The Cutting mm-1

by James Hayman

  ‘Sergeant Cahill,’ he said to the voice on the other end. ‘Aaron Cahill.’

  McCabe found himself wondering if Cahill was still a cop, wondering if he was still in Orlando, wondering if there was a chance in hell he might have come to work early on a Sunday morning. If not, he’d try to get a cell number. Waiting, McCabe drummed his fingers on the surface of the desk. He glanced at the picture of Casey.

  ‘This is Cahill.’ A deep, Johnny Cash-like voice with traces of the Florida panhandle boomed over the phone line. Apparently Cahill had come to work.

  ‘Sergeant Cahill? This is Sergeant Michael McCabe, Portland PD.’

  ‘Two oh seven? Is that Maine or Oregon?’

  The Johnny Cash-like sound was uncanny. McCabe half expected Cahill to burst into a chorus of ‘I Walk the Line.’

  ‘Maine.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Elyse Andersen?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘We’ve got one of our own.’

  ‘No shit? Same MO? What do you know about the Andersen case?’

  ‘The MO’s not identical, but close enough. What I know is what I read in the Sentinel coverage.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Your vic’s nude body was accidentally discovered by a construction crew about three weeks after death. That part’s not similar. Our body was dumped in a scrap yard in the middle of town. The part that is the same is that the cause of death was the removal of the girl’s heart, and in both cases the ME says whoever removed the heart knew what he was doing.’

  ‘Yeah, the medical examiner felt pretty strongly that the heart was removed by a doctor, most likely a surgeon.’

  ‘Exactly what our ME said.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Cahill, ‘let’s talk, but just to make sure you are who you say you are, I’m going to call you back.’

  ‘Don’t you have caller ID?’

  ‘I do, but for all I know there could be a whole bunch of spare phones at the Portland PD.’

  ‘So call me back. Ask for Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe. You want the number?’

  ‘I’ll look it up.’

  McCabe hung up and waited. Less than a minute later, his phone rang. ‘Cahill?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s me. Tell me about your case.’

  McCabe ran down the basic facts surrounding the discovery of Katie Dubois’s body and what Terri Mirabito had reported, including that Katie died in excruciating pain.

  ‘Sounds like it could be the same guy,’ said Cahill, ‘but why would he bury the vic in one case and dump her in the middle of town in the other? Getting lazy?’

  ‘No. Our body wasn’t just dumped. I think he was presenting it to us. Maybe taunting us with it. I think he likes taking chances, gets off on it.’

  ‘Well, that part’s sure as hell different. Our guy was trying to hide the body. Only pure chance we ever found her. She was buried in a piney woods section of Orlando that was slated to become a new golf course. If construction took place as planned, we never would’ve found her. She would’ve been six feet under the ninth hole, probably forever.’

  ‘Sounds like Jimmy Hoffa under the fifty-yard line at Giants Stadium.’

  ‘Same idea,’ said Cahill.

  ‘So how’d you find her?’

  ‘The guy had no way of knowing it, but the architects decided to change the plans. They put the clubhouse where the ninth hole was going to be.’

  ‘So they sent the diggers in?’

  ‘You got it. Right in the middle of digging the foundation, the backhoe comes up with a load of mucky soil, and smack in the middle of it, there’s Elyse Andersen. At least what was left of her. The backhoe driver doesn’t notice her at first and drops the whole load into a dump truck. He finally sees one of the workers jumping up and down and pointing at the truck.’

  ‘Must have been a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I guess. But at least they were smart enough to know something serious was going on and call us immediately. She was mostly in one piece when we found her, except of course for her heart. She’d been dead three, maybe three and a half weeks. Naked. Badly decomposed. We might not have noticed that the heart had been removed except that the breastbone had been cut with a surgical saw and spread.’ There was a pause. ‘You guys check ViCAP for other cases where a heart’s been removed?’

  ‘We’re waiting on their report now.’

  ‘We didn’t find anything similar back then, but if it is the same guy, maybe Andersen was his first.’

  ‘You found Andersen by accident. There could be dozens of others who were never found,’ said McCabe, ‘and never will be. Unless we find the bastard and he leads us to them.’

