The Cutting mm-1

by James Hayman

  Fortier’s voice filled the small space.

  ‘A high school kid named Ryan Corbin. Seventeen years old. Body was found in a culvert at the side of the road. Shot point-blank through the head.’

  McCabe grimaced and wondered if he made the right choice not chasing the shooter across the field. He believed he had. Otherwise Sophie would have died for sure, he probably would have been shot, and the kid might have gotten killed anyway. ‘Hold on a sec,’ he told Fortier. ‘Mag, get some uniforms up here to watch over Sophie. Make sure it’s people we know, experienced people and not some rookie. Tell them to make sure nobody, especially Dr. Philip Spencer, goes anywhere near her. We’ve got to get up to Gray.’

  Maggie took out her own cell.

  McCabe turned off the speakerphone. ‘Where’d you find the body?’

  ‘Sheriff’s deputy found it about a mile and a half from where we found your car and the SUV. I’m headed there now. Come up to where you were. Follow Bucks Mill about a mile, then take a right on Taylorville Road. Go for about a mile and you’ll see a whole shitload of flashing lights. State’s saying this one’s MSP jurisdiction. We’re saying it’s an extension of the Dubois case so we’re still primary. Anyway, we’ll work it out with Matthews. By the way, your car’s being impounded as evidence. So’s the shotgun. Get yourself a rental. We’ll pay for it.’

  McCabe took the overnight bag into the bathroom and changed into the clothes Maggie had brought for him. Jeans. Black turtleneck. Beige windbreaker. Not exactly what he’d choose for a murder investigation, but fuck it. When he came out, two uniformed officers were already talking to Maggie. One was Kevin Comisky, whom he’d last seen leaving the scrap yard on Friday night. The other cop he’d seen a number of times at 109. He didn’t know his name.

  McCabe skipped the pleasantries. ‘Detective Savage fill you in?’

  They nodded. ‘Alright, let me reiterate. This woman is a key witness in the Dubois investigation, and her life is in danger. Someone’s already tried to kill her once. He’ll try again. I got a quick look at the bad guy from the rear. Shaved head. Big neck and shoulders. Maybe five-ten. Might be him coming for her. Might be somebody else.

  ‘She’s listed in this hospital as Jane Doe, and that’s the way it stays. When she comes out of surgery, you stick like glue. Walk with the gurney that takes her to her room and park yourselves outside the door. If one of you has to take a leak, the other stays put. When hospital personnel go into that room, doctors, nurses, anyone, you check their ID and then go in with them. Under no circumstances does a Dr. Philip Spencer go anywhere near her.’

  ‘If it’s Spencer, how do we stop him?’

  ‘Just tell him it’s orders, you have no choice — and don’t take any shit. He’s an arrogant bastard, and he’ll try to bully you. Clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ they said practically in unison.

  ‘Hospital security knows you’re here, and they’ll back you up. If anyone gives you a hard time, call me on my cell.’ He wrote down the number and handed it to Comisky. ‘Let me have your cell number.’

  ‘It’s 555-6655.’

  ‘Thanks. If any cops show up to relieve you, even if you know them, send ’em home. You’re on duty here until I personally relieve you.’

  33

  Wednesday. 4:30 A.M.

  Maggie drove fast. McCabe sat next to her, pondering their next move. Neither spoke. This thing was metastasizing, McCabe thought grimly. First Dubois. Then Sophie. Now this kid. Next maybe Lucinda Cassidy. They had to move fast before any more victims were claimed. In the dark, Maggie gave McCabe’s forearm a reassuring squeeze. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him,’ she said.

  The flashing light bars of half a dozen police cars, state and local as well as the PPD, lent an eerie glow to the night sky above Taylorville Road. A young trooper flagged Maggie to the shoulder a hundred yards short of the crime scene. He checked their IDs and told them they’d have to walk from there. Terri Mirabito’s van pulled in right behind. Terri grabbed her bag, and the three of them approached the yellow crime scene tape cordoning off the area where the boy had been killed. Inside, teams of crime scene techs, Jacobi’s and one from the state crime lab, were making measurements and taking pictures.

  McCabe and Maggie saw Bill Fortier standing with a senior MSP officer, and they went over to join them. Fortier made the introductions. ‘Detective Sergeant Mike McCabe, Detective Margaret Savage, this is Colonel Matthews. Colonel, you probably know the assistant ME.’

