not a female?’
‘Not for certain,’ said McCabe, ‘but sexual sadists are almost always male. Unless we have a compelling reason to believe otherwise, I say we’re looking for a guy.’
‘The third biology teacher is a guy,’ said Fraser. ‘Name’s Tobin Kenney. We haven’t interviewed him yet. He’s in his twenties. This is his third year at the school. Came here from Norway — ’
‘The town or the country?’ asked McCabe. Norway, Maine, was about fifty miles north and west of Portland, just fifteen miles beyond Poland.
‘The town,’ Fraser replied. ‘One more thing. He’s also the assistant girls’ soccer coach.’
‘Okay,’ said Maggie. ‘That means Katie knew him. Probably trusted him.’
‘She was on the team?’ asked Fortier.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Tom Tasco. ‘Big-time. Best sophomore they had last year. Kenney certainly knew her, and potentially Kenney’s got the skills to be the freak.’
‘Is he on your Lexus list?’ asked McCabe.
‘Nope,’ said Fraser, leafing down the list of names. ‘We don’t know what he drives.’
‘That doesn’t exclude him,’ said Maggie. ‘No way it excludes him.’
Though she spoke in even tones, McCabe sensed Maggie was getting excited. Like a hound who picks up a scent and is just aching to be let loose to follow it. Well, he’d been there a lot of times himself. So far it seemed a slim connection, but maybe the scent would lead somewhere. ‘Okay,’ said McCabe. ‘Maggie and I will track down Mr. Kenney later today.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Fortier.
‘Yeah. A couple of things,’ said McCabe. ‘First, Maggie got the autopsy report.’
Maggie spoke in measured tones. ‘Terri Mirabito says there was no trace of any anesthetic drug in Katie’s body when she was cut open. She was wide-awake. Probably tied down and gagged when the bastard started cutting.’
Everyone at the table winced. Nobody said anything. Fortier broke the silence. ‘You said there were two things. What’s number two?’
‘I talked to a detective in Orlando, Florida. Looks like Katie wasn’t our friend’s first victim.’ McCabe filled them in on his conversation with Aaron Cahill. He told them that, like Katie Dubois and Lucinda Cassidy, Elyse Andersen was young, blond, and athletic. ‘I’m not a big believer in coincidence. I think if we find Katie Dubois’s killer, we find Lucinda — but we don’t have a lot of time. Katie was killed roughly a week after she was abducted. So was Andersen. Cassidy was taken Friday. You do the math.
‘First, let’s cross-check for overlaps between Katie and Cassidy. Where they exercised. Where they bought their clothes. Where they went for pizza. Doctors they visited. People who might have come in contact with both of them. Anything or anyone they might have in common.
‘Also, because we don’t know how many mutilated bodies might be buried out there, I want to check all missing person reports for young blond athletic females, say between fifteen and thirty, who disappeared between 2002 and now. Jack, you take that. Check our own records first. Then check every other department in New England. See what the FBI can offer through ViCAP, and the RCMP.’
‘Dubois was from Portland,’ Maggie said. ‘So’s Cassidy. If it is the same guy who did Andersen, maybe he left Florida and moved north. So let’s check HR records in hospitals for surgeons, including residents, who’ve moved here from Florida in the last three or four years. Then maybe broaden it to other docs.’
‘There are privacy issues,’ said McCabe. ‘We may need subpoenas to get access to their personnel files. I already had a run-in with a Dr. Spencer at Cumberland on that issue.’
‘Shockley can help make that happen,’ said Fortier. ‘I’ll develop a list of doctors and hospitals and have him find us a judge who’ll authorize the subpoenas. Meantime, what do we know about Cassidy?’ Fortier was ready to move on.
‘We’re going full speed ahead,’ said Bill Bacon. ‘We have search teams out all over the place. Will and I and two teams from other units have been canvassing the neighborhood and the hospital to see if we can find anybody who might have seen her jogging. Her employer, Beckman and Hawes, is putting up a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information that helps us find her.’
‘Dead or alive?’ asked Fortier.
‘They didn’t specify. One other thing. We don’t know if she was currently in a relationship. Her ex-husband and her sister say no, but it’s always possible she had somebody with her Thursday night or Friday morning. Bill Jacobi’s taking her car and apartment apart for signs of a boyfriend or anyone else being present. The baseball cap and her dog’s body are up in the state crime lab for DNA analysis. There was blood on the dog’s teeth — ’
‘Which means maybe the freak was bitten,’ said McCabe.
‘We think so. We’ll have DNA results on the blood in a couple of days. All we need is a suspect to match it against.’
Fortier’s pager went off. He looked at it. ‘Oh, Christ. Shockley’s here.’
‘And he wants to see you this minute?’ said McCabe, underlining the words ‘this minute’ in an almost perfect imitation of Shockley’s public persona.
‘So what else is new?’ Fortier stood up and looked around the faces at the table. ‘I know you’re all working your butts off. Keep at it. We’re not gonna worry about overtime on these two. Mike, you said you wanted to work both cases. If it is a single perp, that makes sense. Anyway, the GO says that’s your call.’ Fortier collected his notes and left.
12
Once again, Lucy began the long uphill journey back to consciousness. Her brain felt gauzy and uncertain. The headache was back, its throbbing constant, though duller and less insistent than before. She let her mind wander, in a kind of fugue state, through the rooms of her apartment. The sun shone through the oversized south-facing windows, lighting a million dust motes. Fritzy, on his back, feet in the air, wriggled with pleasure in the warm patch where the sun struck the floor. Her laptop waited where she’d left it, open on the couch. She reached for it. There was so much to do. Her hand wouldn’t move. Odd, she thought, and tried again. Still it wouldn’t move. Only then, with a sudden rush, did she remember where she was. She opened her eyes. The room was dark. Beyond dark. Utterly black. He must have known she was afraid of the dark, must have known she always left a small light burning even when she slept. He must have known.
The panic rose like a living thing, up through her body and into her throat, where it came bursting out in a long scream, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. She thrashed against the restraints, up and down, side to side, yanking and pulling until she could feel her wrists and ankles begin to bleed. None of it helped. No matter how loudly she screamed or how fiercely she struggled, the blackness closed in from every side.
13
Sunday. 10:30 A.M.
When McCabe got back to his desk, the phone was ringing. ‘This is McCabe.’
‘Detective McCabe?’ An older woman’s voice, harsh with a smoker’s rasp.
‘That’s right. How can I help you?’
‘It’s about that girl who was murdered. I may have seen her.’
‘May I have your name and address?’
Maggie was at her desk, and he signaled her to listen in on the call.
‘Annie Rafferty. I live at 22 Hackett. That’s off Cumberland on the East Side.’
‘I know the street. Can you tell me what you think you saw?’
‘I know what I saw. I’m getting older now — seventy-four, seventy-five in November — but my eyes are still good. The thing is I don’t sleep so good anymore. I get these pains in my legs. When it’s bad, I get out of bed and
