by James Hayman
Scott smiled at that. “No. She smelled something on top of that and took off like a bat out of hell. I called her to come back, but she kept going. I called again. She still didn’t come back. I figured she must be chasing a squirrel or some other small animal, so I ran after her, calling her name. Telling her to come. But she paid no attention, and I lost sight of her.
“I stopped for a second near the sewage plant, trying to figure out which way she went. That’s when I did see somebody. An old woman scurrying by. A bag lady pushing a cart full of stuff. I tried stopping her and asking if she’d seen my dog, but she just kept going as fast as she could. I suppose she might have seen something.”
“What did she look like?”
Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. Like a bag lady. Gray, stringy hair. Kind of dirty. Mismatched clothes. Maybe sixty something, but you never know with homeless people. Sometimes when they’re brought into the ER they turn out to be twenty years younger than you would have guessed. Anyway, she was maybe five foot two or three. Kind of fat. Pasty face. Her legs were all swollen up with edema. Whoever she is, she’s had a hard life.”
“She was coming from the direction where you found the body?”
“Yeah.”
Looked like they might have a possible witness. That is if they could ever find the woman. “Okay, what then?”
“I ran to the Loring and turned up the trail.”
“Had to be pitch black on the trail. How could you see anything?”
“I was wearing a headlamp. Which, by the way, is still lying in the dirt near the body. It belongs to me, not the killer, so I’d like it back.”
“Sorry. It’ll have to go into the evidence locker for the duration.”
“Yeah? Well, in that case, maybe you guys could buy me a new one. It’s something I use a lot, and first-year residents aren’t exactly rich doctors.”
“Fine. Remind me later. Right now it seems to me that between Ruthie’s barking and the light from your headlamp, the killer must have seen and heard you coming from quite a distance away.”
“I’m sure of it. But at that point I didn’t know anything about a murder or anyone being attacked. I was just trying to find my dog and stop her from catching what I thought must be a small animal and eating it. Anyway, right up there”—Scott pointed—“where the trail meets that little path to the left, I saw some splotches of what I was pretty sure was blood. More blood was visible further along the path. I didn’t hear Ruthie barking anymore, but I could hear her making licking sounds. So I figured she must have caught whatever it was she was chasing and carted it into the woods to finish it off.”
“You didn’t see the girl lying on the path?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she wasn’t there then.”
Maggie frowned. “Where was she?”
“Let me finish. The woods right there are pretty thick on both sides of the path. Small trees. A lot of bramble bushes. Other prickly stuff. With my light I could just see Ruthie on the right side, head to the ground, poking at something. I figured she was probably eating whatever she caught. Since the last thing I need is my dog puking squirrel guts all night, I got down on my haunches and crawled in after her. About ten feet in, I saw the girl. Ruthie was standing over her licking whatever she could off her body.”
“Blood?”
“Blood for sure. Probably other stuff as well. Sweat. Tears if there were any. Salt. Saliva. Whatever. And along with it, I would guess any trace of whoever attacked her. I put Ruthie on the leash. Tied it around a small tree trunk and crawled back. I found a pulse. Weak but definitely there. She wasn’t dead yet.
“She had a deep stab wound about two centimeters above and on the right side of her navel.”
“Her right side or yours?”
“Hers. Looked like the knife punctured the small intestine. Maybe the colon. No way to tell how bad, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it either way. What I could do something about was the bleeding from the back of her head. I took off my shirt and used it as a compress to at least try to stanch the bleeding enough for her to survive till an ambulance could get here. I tied the shirt in place with the laces from my running shoes. One around her forehead and the other around her chin. Then held it on tight with one hand. While I was doing that, I called 911 with the other.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Something weird. She had a letter carved into her chest. Just starting to scab over.”
“A letter?”
“Yeah. A capital letter A. All I could think of was Hester Prynne. Y’know? The one accused of adultery in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter? Except in the book, the A was pinned to her dress.”
Maggie frowned. A letter A carved into the victim’s chest. What in hell was that all about? “All right. What happened then?”
“Then she died. She was just a kid. No more than twenty. I’ll tell you, between the DOA at the hospital and this one, it’s been a bitch of a night.”
“What did you do?”
“When I couldn’t find a pulse, I picked her up and carried her back to the path.”
“Carried her how?”
“Upright. Like this.” Scott formed a circle with his arms. “Arms around her waist. Her body against mine. It was the fastest way to get there. Her feet dragged along the ground most of the way. We both got scratched.”
“Why move her at all?”
“I needed a clear space to start CPR. Both chest compression and mouth to mouth. No way I could do it in the brambles.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Why do CPR if she’d most likely bled to death or maybe died from organ failure? How would CPR help?”
Scott gave Maggie a dismissive look. “Any full arrest deserves a full resuscitation. That’s one of the first things they teach you in med school. It may not help, but when the alternative is certain death, you do what you can to get the heart started again. Specially when there’s an ambulance only a couple of minutes away. That’s it. The whole story. I did CPR until the EMTs got here. We both knew it was over.”
Maggie sighed. “So what we’ve got now is a body covered not just with dog lick but also with your blood and sweat from you carrying her and your saliva in her mouth. Plus your crawling around most likely wiped out any footprints or other signs of the killer.”
