The Girl In The Glass

by James Hayman

  He considered calling Tracy to meet him here but decided that if she was with people, texting might be more discreet. Where R U?

  On my way to office to file story, she texted back.

  Meet me your house ASAP. Need to talk. Privately.

  She instantly responded. K.

  Then he called Shockley’s landline. A sleepy voice answered on the fourth ring.

  “All right, McCabe, what do you want? And trust me, my friend, it better be good.”

  “Are you alone, sir?” Shockley’s supposedly secret live-in girlfriend was an on-air reporter for News Center 6 named Josie Tenant. McCabe hadn’t seen her at Loring, so she might well be lying in the chief’s bed. The last thing he needed was for Tenant to get wind of the murder before Whitby was informed. “I’ve got some highly sensitive information. I don’t think you’ll want your friend listening when you hear it.”

  He half expected Shockley to bust his chops for mentioning his friend, but Shockley didn’t. Just said, “Wait sixty seconds and call back on my cell.”

  McCabe waited, then called.

  “All right, what is it?”

  “Edward Whitby’s daughter, Veronica Aimée Whitby, was murdered at roughly three o’clock this morning just off the Loring Trail on the East End. Possibly raped before she was killed. Body was nude. No ID, but we did find a cell phone we’re sure is hers.”

  “Jesus Fucking Christ. You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Definitely not kidding.”

  “Are you sure of this?” Before McCabe could answer, Shockley said, “Hold on for a sec.” His voice fell to a muffled whisper. “Josie, I’m in the middle of a confidential conversation. Would you mind going back to bed? And please shut the door.” Shockley’s voice returned to normal. “Jesus, McCabe. You have any idea how much money Whitby has?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Well, suffice it to say he regularly appears on the Forbes Richest People in America list.”

  McCabe wondered if Peter Ingram made the cut. Doubted it. Sandy would have been sure to let him know. “Just ’cause the guy’s rich doesn’t mean his daughter is any less dead.”

  A long sigh on the other end. “McCabe. Are you sure of this?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Just Maggie. She’s letting Fortier know. I gave a statement at the scene identifying the vic as Jane Doe.”

  “You said there was no ID?”

  “We found what we think is her cell phone. Won’t know for sure till it’s checked out.”

  “So how do you know it’s her?”

  “I’ve met her before.” McCabe didn’t bother telling Shockley Aimée was only a child at the time. “I also found pictures of her on the Web. They match. Maggie’s talking to Fortier now, organizing the investigation. I’m about to inform the victim’s mother, who happens to be an old friend of mine.”

  “What about Whitby?”

  “Maggie’s gonna do that. I’ll join her when I can.”

  “Maybe I should go with her when she tells him. Whitby will want to know I’m personally involved in the investigation.”

  “With all due respect, Chief, I think it’s better if Maggie does this. She’s about as good as they get at this kind of thing. We’ll let Mr. Whitby know you’re running the show.”

  Shockley didn’t object. In fact, he sounded a little relieved.

  “The girl’s mother? Whitby’s ex-wife?”

  “What about her?”

  “She still covers crime for the Press Herald, doesn’t she?”

  “I don’t think she’s gonna want to write about this. But I will ask her not to tip off any of her colleagues before we go public.”

  “Hmmm. I guess that’s okay. But we better damned well close this case fast, or fucking Whitby will hang us all out to dry.”

  TRACY’S THREE-YEAR-OLD HONDA Accord turned into one of the two spaces in the small driveway. Next to the Honda, McCabe could see a gleaming new Mercedes SL 560. No way Tracy could afford a car like that unless she won the Powerball. Had to be either a boyfriend’s or the kid’s, and McCabe was willing to bet on the kid. He wondered what kind of asshole would spoil a teenager with wheels like that. Probably the same kind of asshole who’d make finding his daughter’s killer a whole lot harder.

  Tracy exited her car and rapped on the driver’s side window of the Bird. McCabe rolled it down.

  “What’s going on, McCabe?” She leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “You thinking of giving me a little scoop on this job? You owe me a couple, you know.”

  “Let’s go inside and we’ll talk, okay?”

  McCabe exited the car and followed Tracy up the concrete steps that led to the landing. He hated next-of-kin notifications. All cops do. But with this one—with the victim being someone he’d met as a little girl and her mother a former girlfriend and now just a friend—there was no question it was going to be brutal.

  Chapter 23

  AT FIVE O’CLOCK in the morning, the fourth floor of 109 was deserted. Maggie sat down, flipped on her desk lamp and called Kelly Haddon in Dispatch.

  “What do you need, Mag?”

  “See if you can find me an address and phone number for Edward Whitby.”

  “Whitby? What’s he got to do with this?”

  “No questions, Kelly. Just see what you can find, okay?”

  Maggie broke the connection. Her next call woke up Bill Fortier. He answered on the second ring.

  “Problems?”

  Maggie filled him in on what had happened during the night on the Loring Trail. Bill listened in his quiet, thoughtful way. Said uh-huh a couple of times. Asked a few questions.

