Now, there’s a thing.
The pale and fragile Sissy Spacek look was undeniable. It was definitely Garrison’s wife. She looked barely thirty. Angie hit PLAY and watched intently as Shelley entered the bar, her gaze searching the crowd.
Jessie noticed Shelley almost immediately. He left his table and hurried through the crowd toward her. He put his arm around her, turning her around, trying to shield her from sighting her husband with Jasmine in the booth. He guided her back toward the exit. But it was too late. Shelley looked over her shoulder and froze as she saw Garrison cuddling up close to Jasmine.
Shelley’s body stiffened. Her jaw sagged, and her eyes went wide as she shot a desperate look at Jessie. Jessie bent his head to hers, said something. She shook her head. He spoke some more. She considered his words, then handed him a package. She looked once more toward the back booth and rushed out.
The scrawny older dude who’d earlier joined the men arguing with Jasmine saw Shelley leaving. His gaze shot to Jessie. Something unspoken passed between the two men. Mr.Scrawny then hurried out of the pub after Shelley.
Angie sat back, feeling exhausted. There was enough motive emerging here for any number of people to have wanted to hurt Jaz Gulati.
Was her accident really just an accident? Or could someone have helped it along?
Or worse.
Could someone have pushed her into the water above the falls with intent to kill?
CHAPTER 21
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER20
Kjel Holgersen stood in a bus shelter smoking his cigarette. It was almost 3:00 a.m., and the road near the university campus was dark, misty, and deserted. Silence had a weight at this hour. It pressed in with the fog. People were asleep in their little houses, hearing not even the wail of a distant siren.
As much as Kjel resented being partnered with Leo in what Leo called the Unit of Lost Causes, his curiosity was piqued. He’d had his own suspicions about Detective Harvey Leo. Mostly they’d involved a belief that Leo was paying young female addicts on the street for blow jobs. And the guy was a mean asshole. He’d dropped Pallorino in the shit for sure. But a dirty cop?
He sucked in another deep chestful of smoke, exhaled slowly, and checked his watch. This was his fifth night in a row with no sleep, so he’d come here at this hour to focus on his case. It was either that or wander the dark streets looking into doorways for the familiar, ravaged face of his father, searching for a way to stay one step ahead of his memories, his guilt.
He and Leo had gotten a tip via the social media blurb that Kjel had asked to be posted on Annelise Janssen in an effort to revive her missing persons case.
A male had called into the soc media desk shortly before Kjel and Leo had punched out for the day. The man claimed he’d seen Annelise at this bus shelter on the night she’d disappeared. Kjel had asked him to come into the station to make a proper statement. The guy claimed to have been leaving one of these small houses behind this bus shelter around 3:00 a.m. last December—a full ten hours after Annelise Janssen was believed to have last been seen on the university campus.
The man said he’d seen the young woman huddled in this bus shelter. She’d been soaked, he’d said, and looked drunk. No coat. It had been extremely cold that December night. While he’d watched, debating whether to approach her, a white Mercedes van had come up the road. It had pulled up to the shelter, stopped. The van had a logo on the side—maybe dark blue or black or olive green. The witness couldn’t be certain given the rain and mist and the dull street lighting. But he’d described the logo as a simplistic, blocky graphic, like First Nations art. The design had reminded him of a stylized animal, like something you’d find on top of a totem pole. The woman had climbed into that van. It had been headed north, he’d said.
Kjel looked northward up the glistening, deserted street, trying to bring the scene to life in his mind in these similar conditions. Once that van had reached the top of this road, it would have hit a traffic circle. From there it could have traveled in any of three opposing directions.
Kjel killed his smoke and yanked up his collar. The self-proclaimed witness maintained the reason he’d not come forward until this time was because he’d been having an affair and had been sneaking out of his lover’s house that night. He hadn’t wanted his wife to find out where he’d been. But he was divorced now, so it no longer mattered what his ex knew. Kjel had checked. The man’s ex had corroborated the affair and divorce. Kjel had then run this new Annelise Janssen information through the crime analyst, and something very interesting had popped up. It was possible they’d scored a major break on more than just the Annelise Janssen cold case. This case could be linked to others.
Ducking out of the shelter, Kjel made for his vehicle parked a short way up the road. His plan was to grab a coffee at the twenty-four-hour Tim’s, maybe a couple of jelly doughnuts. And wait until it was a decent enough hour to call Pallorino. His reason was twofold—to check on her for Maddocks, and to sound his theory out on her, because one of those potentially linked cold cases had been hers.
But as he drove toward the Tim Hortons, Kjel found himself near the bottom end of the city by the water. Wipers going, he slowed his vehicle to a crawl as he peered into the shadowed doorways and alleys. Searching. Always searching. For the man he’d once believed he’d find on these streets. That belief was wearing thin like tired, ragged cloth.
He hit the brakes as something caught his eye. He reversed, stopped. It was nothing.
Just wet cardboard flapping in the wind.
A persistent buzzing entered Angie’s consciousness. She yanked a pillow over her head, trying to muffle the noise. Her brain was pounding. Then it struck her as she became more aware—the intercom. Someone was calling up for her. She sat bolt upright in her bed.
Maddocks?
She swung her feet over the side of the bed and stumbled blindly to her front door before it dawned on her that Maddocks would have used his key. Frowning, she grabbed her phone from the wall near the door. “Yeah, who is it?”
“Heya, top-o-the mornin’ to ya, Palloreeeno.”
She shut her eyes, cursed, and shoved a tangle of hair off her face. Holding her hair in place on the top of her head, she glanced at the clock in the kitchen. “What do you want, Holgersen? Everything okay?”
“For sures. Wanna go grabba jabba? I needs to pick your brain on a case that crossed your desk last winter.”
“Excuse me?”
