“Ginn’s fine,” he said. “She wants me to do this—pursue this to the end.”
“So it does have to do with the barcode case, then? With human trafficking, sex slavery. On an international level, because the barcodes are all foreign, and that’s why you’ve been roped into an interagency force out of Surrey. Have you got an ID on them now?”
“Listen, I don’t have much time. Tell me about Belkin,” he said again, terse, cutting her off.
Her jaw tightened. She inhaled deeply. “Hang on a sec.” She took her laptop and bag and moved to a quiet alcove in the library from where she could watch her notebook, which she left at the microfilm station to reserve her place. Seating herself in a deep chair designed for comfy reading, she described her meeting with Belkin, keeping her voice low as she watched the rain coming down behind the library’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
“He recognized me, Maddocks. Without question. He knew instantly who I was. Which convinces me that he knew my mother and that I look just like her. He knows what happened that night. His fingerprints prove he was there. It’s all inside his brain, and he won’t spill. I just need to find a way to crack him open, make him tell me who I am and what happened to my family. Right now he’s shit-scared. He knows that what I have could put him right back into prison, maybe for murder this time. For life.”
Maddocks was silent for a beat, and then he said very quietly, “The ink on the left side of Belkin’s neck was a blue crab.”
Angie frowned. “I didn’t tell you about a tattoo.”
He swore softly. A cold, inky feeling of disquiet feathered into her chest. “What is this?”
Another moment of hesitation. The chill of disquiet snaked deeper. “Maddocks, talk to me.”
“You need to stop, Angie. Now. You need to stand down from your personal investigation. You have to trust me on this—you’re in danger if you continue. Especially if you’re threatening Belkin’s freedom. And I’m not just talking your job. I’m talking about your life.”
Whoa. Angie blinked, reeling at the blow he’d just delivered out of left field. His secrecy didn’t help. It underscored the sinister tone of his warning. And it got her back up—the fact he was not being open with her. She’d made a damn fine detective because she would not—could not—drop a puzzle until it was solved. The more complex the problem, the more it fired her to find the solution. Angie leaned aggressively forward in the chair.
“You can’t do this to me, tell me to take something on blind faith like this—give me a warning that my life is in danger and not say why.”
Silence.
She surged to her feet, clamped her arm tightly across her chest, and stood in front of the window streaked with rain. “Maddocks, what are you telling me? Is . . . is this because you came across some privileged intel associated with this task force? Something on Belkin?”
“I’m serious, Angie, I’m not at liberty to talk. But I’m asking you, please—leave this alone. At least for now. Do the right thing. Get the first ferry home and be at that social media desk on Monday morning. Keep your head down, and . . . keep vigilant. Lock your doors.”
Tightening her grip on the phone, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. Her brain scrambled to piece facts together. “Okay,” she said slowly. “So you came across some privileged information, and it involves Milo Belkin. You know about Belkin’s tattoo, and it’s key somehow. It’s a symbol of affiliation to something, maybe a gang? And Belkin and this tattoo somehow ties to human trafficking at an international level, because that’s the root of your barcode investigation. And now, because it’s gone international in scope, and because the nature of global sex trafficking generally involves organized crime at a high level, there was probably already an interagency investigation open. And you’ve been co-opted into this investigation, which requires top-level security clearance. Right?”
Silence.
It fueled her frustration. It also told her she was on the right track.
“The patent prints confirm that Belkin touched that bloodied cradle door in ’86, Maddocks. He was there. He knew my mother. He knows what happened to my mouth. Seven years after I was found, he’s busted in a drug shoot-out with narcotics worth $9 million hidden in a cube truck. There’s a level of organized crime that goes into that kind of haul, too. Yet Belkin never snitches—never reveals the identity of his associates, one of whom shot and killed a VPD cop. Are you telling me that Belkin—or his group—was also involved in organized sex trafficking back then, in 1986? That my mother might have been trafficked . . .” It hit her. She placed a palm across her brow. “Jesus, Maddocks, I remember Polish words, a woman screaming at me in Polish to stay inside that cradle and stay quiet. We were foreign.” She swore as possibilities clicked into place. “When the forensic artist’s sketch of me ran in all the papers, no one came forward. Not one soul in this city, or even the country, came to claim me as family. We might not have even been in the country legally—that would explain the dead silence, wouldn’t it? That would explain why I couldn’t speak any English to the nurses . . . why my life could have been so bad that my kid memory wiped itself clean in an act of pure survival.”
Maddocks cursed on his end. Angie heard movement and what sounded like a door closing. The sound of the television grew suddenly muted. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, quieter. “Angie, I’m not going to tell you anything that’s not already out there. And the only reason I’m saying anything at all is because I need you to stand down, and I know that you won’t do it without some solid argument.” He wavered, then said, “When you return to Victoria, to the station, you’ll hear that one of the barcode girls was murdered in hospital while under MVPD guard—”
“What? Which one?”
“The eldest. She was the only one who talked to me. She gave a statement and was killed that same night, in her hospital bed. Her tongue was cut out while she was still alive.”
Angie swallowed, feeling ill.
“Then this interagency task force under the auspices of the RCMP swooped in and asserted jurisdiction—took her body right off O’Hagan’s table, kicked out our forensics guys, took possession of all evidence.”
Her heart quickened. “How’s Belkin connected?”
He cleared his throat. “Listen, I can’t—”
“Maddocks, don’t do this to me. Is there anything else in the public realm that you can clue me in to—anything I could conceivably have come across myself?”
“Angie—”