Mike McCabe 01 - The Cutting

by James Hayman

  He hit redial. The rings started again. One. Two. C’mon, baby, pick up the phone. ‘Did you forget something?’ Casey’s voice again, this time live. McCabe exhaled as silently as he could.

  ‘Where were you?’ he asked.

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘A minute ago. I called. Nobody answered.’

  ‘I was in the bathroom.’

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she said, her voice puzzled.

  ‘Has anyone called or rung the buzzer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any strange noises?’

  ‘Dad, you’re freaking me out.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look, I’m going to ask Maggie to come over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just because I’m being silly. Humor me. I’ll call you back if she can’t come. Make sure it’s Maggie before you let her in.’

  ‘Alright,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I’ll make sure.’ She hung up.

  Of all the women McCabe knew and trusted, Maggie was the only one who carried a gun. The only one who knew how to tag a stakeout. He speed-dialed her number.

  ‘Hello.’ Her voice sounded softer, more sensual than the Maggie he was used to. Was he interrupting a moment of passion? Probably. ‘Hello?’ she said again.

  ‘Maggie?’

  ‘McCabe? What is it?’ Instantly alert, Maggie the lover morphed into Maggie the cop.

  ‘Listen. I’m up here in hell and gone, and Casey’s down there on her own. I think the note may have been designed to draw me away.’

  ‘Okay. Any reason you think that?’

  ‘Other than the fact she’s unprotected, no, and our friend hasn’t turned up yet. I’m sorry. I know you have a date. My mind’s playing games with me. I just need to have Casey covered. I’ll make it up to you.’

  A long sigh, then, ‘I understand. It’s okay. You’re right. Call Casey. Tell her I’ll be there in five.’

  ‘Apologize to Einar for me. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘It’s alright. I’m a big girl. Just remember you owe me.’ She hung up.

  McCabe’s anxiety faded. He decided to wait another ten minutes. If the note writer didn’t show, he’d head back to Portland and let Maggie get on with her life. The night outside was dead quiet. Not even the chirp of cicadas disturbed the calm – but the sound of a shoe scraping on gravel did. It was coming from the right and rear of the Bird, along the shoulder of the road. So soft that in the city he wouldn’t have heard it. McCabe sat still. Moving only his right hand and wrist, he disengaged the safety on the .45 and rotated it so that when the door of the Bird swung open, it was pointed right at the woman’s face.

  It was a face he knew. The face of the woman he chased down Exchange Street. The woman he spoke to in the cathedral. She was dressed differently, more casually, in jeans and a black cotton shirt, but it was definitely the same face.

  ‘Pulling a door open like that is a good way to get yourself killed,’ said McCabe. ‘Get in. Generally speaking, I’d recommend not sneaking up on armed men in the dark.’

  She ignored both his words and the gun pointed at her and slipped into the seat beside him. She closed the door. ‘Drive,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk as we go.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Hidden. About a mile from here.’

  He started the engine and pulled out onto the road. ‘Anywhere in particular you want to go?’

  ‘Just drive. These country roads go on for miles.’ The accent was French and the woman attractive. McCabe noticed a more than passing resemblance to the actress Jeanne Moreau in François Truffaut’s 1962 classic Jules et Jim. A little older than Moreau was then. Maybe forty or forty-five.

  ‘You’re not wearing a wire, are you?’ she asked.

  He pulled back onto the road. ‘No. There’s a small digital recorder in the glove box, but it’s not turned on.’

  She opened the box, examined the device, saw he was telling the truth, and put it back. She picked up the extra magazine and some shotgun shells. ‘Are you planning a war?’

  ‘You never know these days, do you?’

  She put the mag and the shells back and closed the door.

  ‘Québécoise?’ he asked.

  ‘Non. Française. Je suis de Montpellier. Près du Méditerranée.’

  McCabe didn’t respond.

  ‘You speak French?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll speak English.’ Her English seemed good, though accented.

  ‘You’re the note writer?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone was going to show up.’

  ‘I had to be sure you weren’t followed.’

  ‘Why would I be followed?’

  ‘Because of me.’

  McCabe checked the rearview again. No lights. He drove faster, turning from one small country road onto another, occasionally doubling back, using the map in his mind to track every twist and turn. The Bird wasn’t a Porsche, but with its 312 V8 and a three-speed stick, it had plenty of kick and was more than passably agile. If anyone was attempting to follow, he’d either lose them or they’d reveal themselves soon enough. Unless, of course, they were attempting to follow with lights turned off. Treacherous on these roads. Especially at high speeds, even on a moon-filled night.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘My name is Sophie Gauthier. As I told you, I’m French. French-Algerian, actually. Born in Algiers. My father was in the colonial army. My mother was Algerian. Like most of the colonials, we left after independence in 1962 and resettled in France. I was two at the time. I was brought up in Languedoc. That’s in the south of France, west of Provence.’ Sophie Gauthier kept looking to the rear for signs of a following car.

  ‘Keep going,’ said McCabe.

