dated April 2, 2002. McCabe remembered reading it on a flight from Orlando back to LaGuardia.
He’d taken Casey down to Disney World for spring break. The idea had been to cheer her up after he and her mother, Sandy — the beautiful Cassandra, Casey’s namesake — had divorced. McCabe hadn’t thought about Sandy in a long time. The familiar refrain, ‘selfish bitch,’ came instantly to mind. He supposed Sandy’s new life, married to an investment banker, commuting between a fancy house in the Hamptons and a nine-room co-op on West End Avenue, suited her better than being the wife of a cop ever had. Still, McCabe wondered how comfortable she was having walked out not just on a failed marriage but also on her only child. She told McCabe the banker didn’t want to be burdened with kids. At least not somebody else’s kids. He’d forced Sandy to choose between having money and having a daughter. McCabe wasn’t surprised she’d chosen money. That’s just the way Sandy was. There was nothing anybody could do to change it. He wasn’t bothered for himself, but he’d never forgiven Sandy for what she’d done to Casey.
The news story sprang back to life in McCabe’s mind as he read. A construction crew working for the D. J. Puozzoli Construction Company of Orlando yesterday unearthed the decomposed remains of a nude woman, later identified as 26-year-old Elyse Andersen of Winter Park. Ms. Andersen, a sales representative with Mulvaney Real Estate in Orlando, was reported missing three weeks ago by her husband, Martin Andersen, also of Winter Park. An unnamed source at the Orange County Medical Examiner’s office told the Sentinel that the cause of death had been the ‘surgical’ removal of Ms. Andersen’s heart.
McCabe closed out the page. He remembered the rest of the article pretty much verbatim. Orlando police were following several leads. There was no mention of additional wounds, but the article did include the name of the lead detective on the case, Sergeant Aaron Cahill. McCabe looked through the rest of the hits on the Google search and found one follow-up article. Apparently Sergeant Cahill’s leads led nowhere and the case went cold. McCabe decided to wait until after the autopsy, when he would know more about the manner and cause of Katie Dubois’s death, before contacting Sergeant Cahill of the Orlando PD.
He printed out the article and slipped it into a brand-new murder book. Then he picked up the coffee cups and walked them to the small kitchen at the back of the bullpen. He poured the dregs down the sink. One of McCabe’s detectives, Jack Batchelder, stood nearby making a fresh pot.
‘Hiya, Mike. Bad night, huh? At least that’s what I heard.’ Batchelder was a balding, overweight man of fifty. In McCabe’s view, Jack was pretty much a burned-out case, putting in time, padding his pension with a few more years, before calling it quits.
‘I guess you heard right, Jack. Anything else going on?’ McCabe asked.
‘The usual Friday night mayhem. A couple of domestics. A kid got beaten up in a brawl down by the ferry terminal. Oh yeah, there’s another missing persons report. Woman named Cassidy. Works for an ad agency here in town, Beckman and Hawes. Her ex-husband called it in about eight o’clock.’
McCabe looked up. That was about the same time he and Kyra were arriving at Arno and Lacey was sneaking into the scrap yard. ‘Who took the call?’
‘Bill and Will. They should be talking with the ex now.’ Detectives Bill Bacon and Will Messing had been universally known by their rhyming first names since McCabe teamed them up a year earlier.
Carl Sturgis joined them by the sink. ‘Hey, McCabe,’ he said in that shrill terrierlike bark of his, ‘that homeless guy they brought in? He didn’t have shit to say. He was just sneaking into the scrap yard for a couple of snorts. Found the body. Started running around screaming till he found Comisky. End of story. Except he was pissed I didn’t offer him a drink. Big joker. Says you promised him some booze. I told him it was up to you to keep your own promises. I mean, you didn’t really do that, did you?’
‘Don’t believe everything you hear,’ McCabe said, pouring himself a fresh coffee, ‘but thanks for asking.’ He tossed a dollar into the can next to the coffeepot. ‘Where is he now?’
‘I got a uniform to drop him off down by the shelter. I told him to let us know where we could find him. Fat chance.’
McCabe took the coffee back to his desk and called Bill Bacon’s cell. It looked like it was going to be an even longer night than he’d thought. Bacon picked up. ‘Hiya, Mike.’
