by James Hayman
Byron knew she didn’t believe him about Meyers. As soon as he was sure she had gone back to sleep, he slipped out of the bedroom and called Meyers on the coast. It was only midnight L.A. time. He asked his old friend to cover for him.
Lacking a flashlight, Byron proceeded cautiously, particularly in places where overhead branches blocked the ambient light of the moon. Every once in a while he would stop altogether and probe a dark patch in front of him with his foot for unseen roots or stones that might trip him up. It would be just too damned stupid to compound his infidelities by arriving home with a broken ankle or worse. Whenever Byron stopped, his follower stopped and waited silently for Byron to start moving again.
As soon as Byron stepped onto the dock, he felt something hard press into his back.
Byron turned.
He saw a slender figure dressed in black trousers and one of the white jackets the catering staff wore at the party. A black balaclava with small holes cut for the eyes and mouth covered the face and head. Whoever was under that mask didn’t want to be recognized. He . . . or she . . . was pointing a handgun directly at Byron’s face. Byron couldn’t tell one gun from another, but this one looked like the kind the cops in Portland carried on their hips.
The color drained from his face. “W-w-what do you want?”
“What do I want? What I want is to punish you for having sex with one of your students.”
Byron failed to react. Just stood motionless, eyes wide open, like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
“Oh yes, I know what you were doing. You really should have checked things out when your girlfriend told you she heard a noise outside. If you had, it would have made things a lot tougher for me. But no. You were so eager to get back into action you couldn’t be bothered. Well, for your sake, I hope it was a good fuck, Byron, because if you don’t do exactly as I tell you, it just might be your last.”
Byron looked back at the Patti Ann. Forty feet away. He wondered if he could make it. He’d run track in college and was pretty fast. But no. There was no way he could outrun a bullet. He imagined one crashing through the back of his skull before he even got halfway.
“What . . . what are you going to do?” Byron stammered.
“Interesting question. What I’m going to do is punish you for the sin of fucking one of your students when you have a wife waiting faithfully at home. I may kill you. I may not.”
“You, you, you’re not going to kill me?”
“Maybe not. Not if you do exactly what I tell you. I mean, why else would I have this mask on? To keep you from identifying me if I do decide to let you live.”
Byron felt a small glimmer of hope. Maybe this person wasn’t going to shoot him after all. Of course, mask or no mask, he was certain he would never forget his assailant’s voice. But maybe this wasn’t a good time to bring that up. “I promise I won’t say a word to anybody.”
“No, I’m certain you won’t. Now, what I want you to do now is turn around and walk slowly to the end of the dock.”
Byron did as he was told.
“Okay, now take out your cell phone and put it down gently. Not too close to the water. We don’t want to get it wet now, do we?”
Byron followed instructions.
“Now lie down flat on your belly, head toward the water, hands flat on the dock in front of you.”
Byron did what he was told.
“Let me have the pass code for your phone.”
Byron tried to speak, but the only sound that came out was a small mewing sound, like a kitten.
He suddenly felt the barrel of the gun press against the back of his neck. “Your pass code. Now.”
Byron Knowles started shivering and weeping. “Please,” he blubbered, “please don’t kill me.”
The gun was pressed harder into the back of his neck. “Give . . . me . . . your . . . fucking . . . pass code or you die now. One number at a time.”
“Gina,” Byron squeaked.
“What about Gina?”
“Gina. Her name’s the pass code. G-I-N-A.”
“Pass codes are numbers.”
“Numerically, it’s four-four-six-two.”
Now that he’d given up the information, Byron closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the bullet that would end his life. It didn’t come. Instead he peeked around and, out of the corner of his eye, watched the person who might or might not decide to kill him punch in the numbers and, satisfied that they worked, pocket the phone.
“Good. Now I want you to get up and climb down into your boat.”
Byron climbed down.
“Now pick up that black bag there by the cockpit.”
Byron looked and saw a large black vinyl bag he’d never seen before. He picked it up.
