by James Hayman
Rachel was right again. Nudity tended to inhibit aggressive countermeasures. Or attempts to escape.
When he was totally undressed she looked down and smiled for the first time. “I was right. You are a good-looking man. In every respect. I’m kind of sorry you didn’t take me up on my offer the other night. What stopped you?”
“Simple. You weren’t worth it. In fact, I’ve been wondering why you attempted that particular seduction.”
“Don’t play stupid, McCabe. If you’d slept with me, even just once, no way would a jury ever have believed your testimony against me. Oh, and by the way, my brand-new iPhone was all set up and aimed at the bed to video the entire episode.”
“Jesus. You and Josh made quite a pair, didn’t you? One a moral leper, the other an out-of-control psychopath.”
“Trying to irritate me, McCabe, simply isn’t a good idea. Particularly in your current state. Now stretch forward and lean your hands against the side wall.”
McCabe leaned in at about a forty-five-degree angle. He wondered if she’d ever had training at this kind of thing or if she was simply making it up as she went along. He opted for training. He heard her picking up his keys, unlocking the door to the apartment and going in.
“All right. Stand tall. Hands behind your head and come on in. Then close the door behind you.”
McCabe closed the door and stood with his back to it. Rachel stood facing him. The Glock 26 pointing directly at his midsection.
“What exactly are you planning, Rachel?”
“I’m planning to kill you, McCabe.”
“I got that part. But there’s something else going on in that twisted little brain of yours.”
Rachel smiled again. “There is indeed.”
“Maybe you’d like to share it.”
“Why not? I think you deserve to know how you’ll be remembered. And how I plan on getting away with your murder. We’re going to go into your kitchen and get a glass.”
“We’re going to share a last drink together?”
“No, there’ll be only one glass. And there won’t be any drinks.”
“Okay, so what’s the glass for?”
“You’re going to jerk off into the glass.”
McCabe frowned. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“And when you’ve successfully squirted your last, I’m going to shoot you. When you’re dead, I’m going to take off my clothes. Perhaps rip them off would be a more accurate description. And then, and this is the part I’m not really happy about—”
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’re going to hit yourself in the face. Not badly enough to do any serious damage but maybe just enough to leave a few nasty bruises. And then you’re going to take my semen from the glass and put as much as you can up inside you.”
“Very good, McCabe. I knew you were a smart boy.”
“And then you’re going to call the police and tell my erstwhile fellow officers how I raped you and how you just happened to have a gun and how rapists get what rapists deserve. How you killed the rapist McCabe in self-defense or perhaps, postrape, it might be called justifiable homicide?”
“Very good, McCabe. An A minus for you, Officer Friendly.”
“Why not an A plus?”
“Because self-defense would work. You see, I only killed you when I realized you were about to rape me for a second time.”
“Very good, Rachel. An A plus for you. Only one problem with your plan.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“What if I refuse to jerk off?”
“Then I’m afraid I’ll just have to tie you to your bed and give you the best hand job you ever had.”
“Like you gave Josh? Is that how the dried semen ended up on his leg?”
“A plus again.”
McCabe glanced over Rachel’s shoulder to the open door of the bedroom. Then quickly back at Rachel again. “Since it seems I’m going to die anyway, perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you killed not only Josh but the others. Charlie Loughlin and Norah Wilcox.”
“Well, I had hoped that Fischer would do it for me. He certainly had reason enough. Unfortunately what he didn’t have were the guts to carry out the job he helped me plan. So, in the end, I had to do it myself.”
“Was it just for the money? The six million dollars in insurance money? And whatever else you and Josh had salted away?”
“Actually, money had very little to do with it. It was pure revenge. Josh was, to put it mildly, an abusive husband. Any time he felt like sex and I didn’t want it, he’d beat the shit out of me and then spousal-rape me. Sometimes he’d just knock me around for the hell of it if he happened to be pissed about something. Which he was every other day. I wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.”
“Why didn’t you call the police? Have a restraining order put on him?”
“And then what? Have him get so pissed off he’d kill me?”
Rachel was right. Restraining orders were at best a poor tool for violent husbands.
“But you killed two innocent people as well.”
“Charlie Loughlin wasn’t so innocent. He was a rapist as well. If you don’t believe it read Hannah Reindel’s book. As for the hooker, I’m sorry about her but I didn’t see any way around it. I think we’re reaching the end of question time.”
“Just one more. The watch? You lent it to Norah, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So how come Josh didn’t recognize it when he picked up Norah at the Port Grill bar?”
“He never saw it before. It wasn’t a gift from Josh. I bought it especially for the occasion and I wanted it back.” Rachel sighed. “It really is too bad you wouldn’t play with me that night. We both would have had a wonderful time.”
A voice from behind Rachel spoke for the first time. “Unfortunately, Rachel, he’s already taken.” Maggie was standing in the open bedroom door, wearing the long T-shirt she usually slept in, with her Glock 17 trained at the middle of Rachel’s back. “Now drop your gun.”
Rachel Thorne reacted not by dropping the gun but by whirling around at the sound of the voice and aiming at Maggie. But her move was too late. Maggie’s bullet entered Rachel’s oh-so-beautiful face right between her perfect brown eyes and exited the back carrying bits of her twisted brain with it and spattering them against the wall and partly against McCabe.
“I think you better clean up and then get your clothes on,” said Maggie. “We don’t want the rest of the department seeing exactly what it is that makes you so irresistible to me.”
