by James Hayman
The earrings did indeed look expensive and not like anything a kid her age would be wearing with pink sneakers. Deep blue sapphires surrounded by diamonds set in gold dangles.
“Well, the motive doesn’t seem to have included robbery,” McCabe said. “I’m pretty sure they’re real. You check them for prints?”
“We’ll do that back at the shop,” said Jacoby. “Then we’ll have them appraised.”
It was a little over an hour since presumed TOD. Rigor hadn’t fully set in. McCabe looked into Jane Doe’s eyes. Deep blue that nearly matched the blue of the sapphires except that they had started clouding over. Both were open and staring up with a look of puzzlement. As if she couldn’t believe anything this bad could possibly happen to her. She had none of the wasted look of kids who were druggies or runaways. This girl had been healthy and fit. Well fed and well cared for. Her face was lightly but carefully made up. A little eye shadow. A little lipstick. Like she might have been getting ready for a date or a party. Or had been to one. Maybe that’s why the earrings. McCabe imagined her long honey-blonde hair floating in a summer breeze, like a model in a commercial for what Casey called product. But now her life was over, and her beautiful hair was matted with drying blood and held in place by a T-shirt and shoelaces tied around both her forehead and chin.
McCabe’s eyes moved down the body. He estimated the girl’s height at five-eight or five-nine. Flat stomach. Well-muscled arms and legs. Probably an athlete. Or at least someone who exercised a lot. More capable, he imagined, than most women of defending herself from a rapist. She had a small, irregularly shaped, light brown birthmark on her thigh, the kind sometimes called a café au lait mark. It was shaped like a fist with one finger pointing out. He noted the stab wound on the right side of her navel. The three cuts on her upper chest forming the crudely carved letter A.
The cuts looked deep enough that scar tissue would have formed if the girl had survived the attack. The letter A would have been permanently etched on her body.
Was that the killer’s intention? If so, why didn’t he let her live? McCabe pointed to it and threw a questioning glance at Maggie. She shook her head and shrugged.
“I guess it’s a clue,” she said, “but I’m not sure of what. The Scarlet Letter? First in a series of serial killings? First letter of the victim’s name? Maybe the first letter of the killer’s name? Maybe he was just giving himself a grade, like in school. Like he’d done a grade A job of killing her. I imagine it’s got to mean something, but who knows what.”
A short, round-faced woman with dark curly hair walked down the path toward them, carrying an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag. Maine’s newly appointed chief medical examiner, Dr. Terri Mirabito. Maggie filled Terri in on what they knew, which wasn’t much. Terri listened without comment, moved in and squatted down next to McCabe, and looked closely at the body. Shook her head. “What a waste,” she sighed. “Why do they have to kill them so young?”
Without saying any more, Terri pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, took a small high-intensity light from her bag, knelt by the body and began examining the wounds. As she looked, she murmured, “They say great beauty can be more a curse than a blessing. I guess this kid proves the point.”
While Terri was checking the wounds, one of Jacoby’s evidence techs crawled out of the underbrush clutching a bunch of plastic bags. “Clothes,” she said. “Presumably the vic’s. Found ’em bunched up together under a prickly bush.”
“No knife?”
“Not yet. But we did find this.” The tech held up a bag containing an iPhone in a pink protective case. “It was lying on the ground, not far from where the clothes were. Almost certainly hers.”
“Weird,” said Maggie.
“What do you mean?”
“Knowing how much information a smartphone can contain, why on earth would the bad guy toss it into the woods with the clothes? Is he just stupid? Or did he want us to find it?”
McCabe thought about that. “More likely when he heard Ruthie and Scott coming, he panicked, dropped everything and got the hell out of there as fast as he could.”
However it had happened, the phone was a gift. McCabe asked Diane Rizzo to get it back to 109 to be checked out ASAP. He next took the plastic bags containing the clothes. “You find any ID with this stuff? For the girl or anyone else?”
“Nope. Nothing at all in her pockets. Just the stuff she was wearing.”
