The Chill of Night (33 page)

He stuck one of the lasagnas in the microwave, set the timer, hit
START
. Then he reached down for his crystal glass and poured himself a couple of inches of the Macallan. He walked back into the living room and picked up the landline. The quick beeping of the dial tone indicated messages. The first was from Casey. ‘Hi, Dad, it’s me. I’ll see you tomorrow. The snow was great. The boarding was great. The hot tub was great. I’ll be home by six. Love you.’ He hit
DELETE
.

Next Kyra’s voice came on. ‘I’m just calling to say good night and to tell you that I love you. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ He played it again.

The third message was from Sandy. ‘McCabe, I’ve tried calling your cell a couple of times, but apparently you’re not taking calls from me at the moment. I guess whatever you called about last night wasn’t all that important. However, there is something we ought to discuss. Peter and I have been talking. Casey’s going to be a sophomore next year, and Peter feels she’ll have a better shot of getting into a first-class college from a good prep school than she will from Portland High. Peter’s a trustee at Andover, and he thinks he could probably get Casey in as a lower-middler. That’s what they call sophomores there …’

McCabe hung up the phone before the message finished. He didn’t want to hear any more. It wasn’t enough that Sandy had abandoned her daughter with about as much thought as a snake shedding its skin. Now she wanted to dump her in some boarding school and take her away from her father as well. Why? So she could tell the other bankers’ wives about her beautiful daughter who just happened to be away at a top-notch boarding school? Probably. Well, it wasn’t going to happen. McCabe pulled off his coat and tossed it on the couch, found an old Coltrane/Miles Davis collaboration and put it on the machine, and parked himself and his Scotch in the big leather chair in the living room. The one Casey called Dad’s chair. He sipped the whisky and regretted Kyra’s move back to her place. He wanted to be with her tonight. He didn’t want to be thinking about Sandy.

It was funny how his ex-wife never seemed to regret anything. Certainly not any of her extramarital affairs, and there’d been plenty. Kyra once asked him why he hadn’t divorced her sooner. The answer was simple. ‘Fear of losing Casey,’ he told her. ‘In most divorce proceedings the mother gets custody. The father gets to visit. I wasn’t about to let that happen.’

He could hear Sandy’s oh-so-rational arguments even without listening to them. Boarding school would be good for her. Help her grow up. Help her get into Harvard or Yale or whatever Ivy League school Peter, the man who didn’t want to raise ‘other people’s children,’ had graduated from. Maybe the saddest part of the whole thing was that Sandy wasn’t suggesting private school because she wanted Casey living with her. If she had, she could have proposed sending her to Brearley or Dalton or one of the other hotshot schools in Manhattan. No, Sandy didn’t want her daughter back. She just didn’t want McCabe to have her either.

He sipped his Scotch and let the familiar music flow over him. He realized the last time he’d listened to it was the night the marriage finally ended. The night Sandy walked out. More accurately, the night he kicked her out. The last night they made love, though by then, of course, love had nothing to do with it, the act having become no more than reflex copulation. Even in the last days of the marriage Sandy knew she could always turn him on, and she loved proving it. He wondered if her efforts were driven by ego or a need to demonstrate her power or maybe she just liked sex.

He smiled bitterly as the memory of that night replayed in his mind. It had been a hot, sticky night in late August, and McCabe and his partner, Dave Hennings, were working late trying to drill confessions out of two seventeen-year-old crackheads who barged into a dry-cleaning store at ten that morning brandishing guns. They ended up killing the owner. It took most of the night, but McCabe had finally gotten the confessions they needed to put the pair away.

McCabe got back to the apartment on West Seventy-first about one fifteen in the morning, hot and tired, his shirt soaking with sweat and sticking to his back under his jacket. Cool air and the unmistakable scent of Sandy in heat hit him smack in the face when he opened the door. The lights were low. The air-conditioning high. Miles and Coltrane were already providing appropriate background music. Sandy was leaning against the wall in the hallway, wearing a sheer silk nightgown, her naked body silhouetted by the light shining from behind the open bedroom door. She’d always been good at provocative lighting. Probably could have made a career of it. McCabe used to joke to himself that what Shakespeare was to tragedy and Michelangelo was to chapel ceilings, Sandy was to sex. A true genius. The real thing. A Hall of Famer.

