Mike McCabe 01 - The Cutting

by James Hayman

  McCabe decided not to ask about her gallbladder. ‘Is Bobby there?’

  ‘I’ll see if he can talk.’ Bobby was a hotshot personal injury lawyer and McCabe’s older brother. His only brother since Tommy had been killed.

  ‘What’s up, Mike?’ Bobby always got right to the point. There was a moment of silence.

  ‘Sandy called.’

  ‘Okay, so Sandy called.’

  ‘She wants to come up to Portland and see Casey.’

  ‘A fairly normal desire for a child’s mother. I’m surprised she hasn’t called earlier.’

  ‘I just want to know if there’s any way I can stop her.’ Bobby didn’t do divorce work, but he was tough and smart and usually knew the right answers.

  ‘Stop her? I don’t think so. At least not legally. We’re talking visitation here. Not custody. Am I right?’

  Jesus. Custody. McCabe hadn’t even considered that possibility. ‘Custody hasn’t come up,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it seems to me no judge in his right mind would try to keep a mother from seeing her child. What did the divorce decree say about Sandy’s rights to see Casey?’

  ‘Not a lot. The phrase was “reasonable contact on reasonable notice.” But you’ve got to remember Sandy never contested the divorce. It was just something the judge felt ought to be in there.’

  ‘Okay, so now, after three years, your ex-wife wants to reconnect with your daughter. I don’t necessarily see that as bad for Casey. Neither will any family court judge. It might be different if she posed some kind of physical threat to Casey.’

  ‘Emotional threats don’t count?’

  ‘Maybe if the mother was provably psychotic, but even there you probably have to establish a reasonable likelihood of physical harm.’

  ‘Provably self-centered, uncaring, and narcissistic just doesn’t cut it, huh?’

  ‘’Fraid not. A weekend visit is “reasonable contact,” and she’s giving you “reasonable notice.” If I were you, I’d just take it as a positive sign that Sandy wants to see Casey and leave it at that. I think it’ll be good for Casey to get to know her mother, warts and all.’

  ‘What if she does decide to seek custody?’

  ‘Cross that bridge when you get to it.’

  ‘Maybe I should just kneecap the bitch.’

  ‘Watch your mouth, asshole. Anybody hears a gunslinger like you even whisper threats like that and you not only lose Casey, you could also lose your job. By the way, speaking of mothers, Thanksgiving’s at my house this year. Mom’s getting too old to do all that work. I’m assuming you and Casey will be there. You can bring your girlfriend if you want. What’s her name again?’

  ‘Kyra. Her name is Kyra. Try to remember it. Anyway, we’ll try to get there. How’s Mom?’

  ‘Fragile. Getting a little forgetful. I keep thinking about Aunt Joy’s Alzheimer’s and wonder if it’s in our genes. Weird in your case. Like, what do you get when you cross a photographic memory with an Alzheimer’s victim?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘I don’t know. How about somebody who never forgets all the things they can’t remember? Forget it. Not funny. Anyway, you’re coming?’

  ‘Assuming I’m not up to my ass in dead teenagers.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about that. Scumbag actually cut her heart out?’

  ‘Jesus H. Christ. You heard that on the news?’

  ‘Yep. Your boss is giving interviews. “We will leave no stone unturned to find the killer or killers.”’ Bobby was doing a passable job of mimicking Shockley’s public persona. ‘Sonofabitch ought to be on Mount Rushmore. I take it you were trying to keep the heart thing quiet.’

  ‘Trying to. Though I don’t know if it really matters.’

  ‘Anyway, we have people for dinner. Give my love to Casey and to, uh … and to, uh … what did you say your girlfriend’s name was?’

  ‘Good-bye, you asshole.’

  11

  Sunday. 7:30 A.M.

  Maggie stopped by McCabe’s desk. She was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt and black high-top Keds, accessorized with a black holster and sidearm. There were circles under her eyes.

  ‘You alright?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘I was out late last night. Didn’t get much sleep.’

  ‘New boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She paused. ‘Maybe.’ Another pause. ‘Could be.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s a nice guy – but it was only our second date.’

  ‘How’s he feel about dating a woman who wears a gun?’

  ‘Apparently fine,’ she said. ‘Unlike Ryan, I think he’s secure enough to handle it. Anyway, I got a call from Terri Mirabito.’

  McCabe waited.

  ‘She won’t have the final tox report for a while yet, but the initial screening indicates no trace of any anesthetic drugs in Katie’s body. Or any other drugs, for that matter. Just a little alcohol. If that holds up, and Terri thinks it will, Katie was fully conscious and her heart was beating when our freaky friend started cutting her up.’

  McCabe winced. ‘Shit,’ he said.

  ‘My sentiments exactly.’

  ‘How much alcohol?’

  ‘Not much. Apparently it was part of her last supper. He treated her to beluga caviar and champagne just before killing her. They found traces of both in her stomach.’

  ‘A little farewell party?’

  ‘I guess. Also, they’re pretty sure he had sex with her multiple times both front and rear.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing critical. We’ll have to ask Terri when she’s less pissed off. Right now she’s very pissed off.’

  He imagined Katie, battered and sexually abused, being forced to eat caviar and champagne as a prelude to her own death. It was hard not to share Terri’s anger. ‘I want to call a cop in Orlando,’ he told Maggie. ‘It’s that thing I mentioned in the car. I’ll see you in the conference room in about fifteen minutes.’ McCabe had scheduled a meeting of the detectives involved in the two cases.

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  He called the Orlando, Florida, police department as soon as Maggie left.

  ‘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 yo
u 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.