The Cutting mm-1

by James Hayman

  She looked up. ‘No. His alibi was corroborated six ways to Sunday. He couldn’t have pulled the trigger.’

  ‘Could he have recruited someone else to do it?’

  ‘Unlikely. Kane was his meal ticket.’

  ‘Maybe they had a spat.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe, but I don’t think so. I don’t know what you’re looking for here.’

  ‘I’m trying to figure out exactly why this thug ended up in Maine trying to put a bullet through a key witness’s head. All I know so far is that Pollock’s ex-boyfriend, the late Lucas Kane, was buddies with a doctor in Maine who may be involved in the case.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I’d like to know what you know about the murder of Lucas Kane.’

  ‘About all I can add to what you read in the Herald is a couple of things I’ve always thought of as weird. Or at least questionable.’

  ‘Yeah? Like what?’

  ‘Like whoever shot Kane shot him from an angle and chose a weapon guaranteed to blow away his dentures and turn his face into mincemeat. The only reason I can think of to do that is to make positive ID as hard as possible. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. You wrote that the cops suspected a mob hit.’

  ‘Yeah, but that was bullshit. If in doubt, blame the mob. Any mob. Everybody just nods and accepts it. It’s a convenient out.’

  ‘You think this wasn’t their style.’

  ‘I know it’s not. So do you. If they wanted to kill Kane, they’d just go bang-bang-you’re-dead. No reason to hide his identity.’

  McCabe chewed on that for a minute. ‘Okay. That’s weird number one. What’s weird number two?’

  ‘The fingerprints.’

  ‘What about the fingerprints?’

  Bollinger took a breath. ‘McCabe, you’re an experienced homicide cop. You know better than I do that when you check somebody’s house for prints, you generally pick up a lot of extraneous prints from whoever’s been there. Not just the people who live there but others. Visitors, delivery people. Whoever. Well, in Kane’s apartment there was a lot of that. A lot of partials and smears, here, there, and everywhere, just like you’d expect.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘I have a good contact, a crime lab tech who examined the room where they found Kane’s body. He’s somebody I trust. According to my contact, none of those prints belonged to the victim.’

  ‘I thought the cops said there were a lot of Kane’s prints. That’s one of the ways they identified him.’

  ‘There were and it is. They found the victim’s prints all over the place. On the telephone. On the doorknobs. On tables. On the refrigerator. One on an empty beer bottle in the living room.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘Let me finish. These prints were all perfect. Nice fat plump perfect prints. Not a smear or partial among them. It was like somebody walked the victim around the apartment and planted his prints on things just before they shot him. Or maybe pressed his fingers against things just after.’

  ‘The FBI didn’t have a record of Kane’s prints?’

  ‘No. Kane was never fingerprinted while he was alive. Never arrested. Never served in the military, et cetera, et cetera. All they had for a comp was the victim himself.’

  ‘How about the DNA? Sessions said they were sure because of the DNA.'

  ‘Same sort of thing. The DNA they got was from hairs on the bed right where the techs would look. Saliva in the sink. A complete set of fingernail clippings in the wastebasket in the bathroom. Just seemed to me, and my pal in the crime lab, that it was all too perfect.’

  ‘There was no previous record of Kane’s DNA?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘So you’re saying the body wasn’t Kane’s?’

  ‘I’m saying it’s a definite maybe.’

  ‘So if it wasn’t Lucas Kane, who was it?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. In those days South Beach was full of good-looking boys on the prowl. Some selling their bodies. Some just looking for a sugar daddy. If one of them happened to disappear, nobody would even notice.’

  ‘He’d have to be the same height and weight as Kane. Same hair color.’

  ‘Easy enough.’

  ‘How about the car?’

  ‘What about the car?’

  ‘You wrote that Kane’s prints — the corpse’s prints — matched the prints found in the car.’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘Same problem of perfection they found in the condo?’

  ‘No. The prints in the car were about what you’d expect. Partials from the victim on the door, the wheel, the gearshift lever, the seat belt lock, and so on. I don’t know about DNA.’

  ‘Anybody else’s prints anywhere in or on the car?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. I think it was clean.’

