by James Hayman
McCabe waited a few seconds while his eyes adjusted to the light. Then he searched every inch of the garage floor. No luck. No phone. Not even one smashed to smithereens by having car wheels roll over it as it backed out of the garage. The killer must have taken it with him. A smart, if temporary, way to keep McCabe from calling for help.
At least whoever had whacked him had been considerate enough to have dragged or rolled McCabe’s unconscious body over to the kitchen side of the garage before backing out. More thoughtful than driving over him. Possibly he or maybe she had no interest in killing people who weren’t involved in any rapes. On the other hand, they’d put that bullet in Norah Wilcox’s brain and as far as McCabe knew Norah hadn’t raped anyone.
Heading back into the kitchen, McCabe couldn’t shake the image of Norah’s dead eyes staring blankly up into his, as if pleading with him to find and punish whoever it was who’d taken her life. He offered up a silent promise that he would.
McCabe turned on a light in the kitchen. In a drawer under a whiskey glass that held the drying remains of what looked and smelled like Scotch, McCabe found a pile of dishtowels. He took one and opened the freezer door. The first thing he noticed inside was a clear rectangular bottle lying on its side. The glass bottle was marked by what looked like an upside down T atop a second upright T. Beneath the double T logo, at the bottom of the bottle, was the brand name. Double Cross. He left the bottle where it was and filled the towel with a handful of ice cubes and pressed them against the side of his head.
Leaning against a kitchen counter, McCabe held the icy towel in place with one hand and held his Glock with the other, guarding against possible invasions that might possibly come from either the garage or the living room doors. As he stood waiting for the ice to do its magic, he considered the possibility, even probability, that it was Joshua Thorne who had killed Norah. If that’s what had happened Thorne must have somehow convinced Norah to untie the ropes that were binding him to the bed. He probably promised not to hurt her if she did. Probably promised her money. He sure as hell had plenty of it. The guy was a Wall Street millionaire. Money was his stock in trade. Prostitutes are by definition greedy so, for argument’s sake, say she buys his bullshit. She cuts the ropes and frees him from the bed. When she does, wham! He leaps up and grabs her. He’s enraged at what she’s done to him. Tying him naked to a filthy mattress. Blindfolding him. Photographing him that way and then e-mailing the photograph to Josh’s wife. So enraged that once he’s free he grabs a gun. Whose gun? His own? Unlikely. Hers? Possible. Even probable. A high-priced prostitute who makes a living going into strange men’s homes and trading sex for money might well carry a gun for protection. Holding her gun on him would seem like a smart thing to do if she was cutting the ropes and freeing him. But despite the gun, when he’s finally free, he goes for her. She wants to shoot but hesitates. Or maybe she fires and misses. But Josh doesn’t. He’s an athlete. Big, strong and fast. He grabs her and wrestles the gun away. Then he picks her up and hauls her down to the car where he tosses her in the trunk. She reaches out, pleading for her life. But Josh is too pissed about the whole bondage thing to listen to her pleas. He’s got the gun in his hand. He uses it, and bang, just like that, Norah’s dead. Then what? Josh is standing there naked so he goes back into the house to find his clothes. But that’s when McCabe arrives. Josh hustles upstairs and waits, hoping McCabe will leave, or thinking maybe he’ll have to shoot him if he doesn’t. But McCabe doesn’t leave. Instead he seems to be searching the house. He goes into the garage where he finds Norah’s body. Josh doesn’t know McCabe’s a cop. Maybe he figures he’s just a pal of Norah’s. Who knows, maybe her pimp, so he’d better get the hell out of there. McCabe is bending down, looking at Norah and not toward the kitchen. Josh sneaks into the garage. If McCabe turns and sees him, Josh will have to kill him. But McCabe doesn’t see him so there’s no need to shoot. Instead Josh grabs something in the kitchen, sneaks up behind McCabe and clobbers him. Pausing only to steal McCabe’s phone, he gets dressed and drives away. Dumps Norah’s body and goes back to the Regency Hotel readying his story for the cops. Yeah, I did pick this babe up at the Port Grill. Yeah, I did screw her. Yeah, she did tie me up and take that picture. But then she took off. It took me hours but I finally managed to free myself from the bed. So I got dressed and took off myself. Came back to the hotel.
