by James Hayman
‘Keep an eye on our friend,’ he said to Maggie. ‘I’m going to check out the cottage.’ He slipped his .45 from its holster and into the deep pocket of his coat and started toward the house. He moved across the open clearing as fast and silently as he could, Bill Fortier’s L.L. Bean boots giving him better, though not perfect, traction on the icy ledge.
He reached the cottage and pushed himself up against one wall. He peered through the window. The main room looked dark and empty. He pushed in through the front door. Nothing.
‘Richard? Are you here?’ He kept his voice friendly, collegial.
No answer. He quickly checked the other rooms. Nothing. Through the window he could see Abby still perched on her rock. Maggie had moved closer. She was now only about fifty feet away.
Suddenly there was movement at the end of the cliff, and Richard Wolfe’s head appeared above the rocks, followed by his shoulders. Wolfe was climbing up the rickety wooden steps that rose from the rocky beach below. He was still wearing the same dark hooded coat as before, but in the warmer air the hood was down. Wolfe walked toward Maggie. If he still had the .22 it wasn’t in his hand. McCabe drew the .45 from his pocket. He felt his cell phone vibrate. Caller ID said M. SAVAGE. He knew it wasn’t because Maggie wanted to talk to him. She was just telling him to stay put and listen in. He put the phone to his ear and watched through the window.
‘You must be Dr Wolfe?’ Maggie said when he was about five feet away.
‘Yes. Who are you, and what are you doing here?’
‘I’m with the police,’ she said. ‘Detective Margaret Savage, Portland PD.’ She held up her badge wallet. He glanced at it. ‘We’ve been looking for Abby.’
Maybe it was because she heard her name or perhaps because she simply sensed their presence behind her, but Abby turned and looked. First at Wolfe. Then at Maggie. McCabe could see her eyes, but in the failing light of a late January afternoon it was hard to tell if what he saw in them was madness or merely despair. Behind her, weather clouds were closing in. The wind was rising. Waves of white fabric rippled against a darkening sky. He still couldn’t see what was in her hand.
‘Abby, my name is Margaret Savage,’ Maggie called to her. ‘I’m a friend. I’m here to help you. I’d like you please to step away from the edge.’
Abby seemed nervous, distracted. McCabe wasn’t sure she had even heard Maggie’s calm request. Perhaps with the wind blowing she was too far away. Maggie probed the snow in front of her with her cane, making sure her next step, if she took one, would find firm footing. ‘I’m coming to talk to you,’ she called.
‘I wouldn’t go any closer,’ Wolfe said. ‘She’ll jump, you know. I’ve been trying to get her to step in from the edge for nearly an hour now. Without success. If you go any closer, I think she’ll go over.’
McCabe thought about pulling the window up a couple of inches and using the sill as a firing platform. A tough shot from this distance. Too easy to miss. Besides, the shot might cause Abby to jump. No, it wasn’t a good idea.
‘I can try talking her out of it,’ he heard Maggie say to Wolfe. She was keeping her voice too low for Abby to hear. She took another step toward Abby and then another. At the same time, she began moving sideways, crossing in front of Wolfe to his other side, forcing him to turn away from the cottage in order to watch her. Forcing him to keep his back to McCabe.
‘Where are you going?’ Wolfe asked. ‘What are you doing?’ There was anxiety in his voice now.
‘I need to get closer or she won’t hear me,’ said Maggie, her tone calm, matter-of-fact.
McCabe slipped out the cottage door as she spoke.
‘Talking her down won’t work if I have to shout,’ Maggie continued.
‘It won’t work anyway,’ said Wolfe. ‘I want you to go away. Abby doesn’t know you. She knows me. I’m her doctor. She trusts me. Just leave, and I’ll get her to come in.’
McCabe flipped the phone off and stuck it in his pocket. He was close enough now to hear without it.
‘Did you hypnotize her?’ Maggie asked.
‘Yes, I hypnotized her.’
‘How’d it work?’
