The Chill of Night

by James Hayman

  His mind went back to Kyra. To the fight, if that’s what it was. Why was he so hot to marry again? His marriage to Sandy had been a disaster. Except, of course, that it produced Casey, who was, without question, the best thing that ever happened to him. Amazing how such a great kid could ever have come out of that selfish bitch’s body. All she said after nine hours of labor was ‘Never again.’ Didn’t even want to hold her new daughter. Breastfeed? Not on your life.

  So why go through the marriage thing again? Well, for one thing, Kyra wasn’t Sandy. They were about as different as two gorgeous, sexy women could be. Okay, so why not just enjoy his relationship with the gorgeous, sexy Kyra and leave marriage out of the equation? That’s what any therapist would want to know. He’d have to think about the answer.

  By the time McCabe passed Washington Avenue, the cold was getting to him. His ears and toes were starting to go numb, and, drunk or not, he was beginning to regret the decision to walk. He figured he was sobering up, but not fast enough. He passed a new place called the Frost Line Café, coffee bar by day, open mike cabaret by night. He stopped and peered through the windows. They were all misted up from the body heat inside.

  He went in and worked his way through the noisy crowd to the bar and ordered a small cup of coffee from a large, heavily pierced young woman wearing so much makeup that she looked to McCabe like a refugee from the set of Ernst Lubitsch’s Gypsy Blood. Probably was. Just couldn’t find her castanets. Incongruously, in spite of the getup, her accent was pure Downeast. She handed him an earthenware mug big enough to double as a soup tureen and pointed to a row of insulated pots on the far side. Told him to help himself. He did, adding a generous dollop of milk to the strong brew. He hadn’t eaten in a while and figured he could use the nutrition.

  On the far side of the room, a tinny-voiced girl singer was belting out her version of the Dixie Chicks’ ‘Not Ready to Make Nice’ to a crowd that seemed more interested in talking than listening. Natalie Maines had nothing to worry about. McCabe was scanning the room for a place to park himself and his mega cup when he felt his cell vibrate. By the time he fished it out from under three layers of wool, the line had gone dead. The call was from Maggie. McCabe was tempted not to call back. It couldn’t be anything good, and he needed to be with Kyra right now. But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t an option. If something was going on, he needed to know what it was. He headed for the men’s room, where he figured he could hear Maggie, stay warm, and have some privacy all at the same time. He closed and locked the door. The sound of the Dixie Chick wannabe receded. He punched in Maggie’s number.

  ‘Where are you, McCabe?’

  ‘At the moment? In a men’s room on Congress Street.’

  ‘Fine. Whatever it is you’re doing there, when you finish, would you please get your ass down to the Fish Pier. The far end by the water. Seems we’ve got a little problem.’

  This wasn’t great timing. ‘What kind of problem?’ he asked.

  ‘The murder kind,’ Maggie replied.

  Maggie – Detective Margaret Savage – was McCabe’s number two in the PPD’s Crimes Against People unit. They’d been working cases together ever since Chief Shockley bucked the unions and brought McCabe in from New York four years ago. In spite of a long Portland PD tradition of supervisors supervising and detectives working cases, McCabe liked getting into the weeds, especially when it came to homicide, and Maggie was always his partner of choice.

  ‘Anything I oughta know?’

  ‘I don’t know much myself. A uniform discovered the body during a routine check. No positive ID yet. Young female Caucasian. Stuffed into the trunk of a car, possibly her own, parked illegally on the pier. She’s dead, naked, and frozen solid.’

  The frozen part was no big surprise if she’d been in the trunk a while. Unfortunately, a frozen body meant there’d be no decomposition. No decomposition meant there’d be no way to establish time of death. No time of death meant no way to check alibis. Somebody knocked on the restroom door. ‘Be right out,’ McCabe shouted to the knocker. He faced away from the door and turned on the taps to drown out the sound of his voice. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Only that the car’s a brand-new BMW convertible. Registered to an Elaine Elizabeth Goff of Portland. A marine insurance guy who works on the pier spotted it yesterday morning, parked where it shouldn’t be. He didn’t call it in until today. About an hour ago.’

