The Girl on the Bridge

by James Hayman

  “Anybody else read it?”

  “Not when she was alive. She was nervous showing it to other people.”

  “Have you ever mentioned the content to other people?”

  “No. Well, yes, actually. To one other person. After Hannah’s death.”

  “Who?”

  “Joshua Thorne’s wife. Rachel Thorne.”

  “You’ve met Rachel Thorne?”

  “Yes. After Hannah’s death I wanted both Rachel and Josh to know how what he and his friends did to her in college had destroyed and ultimately ended her life. I contacted both of them. He refused to talk to me. Told me to fuck off and not to bother him again. But she agreed to meet with me. I brought a copy of the manuscript with me. I wanted her to read it. Give her a more intimate sense of the brutality of what her husband had done.”

  “Did she say she would read it?”

  “Yes, she seemed quite eager to. But I don’t know if she ever did.”

  After a brief silence Fischer began talking again. “Writing a story even loosely based on what happened to her at Holden was the most difficult thing Hannah ever attempted. It’d often get to be too much and she’d have to stop working on it. Sometimes for months at a time. Too emotionally difficult to constantly relive the situation. It provoked too many flashbacks. Which may have been a contributing factor in her suicide.”

  “Why did she want to do it?” asked McCabe.

  “More a question of had to than wanting to. As difficult as it was, I think working on the book was, for the most part, therapeutic for her. It gave her life purpose. It seemed to offer a kind of catharsis and in spite of the difficulty I encouraged her to pursue it. Sadly, she was actively writing the night she went off that bridge, which makes me wonder how much working on the book might have pushed her to do it. Wonder if my encouraging her to write might have contributed to her suicide. Another source of guilt.”

  A look of utter devastation appeared on Fischer’s face. And then as quickly and suddenly as it had come it changed. Like an actor playing two roles suddenly switching from one character to another. He looked up, smiling as if something had suddenly occurred to him. “Well, I must apologize for being such a terrible host. Hannah would give me hell for that. Can I offer either of you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? I’ve also got some cookies somewhere. Or alcohol? I’ve got wine or beer, if you prefer.”

  McCabe thanked him and declined but Maggie accepted the offer of coffee and cookies. As Fischer fiddled with the coffeemaker, notes from Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train” emerged from McCabe’s jacket pocket. Caller ID indicated Bill Bacon on the other end. McCabe thought about letting the call go to voice mail but then changed his mind. Bacon knew where he was and what he and Maggie were doing. He wouldn’t be calling unless it was important. Or at least pertinent. “Gotta take this call. Be right back.”

  McCabe zipped his jacket and left the warmth of the cabin, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 36

  “HI, BILL. WHAT do you have?”

  “Norah Wilcox. Truth of the matter is I’ve got two Norah Wilcoxes. One dead. Plus a second Norah who happens to be very much alive.”

  “Does the live one have anything to do with the case?”

  “I think so. But first I ought to tell you dead Norah’s body turned up a couple of hours ago. She was still in the trunk of the Altima. We found it parked in a legal spot on Lawn Avenue just off Deering. Patrol unit drove by the car three times before recognizing the number plate and calling it in. We pulled the trunk and there she was. Still dressed up like she was in the surveillance video from the bar. Except her body was pretty much frozen.”

  Frozen made sense. Temps hadn’t gotten above thirty-two for some time. Another Lainie Goff, thought McCabe, recalling the completely frozen corpse of a young woman they’d found in the trunk of her own BMW. A case he and Mag had worked a couple of years back.

  “Weird thing is,” said Bacon, “he left the gun he used to shoot her right there in the trunk with her. A baby Sig.”

  The “baby Sig” Bacon was referring to was a Sig Sauer P238 Nitron. Powerful and small. Just five inches long and weighing less than a pound, McCabe always thought of it as a woman’s gun and the company marketed it as such. Bacon was right. It was strange the killer just left it in with the body. Much smarter and just as easy to toss the murder weapon into the harbor where it’d never be found.