The first bag contained a white tank top. In the second was a dark blue sweatshirt caked with dirt but with no blood and no indication of knife cuts. Which meant her clothes were already off when the knife was plunged in. There was a big white Y in the middle of the sweatshirt. Y for what? McCabe wondered. Yale was the obvious choice, but maybe something else starting with Y? There was always Yeshiva. But for this Waspy-looking blonde in Portland, Maine, Yeshiva didn’t seem likely. Yarmouth High School was possible. Yarmouth was an affluent suburb just up the coast from Portland. But unless Yarmouth’s school color was the same shade of blue framing the same shaped Y, McCabe was ready to bet on Yale.
“Scott tell you where he went to school?”
“Med school at UVM.”
“How about undergrad?”
“No idea.”
“Let’s find out.”
Maggie nodded. McCabe opened another bag. He held up a pair of blue denim short shorts with raggedy hems. The kind Casey and what seemed like half the teenage girls in Portland were wearing these days. At least the half with good legs. The shorts were supposed to look like ratty cutoffs, except they cost forty bucks a pop and were cut about as high up the crotch as possible for the wearer to avoid arrest. There was dirt smeared on both sides of the back. It was likely she’d still been wearing them when she’d gone down. Next came pink thong underpants, which he supposed went with the pink sneakers and pom-poms. There was no bra.
McCabe shook his head. The way this girl was dressed sure as hell would get guys to notice her, lust for her, and maybe, if they wanted to go too far, too fast, to kill her to avoid charges of rape.
“Stop thinking what you’re thinking, McCabe. I don’t care what this kid was wearing. This wasn’t her fault.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“I just know.”
“How come you’re always right?”
Maggie smiled but said nothing.
McCabe turned to Jacoby. “How about a condom? Your folks find any condoms?”
“On this hillside?” Jacoby snorted, “only about a thousand of them.” The area was popular for trysts. Especially gay trysts. “If we pick ’em all up, we’ll be testing DNA from now till hell freezes over.”
“Just go for the fresh ones.”
“I don’t think he used a condom,” Terri called out.
They walked back to the body. Terri was kneeling, shining her light between the girl’s legs.
“He didn’t?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Semen?” asked Maggie.
“I think so. I suppose it could be dog lick. Or maybe both. Be able to tell better at the morgue. Also there’s no sign of vaginal bruising. If he raped her, he didn’t try to hurt her while doing it.”
“Blow to the head the cause of death?” asked Maggie.
“I doubt it. Head wounds like this can bleed like stink, but probably not enough to kill her. More likely the knife wound in the abdomen caused enough internal bleeding to do the job. Either way, cause of death was hemorrhagic shock due to blood loss. You can quote me on that. Now, unless you guys have something more, I’ll have the EMTs wrap her up and take her over to Cumberland. I’ll be able to tell a lot more there. I’ll do the autopsy tomorrow afternoon.”
TERRI CONTINUED TALKING, but McCabe had stopped listening to what she was saying. He just kept looking at the girl’s face, certain there was something about it and that sooner or later something would click. After a minute it did. An image from 2004, the year he moved to Portland, of a little gi
rl, ten years old, blonde and beautiful, handing him a cup of coffee. Thanks to an eidetic memory, McCabe remembered in exquisite detail nearly everything he’d ever seen, heard or read that had even slightly interested him. He could reconstruct in his mind, down to the last dust mote floating in the summer sunshine, a morning eight years ago that he’d spent in an apartment in South Portland.
At 9:21 on that particular morning, McCabe had just walked out of his date’s bedroom. As he closed the door, he noticed the little girl sitting cross-legged in front of the TV set. She turned. Saw him. Muted the Sunday morning cartoon she was watching. There was no sign of shock or surprise at having a strange man emerge from her mother’s bedroom. Apparently, she’d seen that before, how many times McCabe didn’t know.
The girl rose from the floor. She was wearing a pair of pajamas covered with little red hearts and a pair of furry slippers with bunny ears. She walked over to McCabe, held out her hand and introduced herself. “How do you do?” she said formally. “I’m Veronica. Most people call me Aimée.”
McCabe took her hand and shook it. “Why do they call you that?”
