Angie cursed as she was forced to tap the brakes again. The lineup of cars ahead slowed to a dead halt. Impatient, she drummed her nails on the dash. Wind gusted, rocking her vehicle, driving billowing curtains of rain and mist over the road. She reached for the phone icon on her dash and pressed Maddocks’s number. His phone rang several times before cutting to voicemail.
“Hey, me again. I’m in the ferry lineup heading home. Just letting you know.” She’d save her news for dinner. “See you at the King’s Head.” She terminated the call, but that strange hollowness at not being able to connect with him stole into her excitement at having found the boxes and Ken Lau.
Angie waited for the line of cars to start moving again along the spit that jutted out into the wind-whipped ocean. The bruised sky was growing darker as clouds lowered—another front coming in. A bright light down on the misty beach caught her attention. She peered at it through the worms of rain squiggling down the driver’s side window. A small group of people clustered around the light. It was unnaturally bright. That’s when she noticed the CBC news van parked just off the road above the beach. Curious, she reached into her glove compartment and extracted her binoculars—cop habits die hard. She wound down her window. Rain wet her face as she trained her scopes on the group. Someone was holding a huge umbrella over a plump blonde woman who appeared to be under the interrogation of a reporter with a long black coat holding a mike. The plump woman’s short hair ruffled in the wind. She had a small white dog on a leash. She wasn’t just plump, Angie realized as the woman turned sideways—she was very pregnant under her blue jacket. The pregnant woman pointed to a rocky outcrop on the beach. The cameraman swung his camera in that direction. As Angie watched, a strange chill filled her, an odd sense of things closing in.
Her phone rang and she jumped. Quickly she hit the control panel on her dash, connecting the call, expecting Maddocks.
“Pallorino,” she said, almost adding, MVPD sex crimes.
“It’s Vedder,” came the voice. Angie went stone still. Anxiety twisted into her stomach at the sound of her immediate superior’s voice—Vedder was boss of the sex crimes unit where she’d spent the past six years. Vedder had also been appointed as the MVPD liaison between her and the Independent Investigations Office.
“Sir?” She wound up her window.
“Can you come in later this afternoon? We have a ruling from the IIO. We’d like to meet in person to discuss that as well the results of the MVPD internal review.”
For a nanosecond Angie was unable to speak. She cleared her throat. “What did the IIO say?”
“We need to do this in person. You might want to bring your union rep.”
Fuck. Her eyes burned. She rubbed her brow. “I . . . I’m in the ferry lineup at Tsawwassen,” she said slowly. “If I make this next sailing, I could be in your office just after five. I’ll call Marge Buchanan and see if that works for her.”
“Confirm with me once you’ve contacted Buchanan.”
“Vedder, who is ‘we’?”
“Me and Flint.”
Angie cursed inwardly. Inspector Martin Flint was head of special investigations under which the sex crimes unit fell, along with the counterexploitation unit, the high-risk offender unit, and the domestic violence criminal harassment unit. She was toast.
“You’ve got to give me something—let me at least prepare myself.”
“I’m sorry, Angie.” His use of her first name did not help. The tone in his voice told her that this was not easy on him, either. Vedder had been good to her. He’d gone to bat for her on the many occasions that Angie had butted heads with the misogynist dead wood on the force. Detective Harvey Leo for instance. She and Vedder had become close—he was one of the few guys on the force she had bonded with, someone she trusted. So, this was it. She’d suspected it might happen—that they’d fire her ass. She just hadn’t anticipated it happening so soon. Her biggest worry now was the IIO handing her case over to Crown prosecutors. She could be charged for use of excessive and lethal force. “I’m also really sorry about the timing,” he added. “I know it’s your birthday.”
Yeah, happy fucking birthday to me. “I’ll be there.” She stabbed the kill button. And sat numb. Through the squiggles of rain on the window, the film crew was moving closer to the rocky outcrop. A truck behind her vehicle honked. Angie jumped. The line of cars in front of her had started to move. She flipped a bird over her shoulder and reached forward to engage her gears. It wasn’t anticipation that crackled through her now as she crawled farther forward with the traffic. It was anxiety, a sense that life as she’d known it really was over.
Finally drawing up to the ticket booth, she rolled down her window. A blast of sea wind slapped her in the face, tangy with salt and restless with change.
Hers was one of the last vehicles to make it onto the Queen of the North. The ferry ramp made a heavy ka-clunk sound as she drove onto the vehicle deck. A sound of finality. As the bridge drew up behind her, a man in a bright-orange visi-vest waved his flashlight, sending her deeper down into the dark bowels of the vessel. Engines and metal rumbled. Angie parked, got out of her rental, locked it, and zipped up her down jacket. She went up to the passenger level, pushed through the heavy door to the outside deck, and braced into the gusts as she walked to the front of the boat. She stood there, hands on the railing, her face turned to the raw wind, and she didn’t care about the ice-cold rain that lashed her face. Across that metal-gray water was the island. Her home. Behind her lay the mainland, her unknown past. The ferry horn blasted, and the tone of the grumbling engines shifted as the props churned white foam into the sea. The ship pulled out of the dock. Angie felt as though she was about to cross a threshold.
CHAPTER 8
Maddocks refrained from loosening his tie, although the interview room inside the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre was airless. Hot. Cinder block construction. Pale institutional walls. Two-way mirror. Locked door. A male guard in a black uniform stood in front of the door, feet planted apart, shoulders square, his right hand clasped over his left wrist in a posture that indicated he was ready for anything. The name tag on his breast pocket read MORDEN. A ring of keys and a truncheon dangled from his belt. Across the table from Maddocks sat the inmate he’d come to interview—Zina, the transgender bodyguard-assistant arrested in the Amanda Rose takedown two weeks ago.
Seated beside Zina was defense lawyer Israel Lippmann. Observing through the two-way glass were Holgersen, a Crown counsel prosecutor, and a correctional officer.