  “You’re sure you’ve got the right gun? Maybe the one you found was Norah’s and she had it out trying to defend herself.”

  “Whoever it belonged to it’s still the gun that killed her. I held off calling you until we had a ballistics match. No question. It’s the right gun.”

  “Prints or DNA?” he asked.

  “Some prints on the gun. Don’t have a match for them yet. Jacoby’s folks are still going over the car but so far they haven’t come up with anything. Looks like whoever bopped you and drove out of the garage was careful about that. So far all the techs have found came either from Josh Thorne or the Norah in the trunk.”

  “You said something about two Norahs. Who’s the second one?”

  “An ex-classmate of Evan Fischer’s. Fischer and Norah #2 went to high school together. Ridgewood, New Jersey. Class of ’01. She still lives nearby. Town called Ho-Ho-Kus, which is a pretty silly name for a town if you ask me.”

  McCabe had passed through both Ridgewood and Ho-Ho-Kus a bunch of times. They were upscale commuter towns set right next to each other fifteen miles or so northwest of Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge.

  “And she’s not the woman in the trunk?”

  “Nope. Totally different type. And, like I said, still very much alive.”

  “Has she been in touch with Fischer lately?”

  “She says not. I called her and she says she remembers Evan Fischer quite well, but hasn’t seen or heard from him in years. She’s currently married with two kids and doesn’t even use the name Wilcox anymore. She’s Brightman now. Norah Brightman.”

  “So how’d you manage to dig that one out?”

  “Didn’t you know I’m a top detective just like you? Isn’t that what us top detectives do?”

  “So I’ve been told. Now tell me how you found her.”

  “When I ran out of likely or even remotely possible Norah Wilcoxes on the Internet and every other database I could think of, I decided to change tactics and check out people from both Fischer’s and Rachel Thorne’s past. One of the places I looked was Evan Fischer’s high school yearbook.”

  “How’d you find his yearbook?”

  “Holden College alumni office told me he’d graduated from Ridgewood High School, class of ’01. So I called the school library and discovered they have copies of all their yearbooks. Librarian was nice enough to check an entry in the ’01 book for me, and ta-da, there they both were. Evan Fischer and Norah Wilcox. I asked the librarian to scan the page with Wilcox’s photo and e-mail it to me and she did.”

  “I take it Mrs. Brightman’s never worked as a three thousand dollar a night escort in New York City?”

  “Nah. Ridgewood Norah would have a tough time getting fifty bucks a throw.”

  “Cut the shit, Bill.”

  “Okay, sorry. Only kidding. She was kind of cute in her high school pic but current photos on Facebook and Instagram show her as a plain, plump and pleasant-looking mom. But in no way glamorous.”

  “And you managed to talk to her?”

  “Yes. She currently works as an ER nurse at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood. She says she and Fischer were friends back in high school. Dated a couple of times but never anything serious. She hasn’t seen or heard from him in years. She went to their tenth reunion but he wasn’t there. However, she did say that she’d heard about Fischer’s wife’s suicide from another classmate and meant to write him a condolence note. But she hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I figure that Fischer just picked a name from his past and told the fake Norah Wilcox to use it.”

&n
bsp; “Okay. That’s good information. Getting back to dead Norah, do we know anything about her except what she did for a living? Like maybe her real name?”

  “Nope. She’s officially a Jane Doe. Can’t even inform next of kin yet. I’m kind of out of ideas. What do you want me to try next?”

  McCabe didn’t say anything for a minute. Breaking the case would be easy if they could find out who hired dead Norah, aka Jane Doe, and promised to pay her twenty-five grand to lure Joshua Thorne to 339 Hartley Street. He was still thinking the killer was most likely Evan Fischer. But it could have been someone else.

  Bill Bacon broke the silence. “I was thinking maybe we could publish that composite picture that Ishkowitz Photoshopped and see if anyone comes forward and IDs her?”

