The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino Book 1)

by Loreth Anne White

  “Grablowski’s here,” she said.

  “Yep,” Holgersen said. “All’s invited.” Then he added, “He’s the only guy really spinning his wheels over the fact that you shot Addams dead.”

  O’Hagan chuckled. “True. Angie, you apparently robbed the doc of an opportunity to study a locally bred monster firsthand, right in his own backyard. He already had a book deal in the works, but that’s tanked now.”

  “Well,” Angie said, taking another sip of her wine, “I’d love to say there’ll be another time … I’m sure he’ll still spin something out of it.”

  Music ramped up, and the crowd grew noisier. Dancing started in front of the small bandstand. Angie had to raise her voice. “What’s the news on Buziak—is he ever coming back?”

  “You didn’t hear?” Maddocks said near her ear.

  Her gaze ticked up and met his. His mouth was so close. She felt his warmth. Heat stirred low in her belly. “No,” she said quietly. “Vedder wasn’t about to tell me anything.”

  “He got caught in Fitz’s net—internal was going through office devices, looking for external communications, anything that might clue them in to someone leaking information. Buziak, it appears, had a problem with online gaming, sites not legal here, and he was routinely accessing them from work.”

  “Oh man,” Angie said. “Shit. He was a good cop.”

  “Fucking good cop,” Leo added. “Had respect, that guy.”

  Colm McGregor, followed by two of his kitchen staff in chef whites, came muscling through the patrons toward their table. They carried trays laden with turkey and fixings and steaming gravy.

  These were set on their table, and more trays were brought to other tables. Hungry law enforcement and allied personnel dug in all round as the music quieted slightly.

  Glasses were raised, and there were cheers, and spills, and laughter. Maddocks met Angie’s eyes and lifted his glass. “Merry Christmas, Angie.”

  She felt a clutch in her chest at the look in his eyes. “You too, Detective.” And that night she’d taken him in the club felt like a million miles away.

  “It’s here!” McGregor called out, waving a newspaper in the air as he returned to the table. “Christmas Eve special edition—hot off the press.” He plunked a copy of the City Sun in front of them all. The headline blared:

  Mayor and ADAG Caught in Serial Killer Net

  Below the headline was Winston’s photo of Jack Killion and Joyce Norton-Wells embracing in a car outside the ADAG’s estate, the name AKASHA clearly visible on the stone pillar.

  “Shit,” whispered Holgersen. “Winston’s scheduled blog exposé has posted—it’s all out there now.” He regarded the photo. “Think either one will survive that? They’s both married.”

  “Norton-Wells has already stepped down as ADAG,” noted Padachaya. “Whether she’ll bounce back eventually—who knows? She was badly rocked by the arrest of her son, from what I hear. Ironic—the top prosecutor having her son prosecuted by her own office.”

  “Media always goes harder on the woman having the affair,” O’Hagan said. “Killion will probably manage to make a comeback, or maybe spin this somehow. We’ll have to see how it plays out over the next few months, whether his wife and kids stand by him.”

  “C’mon, read it out loud, Holgersen,” Leo slurred, waving his glass at the front page.

  “Not him,” O’Hagan said, reaching for the paper. “You’ll never understand a word.” She scanned the text. “It’s a basic recap of everything we thought she’d put out there …” She paused. “And a personal footnote.” O’Hagan began to read.

  “‘Killion’s affair with Joyce Norton-Wells drives home the risks that one takes to satisfy sexual desire. Their illicit liaison is a mere point along a spectrum of lust. On the one end lies pure, healthy human intimacy. But move along the spectrum and the lines grow darker. Lust crosses into deviance, dysfunction, addiction. Crime. And at the very far black end lies what is lethal—violent, sexually motivated homicide.’”

  Silence hung over them all. Angie thought of her own addiction to the sex club. Holgersen looked into his empty beer glass. “Shit. Kid was deep.”

  “She’s right, though,” O’Hagan said. “That lust spectrum plays out daily on my morgue slab.”

  “It’s what it means to be human,” Padachaya said.

  “Or inhuman,” Angie added.

  Another moment of heavy silence.

  “Well,” said Leo, “I call it job security.” He raised his glass. “So let’s drink to that, eh?”

  “Here’s to Merry Winston,” Angie said, lifting her glass. “Tough kid. May she finally rest in peace.”

  Maddocks placed his hand over Angie’s as the group made another tipsy toast. They all saw his hand on hers. He was not afraid—not hiding his affection. He cared.

  You got friends …

  Violent death is not a one-person mission …

  And in that moment Angie made herself a promise—she resolved to fight her way back, to be with this tribe, these brothers and sisters in blue. To be a better team player.

  And she was going to find her biological parents, learn how she came to be the Angel’s Cradle kid. She’d lost so much in discovering the dark deceit in her family. And yet gained so much in meeting Maddocks.

