Mike McCabe 01 - The Cutting

by James Hayman

  McCabe looked at him. ‘Fuck you, Toomey.’ The man stiffened.

  ‘Alright, just hold it right there.’ Blanchard, conciliatory, held up both his hands, the good cop to Toomey’s bad cop. ‘Relax, Pat – and keep personal remarks to yourself. McCabe, you go back to work. You’re not being sidelined.’

  ‘Really? I thought the regs say we do desk duty any time a firearm is discharged.’

  ‘Let’s say you’ve been investigated,’ said Blanchard, ‘and cleared. You just didn’t notice it ’cause it happened so fast.’

  ‘We’re stretching the rules in your case, Mike, not breaking them,’ said Fortier. ‘For one thing, you didn’t kill anyone. Maggie did. For another, we need you right now. When you say we can’t count on the bad guys waiting, you’re right.’

  ‘Are you looking for a thank-you for that, Bill?’

  ‘Stretching the regs wasn’t Bill’s decision,’ said Toomey. ‘If you want to thank anyone, thank Shockley. It was his call. He’s the one who’ll have to take the heat. “For the good of the community,” he said.’

  Blanchard added, ‘I just hope the department doesn’t end up paying for this down the road.’

  ‘Does Maggie know about any of this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When do I get her back?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be more than a day or so, maybe less,’ said Blanchard.

  ‘Personally,’ said Toomey, ‘in your case, McCabe, I would’ve gone by the book. I believe by your actions last night, going to meet that woman alone, without backup, you not only willfully ignored the rules of this department, you also set this whole clusterfuck in motion. It ended in the death of a fellow officer, the killing of one civilian, the wounding of another, and, last but not least, it looks like the guy in the elevator may be permanently paralyzed. But hey, I guess that’s how they do things in New York. Bill Bacon could have taken over this case from the beginning and, in my view, should have. Oh, by the way, in case you didn’t know it, Kevin Comisky left a wife and three children. The youngest’s only two years old.’

  If Toomey’s intention was to induce guilt, he succeeded. ‘What’s the wife’s name?’

  ‘Carol.’

  Carol. McCabe nodded. He’d have to call on Carol Comisky as soon as he could. Beyond that, he knew Toomey might be right about his decision to meet Sophie alone. That would haunt him. He was also surprised Shockley had gone out on a limb for him. Still, he said nothing about it.

  ‘Okay, that’s it,’ said Fortier. ‘You can go, Mike.’

  ‘Try real hard not to shoot anyone else,’ added Toomey. McCabe let the gibe pass.

  37

  Wednesday. 12:30 P.M.

  Maggie dropped McCabe at his condo before heading home herself to shower and change. Jane Devaney met him at the door, index finger pressed against her lips in a shushing gesture.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered. She pushed him out onto the landing and quietly closed the door.

  ‘Casey’s here. I kept her home from school.’

  ‘Why? Is she sick?’

  ‘Not exactly, but she was awake pretty much all night. Crying a little. Worrying a lot. She crawled into my bed around two, but it was after seven before she finally dropped off. I let her sleep in.’

  ‘Was it about Sandy’s visit?’ He started for the door.

  Jane put out a hand to block his way. ‘That’s in the mix somewhere, I suppose, but last night it was mostly about you.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Yeah. You. Last night she sees you leave here carrying a shotgun. Doesn’t know where you’re going or what you’re doing.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ McCabe sighed, another kernel of guilt starting to form.

  ‘A little later you call and scare her half to death. You tell her Maggie’s coming over. Later Maggie leaves and I turn up. You don’t. She asks where you are. I tell her I’m sure you’re all right. Then she tells me how her uncle was killed in a shootout when she was ten …’

  ‘Tommy.’

  ‘That’s right. Tommy. Obviously she’s worried sick about you getting killed, but she tries not to show it. Wants to be the good girl, the good cop’s daughter.’

  ‘I suppose me getting killed would mean I was abandoning her in a way, too. Just like her mother did. Was that part of it?’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m not sure it got that far.’

