Mike McCabe 01 - The Cutting

by James Hayman

  ‘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.’

  ‘Okay,’ 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.’

  Maggie spoke in measured tones. ‘Terri Mirabito says there was no trace of any anesthetic drug in Katie’s body when she was cut open. She was wide-awake. Probably tied down and gagged when the bastard started cutting.’

  Everyone at the table winced. Nobody said anything. Fortier broke the silence. ‘You said there were two things. What’s number two?’

  ‘I talked to a detective in Orlando, Florida. Looks like Katie wasn’t our friend’s first victim.’ McCabe filled them in on his conversation with Aaron Cahill. He told them that, like Katie Dubois and Lucinda Cassidy, Elyse Andersen was young, blond, and athletic. ‘I’m not a big believer in coincidence. I think if we find Katie Dubois’s killer, we find Lucinda – but we don’t have a lot of time. Katie was killed roughly a week after she was abducted. So was Andersen. Cassidy was taken Friday. You do the math.

  ‘First, let’s cross-check for overlaps between Katie and Cassidy. Where they exercised. Where they bought their clothes. Where they went for pizza. Doctors they visited. People who might have come in contact with both of them. Anything or anyone they might have in common.

  ‘Also, because we don’t know how many mutilated bodies might be buried out there, I want to check all missing person reports for young blond athletic females, say between fifteen and thirty, who disappeared between 2002 and now. Jack, you take that. Check our own records first. Then check every other department in New England. See what the FBI can offer through ViCAP, and the RCMP.’

  ‘Dubois was from Portland,’ Maggie said. ‘So’s Cassidy. If it is the same guy who did Andersen, maybe he left Florida and moved north. So let’s check HR records in hospitals for surgeons, including residents, who’ve moved here from Florida in the last three or four years. Then maybe broaden it to other docs.’

  ‘There are privacy issues,’ said McCabe. ‘We may need subpoenas to get access to their personnel files. I already had a run-in with a Dr. Spencer at Cumberland on that issue.’

  ‘Shockley can help make that happen,’ said Fortier. ‘I’ll develop a list of doctors and hospitals and have him find us a judge who’ll authorize the
subpoenas. Meantime, what do we know about Cassidy?’ Fortier was ready to move on.

  ‘We’re going full speed ahead,’ said Bill Bacon. ‘We have search teams out all over the place. Will and I and two teams from other units have been canvassing the neighborhood and the hospital to see if we can find anybody who might have seen her jogging. Her employer, Beckman and Hawes, is putting up a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information that helps us find her.’

  ‘Dead or alive?’ asked Fortier.

  ‘They didn’t specify. One other thing. We don’t know if she was currently in a relationship. Her ex-husband and her sister say no, but it’s always possible she had somebody with her Thursday night or Friday morning. Bill Jacobi’s taking her car and apartment apart for signs of a boyfriend or anyone else being present. The baseball cap and her dog’s body are up in the state crime lab for DNA analysis. There was blood on the dog’s teeth –’

  ‘Which means maybe the freak was bitten,’ said McCabe.

  ‘We think so. We’ll have DNA results on the blood in a couple of days. All we need is a suspect to match it against.’

  Fortier’s pager went off. He looked at it. ‘Oh, Christ. Shockley’s here.’

  ‘And he wants to see you this minute?’ said McCabe, underlining the words ‘this minute’ in an almost perfect imitation of Shockley’s public persona.

  ‘So what else is new?’ Fortier stood up and looked around the faces at the table. ‘I know you’re all working your butts off. Keep at it. We’re not gonna worry about overtime on these two. Mike, you said you wanted to work both cases. If it is a single perp, that makes sense. Anyway, the GO says that’s your call.’ Fortier collected his notes and left.

