The Cutting mm-1

by James Hayman

  Suddenly Kane lunged. He was fast for a big man, amazingly fast. Something small and shiny flashed by McCabe’s face. McCabe dodged the blade and fired, point-blank, into Kane’s chest. The slug had to have hit, but Kane kept coming.

  ‘You can’t kill me, McCabe,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you know I’m already dead? Murdered in Florida?’

  Kane advanced slowly. McCabe backed away. He felt pain and wetness in his left hand, the one holding the Maglite. The scalpel, if that’s what it was, must have sliced the flesh between his thumb and index finger. He let the light fall to the floor, but it stayed on, illuminating the hall in a shadowy semidarkness.

  Kane slashed again, this time at McCabe’s face. McCabe fired again. Kane staggered but kept coming. Now there was blood leaking from his mouth. ‘I’m a ghost, McCabe. A ghost that’s going to slit your throat.’ Kane’s words came out in a choking cough.

  McCabe drew back farther, amazed Kane was still walking, still upright. Either one of those shots should have killed him. McCabe felt the edge of the banister press against the small of his back. Behind him, he knew, there was nothing but air, three stories down to a stone floor. Finally Kane threw himself forward, his arm swinging the scalpel wildly. McCabe crouched, ducking under the slashing blade. Then he lunged forward himself, rising up and under. The camera in McCabe’s mind recorded the next few seconds in slow motion. Kane’s momentum, aided by McCabe’s shoulder as he rose, lifted him up and over the rail. McCabe stared. Freeze-frame. Kane stared back, suspended for an instant, like a cartoon character, in midair. Then he was falling, still clutching the scalpel, his arms flapping as if he could fly. Kane landed headfirst on the flagstone floor below.

  McCabe felt blood trickling from his wounded left hand. He holstered the. 45, found some Kleenex in his back pocket and pressed it against the wound. He retrieved the Maglite and shone it down on Lucas Kane’s body three floors below.

  51

  Saturday. 12:30 A.M.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  McCabe turned and saw Maggie leaning against the door frame, watching, her weapon in her hand. Even in the dim light, she must have been able to see his left hand covered with bloody Kleenex, because she walked toward him and raised it over his head like a child in class who knew all the answers, though he knew he really didn’t. ‘How’s Lucinda?’ he asked.

  ‘Physically okay, I think. Otherwise? Who knows. The wound in her chest is superficial,’ Maggie said. ‘He must have been drawing the process out. Killing her slowly.’

  ‘Sadistic bastard,’ he said. He paused. ‘Kane’s dead.’

  ‘I know. I heard the shots and came out to help. Saw him go over the rail.’

  McCabe looked straight into Maggie’s eyes. They were practically the same height. ‘He came at me with a scalpel,’ he said. After an awkward moment, he waved his bloodied hand in her direction as a kind of proof that he hadn’t done anything wrong.

  She touched her hand to his cheek. ‘You don’t have to convince me, McCabe.’

  Then she took the Maglite, and together they went back into the room where Lucinda Cassidy lay on a steel autopsy table, still naked, her hands and feet still bound to the table, her eyes wild with fear. A thin red line of blood ran neatly from just below her neck to just above her navel. It was already drying.

  Maggie bent down and retrieved the hospital gown from the floor. She covered Lucinda’s body, tying the strings around her neck. ‘Lucinda,’ she said, pointing the light at her own face, ‘you’re safe. I’m a police officer. Detective Margaret Savage.’ She shifted the beam to McCabe. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe. Nobody’s going to hurt you.’ She handed the light back to McCabe. ‘You’ll be all right now. You’re safe,’ she said, speaking gently like a mother trying to comfort an injured child. Lucinda’s frantic eyes darted rapidly from one to the other of them.

  ‘I’m going to take the tape from your mouth now,’ Maggie continued, ‘and unbind your hands and feet.’

  McCabe watched, sure Lucinda would start screaming and thrashing, as Maggie pulled away the duct tape and untied the restraints. She didn’t. She let Maggie take her in her arms and help her to a sitting position. Then Maggie hugged and stroked her and told her over and over that she was safe. That she would be okay. That the nightmare was over. To McCabe’s surprise, Cassidy simply closed her eyes, laid her head on Maggie’s shoulder, and quietly wept. She babbled a little, the babbles mostly incoherent, except for the word ‘Mommy,’ repeated a number of times. For Lucinda it was going to be a long road back. McCabe put the light on the autopsy table next to Maggie and went downstairs.