  ‘I’m a cardiac perfusionist. Until last year I worked at the university hospital in Montpellier in France, specializing in cardio-thoracic transplant procedures.’

  Transplant, thought McCabe, Spencer’s assurances that it couldn’t be done ringing in his ears. It was a fucking transplant. ‘Heart transplants?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, and heart/lung transplants.’

  ‘Were you involved in the murder of Katie Dubois?’

  ‘No. Not directly, but I believe I know how she was killed and why.’

  ‘And by whom?’

  ‘Unfortunately not.’

  ‘Was she killed to harvest her heart for a transplant?’

  ‘I have no proof of that. In fact, I’ve never laid eyes on Katie Dubois. But yes, that is my suspicion.’ The glow from the dash lit her face from below in a green light that accented the natural sadness of her expression.

  ‘Tell me what you know.’

  ‘I can’t. Not until I know I am safe.’ She looked at him. ‘I want immunity from prosecution.’ Headlights approached from the opposite direction. McCabe slowed the Bird and eased a little over to the right to give the car, an SUV, more room to pass on the narrow road. Sophie Gauthier bent down and shielded her face with her arm as the lights from the oncoming vehicle swept over them.

  ‘Who are you hiding from?’ he asked.

  ‘There are people who I’m sure would kill me if they knew I was talking to you.’

  McCabe glanced at Sophie and then at the clock on the dash with its old-fashioned hands. Fifteen minutes since he’d called Maggie. She’d be at his apartment by now. Casey would be safe. He’d have heard if there’d been a problem.

  ‘It’s a little premature to be discussing immunity,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you have to offer. I don’t even know exactly what you’re supposed to have done. Besides, I’m just a cop. It’s up to the prosecutors, not the police, to discuss immunity or plea bargains. I can make a recommendation, but that’s all it will be. A recommendation.’

  McCabe downshifted and pushed the Bird hard through a tight curve. Driving fast on back roads was usually a pleasure. Sophie Gauthier’s body lurched a
gainst his.

  By now, McCabe figured, if anybody was following, he lost them long ago. He pulled over to the side of the road and killed the lights. ‘Listen,’ he said, turning to face her, ‘we’re all alone here. Nobody is listening, and I need to know more if I’m going to help you. Just tell me what you know about Dubois and what you suspect. I’m not recording the conversation. I haven’t read you your rights. Did you ever hear the expression “he said, she said”? That’s all this is. No matter what you tell me, all you have to do is deny you ever said it.’ McCabe knew the reality wasn’t quite that simple, but he needed information fast and this woman had it. ‘Once I know what you know,’ he continued, ‘if you really do need protection, it can be provided.’

  He guessed Sophie Gauthier was debating how much she was willing to risk. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ she asked.

  ‘Just crack the window,’ he said. She looked puzzled. ‘That means open it. A little.’ She did.

  He waited while Sophie performed what seemed a practiced ritual of delay. She fished around in her small shoulder bag and found her cigarettes. She tapped one out. She returned the pack to the bag and pushed in the car’s electric lighter. She waited for the pop. Finally she lit the cigarette, took a deep drag and exhaled the smoke. A strong familiar scent filled the car. ‘Gauloises?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Do you want one?’

  ‘No. I don’t smoke anymore. They remind me of when I was a student in New York. We thought smoking French cigarettes was cool.’

  ‘Young people are silly about things like that,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  For a while neither of them said anything. ‘Alright,’ she said finally, ‘I will tell you what I know. As I said, I am French. I am an operating theater perfusionist. That’s the person who operates a machine that keeps a patient alive by circulating and oxygenating the blood during thoracic surgery, including transplants of either the heart or of the heart and lungs. I was trained and, until about six months ago, worked at the Hôpital Édouard des Toussaints in Montpellier. It’s a major cardiac center. We do many transplant procedures there. Édouard des Toussaints is one of two transplant hospitals in southwestern France. The other is in Toulouse. Anyway, I took my training there and afterward became a member of the staff.’ She paused as if waiting for him to ask a question. He didn’t, so she continued.

  ‘Transplant operations can be long and tiring,’ she said. ‘You never know when one is going to start because you are never sure when a heart will become available. So you’re more or less always on call.’

  ‘It’s the same over here,’ said McCabe.

  ‘I’m sure it is. Anyway, after an operation, before going home, whatever time it was, I usually stopped in at a small café near the hospital to have a glass of wine or sometimes a Pernod and water. Sometimes I’d also have something to eat. Last year, about this time, three or four times in a row, I saw the same man there, sitting at the bar. He was a good-looking man. Early forties. Tall. Dark hair. Expensive clothes. He wore a closely cropped gray beard.’

  McCabe wondered if Spencer ever had a beard. If there was a picture of him anywhere with a beard.

  ‘Always he sat alone. Like me. Though not so tired as me, I think. Sometimes he’d be drinking wine. Sometimes whiskey. It was easy for me to tell he was not French. I thought English or possibly American. I thought perhaps he was visiting a relative who was in the hospital for a long stay. I’m divorced, and he seemed interested, so we struck up a conversation that lasted several hours. After that we saw each other two or three more times in the café. Once we went elsewhere to dinner.’

