5
Saturday. 4:30 A.M.
It was nearly dawn when McCabe, muddy, bruised, and hurting in more places than he cared to think about, turned into the parking area behind the large white Victorian on the Eastern Prom. He pulled the lovingly restored cherry red ’57 T-Bird into parking space number three. McCabe and Sandy had scrimped and saved to buy the car the first year they were married. He sat for a minute, nursing his pain, holding on to the wheel, not knowing why those days came to mind. Days of innocence long since lost. There was nothing he and Sandy loved more than cruising around Westhampton Beach on a summer Saturday with the top down. Guys making twenty times as much as the two of them put together — brokers, bond traders, network producers — would walk slowly around the parked car, gazing in admiration both at McCabe’s vintage T-Bird and at McCabe’s wife from every angle. He smiled bitterly at the memory. Michael McCabe, twenty-four years old. Hot shit extraordinaire. Hot car. Hot woman. Hot times.
Then the hot times came to an end. He always found it funny — painful but funny — that when Sandy finally ran off with one of those guys, it was the car she wanted to keep. Not the daughter they conceived on a blanket in the Westhampton dunes on a moonlit night one of those very same weekends. Knowing Sandy, she might have brought up custody of the car in court if her lawyer had let her. ‘Let’s see. I’ll trade you one forty-year-old classic convertible for one little girl. Even-up trade. No draft choices. No players to be named later. Well, fuck you, Sandy. I’ve got them both, and no, you can’t have them back.’
McCabe opened the driver’s side door and gingerly climbed out. It had stopped raining. He could see stars in the eastern sky over the bay and the first hints of red on the horizon. He climbed the three flights up to the three- bedroom condo he shared with Casey and, as often as possible, with Kyra.
Taking off his muddy shoes, he left them in the hall and went in. He opened the door to Casey’s room. He knelt by the side of her bed and watched her sleeping face. ‘Have I lied to you?’ he asked silently. ‘Have I encouraged you to believe there’s safety in a world that knows no safety?’ Of course he had, but it was a loving lie. Harsh truths would intrude soon enough. He could only hope they wouldn’t come in the brutal way they had for Katie Dubois. He brushed a strand of dark hair from over her eyes and gave her a kiss so soft he was sure it wouldn’t wake her.
Her lids flickered open, and her blue eyes, so like Sandy’s, looked up at him. She was bathed in the faint predawn light of an autumn morning. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘You look really awful.’
‘It was kind of a rough night,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’
‘I was sort of awake anyway. Are you okay?’
‘You should see the other guy,’ he smiled.
‘You were in a fight?’ She sat halfway up to get a better look at him.
‘No, I’m only kidding. Go back to sleep. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.’
She looked out her window at the thin red line slowly widening in the eastern sky. ‘It pretty much is morning.’
‘There’s time for more sleep.’ He kissed her again. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to give him a hug, ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll get all muddy.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said, releasing him. ‘Kyra’s here. Jane went home.’
He smiled. ‘Good night, sweetie. I’ll see you in the morning.’
He went to his own bedroom.
Kyra’s sleepy voice rose from the bed. ‘I’m glad you’re back. I was beginning to worry.’
‘Is everybody in this house an insomniac? A man can’t sneak into his own bedroom without causing a commotion?’
She flipped on the brass bedside lamp. ‘You don’t look so good.’
‘I kind of fell over a cliff.’
‘In the line of duty? Or just for the fun of it?’
He took off his torn jacket, let it fall to the floor, and sat in the birch bentwood rocker in the corner of the room. ‘We found the Dubois girl.’
‘I heard. It was on the eleven o’clock news.’
‘Any details?’
‘Not really. Just that she’d been murdered and maybe raped.’
Kyra was lying on her side, looking at him, head propped up on one arm. She was covered only by a thin cotton sheet that revealed the curves of her long, slender body, and in spite of his weariness McCabe found himself wanting her. In fact, needing her.
‘You’d better take a shower,’ she said, sensing his desire. ‘I’m not making love to anybody who looks like he finished on the wrong side of a mud wrestling tournament.’
She slipped out of the bed, naked, and walked to him. ‘Here, let me help you,’ she said.
She pulled him to his feet and began unbuttoning his torn shirt. He let her undress him, holding out his arms like a child so she could unbutton his sleeves and pull off his shirt. She unzipped his trousers and, along with his underpants, they fell to the floor. He stepped out of them. She ran her fingers, teasingly, up and down, along the underside of his erection. He reached for her.
She backed away. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Not till you’re clean.’
They got in the shower together. The hot water played over them and stung the scraped, reddened skin on his chest and arms. She gently washed his body and then his hair, commenting, as always, on how many more gray hairs there were than the last time. Then he washed her. After that they just stood for a while in the hot water and stroked each other.
When they had dried, McCabe lay on his back on the bed and Kyra climbed on top of him. He entered her and they made love, slowly, sweetly, silently, for what seemed like a long time. Then he fell asleep, watching the horizontal patterns of light and shadow play against both floor and walls as the new morning sun shone through the slats of the wooden blinds.
He woke around seven thirty. His bruises hurt, and he was disappointed that the other side of the bed was empty. Kyra must have gotten up early and gone off to her studio. He wanted her here. He hadn’t yet had his fill of her. He pushed the sheets back. He was still naked, and with the windows open the morning air coming through the blinds felt soothingly cool on his scraped skin. He grabbed a pair of ancient red sweatpants that lay in a heap on the floor behind the bentwood rocker and pulled them on. The words ST. BARNABAS TRACK running down one leg represented the last remnant of Mike McCabe’s less than heroic career as a middle distance runner on his high school squad. He walked to the window and pulled the cord to open the blinds further. He stood, looking out at Casco Bay and the islands. That view and the fact that it was less than a mile’s walk to police headquarters were the primary reasons he’d paid more than he could afford for the three-bedroom condo when he signed on, three years earlier, as chief of the PPD’s Crimes Against People unit.
It was one of those golden September mornings. Not the kind he would have chosen either for investigating a murder or attending an autopsy. Cool air and a good breeze. He watched the down-bay ferry chug toward Portland and a small sailboat, its yellow-and-red-striped spinnaker billowing, move left to right across his field of vision. Absentmindedly he fingered the old scar that ran seven inches across his abdomen, a souvenir from his days as a newbie, still wearing a uniform. He’d been careless making a collar, and a drugged-out teenager slashed him with a four-inch switchblade. He hadn’t seen it coming, but he didn’t shoot the boy. He was proud of that. He brought the kid in. He was proud of that, too, but he’d vowed never to be so careless again.
There was a knock at the bedroom door. ‘Yeah,’ he called.
Casey came in and flopped down on the bed. ‘You looked pretty beat up when you came in last night.’
‘I was pretty beat up.’
She positioned the tattered remains of Bunny, a stuffed animal she’d had since she was a baby, on her lap. It was now little more than a fuzzy rag with ears, but she refused to give it up.
McCabe lay down next to her. ‘Did you have a good night?’ he asked.
‘It was okay. Gretchen and Whitney were here till about eleven. We just messed around till Whitney’s mom
