‘Will you send prescriptions?’ she asked.
‘Your father will need to take antirejection drugs, primarily cyclosporine, for the rest of his life. It’s available in tablet form, and what is needed will be sent directly to you. There will be no trips to the pharmacy, no paperwork sent to any insurance company.’
‘What about side effects?’
‘Some side effects are likely. There may be kidney dysfunction. Possibly less output when he is urinating. His hands or feet may swell. He may get tremors in his hands. Swollen gums. Bleeding gums. The list is long, but most are not life-threatening. The nurse will know what to do. If there are any indications of organ rejection, the nurse will let us know and we will arrange for a transplant cardiologist to perform a biopsy. If he needs further treatment, you will be contacted to discuss the options.
‘I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you must tell no one of these arrangements. Not your doctor. Not your lover. Not your Aunt Ethel. If you talk in your sleep, sleep alone. If anyone asks why he seems better — if the surgery works — tell them only that’s he’s had bypass surgery. The scars will look similar enough. If he dies, then contact us at the number you’ve been given. We will make arrangements for a physician to sign a death certificate and for the body to be cremated.’
‘Is that all?’ she asked.
‘One last thing. By accepting these arrangements, both you and your father become complicit in breaking the law. If we discover that you have spoken of it before the fact — and we will be watching and listening — the arrangements are off. We will keep the money, but there will be no surgery. If we find out that you have spoken of it after the surgery, to a doctor, to a hospital, to the police, or to anyone else, the contract, and both you and your father, will be terminated.’
Harry Lime spoke these words in a flat businesslike tone, without threat, without emotion of any kind. In spite of the Florida heat, Vanessa Redmond found herself shivering. She knew nothing of this man or the people he worked with. She was taking what he said and what he promised entirely on faith. Yet, because she wanted her father to live, even if only a little longer, she said simply, ‘I understand.’
27
Tuesday. 5:00 P.M.
It was late Tuesday afternoon. Four days since Katie Dubois’s body turned up in the scrap yard and Lucinda Cassidy disappeared from the Western Prom. Tom Shockley was starting to bitch about the lack of results. Bill Fortier was beginning to worry about the cost of overtime. McCabe was increasingly haunted by the hours ticking down on Cassidy’s life.
He spent most of the day huddling with his Crimes Against People unit, reviewing the results of endless interviews, virtually all of which led nowhere. Working round the clock, Tasco and Frazier and four teams of detectives narrowed the so-called Lexus List down from nearly five hundred to fewer than a dozen. Each of these so-called possibles — three surgeons, four other MDs, one nurse-practitioner, and a professor of biology at a small college in New Hampshire — had the requisite skills to remove a human heart. Each lacked an alibi that could be corroborated by a third party. Each was brought in to 109 Middle Street and placed in an interview room equipped with microphones and hidden video equipment. Each was questioned intensively, sometimes for hours, by teams of detectives skilled in ferreting out the slightest inconsistencies in their stories. In Tom Tasco’s opinion, the most promising ‘suspect’ was a fifty-five-year-old retired gynecologist from North Berwick. He seemed promising only because he’d lost his license in ’02 for allegedly fondling half a dozen patients while their feet were in the stirrups. One was a fourteen-year-old girl.
Unfortunately, the man was only five foot ten, not the six foot plus seen in the surveillance tape and later corroborated by Tobin Kenney. Reviewing the video, McCabe knew there was no way that this man would have been strong enough to carry Katie’s body to where she was dumped.
The hunt for Lucinda Cassidy hadn’t gone much better. Searches organized in ever widening circles from an epicenter in Portland turned up no leads. Divers explored the waters of Portland harbor and found nothing. Advanced mapping techniques used successfully by Maine Forest Service rangers to find the body of a murdered girl a few years earlier were tried again. This time they failed to produce results. Bill Bacon and Will Messing were running out of places to look.
Perhaps the most promising development came in a report from the state lab in Augusta, which said that Lucinda Cassidy’s dog, Fritz, had definitely bitten her attacker and that traces of human blood and hair were found in his mouth. Both samples had undergone DNA analysis, and the results were in. Unfortunately, there was no suspect DNA available to check for a match.
Finally, around six o’clock, McCabe called Burt Lund to find out if Judge Washburn had returned and if Lund had had any luck setting up a meeting with her.
‘She just got back,’ Lund told him. ‘Meet me in her chambers in ten minutes.’
Before leaving, McCabe gathered the exhausted cops in the detectives’ conference room. First he encouraged them all to keep their spirits up and to keep going. He told them every suspect eliminated brought them one step closer to success. Looking into their tired faces, he knew they’d heard it all before. He considered telling them about the note in his mailbox, about the meeting set for tonight with the possible witness, but he was afraid to risk a leak either to the press or to Shockley’s office. However, he did mention he was on his way to ask a judge for a warrant to search Spencer’s car and home. Then he told them to go home and get some rest. Start fresh in the morning.
Judge Paula Washburn’s chambers were on the second floor of the Cumberland County Courthouse on Federal Street, less than a five-minute walk from police headquarters. McCabe and Lund were admitted immediately. Washburn was a tall, extremely thin woman with cropped gray hair. She didn’t bother with the formality of a greeting, though she did ask them to sit.
‘Well, gentlemen, what do we have that’s so all-fired urgent it just couldn’t wait another minute?’ she asked.
‘A request for a search warrant in the Dubois case,’ said Lund. He handed her McCabe’s affidavit.
She took several minutes to read it silently. ‘Well, isn’t this interesting,’ she said finally, peering up at him over the tiny reading glasses perched on her long nose. ‘I hope this isn’t a fishing expedition, Sergeant McCabe. If so, you’re going after a pretty big fish.’
‘No, Your Honor, it isn’t. I believe we have sufficient reason to investigate Dr. Spencer further.’
‘There are other doctors with green Lexus SUVs.’
‘There are, but so far, at least, Spencer is the only one who is physically similar both to the person seen in the video and the man described by the soccer coach.’
She asked several questions about the reliability of Starbucks’s video enhancement and Tobin Kenney’s memory. McCabe answered them as best he could. Judge Washburn nodded, considering his responses. Then she asked, ‘Is Dr. Spencer aware that he’s about to become a suspect in a murder case?’
‘I think he may have an inkling. He called Chief Shockley and complained about my questioning his wife.’
‘Does Shockley know you’re seeking this warrant?’
‘No.’
‘You realize, of course, he’s going to be less than pleased.’
‘I do.’
‘And you’re not bothered?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Are there any other considerations I should be aware of?’
‘Yes,’ said Lund. ‘Ordinarily, Your Honor, we might wait a little longer, amass a little more evidence, before seeking this warrant. In this case we’re rushing it a bit because there may be another life at stake.’
‘The woman who disappeared?’
‘Yes, Your Honor.’
‘Very well, Mr. Lund, I’m going to grant this request, though I do wish you had some evidence that was slightly more compelling. I’m doing so in the belief that I would have no hesitiation issuing a warrant if the suspect