  “All right,” he finally said, “I’ve got it. You go do your NOK. I’ll be there in fifteen and pull in every warm body I can find to start a canvas. I’ll also get Cleary working on getting the lowdown on the phone. Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered.”

  “Do me a favor, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Assign somebody to do a backgrounder on Dean Scott. I want as much on the guy as we can find. Hometown. Family. Friends. Education. I also want to check ViCAP and CODIS.” These were FBI databases that kept a record of anybody who’d ever been implicated in any violent or sexual crimes anywhere in the US. “If your folks find anything remotely suspicious, ask Cleary to bring him in and put his ass through a wringer.”

  Detective Brian Cleary was a tough little fireplug and a certified expert at playing bad cop. An ex-prizefighter who looked the part, he was capable of scaring the shit out of most suspects. She was certain he’d have that effect on Scott.

  “You think Scott’s our perp?” asked Fortier. “I mean the guy’s a doctor, for chrissake.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not. But doctors aren’t saints, and Scott’s young, definitely horny and he was the last person to see the girl alive. Far as I’m concerned that automatically makes him a suspect.”

  As soon as Maggie hung up, Kelly Haddon got back to her with an address and the unlisted phone number for what she described as the Whitby mansion on the Western Prom. Maggie was pretty sure she knew which house it was. She tried the number twice. Got voice mail twice. Finally, she said the hell with it and decided just to go and bang on the door till someone answered.

  Chapter 24

  TRACY UNLOCKED THE door and led McCabe inside. The place looked much as he remembered it from the night of the party. To the left, a graceful oak staircase led up to the second floor. To the right, an open living room extended some twenty-five feet to the back deck. The furniture was modern. Black leather, glass and chrome. Some good art hung on the walls, including one of Kyra’s. Without the fifty party guests who’d filled the room the last time he’d been here, it looked bigger. And messier. Books and newspapers scattered both on the glass coffee table and under it. A heavy glass ashtray filled with dead butts. A pair of wineglasses colored by the dregs of last night’s red wine sat on a side table, an em
pty bottle of good California Cabernet next to them.

  “Okay, so what’s the deal, McCabe? What do you want to talk about?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is there something you want me to plant in my story?”

  “Nothing like that, Trace. We just need to talk.”

  She pointed him to the couch in the middle of the room and slipped into the matching armchair next to it.

  “All right, so talk.”

  “You alone?”

  Tracy noticed him looking at the empty bottle and the glasses. “Yes, I’m alone. I had dinner with a friend last night. A friend who went home. Aimée’s out at her father’s place on Whitby Island.” She pulled a box of Marlboros from her shoulder bag. Slid one between her lips. Lit it with a cheap plastic lighter.

  She sucked in the smoke. Blew it out. He realized he had no idea how to start. “It’s about Aimée.”

  Tracy frowned. “What about Aimée? Like I told you, she’s on the island.”

  McCabe struggled to find the words to begin.

  Tracy filled the silence. “Her father threw a big graduation party out there last night supposedly in honor of Aimée and his other daughter, Aimée’s half twin, Julia. She spent the night there.”

  “By any chance,” asked McCabe, “does Aimée have a small café au lait birthmark on her right hip?”

  Tracy’s expression changed from curious to alarmed. She nodded silently.

  “She’s not on the island, Trace.”

  For as long as McCabe had known her, Tracy always liked to assume a kind of tough, no bullshit, newspaper woman persona. Sort of like Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday. But McCabe knew, as he always had, that Tracy’s toughness was a thin veneer masking a sensitive and now suddenly frightened woman.

  She retreated into her chair as if she might find safety there. “She said she was staying there,” she repeated, as if saying it might make it so.

  “She’s not on the island.” McCabe took a deep breath. Blew it out slowly. There was no gentle way to say it. “It was Aimée we found this morning.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Tracy put both hands up, palms out, as if to push what he was saying away from her. “No. No. No way. You said you didn’t know who the dead girl was. You called her Jane Doe. Aimée’s on the island.”

  “I’m sorry, Tracy. It’s her. She was here. In Portland.”

  “How do you know it was her? You haven’t seen her in what? Seven or eight years? Lots of people have birthmarks.”

  “I wouldn’t be telling you this if I wasn’t sure.”

  Tracy found her cell phone, poked at it a couple of times, then pushed it at him. “Here. A dozen pictures I took yesterday. Look at them. And then I want you to tell me it was somebody else you found and you’re sorry for scaring the shit out of me.”

  McCabe sighed. Took the phone. Fingered through a series of photos of a young woman in a white graduation dress. In a couple, she was smiling at her mother’s camera. Others showed her at a dais making a speech. There was one of Aimée walking down the center aisle carrying a bouquet of red roses, her head turned toward her mother’s camera, smiling, fingers waving.

  Had McCabe harbored even the slightest doubt, it would now be gone. He shook his head, handing back the phone. “I’m sorry, but it is her.”

  Tracy speed-dialed a number. A voice message came on immediately. “Hi. You’ve reached Aimée. Leave your number, and I’ll call you back.”

