The Cutting (8 page)

‘Mrs. Spencer?’

‘Yes?’

‘This is Detective Michael McCabe, Portland police. Is Dr. Spencer at home?’

‘No, I’m afraid he’s not. I think he’s gone out for a run.’

‘Could you ask him to call me when he returns?’

‘May I ask what this is in reference to? We’ve already given to the Children’s Fund.’ Her voice and manner were pure Yankee blue blood.

‘Mrs. Spencer, this is not about a donation. We’re investigating a homicide, and Dr. Spencer may be able to help.’

‘Oh, I see. It’s about that poor girl, isn’t it? Do you have any suspects yet?’

‘Mrs. Spencer, I’m sure you’ll understand, I’m not at liberty to discuss the case.’

‘Of course. I’ll have Philip call you.’

McCabe gave Spencer’s wife his cell number. He looked up and saw Tom Tasco and Eddie Fraser standing by his desk. They looked tired. Normally Eddie had a kind of jumpy energy. He couldn’t stand still. Right now he was standing still.

‘We may have a witness,’ Tasco said.

McCabe hung up the phone. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Eddie and I were canvassing all the commercial properties in the area to see if anybody saw or heard anything,’ said Tasco. ‘There’s a moving and storage company on the other side of Somerset? Richard A. Morgan Van Lines?’

‘I know the place.’

‘Seems they’ve got a night security guy. Student at USM. Name’s Mark Shevack.’

‘How long has he worked there?’

‘About a year,’ Fraser said. ‘He got the job when he started over at the U. last September. My guess is he mostly snoozes or listens to his iPod, but he occasionally has to wander around and check things out. Says he thinks he saw a car stop and park on Somerset on a line with where the vic was found. It stayed there about ten minutes, then took off.’

‘When?’

‘Thursday around midnight.’

‘That works okay with time of death, but it means she was lying there for nearly twenty-four hours before anyone spotted her.’

‘Not many people go in there.’

‘Did Shevack get a decent look at the car?’

‘Not really,’ said Tasco. ‘He says it was a dark-colored SUV. Couldn’t tell what kind. Thought it might be European. Curvier look than a Jeep or Explorer. He couldn’t make a color or plate number either. He says it was pretty dark and he really wasn’t paying much attention. He’s only responsible for checking the warehouse. He only noticed it because cars don’t stop on Somerset very often. Almost never that late.’

‘Is that it?’

‘No. There was a security camera, too,’ said Fraser.

‘That’s good news.’

‘Yes and no. Unfortunately, it’s mostly pointed on the warehouse area, but on a corner of the frame, it picked up what might be part of the car in the background.’

‘Might be?’

‘Yeah. It’s time-coded, but way the hell out of focus. You can see a dark car-blob stop where Shevack said at eleven forty-eight. A human-blob gets out of the car-blob and goes to the rear, where, as best we can tell, it unloads what might possibly be the body and carries it into the yard. Then the human-blob comes back without the possible body-blob, gets in the car, and drives away. It’s eleven fifty-nine.’

‘Eleven minutes?’ McCabe considered how long eleven minutes could be. Too much time just to carry the body to where it was dumped, arrange it to his liking, and walk back. So what’s he doing in there for eleven minutes? Admiring his handiwork? Jerking off? That’s some cocky bastard.

Eddie Fraser was trying to get his attention. ‘Mike, it’s gotta be our guy. It’s gotta be. Starbucks is trying to computer-enhance the image now. C’mon, let’s see how he’s doing.’

McCabe and the two detectives went downstairs to the small cubicle where the PPD’s resident brainiac sat in front of a computer setup far more sophisticated than McCabe’s. He was a Somali kid named Aden Yusuf Hassan. When he started working for the PPD a few years earlier he was instantly nicknamed Starbucks by the cops, more for his addiction to strong coffee than for any resemblance to the Melville character.

Starbucks had arrived in Portland at age fifteen back in 2000, in the first wave of Sudanese and Somali refugees who came fleeing genocide in their own lands. Shockley hired him part-time while he was still in high school, part of a brief flirtation with building racial diversity in the department. The kid had never touched a computer in his native country, but he learned fast. He was a natural. One of the best McCabe ever saw. He could teach himself the basics in complex programs in just a couple of hours, mastery in a few days. Without question, he was the number one computer geek in the department, maybe in the whole city. Starbucks sat hunched in front of a flat-panel monitor, his dark brown face scrunched up in concentration.