“It’s my middle name, and I think it’s prettier than Veronica. It means ‘beloved’ in French. My mother insists on calling me Ronnie, though.”
McCabe remembered thinking how incredibly self-possessed this child was. Ten years old, going on thirty. “How do you do, Aimée,” he said. “My name is Michael. Most people call me McCabe.”
“Why do they call you that?”
“It’s my last name and I think it’s prettier than Michael.”
“You do not.” She smiled a smile so beautiful it almost took his breath away.
“No. I’m just teasing about the pretty part. But most people do call me McCabe.”
“Okay, McCabe. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, thank you, Aimée, I’d love a cup of coffee.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black, please.”
“I’ll pour two. My mom likes coffee in bed if you want to take it to her.”
“Of course.”
McCabe closed his eyes and concentrated on the details of ten-year-old Aimée’s face. How it might have changed as she’d matured and grown. And the more he thought about it, the surer he was that the girl who lay dead beneath his gaze was Tracy Carlin’s daughter, Veronica Aimée Whitby. He wondered if she still called herself Aimée because she thought it a prettier name than Veronica. He knew he was the one who’d have to tell Tracy—who, though no longer a girlfriend, was still a friend—that her daughter was dead. But before he did, he had to be sure beyond any shadow of a doubt. Beyond one percent. Beyond even one-tenth of one percent.
He took out his iPhone. Connected to the Internet. Typed in Veronica Aimée Whitby and hit Images. The last scraps of doubt disappeared. McCabe signaled Maggie to follow him up the hill. “I know who she is,” he said, showing her the pictures. “And where she lives. By an interesting coincidence, Dr. Scott happens to be a rather near neighbor.”
Maggie took the iPhone and looked. “She’s Edward Whitby’s daughter? Jesus.”
“As far as anyone else is concerned,” said McCabe, “she’s still Jane Doe.”
Chapter 20
From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.
Entry dated June 26, 1924
Even in the beginning, when I was begging her to marry me, I should have known Aimée was ill suited for the role I had cast her in, wife of a wealthy Portland businessman. I suppose I assumed once she became mistress of the house on the Western Prom, she would somehow be magically transformed and begin to behave like the women I’d grown up with, the women who’d married my friends. Of course, if that had happened, she’d no longer have been the woman I fell in love with.
That Aimée was a free spirit, a Bohemian, a supremely talented artist and a woman of strong emotions and stronger opinions who had allowed herself to be trapped in a marriage to someone who had once been a fellow artist but was no longer. Alas, as my father had foreseen, the artist in me withered and died as, over the years, I became more and more enmeshed in the business of Whitby & Sons. While Aimée escaped the tedium of Portland society by creating beautiful portraits and seascapes and socializing with other artists, I was busy designing and building warships for the Navy Department.
“For what purpose?” she frequently asked.
“To keep our country strong,” I would reply, sounding more pompous than I intended. I suspect she knew, probably before I did, that the reason I worked so hard was a desperate need to outdo my now dead father. To make Whitby & Sons far more profitable than he’d ever dreamt it could be. To earn more money than he ever had. I deluded myself into thinking that outdoing him in the things he prided most in himself would, in some way, constitute revenge for all the humiliation I suffered at his hands. In the end, of course, all it did was turn me into the son he’d always wanted. Like almighty God, he had created me in his own image. His ultimate triumph.
“Come back to Paris with me,” Aimée pleaded time and again.
“We visit often enough,” I’d say, pretending not to understand what she meant.
“Oh, Lord,” she would sigh. “Where has the beautiful boy I married disappeared to?”
“I’m the same man I always was.”
“No, you’re not. But if we move back to Paris to live, perhaps you’ll rediscover yourself, Edward. We’re still young. We have more than enough money to last three lifetimes. What’s the point of making more? Together, we’ve created three beautiful children. I want them to grow up appreciating the beauty of life. Not the beauty of warships.”
Of course she was right. I look now at the images she created of the sea and the island. Canvases that captured both the extraordinary light and power of the Maine coast. I see them now and realize how good they were and wonder if I myself could ever have reached such heights.
