The Cutting

by James Hayman

  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.

  He went back to scanning the faces in the crowd. One stood out, an exotic-looking woman around forty, expensively though casually dressed. More Saks Fifth Avenue than L.L.Bean. To McCabe, she seemed anxious, edgy. Her fingers kept opening and closing the metal clasp on her leather shoulder bag. Her eyes blinked frequently. As Shockley spoke, she seemed to focus on McCabe, but, like a shy schoolgirl, she looked away the instant he glanced in her direction. This happened two or three times, and McCabe knew she was more than a passerby, more than a voyeur attracted by the cameras. She had something to tell him. He needed to find out who she was and what she was doing here.

  She must have sensed what he was thinking, because even before Shockley finished speaking, she suddenly turned and hurried away. He watched her cross Congress Street and start down Exchange. He paused, perhaps too long, but then, playing back his brother Tommy’s words – You’ve got good instincts, Mike. Follow them – he ran down the crowded steps of City Hall, taking them two at a time.

  He could hear Shockley’s voice behind him. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. As you can see, it seems Sergeant McCabe is wasting no time picking up the investigation.’ The crowd laughed appreciatively.

  Dodging oncoming traffic, almost getting hit by an ancient Chevy pickup, McCabe crossed Congress Street and ran onto Exchange. Too late. She was out of sight. He hurried down the street, looking left, looking right, checking building entrances, a fancy dress shop, a small Chinese takeout. Maybe she’d slipped into one of the shops. He peered in the windows. She couldn’t be far. Across the street an old brick building housed the Press Herald offices. He knew a security guard manned a desk near the entrance. He entered the building, holding his shield at eye level. He pushed past two men and a woman on their way out. ‘Sorry. Sorry. Excuse me.’

  He leaned around a woman signing in with security. ‘Excuse me,’ he asked the guard, ‘did you see an attractive, well-dressed woman, brownish hair, maybe forty? Kind of in a hurry?’ The security man looked bewildered. ‘Did you see her come in here? A minute ago?’ The guard shrugged and wordlessly shook his head.

  ‘Chasing a suspect, McCabe?’ The voice came from the stairwell beyond the security station. It was Preston Summerville, one of the paper’s editorial writers. ‘Looks like you lost her. A well-dressed woman, brownish hair?’ Summerville’s well-honed reporter’s instincts were kicking in. ‘What’s she done? Maybe I can help –’

  ‘Did you see her go out the back?’ he asked just as Josie Tenant burst in the front door, cameraman in tow.

  ‘Hey, McCabe, what’s going on?’ she called out.

  McCabe sighed. Hunter chases fox. Hounds chase hunter. Hounds catch hunter. Fox gets away. It wasn’t supposed to work that way, was it?

  ‘Sorry,’ said Summerville. ‘Didn’t really notice.’ McCabe went out the door that led to the parking lot. He scanned the cars in the lot but knew it was over. If she came out here, she was gone. If she didn’t, if she continued down Exchange Street, she was still gone.

  8

  Saturday. 3:00 P.M.

  It was 3:00 P.M. and McCabe and Maggie Savage were both present in the autopsy room at th
e Maine State pathology lab on Hospital Road in Augusta. Terri Mirabito entered, clad in her blue scrubs, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. ‘Good afternoon, everybody,’ she called out. ‘Shall we begin?’ Terri was short, perhaps five-one or five-two, a trifle plump but definitely cute, with a round, sunny face and a mop of curly black hair. Before he met Kyra, McCabe seriously considered asking her out on a date. Though he did imagine dinner-table conversation between a homicide cop and a forensic pathologist might tend toward the ghoulish.

  McCabe watched in silence as she took the case chart from Assistant Pathologist Jose Guerrera and began reading aloud. ‘Today is September 17, 2005. This is case number 106-97-4482. Katherine Dubois. Caucasian female. Sixteen years old. Date of birth, July 14, 1989. The body has been positively identified by the deceased’s mother, Joanne Ceglia of 324 Dexter Street, Portland, Maine. Height 5′ 3½″. Weight 106 pounds, 45.2 kilograms.’ She continued reviewing the preliminaries, recording additional findings on the file as she proceeded. She checked the photographs Guerrera had taken earlier and found them acceptable.