Still holding the ice pack against his head, McCabe headed to the closet to see if Thorne’s clothes and wallet were still there. They were. Still balled up behind the vacuum cleaner. He wouldn’t have fled the house naked but he might have found some of Bob Bickle’s old clothes and put them on. Maybe Bickle was a big guy and his clothes would fit Josh. One way to find out. McCabe reached down and pulled out the suit jacket. He felt the breast pocket. The wallet was still there, and so no, Thorne wasn’t Norah’s killer. While he might have worn some of Bickle’s clothes to flee, he never would have left his wallet behind.
McCabe debated his immediate options. He supposed he could go to his car and use the police radio to call for help. Or bang on Mrs. O’Malley’s door, wake her up and ask to use her phone. But if Thorne wasn’t the killer, there was at least a slim possibility he was still alive and still tied to the bed upstairs. That meant the first priority had to be going upstairs and finding him. If he wasn’t dead, McCabe would do what he could to help him survive. If he was dead, he’d then head back to the car and use the radio to call for help.
McCabe headed toward the narrow stairwell that led up to the bedrooms. He climbed slowly, silently, keeping his body in a low crouch and listening for the slightest sound. When he reached a point where he could just peer over the top step, he stopped and scanned the scene from floor level. The second-floor landing consisted of a small, carpeted hallway with three doors. One to his right. One to his left. One dead ahead. He climbed the remaining steps in semidarkness, the landing lit only by reflected light from the kitchen. According to Bob Bickle the door to the left led to the unused storage bedroom. The room most likely to house an iron bedstead, a filthy mattress and a bound and blindfolded man.
McCabe put his makeshift ice bag on the floor, held his gun in two hands and pushed the door open with his foot. He waited. When no shots rang out in response, he moved into the room fast and silent, his weapon leading the way. The first thing he noticed was something wet and sticky under his booties. A faint but familiar smell tainting the air. He knew immediately what it was. Blood slowly congealing on the bare floor beneath his feet. McCabe looked up and saw a cord attached to an overhead light. He pulled on it and any doubts as to the fate or whereabouts of Joshua Thorne vanished. There he was. Still naked. Still bound to the bed frame by clothesline. Only the blindfold had been removed, suggesting, perhaps, that the killer wanted Thorne to witness his own death. And possibly to see who it was who was taking his life.
The killing of Joshua Thorne couldn’t have been more different than the killing in the garage. The single shot to Norah’s head was quick, efficient and about as impersonal as murder ever gets. Thorne’s death was far more brutal. Savage, sadistic and sexually very angry.
McCabe supposed that the killer had taken out Norah first to make sure she couldn’t finger him as the one who had hired her to lure the victim to this house. After she was dead, the killer had come upstairs and finished this sadistic business. McCabe studied the victim’s body.
There was a deep ugly wound between Thorne’s legs where his genitals had once been but were no longer. It seemed to McCabe from the amount of blood that had poured from that wound that Thorne had been both alive and likely conscious, his heart still pumping, when the killer castrated him. McCabe remembered Maggie once saying after they’d arrested a serial rapist, “They ought to cut this bastard’s balls off,” she’d said. “That’d fix him.”
Well, this time they’d fixed him good. The idea that Thorne was still alive to witness the torture sent an involuntary shudder through McCabe’s body. Despite a fair amount of blood
staining the cardboard, the words Rapists Get What Rapists Deserve remained partially visible.
McCabe wondered if the killer, having completed the gruesome surgery, had stood in the room and listened to Joshua Thorne’s screams. Maybe the same screams that prompted Mrs. O’Malley next door to call in her complaint of excessive noise. McCabe imagined the killer standing there watching the agony on the victim’s face and listening to Thorne’s cries with a sense of satisfaction before finishing the execution by cutting Thorne’s throat from ear to ear. The cut across the neck was so deep that it had nearly severed the victim’s head from his body.