  ‘I’d better talk to her –’

  ‘Yes. You’d better. Right now may not be the best time. She’s got it under control for now.’

  ‘So what do I say?’

  ‘Just be sensitive to how she feels. Make sure she knows you’re okay and that you care. You can talk to her a little more deeply when things calm down. Anyway, I’ll take her to school in a little while. Let me just grab a shower. I’ve been up all night, too.’

  He found Casey in the kitchen eating a bowl of Cheerios. He slipped into the chair opposite her.

  ‘New scrunchie?’ McCabe asked, noticing the band of orange fabric holding her hair back.

  ‘Yeah, Sarah and I made them. Her mom showed us how. I’ve got two more.’

  ‘Good job.’

  ‘It’s easy. You just sew the cloth into a tube and push the stretchy stuff through with a safety pin. Then you sew the ends.’ She took it off and showed him.

  ‘Cool.’ He slipped the band around his head. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Don’t. You’ll stretch it.’ She reached over and took the scrunchie off his head. ‘You okay?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m okay. Did you get any sleep?’

  ‘Not much. Maggie left in the middle of the night. Said she had to go meet you. Jane came over.’

  ‘Was that okay?’

  ‘I kind of wanted company. I slept with Jane. Where were you?’

  ‘Up in Gray interviewing a witness. Then over at Cumberland Med.’

  ‘Somebody get hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t go into detail.

  ‘Where’s your shotgun?’

  ‘I left it down at headquarters.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘It was important for me to be there.’

  Casey studied him for a minute. ‘Okay,’ she said.

  He took her hand, the one not holding the spoon.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said and pulled it away.

  He realized he was famished. Maggie’s doughnuts and a spoonful of lasagna were all he’d eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. He got himself a bowl and spoon and poured out some Cheerios. He added milk and started munching. ‘Have you thought any more about seeing your mother?’

  ‘Yeah. A lot.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘You said I had to see her.’

  ‘I think you do. The judge gave her that right. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s coming Friday?’

  ‘Yes. She’ll meet you here after school. She wants to take you to Boston for the weekend. Probably stay at some fancy hotel. Maybe go see a show.’

  ‘Big deal.’ Silence. ‘She’s really rich?’

  ‘Her husband is.’

  Casey finished her cereal and took the bowl to the sink and rinsed it out. ‘His name’s Peter?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Peter what?’

  ‘Ingram.’

  ‘Is he my stepfather?’

  ‘Only if you want to think about him that way.’

  ‘I don’t think about him any way. I never even met him. He’s not coming, is he?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s just Sandy.’

  ‘How come you gave me the same name as her?’

  ‘It’s what she wanted when you were born.’ A little extension of herself, McCabe thought. ‘Anyway, it’s not really the same. You’re Casey. She’s Sandy.’

  ‘Ready to go?’ Jane appeared.

  ‘We’re both Cassandras,’ Casey said. ‘You guys aren’t gonna fight about me, are you? You and Mom?’

  ‘I hope not. I’ll try not to. I can’
t speak for her.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be the grown-ups, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I heard.’ He hugged her hard. ‘I love you.’ He didn’t want to let her go. Not to Boston. Not, at the moment, even to school.

  ‘Dad, I gotta go.’

  ‘I know. Go break a leg.’

  ‘I love you, too,’ she said and turned and ran down the stairs.

  He called Sandy’s number in New York.

  ‘Hello, McCabe. Casey ready for my visit?’

  He wasn’t sure ready was the operative word. Still, he said, ‘You can pick her up Friday after school.’

  ‘I’ll be there at four o’clock. I’ve reserved a suite at the Four Seasons. She should bring a nice outfit she can wear to some good restaurants and maybe the theater. She does have something decent to put on, doesn’t she?’

  He let the sarcasm pass. ‘She’ll pack something nice.’

  ‘Anything in particular she’d like to see?’