  ‘So maybe they wiped it down and then let the victim drive it around?’

  ‘That could be.’

  ‘Did you ever ask Allard or Sessions about any of this?’

  ‘Yeah. At first they pooh-poohed the whole thing, told me my imagination was working overtime, but I’m a persistent kind of gal, and I kept asking. After a while they just stonewalled me.’

  ‘Kane’s father came to the funeral, right?’ McCabe asked.

  ‘Yes. The famous pianist. I remember a sad old man. He came with a much younger woman who was supposedly his assistant. Maybe she was. Maybe she was more. I think the mother may be dead.’

  ‘Did anybody think to do a Y-chromosomal DNA match between father and son? That would have confirmed the body’s identity beyond a doubt.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have helped.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Kane was adopted. On that note, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take a short break and find the little girls’ room.’

  Bollinger rose and wandered off. McCabe got them both another coffee and considered the possibilities. Suppose Bollinger was right and the body they buried wasn’t Lucas Kane. Pollock would have to have known. He ID’d the body. Said it was Kane. Hair, moles, and scars in all the right places, Sessions told him. Even made some jokes about the guy’s pecker. ‘I never forget a penis,’ he said.

  Suppose Kane had killed someone else to convince people he was dead. Why? So he could become Harry Lime? In the film The Third Man, Harry Lime faked his own death on the theory that the police would never go after a dead man. Had Kane done the same thing for the same reason? The choice of names seemed almost too obvious. Once again the risk-taker? What about the other name? Pollock’s alias, Paul Oliver Duggan. The name used by the assassin in Day of the Jackal.

  McCabe replayed Spencer’s words again in his mind. A tragic, tragic loss. In some ways Lucas was the most talented of us all. Talented enough to perform transplant surgery on elderly patients after fifteen years of not being a doctor? Seemed like a reach. Talented enough to be someone’s assistant? Holland’s. Wilcox’s. Or even Spencer’s. Maybe they were all in on it. The Asclepius Society. Killing healthy young people to bring the dead back to life.

  McCabe let his mind range over the possibilities. What about the victims? Katie Dubois. Lucinda Cassidy. Elyse Andersen. Wendy Branca. Brian Henry. All blond. All athletes. All physically attractive. All but one female. The Harry Lime name was linked to both Dubois and Andersen. Dubois was raped before being murdered. Dubois and Andersen had their hearts cut out. The fate of the others remained uncertain.

  McCabe wondered about Kane’s sexuality. In Miami he lived an openly gay lifestyle. Maybe he was bisexual. Common enough. He remembered reading Kinsey Institute statistics claiming 11.6 percent of white males between twenty and thirty-five were equally attracted to men and women.

  Bollinger returned. He handed her her coffee. ‘What do you know about Kane’s sex life?’

  ‘Ah, now we’re getting to the fun stuff,’ said Bollinger.

  ‘Seriously. I know he had an ongoing relationship with Pollard — excuse me, Pollock — but beyond that?’

>   ‘Lucas Kane was a sexual predator. Men. Women. It didn’t matter. He was vicious and voracious.’

  ‘You mean AC/DC?’

  ‘No. That’s too gentle a word for it. Sex defined nearly everything Lucas Kane did. He consumed people. Used them and abused them. Most of his targets were young and fit, but lack of beauty never deterred Lucas. If he wanted something, he used sex to get it. He even hit on fat old me on more than one occasion.’

  ‘Did he score?’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but no. Lucas Kane was physically attractive, very attractive. Beautiful, really, but I found him psychically repellent. Like a snake. Lucas would take you, suck you dry, and throw you away. Darryl Pollock was the only human being I can think of, and I use the term “human being” loosely, who was tough enough or insensitive enough or sociopathic enough not to care. A match made in heaven. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s change the subject. Lucas’s sex life gives me the creeps.’

  ‘Okay. Tell me about Stan Allard’s suicide.’