  She still didn’t know why she understood those Polish words, or what those other childlike utterings in her mind meant, but they would lead her forward into the new year.

  Come … playum dum grove … Come down dem …

  … come.

  A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT ANGIE PALLORINO NOVEL—COMING SOON

  EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS IS AN EARLY EXCERPT AND MAY NOT REFLECT THE FINISHED BOOK.

  FLOTSAM

  To give the nameless back their names …

  —The Doe Network

  MONDAY, JANUARY 1

  “Ty, dammit! Get your butt away from there, will ya!” Betsy Champlain, all of eight months pregnant, stood on the verge of the road and yelled into the wind for her son to come back from the water’s edge. It was raining, clouds low, and dusk was rolling in fast with a fog from the sea. She could barely see him now, chasing their little family Maltese into the gloam along the strip of dark pebbled beach. Panic licked through her stomach.

  She spun around. Behind her, along the man-made causeway that jutted out into the water, ferry traffic was lined bumper-to-bumper for miles. Four sailing waits long, and then some. Most of the earlier sailings between the mainland and the island had been canceled throughout the day because of the storms that had ridden into the polar jet stream on the coattails of Typhoon Shiori, blasting the Pacific Northwest with a roller coaster of foul weather. Plus it was New Year’s Day—a holiday in this part of the world. Which meant tomorrow was the first day back at work in the new year, and everyone was trying to get home. She was never going to make it from the Vancouver mainland back to the island tonight, and frustration ate at her. She shouldn’t have come solo to visit her mom with the two kids and the dog. Ferry traffic was always insane over the holiday period.

  They’d been cooped up in the car for hours, and Chloe, their little dog, had needed a bathroom break. Betsy had left the Subaru in the lineup with the window down and Emily, her three-year-old, inside, sleeping. She’d crossed over the road to where she could watch her eight-year-old relieve the dog down the riprap embankment.

  But Ty had been busting with frustrated energy after being imprisoned in the vehicle all day. He’d scuttled down the riprap, slipping and dropping Chloe’s leash. Chloe had hightailed it straight down to the water.

  “Ty! Get back here! Now!” Conflict stabbed through Betsy. She shot a look back at the Subaru, then glanced at Ty’s little ghost-shape in the mist. She turned and waddled fast back to the car.

  “Emily,” she said, shaking her baby girl. “Wake up. You have to come with me.”

  Betsy grabbed her half-asleep child’s hand and dragged her at a run back over the road. They negotiated the wet, sl
ippery riprap down to the beach. Emily began to fall and cry. On the beach, Betsy scooped Emily up onto her hip and stumbled over the rocky strip to where she’d seen Ty vanish. She was breathing hard. She needed to pee—her bladder felt like it was going to burst.

  “Ty!” she called. She couldn’t see him. “Tyson Champlain, you get your butt over here right now, or—”

  “But Ma—” He popped up from behind a rocky outcrop, holding a driftwood stick. Relief cut Betsy like a knife.

  “Chloe’s found something—I’m just taking a look.” He disappeared again, behind his rock knoll.

  Heaving out a sigh of exasperation, Betsy readjusted Emily’s weight on her hip and negotiated her way over a carpet of small rocks encrusted with barnacles. She came around to the seaward side of the knoll. The tide was far out, revealing a wide expanse of silt covered in slime and scalloped with dirty brown foam. Along the lace of foam lay lengths of seaweed fat as her arm, along with other detritus that had been tossed up or blown in with the storm. A stench of rot and brine and dead fish filled her nostrils.

  Ty was crouched over something and poking at it with his stick. Chloe growled, trying to wrestle it away from him. Unusual for the dog.

  She frowned, a sense of foreboding creeping into her bones.

  “What is it, Ty?”

  “A shoe.”

  Betsy set Emily down, took her hand, and came closer to see. The mist was thicker down here. Emily stopped crying and peered with interest.

  “It’s got something inside,” Ty said, trying to shove Chloe away as he jabbed the contents with his stick.

  A memory suddenly chilled Betsy to the core—a news show she’d watched recently about severed feet in sneakers that had been washing up all over the BC coast and in Washington. Sixteen in all since 2007. No other body parts. A baffling mystery.

  “Leave that alone!” She grabbed her son by his jacket and pulled him back. “Pick up Chloe’s leash—now! Get her away from that shoe.”

  Ty’s eyes went round in shock at her tone. For once in his life he obeyed fast and in silence. He grabbed the dog’s leash.

  Together, they stared at the shoe. It was a pale lilac in color beneath the grime and seaweed that entangled it. Small. Stubby. A high-top sneaker with a fat, air-filled base for a sole.

  Betsy turned and looked back up at the rows of cars, blurred behind a screen of rain. What should she do? Run up there and bash on windows to see if anyone could help her? Help her do what? Police. She needed to tell the police.