  ‘So if it’s the same whacko — and that’s a big if — he suddenly switches MO and dumps her in plain sight. That’s because?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s a risk-taker. Maybe, like a junkie, he keeps needing a bigger and bigger hit to get the same high. Just killing them and cutting them up doesn’t do it for him anymore. He’s got to taunt us with them now.’

  ‘So how do we find him?’ asked Cahill.

  ‘If he’s itchy to get noticed, maybe he’ll find us. I assume you checked the local hospitals, surgeons, cardiologists, pathologists, nurses with OR experience, and so on?’

  ‘For weeks. My guys did over six hundred interviews. Anybody and everybody we could think of who might have had the skills and access to the tools to pull this off. All we got is a big fat goose egg. Zero. Not a damned thing.’

  ‘Anyway, can you find out if any of your local surgeons have since moved to Maine? Or New Hampshire? Or even Massachusetts?’

  ‘We can take a crack at it.’

  ‘Tell me about Andersen. How did the guy get his hands on her?’

  ‘It wasn’t random. He targeted her. She was a local real estate agent. The whole scam was pretty simple. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Unknown male calls her office. Asks for Andersen by name. Another saleswoman asked who was calling. He says his name is Harry Lime.’

  ‘Harry Lime? You’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. The character in The Third Man. Apparently the woman’s not a movie buff, and the name doesn’t mean a thing to her. Anyway, our so-called Harry Lime tells her he’s a potential buyer and Andersen was specifically recommended to him. He wants Andersen to show him a house. So she routes the call to Andersen. Notes on Andersen’s desk indicate the guy also tells her his name is Harry Lime. Said he was looking for a house in the eight-hundred-thousand to one-million range. He asks her to show him a specific house in a new subdivision. She agrees to meet him there. She never returned from the appointment. The house was locked up. Lockbox in place. No fingerprints anywhere. Not even hers. Her car was found in the driveway, but not in the center. Way over to the right. Like there’d been another car parked next to it. My guess is as soon as they go in, he jumps her, knocks her out or ties her up, then loads her in his car and drives off.’

  ‘Once again the risk-taker. Anybody could have seen him. I gather nobody did.’

  ‘Nope. All the houses around the one she was supposed to show him were empty. It was the middle of the day, and there wasn’t a soul around,’ said Cahill.

  ‘Well, that part sure fits with dumping a body in the middle of the city at eleven o’clock on a Thursday night. I assume you did a major search for her before the body turned up?’

  ‘Full-court press. We even had a couple of hundred National Guardsmen looking for her. Came up with zip.’

  ‘Did you check to see if his name might really be Harry Lime?’

  ‘We checked. AutoTrack came up with six Harry Limes. Two in L.A. One in Chicago. One in New York City. One in Georgia. One here in Florida. All came up negative. We think he was yanking our chains with the name.’

  ‘When did all this happen?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘More than a month before she was found.’

  ‘She was dead three to four weeks when you found her. Which
means he kept her for what? A week before he killed her?’

  ‘Based on the fact that she was buried about five feet down and the kind of bugs they found in the body, that’s what the ME figured, but it’s still a guess. You know as well as I do we can’t pin it down exactly, specially when you’re looking at decomposed remains.’

  ‘Even so, it’s about the same time frame we have here.’ One week. He wondered if that’s all the time they had to find Cassidy. One week. It wasn’t much. ‘What about the phone call?’ he asked.

  ‘It came from a pay phone outside a 7-Eleven. Nobody there remembered anybody using the phone around the time the call was placed.’

  ‘Anything else I should know about Elyse Andersen?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘What was she like? I saw her picture in the Sentinel. Good-looking woman.’

  ‘That she was. Twenty-six years old. Blond. She was a competitive triathlete. She’d been training for an upcoming event.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’ McCabe said. ‘Dubois was young, blond, and an athlete. High school soccer player. Prospect for all-state this year.’

  ‘Could be a coincidence,’ said Cahill.

  ‘Maybe,’ said McCabe. ‘Or maybe he likes blonds with firm muscles and healthy hearts.’ McCabe told Cahill about the disappearance of Lucinda Cassidy. A blond and a runner. Training for a 10K. Andersen. Dubois. Cassidy. Three young blonds. Three athletes. Coincidence? McCabe didn’t think so. Neither did Cahill.

