by James Hayman
Maggie was sure Whitby was weeping but was trying hard not to be heard.
“Said she was going off with some of the Penfield kids.”
“Off where?”
“A bonfire near the cliff on the other side. An after-party for the graduates.”
“How many people were on the island last night?”
“A lot. Between two and three hundred, including help.”
“How many were left when you last saw Aimée?”
“God, I don’t know. Maybe forty or fifty. Plus the caterers and other help.”
“When did they leave?”
“Nearly everyone was gone by midnight except for a few of the kids and some other hangers-on. I don’t know for sure, but I’d say that by 2:00 a.m., the island was empty except for my family and the couple that looks after the place for us.”
“Mr. Jolley?”
“Yes. And his wife. Oh, and my director of security also spent the night.”
“Name?”
“Charles Kraft.”
“It would be helpful, Mr. Whitby, if you could put together a list of everybody who was on the island last night. Not just your guests but bartenders, caterers, musicians, whatever. Also if you could indicate those whom you know were still there when you saw Aimée for the last time. We’ll also need contact numbers. Everyone who attended or worked at the party will have to be interviewed.”
“Some pretty important people are on that list.”
“We’ll need to talk to everyone.”
“Even Senator Colman? Or Governor Hardesty? Or Margaux Amory? Obviously none of them had anything to do with Aimée’s death.”
“I’m sure not. But it’s impossible to know who, if anyone, may have seen something or someone that might turn out to be important to the case.”
Whitby sighed. “Fine. My assistant can make up a list with contact numbers. I’ll call her at home and have her get started. I’ll try to figure out if there is anyone else still here and ask them to stay.”
“Who catered?”
“A company called Great Expectations. They handle all our parties and events. Both corporate and personal. I guess I better come back to town so we can talk face-to-face.”
“I’d rather you stayed on the island for the time being. My partner, Sergeant McCabe, and I will need to come out to the island to have a good look around. We’ll also want to talk to you and your family and whoever else still there who might have seen Aimée last night. Oh, by the way, do you get cell service on the island?”
“Intermittent. On the side facing Portland, where the house is, it’s quite good. On the backside by the cliff, practically nothing.” Whitby paused and then asked, “Where is Aimée now? Her body, I mean?”
“In the morgue at Cumberland Medical Center. The medical examiner will be performing an autopsy this afternoon.”
“Is that really necessary? It just hurts. The idea of someone cutting up my child.”
“I’m afraid it is. In all cases of homicide, an autopsy is required by law. It can also be very helpful in identifying the perpetrator.”
Maggie heard another deep sigh on the other end of the phone. “Have you told Aimée’s mother yet?”
“Sergeant McCabe is with her now.”
“Poor Tracy. This has got to be absolutely devastating for her.”
“And for you as well.”
“Yes. And for me. Let me know when you’re coming.”
“I will. Let me have the best number to reach you.”
He gave it to her. Then added, “Call me before you come. I can have my helicopter waiting for you.”
“No need. The Portland fireboat can bring us out.”
“The chopper’s faster. By the way, I suppose Tom Shockley knows about Aimée?”
“Yes, sir. He’s assigned Sergeant McCabe and me to head up the investigation.” That was only a small lie. “We’re the department’s senior homicide investigators. We’ll be running things. And, of course, Chief Shockley will be fully involved in the investigation.”
“Frankly, if I were you, I’d keep him as far away from this as you can. I suspect you know as well as I do, Shockley’s an ass.”
Maggie didn’t say anything. And, of course, Whitby couldn’t see her smiling.
When they’d broken the connection, she texted McCabe. Whitby notified.
Chapter 30
MCCABE LEFT TRACY’S house and called Maggie from the car.
“Can you talk?”
“Yes. You’ve finished with Tracy?”
“All done. But something else has come up.” He told her about Byron Knowles’s disappearance. “We need to talk to the wife next. Be a good idea if we did it together. I want to drop the Bird off at my place. Maybe you could pick me up there.”
As McCabe headed home, his mind focused on the text Byron Knowles sent his wife. I can never forgive myself for the terrible things I have done. Okay, so what was it Knowles had done? Given the timing, maybe Knowles got drunk enough at the party to lose control and rape one of his own students. When it was over, maybe she threatened to turn him in and he killed her to avoid punishment. Consumed with guilt, he then killed himself. That seemed possible.
On the other hand, maybe the sex had been consensual and ongoing. An affair between student and teacher, forbidden both by law and moral custom. Maybe Aimée wanted to break it off. Knowles didn’t. They argued and Aimée threatened to go public. Not being able to face the scandal, Knowles killed her and then himself. All of it possible, but why in hell carve an A in Aimée’s chest? As an English teacher, he certainly would have been familiar with Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. Maybe even assigned it in one of his classes. In which case, the blood red A carved into Aimée’s chest stood for Knowles’s adultery and not her own.
