“You know why I’m here, don’t you, Milo?” she said quietly. “You recognized me the instant you walked in,” she said.
The man swallowed. A vein bulged at his neck, which was corded with muscle and tension. He had a tattoo on the left side of that thick neck, she realized—the ink just poking into her line of vision.
“How do you know me, Milo?”
Silence.
She placed a copy of the Kodak print that Jenny Marsden had given her onto the table. She pushed it toward him. “Can you tell me now?”
He refused to glance down at the photo.
She leaned forward and jabbed the print with her index finger. “That there is the angel’s cradle child. Janie Doe. Abandoned at Saint Peter’s Hospital, Christmas Eve 1986.” Angie waited.
Slowly, cautiously, Belkin glanced down toward the image. He inhaled sharply. His eyes ticked back to Angie’s face.
She touched the scar that bisected the left side of her lips. “Did you put this here, Milo? Do you perhaps remember me as Roksana?”
He shot another glance over his shoulder at the guard, who remained impervious, sullen, staring straight ahead, one hand clasped over the other in front of him.
“You chased a young dark-haired woman across Front Street that night in ’86, Milo. In the snow. You and at least one other man. The woman had two children with her, didn’t she? One of the children was barefoot. No coats.”
His Adam’s apple moved in his throat as he swallowed hard. She pushed a Styrofoam cup of water toward him.
“Dry mouth?” she said. “Can be a sign of stress. Does my presence stress you, Milo?”
He said nothing, did not reach for the water. Instead his attention returned slowly to the photo. He stared at it. Angie’s heart beat even faster—he had not denied that there were two children present. Or that he might know her as Roksana.
She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “What did you do to that woman and the other child, Milo, the little girl who did not make it into the angel’s cradle?”
Silence pressed thick and heavy into the room. She could smell him—sweat tinged with the unique stink of fear. She waited. But still he remained mute.
“The other little girl, her name was Mila, wasn’t it?”
Tiny pinpricks of moisture beaded his upper lip as he continued to stare at the photo.
“Why do I scare you so much, Milo Belkin?”
He refused to make eye contact again. He was going to wait her out, possibly hoping she’d leave sooner than later. This felon was six months out from his WED date. And once he was released after he had served out the very last day and hour of his sentence, not even the parole board would have jurisdiction over him. He could disappear into the ether a free man. There was no way in hell he was going to say anything that would incriminate him in a crime that would garner him a whole other set of new charges. And fresh prison time.
Angie leaned farther forward, forcing him to look directly into her eyes again. “See, Milo, here’s what I’m thinking—when you walked into this room, you just about wet yourself. Because I look just like someone you used to know, isn’t that right?”
A muscle began to twitch in the corner of his left eye. Adrenaline pumped into Angie’s blood. She kept her voice low, calm. “I resemble that woman you chased across the street, except for coloring maybe. The hair—hers was dark brown. Mine is red. Like the twins.”
Her words seemed to make the last of the color drain completely from his face. The pace of the twitch at the corner of his eye doubled. He broke eye contact, stared hard at the table.
“And then when you saw this scar across my mouth, you knew, didn’t you, exactly who I was. When you walked into this room, you looked like you’d seen a ghost, and you had. Because I’ve come back to haunt you, Milo Belkin. With this—”
She placed onto the table a printed copy of the crime scene photograph showing the blood-smeared outside door of the cradle. Beside it she placed another photograph—this one a close-up of a palm smear and clear bloody fingerprints on the door.
“This, Milo.” She slid both prints right under his nose. “Whether you want to tell me what happened or not, this is proof that you were there that night in ’86. You chased that woman and her children. You struggled with the woman outside that cradle as she fought to put both her girls inside where they would be safe. You fired shots—a Colt .45 maybe. You escaped in a black Chevrolet van.”
His eyes darted back to her face.
Excitement cracked through her. “You cut my mouth, because my blood was on your hands when you touched those cradle doors as you battled to get me out of the bassinet. But then the church bells started ringing, and people began exiting the church across the alley. Maybe you heard sirens coming, too. And you grabbed the woman and the other child and ran. To the Chevy van waiting at the top of the alley on the back side of the hospital, and you fled the scene.”
He lifted his hand and slowly wiped the perspiration from above his lip.
“All the old evidence from that crime scene is now being retested using new science,” she said quietly. “That’s how we got a hit on your prints left in that blood on the cradle door. That’s how I found you, because your prints are in the system as a convicted felon. In a few days we’ll also have DNA results from semen on a purple sweater that was found inside the cradle with the child. When that semen stain comes up as a match to your DNA profile, which will also be filed in the national DNA database for convicted offenders, you’re going to be charged all over again, Milo Belkin. And this time”—she pushed her last photo toward him, the little lilac high-top that had washed up on the beach—“it’ll be for murder.” She paused. “Life.”
His gaze darted to the photograph. His eyes widened. His lips parted. His breathing quickened.
“That’s the remains of my sister’s foot still in that shoe. You know exactly what happened to her. And to our young mother.”
His eyes watered as he continued to stare at the image of the dirty little high-top. And he did not deny that the dark-haired woman was the mother of the two children. This set a fire under Angie.
She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m going to haunt you, Milo Belkin. I’m going to do whatever it takes to find out what happened that night. I’m going to get you. I’m going to nail your ass to the wall for what you did to my mother and sister.”
“Guard,” he said very quietly, his gaze still riveted on the photograph of the dismembered foot in its little shoe.
“And not only do I have more evidence coming in,” she said, “but I’m also starting to remember. Things from that night. From before. On top of this, the RCMP has opened its own investigation into that little floating foot, and they’ve already connected it to me and the cradle case, so it’s going to be better for you all around if you talk to me now.”
“Guard,” he growled loudly, surging to his feet. “Get me out. Now.” As he turned away from her, Angie saw the tattoo on the side of his neck. A pale-blue crab.