McCabe quickly checked the other bedroom and the bathroom. Finding them both empty, he headed downstairs. Leaving the bloody booties by the door, he left the house and headed for his car. When he reached his car, he used the police radio to call in the murders. He also asked Dispatch to have someone ping his cell phone. He hoped it would still be in the killer’s pocket. He then headed back to the house.
Chapter 24
WHILE MAGGIE WAS debating how much of Heather Loughlin’s version of events to believe, her cell phone vibrated. Caller ID said Holden College. Maggie figured it had to be Ann Nixon getting back to her. She let it go to message. She’d return the call when she’d finished getting what she could from Heather.
“Why did the girl, this Hannah Reindel, wait four months before reporting the crime?” she asked.
“My opinion? Because there was no crime. It was all bullshit. No crime, no rape. She probably got a little or maybe a lot drunk and went upstairs with Josh. Who wouldn’t have? He was unquestionably the best-looking and most desirable guy on campus. This Hannah girl then proceeded to have consensual sex not just with Josh but with half the football team because she was probably drunk as a skunk or high on weed or maybe both and these were mostly good-looking guys. Not just Josh but all of them. After she sobered up, she was ashamed of what she’d done so she didn’t say a word about it to anyone. But guys talk and soon rumors were flying around campus about how this Hannah Reindel girl had fucked half the Alpha Chi house in one night. People started slut-shaming her. Calling her a whore. Strange guys calling her up and inviting her to their fraternity parties to quote ‘do her thing.’ She could barely go anywhere on campus without girls avoiding her and guys hitting on her, then and only then does she go to the dean’s office and start screaming rape.
“When I first heard about it I badgered Charlie to tell me the truth, ’cause, Jesus Christ, I was already dating this guy and I sure as hell didn’t want a boyfriend who might be a rapist. At first he denied ever touching her. But Charlie always was a lousy liar. I told him I didn’t believe him. Said I couldn’t see him anymore because he wasn’t telling me the truth. He came to me a week later and begged for forgiveness. It was really hard for him, but finally he broke down and admitted that yes, he did have sex with this Hannah girl and he was sorry about that but so did Josh and a bunch of the others.”
“How many others?” asked Maggie.
“I don’t know. He just said a bunch. He swore to me that it was all consensual. It was the only time in my life I ever saw Charlie cry. He said Hannah was begging for it, and yeah, she was drunk and the guys were being stupid but when a good-looking girl walks into a room filled with guys, does a striptease, then lies down and spreads her legs, hell, you can’t blame a bunch of horny twenty-year-olds for taking her up on it.”
“And you believed him when he said it was consensual?”
“I was pissed as hell that a guy I thought I was in love with could possibly be involved in something as sleazy as that, but yes, I believed him. And I still do. Charlie never raped anybody.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Bernstein.
“Because I know Charlie and he’s not that stupid or cruel. But not just that. He also had proof this Hannah girl was asking for it.”
“What kind of proof?”
“Josh made an audio recording of her asking for sex, pleading with the guys to fuck her.”
Maggie and Toni Bernstein exchanged glances, then stared at Heather Loughlin in silence for a full minute, maybe more. “An audio recording?” Maggie finally asked. “Whose idea was it to make this audio recording?”
“Josh’s.” Heather smiled. “He was the so-called—” she again made quote signs with her fingers “‘—brains’ of the bunch. Nobody ever accused Josh of being stupid.”
“And why did Josh make this recording?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Possibly. But I want to hear you say it.”
Heather sighed as if she was patiently explaining something totally obvious to someone who, just as obviously, wasn’t very bright. “Josh made the recording as proof that this girl was asking for it. That she wanted the whole backfield and a couple of wide receivers to screw her. It was insurance in case she screamed rape. Which is exactly what she later did. And it worked.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Bernstein. “How?”
“When Josh and Charlie were called into the dean’s office and were told that a freshman girl was accusing them of rape, Josh played the tape for the dean and the others. Her voice shouting, ‘Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,’ is why the whole thing was dropped.”
