The Girl on the Bridge

by James Hayman

  “How would it be possible for any woman to do that?” Rachel persisted.

  “I don’t know,” McCabe responded. “Is Josh into bondage?”

  Rachel stared at him curiously. “Bondage? You mean like whips and chains?”

  “No. More like being blindfolded and tied up. Like in the picture.”

  “God, no. That’s what’s so weird about this. He hates anything even slightly kinky. That’s the last thing he’d want to do. He’s a Republican, for Christ’s sake.”

  McCabe swallowed a strong desire to laugh and instead went back to trying to construct a likely scenario. What seemed certain was that Joshua Thorne met a woman last night whose name may or may not have been Norah Wilcox. They ended up going somewhere. Maybe her house or apartment. Maybe a short term rental. Maybe even a cheap motel. One unanswered question was why? The Regency was a luxury hotel just a short walk from the Port Grill and Thorne already had a room. But instead of going there, he . . . they . . . went to a place where Thorne ended up tied down on a bare mattress that looked like it had been dragged in from a homeless shelter.

  The first question was where. The second was what happened when they got there? Given the sign on Thorne’s chest, the obvious answer was he raped the woman he picked up and taking and sending the photo to Rachel was her revenge for what he had done. A second possibility was that it was revenge for the college rape that recently resulted in the victim’s suicide. A third was that Thorne was a habitual rapist and some past victim was getting back at him.

  So how’d it happen? The woman does whatever she does to render Thorne unconscious, though probably not by whacking him on the head with a Ming Dynasty vase. Once he’s out she ties him down on the filthy mattress, puts the sign on his chest, takes his picture and sends it to his wife.

  How does she get Rachel’s name and e-mail address? From Thorne’s smartphone? That seemed reasonable. No pass code necessary. These days all you do is press the owner’s thumb against the phone and it opens right up. Okay, so she e-mails the picture. Then what? Does she untie him and take off into the night? Or possibly into the morning?

  No, McCabe decided, that didn’t make sense. Josh would have gotten up, gotten dressed and gone to his meeting. Or at least called his clients when he woke up to explain why he missed it. Unless he was still unconscious, which seemed unlikely since it was already nearly three in the afternoon.

  Okay. Scenario two. Norah doesn’t free him from the ropes. Just leaves him tied up and takes off. What would he do? Yell and scream till somebody hears him and rescues him. Unless she put some duct tape over his mouth to shut him up.

  Scenario three was, in McCabe’s view, the most likely one. That the reason nobody heard Joshua Thorne screaming and yelling was because he was already dead and everybody knows dead men have a hard time raising a ruckus.

  McCabe got up. “Nature calls,” he said. “Be back in a minute.”

  Chapter 9

  MCCABE HEADED ACROSS the floor to the small conference room. Once inside he flipped on a monitor. Rachel Thorne’s face filled the screen. He muted the audio and called Dispatch.

  “How can I help you, Sergeant?”

  “Any excessive noise complaints come in last night?” he asked. “Somebody yelling and shouting in a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night?”

  “Hold on, I’ll check.”

  A minute later Kelly Haddon was back. “Yes. There was one,” she said, “a woman named Joan O’Malley called 911 at 2:14 A.M. Complained about some guy swearing a lot and screaming about wanting to kill someone. She thought the noise was coming from the house next door and that bothered her because the owners don’t live there anymore and she thought maybe some homeless drunks had broken in and gone off the deep end.”

  “Address?”

  “O’Malley lives at 337 Hartley Street. About halfway between Forest and Stevens. Next door is 339. Both houses back up onto Baxter Woods. The far side of 339 is also open to the woods.” Baxter Woods was a small patch of undeveloped parkland on the north side of the city. Named after Percival Proctor Baxter, a former mayor of Portland and governor of Maine.

  “Who investigated the complaint?” asked McCabe.

  “One of our rookies. Cathy Willetts.”

  McCabe had never met Willetts but he’d heard her name before. One of his younger detectives, Brian Cleary, told him she was a good-looking twenty-something just a couple of months out of the Academy. Brian had asked McCabe if he thought it was smart for him to date another cop. He sure as hell was interested. McCabe told Brian it probably wasn’t a good idea. McCabe didn’t mention how he and Maggie had resisted similar temptation right after McCabe broke up with his old girlfriend Kyra.

  McCabe thanked Kelly for the information and called Willetts’s boss, Sergeant Walt Ghent.

  “The one and only Michael McCabe. To what do I owe the honor?”

  “Hiya, Walt. I need some input.”

  “Shoot.”

  “One of your people checked out an excessive noise complaint on Hartley Street last night?”

  “That’s right. Rookie named Willetts.”

  “This rookie know what she’s doing?”

  “Yeah, she does. Gonna be a good cop, I think. I’m looking at her incident report now.”

  “Okay, tell me about it.”