He looked up as McCabe and the others approached. His face exploded in a huge smile. ‘Good news, Detectives!’ He said it emphatically, practically shouting out the word ‘Detectives’ with only a trace of a Somali accent, his only language until age fourteen. ‘I make the car as definitely an SUV. Maybe a Lexus. Maybe a BMW. A 2002 model, maybe 2003.’ Starbucks traced an index finger along the back edge of the blob that, thanks to his efforts, now looked more like a car. ‘See? Follow the rear roofline? Now look.’ A second, more recognizable SUV popped up on the screen next to the still-blurry shot from the security camera. ‘Here is a known 2002 Lexus SUV. Same position. Same angle. You can see the line’s the same.’

The outlines seemed nearly identical. Then the Lexus image was replaced by another similar one. ‘Now here’s a BMW,’ said Starbucks.

Again a similarity to the blob. Not quite as close. Without taking his eyes off the screen, McCabe said, ‘Eddie, can you guys check DMV for all ’01 through ’06 Lexus SUVs registered in Maine? Check BMWs as well while you’re at it, and throw in New Hampshire. Then see if you can cross-check ownership against a database of male MDs. Especially surgeons and pathologists. Maybe biologists or biology teachers. Eliminate anyone over the age of sixty. Our guy’s not that old. Starbucks, can you do anything to tell us more about the guy who gets out of the car?’

Starbucks advanced the tape frame by frame searching for an image of the man that might provide additional information. McCabe watched. Just as the man-shaped object reached the back of the vehicle, he paused and turned toward the road, maybe to check if he was being watched, but he never looked right at the camera. At best, it was a one-quarter to one-third profile, more side than front. Still, it was something.

Starbucks’s fingers worked his keyboard, and the image on the screen became more of a man, less of a blur. ‘Starbucks,’ said McCabe, ‘keep a record of exactly what you’re doing to enhance this image. If the tape’s ever going to be admissible in court, you’re going to have to be able to repeat and verify every single thing you do.’

‘No problem, Sergeant. I’m keeping notes, and I’m recording each step on a nonerasable CD. Repeatable and verifiable. How much it will tell us about the bad guy is less certain.’ Both McCabe and Starbucks knew that even if the tape led them to the killer, by itself it wouldn’t be sufficient to positively identify the guy or prove he did it. They’d need more.

The young Somali zoomed in, isolating the portion of the frame where the man-blob could be seen in direct relation to the car. ‘Since we know the height of the car and the height of the fence, we can see the man is quite tall. By simple triangulation I estimate his height at six foot one or, at most, six two.’

‘Anything else?’

‘His face is mostly turned away, and the source material is of poor quality. However, he has broad shoulders, appears to be Caucasian, and is wearing a baseball cap. Even from this angle we can see he has quite a long face. Maybe a big nose, but that’s less certain.’

‘A tall, thin-faced white doctor in a cap. Well, that narrows things down some,’ said Tasco.

McCabe watched as Starbucks played with the keys again. He advanced the image to the scene where the man-blob lifted the tailgate and unloaded his cargo. Starbucks advanced the scene again and stopped it. Now the tall white doctor was carefully carrying his trophy in his outstretched arms into the scrap yard. A groom carrying his bride over the threshold. In the middle of a busy city. The guy was clearly a risk-taker. Maybe that was part of the thrill.

Starbucks moved the scene forward and back a number of times, finally stopping on the frame that provided the best view of the bundle. It seemed to be wrapped in a light-colored fabric. Starbucks zoomed in on the image. ‘Well, from the shape it certainly could be Katie,’ said McCabe. ‘Or maybe just a bundle of trash from some guy too lazy to go out to Riverside.’

‘Strange shape for trash,’ said Tasco. ‘Besides, Jacobi’s team didn’t find anything else out there remotely similar.’

‘Just Katie.’

‘Yeah, just Katie.’

They ran through the portions of the tape where the car was parked. Two other cars drove by during the eleven minutes, but there was nothing else that seemed revealing. ‘Let’s put out some publicity on this,’ said McCabe. ‘See if we can find one or both of the drive-bys. Maybe they’ll remember something useful about the parked car.’

‘I’ll continue working with this,’ said Starbucks. ‘By altering the individual pixels I think I can improve resolution. Give us a better idea of what the guy looks like. What he was wearing. However, as I said, the quality of the source material is poor.’