  “No, I don’t want to do that yet,” said McCabe, figuring every whackadoo Gillian Anderson fan in the country would start calling in with hot tips. Hell, Anderson might even get pissed enough to make a fuss about it if she realized that they’d started the process with her image. “I assume you’ve Googled escort services in New York and looked for pictures of her?” asked McCabe.

  “Yup. Every one of them. Least all the ones I could find online and on the pages of BackList. A lot of good-looking babes out there for three grand a night, even one asking five grand, but no Gillian Andersons.”

  “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I found dead Norah’s Day Runner date book in the glove compartment of the Altima. I don’t have it with me but I remember pretty much the whole thing.” McCabe’s eidetic memory would allow him to remember and repeat for Bacon’s recorder every name, date and number he’d seen in Norah Wilcox’s Day Runner. “I want you to go get a recorder and record this call. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  A minute or two later, Bacon said, “Okay, McCabe, you’re on the air.”

  “Okay. The book is filled with, oh, I don’t know, maybe a hundred or more names of her clients, most with phone numbers and places and dates when they got together. A lot of repeat customers among them. I’m going to repeat them all to you and when I’m done I want you to start calling the johns.”

  It took him a little over fifteen minutes to recite them all. When he had finished, he said, “I want you to call them all. They won’t know the Norah Wilcox name but if you tell them when and where they met with her, what her phone number is and how much they paid, they shouldn’t have any problem remembering. I want you to get the name she used with them and also the name of whoever ran the escort service. Call the number and find out her real name if you can and any information about who she is and where she came from. Aside from anything else we’re going to have to notify next of kin about her death.”

  “This ought to be interesting,” said Bacon. “Think her clients will cooperate? Wouldn’t do their reputations much good. Or their relationships if they’re married.”

  “A lot will hang up on you. If they do, keep after them. Call them back, leave a message if necessary, and tell them if they don’t cooperate and tell us what they know about Ms. Wilcox, we’ll let the world . . . including wives and employers . . . know all about their secret adventures in the big city.”

  “Jesus, McCabe, I think that’s called blackmail.”

  “I’m not sure it qualifies. In any case, I doubt they’ll call the police.”

  “We are the police.”

  “So I’ve been told. Don’t worry about it. Just tell them we’ll give them total confidentiality if they help us out. If they refuse to tell us whatever they know about her, we go public. My bet is they’ll start singing like canaries.”

  “Likely she didn’t give them her real name either. Prostitutes like to stay as anonymous as possible.”

  “Maybe. But they should know how to contact her. Whoever was running her or maybe some of her coworkers might know her real name or at least have some usable background information. When you find one make a date with her.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Where and when?”

  McCabe thought about appropriate hotels. “The Grand Hyatt on 42nd Street. Tomorrow night, nine o’clock. Have Fortier arrange a credit card for you and make a reservation.”

  “So you want me to go down to New York and spend time hanging out with a high priced hooker?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’m gonna be the one hanging out with the high priced hooker.”

  “Damn. Why do you get to have all the fun?”

  “Sorry, Bill. Rank has its privileges.”

  “Well, at least that’ll make my wife happy. I’ll start making calls soon as we hang up. Let you know what I find out.”

  Chapter 37

  BY THE TIME McCabe went back into the cabin, Maggie was sitting with her boots off, her stocking feet tucked under her, sipping coffee and listening to Fischer tell her how much he’d loved his wife. How hard it was going to be to go on living without her.

  “What made you want to call Thorne and Loughlin?” she asked.

  “I thought they should know what happened to Hannah. How they destroyed the life of a beautiful and talented young woman. I called Loughlin first. Then Thorne. I told them both about Hannah’s death. Tried to explain how Hannah’s suicide was their fault. Instead of showing any contrition, Loughlin told me not to call again and hung up. Thorne had the gall to tell me the multiple rapes were my fault, not his.”