  ‘She’ll like anything you choose. Or better yet, give her the choice. She doesn’t get to go much. You know where we live?’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘She’ll need to be back early enough Sunday to do her homework. No later than four or five o’clock.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Sandy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take good care of her.’

  McCabe kicked off his shoes and lay on the unmade bed, thinking about Casey and what he might have said to her. Kyra’s scent lingered on the sheets. He was exhausted but knew he didn’t have time for sleep. He had to go back to the hospital, talk to Sophie as soon as she was compos mentis, but first he needed to sort things out. The list of loose ends was long and getting longer, a Pandora’s box of probablys, might bes and what ifs.

  He stripped down, got in the shower, and thought about things as the hot water coursed over him. Sophie said they were doing illegal transplants. Most likely somewhere inside a fifty-mile band north or east of Augusta. Unless, of course, they cut south again. He thought about that and rejected it. It’d waste too much time doubling back and forth.

  Okay. There were five or six people involved besides Sophie. A transplant surgeon and a second surgeon. One of them Spencer? Probably. Anybody else? Maybe one of Spencer’s buddies from the Denali picture. Wilcox or Holland. Who else? A nurse-anesthetist. Identity unknown. Two or three OR nurses. Also unknown. A perfusionist. Sophie.

  Sophie said she hadn’t known they were killing people to obtain the hearts. Did the others? For sure, at least one of them did. What about the goon Maggie killed last night? Was he part of the surgical team? Unlikely. Finally, there was the fact that Sophie said there’d been at least two other transplants. Jack Batchelder was supposed to be tracking down possible victims. He’d have to find out how much progress Jack had made. Yes, a lot of loose ends. Even so, he felt he was getting closer. What he needed to tie the loose ends around Spencer’s neck in a neat little bow might be waiting in the Lexus. They should have searched it already. Unfortunately, events kind of got out of hand. They’d search it today. They’d also bring Philip Spencer down to 109 for a chat.

  38

  Wednesday. 1:30 P.M.

  The third floor at Cumberland Medical Center was an armed camp. Dick Cheney’s undisclosed secure location couldn’t have been closed down any tighter. Uniformed cops were stationed at each of the elevator banks and at the stairwell doors, checking IDs of anyone coming or going including staff. Two additional patrol officers sat at Sophie’s door, and a third was in the room. All doctors, nurses, and aides going in or out of her room were checked against an approved list of caregivers. Anyone not on the list didn’t go in. Period. Medications and food were double-checked against orders by the floor nurse and the chief resident. Security was as tight as it could be if the hospital was going to function at all. Some comedian put up a sign opposite the elevators, WELCOME TO THE GREEN ZONE. The cops didn’t bother taking it down.

  Sophie was awake but glum when McCabe entered. Her arm was bandaged and immobilized, an IV inserted in her hand. She didn’t look up when he sat in the chair next to her bed. She seemed to be absorbed in an old issue of Cosmo.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. No answer.

  ‘You’re not talking to me, is that it?’ Still no answer.

  ‘Listen, I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.’

  She looked at him and then turned back to the magazine.

  ‘The guy who shot you is dead. He can’t hurt you anymore – but there are others who can. I need you to talk to me. If you don’t, it’s very likely another woman will die. It’s just as likely they’ll come after you again.’

  ‘You swore to me you weren’t followed.’ She didn’t look up from the magazine as she spoke.

  ‘I wasn’t. They attached a global positioning transmitter under your car. Another under mine. That’s how they knew where we were. Sophie, the only safety for you is if we catch the people responsible for all this. The only way we can do that is for you to tell me everything you know.’

  ‘I’m going home,’ she said. ‘Back to France. As soon as they let me out of here.’

  ‘You won’t be any safer there than you are here. The man you called Spencer knows where you live. He knows you can identify him. He knows you’ve been talking to the police, and for all he knows, you’ve already told us everything you know. For all he knows, you’re ready to testify against him in court.

