The Cutting

by James Hayman

  To the right of the hall he found a formal dining room, a gleaming mahogany table and eight Duncan Phyfe chairs in the middle. He had a vivid memory of Sandy coveting a similar set in an antique store in Connecticut. Frustrated and angry they couldn’t afford even one of the chairs on a cop’s salary, she sulked all the way back to New York. Probably had the whole set now.

  Beyond the dining room McCabe found the small den he’d seen from outside on his first visit. It, too, lay silent and empty, the New York Times crossword still in the same place, still half finished. He crossed the hall. A pair of massive pocket doors, each weighing several hundred pounds, blocked entry to what he assumed was the living room. He gave one a gentle push. The beautifully balanced door rolled silently and smoothly into its pocket on the far side, revealing another empty room.

  An open bottle of Tanqueray stood on a silver tray on a walnut chest. The source, he supposed, of Hattie Spencer’s morning nip. On the opposite wall, a pair of tall windows looked out on the front garden. He remembered Hattie’s slender form outlined in the far window, seeing him off the property, just days before.

  Something soft rubbed against his leg. A small black-and-white cat looked up and purred, then continued past, squeezing itself under the protective legs of an upholstered chair. It peered out at McCabe. McCabe peered back. The animal decided to ignore the man and began licking its once white feet, now stained a dark red.

  The trail of cat’s prints led out into the hall and up the broad stairs that arched gracefully to the landing on the second floor. McCabe probably wouldn’t have noticed them against the dark wood had he not been looking for them. He touched a finger to one at the top of the stairs. Still damp. The paw prints led to a room at the end of the hall, its door open just enough for a small cat to have slipped through. McCabe walked to the end of the corridor, raised one foot, and gently pushed. Silence. He entered and scanned the room, pointing the .45 first left, then right. Sheets lay rumpled on a queen-sized four-poster bed, dark red bloodstains providing a vivid counterpoint to the white lace canopy above. Beyond the bed, McCabe saw a thickening pool still spreading slowly across the not quite level floor. He swallowed hard and walked around the end of the bed to the other side.

  Philip Spencer’s naked body lay on its back, his smug arrogance gone, his once handsome face contorted in agony. An overturned chair indicated a final struggle. He’d been stabbed half a dozen times. Where Spencer’s legs met, there was now only an open wound. On the wall above the bed, written in Spencer’s blood, a line from the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  McCabe counted the ways and counted again. Each time, the only answer that made any sense was the one that added up to Lucas Kane.

  47

  Friday. 12:30 P.M.

  McCabe’s eyes darted back and forth between Spencer’s body and the bloody writing on the wall. In his mind’s eye, he saw Lucas Kane standing triumphant atop Denali. Lucas Kane. Spencer’s lover. Spencer’s betrayer. Spencer’s killer. How do I love thee, Kane had asked. The only truthful answer was the one Browning had written. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. Assuming, of course, Kane’s soul was, as Melody Bollinger described, vicious and voracious, sex defining nearly everything Lucas Kane did. McCabe was sure Bollinger was right about these things. He was now also certain she was right about Kane being alive – and deep down inside himself, in a place of which he was only dimly aware, he knew that was something he was going to have to change.

  He heard steps in the corridor. Maggie’s long figure appeared in the door. She saw the bloody sheets on the bed. He held up a hand to stop her. Ignoring it, she crossed the room and looked down. She closed her eyes, opened them, looked around, walked to the master bathroom, bent over Harriet Spencer’s fancy French bidet, and threw up.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  He took out his cell and hit Tasco’s number. Just as it rang, they heard the steel basement hatch, outside the back door, clang shut. McCabe moved to the bathroom window. A tall figure, dressed in black and wearing cowboy boots, walked quickly but calmly to the side door of the garage. Then the man turned, looked up, and, for an instant, smiled at McCabe in the window. Before McCabe could get a shot off, Lucas Kane disappeared.

  ‘Mike, Mike, answer me. Dammit.’ Tasco’s voice, shouting from the cell.

  ‘The garage, Tom. He’s in the garage. Get him.’

  ‘Spencer?’