  Terri then began a close examination of the body that had once been Katie Dubois. She identified nine second-degree circular burns, each about half an inch in diameter, that had been randomly inflicted, six on Katie’s chest, three on her inner thighs.

  ‘Was she burned postmortem or ante?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘Ante,’ said Terri. ‘Postmortem tissue doesn’t redden like this.’

  Why on earth did he burn her? McCabe wondered. Why did he have to do that, too? Was it punishment for defiance? Lying there on the autopsy table, Katie seemed so slight, her barely developed body so childlike, so vulnerable in death, McCabe found it hard to imagine that she’d been anything but terrified, anything but compliant.

  McCabe watched Terri closely as she worked. She was humming an old Beatles song, ‘Hey Jude,’ tunelessly, probably mindlessly, to herself. She painstakingly checked every millimeter, looking for hairs or fibers that weren’t Katie’s, for anything that might provide a clue to where the girl had been and whom she’d been with. She found nothing. Terri checked both fingernails and toenails for traces of skin or hair that might have been scratched from an attacker during a struggle. As he watched, McCabe noticed Katie’s toenails were painted an assortment of bright colors, each toe a different color, a smiley face drawn on the big toe where someone, probably Guerrera, had earlier hung an ID tag identifying Katie as case number 106-97-4482. McCabe hadn’t seen the nail polish in the gloom of the scrap yard and chided himself for carelessness. Again Terri found nothing. ‘Clean as a whistle,’ she murmured more to herself than to the cops.

  Terri then swabbed Katie’s vaginal and anal cavities for traces of semen. Though he’d attended dozens of autopsies of women who had been sexually attacked, this time, for the first time, McCabe felt he was intruding in a place he shouldn’t go. He imagined Casey’s body laid out like this on a stainless steel autopsy table, exposed under bright lights to faceless cops and probing pathologists, and he wished he were somewhere else. He forced the image from his mind. He knew he had to be here both for himself and for the girl – in a way, for Casey, too. Terri spoke for the record. ‘There is severe vaginal and anal bruising indicating rough sex or possibly insertion of a dildo or other foreign object. The subject may have been raped multiple times prior to death.’

  Guerrera reported that the swabs came up negative for semen. ‘Either he used a condom or maybe he was just as happy playing with toys.’ He spoke with a soft Castilian accent that seemed somehow out of place in this cold sterile room.

  Terri looked up at McCabe. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look so good.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’ He didn’t elaborate.

  Terri nodded and then went back to her work. She examined the incision that had been made in Katie’s abdomen. She carefully removed the small ornament that decorated Katie’s navel. Using a scalpel, Terri then cut diagonally from each of Katie’s shoulders down toward the opening that already existed in her chest and abdomen. She continued the cut down beyond the navel to the pubis. She reopened the already sawn sternum and began removing, examining, and weighing each of the girl’s organs, excepting, of course, her missing heart. With the body opened, the stench of decomposing flesh filled McCabe’s nostrils, and he felt a rising nausea. This was the moment in each autopsy where, for McCabe, the corpse lost its connection with the living, its human identity becoming once and for all time a memory. McCabe’s mind let go of Katie and now shifted to planning the next steps in the Dubois investigation. At the same time, he found himself wondering if Lucinda Cassidy might still be alive and, if she was, how on earth he’d ever find her before she, too, ended up on a table like this.

  An hour later the autopsy was over. Terri, removing her gloves, walked McCabe and Maggie to the door. She looked at McCabe. ‘Like I said last night, someone surgically removed this girl’s heart. Underline surgically. Removing a heart is not a difficult procedure, especially if you don’t care if the patient – victim – dies, or if you actually want the patient to die.’

  ‘How could you remove someone’s heart and not have the person die?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘It’s done all the time,’ said Terri.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Maggie was genuinely confused.

  ‘It’s called a transplant. A sick heart is removed from a person and a healthy heart put in. In most cases, the patient who receives the heart goes on to live a perfectly normal life. At least for some period of time.’