Wolfe didn’t hear McCabe approaching. Now less than ten feet from Wolfe’s back. Too close to miss. Maggie didn’t alert Wolfe by glancing up.
‘She went under quite easily. In fact, she’s still in a hypnotic trance. She’ll do anything I ask.’
‘Really? Anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Including asking her to walk in from the edge of that cliff?’ asked Maggie.
‘Yes,’ said Wolfe.
‘Well, why is it you’re not doing that?’ asked McCabe.
Wolfe turned. His eyes widened at the sight of the .45 leveled at his chest.
‘Is it because you want her to jump?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘There were hidden cameras in Goff’s apartment the night she told you about the pictures. You know, the dirty pictures. We have the whole conversation on video. We know it was you. You’re under arrest.’
If Wolfe was surprised he didn’t show it. A thin, ugly smile passed his lips. ‘There’s only one problem with that,’ he said. ‘You were right a minute ago. I do want her to jump. And all I have to do to make it happen is say one word … let’s call it the magic word … and, poof, over she goes.’
McCabe didn’t know whether Wolfe was bluffing. Maybe there was a magic word, maybe there wasn’t. He considered his options. One was simply pulling the trigger. That would end it – but the shot might also drive Abby over the edge. An unacceptable risk.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Abby turn back and look the other way, down at the rocks and at the sea below. Then she turned her gaze back to the three of them. Was she in a hypnotic trance? McCabe didn’t know. All he saw on her face was fear. Afraid to move forward to her death. Afraid to move back toward them.
‘I have a question for you, Richard,’ said McCabe. ‘If Detective Savage and I do what you ask and leave, what happens next? You take Abby with you as your hostage?’
‘That’s my plan, yes. Plan B, actually. My backup. My dinghy’s on the beach at the bottom of the stairs. My boat’s anchored nearby. You leave. Abby and I sail away. When I feel it’s safe, I’ll drop her off on the coast. If you or the Coast Guard or some down-market Galahad in a lobster boat follows me …’ Wolfe shrugged.
‘You’ll say your magic word, and she’ll jump overboard.’
Wolf smiled. ‘No, actually, at that point, I’ll just shoot her. I keep a small revolver on board. A Smith & Wesson Airweight .38.’
McCabe was familiar with the Airweight. It was light. Easily concealed. Deadly at close quarters.
‘Out of curiosity, Richard, what was Plan A?’
‘Oh, Plan A was much simpler. There would have been no video. Kelly would have gone to jail for the murder.’
‘Murders plural.’
‘Yes, murders plural. Abby, not needed as a hostage, would have jumped off the cliff, her third and final try at suicide tragically successful. I would have sailed back to my office in Portland. And, of course, we all would have mourned her loss in the morning.’
‘Why did she have to die?’ asked Maggie. ‘She couldn’t describe what you looked like.’
‘There was no guarantee of that. Her memory might have come back at any time.’
It was a no go. McCabe knew that if Abby got on Wolfe’s boat, he would kill her as soon as he didn’t need her anymore. Again he considered his options. Shooting the bastard was still number one. He couldn’t think of a second.
‘One last question, Richard.’
‘Before you go?’
‘Yes. Before we go.’ He leveled the .45 at Wolfe’s throat. Where Wolfe’s magic word would come from. If there really was a magic word. ‘It’s sort of a physics question. You know, like the ones we had in high school. If train A leaves station B at forty miles an hour. That sort of thing.’
W
olfe stared at McCabe and then at the gun and said nothing.
‘Want to know what my question is, Richard? It’s kind of an important one.’
Still Wolfe said nothing.
‘My question is, if the bullet in the chamber of my gun leaves the barrel at exactly the same instant you start to shout your magic word, will you be dead before or after the word leaves your mouth?’
‘You’re bluffing.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘That would be murder.’
It was McCabe’s turn to smile. ‘No. Murder is what you do, Dr Wolfe. What I do is called justifiable use of force against a killer threatening a hostage.’
‘McCabe,’ said Maggie.
‘What?’ he answered, his eyes still glued to Wolfe.
