She thought about that for a moment. ‘Left. Then we drove a little way, a minute or two. Stopped and waited for a moment.’
A stop sign, thought McCabe. Or a traffic light. ‘While you were stopped, could you hear cars passing in front of you?’
‘Yes, but only in one direction, left to right.’ Her eyes were still closed. She was doing well. ‘Then we turned right and joined the flow of traffic. We drove for a little while, went around a curve and then onto a big road. The driver accelerated fast as we went onto it. A motorway, I think it must have been. I could hear us passing cars and trucks to our right. Sometimes they passed us to our left. We drove on that road for a long way.’
I-95, McCabe thought. The guy was driving carefully. Center lane. Not too slow. Not too fast. Probably doing sixty-five. Smart. Why attract attention? ‘Were you still on the big road when the sun came up? That would’ve been around six fifteen or so. You would have been driving about forty-five minutes. Could you feel its warmth on your face?’
Again she thought before speaking. ‘Yes.’
‘On your left side or right side?’
‘Right side. I hadn’t thought about that before. We must have been traveling north. It got warmer as we went along.’
He wondered about the tolls. ‘Did the driver slow down or stop at all while you were on the big road? Like for a tollbooth?’
‘Yes. I think he must have had a bowl of coins on the seat next to him. I could hear them jingling just as we slowed. Then he opened his window. I could hear it go down and feel the air on my face as we slowed to a stop. I suppose he threw the coins in a basket. Then we accelerated fast again.’
Exact change lane. Made sense. No E-ZPass records. No toll takers to notice a woman in a blindfold.
‘How long did you stay on the fast road, the motorway?’
‘Several hours. I can’t be sure of the time.’
‘How many times did you go through a toll? Where you could hear the change rattle?’
‘Three times.’
McCabe thought about the pattern of tollbooths along the Maine Turnpike. ‘After the third toll — this is important — did you start going fast again like on a motorway, or was it more like you were on smaller roads? You know, stops, turns, stuff like that.’
‘We stayed on the motorway only a little longer, maybe five minutes.’
McCabe thought about that and guessed they’d stayed on 95 and probably gotten off around Augusta.
‘How much longer did you drive after you left the motorway?’
‘A while. More than an hour. Maybe two. We seemed to be going pretty fast with some stops. A two-lane road, I think. I could hear the whooshing sound of traffic coming the other way. Also, several times the driver pulled out suddenly to pass, accelerated fast, and pulled back in suddenly. The last few miles felt like a poorly maintained road. With many bumps.’
A couple of hours on secondary roads from Augusta. Max of what? Seventy-five or eighty miles. Progressively smaller roads at the end. That narrowed things down a bit. ‘Any sense from the position of the sun or anything else what direction you were traveling in?’
‘No.’
‘At the end of the journey, when you got out of the car, think back to what your senses told you. Put yourself back in that place. Sound. Smell. The feel of the ground under your feet.’
Sophie rummaged in her bag for another cigarette. She lit it and inhaled deeply. She considered his question, her eyes open. ‘I think we were in a wooded area. I could smell pine trees. The ground was soft.’
‘Could you smell the sea? Or hear seagulls? Or other birds?’
‘No. I don’t think so. As I was led toward the building, we were climbing up a rocky area. I tripped once or twice. He held me up. When we got to the building, he opened a door. Just inside the door we went down three rather long flights of stairs. Thirteen steps each. I was careful to count them because I still couldn’t see. He held my arm and told me when we reached the last step.’
Three times thirteen. Thirty-nine. Thirty-nine steps down from the ground level. Thirty-nine steps? Another deliberate movie reference, this time to an early Hitchcock classic? Or was he just being silly? Flights of stairs typically had thirteen steps. Okay. Thirty-nine steps down to what? A basement? An underground surgical center? Somewhere in the woods. With an operating room, a recovery room, dressing rooms. Maybe a prison for the victims.
Sophie began remembering again. ‘I was led to a small room, no bigger than a closet, really.’
‘How do you know it was small?’
‘That’s where I finally took off the mask. I was directed to change into a set of scrubs. I was told to put on a surgical mask and cap before leaving the OR. Then I scrubbed up. There was a sink and antiseptic soap in the room. I didn’t see the others until we were all in the OR.’
‘Could you see the surgeon’s face?’
‘No. Not really. He entered the room wearing a surgical mask and goggles. So did the assistant surgeon and the anesthetist. Everybody else wore standard surgical masks at all times. We used no names. Each of us was assigned a code name, which was used in the OR. Mine was Catwalk.’
‘Any significance to the name?’
‘None that I’m aware of.’
‘How many people in the room?’
‘Six. The surgeon. An assistant. A nurse-anesthetist. Me. Two other nurses. A very small team for a transplant. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to handle it, but the surgeon was very skilled.’
‘Did you talk to the others?’
‘Only to communicate what was necessary during the operations. No names were used. We kept our masks on until we left the building. We were told this was for our own protection.’
‘It was the same team each time?’
‘No. One of the nurses changed.’
McCabe considered the size of the team for a moment. That made it a fairly wide conspiracy. A lot of people involved. A lot of possible leaks.
‘The team — men or women?’
‘Both surgeons were male. The nurse-anesthetist was female. One of the other nurses was a man, one a woman.’
‘You said one was replaced.’
‘A female nurse replaced a female.’
‘How could you tell there was a change if you were all wearing masks?’
‘The new one was shorter, fatter. The voice was different.’
‘Was Spencer one of the doctors?’
‘I don’t know. He might have been. Right size. Hard to tell about the voice. He didn’t say much.’
‘How about the other surgeon?’
‘He seemed more slender. Slightly shorter.’
‘You were paid a hundred thousand euros for each operation?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who were the patients?’
‘They were all nameless old men. I assume they were all rich.’
They sat silently for a while, Sophie smoking, McCabe thinking.
29
Tuesday. 10:00 P.M.
The bullet from the sniper’s rifle traversed the five hundred yards separating it from its intended target faster than the speed of sound. For this reason, McCabe saw the windshield fracture and blood explode from Sophie