  ‘I’ll e-mail you the case files, but I want you to promise to keep me in the loop. Specially if you find something. I’ll reopen this case in a minute if I think you can give us something to go on.’

  ‘That’s a deal.’

  All of McCabe’s detectives plus a few others on loan from the Crimes Against Property unit were crowded into the small fourth-floor conference room. Some were standing against the wall, others sitting. Most were sipping coffee from paper cups, eating bagels and doughnuts, and basically bullshitting when McCabe arrived. Bill Fortier was hunched silently at the head of the table with a worried look on his face. Tom Tasco was reading the Press Herald coverage of the Dubois murder. A detective from the other side of the building was peering over his shoulder. McCabe’s picture, taken at the press conference, was on the front page next to images of Shockley and Katie Dubois. The photographer had caught him off guard, a questioning scowl on his face. He seemed to be looking into the distance, and McCabe guessed it was snapped just as he had seen his mystery woman take off. Maggie, who was leaning back in her chair, long legs propped against the side of the table, quipped, ‘Nice shot, McCabe. Makes you look like you not only want to catch the bad guy, you want to eat him for lunch.’

  ‘Yeah, Mike, you’ve gotta learn to smile for the camera,’ added Bill Bacon.

  Ignoring the hazing, McCabe poured coffee for himself from the urn just outside the door before sitting down.

  Fortier began. ‘Okay, let’s start with Dubois. What leads do we have? What leads was Shockley talking about?’

  ‘Shockley was mostly blowing smoke for the media, Bill,’ said Tom Tasco. ‘The only thing that remotely qualifies as a lead is a surveillance video of a vehicle that arrived in the right place at what we think may be the right time.’ He filled the others in on what the moving company’s security camera had recorded and what Starbucks had built from it.

  ‘I’ve got the DMV reports.’ Eddie Fraser was waving a batch of printouts with one hand and eating a chocolate-covered doughnut with the other. There were bits of chocolate around his mouth.

  ‘That was fast,’ said McCabe.

  ‘That’s ’cause we’re good,’ said Fraser. ‘Like we agreed, we covered all of Maine, all of New Hampshire, and we threw in Massachusetts north of Boston as a wild card. Owners of late-model Lexus or BMW SUVs who are doctors, surgeons, pathologists. We added biologists at the high school and college level, figuring they ought to be good at cutting up frogs and mice, if not people. We came up with four hundred and sixty-two names.’

  ‘If we’re talking about people who’re good at cutting up animals,’ asked Will Messing, ‘why not check butchers? They cut up animals all day.’ The others looked at Messing as if he’d descended from another planet.

  ‘Butchers?’ said Maggie. ‘You mean like grocery store butchers? You think a butcher could have done this?’

  ‘Why not? They’re good at cutting meat, and who says a butcher can’t be a freak?’

  ‘It’s a hell of a leap from a surgeon to a butcher,’ said Tom Tasco.

  ‘Use your imagination,’ Messing persisted. ‘My brother-in-law’s a butcher. You should see him butterfly a leg of lamb. It’s like an art form.’

  ‘C’mon, Will, for Christ’s sake, we’re talking about a teenage girl here. Not a leg of lamb,’ said Carl Sturgis.

  ‘You want to make your brother-in-law a suspect?’ Tasco laughed.

  ‘I think we’re getting a little off track,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Messing shrugged at them. ‘Just trying to think outside the box.’ Clearly he felt the others didn’t recognize creative thinking when they heard it.

  ‘Anyway,’ Eddie Fraser continued, ‘I cross-checked the DMV list with AutoTrack. Numbers went up to four ninety. Obviously we’ve got to run down that list. Separate the probables and possibles from the impossibles and the unlikelys. We’ve already started, but with four hundred and ninety names we’re going to need some help.’

  ‘Well, you should be able to disqualify a lot of them right off the bat,’ said McCabe. ‘Bill, can you assign some additional detectives and patrol officers to help Tom and Eddie run down the list?’