  Matthews extended his hand first to McCabe, then Maggie. ‘Ed Matthews,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you two.’ He smiled over at Terri. ‘I do know Dr. Mirabito.’

  McCabe’s mind played with the name. ‘Ed Mathews. Third baseman. Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta Braves. Only man to play with the Braves in all three cities. Five hundred and twelve career home runs. Tied with Ernie Banks for seventeenth on the all-time list. Voted into the Hall of Fame in 1978. Spelled with one T.’ What a lot of shit. Sometimes he wished he had a delete button for all the unwanted detritus that lingered in his brain.

  ‘Colonel Matthews and I have been discussing jurisdictional issues,’ said Fortier. ‘This could be considered an MSP case because the kid was killed out here in East Hoo-Haa and not in the City of Portland. On the other hand, with the obvious connection to the Dubois case, if that holds up, and we think it will, PPD has a material interest. What we’ve decided is that Portland will continue as the lead agency, you and Maggie as lead team, but MSP will commit any resources we need — detectives, uniformed assets, whatever. Anybody involved reports to you, Mike, and through you to me and then to Shockley.’

  ‘Feel free to call on me for whatever you need,’ added Matthews. ‘If we’ve got it, you’ve got it.’

  McCabe nodded, his hands stuffed in his pockets against the early morning chill. ‘Works for me.’ Truth was he couldn’t have asked for more. He was still running the show, but the new arrangement gave him extra resources whenever and wherever he might need them.

  *

  Maggie, Terri, and McCabe all donned latex gloves and paper booties and walked over to where the body lay in a small drainage culvert that ran between the side of the road and an open meadow beyond. In the predawn light, with his pants pulled down and his arms and head turned at improbable angles, the boy looked like an oversized puppet that had been carelessly tossed away. A cop shone his Maglite on the corpse. Dirt from dried tears marked the boy’s cheeks just below the eyes. An ugly star-shaped wound, black, red, and orange, shone like a gaping eye an inch above the left ear. The boy hadn’t bled much from the wound, but there was a lot of dried blood below his nose on his lips and chin and some spattered on his sweatshirt.

  Terri knelt in the culvert and examined the wound. ‘Not much question about cause,’ she said. ‘Contact wound from a rifle. The killer must have held the muzzle up close against the kid’s head. This stippling effect’ — she pointed with a finger — ‘was caused by muzzle gases burning and staining the skin.’ She pointed to a clearly round indentation in the center of the wound. ‘Muzzle impact.’ Then, looking up, she said, ‘It’ll match the bore of the weapon.’ She wiggled the boy’s nose with a gloved hand. ‘Nose is broken. The guy must have roughed him up first.’

  ‘Time of death?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘Only a few hours ago. Between midnight and 2:00 A.M. ’ She gently moved one of the boy’s wrists back and forth. ‘Rigor hasn’t set in yet. Looking at the scrapes on the back and buttocks, I figure he was shot up there on the road somewhere and dragged here postmortem.’

  ‘We’ve found the slug.’ Jacobi walked over from the road, carrying a small evidence bag. ‘Imbedded about six inches into the road. Should match the one we took from the seat of the T-Bird.’

  ‘It’ll match,’ said McCabe.

  ‘’Course it will,’ said Jacobi.

  Maggie and McCabe drove back to the crash site behind Bill Jacobi. They pulled in behind the crime scene tape about fifty yard
s away from the damaged vehicles. The shooter’s SUV was pretty nearly totaled, its hood smashed in against a two-hundred-year-old maple with a trunk that had to be six feet in diameter. A flatbed driver had positioned his vehicle behind the SUV and was preparing to haul it up onto his truck. Tom Tasco and Eddie Fraser were standing nearby.

  ‘He must have been doing forty at the moment of impact,’ Jacobi told McCabe. ‘The air bag deployed. Probably smacked him in the face. I’m surprised the son of a bitch was able to walk, let alone run.’

  ‘Anybody run the vehicle?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tasco. ‘Rented on September 13 at the Budget counter at Logan under the name of Paul Oliver Duggan. D-U-G-G-A-N. We assume that’s an alias.’

  ‘It is,’ said McCabe. ‘It’s another movie character. From Day of the Jackal. Paul Oliver Duggan was the name on the Jackal’s fake passport. Did Mr. Duggan have a reservation?’

