“I need to go out there. I need to check out his place, ask more questions. He has the right kind of profile, Barb. He’s the survivor of a brutal sexual assault in his youth, allegedly perpetrated by a group of boys from his school who used to bully him. He was gang-raped by males, and he never received medical attention or therapy of any kind. The incident was buried. He became even more of a loner, isolating himself out there on that forest property. He rescues things he finds in the woods. Little cubs, fawns, raccoons—”
“And a half-drowned woman? You thinkthat’swhat could have happened? He rescued and kept her? And she gave birth, and the child lived long enough to be fed formula for a time?”
Angie blew out a big breath. “I’ve got to go see. I need to check if that could be possible.” Her gaze shifted back to Holgersen at the bar, and an idea began to formulate in her mind.
CHAPTER 42
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER25
Angie drove north along the island highway while Holgersen sat in the passenger seat chewing nicotine gum and reading through the coroner’s preliminary report on Jasmine Gulati.
“Still can’t believe you roped me into this,” he said, turning a page.
“Come on, you love it. Admit it—you’re flattered. What else were you going to do on your day off?”
“I gots a life, Pallorino, even if you don’t.”
“That life include dating Webb?
He shot her a sideways glance. “What if it does?”
“You confuse me, Holgersen. I thought you were celibate.”
“I didn’t say I was fucking her, now did I?”
She gave a half shrug. “Why date if, you know, there’s nothing physical?”
“She’s a friend. I likes her company. We had drinks, that’s all.”
“Maddocks know about this? She’s in your unit, isn’t she?”
“None of boss man’s business. Yours, neither. She’s not in my cold case division. That’s justs me and hairy ass.” He sounded irritated or maybe frustrated. Angie let it go. She’d boomerang back to it later, because, yeah, she was curious. Everything about Holgersen made her curious. He was a dark one.
“Okay,” he said, flipping a page. “SomaybeJasmine Gulati was preggers at the time she went over the falls.”
“Yeah, maybe. All I have is her girlfriends saying that Jasmine told them she was carrying Dr.Hart’s baby. She wrote this in her journal, too. But how much of that journal is fact or fantasy, I don’t know. Jasmine told them she’d scheduled an abortion. She first asked Mia Smith to accompany her for the procedure, but she and Mia had a major fallout over termination. So Jasmine asked Sophie Sinovich to go with her instead, but according to Sophie, Jasmine bailed at the very last minute.”
“So, just to be clear, all Sophie Sinovich had was Jasmine Gulati’s word that an appointment for an abortion had actually been scheduled?”
Angie nodded. “I called the women’s center on the mainland this morning. They confirmed they don’t keep records going back that far—sixteen years is the requirement for medical records. So no proof of pregnancy. All just circumstantial.”
“And these post parturition scars are not unequivocal proof, either?”
“Correct.”
“So given that there was no evidence of a fetus found with her remains, she might not have been pregnant. Everything might be just as it seems. She went over the falls. Drowned. Washed up. Was found twenty-four years later. And the scarring on her pelvis was incidental. She could have hurt her shoulder some time before she went on that trip, maybe. Plus, there’s Rachel Hart’s confession that her daughter struck and pushed Jasmine Gulati into the river.” He powered down his window. Wind blasted into the car as he spat his gum out onto the highway. He dug into his pocket for the pack and started to pop a fresh tablet of nicotine chewing gum out of the cellophane. “That truck chasing you could have just been to scare you away from digging up shit on the old Porter Bates case. And them arrows in the grove, too.”
“Or those arrows really could have been hunters shooting at us in error. It happens often enough.”
“So it could be like it looks.”
“Or not.” She shot him a look. “Which is why I need to talk to Axel Tollet and poke around up there some more to be sure.”
“You could just let it lie.”
“No, I can’t. If Jasmine Gulati survived the waterfall, I can’t let someone take the murder rap for that.”
“They’s confessed.”