  Fortier nodded. ‘No problem. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tasco. ‘We’re reinterviewing Katie’s friends at school. Plus her teammates on the soccer team. We want to see if any of them remember anything they didn’t want to tell us when they thought she was still alive. Sometimes kids hold stuff back they think their friends wouldn’t want cops to know.’

  Maggie said, ‘I’m sorry, but that whole scenario just doesn’t work for me. I don’t buy that the kids she was with had anything to do with this. My bet is talking to them won’t get us anywhere. So let’s start with what we do know. We’ve got a sixteen-year-old high school girl. No Goody Two-Shoes, but not a bad or a wild kid either. Good athlete. Okay student. Anyway, Wednesday night she’s out cruising around the Old Port with a group of friends. She has a fight with her boyfriend and storms off. The others figure she’s just blowing off steam and they’ll run into her later — ’

  ‘Which they never do.’

  Maggie continued. ‘So is she heading for home? We don’t know. If so, how does she plan to get there? We don’t know. She doesn’t have a car, and Jack’s checked every taxi company in town and come up empty. It’s three or four miles to her house. Walkable but still a pretty good hike. Plus she never got there. So what the hell happened to her?’

  ‘Somebody grabs her off the street, shoves her into his car, and off they go,’ said Tasco.

  ‘Unlikely in the Old Port,’ said McCabe. ‘Too many people around. Maybe farther out, or maybe she hitches a ride.’

  ‘Only if she knew the guy,’ said Maggie. ‘Her mother insists she’d never get in a car with a strange guy, assuming her mother knows what she’s talking about.’

  ‘Her parents told you they were home from 6:00 P.M. on, so they would’ve heard her if she ever arrived?’ asked Fortier.

  ‘Yeah. It’s the same thing they told Tom and Eddie. We have no reason to doubt it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said McCabe, ‘let’s say she knew the guy at least well enough to accept a ride from him. So who does she know who also has the skills to be the freak? Her doctor, maybe?’

  ‘I got the name of their PCP from Katie’s mother,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s a female doc at the family health place on India. Dr. Annabelle Blum. We haven’t had a chance to interview her yet.’

  ‘Ok
ay,’ said McCabe, ‘let’s scratch Dr. Blum. At least for now. How about a biology teacher at the high school?’

  ‘Portland High has three biology teachers,’ said Fraser. ‘The department head’s a gray-haired sixty-one-year-old woman named Angela Kovaleski. Katie was in her class last year. Got a B. Teacher number two is younger but also female — ’

  Sturgis interrupted. ‘We seem to be excluding people because they’re female. Do we know for sure the killer’s not a female?’

  ‘Not for certain,’ said McCabe, ‘but sexual sadists are almost always male. Unless we have a compelling reason to believe otherwise, I say we’re looking for a guy.’

  ‘The third biology teacher is a guy,’ said Fraser. ‘Name’s Tobin Kenney. We haven’t interviewed him yet. He’s in his twenties. This is his third year at the school. Came here from Norway — ’

  ‘The town or the country?’ asked McCabe. Norway, Maine, was about fifty miles north and west of Portland, just fifteen miles beyond Poland.

  ‘The town,’ Fraser replied. ‘One more thing. He’s also the assistant girls’ soccer coach.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Maggie. ‘That means Katie knew him. Probably trusted him.’

  ‘She was on the team?’ asked Fortier.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Tom Tasco. ‘Big-time. Best sophomore they had last year. Kenney certainly knew her, and potentially Kenney’s got the skills to be the freak.’

  ‘Is he on your Lexus list?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘Nope,’ said Fraser, leafing down the list of names. ‘We don’t know what he drives.’

  ‘That doesn’t exclude him,’ said Maggie. ‘No way it excludes him.’

  Though she spoke in even tones, McCabe sensed Maggie was getting excited. Like a hound who picks up a scent and is just aching to be let loose to follow it. Well, he’d been there a lot of times himself. So far it seemed a slim connection, but maybe the scent would lead somewhere. ‘Okay,’ said McCabe. ‘Maggie and I will track down Mr. Kenney later today.’

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Fortier.

  ‘Yeah. A couple of things,’ said McCabe. ‘First, Maggie got the autopsy report.’