  ‘I guess that’s weird thing number three. I don’t think it was suicide.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What happened is, a little after Kane’s death, Stan’s marriage finally broke up and he moved into this grubby little place called the Endless Dunes. Basically a hot-sheets motel a couple of blocks from the beach. The way Sessions tells it, Stan was so depressed about splitting with his wife that he just wanted to end it all.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Stan wasn’t depressed. He was overjoyed. A few days before the supposed suicide, I had a couple of drinks with him. You know what he said about the breakup? “Best thing that ever happened to me. I should have walked out on the bitch years ago.”

  ‘Then we started bullshitting about the Kane murder, and I told him about some of my concerns about the fingerprints and DNA. All he said was, “I’m working on that.”

  ‘I said, “What do you mean you’re working on it? I thought the case was closed?”

  ‘He said, “It wasn’t cleared. It isn’t closed. I’m working on it.” Listen, McCabe, Stan Allard was a smart, tough cop. A survivor. I say there’s no way he shot himself.’ Bollinger paused.

  ‘You think it was Pollock and Kane.’

  ‘One or the other. Or both. Duane did most of Kane’s dirty work, but they both liked hurting people. Probably liked killing them.’

  ‘They killed Allard because Allard was getting too close to proving Kane wasn’t dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sessions didn’t do anything about it?’

  ‘I’ve got some pretty good sources who tell me Sessions was on Kane’s payroll. Hired and paid for. He wanted everyone thinking Kane was dead. Again nothing I can prove. Or even print.’

  ‘How do you think they did Allard?’

  ‘I think Kane and Pollard, sorry, Pollock, may have been waiting in Stan’s motel room. When he gets home, they render him unconscious, sit him in a chair, wrap his hand around his gun, stick it in his mouth, and bang. There were powder burns inside Stan’s mouth and evidence of saliva on the barrel of the gun.’

  ‘What kind of gun?’

  ‘A Glock 17. It was Stan’s.’

  ‘Where did they find it?’

  ‘On the floor by the body.’

  ‘Nobody heard the shot?’

  ‘Nobody they could find. Nobody willing to talk. Remember, the guest list at the Endless Dunes is mostly hookers and other romantic types who don’t want to get caught.’

  ‘So Sessions doesn’t blow the whistle…’

  ‘Because Kane can prove he was on the take.’

  ‘He leave a suicide note?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Any sign of a choke hold or drugs in Stan’s blood?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you can’t prove a thing.’

  ‘Damn, you’re good, McCabe.’

  46

  Friday. 10:30 A.M.

  McCabe half expected Sandy to turn up on his flight back to Portland. Thank God, she didn’t. Sitting next to Sandy, chatting about her coming weekend with Casey, would have been more than he could have handled. Anyway, it was early. Sandy was probably still in her West End Avenue apartment, picking out the perfect wardrobe for parental visitation. Something conservative and motherly. Sandy was good at playing roles, equally good at dressing for them.

  The plane was one of those small commuter jobs with undersized seats. He looked around to see if he could snag an empty row before squeezing into his assigned aisle seat. No such luck. The flight was packed. Next to him a distracted businesswoman in full New York chic rummaged through her Ferragamo briefcase. He smiled at her. She smiled back as she extracted a Wall Street Journal and stowed the briefcase under the seat. Then she immersed herself in the paper, signaling a lack of interest in small talk. McCabe leaned back in agreement, closed his eyes, and thought about his conversation with Melody Bollinger. Was Lucas Kane dead and buried in Florida or alive and cutting out hearts in Maine? He was ready to bet on the latter.

  His cell phone vibrated shortly after the plane bumped down at Portland International Jetport. Maggie’s name appeared in the window. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Good news, bad news. The good news is I’m back on the case and on my way to search Spencer’s house. Thought you might want to join us. Unless you’re still in New York.’

  ‘No, I’m here. Just touched down. What’s the bad news?’

  ‘We don’t know where Spencer is.’

  ‘He’s gone?’ McCabe looked out the window. The plane seemed to be crawling to the gate. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘We don’t know. The cop watching his house doesn’t know. The hospital doesn’t know either. Woman at the Levenson Heart Center said he was supposed to be in surgery this morning. He never showed up.’

  Spencer would never miss surgery, would he? The plane stopped about a hundred yards short of the terminal. ‘When was the last time anyone spoke to him?’

  ‘At 6:00 A.M.,’ said Maggie. ‘Hospital called him at home. He answered.’