  ‘No, Spencer’s dead. The murderer.’

  From his right, McCabe saw Tasco and Fraser sprinting up the driveway, weapons drawn.

  ‘Careful, Tommy,’ he shouted into the cell. Tasco wasn’t listening.

  An engine roared to life. Garage doors slid open. Tires squealed. Philip Spencer’s black Porsche Boxster hurtled down the driveway, spraying gravel. Tasco leapt out of the way. Eddie Fraser stood his ground and fired twice. The car sideswiped Fraser, tossing him into the air. He landed hard on the lawn. The small Porsche just made it past Tasco’s blocking vehicle. It turned left and screamed away. Tasco squeezed off two rounds. Both missed. He ran to the radio in his Crown Vic. ‘This is seven-two-two. Detective down. I need an ambulance at 24 Trinity Street. Hit-and-run suspect vehicle heading west toward Vaughan. Black Porsche Boxster. Maine registration Two-Eight-Zero-One-Victor-Romeo. Repeat Two-Eight-Zero-One-Victor-Romeo. One male subject in vehicle. Consider armed and very dangerous. Over.’

  ‘Roger, seven-two-two. MedCU en route, 24 Trinity. We’ll be right there. Out.’ This was followed by the loud electronic signal that would alert all units that a priority transmission was about to be broadcast.

  The two patrol units that had been parked around the corner roared by in pursuit, lights flashing, sirens screaming. McCabe and Tasco reached Fraser simultaneously. Eddie was clutching his side, trying to sit up. Blood poured from a gash on his forehead. ‘Stay down. Ambulance’ll be here in a second,’ said McCabe.

  Tasco opened a first-aid kit, tore the paper wrapping from a bandage, and pressed it onto Fraser’s bleeding forehead. McCabe rose, walked toward the house, and stopped, reconstructing the scene in his mind. Had someone been in the car with Kane? Yes. A woman. A blonde. Hunched over in a strange position. Maybe shot. He walked back to Fraser. ‘Eddie? How many people did you see in the car?’

  Fraser held up two fingers.

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked McCabe.

  Fraser nodded and spoke through the pain. ‘A guy driving. A woman next to him.’

  ‘Did you hit either one?’

  He shook his head. ‘Shitty shooting, huh?’

  McCabe radioed from Tasco’s car. Two people in the suspect car. A dark-haired man and a blond woman, possibly Harriet Spencer, possibly Lucinda Cassidy, either a possible hostage.

  He wondered where Kane was heading and if the blonde was, in fact, Hattie Spencer. He’d only seen the woman for a split second as the Porsche sped down the driveway. Had she been restrained in any way? He backed his mind up to the single frame in which her image appeared just as he would a video editing machine. The frame was blurry. It flashed by so fast he couldn’t be sure.

  He returned to the house.

  Upstairs, he gazed at Spencer’s mutilated corpse. The sirens faded in the distance. The crime scene techs were on their way. He had to figure out what to do next. For the moment, he didn’t have a clue.

  Maggie appeared at his side. ‘McCabe, what in hell is this all about?’

  ‘It’s about Lucas Kane.’

  ‘I thought Kane was dead.’

  ‘Kane faked his own death.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Lots of reasons. Probably figured being dead would keep the cops from watching his new business venture too closely. Probably thought disappearing into the grave was cool.’

  ‘Cool like Harry Lime in The Third Man?
’

  ‘Cool like that.’

  ‘Why’d he have to castrate Spencer? Why couldn’t he just kill him … well … normally?’

  ‘I think it’s about power.’ Sex defined nearly everything Lucas Kane did. ‘In Kane’s mind, cutting off the genitals might have been a way of symbolically neutralizing an enemy’s power.’

  Maggie looked dubious.

  ‘That’s not a new idea. Balls have been a metaphor for bravery and power for a long, long time.’

  ‘Sick.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘You’re sure it was Kane you saw down there?’

  ‘You know me. I never forget a face.’