Of course, he could be overthinking it. Possibly his first guess was the right one. That Knowles just got drunk at the party, made a pass at a beautiful girl, lost control and raped her. She threatened to turn him in. Tell her father. Knowles panicked and killed her. He had a boat. People keep knives on boats they use for fishing. Maybe he was giving her a ride back to Portland when it happened. But if so, why not just dump her body at sea? Why drag it to the East End and up the Loring Trail? Especially if she was still alive. Which Scott said she was. And again, why in God’s name carve the letter A on her chest? It had to be meant as a message or a confession.
Of course there was one other possibility. That Knowles’s disappearance had nothing to do with Aimée’s death other than the coincidence of timing. Maybe he was just an unhappy husband who wanted to run away from a bad marriage. Or throw himself into the ocean and end it all.
He called Fortier back. “Bill,” said McCabe, “can you get us Knowles’s cell phone records as well as Aimée’s? Every number called. Every text. Every voice mail. Every e-mail. We need to know if their relationship was more than just normal student and teacher.”
“Cleary’s already on it. Let you know when we get them.”
He next texted Casey, who, at this hour, would still be asleep. Out working. Brand-new homicide. Talk later. He briefly considered changing his plan to use Sandy’s uncanceled reservation at Fore Street for the celebratory dinner she was supposed to have had with her daughter. On the other hand he didn’t want to disappoint Casey the way he’d so often disappointed Kyra.
Chapter 31
From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.
Entry dated June 28, 1924
I have, for many years now, suffered a recurring dream, the images of which have lately tormented me night after night. In this dream, I see Aimée gazing out from within the glass of an old mirror. I can see no reflection of myself in this mirror. Or of the room in which I sit. It is as if I am looking through a window darkening with age. There is only Aimée on the other side. Behind her, the clutter of her island studio as it was in that fateful final year.
She stands before her easel, working on a canvas. It is turned toward her, so I cannot see the i
mage she is working on. However, from time to time, she looks into the glass at herself, unaware both of my presence and the longing I feel for her, just feet away. Unaware, as well, of the tortured wreckage I have become. As she looks, she turns her head, first this way and then that, studying, I assume, the structure and color of her own face. Then she turns back to the canvas and works the colors into it. I think this must be a self-portrait she is working on. She painted many of these in the years we were together. I have kept them, and they are precious to me.
She looks pleased with her work. As she examines it, she smiles the same smile I remember so clearly from our first day at the Académie in Paris. The face and smile I fell so hopelessly in love with. I yearn to again hold her. To take her into my arms. To press my lips against hers. To make love as ardently as we did back then, when we were both too young and eager and, in the way of youth, too selfish to understand where love might lead.
I reach out, wanting to touch her face, but my hand is stopped by hard glass. I press harder. Still I cannot penetrate this brittle barrier. I knock, as if knocking on a doorway to the dead will convince Aimée to open it and allow me to join her on the other side. She appears not to hear my knocks, so I knock louder. Still the door will not open. She will not let me in.
An uncontrollable rage builds within me. I get up and lift the chair I am sitting on. I swing it with all my might. The glass explodes. Knifelike shards fly toward her. They strike her face and body. She erupts in blood from a thousand cuts. She stares at me with a horror which, in my life, I have never seen on another human face.
I fly through the open space where the glass once was. I reach out, wanting to comfort her. To heal her wounds. She turns and flees. Runs toward the cliff. I follow, desperately calling her name, trying to stop her before she gets to the edge.
I am too late. I peer over the edge and see her naked body falling. Arms flailing, face looking up into mine. She falls for what seems an eternity, reaching up for me to save her as she goes. I try, but cannot. I tell myself to follow her over the cliff. But I don’t. I simply watch as she falls faster and faster and finally lands on the rocks below, breaking into a thousand pieces like a glass figurine, its delicate and now broken parts strewn across the bottom of the cliff. As I look down, I scream in anguish at the sight of her lying there, and it is my screams that, night after night, wake me from this ghastly nightmare.
Chapter 32
MAGGIE HANDED MCCABE a large Styrofoam cup of coffee and a paper bag. “Here. Stopped for these up on the way over. Figured you hadn’t had a good nutritious breakfast yet.”
She pulled the unmarked Interceptor out onto the Eastern Prom and turned right toward the Old Port.
He peered inside. Two chocolate-covered donuts. “Both for me?”
“Both for you. I gobbled mine on the way over.”
He bit into one, licked chocolate off his finger and washed it down with a generous slug of the coffee.
“Do you suppose,” he asked, “that we became cops because we like donuts? Or that we like donuts because we became cops?”
They crossed Franklin and continued west on Fore Street, still quiet at six thirty on a Friday morning.
McCabe finished his first donut and pulled the second from the bag.
“I think,” said Maggie, bearing left onto York Street and heading for the Casco Bay Bridge, “that we like donuts because, as responsible, health-conscious adults, we are both aware that a good, nutritious breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Exactly what my mother used to say when she poured me my Sugar Pops.”
“A wise woman. How’s she doing?” Maggie stayed in the middle lane as she crossed the bridge that spanned the Fore River and separated Portland from South Portland, or SoPo, as it was called. She turned right onto Cottage Road, then left onto Ellesmere.