  Maggie was interrupted by the voice of the captain. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid there’ll be a short delay while we wait for a gate to open up. Shouldn’t be more than a minute or two.’

  ‘Shit,’ McCabe said. Too loudly. The woman next to him gave him a look. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. He looked out the window. Couldn’t see anything.

  ‘A teenage boy died early this morning,’ Maggie continued, ‘from injuries in a car crash. Spencer was supposed to be installing his heart in a thirty-two-year-old woman named — ’ Maggie paused. Seemed like she was checking her notes. ‘- Lisa Lynch.’

  ‘He never showed up?’

  ‘You got it. They called Dr. Codman to cover. Almost lost the heart and the woman.’

  Why would Spencer not show up? There were a lot of reasons, none of them good. ‘You tried the house yourself, and his cell?’

  ‘Yeah. Voice mail picks up on both. I think we were wrong about him not being involved. I think he flew the coop,’ said Maggie.

  McCabe doubted it. Even if Maggie was right and Spencer was involved, taking off would practically be an admission of guilt. Okay. They had the earring, and the blood from the Lexus, but even taken together that wouldn’t be enough to convict. Not with a lawyer like Sheldon Thomas. Hell, they couldn’t even prove Spencer was driving the Lexus. The evidence they had was a lot less damning than OJ and his Bruno Magli shoes. Thomas would have told him that.

  The plane inched forward again.

  Maggie’s voice was in his ear. ‘I think maybe he’s guilty and Tasco rattled him more than you thought during that interview. He decides we’re getting close to nailing him and bango, he hits the road.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe,’ McCabe said. Although he wasn’t buying it. The plane reached the gate. The pilot turned off the seat belt sign, and people all around him started getting up. ‘What about Hattie?’ he asked.

  ‘We don’t know where
she is either. I think they took off together.’

  The woman next to McCabe was looking at him again. He was still in his seat, and she wanted out. He stood up and banged his head on the overhead. ‘Where are you now?’ he asked, pushing his way into the aisle and rubbing his head.

  ‘We’re just leaving 109.’

  ‘Have you put out an ATL yet?’ He didn’t want to use Spencer’s name.

  ‘Yeah. For both the BMW and the Porsche. Every department in Maine plus the New Hampshire staties.’

  The flight attendant opened the door, and the line of people started inching out.

  ‘We’ve got public transport covered as well. Buses. Trains. The airport.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll run into them on the way out,’ said McCabe. The idea made him smile. Grimly.

  The line stopped again. In front of McCabe, a girl around twenty, probably a college kid, was blocking the aisle, struggling to release a duffel bag way too big for the overhead space. He slipped the cell phone into his pocket and wrestled it down for her. They started moving again.

  He could hear Maggie shouting from inside his pocket. ‘Hey, McCabe, you still there?’

  He pulled the phone out. ‘Yeah. I’m trying to get off the plane. Call you right back.’ He flipped it off.

  Up ahead, the flight attendant chirped her mandatory farewells. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. Finally he was free.

  He called Maggie back. ‘Meet you at Trinity Street?’

  ‘I just sent a car to the airport to pick you up,’ she told him. ‘Should be there any minute.’

  By the time McCabe reached the exit, the black-and-white Crown Vic was pulling into a no-parking zone right out front, lights flashing. He slipped into the front seat. ‘Alright, hit it,’ he told the officer driving. ‘Lights and siren, 24 Trinity Street.’

  Dave Hennings called as they turned out of the airport and onto Congress Street. McCabe asked the driver to silence the siren.

  ‘Howdy, partner, how you doing?’

  ‘Not so great, Dave. A suspect just turned up missing. We’re about to search his house. You have anything for me?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s a good thing I love you like family. I had to flaunt my Homeland Security creds big-time on this one. Threaten our nation’s air carriers with the Patriot Act. Imply Wilcox was a suspected terrorist. Anyway, it turns out he made three short round-trips between Raleigh-Durham and Portland over the past year. Trip number one was last December. First class out of Raleigh-Durham on United 3281 December fourteenth, changed planes in D.C. He returned on the seventeenth, also on United.’