  “Her phone’s in the crime lab at 109. We found it by the body. Tech knows enough not to answer.”

  Tracy hit the Off button, suppressed a choking sound and just managed to get out the words, “Is there any possibility . . .” She closed her eyes. Swallowed hard. Opened them again. “ . . . that you’re wrong?”

  McCabe pictured himself sitting across from a cop hearing the news that his daughter, Casey, had been murdered. He couldn’t begin to imagine the pain she must be feeling.

  Chapter 25

  AS MAGGIE DROVE across town in the early morning light, the streets were empty save for a few poor souls sleeping “al fresco,” as McCabe often described it. Maggie headed west on Middle Street past where it turned into Spring, followed Spring till it ended on Vaughn, then circled down around the bottom of the West End Cemetery, hooking a sharp right up the hill onto the Western Prom.

  Edward Whitby lived in a large, white-columned mansion she’d driven by a thousand times. The place always reminded her of Tara in Gone With the Wind, except this particular Tara was improbably sandwiched between a pair of large, plain, New Englandy shingled jobs.

  Maggie parked her unmarked Police Interceptor under a white portico supported by six large white columns. Doric, she thought. Or maybe Ionic. Or Dork and Ironic, as she and her best friend, Emily Kaplan, called them in high school. Either way, Maggie could never remember which was which.

  She spent a good five minutes ringing the doorbell and banging a brass knocker on a large pair of twin mahogany doors. No one answered. Certain that a house this big had to come with at least one or two live-in staff, she decided to try telephoning again. Before the call went through, a light went on and the door opened about six inches.

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  A woman in her late sixties or early seventies glared out at Maggie through the narrow opening. She had steel-gray hair cut short in a mannish style and was dressed in a nightgown and robe. She’d clearly been woken up by the ruckus Maggie had been making outside.

  “Mrs. Whitby?” Maggie asked, pretty sure it wasn’t.

  “No. Mrs. Whitby isn’t here.”

  “I see. Can you tell me where I can find either Mr. or Mrs. Whitby? Or preferably both. I’m Detective Margaret Savage of the Portland Police Department, and I’m here on a rather urgent matter.” She took out her wallet. Flipped it open and showed the woman her ID.

  After waiting vainly for the woman to introduce herself, Maggie said, “May I ask what your name is?”

  “Mrs. Boatwright,” the woman said. “Brenda Boatwright. I’m the housekeeper here. And what may I ask is so important that you have to come banging on our doors at the crack of dawn?”

  “I need to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Whitby as soon as possible. This is a police matter, and, trust me, it is important. Now, can you tell me where I can find them?”

  “No. Not unless you tell me what it’s all about.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Then I can’t tell you where the Whitbys are. I’m sorry, but I’m under standing orders not to give anyone, detective or not, their private phone number.”

  Boatwright began to push the door closed. Maggie stuck out an arm and stopped her. “I respect your loyalty to your employers, Ms. Boatwright. But trust me when I tell you I’m here on very urgent police business and that if the Whitbys don’t get to hear what I have to tell them because you decided to stonewall me, well, I suspect they’ll kick your loyal ass out of this house before you can say boo. And even if they don’t, I just might take it into my own head to charge you with impeding a criminal investigation.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I sure as hell am. Now where are Mr. and Mrs. Whitby?”

  Chapter 26

  TRACY’S FACE CRUMPLED in on itself. She covered it with both hands and, bending almost double, let out a long, loud, low-pitched wail so filled with pain that McCabe thought her heart must be literally breaking in two.

  He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She shook him off. “Just give me a minute alone to absorb this.”

  McCabe rose and went out onto a back deck overlooking a garden he knew his friend lovingly tended. He closed the screen but left the sliding door open so he could hear her, then sat in one of a pair of deck chairs that were still damp with morning dew. He looked down at the clumps of blooming azaleas and rhododendrons running along the back fence, alive in a blaze of pink and white. The white peonies about to pop. Red roses climbing a trellis attached to the sid
e of a garden shed. There was a profusion of other flowers McCabe couldn’t begin to name. A small granite fountain sat off to one side, burbling water. Tracy had often said her garden was her refuge, the one place where she could truly relax and shake off the evils of the world she wrote about day after day.

  After about five minutes, he heard her get up and head for the deck. He rose as she walked out.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said, her voice flat and empty. “I want to know all of it. Everything you know.”

  He nodded, thinking how little they really knew and wondering how much he could allow himself to say. She was, after all, a reporter.

  They sat side by side on the deck chairs. She lit another cigarette, then tossed the box on the small glass table in front of them. She took a deep drag, blew out the smoke and stared down, as he had, at the profusion of color below.

  McCabe reached over and took one of the cigarettes. Lit it and sucked in the smoke. He hadn’t smoked in at least a couple of years. Amazingly, it still tasted good.

  “Talk to me, McCabe.”

  He told her most of what they knew, holding back little.

  Chapter 27

  BRENDA BOATWRIGHT STARED at Maggie for maybe five seconds. Blinked about twenty times. Then opened the door wider and said, “Follow me.”