“ ’Fraid so. Sorry. Like I said. A fucked-up crime scene. But I tried to do what was best for the girl.”
Maggie studied the young doctor, wondering if maybe he had killed the girl himself and all the rest was bullshit.
“Can I go home now?” he asked.
Maggie didn’t hear him. She was thinking maybe he was pleased because his strategy seemed to be working. The fact that his blood, saliva, fingerprints and footprints were all over the place, on the body and at the scene, couldn’t be used to convince a jury, or even a prosecutor, of his guilt. Neither could the fact that her blood was on him. All it would convince them of was his heroic efforts to save her life. An almost perfect cover-up for murder.
“Detective, I asked you if I could go home now.”
“No. Not yet,” she said distractedly. Her mind was racing. Okay. Scott said people saw him leave the hospital at 2:15 a.m. That could be easily checked, easily substantiated. But what if instead of just taking the dog for a run, he also had a date to meet the girl here? A date in which he planned to kill her. Did it have to be planned? Could it have been spontaneous? No. It had to be planned. Why else carry a knife with him? On the other hand, if he planned to rape and kill somebody, why bring the dog? Ruthie the licker. Answer: To screw up the evidence. Okay. So he went home. Changed into running clothes. Got the dog. Got the knife. And jogged on down for their rendezvous. It sort of fit. Including the fact that he was admittedly present at time of death. Except if he was the killer, maybe he delayed the 911 call till he was sure she was dead. But that was no big deal. Okay, so what about the letter A? Maybe it had nothing to do with Hester Prynne.
Maybe he was signing his work. Maybe his name started with an A. No, she reminded herself, his initials were DS. Okay, maybe the A meant that this kid was destined to be the first of many. They’d find his next victim with a B on her chest. On the surface, Scott didn’t seem to fit the profile of a serial killer. He’d chosen a career in which his job was saving lives. On the other hand, who the hell knew? Serial killers did weird stuff. Dennis Rader sent notes to the media and the cops telling them he wanted to be called BTK. That was his signature. Bind. Torture. Kill. Then there was that alphabet guy in New York State whose victims’ first and last names and towns in which the bodies were found always started with the same letter. Carmen Colon in Churchville. Wanda Walkowicz in Webster. Michelle Maenza in Macedon.
“I’m sorry, I think I have to go home now. I’ve got to be back at the hospital by noon.”
“One last question. Do you remember anything else that might have some meaning? Anything else, anything at all that you saw or heard on your way to the scene? Think hard. Put yourself back in that place and think hard if there was anything else.”
Scott took a deep breath. Leaned his head back. Maggie waited.
“There was one thing, now that I think about it, that seemed a little strange.”
“What?”
“A boat engine. Judging by the sound, a midsized outboard. It started up just about the time I stopped the bag lady. Then the sound diminished, like the boat was pulling away from shore. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time—I was too focused on finding Ruthie. It probably should have occurred to me that it was strange that someone should be running a boat at that hour of the morning. I don’t know.” Scott’s face brightened. “Maybe it was your killer making his getaway.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” A boat engine. Okay. Might mean something. But maybe nothing more than a lobsterman getting an early start. On the other hand, Scott could be right about the guy getting away by boat. Maggie looked up and saw McCabe standing a few feet away, studying her. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there.
“Can I go home now?” asked Scott.
“Yes. You can go. Get some sleep. Get cleaned up. But don’t go far. We may need to talk to you again.” She asked for his cell number. Wrote it down. Handed him her card. “If something occurs to you that you didn’t think of while we were talking, anything, no matter how small, please call me. Even if you think it’s totally irrelevant.”
Scott smiled what Maggie figured was his charm-the-girls smile. “How about I give you a call anyway?” he said. “Even if I don’t think of anything, maybe we could get together for a drink or something?”
She suppressed a strong desire to say Hey, asshole, we’re in the middle of a murder investigation and I’m a cop and I don’t date witnesses. Instead she left it at a pleasant, “Sorry, Dean, I don’t think so.”
She waited till Scott and Ruthie were out of sight before asking McCabe, “What do you think?”
“Sort of a jerk, specially that ‘let’s get together for a drink’ business, but I don’t think I buy him as the killer.”
“I dunno. You’re probably right. Let’s go look at the body.”
Chapter 18
From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.
Entry dated June 24, 1924
I sailed from Boston on the liner Bretagne on the 20th of July 1894 and arrived in Paris eight days later. With the help of Peter Comstock, a friend and fellow artist from the Museum School who had been in Paris for over a year, I found appropriate rooms one flight above his, in a building on the Rue des Trois Frères in the Montmartre section of the city, just north of the Académie Julien. My rooms were comfortably, if not lavishly, furnished and afforded me a pleasant view of the rooftops of the city. The building itself was almost entirely populated by Americans more or less my own age who had come to Paris to eat good food, drink fine wine and get to know as many ladies of the demimonde as we possibly could. Of course, with whatever time we had left over, we also studied art, music, medicine or French literature.