  “Hold on to your sister, Ty,” she said, fumbling in her jacket for her cell phone. “And you hold on to my jacket with your other hand—don’t let go, either of you.”

  He didn’t.

  Betsy had never called 911 before. No need, thank God. But … did this constitute an emergency? Or would she look dumb? Her gaze shot back to the little shoe lying in the silt. There was definitely something inside—like the photos she’d seen on the news.

  She knew about the hoaxes, too. The runner found with a partially skeletonized animal paw inside. And others with raw meat stuffed inside. But the cops would want to know, too, if this was a hoax. Right?

  “Mom?”

  “Quiet.”

  Fingers shaking, she pressed 911.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  “I … uh, I …” Betsy’s voice stuck suddenly on a ball of phlegm. She cleared her throat. “I found a shoe. I think there’s a foot inside. I think it washed up in the storm.”

  “What is your location—where are you?”

  “The causeway beach at the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal. About … halfway up, I think.”

  “What is the number you are calling from?”

  “Cell phone.” She gave her number.

  “And what is your name, ma’am?”

  “Betsy. Betsy Champlain.” The pressure on her bladder was suddenly intense. She needed a washroom bad. For some reason she also needed to cry. She swiped the back of her hand across her nose, sniffed.

  “Are you safe? Everything else all right?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m out here with my kids and my dog. In the rain. My dog found the shoe, and there seems to be a bit of old sock and something inside. I know there are hoaxes, but—”

  Up on the causeway engines started growling to life, headlights going on. The line of cars started moving. Someone began honking at her stationary Subaru.

  “Oh God, I need to go move my car—the ferry lineup is moving.”

  “Ma’am, could you please stay with the shoe? I’ve got RCMP on their way. There’s a vehicle in your area now. They’ll be there shortly.”

  “My car is in the lineup. They’re honking—”

  “We’ll contact BC Ferries. They’ll get someone out there to direct traffic around it. Ms. Champlain? Betsy?”

  “I’m here. I’ll wait.” She paused. “I … know about the dismembered feet,” she said quietly, her attention returning to the little lilac high-top. “But this one’s not adult.” She reached down and gathered her children closer. “It’s a child’s size nine or ten.”

  “Does it show the size?” said the operator.

  “No. But it’s the same size as my daughter’s.”

  Betsy hung up, shivered, rain soft against her cheeks. She sat down on a rock and clutched her kids tightly to her body. Too tight. So tight—because suddenly everything that was precious and ever would be was right here in her arms. She stared at the child’s shoe lying in the silt. “I … I love you, sweethearts.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” Tears glittered in Ty’s big brown eyes. “I … I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

  She sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Not your fault, Ty. It’s not your fault—it’s going to be okay.”

  “Whose shoe is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s the rest of her?”

  She looked up toward the shadows of land barely discernible through the mist across the bay—Point Roberts in the United States. Behind her, traffic inched along the causeway that stretched a mile into the ocean to the ferry terminal, which lay just five hundred yards short of the US water border—the ferries crossed through American waters each time they traveled from the mainland to Vancouver Island.

  That little foot could have come from anywhere. Off a boat?

  Washed from land out into the sea during the storm?

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They’ll find her.”

  “Who will?”

  “I don’t know, Ty.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Marlin Beswetherick, again, thank you for walking the streets of Victoria with me on that frigid winter weekend, our breath misting on air, salt wind sharp off the ocean—for the peeks into the cathedral, the tiny eateries, for your stories of the clubs and the people, and the university. You sparked the Angie Pallorino series to vivid life. And while the city of Victoria is real, Angie’s Victoria is one of an augmented reality, and her police force should be no reflection on Victoria’s fine law enforcement organizations.

  Thank you also to Ewa Drozdel for the nuances of Polish, and Dario Cirello for the Italian.

  On the editorial side, a deep appreciation goes to Alison Dasho, Charlotte Herscher, and the rest of the Montlake team who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make the business of publishing happen. And to the indomitable Jessica Poore, who keeps all of us authors ridiculously happy and placated. Also, a special thanks to Rex Bonomelli for capturing the tone and the metaphor of The Drowned Girls so beautifully in his lush cover art.

  While Angie might say that violent death is not a one-person mission, neither is producing a book.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2013 Paul Beswetherick

  Loreth Anne White is an award-winning, bestselling author of romantic suspense, thrillers, and mysteries. A three-time RITA finalist, she has also won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Romantic Crown for Best Romantic
Suspense and Best Book Overall, in addition to being a Booksellers’ Best finalist, a multiple Daphne Du Maurier Award finalist, and a multiple CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice Award winner. A former journalist and newspaper editor who has worked in both South Africa and Canada, she now resides in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with her family. When she’s not writing, you will find her skiing, biking, or hiking the trails with her Black Dog. Visit her at www.lorethannewhite.com.