  In nearly complete darkness, he felt his way to the back utility room and flipped on the main power switch. The lights came back on. The Goldberg Variations picked up where they’d left off. In the hallway, Lucas Kane lay in the middle of the floor. Dead once. Now, dead again. This time for good. It was over.

  McCabe could hear sirens. He walked to the front door and opened it in time to see three Maine State Police cars and a MedCU unit scream into the compound. Maggie must have called Ellsworth after all. Good for Maggie.

  Troopers poured out of the cars dressed for combat. McCabe walked out of the house, hands in the air, holding his shield high over his head for the troopers to see.

  ‘McCabe?’ one of them called. A sergeant. Apparently in charge.

  ‘Yes,’ McCabe shouted and went to join them by the cars.

  ‘Sergeant Bill Dickinson, Ellsworth Barracks.’ He held out his hand.

  McCabe shook it. ‘Katie Dubois’s murderer is inside the big house. He’s dead. My partner’s upstairs caring for a female hostage.’

  ‘The Cassidy woman?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He turned to the EMTs, one of whom was bandaging his cut hand. ‘The woman upstairs — she’ll need to be sedated. Otherwise she seems okay. Third floor.’ They nodded and both of them headed for the building.

  ‘What else?’ asked Dickinson.

  ‘Some people are holed up in a large basement area under the cottage over there. A doctor. Some nurses. An old man with a serious heart condition. He’ll need medical attention, too.’

  ‘Armed? Fortified?’

  ‘No. They’re using it as an operating room. Just let them know you’re here. My guess is they’ll come out without a peep.’

  Two heavily armed troopers rushed the building and tried the door. Unlocked. They slipped inside.

  McCabe watched them go, then turned and started walking back toward the house.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sergeant Dickinson’s voice boomed out behind him.

  McCabe looked back. ‘Me? I’m getting my partner and going home.’

  52

  Saturday. 1:00 A.M.

  They started back to Portland the same way they’d come. Maggie was at the wheel. McCabe stared silently out the window, thinking about nothing, thinking about everything. The road was nearly empty now, and Maggie drove fast, easily overtaking the few cars they encountered along the way. Temperatures had fallen down near the freezing mark, but the promised flurries hadn’t materialized. ‘Get some sleep,’ she said. ‘We can trade over in an hour or so.’ He nodded and closed his eyes, but they wouldn’t stay closed. Instead they focused on the center stripe, reflected in the headlights, rushing toward them, then disappearing under the hood of the car.

  In the warmth generated by the heater, McCabe’s weary brain played and replayed the final seconds of Lucas Kane’s life, watching from another vantage point as he and Kane engaged in their slow, final dance of death. He saw Kane, already bleeding from two bullet wounds, lunge forward. Saw himself duck beneath the arc of Kane’s slashing blade. Then from his crouching position he saw himself drive forward, his shoulder striking Kane just below the waist. Finally he watched himself as he rose and, using Kane’s own forward momentum, lifted the bigger man up and over the railing. He watched the fall. The flapping of the arms. The fatal impact.

  Each time he watched, McCabe came to the sam
e conclusion. If he hadn’t risen, if, instead, he’d moved straight forward, or angled left or right, Kane wouldn’t have gone over the rail. He would have just been knocked to the floor. In all probability, he would have died from the gunshot wounds anyway. Either way, the question McCabe had no answer for was a simple one. Had he flipped Kane over the rail on purpose? Had he, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, wanted to make absolutely sure that there would be no trial? That there would be no Sheldon Thomas finding some slick way to get the killer off? He wasn’t certain of the answer — and if truth be told, he finally realized, he didn’t really care. Just as he’d told Kyra about TwoTimes, the man was vermin and he deserved to die. Ambiguity. McCabe was comfortable with that.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Maggie asked, glancing over at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said finally, after thinking about it a little longer. ‘Yes. I’m fine.’ He gazed out the driver’s side window. They were crossing the Penobscot River east of Bucksport on the old Waldo-Hancock Bridge. The skeleton of the new bridge, still under construction, rose out of the darkness just south of them.

  Near Stockton Springs, they stopped for coffee and a couple of candy bars at an all-night gas station. Neither had slept in nearly forty-eight hours. They were both exhausted. The last thing they needed was for one or the other of them to fall asleep at the wheel. McCabe filled the tank. Then they switched around and he drove.