  ‘Jesus, McCabe, doesn’t this creep ever take a vacation?’ Bill Jacobi called from the door. ‘My guys can’t keep up with the corpses.’ He looked down at the mutilated body. ‘Cute. What did he do with the guy’s schwantz? Keep it for a souvenir? Terri here yet?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll get out of your way so you can do your job.’

  Outside, the scene had changed dramatically. An ambulance and half a dozen patrol units were pulled up, plus a couple more unmarked Crown Vics. Crime scene tape surrounded the property. Neighbors and passersby gawked from the street. Rumors of Philip Spencer’s violent death brought the media out in force. Flies to honey. News Center 6’s Josie Tenant once again in the lead. McCabe had no doubt her reports would go directly into NBC’s national feed. He owed Melody Bollinger a call, but that’d have to wait.

  A pair of EMTs lifted Eddie Fraser into the ambulance for the short ride to Cumberland. ‘Three or four broken ribs and a concussion,’ Tasco told them. ‘Maybe some other broken bones as well.’

  McCabe and Maggie walked over to Shockley and Fortier. ‘Anybody get the Porsche?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Shockley spoke first. ‘Nobody’s seen it since it left the West End.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ said Fortier. ‘If he’s still in it.’

  ‘He won’t be.’ McCabe told his bosses about Lucas Kane.

  ‘You’re sure it was Kane?’ asked Fortier.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘He’s got a hostage?’ asked the chief.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. We spotted a blond female in the car.’

  ‘Harriet Spencer? Lucinda Cassidy?’

  ‘My money’s on Hattie.’

  The call came less than a minute later. A female shopper pulling into a space on the upper level of a garage off Monument Square noticed a blond woman slumped in the Porsche parked next to her. She thought the woman might be sick, so she looked closer. Then she called 911.

  Five minutes later McCabe peered through the Porsche’s window himself. There was no doubt about it. The blond was Harriet Spencer, and she was dead. Stabbed in the heart, naked from the waist down, seat belt still engaged, pants and panties folded neatly on her lap. When they looked, the crime scene guys found sand in her panties. Beach sand, they thought.

  Kane must have driven into the garage, parked, and driven out in another vehicle. The garage didn’t have a surveillance camera. The cashier didn’t notice a thing. ‘Just great,’ said McCabe. ‘Now we don’t even know what kind of car we’re looking for.’

  ‘So what now?’ asked Fortier, frustration palpable in his voice.

  ‘Beats the shit out of me,’ McCabe muttered. ‘I guess we’ll think of something.’

  He checked his watch. In an hour and a half Sandy would be arriving to pick up Casey. He asked Maggie to give him a ride back to the condo.

  48

  Friday. 2:30 P.M.

  They drove in silence, their minds focused on Spencer’s death, needing to figure out what to do next. Images of the city slid by. At the end of Danforth, a bronze statue of John Ford, a Portland native, relaxed in an oversized director’s chair. Nearby, giant fish kites fluttered above a Japanese restaurant. Maggie took the half right onto Fore Street and headed into the Old Port. McCabe gazed absently at the passing parade, strategies, angles of attack, taking shape in his mind. He watched a pack of noisy teenagers, boys in baggy pants, girls showing too much skin, pointing and giggling at the silly sex toys in the windows of Condom Sense. A trio of Muslim women, heads and bodies covered, gave the same windows sidelong glances as they passed.

  Did you consider Kane a friend? he’d asked Hattie. She’d smiled an ironic smile. No, I never would have called Lucas that. No. Kane wasn’t Hattie’s friend. He was her lover. A lover Hattie helped by fingering candidates with the right blood types. Fingering candidates for murder. Was Spencer dead because Hattie told him about it? Or maybe he figured it out on his own and confronted Kane. Either way he had to be eliminated – and so did she. In the Porsche, Harriet’s pants and panties lay neatly folded on her lap, sand inside the panties. Kane must’ve screwed her on a beach and stabbed her then and there. Death at the moment of orgasm? He imagined Kane getting off on it.

  Maggie missed the light at Pearl. While they waited, McCabe watched a group of office workers cross the street in front of them, probably escaping early for a September weekend. He envied them their freedom. When the light changed, Maggie drove across India and up Munjoy Hill, where Fore Street turns into the Eastern Prom. Casco Bay glittered before them.