  “Not all that much to tell. Everything was quiet by the time Willetts got there. She knocked on this O’Malley’s woman’s door. Takes her a while to answer and when she does O’Malley starts whining about how nobody, including the cops, ever let her get a decent night’s sleep. Willetts apologized and said she was just responding to O’Malley’s own complaint. O’Malley said to forget about it. Everything had quieted down. Willetts asked her if she really thought the noise was coming from the house next door and O’Malley admitted she wasn’t sure. It might have been some kids raising a ruckus on the street. Or maybe some druggies doing their thing in Baxter Woods. O’Malley’s thank-you took the form of telling Willetts, ‘I don’t know what takes you people so long to get here.’”

  “Did it take long?”

  “Nah. Willetts was there six minutes from the time Dispatch got the call. Not instant but not bad. Anyway, after getting the basics from O’Malley, Willetts went next door and rang the bell on 339. When nobody answered she went around back. Shined her light through the windows. The place was dark and quiet. No homeless guy. No druggies. No TV or radio left on. No car in the driveway. No nothing. Then, just to be thorough, she checked out the woods alongside and behind the house to see if any homeless people might be winter camping out there and maybe downing too much coffee brandy or whatever the hell they’re drinking or shooting up these days. Maybe getting into a noisy scuffle while they’re in the process.”

  “But she didn’t see or hear anyone?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Walt.”

  “YOU HAVE OTHER pictures of Josh on this tablet?” Maggie was asking Rachel when McCabe walked back in. He didn’t sit. Just stood by the door listening.

  “Yes, of course,” said Rachel.

  “Good. We’ll need one that clearly shows Josh’s face so we can distribute it and start a search.”

  Rachel took the tablet, flipped through a bunch of photos, settling on one of a good-looking guy wearing jeans and a sweater smiling at the camera from a park bench. Trees with red and gold leaves filled the background. “I took this last fall in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It’s a good likeness.”

  “Okay. We’ll have to borrow your tablet and cell phone for a while to get an investigation under way. What’s your pass code?”

  “It’s 1884. That’s the year Charlton, the school I work for, was founded.”

  “The same for both of them?”

  “Yes.”

  McCabe caught Maggie’s eye and signaled with a tilt of his head that he wanted to talk to her.

  “Okay,” said Maggie, “there are some things Sergeant McCabe and I have to discuss r
ight away if we’re going to find Josh. In the meantime, please wait here for us. We’ll need to ask you some further questions. It could be a while so I apologize but please don’t go anywhere.”

  WALKING BACK TO the conference room McCabe filled Maggie in on Mrs. O’Malley’s noise complaint.

  “Could be unconnected.”

  “Maybe. Still worth a look-see.”

  They went in and closed the door. On the monitor Rachel Thorne’s face still filled the screen.

  “You think she’s lying?” asked McCabe. He trusted Maggie’s instincts on such things even more than his own.

  “Lying about what?”

  “The college rape.”

  “Maybe. What I do think she’s doing is trying to protect her husband or maybe just her marriage to a guy who may screw around but also brings in the big bucks.” Maggie studied Rachel’s more or less expressionless face on the screen. “And who knows? Maybe she messes around as well. The proverbial open marriage. Either way, she looks to me like a woman who enjoys spending Josh’s seven-figure bonus money. Anyway, if she is a liar she’s a good one.”

  “She’s got plenty of motivation,” said McCabe. “If Josh gets outed as a rapist, from college days or otherwise, the money flow could dry up, and if rape can be proven, it might even land him in jail.”

  “I don’t see how. Even assuming the college rape was rape, it happened twelve years ago. The statute of limitations on sexual assault is eight.”

  “In Maine it is. But Holden College is in New York State. No time limit on prosecuting rape in New York.”

  “Okay. Good for New York. But I still don’t see how you’d prosecute. The victim didn’t press charges back then and since she’s currently dead she can’t do it now.”

  “No. She can’t. And if Norah tried to press charges she could be charged with kidnapping even if Thorne did rape her. I have Bill Bacon tracking down women named Norah Wilcox and Davenport checking for recent suicides by women who attended Holden College in 2001. In the meantime, why don’t you see what Starbucks can get us on the Wilcox e-mail and photo.”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Then maybe you could finish up with Rachel and then cut her loose.”

  “And meanwhile you’re just going to stand there gazing at the beautiful but distraught wife?”

  “Yeah. I wanna see how she acts when there’s no one else in the room.”

  “She knows there’s a camera focused on her.”

  McCabe shrugged. “People sometimes forget they’re on camera.”

  “Maybe some people do. But not this one.”

  MAGGIE HEADED TO her desk where she e-mailed the Prospect Park photo of Thorne both to her own computer and to Dispatch with a note asking Kelly to send out an extended ATL—Attempt to Locate—for Joshua Thorne. Within ten minutes every cop in Maine, New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts would be on the lookout for anyone resembling Josh. Within an hour they’d all have the Prospect Park photo taped to their dashboards.

  She next took Rachel’s iPhone and iPad downstairs to Starbucks, the Portland PD’s resident computer geek. Whoever had shot the bondage picture of Thorne might not have been computer savvy enough to remove the EXIF code and other identifying metadata from the photograph. If that was the case Starbucks might be able to identify whatever camera or smartphone the picture had been taken with. And even if it was Josh’s as she suspected, if it still contained its SIM card, they’d be able to pinpoint its location and, with any luck, Josh’s location at the same time.

