CHAPTER 24
Kjel Holgersen pushed through the doors of the Flying Pig Bar and Grill, a joint down the road from the MVPD station named tongue-in-cheek for the police fraternity that frequented it. He scanned the place, his eyes adjusting to the muted light. It was packed. Colm McGregor, the burly Scots owner, was manning the bar himself, as per his custom. Leo, with his thatch of white hair, was hunkered over a glass at the beaten-copper bar counter, his head bent in close conversation with some guy seated on the stool beside him. As Kjel approached, the man behind the old detective came into view. Surprise washed through Kjel—he hadn’t realized Leo was friendly with forensic shrink Dr. Reinhold Grablowski.
As Kjel neared the pair, he saw that Leo was showing Grablowski an A-4-size piece of paper with something printed on it. Leo folded the printout in half, then in half again. He slipped it into the breast pocket of his jacket. Grablowski patted Leo on the shoulder, came to his feet, and turned to leave.
“Heya, Doc,” Kjel said. “Don’t go leaving on my account.”
Eyes as black as night met Kjel’s through silver John Lennon–style frames. “Detective,” Grablowski said in his slight German accent. He gave a quick feral smile that did not reach those beady eyes. “I’m running late. Enjoy your evening.” He brushed past Kjel.
Climbing onto the vacated barstool, Kjel said, “Didn’t know yous and Profiler Grablowski was tight.”
Leo knocked back the dregs of a whiskey and motioned to McGregor to bring him a refill. The detective’s eyes were bleary. He must have gotten an early start today.
“I had something of interest for him.”
“Like what?”
The veteran cop eyeballed him, deliberating whether to tell, which made Kjel even more curious. He switched approach, figuring he’d come at it again later, when the drink had loosened Leo up even more.
“So you’s cleaned up your pants, I see?”
“Fucking bitch, that Pallorino,” Leo muttered. “Had a spare in my locker.”
McGregor set a fresh glass of whiskey with ice in front of Leo. Kjel asked McGregor for a Heineken and a vegetarian burger with onion rings.
Leo grabbed his glass, took a deep gulp, and sat silent. “How’s the barcode investigation going?” he said finally.
McGregor placed the Heineken in front of Kjel. He reached for it, took a deep swallow straight from the bottle. “Ah—nothing like that first sip, eh?”
Leo studied him.
“Investigation’s going good,” Kjel said.
“Just ‘good’?”
“Yeah.” Kjel took another pull on his drink.
Leo swore. “At least you’re still on it. If your boss-buddy hadn’t put me on that homeless guy homicide, I’d still be working it. Figure Maddocks wanted me out ’cause he’s screwing Pallorino and she has it in for me.”
Kjel cocked a brow. “Even them homeless needs justice—someone’s gotta do it.”
“Fucking Pallorino,” Leo said again, and then he glanced over his shoulder, lowered his voice. “You want to hear something good?”
“About Pallorino?”
“Yeah, about Pallorino.”
“If it’s gonna get me in trouble,” he said, tipping the beer bottle to his mouth, “then maybe I don’t wants to know. I prefers my coffee inside my mug, not down my crotch.” He chuckled, then took a swig.
“Or maybe you’re brownnosing, eh? Trying to stay in new-guy Maddocks’s good graces.”
“Oh, fuck off. Tell me. What is it?” Kjel knew Leo would come around to it soon enough.
“So I was in that little observation room next to interview room B, and suddenly in walks Pallorino with an RCMP officer and this woman from the coroner’s office in Burnaby, and they start to talk.”
“She walked into the interview room?”
“Yeah. And audio was on.”
Kjel held the detective’s gaze. “Audio was . . . just like . . . on?”
“Yeah. Yeah, someone had left it on.”
He studied Leo, a wariness creeping into him. “What was you just happening to be doing in the observation room?”
Leo slid his hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out a slim silver hip flask.
“You’s shitting me. Jeezus fuck, Leo—you wanna get your hairy ass fired before you max out on your retirement plan or what? Why you telling me this? I don’t wanna know you tipple on the fucking job.”
“I’m telling you so that you don’t figure I followed her in there on purpose to fucking spy on her, that’s why.”
Kjel weighed the old detective. There was more. Had to be. Leo was feeding him this information as some kind of test.
“So,” Kjel said quietly, “what you hear?”
“Pallorino’s DNA is a dead match to that little kid’s foot found at Tsawwassen.”
Kjel stilled his beer midair. “What?”
“Yeah, God’s truth. The Mountie and the coroner’s woman came over to inform her they got a hit, and they wanted another sample for proof. They’ve opened an investigation into the foot, and she’s a part of it.”
“You’s shitting me.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Pallorino’s got, like, two feet—real feet. I mean, not like I actually seen her bare feet with my own eyes. But—”
“A twin maybe,” Leo said. “Pallorino’s adopted. She was left in that baby box at Saint Peter’s Hospital in Vancouver back in ’86 when she was four. The Mountie was questioning her about it. I looked it up after.” He pulled the piece of paper from his breast pocket again—the one he’d been showing Grablowski. Unfolding it, he laid it in on the bar counter. “Printed it from the Internet.”
Kjel pulled it closer and read the article, a dark sensation leaking into him. He looked up at Leo. “How long was you just sitting in that observation room that you’s managed to hear all this?”
“Long enough.”
“You showed this to Grablowski?”
He shrugged.
“What in the hell for?”
“Pallorino fucked up his book deal by going and killing the Baptist. The doc had to pay back his mega advance because his deal was contingent on face-to-face interviews with Spencer Addams—to talk direct with the Baptist about all his rapes while traveling the world aboard a floating brothel and about his upbringing, his mother, father, all the freaky religious stuff. So I figured as compensation Grablowski might like first shot at breaking the Mystery Twins story—one twin sliced across the face with a knife and stuffed into an angel’s cradle during a gunfight on Christmas Eve, the other twin’s foot found floating in the sea over thirty years later.” He took a hard swig of his drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “And then the cradle child ends up a sex crimes cop? The same cop who goes and overkills a serial killer. No memory of her past until now, bam, this foot floats up? Tell me there’s not a major true crime book in that. Who better to write it than Grablowski, who helped profile the killer she shot and who worked with the cop twin on the case?”