McCabe checked his watch. Almost time for Shockley’s press conference. ‘Okay. I’ll check in with you guys later. Right now I’ve got to attend a command performance for the GO.’ ‘The GO’ was the squad’s nickname for Chief Shockley, a.k.a. ‘the Great One.’

7

Saturday. 11:00
A.M.

The press conference began on schedule on the broad granite steps of Portland’s hundred-year-old beaux arts City Hall. The event was, as McCabe expected, perfectly stage-managed. Camera crews and reporters from the local network affiliates plus reporters from all of Maine’s major daily papers stood in a crowd at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at Shockley. Among them McCabe saw a face he recognized as a stringer for one of the New York tabloids. There were probably others.

The mayor and several city council members flanked Chief Shockley. Close to a hundred of the merely curious were also in attendance. Shockley wore full-dress blues for the occasion. McCabe and Maggie Savage positioned themselves behind him and slightly to his right. At least, McCabe mused, there were no musicians on hand to start things off with a rousing chorus of ‘Hail to the Chief.’ Probably only because Shockley hadn’t thought of it.

‘As most of you know, a brutal murder was committed in our city within the last forty-eight hours.’ As Shockley began to speak, McCabe’s eyes scanned the crowd. The one real benefit of this sort of circus was that it might just draw ‘a person of interest.’ One by one he began recording the faces in his memory. He wouldn’t forget them.

Shockley continued. ‘A young woman, not yet out of high school, was killed and possibly raped, her body left in a vacant lot off Somerset Street. I can assure you this crime will not go unpunished. All the resources of this department are focused on finding the killer or killers. Our investigation is already well under way and is being led by Detective Sergeant Mike McCabe, formerly one of New York City’s top homicide detectives’ – Shockley graciously gestured in McCabe’s direction; McCabe graciously nodded back – ‘who now heads up our own Crimes Against People unit. You can rest assured he and his team will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to apprehend the killer or killers of Katie Dubois. I’ll take your questions now.’

Half a dozen reporters waved their hands. Luke McGuire of the
Press Herald
got the first question. ‘Chief, can you tell us if you’ve developed any leads and, if so, what they indicate?’

‘Thank you, Luke. Yes we have developed several leads and are following up on them now …’

McCabe and Maggie exchanged glances. Exactly what leads was Shockley referring to? He didn’t know about the video.

‘… but I’m sure you’ll all understand that we can’t yet reveal these to the public.’

Toni Taylor, an attractive woman in her forties, a reporter for the local ABC affiliate, was next. ‘Chief, we heard another woman was reported missing yesterday. Are the two cases in any way related? What can you tell us about that?’

‘Yes, that’s true, Toni. A local businesswoman named Lucinda Cassidy was reported missing last night about the same time Katie Dubois’s body was discovered. At this point we have no reason, other than the coincidence of timing, to believe the two cases are related.’

The questions and answers continued in a set-piece pattern for about ten minutes. McCabe was getting antsy. He wanted to get moving on the case. Then a reporter McCabe didn’t recognize was called on. ‘Chief, you’ve said some nice things about Sergeant McCabe. Could the sergeant tell us more about his background and career experience?’

McCabe eyed the man, wondering what, if anything, he might know. Before he could open his mouth, Shockley fielded the question as smoothly as a big league shortstop. ‘Let me respond to that, Charlie.’ Okay, the man’s name was Charlie, and it seemed Shockley knew him.

‘Sergeant McCabe is a modest man who, I suspect, won’t do justice to his own accomplishments, but I’ll touch on a few of the highlights. In just ten short years Michael McCabe rose from rookie patrolman to head of the homicide desk at the NYPD’s Midtown North precinct, one of the top homicide jobs in the country.’ As Shockley continued, McCabe could feel his toes curling inside his shoes. He suspected he might be blushing and hoped he wasn’t scowling. Maggie gave him a slightly amused smile.

‘During his three years at Midtown North,’ Shockley continued, ‘McCabe was credited with clearing more than sixty murders with a conviction rate of better than ninety percent, one of the best in the history of the NYPD. The guilty included a number of gang leaders and drug kingpins and, importantly for our present circumstances, at least two high-profile serial killers.’ Shockley rattled on for a while, and McCabe was relieved Charlie didn’t ask any follow-up questions. He didn’t seem to know about TwoTimes. McCabe didn’t need all that coming back to haunt him now.