It wasn’t like he was imagining it. Or remembering it. It was like he was really there. He could hear the rush of the city. He could smell the stink of it. A hundred bloodied corpses paraded before his eyes. His right hand drew comfort from resting on the handle of his gun. Mike McCabe, once again lured to the chase. He knew with an absolute certainty that this was his calling. That it was here, among the killers and the killed, that he belonged. No matter how far he ran, no matter how well he hid, he’d never leave the violence or his fascination with it behind.
McCabe stepped back from Katie’s body, careful not to trip over Maggie, who was kneeling a few feet behind him, writing her notes. He approached the uniformed officer who’d found the body. He remembered the man’s name. Kevin Comisky. ‘Kevin,’ he said quietly, ‘what do we know?’
‘Not much. I was on patrol. Quiet night. I just made the turn off Marginal onto Franklin when this drunk comes running out, waving his arms around. He’s screaming something about murder, but he’s pretty incoherent, so I put him in the car, which, by the way, he stinks up pretty bad. I ask him to tell me where he saw whatever he saw. He manages to direct me here. I see the body. Call Dispatch. They send Kennerly as backup. Then they call you guys.’
McCabe used his cell to call police headquarters at 109 Middle Street. Two evidence techs were currently on duty. He told both he needed them at the scrap yard ASAP. Then he called Deputy ME Terri Mirabito. Portland, with a population a little over sixty-five thousand, wasn’t big enough to have its own medical examiner’s office. Normally whoever was assigned would have to drive down from the state lab in Augusta, a good hour and some away, but Mirabito lived in town, and if she was home she could get here a lot faster. She answered on the first ring and said she’d be right over.
‘Where’s the drunk now?’ he asked Comisky.
‘Still in the unit,’ said the cop. ‘It’s gonna take more than a paper pine tree and a squirt of Lysol to get the stink out of that baby.’
‘Either of you guys touch anything or move the body around?’ McCabe addressed both uniformed officers.
Both responded negatively. One said, ‘It’s tough enough just looking at her.’
‘Okay. I’m going to wander around, see what I can see. Then I’ll want to talk to your friend in the car, so please make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.’
He turned to Maggie. ‘Where are Tasco and Fraser? I thought this was their case.’ He knew he was sounding irritable, but tough shit. A detective should never lose track of his case.
‘Mike, they’ve been putting in eighteen-hour days for over a week. Anyway, Tom’s on his way in. I couldn’t find Eddie.’
McCabe nodded. ‘Find him.’
He turned away and used his cell to call home. Casey answered. ‘Hey, Case, how’re you doing?’
‘Hello, Daddy dearest. I’m fine,’ McCabe’s thirteen-year-old daughter said in a playfully proper tone. ‘Are you still eating dinner?’
‘We never got to dinner. I’m working.’ He wondered if Casey had known Katie Dubois. They were both soccer players. Probably not, he decided. Casey was still in middle school. Eighth grade. ‘I’m going to be late. What are you up to?’
‘I’ve got some friends over. Do you want to talk to Jane?’
‘Oh, really? Who’s over?’
‘Gretchen and Whitney.’ They were two of Casey’s best friends and lived nearby on Munjoy Hill. ‘We’re kind of in the middle of something.’ Doing her best to put on an aristocratic British accent, she added, ‘I don’t want to go into it. I’ll fetch Jane.’
‘Okay,’ he laughed. ‘Fetch Jane. As long as you’re not doing something you’re not supposed to.’
‘Dad, I’m not a baby, y’know.’
‘Okay. Get Jane. I love you.’
‘Love you, too.’
McCabe could hear Casey shouting, ‘Hey, Jane, it’s Dad,’ the single syllable drawn out, ‘Da-aaad!’
Jane Devaney was a sixty-year-old retired nurse and high school sex education teacher McCabe employed on a part-time basis to look after Casey. She also rode a Harley. Casey found that indescribably cool. So did McCabe.
Jane’s voice came on. ‘Hiya, Mike.’
‘Everything good there?’
‘Oh yeah, we’re fine. Kids are fooling around. Girl stuff. I’m deep into Supernanny. Keeping tabs on the competition. I take it you’re working late?’
‘It looks that way.’
‘Want me to spend the night?’
‘Not necessary. I’m not sure when I’ll be home, but Kyra should be there as soon as she finishes dinner.’
‘Well, if you decide you want me to stay, just let me know. It’s not a problem.’
‘Thanks, Jane. I appreciate it.’
McCabe closed the phone and returned it to his pocket. He pulled on the surgical gloves he’d brought from the car. Pointing the flashlight at the ground, he started inspecting the area where the girl’s body was lying. Senior evidence tech Bill Jacobi and his partner would arrive soon enough, but McCabe wanted to have a more thorough look around first.
McCabe figured the girl was most likely killed somewhere else and the body dumped here later. If so, he’d find little in the way of evidence. He saw no blood on the ground, and the blood on the body was dried and old. A greenish cast of decomposition was beginning to show on her abdomen. Katie Dubois had been dead a while. McCabe guessed at least forty-eight hours.
The ground was stone hard, so he doubted he’d find any footprints or tire tracks, but he watched where he walked and looked anyway. Also, he saw nothing to suggest the body had been dragged the thirty or so yards from the street. No bent clusters of weeds. No visible scrapes of dirt around the girl’s heels or head or shoulders. He figured the killer carried Katie to where he dumped her. No great feat. She couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds even before she lost most of her blood. The killer would have gotten some of that blood on his clothes. Possible evidence unless he burned them.
He played his light over the girl’s body, inch by inch. The cut down the middle of her chest looked as careful and clean as if it had been made with a razor or possibly a surgeon’s scalpel. The burn marks were recent and deliberate. In the lobe of her right ear he found a small gold earring with a dangling heart-shaped charm. He moved the light to the left ear. The lobe was torn, and the mate to the earring, assuming there was a mate, was gone. Accidentally caught on something? Maybe. Roughly pulled out? Possibly. Taken as a trophy? More likely. Her navel was pierced with a silver-colored semicircular bar with tiny metal balls at either end. A blue tattoo that looked like a Chinese or maybe Japanese character adorned the skin above her left hipbone. A twenty-first-century teen.
The crime scene techs arrived and began drawing their diagrams and taking their pictures. McCabe pointed out the remaining earring and asked the senior tech, Bill Jacobi, to make sure to check for both prints and DNA. Jacobi gave him a ‘So what do you think, I’m stupid?’ look in response.
‘Looks like somebody started the autopsy without me.’ McCabe turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. Deputy State Medical Examiner Terri Mirabito stood behind him, looking at the body. ‘I think I resent that,’ she added, ‘both on her behalf and mine.’
‘Good to see you, Terri. Glad you’re here.’ McCabe had worked with her on half a dozen cases over the past three years and valued her skills.
After photographing the body from several angles, Mirabito knelt down for a closer look. ‘How long do you think she’s been dead?’ McCabe asked.
‘A while. She’s out of rigor. Only slight lividity.’ With gloved hands, she gently pulled back the fold of tissue on the left side of the girl’s chest. McCabe could see what appeared to be grains of rice inside the cut. Only the rice was moving. Maggots.
‘Judging by the activity in there, I’d say she was killed forty-eight to seventy-two hours ago. Maybe a little longer depending where the body was kept.’ Terri pulled the skin back a bit further. ‘Well, sonofabitch, will you look at that?’
‘What? What is it?’
Terri looked up, a grim expression on her face. ‘Her heart’s gone.’