“All right, now, nice and slowly, I want you to climb into the bag. Feet first. Arms by your side. Make one sound and, trust me, you’ll be dead.”
Byron was sure this thing must be a body bag, though he’d never seen one before. As instructed, he put his feet into the bottom.
“Now grab the zipper and pull it up as high up around you as you can. Then put your hands inside. If you make a single solitary sound, I’ll be forced to shoot and get my brand-new bag all dirty with the gooey bits of your brain.”
Byron managed to pull the zipper up almost as high as his neck. Then he squeezed his hands back inside.
“Now lie down on the deck and close your eyes.”
Again he followed instructions. He felt a gloved hand take hold of the zipper and pull it up the rest of the way. Byron opened his eyes. He could see nothing but black. He was totally encased in dark, heavy vinyl with no way to get out. Byron, always afraid of the dark, was now sure he was going to die. He imagined himself buried alive in this bag, dying slowly and horribly under the earth. He began whimpering and shaking uncontrollably.
“Goddamit, stop blubbering. Lie still, or I’ll kill you now.”
Byron lay still and tried to keep the sound of his weeping as quiet as he possibly could.
FOR THE FIRST fifteen minutes after her lover left, Aimée lay on the rumpled sheets of the sofa bed, mourning the end of the affair. She really had loved Byron. At least she thought she had. Finally, tired of feeling sorry for herself, she got up, found her clothes in the corner where she’d thrown them and pulled them on. Denim cutoffs over a pink thong. A white tank top. An old Yale sweatshirt of Moseley’s. A pair of pink sneakers. She opened the door and looked out toward the cliff. The kids’ after-party was still going on. She could hear the sound of distant voices and somebody playing a guitar. She could see the glow of a bonfire light up the night sky. She wondered who might still be there. Jules for sure. Some of her friends. She wondered if Aman Anbessa had stayed. Probably not. The after-party wouldn’t be his scene. Especially when he realized the silent promise of her kiss was never meant to be kept. Moseley? Yeah, he’d be there for sure, still looking to get laid. Unless, of course, he’d already found a willing victim. Maybe Jules. Maybe not.
Truth be told, Will or no Will, the idea of sitting around a bonfire with a bunch of high school kids had zero appeal. Partly because none of them was all that interesting. But more importantly because the guy she thought she’d loved turned out, in the end, to be nothing more than a pussy-whipped English teacher too afraid of his ugly, boring wife to take a chance on living life to the fullest.
Still, she had thought she loved him.
She’d planned their affair so carefully. Rented the apartment on Hampshire Street so they’d have someplace to go and not worry about Tracy or her father bursting in on them. Or Mr. Jolley peeping through the window.
And next year was supposed to have been even better. Aimée had checked out some really cool apartments near RISD, on the hill overlooking Providence. Places that would have been perfect for their evenings together. How many times had she imagined the scene? Byron working on his screenplay or maybe posing nude while Aimée sketched his beautiful, slender body. It all would have been so much fu
n, and now he had gone and screwed everything up. It really wasn’t fair. Not fair at all.
She got up, straightened the sheets and closed the sofa bed. Found the vodka, poured herself a drink and sat quietly sipping. She thought about all the boys and men who wanted her. Why was it, she wondered, she was always attracted to the older ones? The impossible ones. She wondered if what she was really looking for wasn’t some poetic wuss like Byron but somebody more like Charles or, even better, Daddy. Her father was almost perfect. Smart. Warm. Handsome. Funny. And, most important, unafraid of living life to the fullest. She wanted someone like that. Someone who could be gentle and tender with her yet tough as nails with anyone who had the balls to confront him head-on. And that sure as hell wasn’t Byron. Byron with all his poetry didn’t come close. She supposed she’d always known the affair wouldn’t last. But she didn’t think it would end this soon. And the way it ended hurt. She wanted to make Byron suffer for that.
The vibration from the phone in her pocket made her jump. A text from Byron. How could I have been such a jerk? he wrote. I’m so sorry. We need to talk. Please meet me by my boat. I love you.