“Have you ever listened to this tape?”
“No. Charlie wouldn’t let me. I didn’t want to anyway. The idea disgusts me.”
“Does the tape still exist?”
“I have no idea. But I’ll bet you Joshua Thorne does.”
“You told us you learned more about Hannah Reindel from a man you spoke to after Christmas. Tell us about that.”
Heather shook her head sadly. “It was the second week in January. Charlie was at work and the kids were already back in school. This guy called out of the blue.”
“On your cell number?”
“No. Here at the house. On the landline.”
“A listed number?”
“Yes. At first I thought it was a sales call or something and I wasn’t going to talk to him. But he said he was the freshman guy who brought Hannah Reindel to that party and he had some information about what Charlie and Josh had done that he thought I’d want to know about. I said all that stuff had been dead and buried years ago and I intended to keep it that way. I was about to tell him to screw off and hang up when he told me that the girl, Hannah Reindel, had just recently committed suicide. He said her death was Josh’s and Charlie’s fault. He said she killed herself because of what happened the night of the party. I mean, come on, twelve years later? Wouldn’t she have gotten over it in twelve years? It was just a drunken night of sex. Anyone would have.”
Anyone would have? Maybe some people would have. But surely not anyone. Especially if Josh’s tape was phony and seventeen-year-old Hannah Reindel had indeed been violently raped by “the entire backfield plus a couple of wide receivers.” Trauma from something as violent as gang rape wasn’t something you just got over. It stayed with many women forever, creating unmentionable fears, anxieties and vivid flashbacks of the event itself.
“Did this man say anything else?”
“Yes. He said he’d been suffering the guilt of what happened that night for over twelve years. From having brought Hannah to that party. He said he thought it was way past time for Charlie and Josh to suffer for what they had done as well.”
“Did he make any specific threats?”
“No. I hung up before he could. I told Charlie about the call that night when he got home from work. He said not to worry about it. The guy had called him too. Charlie said he felt sorry for the guy but he wasn’t going to listen to his bullshit. He just hung up on him. And now Charlie is dead. And maybe Josh is too.”
“Did he tell you his name? Or where he lived?” asked Maggie.
“He said his name was Evan Fischer. I think he said something about living somewhere in New Hampshire.”
TONI BERNSTEIN TAPPED out and lit one of her cigarettes as soon as Heather Loughlin’s door closed behind them. As they wa
lked back to the road, she sucked in a deep drag and blew it out into the cold night air. Maggie speed dialed McCabe. His phone rang four times, then went to voice mail. “McCabe, call me as soon as you get this. Our killer may be a guy named Evan Fischer. Husband of the girl who was raped at Holden College. The one who killed herself. We’ve got to find this Fischer guy and talk to him. Pronto.”
Meanwhile Bernstein used her phone to see if she could find an Evan Fischer in New Hampshire. There were two. One spelled Fisher lived in Nashua. The other spelled Fischer lived in Durham, the town where the state university was located. A landline number was listed on SuperPages for the one in Durham. Bernstein punched in the number. After four rings a man’s voice came on. “Hi, this is Evan and Hannah. We can’t take your call right now but if you leave your name and number we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”
“Voice mail for Evan and Hannah. I think we got our guy.”
On the off chance he worked there and there’d be a computerized employee directory available on the phone, Maggie tried the main number for UNH. “Welcome to the University of New Hampshire. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now. If not, please call back in the morning.”
Last call. The Durham, New Hampshire, PD. It took three rings for the call to be answered.
“Durham Police Department. This is Officer Heller. How may I help you?”
“Hi, this is Detective Margaret Savage of the Portland Police Department. I’m trying to locate a Durham resident named Evan Fischer. Are you familiar with Mr. Fischer?”
“Fischer? You mean the guy whose wife killed herself couple of months back?”
“That’s right. I’m wondering if you might have a number where I could reach him.”
“May I ask what your interest is? The guy’s in pretty bad shape.”
“He’s a possible suspect in a murder case in Connecticut and another one in Portland.”