  ‘Did you become lovers?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think his heart was in it. I think he may be homosexual. Or maybe not. As a woman who attracts quite a few men, I could tell he was more interested in what I did at the hospital than in me as a woman.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Mostly my job. How much experience I had. What kind of equipment we used.’

  ‘Did that surprise you?’

  ‘At first, yes, but when I asked him about it, he said what he did for a living was sell medical equipment. Including heart-lung machines. That’s what he said he was doing at the hospital, a business deal.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘Yes. I had no reason not to. He knew a lot about the machines.’

  ‘Did he tell you his name?’

  ‘He told me his name was Phillipe Spencer.’

  ‘Philip Spencer?’ McCabe felt a surge of adrenaline. Here it was. Falling right into his lap. The corroborating evidence Burt Lund was pushing for.

  Sophie sensed his excitement. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Let’s just say I know the name.’ He was sitting with a witness who could directly link the sonofabitch to an illegal transplant. Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better than a pair of Bruno Magli shoes. Why would Spencer use his real name, though? Why not Harry Lime or some other alias? It didn’t make sense. Yes, it did. Simple. The passport. He was traveling in a foreign country. He didn’t have the time, or maybe the means, to get himself a phony. Still, why give her the name? No. It didn’t make sense. Then again, lots of things that don’t make sense turn out to be true.

  McCabe watched her light another Gauloises. With her Jeanne Moreau face, her accent, and the strong smell of the cigarettes, McCabe was beginning to feel like he had somehow landed in the middle of a Truffaut film himself. Tirez sur le Détective?

  ‘What happened next?’ he asked.

  ‘Phillipe somehow found out, or maybe he already knew, that I had money problems. I’m sure that’s why he approached me. I make a good income as a perfusionist in France – not as much as one would make here in the States, but still quite a lot. But I have expensive tastes, and I indulge them. I was carrying a lot of debt at high interest. So when he said he could offer me an assignment that would pay very well, I was interested in hearing more about it. I asked what it was, and he said there was an opportunity for me to take part in a transplant operation in America. I asked him why he’d want me to travel all the way from France when there were already many perfusionists in America. It quickly became clear that this was to be an illegal operation. He wanted me because of my financial problems and, I suppose, because I have no contacts with the medical or legal authorities in America.’

  ‘Did he tell you who the patient was?’

  ‘No, not by name. He just told me that a very rich man in his eighties was dying of end-stage congestive heart failure. He wanted a new heart but couldn’t qualify for an approved program because of his age. Phillipe said he’d located a resource that could obtain hearts outside of normal channels. I told him I had no interest in breaking the law and even less in going to jail. He said there was no danger of that. He said he and his friends had performed a number of these operations in the past and no one was any the wiser.’

  ‘Is that the word he used, friends? Not colleagues? Or associates?’

  ‘I think so. Yes. I’m quite sure it is. Is that important?’

  ‘I don’t know. It might be. What happened next?’

  ‘This conversation didn’t occur all at once. It took place during the course of two or three meetings.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Even though he said there was very little risk, I told him I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to be involved in anything illegal, and given the shortage of healthy hearts for transplant, I didn’t believe it was ethically right to deprive someone younger of the chance for a normal life to help an old man who’d soon die anyway.’

  ‘Did he accept that?’

  ‘He seemed to.’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘Money. Avarice overcame both scruples and discretion. In our final discussion he told me that for one operation, one day in the operating room, he would deposit a hundred thousand euros in a numbered account in my name in the Cayman Islands. That’s a hundred thousand euros for one
day’s work plus a couple of days’ preparation and travel. That’s more than I make in a year. Even so, I didn’t say yes right away. I went back to my apartment and looked at the pile of unpaid bills on my table.’

  ‘Sounds familiar.’

  ‘Then I drank a bottle of wine and went out and had sex with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a year.’

  ‘Lucky friend.’

  She ignored the comment. ‘The next morning I called Phillipe at his hotel and told him I would take part.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘Yes. That was three operations ago. The third was last week. It never occurred to me until the Dubois girl’s body was discovered that they might actually be killing people to harvest their hearts.’

  McCabe’s mind was racing. Two more transplants. Two more harvested hearts. Whose hearts? Two more young blond female athletes? Where were the bodies? Buried under a golf course like Elyse Andersen? What about Lucinda Cassidy? He was jumping too far ahead. He forced himself to slow down.

  ‘What made you think that’s what they were doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Timing. We performed a transplant Wednesday afternoon. Katie Dubois’s body was found Friday night. Then over the weekend, news reports said her heart had been cut from her body. I didn’t know for sure if there was a connection, but it seemed likely. When I saw you at the funeral, I decided I would talk to you.’

  ‘When were the other two operations?’

  ‘The first was late December last year, a week or so before Christmas. The second this spring, April sometime.’

  ‘Do you know the name of the hotel Spencer was staying in?’