Epilogue
THE NEXT DAY Evan Fischer was released from the Cumberland County jail and sent to Winter Haven Hospital for a complete psychiatric evaluation.
Detective Toni Bernstein of the West Hartford PD was informed of Rachel’s confession that she was the “Norah Wilcox” who’d killed Charlie Loughlin.
And McCabe sent Jen O’Leary a text message telling her that Hallie’s killer had been found and unfortunately shot to death resisting arrest.
Finally, the missing key to Bob and Brenda Bickle’s house on Hartley Street turned up in a desk drawer in room 411, the Governor’s Suite, of the Portland Regency Hotel.
Detective Margaret Savage was, of course, placed on temporary suspension while Portland Police Chief Thomas Shockley, Lieutenant Bill Fortier and Lieutenant Peter Gerlach, head of the PPD’s Internal Affairs unit, investigated the circumstances of the shooting death of the suspect Rachel Christensen Thorne. Fortunately Maggie had recorded the entire conversation between Rachel and McCabe with her cell phone while standing in the doorway so almost none of the facts were in question.
They were all sitting around the small conference table in Chief Shockley’s office.
“I had no idea what time McCabe was coming home from New York and I was asleep when they got here,” said Maggie. “The sound of their voices woke me. I could hear what they were saying
so I obviously knew something was wrong. I slipped out of bed as quietly as I could, retrieved my weapon and my phone from the bedside table and went to the door, which was already ajar. I opened it further. Happily it doesn’t squeak. Rachel’s back was to me. McCabe was facing me. He saw me and I could tell he wanted me to hold off until he could pull a confession out of the suspect, Rachel Thorne. I wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t shoot him before finishing her confession.” Maggie looked over at McCabe. “But we took the chance.”
Shockley nodded. “The circumstances behind the killing of Mrs. Thorne are very clear from that recording and there won’t be any need for further investigation into that. Do you agree, Gerlach?”
“I do. We should be able to reinstate Detective Savage to active duty very quickly.”
“Good,” said Shockley. “Then perhaps you and Lieutenant Fortier will excuse us. There’s something I have to talk to Sergeant McCabe and Detective Savage about privately.”
Fortier and Gerlach left.
When they were gone, he asked, “How long have the two of you been cohabiting?”
“I’m not entirely sure that’s any of your business,” said McCabe.
Maggie’s look told McCabe to hold his tongue. “We’re not exactly cohabiting,” said Maggie. “I’ve kept my own apartment on Vesper Street. At least for the time being.”
“But you do spend nights together?”
“Yes. Obviously. Quite a few,” said McCabe. “Just as you and your girlfriend, Josie Tenant, have been doing for a couple of years.”
“Unlike you and Savage, Tenant and I don’t work together. I’m not her boss. And, unfortunately, the way this case ended makes it common knowledge that you and Maggie are living together. I don’t think the public will particularly approve of two senior detectives living in sin. Particularly if one reports to the other.”
“Living in sin?” said Maggie. “You must be joking. Everybody lives in sin these days. And trust me, there’s nothing sinful about it.”
“If you’re asking us to end our relationship,” said McCabe, “forget about it. It’s taken us a long time to get here.”
“We can have our resignations on your desk this afternoon,” added Maggie.
“We’ve discussed setting up our own private investigations firm. McCabe and Savage.”
“Or possibly Savage and McCabe,” Maggie added with a smile.
Shockley stared unhappily at the two of them. “All right. Don’t do anything hasty. Let me think about it.”
McCabe and Savage left the office and headed toward the elevator.
“Want to get some lunch?” asked McCabe.
“Nah. I’d rather go back to the apartment and do a little more of that living in sin stuff.”
McCabe smiled and kissed her as the elevator doors opened. Brian Cleary grinned at them as he exited. “Maybe you should give Willetts a call,” McCabe called to him as he and Maggie got on.
When the doors closed, they kissed again.
Acknowledgments
There are many people I wish to thank for their contributions to this book. Former Portland Police detective Sergeant Tom Joyce’s knowledge and insights regarding police procedure and the ins and outs of the Portland PD was, as always, immensely helpful. None of the McCabe/Savage books would have been possible without Tom’s help.
I’d also like to thank my publisher, Dan Mallory, and editor, Emily Krump, from HarperCollins/William Morrow, and my agents Meg Ruley and Rebecca Scherer of the Jane Rotrosen Literary Agency, for their many significant contributions to the final version of this book.
Finally, writing The Girl on the Bridge would not have been possible without the insights provided by reading a number of memoirs written by brave women who have experienced and recovered from the horrendous psychological damage of violent rape. Chief among these is a book titled After Silence: Rape & My Journey Back by Nancy Venable Raine. I’ve never met nor spoken to Ms. Raine but I owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude.
About the Author
JAMES HAYMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of the McCabe and Savage thrillers The Cutting, The Chill of Night, Darkness First, and The Girl in the Glass, which combined have sold more than half a million copies.
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Also by James Hayman
The Cutting
The Chill of the Night
Darkness First
The Girl in the Glass
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Credits
Cover design and photo illustration by Nadine Badalaty
Cover photograph © Getty Images (bridge); © Shutterstock (woman and sky); © Masterfile (background)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE. Copyright © 2017 by James Hayman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition May 2017 ISBN 9780062657213
ISBN 978-0-06-266133-3
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