  “Why your fault?”

  “I brought her to the party.”

  “He admitted they were rapes?”

  “No. He called them Hannah’s sexcapades. He claimed she was eager to play. Which is total bullshit. Anyway, after Loughlin and Thorne told me to fuck off I called their wives.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to hurt them by making their wives aware of what kind of scum they were married to. I guess I hoped when they found out they’d make their husbands’ lives miserable for what they’d done to Hannah. I called Heather Loughlin first. She hung up even faster than Charlie did.”

  “But Rachel Thorne didn’t hang up,” said Maggie. “In fact, she agreed to meet with you. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. We arranged to meet in Brooklyn. I assume Rachel told you that.”

  “She did. Evan, did you have any idea Rachel was recording your conversation when you met with her?”

  Fischer furrowed his brows. “No. No idea at all. Is that legal?”

  “It is as long as one party to the conversation is aware of it.”

  “Did Rachel give you this recording to listen to?”

  “Yes. She played it for Sergeant McCabe in Portland and I listened to it twice on the drive down here.”

  A frown line formed between Fischer’s eyes. He was angry again. “I’m not sure why she’d want to record it or even why she’d want you to hear what we talked about that afternoon.”

  “Oh yeah? Why not?”

  “Because we talked about murdering her husband.”

  Maggie looked at him oddly. “In light of what happened to him doesn’t that conversation seem kind of relevant?”

  Fischer rose from his chair without answering and began pacing back and forth in the small room, his face knotted in concentration. Was he trying to remember what he’d said to Rachel on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade? Maybe. Maggie began to ask another question but he waved her off. “Give me a minute, will you? I have to think something through.”

  Fischer continued to pace. Probably trying to remember not just what he’d said to Rachel but what might be incriminating. As he paced, Maggie watched him muttering and moving his hands about as if deeply involved in a complex conversation with himself. Or maybe repeating the conversation with Rachel. Then he stopped and looked at Maggie. “You said you listened to this recording?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Twice?”

  “Right again.”

  “All while you were driving down here?”

  “Yes. Why?”

 
“The drive from Portland takes about an hour.”

  “A little less. We drive fast.”

  “Then you couldn’t have listened to it twice.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because my conversation with Rachel went on a lot longer than that. The first half hour or so we talked on a bench overlooking New York Harbor. Then we went back to her apartment. She said she was getting cold but we had a lot more to talk about. She suggested we continue talking there. I asked her if Josh was there. She said he was away on business. He was in Portland, as a matter of fact.”

  “So you went to the apartment?”

  “Yes. Walking there took only a few minutes and we didn’t talk about much of anything on the way. Just some small talk about Brooklyn becoming the hot place to live in New York. When we got there we took an elevator to the fifth floor.”

  “What was the apartment like?”

  Fischer shrugged. “Modern. Expensive.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “Why is that relevant? You want proof I was actually there?”

  “Something like that.”

  Fischer shrugged. “It was a duplex. Two stories. Entire fifth and sixth floors of the building. I didn’t go upstairs where I guess the bedrooms are but the living room and kitchen were very modern. All white and glass furniture. Modern art on the walls. Looked original. SubZero fridge and a big Viking stove in the kitchen that had, like, six burners. I asked her if she liked to cook. She said no, she never cooked. They mostly ate out. Or ordered in. Ridiculous. What else? Let’s see. There were big floor-to-ceiling windows from one end of the main room to the other. You could look out and see the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. I don’t know what places like that go for these days but I imagine it’s got to be millions.”

  “What then?”

  “She asked me if I wanted a drink.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, I really did. I was so nervous about being in Joshua Thorne’s apartment with Joshua Thorne’s wife that I was shaking like a frigging leaf and not just from the cold. I asked her if she had any Scotch. She got out a bottle and poured one for me and one for herself. She had ice with hers. I don’t take ice.”