  12

  Once again, Lucy began the long uphill journey back to consciousness. Her brain felt gauzy and uncertain. The headache was back, its throbbing constant, though duller and less insistent than before. She let her mind wander, in a kind of fugue state, through the rooms of her apartment. The sun shone through the oversized south-facing windows, lighting a million dust motes. Fritzy, on his back, feet in the air, wriggled with pleasure in the warm patch where the sun struck the floor. Her laptop waited where she’d left it, open on the couch. She reached for it. There was so much to do. Her hand wouldn’t move. Odd, she thought, and tried again. Still it wouldn’t move. Only then, with a sudden rush, did she remember where she was. She opened her eyes. The room was dark. Beyond dark. Utterly black. He must have known she was afraid of the dark, must have known she always left a small light burning even when she slept. He must have known.

  The panic rose like a living thing, up through her body and into her throat, where it came bursting out in a long scream, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. She thrashed against the restraints, up and down, side to side, yanking and pulling until she could feel her wrists and ankles begin to bleed. None of it helped. No matter how loudly she screamed or how fiercely she struggled, the blackness closed in from every side.

  13

  Sunday. 10:30 A.M.

  When McCabe got back to his desk, the phone was ringing. ‘This is McCabe.’

  ‘Detective McCabe?’ An older woman’s voice, harsh with a smoker’s rasp.

  ‘That’s right. How can I help you?’

  ‘It’s about that girl who was murdered. I may have seen her.’

  ‘May I have your name and address?’

  Maggie was at her desk, and he signaled her to listen in on the call.

  ‘Annie Rafferty. I live at 22 Hackett. That’s off Cumberland on the East Side.’

  ‘I know the street. Can you tell me what you think you saw?’

  ‘I know what I saw. I’m getting older now – seventy-four, seventy-five in November – but my eyes are still good. The thing is I don’t sleep so good anymore. I get these pains in my legs. When it’s bad, I get out of bed and sit and look out the window. Well, the other night – the night the girl went missing – I was sitting there wishing the pain’d just go away. Across the street the front door opens and this girl who looked like the one they’re showing on TV, well, she’s standing in the doorway yelling and screaming at somebody. Then she takes off, fuming mad. I got a good look, and I tell you it was the Dubois kid.’

  ‘Can you remember what she was screaming about?’

  ‘Oh, you know, f-ing this and f-ing that. I’m no prude, and I cursed out more than one jerk in my time, but I wouldn’t want to repeat what I heard her screaming. Even to an Irish cop who I’m sure has heard it all before. All the while, she’s standing there wearing this tiny little miniskirt, showin’ off her cute little ass and swearing like a sailor.’

  ‘Do you remember what time it was?’

  ‘About eleven thirty. The clock said eleven fifteen when I got out of bed, and not much time’d passed.’

  ‘Who lives in the house, the one across the street?’

  ‘Well, that’s what was so surprising. It’s this nice young man. Always real polite. Shovels my steps for me when it snows, brings me groceries –’

  ‘Mrs. Rafferty, can you tell me his name?’

  ‘He’s a teacher over at the high school.’

  ‘His name? Please.’

  ‘Yes … his name. It’s Kenney. Tobin Kenney.’

  ‘Well, whaddyaknow!’ Maggie mouthed the words both silently and loudly, if such a thing were possible. She smiled and gave McCabe a thumbs-up.

  ‘Mind if we stop over, Mrs. Rafferty?’

  ‘Annie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Call me Annie.’

  ‘Okay, Annie then. Please don’t go anywhere or talk to anybody about any of this till we get there.’

  *

  Hackett was a short street, running just two blocks along the northern edge of Munjoy Hill. Small frame houses built around 1900 for the families of merchants and tradesmen lined both sides. Like much of the Hill, Hackett Street had fallen on hard times in the sixties and seventies as a generation of younger families fled Portland for the city’s growing suburbs. Many of the houses were broken up into small apartments. Others simply deteriorated. Now, after decades of decay, gentrification was taking root, and some of the houses were being restored by young urban homesteaders. As McCabe and Maggie pulled up, it was easy to see Annie Rafferty’s wasn’t one of them. The house had long ago abandoned its middle-class pretensions, and nobody was fixing it up. The dark green asbestos siding, probably put up forty years ago, was deteriorating. The trim was badly in need of paint. Drooping lace curtains, once white, had turned a dusky gray.