‘She’s off the cliff. She’s walking this way.’
McCabe glanced quickly to his right. Abby was heading toward them through the snow. Her feet were bare. Her hands still hung by her sides.
‘Well,’ said McCabe, ‘it seems Abby has solved our hostage crisis. That makes everything much simpler. I want you facedown on the ground with your hands behind your back.’
Wolfe didn’t move.
‘Now, Richard. Otherwise I may shoot you just for the hell of it. You know the headline. “Perpetrator shot and killed resisting arrest.” ’
When Quinn was about ten feet from Wolfe, she stopped. ‘You’re Death,’ she said. ‘You have to die.’
She raised a small shiny revolver. Wolfe’s Airweight .38.
‘Abby! No!’ Maggie leapt, hitting Quinn’s legs just as she fired, knocking both knees out from under her and the gun from her hand. The bullet went wide. Wolfe and Maggie dove for the gun. Wolfe won.
He scooped up the revolver and, in one swift motion, rolled to his feet behind Abby. He wrapped an arm around her neck, pulling her in and pushing the short barrel of the Airweight against her throat.
She struggled to get away, but he was too strong, his grip too tight. He started pulling her back, one step at a time, looking first left at McCabe, then right at Maggie.
McCabe and Maggie followed his retreat, McCabe circling left toward the wooden stairs, Maggie circling to the right. Both working to create a wider angle that would give at least one of them a clear shot at Wolfe without hitting Abby. Wolfe looked from one side to the other. Then he looked at the stairs. McCabe was standing in front of them, blocking his escape.
‘Out of the way,’ Wolfe shouted, ‘or she’s dead.’
‘You’ll be dead, too, Richard. Death all around.’
Without warning, Abby wrenched her body violently forward and down, screaming, ‘Shut up! Shut up! I won’t listen to you anymore!’
Suddenly exposed, Wolfe fired at McCabe at precisely the same instant that McCabe fired back. McCabe was a better shot. The big .45 a better gun. McCabe’s bullet struck Wolfe high on the chest, driving him back. Maggie’s bullet hit his back a fraction of a second later, four inches lower. The impact of their two shots drove him backward over the edge of the cliff. He didn’t scream as he fell. McCabe figured that was because he was already dead.
‘Tell them to shut up,’ Abby shrieked. ‘Tell them I won’t listen to them anymore. I won’t listen.’
She tucked herself into a fetal position and wept. Maggie sat down in the snow next to her and gently stroked her back. McCabe peered over the cliff through the growing darkness. He saw a retreating wave pull Wolfe’s body away from the rocks and out into the frigid water. If the bullets hadn’t killed him, surely the fall had. If not the fall, then surely the icy cold January seas. Any way you cut it, it was over.
‘He was Death. He had to die,’ Abby told Maggie between sobs. ‘He had to die.’
McCabe called for the fireboat and an ambulance to meet them on the other side. They were taking Abby to Winter Haven. He hoped she wouldn’t have to be there long. But there was no way of knowing.
Forty
Portland, Maine
Maggie and McCabe returned to 109. The photographs from New York were waiting for them in McCabe’s e-mail in-box. They both peered at the screen and flipped through them one at a time. There were six in all, and Lainie was right. All six were both graphic and disgusting.
For what it was worth, the girl in the photos wasn’t Tara. It was someone who looked much younger with a thin, barely developed body. She may have been sixteen, but, as Astarita said, she looked more like twelve.
‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ said Maggie, staring at the screen.
‘That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that.’
‘I only wish we could have made it more painful.’ She turned away from the images and went back to her desk. ‘Maybe we’ll find her alive,’ she said as she eased herself down in her chair. ‘Maybe she managed to get away.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said McCabe. ‘You never know.’
They both knew they were blowing smoke. The odds of Wolfe’s having let the girl live when he’d killed all the others were next to zero. Even now, teams of cops equipped with ground-penetrating radar and a couple of cadaver dogs were out searching John Kelly’s five-acre property. If they didn’t find her there, they’d extend the search to the rest of the island. But the truth was, her body could be almost anywhere. The girl didn’t fit into Wolfe’s scheme to frame John Kelly, and like Maggie said, Maine was a big state.