  ‘You call Fortier?’

  ‘Yeah. Told him what I just told you. He said he’d brief Shockley.’ Chief Shockley wanted to be kept up to the minute on any homicides. There weren’t many murders in Portland, and when they happened he hated to look dumb in front of reporters. Especially the one he was sleeping with.

  The knocker knocked again. ‘Just a damned minute,’ McCabe yelled at the door. Then he said into the phone, ‘Okay, Mag, I’ll be right there.’ He hit end call and exited the men’s room. The knocker gave McCabe what he figured was supposed to be a withering look. McCabe smiled back sweetly. ‘All yours.’ He threaded his way through the crowd and out the door. He called Kyra from the street.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘I can guess. You’re not coming.’ She sounded more disappointed than angry.

  ‘No, I’m not, but not for the reason you think. I was on my way to the gallery when Maggie called. They found a dead body dumped on one of the piers.’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Me, too. About everything. I want you to know that. And I want you to know I want to be there. How’s the turnout?’

  ‘Great, considering the weather.’

  ‘Any reaction from the other major Maine artists?’

  ‘Actually, Marta Einhorn’s being very gracious. The others haven’t said much. Oh, and Joe Kleinerman from the Press Herald –’

  ‘The arts critic?’

  ‘Yeah. He wants to do a piece about my work.’

  McCabe spotted a PPD black-and-white unit heading east on Congress. He stepped into the middle of the street and flagged it down. ‘That’s great. Listen, I’ve got to go now. I love you. I wanted you to know that as well.’

  ‘Yeah. Me, too.’

  McCabe hung up. A young Asian patrol officer pulled up. McCabe leaned in and flashed his shield in case the guy didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t necessary. The Lucas Kane case last year had made McCabe a minor celebrity, not just in the department but pretty much all over the city. He’d even gotten some press in New York. ‘Hiya, Sergeant. What do you need?’

  The cop’s name tag identified him as T. Ly. Probably the shortest last name in the history of the department. Cambodian, McCabe guessed. There were quite a few Cambodians living in Portland. Most resettled as refugees back in the nineties.

  ‘Ly?’ McCabe asked, pronouncing it Lee. ‘Right pronunciation?’

  The man nodded. ‘It’ll do.’

  ‘Can you get me to the Fish Pier? Like fast?’

  Three

  McCabe squeezed into the front seat, space made tight by the unit’s onboard computer. Ly flipped on lights and siren, pulled a U-turn on Congress, and took off. It took less than two minutes to reach the Fish Pier. A sprawling waterfront complex off Commercial Street, the Portland Fish Pier was home to businesses serving the city’s working waterfront, especially its struggling groundfish industry. A PPD unit blocked their way. Ly cut the siren and rolled down the window. The wind was howling even louder than before. A cop leaned in. ‘Hiya, Sergeant. Go on down to the end of the pier.’ He pointed. ‘You’ll see a bunch of units pulled in by the Vessel Services building. Can’t miss ’em.’

  Ly followed the road that looped around to the end of the pier. On their left, McCabe noted the boxy silhouette of the Portland Fish Exchange. A few years ago it would have been lit up and busy. Tonight it loomed dark and empty. A once thriving auction market where trawlers working out of Portland and a handful of other Maine ports sold their catches, t
he exchange had fallen on hard times. Federal regulations aimed at replenishing fish stocks cut trawlers’ days at sea to a bare minimum. Catches and income were way down. Adding insult to injury, McCabe remembered reading, legislation backed by Maine’s powerful lobstermen’s lobby was keeping the fishermen from making a few extra bucks by selling the lobsters they snared in their nets. They had to throw them back. Or sneak them home to share with friends.

  Without enough fish coming in, the Fish Exchange auctions, once held daily at noon, had become intermittent. Half the time they didn’t happen at all. Some longtime Portland fishing families were being squeezed out of the business. Others moved down the coast to Gloucester, where selling stray lobsters was allowed. The captains who remained weren’t happy.