As talented as she was, I didn’t want Aimée selling her work. I felt accepting money from strangers was beneath the dignity of the wife of Edward Whitby. That, if friends wanted them, she should make them a gift.
This, of course, made her angry, and rightfully so. “I’m an artist, Edward,” she said. “Art is my business. I make paintings and I sell them. It’s an honest and honorable profession, and it’s what I do. I was an artist when we met in Paris. And so were you. But unlike you, I’m still an artist. And I will be till I die.”
We argued about that dozens of times, and each time Aimée adamantly refused to give in. Her paintings sold for good prices and were hanging in the homes of the wealthy, not just in Portland but also in Boston and New York. Two had even been purchased by the famed Boston collector Isabella Stewart Gardner and were included in the collection of the new museum Mrs. Gardner had established just eighteen months before Aimée’s death in a grand building on the Fenway. The idea that Aimée’s paintings would soon be hanging in the same building, perhaps even in the same room, with works by Titian, Rembrandt and Sargent thrilled us both. But since her death, I’ve never gone to see them. I was always afraid the sight of them would break my heart.
Chapter 21
MAGGIE AND MCCABE watched as two EMTs slid Veronica Aimée Whitby’s remains into a black vinyl-coated bag and zipped it up. They placed the bag on a stretcher, lifted it easily, their burden weighing no more than one hundred and thirty pounds, and began carrying it up the hill. The two detectives followed.
“I should be the one to tell Tracy about this,” said McCabe.
Maggie nodded. “Yes, you should. You want me to do Whitby?”
“Sure. But let’s get our people started first. Why don’t you call Fortier and bring him up to speed? Especially on that cell phone. It could be the key to the whole case.” Lieutenant Bill Fortier was the head of Portland’s CID and McCabe’s direct report. “Bill should also drag in as many warm bodies as he can for a full court press on the neighborhood. Find out if anyone else saw the homeless woman Scott said was coming from the Lo
ring.”
Maggie and McCabe reached the top of the hill just as the MEDCU ambulance pulled away, heading for the morgue at Cumberland Med. The newshounds were already out in force. TV. Print. A couple of local stringers for the Boston and New York papers. Spotting the two detectives, they moved in and started calling out questions. Portland was a small city, and McCabe knew just about all of the reporters by name. Tracy Carlin was the one he knew best. He saw her in the middle of the pack. She smiled as she caught his eye.
McCabe held up a hand calling for silence. “Okay, quiet down,” he shouted. The questions kept coming for maybe another ten seconds. “You all know me well enough to know I’ll play it till you all pipe down.” D and D meant deaf and dumb.
Finally there was a semblance of silence. “Okay. First I’ll make a brief statement. But after that no one here will be answering any questions of any kind from anybody.” McCabe ignored the collective groan. “What I will tell you is that the body of a young woman was found at roughly three o’clock this morning on the Loring Trail by a jogger, a young doctor at Cumberland Medical Center. She was the apparent victim of a homicide. She was stabbed and may also have been raped. We have no information at this time as to her identity, and when we do, we won’t be making the information public until next of kin have been notified. That’s not going to be for a while yet, so if I were you, I’d go home and get some sleep. Now if you’ll excuse us, Detective Savage and I have work to do.”
“Come on, McCabe,” Tracy Carlin called out. “You’ve got to give us more than that.”
“As soon as we know any more, Tracy, we’ll let you know. That’s it for now except to say our crime scene specialists are still combing the area for possible evidence. So please don’t try to sneak in.”
Chapter 22
MAGGIE HEADED FOR her Blazer, McCabe for the Bird. He started the engine and pulled out. It only took a couple of minutes to drive to Tracy’s new home, a small, single-family on the corner of Howard Street and Quebec, two short blocks from Dean Scott’s apartment. He looked at the place in the early morning light. A hundred-year-old frame house with pale yellow clapboards and black shutters. She’d bought it five years ago and spent two years and a lot of money renovating it from top to bottom. McCabe and Kyra had gone to the housewarming when the renovations were finished. He hadn’t thought about it at the time, but Aimée hadn’t been there. At least he hadn’t seen her. Strange, considering it was her new home as well.