  ‘No. He was a walk-up. No history of renting with Budget before. We’ve requested passenger manifests on all flights that arrived within three hours of the rental, but we doubt we’ll find the name Duggan.’

  ‘Let me check the manifests when they come in. The guy likes to use movie names. I may recognize one you miss. How about license and credit card?’

  ‘He had a California license and a valid Capital One Visa card. Both listed his home address as 5333 Zoo Drive, Los Angeles,’ said Eddie Fraser.

  ‘Let me guess. The L.A. Zoo?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘These guys are real comedians. Anything in the car?’

  ‘We’ll check for prints in Portland. The semen sample is going to a lab in Brunswick.’

  ‘He left the car in a hurry. He leave any stuff behind?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tasco. ‘A couple of country music CDs and an old DVD, apparently purchased out of the used pile at VideoPort on Middle Street. I guess after killing people, he likes relaxing with a movie.’

  ‘Let me guess again. Day of the Jackal.’

  ‘Two for two. There was also a pricey leather jacket. Nothing in the pockets except one of those tins of breath mints. Almost empty.’

  McCabe froze. ‘Altoids?’

  ‘Yeah, Altoids. Also a couple of empty tins on the floor. The guy must have been an addict.’

  ‘Shit.’ McCabe reached for his cell and punched in the number Comisky had given him.

  34

  Wednesday. 6:30 A.M.

  The shooter studied his image in the restroom mirror as he unwrapped the bandages from around his head. Nice touch for a hospital, he thought, hiding his shaved head with bandages instead of a hat. He once thought he ought to get a rug. It’d change his look alright. In the end, though, he decided there was no way he was gonna compromise his cool with something that looked so frigging ridiculous. He fingered the bruising under his left eye. It hurt. Fucking air bag smacked him in the face like a punch. Fuck it. Couldn’t do much about that now. He pulled off his jeans, rolled them into a tight ball, and hid them as best he could behind the toilet. He put on the scrubs and the little blue hat the cop had left behind in the bathroom. With the scrubs, he’d fit right in.

  He checked the Blackie Collins switchblade strapped to his leg. Nice to know it was there, though his two hands were all the weapons he’d need. He didn’t have the rifle. That was hidden in the truck, parked two blocks from the hospital and bearing a new set of license plates.

  The shooter looked again in the mirror. Blew himself a kiss. Forced himself to breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly. Deeply. Once. Twice. Three times. Keep it cool. Not too edgy. Not too excited. A stealth op. Excitement causes fuckups.

  Time for recon. If he was gonna get into the bitch’s room, he needed one of those plastic ID badges they all hung around their necks. He’d have to borrow one. That was job one. He exited the restroom, turned out the light, and quietly closed the door.

  ‘A lot of people suck Altoids, McCabe.’

  Maggie and McCabe were heading back down the turnpike toward Cumberland Medical. There was more traffic on the road now, the forward edge of rush hour, and McCabe was weaving around cars, siren blaring.

  ‘Yeah, I know, but I knew there was something not quite right about that guy. I should have seen it. I should have recognized him from his body shape. Didn’t fit with an old drunk sailor.’

  ‘Well, don’t take it so hard. I know you sometimes see yourself as SuperCop, but, like they say, shit happens. We make mistakes. We all do, even you.’

  ‘Work homicide long enough and it becomes part of your DNA that mistakes kill innocent people. Even not so innocent ones like my brother Tommy.’

  McCabe pulled off 95 by the mall and took the connector to 295. A couple of minutes later they were at the Congress Street exit heading to the hospital.

  Sophie Gauthier was out of recovery and in a room on the third floor. Finding the room turned out to be easy. When the shooter spotted a cop carrying two cups of coffee and a bag of something out of the cafeteria, he just followed the jerk right to the room. Then he kept walking. No one asked any questions. No one even looked up. Not the cops. Not the hospital security guys hanging around outside the room trying to act like they, too, were the real deal. Assholes.