  He checked his watch — 2:00 A.M. Casey would be asleep in Boston now. In a big bed in a fancy hotel. Anyway, he hoped she was sleeping and not lying awake worrying. He wondered if she and Sandy were sharing a bed. If so, he hoped Sandy had given her a choice about that. He also hoped Sandy hadn’t made any remarks about Casey being too old to still be sleeping with Bunny.

  His cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID. Shockley. He flipped the phone to speaker mode so Maggie could hear. ‘Hello, Tom. I guess you heard about Kane.’

  ‘You’re damned right I did. Good work. Great work.’ Shockley sounded excited. ‘I issued standing orders for Dispatch to wake me if and when we got this bastard. Can you let me have a few of the details? I’m talking to the press in a little while.’ McCabe smiled, imagining visions of Blaine House, the governor’s mansion, dancing like sugarplums through Shockley’s overeager brain. ‘Mike, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Chief. By the way, you’re on speaker. Maggie’s here.’

  ‘Fine. Can you give me any of the details? I need to get this right.’

  McCabe took Shockley through the whole thing, starting with his call to Priscilla Pepper and ending with Kane’s final fall to the stone floor and Cassidy being found alive.

  ‘Was the scalpel still in his hand when he died?’

  ‘Yes,’ said McCabe. ‘It was.’

  ‘I saw the whole thing, Chief,’ added Maggie. McCabe glanced at her, knowing she’d only come out of the room in time to see Kane go over the rail. ‘Use of deadly force was justified,’ she said.

  ‘Well, thank God for that,’ Shockley replied. ‘The media briefing starts in about twenty minutes. Will you two be back by then?’

  ‘No. We’re still the other side of Belfast,’ said Maggie. ‘A couple of hours out.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll handle it. By the way, Kevin Comisky’s funeral’s scheduled for three o’clock Monday. Full departmental honors. I hope you’ll be there.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Can you let me have his wife’s address and phone number?’ asked McCabe. ‘I’d like to call on her.’

  ‘I’ll have Deirdre e-mail it to you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Then, not wanting to listen to Shockley anymore, McCabe hit the off button before the chief could answer.

  He looked over at Maggie. ‘Use of deadly force was justified? That’s what I’m supposed to tell Casey when she asks if I had to kill the guy?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what you’ll tell her because we both know that’s the truth. You had no choice.’ She looked back at him. ‘Just like you told me the other day, it was a clean kill. It needed to be done.’

  He felt Maggie’s eyes studying him as they drove on in silence. ‘Now what are you thinking about?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing. Sometimes I just wonder if Casey wouldn’t be better off living a life where phrases like “clean kill” and “justifiable use of force” didn’t enter the lexicon. Where she wouldn’t have to lie awake nights wondering if her father’s gonna come home dead or alive.’

  ‘I can’t help you with that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I would if I could.’

  ‘I know that, too,’ said McCabe.

  ‘I just think you should stop torturing yourself. You’re one of the good guys. You always will be.’

  He reached out from the wheel and took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. He remembered her brown eyes gazing down at him in Tallulah’s and smiled. ‘You know what else I’m thinking about? I’m thinking about a kiss I got from a really good friend of mine the other day in Tallulah’s, and I’m wondering what she might have been thinking at the time.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Maggie. ‘That was just an impulsive thing on your friend’s part. Don’t let it worry you. Like she said at the time, you’re taken.’

  He let go of her hand. ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘I guess I am.’ He wondered if Kyra would be waiting for him in the apartment. He was hoping she was.

  They traded places again at Augusta, and Maggie drove the rest of the way in silence. McCabe snoozed. It was still dark when they reached the Eastern Prom. Maggie turned the Crown Vic into the parking lot behind the condo. McCabe got out and headed for the door. When he got there he looked back to offer a final wave, but Maggie was already gone. He entered the white Victorian and climbed the stairs to the third floor. He knew that if Kyra was there, he would wake her and they would make love. He knew she’d be happy with that. Afterward maybe they’d sleep for a while. After they woke from that sleep, they’d make love again.

  McCabe pulled off his shoes on the landing, entered the apartment, and padded silently across to the bedroom. He pushed open the bedroom door. Somehow, in the darkness he could see Kyra, sitting up in bed, waiting for him. Letting the sheet slip from her naked body, she held out her arms. ‘Welcome home,’ she said softly.

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