She led him to the bedroom and helped him take his clothes off. Then she washed his body all over with a cool moist cloth. When that was done, she slipped off her nightgown, knelt down, and took him in her mouth. She brought him almost to the point of climax, then waited a few seconds and did it again. Finally she led him to the bed, climbed on top, and guided him into her. Sex with Sandy was always good. Often it was great. This time was one of the best. Knowing what came next, he wondered if she’d intended it as some kind of farewell gift. Something to remember and regret after she was gone. If so, he supposed it had worked. It was only last night, in Lainie Goff’s apartment, that he’d finally broken the spell. At least he hoped he had.

He remembered how, when they were done and he was utterly spent, she slipped out of bed and walked to her dressing table, where she sat, still naked, and examined her face in the mirror. Then she began rubbing some kind of cream into it. Midway through, with streaks of white still showing, she said lightly, almost as an aside, more to her own reflected image than to him, ‘Peter Ingram’s asked me to marry him.’

McCabe didn’t answer. It wasn’t unexpected. He didn’t really care.

‘I’ve told him yes,’ she said.

Still McCabe said nothing. Just waited for the other shoe to drop.

She turned back to the mirror and began rubbing in cream again. ‘The wedding will be at Peter’s house in East Hampton as soon as the divorce is finalized,’ she said, speaking again to his reflected image.

That wasn’t the shoe he was waiting for. ‘What about Casey?’ he finally asked.

‘Casey?’

‘Yes. You remember Casey? Our daughter? The one who hopefully is asleep on the other side of that wall. What about her?’

Sandy ignored the sarcasm. ‘She’ll be staying here,’ she said. ‘With you.’ She finally turned and looked at him instead of his image in the mirror. ‘I expect you’ll be happy about that. She was the only one of us you ever cared about anyway.’

That wasn’t entirely true. He had loved Sandy once. Though he couldn’t remember exactly why.

‘You won’t seek custody?’ he asked.

‘No, McCabe, I won’t seek custody. You’ll have your little princess all to yourself. Peter has no interest in raising other people’s children.’

Other people’s children?
It was the casualness of the delivery as much as the phrase itself that enraged him. The tossing off of a bit of debris from a life she no longer wanted. Nothing more. McCabe looked at her image in the mirror and realized he had never hated anything as much as he hated Sandy at that moment. He thought about shooting her. It would have been easy enough. His holster and gun were only a few feet away, draped over the chair in the corner along with his clothes. Then he thought about hitting her. How satisfying it would be to feel his fist connect with the middle of her face. Feel her familiar flesh and bone give way, her nose break, her blood spurt out. He closed his eyes. Forced the thoughts of violence away. Sometimes in dreams those feelings had come back, and in dreams he’d often played them out. But that night, five years ago in the apartment on West Seventy-first Street, thanks, perhaps, to his love for Casey, he managed to hold them in check.

‘I’ll be moving to Peter’s place in the morning after Casey’s left for school,’ she said, her tone again matter-of-fact.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, his voice flat and angry.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, her eyebrows going up as she spoke to emphasize the certainty of the thing. ‘It’s all arranged.’

He pulled on a pair of boxers and walked over to her dressing table. ‘No,’ he said, ‘what
is
arranged is that you have exactly five minutes to get yourself dressed and out of this apartment.’ To emphasize the point he reached across the table and swept all the lotions and creams and tubes of mascara onto the floor with a single swing of his arm.

He saw doubt and, for the first time, maybe a little fear showing on her face.

‘You’d better get moving,’ he said. ‘You’re down to four and a half minutes. If you’re not out of here by then, I’ll toss your naked ass out on the sidewalk and you can walk to Ingram’s just the way you are.’

She pulled on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and some flip-flops and made it to the elevator just before her time ran out.

Twenty-Seven

He held the gun steady in two gloved hands and sighted his own image in the mirror. An old Ruger Standard .22. Abby’s daddy’s own gun. Taken from her house, where he’d found it, ready and waiting, fully loaded, the night he killed Goff. The night he realized he’d have to kill Abby as well.