If allowing me to get “certain appetites” out of my system was the reason my father agreed to finance my year in Paris, I am the first to admit that at least for the first month or so, I did not disappoint. I spent Whitby money lavishly. Ate with Peter and other friends at the city’s finest restaurants and drank heavily. I experimented with absinthe, cocaine and morphine, and spent more than a few nights a week cavorting with les filles de joie within the rooms of Paris’s most exclusive maisons de tolerance, most particularly Madame Kelly’s Le Chabanais, where the other patrons included the famed artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Queen Victoria’s corpulent son “Bertie,” the Prince of Wales, a pleasant, if self-indulgent, fellow who would later become King Edward VII.
On a warm, rainy day at the beginning of September, I began classes at the Académie. It was a little after two in the afternoon and I was hurrying, because I was nearly twenty minutes late for my first studio session and I arrived soaked both by perspiration and rain. Every face in the room turned as I bolted in. Twenty-one men and one woman. Two if you count the model.
Le professeur, Monsieur Garnier, approached.
“Monsieur Whitby?”
“Yes, sir. I mean oui, Monsieur.”
“You are late,” he said in excellent English.
“Oui, Monsieur.”
“I will excuse your tardiness, as this is your first session. However, in the future, kindly make sure you arrive on time. Now find yourself a bench and please stop staring at my daughter.”
I tried. I truly did. But as I started my sketches, I found it nearly impossible not to look at her. And soon I was sketching Aimée and not the far-rougher-looking woman who was modeling. Indeed, at eighteen, Aimée was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. Her silky blonde hair was tied back with a black ribbon. Her soft red lips pursed in concentration as she worked. She had deep blue, nearly indigo eyes that, as I recall, occasionally glanced back at me in playful curiosity. It wasn’t just Aimée’s features and figure that attracted me. Even if these had been more ordinary, she exuded a radiance of spirit I’d never before encountered in a woman. Indeed, by the end of our two-hour session, I was hopelessly in love without a word having passed between us. I gathered up both my sketches and my courage and walked over to introduce myself, hoping my less-than-satisfactory Penfield Academy French would suffice. Happily she spoke perfect English. I was half-expecting to be sent packing for my forwardness in so obviously sketching her, but instead she asked to see the sketches. I hesitated. She was, after all, the daughter of one of the most famous artists in the world. To my amazement, she complimented my work. Told me I had talent. And, to my delight, invited me to join her and a group of other students after class at the nearby Café Lézard.
I readily accepted the invitation and followed as she led us through the rain-soaked streets to the café. It turned out that Aimée was the only woman, as well as the only Francaise, in the group. Whether she was included for her beauty, for her family connection to one of the most important professeurs at the Académie, or because they liked her strong opinions and prodigious talent was a matter of debate. Still, it pleased Aimée to be there. She made no secret of the fact that she preferred the company of men, flirted shamelessly with all of us and basked in the attention we paid her.
I remember those afternoons so well. There we were, seven young peacocks, seated around a large table, all puffed up, strutting and shaking our tails in our eagerness to impress the one extraordinary female in our midst. Every time she favored me rather than one of the others with a look, or asked my opinion on something, my heart would leap. But whenever she turned her attention to someone else, it wounded me like a knife to the heart.
Ten months later, to my own amazement, as well as the amazement of everyone who knew us both, Aimée agreed to become my wife. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined anyone as beautiful and talented, anyone with so much life, could ever find someone as intense and moody as mys
elf even remotely attractive. But apparently she did.
Not wanting to give my prize a chance to change her mind, I promptly presented her with a large diamond purchased at the most expensive bijouterie in Paris, and two weeks later, despite the protests of both Aimée’s and my own parents, we were married in the village church near the farm in Provence where Aimée was born. After the wedding, we traveled by train to Le Havre and boarded La Bretagne for the trip back to Boston.
Chapter 19
AT 4:20 A.M., the air on the Loring Trail was dry, crisp and surprisingly cool for early June. A steady breeze was blowing in from the water. The stars that had filled the night skies just a little earlier faded as the first streaks of dawn appeared in the east.
Maggie and McCabe waited at the top of the path where the girl’s body lay in the glare of the floodlights. A pair of evidence techs were still taking measurements. Drawing diagrams. Shooting photographs and videos both of the body and the scene.
Finally, Bill Jacoby came up and handed them gloves and Tyvek booties. “My people will be done in a minute. You can go have a look.”
As the techs moved away from the body and disappeared into the woods to search for evidence, McCabe and Maggie walked down the narrow path, single file, to where the body lay.
They squatted side by side next to the girl. She looked to be twenty at most. Even in death it was easy to tell she’d once been pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful in that same rare way few women are. “She looks like a young Catherine Deneuve,” said McCabe. “Features. Shape of the head. Everything.”
“Catherine who?” asked Jacoby.
“A famous French film star.”
“Lucky film star,” said Jacoby.
“Deneuve must be in her seventies now. Still a beauty though. Too bad this girl didn’t make it that far.”
“Find any ID yet?” Maggie asked Jacoby.
“Nope. Nothing. Unless her name starts with an A. She’s still Jane Doe as far as we’re concerned. But check out the earrings she’s wearing. They look like the real thing and damned expensive.”