“Not so great. According to my brother Bobby, she’s getting more and more forgetful all the time. He thinks it’s Alzheimer’s.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Maggie. She navigated a series of lefts and rights that led to Willard Haven Place, where Byron Knowles and his wife, Gina, lived. “Changing the subject, how convinced are you that Knowles killed Aimée?”
“ ‘I can never forgive myself for the terrible things I have done’? I suppose that could refer to a lot of things, but given the coincidence of timing, it sure seems likely that what he can’t forgive himself for is killing her.”
“Jesus, her English teacher. If you can’t trust your English teacher, who can you trust?”
“Yeah. It makes me happier than you can imagine that Casey’s English teacher is a fifty-five-year-old overweight female.”
They pulled up in front of a small, light green Cape Cod on Willard Haven Place in the Willard Beach section of the city. Another unmarked police car was parked on the opposite side of the street. A big man with a dark black mustache exited the vehicle. Maggie and McCabe crossed over to meet him.
“Detective Holmes?” asked McCabe.
“Yup, Tommy Holmes.”
“Anybody ever call you Sherlock?”
“Only folks who don’t mind getting their asses kicked.” Since Holmes stood a good six foot three and probably weighed 220, most of it muscle, there was no question he could have kicked most asses without breaking a sweat. Including McCabe’s.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said McCabe with a smile. “Anyway, I’m Detective Sergeant Mike McCabe. This is my partner, Detective Maggie Savage.”
They all shook hands. “You talked to the wife yet?” asked Maggie.
“Yeah. One of our patrol guys answered the missing persons call. When she showed him the text, he alerted me.”
“You checked the source of the text?”
“Yeah. It definitely came from Knowles’s cell phone. He sent it at 2:21 a.m. Phone’s been offline ever since. Pops right to message. I asked her where Knowles was last night. Apparently he teaches English at Penfield and went to a school graduation party out on Whitby Island. Went in his own boat.”
“What kind of boat?”
“An old nineteen-foot Midland he fixed up himself. Mostly uses it for fishing. He was supposed to be back by midnight. Never showed. He keeps the boat at the Sunset Marina off Front Street. We checked, and it wasn’t there. But his car was still in the lot. A maroon ’02 Camry.”
“Anything of interest in the car?”
“Nah. Just some empty coffee cups and a kid’s toy.”
“Did you look in the trunk?”
“Yeah. Just in case he’d been murdered and stuffed in there. But there was nothing there. It’s possible he had some kind of problem with the boat on the way home. Engine conking out or whatever. But given the contents of the message, I’ve got a feeling he took a dive. Coast Guard Search and Rescue are looking for both the boat and for Knowles if he’s in the water. When I heard you guys had a brand-new homicide, a female teenager, and since Knowles taught teenagers, seemed like there might be a connection. I don’t know. Like maybe he killed your vic and then himself. Or maybe he’s using the boat to make a getaway.”
“Definitely a connection. Our victim was in Knowles’s class and was at the same party with him.”
“Well, there you go then. Anyway, the Coasties are patrolling the area looking for him and/or the boat.”
“What’s the boat’s registration number?” asked McCabe.
Holmes took out his notepad. “Want me to write it out for you?”
“Not necessary. Just read it out loud. I’ll remember it.”
“You got a photographic memory or something?”
“Or something.”
Holmes shrugged and read off the six-digit registration number.
“I’ve also got somebody watching the car in case Knowles turns up. Also to make sure nobody else touches it till it can be checked for possible evidence.”
“Mag, would you see if Jacoby’s got anybody left who can go over the car?”
“If it helps, I
could have our people do it,” said Holmes. “We’ll send over whatever we find.”
“That’d be a big help. Thanks. We’re stretched thin at the moment.”
Holmes nodded and made the call. After he’d arranged for South Portland evidence techs to check out the Camry he hung up and asked McCabe, “Can you tell me the name of the victim yet?”
Since it’d be all over the media in just a couple of hours, there was no point in holding back. “She was Edward Whitby’s daughter. Veronica Aimée Whitby.”
“Whitby?” Holmes made a whistling sound. “That ought to make things interesting.”
“Yep. She took senior English from the missing Mr. Knowles. You get anything more from Mrs. Knowles?”
“Not really. I didn’t want to get into her relationship with her husband. Figured I’d leave that to you. By the way, you do know she’s gonna have a baby any minute?”
“We heard. Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Just as Holmes was getting in his car, McCabe called out, “Give my regards to Dr. Watson.” Holmes smiled and extended the third finger of his left hand.
Chapter 33
AS THEY WENT up the walk, McCabe suggested that Maggie do most of the talking. She was good at it, and he preferred watching for visual reaction. McCabe knocked. A very pregnant but otherwise slender-looking blonde in her midthirties opened the door. A little girl about four peered curiously out from behind her mother’s trousers.
“Mrs. Knowles?” asked Maggie.
“Yes. Gina.”
“I’m Detective Margaret Savage. Portland PD. This is Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe. May we come in?”
She eyed them suspiciously through large black-framed glasses. “Why Portland? I already talked to two people from the South Portland Police.”
“Detective Holmes called us because we’re investigating another case that might shed some light on your husband’s whereabouts. May we come in?”