  Near the end of the pier, McCabe could see a pack of PPD units, light bars flashing. They were clustered next to the Vessel Services facility. Behind them yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the far end of the pier. Ly joined them. Half a dozen cold cops, clouds of breath streaming from their mouths, were stamping their feet, clapping their hands, or just moving around to keep warm. Two had positioned themselves by the tape to keep unauthorized visitors out of the active crime scene area. The others were keeping them company. A MedCU unit was just leaving. A dead body meant there was nothing for the paramedics to do.

  ‘Hey.’ Maggie Savage greeted McCabe as he emerged from the car. She was bundled in a dark blue Gore-Tex parka, hands in her pockets, a wool watch cap pulled down around her ears, her shield pinned to the outside.

  ‘Hey, yourself. What’s going on?’ McCabe borrowed Ly’s Maglite, and they headed toward a bronze BMW convertible parked facing in toward the city from the far end of the pier. Its driver’s side door and trunk lid gaped open. Senior evidence tech Bill Jacobi and one of his guys were busy taking their pictures and measurements, drawing their diagrams, and writing their notes. The car was elegantly framed at a three-quarter angle between two concrete arms that poked out from the end of the pier into the Fore River, the tidal estuary that formed the far end of Portland harbor. Its rear wheels were two or three feet from the edge, leaving just enough room for the techs to walk behind the car without falling in. McCabe could see reflections of ambient light from nearby buildings as well as the more distant Casco Bay Bridge bouncing off the showroom-shiny fenders. Like an ad in a glossy magazine, the damned thing practically shouted, Hey, look at me! Ain’t I sexy? To McCabe, it seemed too artfully placed for it to have been accidental. Someone wanted the car to be noticed.

  As they stood there, Maggie handed him a plastic box of Tic-Tacs. ‘Here. Before you breathe on anyone else, you might want to suck on a couple of these.’

  ‘That bad, huh?’

  ‘Not for anyone who appreciates the finer qualities of single malt. I just don’t think it’s something you want Jacobi noticing. Or the uniforms either, for that matter. Big night on the town?’

  ‘I guess I had a few.’ He left it at that and tossed two white pellets into his mouth. If truth be told, he felt a bit sick. He might have trouble walking the proverbial straight line. He handed the box back. ‘Anything new?’ he asked. He wondered if he was slurring his words.

  ‘Just what I told you on the phone. Woman’s body is stuffed in the trunk,’ Maggie said. ‘Frozen solid.’

  McCabe shivered. ‘I know how she feels.’

  ‘She’s packed in there so tight, I’m not sure how we’re gonna get her out. At least not till she thaws.’

  ‘Who called it in?’

  ‘Guy named Doug Hester a little after six.’

  About the time he was deciding to go to Kyra’s show.

  ‘Hester’s office is over there,’ Maggie continued. ‘The one with lights on on the second floor. He runs a one-man marine insurance agency. Says he could see the car from his desk. It’s been sitting there, illegally parked, since at least seven thirty yesterday morning when he came to work.’

  Thirty-six hours. ‘What took him so long to call it in?’

  ‘It wasn’t just him. There must have been fifty people who saw that car parked where it shouldn’t be, and for two solid days none of them called it in. Either to us or to a towing service. I asked Hester why. He said people on the waterfront don’t like to pry into other people’s business.’

  McCabe nodded. A familiar scenario. Citizens not wanting to get involved. Too polite. Too fearful. Too lazy. It was a problem for police departments across the country. It bugged the hell out of McCabe, but it was tough to figure out what to do about it.

  ‘He said the car wasn’t bothering him,’ Maggie continued. ‘Didn’t seem to be bothering anyone else. So he, quote, didn’t pay it no never mind, unquote. Also he says it’s not that unusual for the wife of one of the captains to leave a car for her husband for when his boat gets in.’

  ‘So what made him change his mind?’