Aimée smiled to herself. Less than half an hour after his big speech, and the gutless wonder was already crawling back. She texted back, OMW.
Chapter 15
WITHOUT REALIZING HOW far he’d driven, McCabe found himself passing through the town of Rumford, heading toward the Mahoosuc Land Trust on a small two-laner. That’s when his phone rang. Caller ID told him it was Kelly Haddon from Portland Police Dispatch.
“What’s up, Kelly?”
Kelly’s voice emerged from the Bluetooth speakers. “Looks like you’re up, Sergeant,” she said. “Body of a woman was just found off the Loring Trail. Bob Hurley was first at the scene. Says the vic looks pretty young. Maybe a teenager. Shift commander said I should call you direct.”
“Murdered? Or just dead?”
“Murdered, I think. Possibly raped is what Hurley said.”
It was weird. Just hearing the words murdered, possibly raped emerge from the speaker triggered a familiar rush in McCabe. His breathing and heart rate shot up. His muscles tensed. His senses went on heightened alert. It was a high he’d always been addicted to. A high for which there were no rehab centers or twenty-eight-day cures. McCabe knew it. Kyra knew it. A murder junkie, she’d once called him. And she was right. When the bell went off, it turned him on. More than booze, more than pot, even more than sex. A high that stayed with him until the bad guy was caught. Or, better yet, dead.
“What do you want me to do?” Kelly’s voice asked from the speakers.
As with all addictions, McCabe’s came with a price: the inevitable guilt of knowing that the excitement he drew from the act of murder was both ethically and morally wrong. Reprehensible. The problem was, he couldn’t help himself.
“McCabe?”
Fueled by adrenaline, McCabe hit the brakes, downshifted to second, spun the wheel hard to the left and slammed the Bird into a tight one-eighty. He floored the accelerator and shifted to third.
“McCabe, are you still there?”
“I’m here,” he responded.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Call Maggie. Tell her I’m up near Rumford. Tell her to get on down to the scene. I’ll be there quick as I can.”
He ended the call.
The night was clear. The road before him empty. McCabe turned on his flashers and pushed the Bird up to 110 . . . everything the old V8 was able to give.
His mind went to his daughter sleeping peacefully in her bed. The red-haired kid leaving the building. He imagined Casey getting up. Sneaking out for a secret late-night rendezvous. I love you. I love you too. He saw them kissing. Groping. And then . . . what? Rape? Murder? He told himself to stop it. Stop getting weirded out by stupid thoughts. Stop being an asshole. Still, he couldn’t push the image from his mind.
KELLY HADDON’S CALL woke Maggie from a restless sleep in her apartment on Vesper Street on Portland’s Munjoy Hill.
“Yeah. What is it?” she mumbled into her cell.
“Some kid’s gotten herself killed,” said Haddon. “McCabe says he wants you to get to the scene. Seems he’s up near Rumford. He’s on his way back.”
Rumford? Rumford was the back of beyond. What in hell was McCabe doing in Rumford at three in the morning? She wondered if he was still drunk. Or maybe just hungover.
She flipped the phone to speaker, took it with her into the bathroom. “Okay. Tell me what you know.”
She listened to Haddon while she washed her face and brushed her teeth.
“Young woman, maybe a teenager, was found stabbed and naked on the Loring Trail just off the end of the Eastern Prom. Patrol guys are there now. Jacoby’s people are on their way.” Bill Jacoby ran the PPD’s Crime Scene unit. “I don’t have a lot of specifics.”
“Okay. Thanks. Be there in five.”
Maggie hit End. She threw on some clothes, attached her gold shield to her belt, strapped on her weapon and headed downstairs.
Less than three minutes later, she pulled her red Chevy TrailBlazer in behind a cluster of PPD cruisers and a MEDCU ambulance that practically filled the small circular parking area around the Loring Memorial. Located at the far end of the Eastern Prom, the place was a vest pocket park dedicated to the memory of a dead war hero.