  A transplant was something McCabe hadn’t considered. He found the notion intriguing. He looked at Terri. ‘Do you think that’s even remotely possible?’ he asked. ‘That Katie’s heart was removed as part of a transplant procedure?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible, but damned unlikely. There’s certainly a shortage of hearts available for transplant. Someone might even kill for one. Many have died for want of one. The thing is, a successful transplant can’t be done outside a modern OR, and I can’t imagine any American transplant center accepting a donor heart without knowing exactly whose it was or where it came from. It just wouldn’t happen.

  ‘Even so,’ Terri continued, ‘this extraction was done skillfully. The incision was clean, most likely made with a scalpel. I’d guess the sternum was cut with a Stryker surgical saw. Like the one I use for autopsies. Hard to find outside a hospital. Or someplace like this. Anyway, I’d say you might – underline might – be looking for a murderer who trained as a doctor. Probably, but not necessarily, a surgeon. Possibly, but not necessarily, a cardiac surgeon. Again possibly, a pathologist. That’s the best lead I can give you. Katie Dubois was alive, her heart was beating, when the surgery – and I’m going to call it that – began. The removal of her heart was the immediate cause of death. What I’m really curious about is whether or not she was either anesthetized or brain dead at the time the heart was removed.’

  ‘If not?’

  ‘If not, she would have suffered horribly.’

  Maybe our boy got off on that, thought McCabe. ‘Your blood tox results will tell you that?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I’ll let you know as soon as I do. It’ll be a while, but I’ll try to hurry the lab along as much as I can.’

  9

  Saturday. 6:00 P.M.

  McCabe’s cell phone rang on the return trip from Augusta. ‘This is McCabe.’

  ‘Sergeant McCabe? This is Dr. Spencer. Phil Spencer. My wife said you called?’

  ‘Yes, Dr. Spencer, I was hoping you could spare me half an hour.’

  ‘Hattie said you wanted to talk to me about the Dubois girl,’ said Spencer. Without waiting for a response, he continued. ‘I’m not sure how I can help, but I’ll be happy to talk with you. I keep an office in the hospital, in the Levenson Heart Center. It’s one of the luxuries the hospital affords me. If you can come up in an hour or so, say seven o’clock, I can spare you some time. I
should warn you, though, I may have to run out midconversation. I’m waiting on a harvest.’

  ‘A harvest?’

  ‘Yes. We’re harvesting a heart. For a transplant. Or, more accurately, a surgeon in New Hampshire is harvesting a heart.’

  ‘You call removing a heart “harvesting”?’ McCabe found the term a little creepy.

  ‘Yep. Organ recovery is more politically correct these days, but I’ve said harvesting for fifteen years, so I guess I always will. Anyway, once I get word the heart’s on its way, I won’t have much time to talk.’

  McCabe glanced at his watch. Five after six. He could make it by seven if he drove straight through to the hospital. ‘See you at seven,’ he said.

  It was a warm, pleasant evening, and he drove with the Bird’s retractable hardtop down, catching as much of the sunset as he could. There wasn’t much traffic, and he picked up his speed, taking 95 to 295. He reached the Congress Street exit for the hospital with time to spare.

  He pulled the Bird into the crowded visitors’ parking lot and headed for the hospital. An oversized revolving door led into the main lobby. Spotting an information desk manned by elderly volunteers, McCabe lined up behind a gaggle of other visitors and, as he waited, studied the comings and goings of a wounded humanity. An old woman, legs wrapped in bandages, hobbled painfully toward a bench, where she sat heavily. A girl, no more than fifteen, perhaps as young as Casey, rode in a wheelchair, a dazed expression on her face, a newborn in her arms. An aide was pushing the chair toward the exit. A middle-aged couple, the girl’s parents, McCabe supposed, walked behind. White-coated students and residents scurried importantly around them, stethoscopes stuffed in pockets, badges pinned to chests.

  Finally an elderly woman sporting a fluffy halo of white hair smiled up from behind the desk. ‘May I help you, sir?’