  ‘I spoke to the prosecutor about getting you immunity in return for your testimony. He said he’d do what he can, but I can’t promise you that. All I can promise you is that if you don’t help us stop him here and now, he will follow you to France, or wherever else you may go – and when he finds you he’ll surely kill you.’

  Sophie sat in her bed staring straight ahead. McCabe saw that she was quietly crying, and it made him feel like a shit. What he told her was the truth of the matter, though, and there was no changing that.

  Finally she turned to him. ‘Alright, what do you want to know?’

  He turned on his recorder and spoke into it. ‘This is an interview between Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe, Portland Police Department, and Sophie Gauthier, a French citizen, recorded at Cumberland Medical Center, Portland, Maine, at 1:30 P.M. on Wednesday, September 21, 2005. Ms. Gauthier, you are participating in this interview freely and of your own volition, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  With only a little prompting, Sophie repeated into the recorder everything she had told McCabe the night before on the quiet road in Gray.

  When she finished, he handed her half a dozen photographs, including a picture of Philip Spencer he’d printed off Casey’s computer. ‘I am showing Ms. Gauthier six photographs of men who fit the description of the man who contacted her in France. Ms. Gauthier, have you ever seen any of these men before?’

  She took the photos and looked at each of them for a minute or two. She finally shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘None of these photos are of the man who called himself Philip Spencer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Imagine each of them with beards.’

  ‘This one looks like him a little.’ She picked up the picture of Philip Spencer. ‘More when I imagine him, as you say, with a beard, but really not so much when you look closely.’

  He showed her another photo of Spencer, shot from a slightly different angle. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I told you. This is not the man I spoke to.’

  Okay, so Spencer wasn’t the recruiter. He could still be the cutter. The killer. McCabe slid another series of pictures in front of her. ‘Have you seen any of these men before?’

  She pointed at a postmortem photo of the shooter. ‘Yes. This one was the driver who came for me at the hotels and brought me to the operations. Is he the man who tried to kill me?’

  McCabe nodded. ‘Did he come for you each time?’r />
  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he in the operating room during the heart transplants?’

  ‘No.’

  Tom Tasco and Eddie Fraser were waiting for McCabe as he left Sophie’s room. Fraser jumped right in. ‘We ID’d the shooter, Mike. Jacobi found a couple of usable prints in the SUV, and the bureau came up with a match.’

  McCabe interrupted him. ‘Let’s go and get some coffee,’ he said. ‘Too crowded to talk up here.’

  They rode the elevator down to the big cafeteria on the ground floor. At two thirty, it was still pretty crowded with a late lunch crowd. They got three cups of coffee and went for privacy to an outdoor area where there were some chairs and tables. McCabe noticed, for the first time, it was a beautiful day. They sat where they could speak without being overheard.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘Name’s Darryl Pollock,’ said Tasco. ‘Ex-marine. Served as a sniper in the first Gulf War. Won a Bronze Star. Stayed in the marines after the war. Joined Force Recon. That’s Marine Corps Special Ops. Apparently he only quit because some of the homophobes in the Corps found out he was gay and made life uncomfortable for him.’

  ‘What did he do after the military?’

  ‘Record gets a little sketchy.’ Tasco was reading from some computer printouts. ‘Worked as a bouncer in some gay clubs in New York. Couple of assault arrests for getting too rough with some drunks. No convictions. Turns up next in Florida. South Beach.’

  Tasco sorted through his notes. ‘In Florida, Pollock does a little time for beating the shit out of a couple of college jocks in a bar fight. He got pissed at them for gay-bashing some aging queen Pollock didn’t even know. He told them to lay off. Instead they start in on him. Football players,’ Tasco said with a snort. ‘Guess they thought they were tough. Pollock almost killed one of them. That was in ’96. He gets out in ’98 and disappears. End of story.’

  Darryl Pollock. Duane Pollard. Initials DP. South Beach. Lucas Kane’s lover? McCabe was willing to bet on it. In 1998 Pollock changes his name and hooks up with Kane. He wondered what, if anything, Detective Sessions would know about that. Or be willing to tell him.