But if Voight had suspected this, he’d not been able to link Milo Belkin directly to the cradle case as Angie had just done, because the fingerprint comparison technology had not yet been in place.
Darkness was complete as Angie headed for her car, lights reflecting in puddles. Rain blew sideways in the wind, and thunder rumbled up in the clouds. Bits of tree debris pelted her as she neared her vehicle in the lot. Abruptly, a shadow cut in front of her.
She caught her breath and stepped back, her hand instinctively moving toward the sidearm in her holster—but her weapon was no longer there.
“Detective Pallorino,” came a deep German-accented voice. “How are you?”
She squinted into the dark. “Grablowski? Is that you?”
“Can we talk?” the profiler said, stepping into view, the light from the parking lot lamp standard catching his face. He wore a long double-breasted raincoat with deep pockets, wide belt. His customary herringbone cap protected his head from rain. His round glasses glinted in the dark.
“What about?” she said, suddenly uneasy. “Were you waiting for me out here?”
“I know that you knock off at five now—demotion and all,” he said. “Could I tempt you with a drink at the Pig down the road? We can talk there.”
“Look, I’m in a rush.” She proceeded toward her Nissan. “I need to be on the last ferry to Vancouver tonight. It’ll have to wait.”
“I don’t think you’ll want it to wait.”
There was an edge to his voice. Caution whispered through Angie, along with curiosity. She stopped, turned to face him. Whatever the forensic shrink had to say to her, she didn’t trust him—there was something sinister about this man who delved into the minds of monsters for a living and who was eager to profit off them in search of his own academic acclaim.
Thunder clapped, then grumbled away into the distance. “Want to wait for what?” she said quietly.
“I know that you are the angel’s cradle Jane Doe.”
Something dropped like a cold stone through her stomach. Ringing began in her ears. “I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned back toward her Nissan, key fob in hand, a kind of panic rising inside her. How could he know? Someone had to have told him. But who? Why?
She beeped her lock. He came up behind her. “I also know that your DNA matches that tiny little child’s foot that floated all alone up onto that beach in Tsawwassen.
She froze.
Her heart began to jackhammer.
Jacob Anders? Maddocks? Jenny Marsden? She hadn’t told anyone else that she was the cradle child. And she’d told no one about her DNA match to the foot—only Jacob Anders. She spun to face Grablowski. “Where did you hear this?”
“My source is reliable.”
“Who? Tell me!”
He stepped backward, raising both hands, palms out in self-defense. “No need to get aggressive, Detective. We all know of your proclivity toward violence. I simply have a proposition in the face of this breaking news. Give me the exclusive on your story—allow me to interview you as the RCMP investigation continues to unfold. It will make for gripping true crime drama. It has all the feels—might even secure us a movie deal.”
Us?
Fury lashed up inside her. She stepped toe to toe and eye to eye with the forensic shrink. “A proposition? So you can make money off my life? When you won’t even tell me where you got this information? Fuck you, Grablowski.” She whirled back to her car and yanked open the driver’s door. He clamped his left hand on top of the door.
“We split the profits. Fifty-fifty.”
“Get your hand off my car before I break all your fucking fingers,” she growled through gritted teeth. Her eyes were burning. “And if you go public with this, I’ll sue your shrink ass off.”
“I’m not the only one with this information, Detective. But I’ll hold off on going to the media if you agree to work with me on the book. And then once the story breaks, the publicity will be advantageous to sales, of course. Think about it.” He panned his right hand out into the darkness as if to denote a billboard up in lights. “The mystery angel’s cradle baby is separated from her twin at age four. Unaware of her past, she grows up to become an aggressive sex crimes cop, unrelenting, fierce in her drive to save all the broken women and children out there without realizing what propelled her to into policing in the first place, and possibly into the sex unit specifically. Her temper is lightning quick. She’s uncompromising. She is the as-yet-unnamed MVPD officer who hunted down and violently shot to death a heinous lust-based serial killer. Whom I, the author, profiled. And then she finds out that she has—or had—a twin. What happened to that twin, Detective Pallorino? What happened to you prior to Christmas Eve 1986? This is the journey we shall take our readers on.”
Inside her belly she began to shake. “Is that a threat? You’re going to name me in the press as the Baptist’s shooter—because not even the IIO publicly named me? You’re going to break the personal story of my past?”
He said nothing. She couldn’t read his eyes behind the shine of his spectacles in the darkness. But his silence held her paralyzed. She was doomed. Whether she cooperated with him or not—this was all going to get out there, one way or another.
“Sleep on it for a day or two, why don’t you?” He paused. “And consider this—I can do this story justice. I have a specific interest in twins. It’s been an area of academic expertise for me. Look up the old papers I wrote on cryptophasia.”
“What?”
“Twin talk. It’s an idioglossia—an idiosyncratic, private language invented and spoken by only one person, or between very few people, usually children. When it’s spoken solely between twins, it’s referred to as cryptophasia. It can grow out of delayed childhood development or reduced verbal stimulation and interaction with adult language models. Perhaps you even had a special language with your twin, Detective.”
A memory sliced through her.
Come playum dum grove . . . Come down dem . . .
Angie could see her suddenly, the little girl from her earlier hallucinations, awash in a luminous glow of pale pink, no discernible face, long red hair, her small white hand reaching out, beckoning . . . A singsongy voice filled Angie’s ears . . .
Two little kittens . . . two little kittens . . .
The childish, tinky-tonk tune crashed and died in a horrible cacophony, like piano keys all being smashed at once.
She shook herself, cleared her throat. Very quietly, she said, “I’m going to ask you one last time—who told you?”
“You’ve got my number.” He adjusted the bill of his sodden hat. “Take care, Detective Pallorino.”
She glared after him as his shadow merged into the dark, rainy mist. She was shaking. Cold. Wet. She got into her car and rubbed her hands hard over her damp face. She’d kill whoever had spilled her personal news to that creep. And now that it was out, there was no way that she was going to be able to cram that genie back into the bottle.