He turned off the lights, walked to the living room window, and looked out on the street below. Empty save for a lone dog walker. A woman. A stranger. He sighted the gun. Slipped off the safety. Slid his finger along the curve of the trigger. He felt a tremor of excitement. His breathing quickened. The power of life and death. He’d never realized how intoxicating it could be.

It was time to go. He closed the blinds, tucked the Ruger under his belt, and checked himself out in the mirror. He put on his glasses with the heavy black frames and smiled and winked. First with one eye. Then the other. Then he went to the closet and put on his heavy coat with the oversized hood. He went out the door and walked to his car.

Twenty-Eight

Even with the covers pulled over her head and her eyes squeezed shut, Abby knew Death was near. She could feel his presence. Smell it. Like ozone in the air before a summer lightning strike. The cold knot of fear she’d been living with since Tuesday had relaxed last night when Leanna opened her arms and welcomed Abby in. Now it was back, bigger and tighter than ever before. Abby reached a hand across the bed, seeking comfort from Leanna’s bulk, but, finding none, pulled away. Her friend’s body shifted in restless sleep, unaware of the danger lurking close by.

Abby wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep or, for that matter, how long she’d even been here. She remembered arriving with the big guy in the pickup. She thought that was last night. Or, more accurately, early this morning. This morning and not yesterday morning or the morning before. But to be truthful, she really wasn’t sure which morning it was.

She remembered the big guy’s goofy grin and the microwave containers of Chef Boyardee in his arms. She also remembered the gun under his jacket. Even so, she found herself wishing he were here now. She thought about the card he gave her.
JOSEPH L. VODNICK
, it said.
PORTLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT
. There was a phone number. She could call him, except he wasn’t at the number. He was up in some dumb-ass lean-to at the bottom of Mt Katahdin. Camping or ice climbing or whatever the hell he was doing on his two days off. When they arrived last night she just wanted him to go away. Hadn’t even wanted him to get out of the truck. He insisted on walking her to the door. Said he wanted to make sure her friend was home and she could get in okay. It took a couple of minutes of ringing and banging before Leanna heard them and opened up. All that time they were just standing on the steps looking everywhere else except at each other. Abby was afraid the guy might try to kiss her good night. How goofy was that? He didn’t, though. He just reminded her of the card. Told her again to call if she was in any trouble. Then he got back in his truck and left.

Leanna asked who he was.

She looked down at the card. ‘Joseph L. Vodnick.’

‘Who?’

‘Some guy I met at the Mini Mart. He gave me a ride over.’

Leanna pulled Abby inside and shut the door against the still swirling snow.

All Abby remembered after that was taking off her clothes and climbing into the shower and letting hot water course over her until her body was bright pink and all the freeze was out of her bones. After that she checked her Zyprexa. They were all gone. She thought she had some left, but she didn’t. Must have been taking more than she thought. Or maybe she dropped some out there in the storm last time she opened the bottle. Maybe it didn’t matter. They didn’t seem to be helping a whole lot anyway. Leanna gave her a couple of pills from her own stash. Blue ones. Not Zyprexa. Something else. Leanna said the pills would help her sleep, and, boy, did they ever – but now she was wide awake and Death was coming.

The smell had become stronger, and Abby wondered if he was in the room. She pulled back the sheet and blanket enough to allow one eye to peer out of her warm cocoon. Enough dim light from the winter moon filtered through the gauzy curtains to make out the shapes of things. But not enough to penetrate the shadows where she knew Death would hide. She scanned the wall and corners on this side of the room. She saw nothing. She knew she’d have to pull the blankets all the way off her head and sit up if she was going to look over Leanna’s body and check the other side. She had to do it, she told herself. The only alternative was to lie here and wait for him to stick his knife into the back of her neck. She remembered how the woman at the Markhams’ house dropped. A puppet with her strings cut.

Abby pushed the image away. She wasn’t ready for Death. Not today. Maybe not ever. She pulled herself into a sitting position. Leanna’s breathing continued slow and steady. She looked across. Nothing there either. Just a chair piled high with clothes. A table that was really a box with a cloth thrown over it and a lamp on top. He wasn’t there. Still the smell lingered.