‘Where are you guys?’
‘In the car. You heard about our missing person? We just finished with her ex-husband. Says he’s very upset. I personally think he’s full of shit. Anyway, we’re on our way to her apartment.’
‘Back it up, Bill, and give me the two-minute drill on this.’
‘Missing woman is named Lucinda Cassidy. She’s twenty-eight years old. Works for an advertising outfit on Free Street, Beckman and Hawes.’ Bacon sounded like he was reading from his notes. ‘Young management type. She was supposed to meet her ex-husband for dinner at Tony’s at six thirty. Guy named Dave Farrington. They’ve been divorced less than a year. She’s not there when he arrives. He orders a drink and waits. By seven she still hasn’t turned up, which he says is very unlike her. He orders another drink and starts making calls. First he tries calling her numbers. There’s no answer either on her landline or her cell or at the office. So next he looks up her boss’s home number and reaches him. The boss, a John Beckman of Beckman and Hawes, says she never showed up for work this morning. He’s pissed ’cause she missed some big meeting or something. Tells Farrington he thought maybe she was sick or maybe there was a family crisis, but when she didn’t answer her phone, he didn’t know what to think. Naturally, the schmuck doesn’t think to call us.’
‘You said you thought the ex was full of shit? You think he had something to do with the disappearance?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Not yet, anyway. I just think he’s a slick-assed jack who’s a little too full of himself. Anyway, Farrington next calls Cassidy’s sister, his ex-sister-in-law. She hasn’t heard from Lucinda in a couple of days. So now he’s really worried. He calls 911 about eight. Wants to know if there’ve been any accidents reported or if anyone brought her into any of the local hospitals. The answer is no. Dispatch routes the call to us. First thing, we go to Tony’s, talk to Farrington, who’s still there, having another drink. Then we go with him to her apartment to see if maybe she’s home and just not answering the phone. She’s not. At least, there are no lights on and she’s not answering the door either.’
‘Is that it?’ McCabe asked.
‘Not quite. Will checks her vehicle and plate numbers and sends out an ATL just in case she’s on the road somewhere. About an hour later we get a call from a unit on the West Side. Connie Davenport. Cassidy’s car’s been found. Beige ’99 Corolla. Parked on Vaughan Street by the old cemetery. Neighbor tells Davenport the Corolla’s been there all day. Turns out Lucinda’s a jogger. She runs every morning, usually on the West End. Farrington told us she was training for a 10K.’ Bill Bacon stopped talking, and there was silence on the phone.
‘What are you thinking, Billy?’
‘Mike, I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,’ he said finally. ‘I just called the evidence techs to check out the scene on Vaughan. Then I want them to flatbed the car to 109 and check it for prints, blood, fibers, the works.’
‘Busy night for the techs.’
‘Yeah. I guess for all of us. Like I said, we’re pulling up to the apartment now. Landlord’s meeting us here with a key. If she still doesn’t answer the door, he said he’d let us in.’ Another pause. ‘I’ll call you back.’
‘Is Farrington still with you?’
‘No. I got a uniform to take him down to the station to give us a set of prints. We’ll check for matches both in the apartment and in the Corolla, but I’ll bet he can prove he’s been in both places before.’
‘I’ll wait for your call,’ McCabe said and then hung up the phone.
Next, McCabe called Lieutenant Bill Fortier at home. Fortier’s wife, Millie, answered. She went to get him. In the background McCabe could hear sounds of the Sox game. ‘Yeah, Mike, what’s up?’
McCabe filled him in on what was going on at the scrap yard and what Bacon had told him about Lucinda Cassidy.
‘You think she just took off?’
‘Leaving her car sitting there on the street? Doesn’t seem likely.’
‘You think it’s the same guy?’ Fortier asked. He sounded like he was munching on something crunchy.
‘Seems like the timing’s all wrong, but who the hell knows? Our boy would have to finish with one vic and right away go pick up another. Most freaks don’t work that way.’
‘Yeah, doesn’t one killing usually satisfy the lust for a while?’
‘It’s supposed to,’ said McCabe, ‘but all these sadistic whack jobs have their own little quirks. Anyway, nobody’s killed Cassidy yet. At least as far as we know. Let’s not hurry her along.’