“Hiya, Mag, how you doing?” The greeting, called out in a throaty growl, came from one of the PPD’s veterans, Sergeant Pete Kenney. Kenney’d been one of Maggie’s trainers when she first joined the department fourteen years ago, and she still had a soft spot for him. He’d put in his thirty and was now only weeks from retirement. She’d just RSVP’d yes to the invite for his farewell party, a family affair at Bruno’s Tavern, an Italian place located in front of the Portland Boxing Club on Allen Avenue.
“Hiya, Pete. Any reporters pick up the scent?”
“Not yet. But it won’t be long. It never is.”
Kenney had given himself the job of keeping anyone, but especially the press, from heading down the steps toward the scene.
The Loring Trail was a narrow dirt path descending at a sharp angle from the memorial down to the water. It was both the shortest and steepest way to cut down the backside of Munjoy Hill to the running and biking trails that ran along the edge of Casco Bay and Back Cove for miles in each direction.
“Who’s watching from below?”
“Walt Ghent and John Freeman.”
Maggie started for the trail. Kenney stopped her. “Take this,” he said, handing her a MagLite. “Dark as doom down there and plenty to trip over.”
She nodded her thanks, slipped under the yellow crime scene tape that’d already been stretched across the opening to the trail and started her descent.
Chapter 16
From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.
Entry dated June 20, 1924
I begin this journal by noting that while my heart died twenty years ago this month, the rest of my body will only be joining it now. To be precise, not exactly now, but surely within a few short months. I write seated at a simple wooden table and chair in Aimée’s studio on Whitby Island. I have decided to spend my last months here alone with my memories of the woman I loved more than any other, in the place we both loved more than any other, tended only by a private nurse and my manservant, Alfred Kinney.
My doctors have done all they can to prolong my life. I’ve undergone several surgeries, as well as radiation treatments by Dr. Gioacchino Failla at Memorial Hospital in New York. I hope these procedures have given me the few months I need to tell the story of that love as only I know it before I join Aimée and Garrison in death.
I am in constant pain, but I refuse the morphine my doctors offer, for I know it will cloud my mind and make it impossible for me to finish the task I have set myself.
I write for no other eyes but my own and those of my children and grandchildren, and then only when they are old enough to understand the tragic eve
nts that transpired in that wretched summer of 1904. It seems right to me that those whom Aimée and I brought into the world should be allowed to know the truth of how she left it. And the guilt I have suffered ever since for the role I played in her death. But no one else. Our family has already suffered too much from the lies and from the public shaming of the remarkable woman who was my wife. Showing these pages beyond our direct line would only revive the chatter we were forced to live through and would serve no purpose whatsoever. The dead would remain dead.
Sitting here on the island, as darkness falls, I ponder how to tell the tale. I suppose I should begin at the beginning. Not with my birth, like Copperfield, but with my year in Paris. The year my father gave me to “sow my wild oats.” The year I met Aimée and fell in love with the most remarkable woman I have ever known.
In June 1894 I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, near the top of my class, with a degree in Naval Architecture. Though I’d pursued my studies assiduously, my true passion at the time was art. From my earliest years I’d seldom been without a sketchpad or paints and canvas. While completing my degree at MIT, I simultaneously completed a course of study at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the basement in Copley Square. I was a good painter, and my work earned high praise from my instructors. While I knew I was talented, I was not yet as good as I wanted to be.
The Sunday after graduation, the Whitby family went en masse, as was our wont, to services at St. Luke’s Cathedral on State Street in Portland. After returning to the house, I planned to tell my father that before I joined the firm, I intended to go to Paris to study art.
The coach let us off under the porte cochere. Before going in, I stopped my father and told him there was something important we needed to discuss. He looked at me with his dark eyes and invited me into his private study overlooking the back gardens. I always hated that room, for it was there, throughout my childhood, that punishment had been meted out. I still bore the scars, mental as well as physical, of the beatings I suffered in that room from the buckle on my dear papa’s favorite leather belt.