  ‘He started thinking how none of the fishing families he knows is likely to have a brand-new BMW convertible. Not with the business in the dumper the way it is now. And, even if they did, they sure as hell wouldn’t leave it sitting at the end of the pier for two days. So, at long last, he walks over and takes a closer look. Sees the keys in the ignition. Tries the door. It’s not locked.’

  ‘Getting his prints all over everything?’

  ‘Probably. Though he says just the door. Anyway, he gets suspicious and finally decides to call.’

  ‘Okay, so the car wasn’t here when Hester left work Wednesday night, but it was here when he arrived Thursday morning. So sometime during that twelve-hour window somebody, presumably the killer, but possibly the victim, drives it in and parks it in the most prominent position on the pier.’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Hester pop the trunk?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘No. That was the responding officer. Uniform named Joe Vodnick. He popped the trunk and found the body. Little over an hour ago.’

  ‘Was there probable cause for opening the trunk?’

  ‘I think there may be some question about that.’

  McCabe thought about it. Opening the trunk was no big deal if the car belonged to the victim. Elaine Goff or whoever it was wasn’t going to complain about illegal search or seizure, dead as she was and stuffed inside. On the other hand, if the dead woman wasn’t Goff, if Goff was the killer or somehow connected to the killer, the investigation could be compromised even before it began. ‘Which one’s Vodnick?’

  ‘The big guy over there on the right.’

  Vodnick was big alright. Six foot six. Built like a linebacker. Probably weighed 260, maybe more. He was busy bullshitting with a couple of the other cops. ‘Did you ask him about probable cause?’

  ‘He said the car roused his suspicions.’

  ‘Roused his suspicions? That’s nice. Anything a little more substantive?’

  ‘Nope. He just said here was this expensive car, parked in a place it shouldn’t have been for two days. Doors unlocked. Key in the ignition. He checked with Dispatch, and the car wasn’t reported stolen. So he looked in the trunk. Listen, Mike, I don’t know what a judge would say about probable cause, but I do know we probably wouldn’t have found her otherwise. Hell, she could have been sitting in a tow yard until she thawed and somebody noticed the smell. I say he made a good call.’

  ‘Assuming some slick-ass lawyer doesn’t have the whole case thrown out on a technicality. I assume Vodnick’s prints are on the car as well?’

  ‘He says just the outside door handle and trunk release button, which is under the dash to the left of the wheel. Claims he was careful. Tried not to smear other possible prints.’

  McCabe stood silently for a long minute, breathing in cold, damp air that smelled like seaweed and rotting fish, scanning the scene, burning its details into the hard drive he carried in his brain. A brand-new Beemer, unlocked, keys in the ignition, sitting there for two days. Amazing nobody tried to steal it. In New York it would’ve been g
one in the blink of an eye. Maybe that was the bad guy’s intention. Have some clueless kid take it for a joyride. Get his prints all over it. Get blamed for the murder when he was finally caught, nobody believing his denials. Not a bad plan. Might’ve worked. Except this was Maine, and nobody bothered stealing it.

  He could see half a dozen trawlers tied up, two abreast, on either side of the pier. All good-sized commercial fishing boats. Some of the names were visible. The Emma Anne. The Katie James. The Old Jolly. They looked dark and empty, and none of them looked very jolly. McCabe wondered if any of them might have been here the night the car was driven onto the pier. If anyone might have seen anything. Probably not. Trawlers must be in and out of this place all the time. Taking on ice and fuel. Unloading fish for the auctions. Worth checking, though.

  ‘Who takes care of the boats while they’re here?’ he asked Maggie.

  ‘What do you mean, takes care of?’

  ‘Services them. Fuel. Water. Ice. Stuff like that.’

  ‘Actually, I do know. Company called Vessel Services. Right over there. I know someone who works for them.’

  ‘Suppose they keep a record of which boats were here from Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning?’

  ‘Probably. But if you’re thinking witnesses, why would someone spend a freezing cold night on board when he didn’t have to?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘An out-of-town boat, maybe. A Portland boat, I doubt it. These guys spend too much time at sea not to be home with their wives, girlfriends, or whoever they can rustle up. Specially in this kind of weather.’