  Okay, so he knew where she was. Now he just had to stop crapping around in the hallways and get the goddamn ID badge. It had to look at least a little like him. They’d for sure check the picture. It took the shooter a while, going up and down stairs, roaming the halls to find the right guy. Finally, on the fourth floor, a guy walking toward him looked close enough to work. Same shaved head. Same shape to his face. The shooter checked the badge as they passed each other. Charles Lowery, Radiology. Okay, Charles, let’s find somewhere we can be alone. The shooter did a quick 180 and followed Charles to the elevator bay at the end of the hall. Charles pressed the down button and waited. The shooter stood next to him. If the car was empty, he’d take Charles right away. When the body was found, it’d cause a commotion. Doctors, nurses, and the security guys, they’d all come running. Maybe the cops, too. Could be the opening he needed.

  Charles Lowery glanced at the shooter. Nodded his head. The shooter smiled and nodded back. A little bell rang and the elevator doors opened. The car was empty. They got on. Charles pressed the button for the ground floor. The doors closed.

  When the car began moving, the shooter turned to face Charles. In a single swift motion, he swung his right arm around Charles’s neck, pushing his head down and under his own left armpit. The shooter’s left forearm went under Charles’s throat. He pushed forward with his hip, made a quarter turn to the right, and jerked upward with his left arm, instantly breaking Charles’s neck. It all took less than three seconds.

  With Charles’s head still under his arm, the shooter lowered the body to a sitting position against the back wall. He pulled off the plastic badge, put it around his own neck, and took a deep breath.

  The elevator bounced to a stop on one. The shooter faced forward as the doors slid open. An elderly woman looked in with wide eyes. She looked down at Charles. Then up at the shooter. ‘Heart attack,’ the shooter said. ‘You stay here. I’ll get help.’

  She nodded. Before leaving the elevator, he reached back and pressed a button. Then he slipped out through the closing doors, smiling at the woman, who still stood outside. The elevator, empty except for Charles, ascended to three.

  The shooter walked to the nearest stairwell and stepped inside. On the landing he examined Charles Lowery’s picture. It wouldn’t pass close scrutiny. Charles was smaller, skinnier, but that didn’t matter. The badge only showed a head shot, and that was close enough. It’d do.

  Maggie’s Crown Vic squealed to a halt at the main entrance just as the shooter started up the stairs. McCabe killed the engine and siren and bolted out of the car at a run, Maggie right behind. Comisky told him they were putting Sophie, who was heavily sedated, in room 308. She’d be there by now. They entered the hospital and sprinted toward the elevator bay
down the hall to the right. An elderly woman with gray hair and a red face stood by the closed elevator doors, shouting, ‘He had a heart attack. He had a heart attack! He’s in the elevator!’ A hospital employee was trying to calm her down. McCabe glanced at the lights above the elevator doors. The car she was pointing to was stopped on three. The other was descending from seven. It could stop two or three times before it got to one.

  McCabe scanned the area, looking for the nearest stairs. Spotting the sign, he ran toward them.

  The shooter exited the stairwell on three and looked down the hall toward the open elevator doors. Pure chaos. Even better than he hoped. Doctors, nurses, and security guys all shouting and running toward the open elevator with Charles’s body in it. Even the cops left their posts. One ran from the door of Sophie’s room toward the crowd, then stopped ten feet down the hall, his back to the room, looking toward the commotion. The second cop stayed by the door but was out of his chair, watching the action, his back to the shooter.

  From what he could hear, it sounded like Charles was still alive and they were treating him for a broken neck. Tough little bugger. That snap should have finished him off. The shooter grabbed an abandoned meal cart and rolled it toward Sophie’s room. He pulled to a stop at the door. As quietly as possible, he opened the door and pushed the cart in. As he closed it, he heard the cop outside the door shout, ‘Hey, where do you think you’re going?’ The shooter left the cart in the middle of the room and slipped behind the door, pulling the Blackie Collins knife from its ankle sheath. He snapped it open.

  McCabe reached the third floor a full flight ahead of Maggie. He could see people milling around the elevator at the end of the hall. Midway down on the left, Comisky, in a crouch, gun drawn, was entering room 308. The door closed. McCabe sprinted toward the room, pulling his. 45 from its holster.

  He kicked open the door, holding the automatic in front of him. Kevin Comisky lay writhing on the floor, hands clutching at his neck, trying desperately to hold back gushers of blood spurting from a slashed carotid artery, his life running out. A man in scrubs stood over him, a short-bladed, bloody knife in hand. Surprise registered on his face at McCabe’s intrusion. Surprise turned to rage. ‘Too late, asshole.’