  As she pulled in behind his condo, McCabe broke the silence. ‘Did you ever talk to DeWitt Holland?’

  ‘On the phone,’ said Maggie. ‘Not much joy in it. Said he hadn’t seen Spencer in a couple of years. I made a date to interview him in person tomorrow.’

  ‘Did he seem nervous?’

  ‘Not especially. Claimed he didn’t know anything about the murder, hadn’t even seen it on the news. “I don’t pay attention to things like that” is how he phrased it.’

  ‘Telling the truth?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He was pretty smooth.’

  ‘Maybe you better call your homicide buddy on the Boston PD. If Holland was involved or knew anything about it, he could be next on Killer Kane’s hit list.’

  Maggie reached for her cell and dialed. ‘His name’s John Bell,’ she said to McCabe as she flipped the phone to speaker mode.

  ‘Hey, Mag,’ Bell’s voice boomed out, ‘how goes the investigation? When are you coming down?’

  ‘John, I’ve got my partner, Mike McCabe, with me. You’re on speaker.’

  ‘Okay, that’s fine. What’s up?’

  ‘We’ve had another murder up here. Victim was a top heart surgeon. We think Dr. DeWitt Holland, a heart surgeon at the Brigham, may be the killer’s next target.’

  ‘Jesus, somebody have something against heart docs? Can you give me a little background on this?’

  McCabe slipped a note under Maggie’s nose. How much do you trust this guy?

  She scrawled underneath, Completely.

  ‘Mag, you there?’

  ‘Sorry, John.’ Maggie told Bell what they knew, starting with Katie Dubois’s murder and ending with Philip Spencer’s.

  ‘How does that connect with Holland?’

  ‘Spencer, Holland, and another transplant surgeon named Matthew Wilcox all did their residencies with Kane in New York in the eighties,’ McCabe said. ‘They were big buddies. Called themselves the Asclepius Society after the Greek god of healing. They stayed friends at least through the nineties, climbing mountains together, stuff like that. When Kane dreamed up this illegal transplant idea, naturally he needed a surgeon or two to help. Now we think Kane’s closing the business down and wants to get rid of anyone who knows anything. He’s already killed Spencer and Spencer’s wife. He may have killed Wilcox. We don’t know for sure if Holland’s involved, but if he is, he’s in grave danger. I suggest you get him into protective custody or at least have him covered if Kane comes calling.’

  ‘I’ll e-mail you what we have on Kane,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Any pictures?’ asked Bell. ‘Our guys will want to know who they’re watching for.’

  ‘An old one, take
n maybe ten years ago,’ said McCabe. ‘Shows the four friends on top of a mountain. We’ll have our computer guy age Kane a little and send it down.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Bell. ‘You still coming down, Maggie?’

  ‘Yeah, but not today. How about I let you know?’

  ‘I’d love to see you. It’s been what? Five years?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Maggie switched off the phone.

  ‘Flame still burning?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Maggie. ‘Anyway, like you, he’s taken. Married with a new baby.’ She smiled at him. ‘Good luck with the ex,’ she said. ‘You’ll want to spend some time with Casey, and I’ve got a lot that needs doing.’

  Though a good height for her age, five-four and still growing, Casey looked small in his big chair, feet not quite reaching the floor. Her red duffel, the one for overnights, waited on the floor by her side. Bunny sat perched on her lap. Casey fiddled with the animal’s remains, mostly just ragged ears.

  McCabe figured he could use something to fiddle with, too. A bunny for grow-ups. He thought how good a cigarette would taste right about now. It’d even make Sandy happy. She could report him for secondhand smoke. He pushed the urge away.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Ready to go?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re taking Bunny?’

  She looked up, her oval face, framed by dark hair, more like Sandy’s every day. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, as if expecting him to object.

  ‘Okay.’

  She had on one of her new outfits. He supposed the rest of the new clothes were packed in the bag. Sitting there she reminded him of the last kid at summer camp, the one whose parents always arrived late to pick her up. He sat opposite on the white couch. ‘It’ll be fine. You’ll have a good time.’