  WHILE MCCABE STOOD watching Rachel Thorne, he called his boss, Lieutenant Bill Fortier. He knew Bill would be in the middle of his weekly status meeting with Police Chief Tom Shockley but figured by getting them together he could kill two birds with one stone. Fortier answered on the first ring. No greeting. Just an unusually brusque, “What’s up, McCabe?” Something was pissing Fortier off.

  “Missing person,” said McCabe. “Possible kidnapping. Possible homicide.”

  “New York banker by the name of Joshua Thorne?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “His boss just stormed out of the chief’s office.”

  “Guy named Brumfield?”

  “Yeah. Floyd Brumfield. Obnoxious New York type. You know, Master of the Universe and all that bullshit? He told us, and I quote, we damned well better pull our fingers out of our butts and find his boy Thorne or there’d be hell to pay.”

  “Nice. Did he happen to mention what kind of hell?”

  “FBI hell. He said Deputy Director Jack Ellerbey is a good friend of his from East Hampton, and if we didn’t find Thorne fast, Ellerbey’s people would move in and take over.”

  “Think he has that kind of pull?”

  “I have no idea. But when Brumfield stormed out, Shockley trotted after him like an eager poodle. I’m still sitting in the chief’s empty office so why don’t you just fill me in on what you know.”

  McCabe provided Fortier with a shorthand version of the interview with Rachel Thorne and her brother. He added that, at the moment, Maggie and Starbucks were trying to digitally locate Joshua Thorne’s iPhone.

  Fortier asked a few questions but not many before responding. “Okay, I got it. You know what you’re doing. Forget Brumfield and his threats. Just keep me posted on any developments. Major or minor.”

  “I’m getting my people together at three-thirty. Small conference room. You may as well sit in.”

  “Will do.”

  The door opened. “How’s the distraught wife doing? Make any on-camera confessions?” asked Maggie.

  “Cool as a cucumber. Closed her eyes for a while. Like she was meditating. Or praying. I don’t know. Got up a couple of times to stretch and walk back and forth. Opened the door once and looked up and down the hall.”

  “What’s your gut on what happened to Thorne?”

  “My gut says he’s probably dead.”

  Maggie nodded. “Yeah. Mine too.”

  “You know what keeps running through my mind?” asked McCabe. “Remember that opening scene from Basic Instinct? The one where Sharon Stone ties the guy to the bed with silk scarves and then plunges an ice pick into his throat and about eighteen other places right in the middle of screwing him.”

  “Coitus interruptus?”

  “Yeah. Interruptus in the worst possible way.”

  “Okay, so we both think Josh is dead,” said Maggie, “and you think we’re looking for Sharon Stone.”

  McCabe laughed. “Yeah. As played by someone named Norah Wilcox.”

  “Norah’s motive being revenge for a rape?”

  “She said so herself. Rapists get what rapists deserve.”

  “And rapists deserve to be killed?”

  “It just occurred to me. If someone murdered Joshua Thorne for his role in the Holden College rape,” said McCabe, “we could have another problem.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the other guys who were accused of that rape. Charlie Loughlin and the other four who supposedly climbed aboard after them. If this is revenge for what happened at Alpha Chi Delta that night there may ultimately be six victims.”

  “Joshua Thorne being the first?”

  “Or, who knows, maybe the last.”

  Chapter 10

  MAGGIE OPENED THE door to the interview room and Rachel Thorne looked up.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel, but there were a few things we had to do to kick the search for Josh into high gear.”

  “Where’s Sergeant McCabe?”

  “He’s busy at the moment.”

  “I see.” Rachel chewed on that for a moment. “Does that mean I’m being relegated to the second string?”

  The insult seemed calculated. Maggie decided to let it pass. “Not at all,” she said sweetly. “McCabe and I are partners. We work together. We’re both trying to find your husband.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry I said that. I’m just a little upset. Actuall
y, a lot upset. Can I go now?”

  “In a little while. I need to ask you a few more questions first.”

  “Can’t that wait?”

  “No. I’m sorry, but it’s important we move on something like this as fast as we can.”

  A long sigh. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “Can you tell me where you were last night while Josh was here in Portland?”

  Rachel frowned. The question didn’t please her. “How is that pertinent?”

  “Standard police procedure. Don’t take it personally.”

  “I take it very personally.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Where were you?”

  “Having dinner with a friend at a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn called Fung Tao. Then we went to the movies.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Something called Love Times Two, which was a complete waste of time.”

  “Oh yeah? I heard it was pretty good.”

  “Don’t bother. After the movie I took a cab home. I got back to my apartment a little after eleven.”

  “Can you give me your friend’s name and phone number?”

  “Oh, come on. You couldn’t possibly think I had anything to do with Josh’s disappearance so why do you need to bother my friend?”

  “Please just cooperate.”

  “Where’s McCabe? I want to talk to him.”

  “He’s not available. Now would you please just give me your friend’s name and number?”

  Another sigh. “Annie Jessup. She lives in Manhattan. You can find her number under contacts in my iPhone.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I go now?”

  “Just a few more questions. How long have you and Josh been married?”