  Maggie rang the bell. As they waited, they noted that Tobin Kenney’s house stood directly across the street and that the car in the driveway was a Subaru. She rang again. Finally Annie Rafferty, wearing a stained polyester housecoat, dark blue and decorated with big pink flowers, answered the door. From the way the thin fabric clung to her bony body, McCabe could tell she had nothing on underneath. While Mrs. Rafferty hadn’t bothered to dress for their visit, she’d definitely made up her face. She wore lipstick that was bright red and freshly applied. Pink blusher shone from the hollows of her cheeks. Her thinning hair was colored a shade of red McCabe had never seen before. At least not on a human head. She smelled of cigarette butts.

  ‘Mrs. Rafferty?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘You must be Sergeant McCabe,’ she said. ‘You aren’t Tessie McCabe’s boy, are you? From Windham?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m Rosie McCabe’s boy. From the Bronx.’

  Rafferty glanced at Maggie and then back to McCabe. ‘I thought you said you was comin’ alone.’ She winked at him. ‘Too bad you didn’t.’

  In spite of himself, McCabe blushed. Then, feeling slightly ridiculous, he introduced Maggie. ‘This is my partner, Detective Margaret Savage.’ Maggie nodded. She didn’t look happy. McCabe guessed she was imagining how a jury might react to the flirtatious Mrs. Rafferty on the witness stand. Well, at least she wouldn’t be wearing the clinging housecoat. ‘May we come in?’

  ‘That’s why you came, isn’
t it? But I already told you everything I know on the phone.’ She turned and headed back into the living room.

  McCabe and Maggie followed her in. The living room, like the woman, smelled of stale smoke. Mrs. Rafferty signaled McCabe and Maggie to sit on a worn green sofa, not unlike one McCabe’s parents had purchased from a Sears store off Bruckner Boulevard in the seventies. McCabe wondered if his mother’s sofa would look as shabby as this one to a pair of cops entering her house today. He was sure it wouldn’t look as dirty.

  The room was filled with junk. Piles of old newspapers and magazines lay against the walls. Knickknacks and souvenirs of vacations taken decades earlier covered every surface. McCabe noticed a framed photograph on the wall. Two overweight men were flipping steaks at a backyard barbecue and clowning for the camera. ‘The one on the left is my husband, Dennis,’ said Mrs. Rafferty. ‘He dropped dead of a heart attack just a coupla weeks after that picture was taken. Nineteen eighty-five.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said McCabe.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘Dennis was a nasty sonofabitch. He used to beat me silly every chance he got. I like to think God spared me a bunch of black eyes and maybe a few broken bones when he gave Dennis that heart attack. So,’ she added, ‘what else you wanna know?’

  ‘I’d like to look out the window where you saw Katie Dubois. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. Not if you don’t mind the mess in the bedroom.’

  The three of them climbed the stairs to a small bedroom at the front of the house. Mrs. Rafferty was right about the mess. The bed was unmade. Clothes were piled on the chair by the window. The old woman collected the clothes and tossed them on the bed. McCabe sat and looked out the window. He had an expansive view of the house and porch across the street. Of course, at five foot two Annie Rafferty would never have seen as much of Kenney’s house as McCabe at six foot one. He scrunched down to approximate Mrs. Rafferty’s height. Even at that level, he had a direct line of sight to Tobin Kenney’s front steps. It would have been easy for her to see the girl’s face as she turned, even in the dark. Unless, of course, the girl was silhouetted by light shining behind her from Kenney’s house. That was possible. A defense lawyer might try to make something of that. Still, even if Mrs. Rafferty’s testimony was bulletproof, it didn’t make Kenney a murderer. All the old woman saw was an angry girl leaving Kenney’s house alive. It seemed to McCabe that Kenney as a suspect was beginning to feel considerably cooler. Maggie asked Mrs. Rafferty if she’d mind coming down to police headquarters and repeating her story in an official interview. She said she wouldn’t. They set up a time. Then they left.