, more stark. Mist swirled in again, completely obscuring the opposite cliff. The sound of a chopper somewhere up high in the clouds suddenly reached him. Maddocks said a silent prayer of thanks before the reality of the situation struck hard.
With the cliffs, the soaring height of the old-growth trees, and the dense soup of fog, there was nowhere to bring a chopper in.
Even so, the beat of the rotors grew louder, the sound bouncing off the rock canyon in a growing roar. Another shot rang out, and another.
Maddocks swore. Addams was firing on the helo. The chopper began to rise again, the sound growing less intense as it moved higher into the cloud and toward the west. His sense of aloneness could not have felt more profound.
Help was out there, but just beyond reach. And time was against them.
The minutes continued to tick down. The chopper was silent. He checked his watch again. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to do this on his own.
But how?
A crack of a branch snapped his attention to the forest behind him. He whipped his rifle toward the sound.
“Maddocks?” came a whisper. “Are you there?” A shape with a headlamp and flashlight emerged from the trees. Angie.
The shot was instant. Bark shrapnel exploded and pinged off the metal railing.
“Kill your lights!” he hissed. “Get down!”
She did, but not before another shot zinged across the platform as she dived. Then all fell silent. He could hear her breathing heavily.
“You okay?” he said.
“Where is he?” she said as she scrambled across the wood floor of the platform to where he crouched in the corner.
“Opposite side of the gorge.”
“And Ginny—with him?”
The act of having to voice it hammered home the sick reality of the situation, made the horror of the nightmare all the more bleak.
“He’s suspended her from the trestle bridge. Just above the rising water.”
Angie wriggled herself up into a sitting position beside him, her breath misting, her shoulder pressing against his as he pointed out where Ginny had been strung. She’d been running and Maddocks could feel her warmth. It released a faint fragrance of flowers and something soapy fresh from her skin. Never had a woman’s touch, her scent, felt more human, more welcome than Angie Pallorino right now. To have an ally suddenly meant the world.
“What in the hell are you doing here anyway?” he said.
“I’m your partner.” She unhooked coils of rop
e from her shoulder as she spoke. “I left almost right after you. I got your back—and that ERT team is not going to be able to get in here.” She shrugged out of the pack on her back, opened it. “We’re going to have to do this on our own.”
“Angie, you’re not—”
“Shut the fuck up, okay? They’re not going to risk killing a helo full of men in a doomed attempt to save one detective and his daughter, and you know it. They’re fully aware Addams is out there somewhere. They know they can track him for days with dogs, bring in military equipment, man trackers. They’ll get him in the end, flush him out. Or he’ll die in the wilderness. They can afford to wait for the best possible conditions. We can’t.”
He stared into her eyes, dark and glistening in the faint light of dawn beginning to lighten their world as they approached the shortest day of the year. And at that moment Maddocks believed he loved her. Wholly. And he did not want to—could not—risk her life. He wasn’t even certain Ginny was still breathing.
As if reading his mind, she said, “She’s alive, Maddocks. She is. You have got to believe that. And we’re going to save her. This is how—” Before she could finish, another shot rang out. They both ducked instinctively.
Crouching together, faces close, breath misting around them, they listened, waited. A swath of thick mist blew in again, buying them a few moments. Not only was the tide rising, but the light of dawn would soon make them sitting targets each time the shroud lifted.
“I know this place,” she said, digging back into her pack. She took out a tangle of carabiners. “I used to hike and camp here when I was at college. And when I was a kid, my dad—” She hesitated, her fingers working fast to separate the carabiners. “Joseph Pallorino used to bring me here. We’d pump for shrimp, collect clams from the mud flats when the tide was out. I know how fast it comes in.” She got up into a crouch, met his gaze. Intensity crackled off her.
“Are you a strong swimmer?” she said.
“Strong enough.”
“That’s stronger than I am.” She handed him a coil of the climbing rope she’d brought, along with a link of carabiners.