‘I guess Kelly will be able to tell us who she is,’ he said. ‘Maybe help us find her.’ The District Attorney’s office had authorized the ex-priest’s release less than an hour earlier. He was probably already home.
McCabe shut down his computer, stuffed a couple of files in his bottom drawer, and stood up from his desk. ‘Why don’t you go home?’ he said to Maggie. ‘You’ve got to be at least as tired as I am. Maybe more. I don’t have the benefit of two bullet holes in me. Tom or Brian can go over the pictures with Kelly.’
‘You go,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember what I told you last night? I’m Superwoman. Besides, I’d like to finish this up myself.’
McCabe called Kyra from the car. Told her it was over. Told her he was back. She was in her studio, she said, putting the finishing touches on a new painting. She told him she’d be home in an hour.
‘Wagging your tail and happy as a clam?’
‘Absolutely. I’ll stop at Hannaford’s on the way for some groceries. Somehow, I have a feeling you guys could use a decent meal.’
The lights were on in the apartment when McCabe pulled into his place on the Eastern Prom. He climbed the stairs to the third floor and unlocked the door.
‘Hello,’ he called. There was no answer. He tried again. ‘Anybody home?’
Still no answer. He headed for Casey’s room. She should have been here by now.
She was. Sitting on her bed, back resting against the headboard, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince propped on her knees. Ear buds in her ears. He studied her face, serious and intent on the story.
‘Haven’t you read that before?’ he shouted to be heard over the music.
‘I’m reading it again,’ she said. Her eyes remained glued to the book.
‘Can I come in and maybe get a “hello, I missed you, and I’m glad to see you” kiss?’
‘In a minute … just let me finish this chapter. Just another …’ She flipped the pages. ‘Three more pages.’
‘Oh no!’ He threw a hand over his heart, ‘Rejected again.’
Apparently she didn’t find that funny, ’cause she didn’t laugh. ‘Just a couple of minutes, okay?’ she said.
‘Okay.’ He went to the kitchen and poured a couple of inches of the Macallan into the cut crystal glass, came back to her room, and eased himself down onto the dark wood floor, resting his back against the door of her closet. He sipped the Scotch and studied her face. She was growing up fast, starting to look even more like Sandy than she had as a little girl. A lot more, he realized now, than Lainie Goff ever had. She had the same mouth and nose. The same silky dark hair. The
same startling blue eyes. The same perfect skin. Fourteen years old and not even the trace of a zit. She was facing the blessing and the curse of being a drop-dead beautiful woman. Just like Sandy. But, thank God, that’s where the resemblance ended.
Inside, Casey was totally different. She was bright and funny and giving in a way that Sandy never was, and she had a silly sense of humor that was totally a McCabe gene. She’d taken the best of both her parents. There was going to be no stopping this kid.
‘There,’ she said, marking her place and closing the book. She got up and walked to where he was sitting, opened her arms wide, closed her eyes, and squeezed her lips in an exaggerated pucker. ‘Get up,’ she said. ‘You may welcome me home.’
‘Not sure I want to now,’ he said, looking up. ‘You blew your chances.’ He took another sip of his Scotch.
‘Well, then pooh on you.’ She turned away and headed for the kitchen. ‘By the way, there’s nothing to eat,’ she called back. ‘Just a dead lasagna that looks like it’s been in the microwave since before I was born.’
He got up and followed. ‘Hey!’ he called after her.
‘Hey, what.’
‘Hey, pooh on you, too,’ he said, wrapping his arms around her slender body. They gave each other a long, hard squeeze.
‘Kyra’s picking up some food,’ he said, releasing her. ‘She’ll be here in an hour.’
She flopped down on the couch. He sat in Dad’s chair.
‘How was the boarding?’
‘Awesome except for the tow lines. We got a ton of snow Friday night.’