the scalpel and, using a sponge, washed her chest with something that felt cold and smelled antiseptic. He smiled at her. Then he leaned over and gently kissed her cheek. ‘I hope you’ve enjoyed our time together, Lucinda,’ he said.
McCabe tugged at the panel door. Shit. Painted shut. He pulled again. Still it wouldn’t open.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Maggie, her voice a whisper, but barely.
He ignored the question. His eyes darted around. He was losing precious seconds. He imagined Kane cutting a neat red line down the middle of Lucinda’s chest. He spotted a retractable box cutter on top of the moving cartons, grabbed it, and flipped it open. He ran the blade around the painted edges of the door. He pulled again. Still stuck. This was taking too long. He thought he could hear the whine of the Stryker surgical saw. Nearly frantic, he used the knife again and pulled even harder. The dry paint cracked. Then, finally, it gave way.
Her lover slid a surgical mask over his mouth. He placed the point of the scalpel against her skin at the bottom of her throat. Lucy retreated into the cold steel platform that held her, trying to pull back into its impenetrable hardness. He pushed. She felt a shock of pain as the blade broke her skin. She closed her eyes and prayed to a God she’d never believed in for the peace and redemption that death would bring. The lights went out.
The utility room went black. The Goldberg Variations ceased. McCabe flipped on his Maglite and raced for the stairs that circled the open hallway. He took them two at a time. He was breathing hard by the time he got to the third-floor landing. He could hear Maggie running close behind. Kane was nowhere in sight. Was he still in the room with Lucinda? What was he doing in there? Without power, Kane couldn’t see to cut, couldn’t use the saw. So what was he doing? The plan was for Kane to come out of the room to investigate the loss of power, to come out where McCabe could get him before he killed Lucy. Where the fuck was he?
McCabe forced himself to calm down. He pressed his body against the wall on one side of the door, his. 45 in his hand. Maggie took up a position on the other side. He flicked the Maglite off. An unholy blackness filled the space. Okay, Kane, get your ass out here. Investigate. Don’t you want to know why the power went off?
Finally the lock turned, the door opened, and Lucas Kane emerged into the blackness of the hall. He walked three tentative steps.
‘Kane,’ McCabe said. The man turned to face him. McCabe switched on the Maglite. Lucas Kane raised his left hand to shield his eyes from the light. He peered toward the detective.
‘Lucas Kane, you’re under arrest,’ said McCabe, his voice flat, hard, matter-of-fact. ‘Turn around slowly and put your hands behind your head.’
Kane didn’t move.
‘Just so you know, Kane, or is it Harry Lime? I’m pointing my gun right at your heart. I’m going to kill you if you don’t do exactly as I say.’
Maggie rushed into the darkened room. McCabe could hear Cassidy’s muffled cries. She was still alive.
‘Lucas Kane,’ said McCabe, ‘I repeat, you’re under arrest for the murders of Katherine Dubois and Philip and Harriet Spencer. You have the right — ’
‘Only those three?’ Kane interrupted the recitation of his rights. ‘What about the others? What about Elyse Andersen? She was my first, you know, and in some ways, the best. We used Elyse’s heart to save dear Daddy’s life.’
‘Out of love for the old man?’
‘Love? Good God, no. It was for the money. I’d already been written out of his will. There was no love between my father and me.’
‘You did the surgery? Or was it Wilcox?’
‘Only the harvest,’ he said. ‘Matt Wilcox did the transplant. He’s done them all. A talented surgeon, Matt. Elyse’s heart is still beating, right downstairs, inside the old man’s body.’
McCabe was growing impatient. The longer this went on, the greater the potential for a fuckup. ‘Alright, Kane. Enough. Lie down on the floor. Now. Hands behind your back.’
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Kane’s right hand slipped out of sight. A smile passed his lips. The smile of the hunter, not of the prey. ‘No,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘No. I have no intention of letting you or anybody else truss me up like a pig for the slaughter.’
Suddenly Kane lunged. He was fast for a big man, amazingly fast. Something small and shiny flashed by McCabe’s face. McCabe dodged the blade and fired, point-blank, into Kane’s chest. The slug had to have hit, but Kane kept coming.
‘You can’t kill me, McCabe,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you know I’m already dead? Murdered in Florida?’
Kane advanced slowly. McCabe backed away. He felt pain and wetness in his left hand, the one holding the Maglite. The scalpel, if that’s what it was, must have sliced the flesh between his thumb and index finger. He let the light fall to the floor, but it stayed on, illuminating the hall in a shadowy semidarkness.
Kane slashed again, this time at McCabe’s face. McCabe fired again. Kane staggered but kept coming. Now there was blood leaking from his mouth. ‘I’m a ghost, McCabe. A ghost that’s going to slit your throat.’ Kane’s words came out in a choking cough.
McCabe drew back farther, amazed Kane was still walking, still upright. Either one of those shots should have killed him. McCabe felt the edge of the banister press against the small of his back. Behind him, he knew, there was nothing but air, three stories down to a stone floor. Finally Kane threw himself forward, his arm swinging the scalpel wildly. McCabe crouched, ducking under the slashing blade. Then he lunged forward himself, rising up and under. The camera in McCabe’s mind recorded the next few seconds in slow motion. Kane’s momentum, aided by McCabe’s shoulder as he rose, lifted him up and over the rail. McCabe stared. Freeze-frame. Kane stared back, suspended for an instant, like a cartoon character, in midair. Then he was falling, still clutching the scalpel, his arms flapping as if he could fly. Kane landed headfirst on the flagstone floor below.
McCabe felt blood trickling from his wounded left hand. He holstered the. 45, found some Kleenex in his back pocket and pressed it against the wound. He retrieved the Maglite and shone it down on Lucas Kane’s body three floors below.
51
Saturday. 12:30 A.M.
‘Is he dead?’
McCabe turned and saw Maggie leaning against the door frame, watching, her weapon in her hand. Even in the dim light, she must have been able to see his left hand covered with bloody Kleenex, because she walked toward him and raised it over his head like a child in class who knew all the answers, though he knew he really didn’t. ‘How’s Lucinda?’ he asked.
‘Physically okay, I think. Otherwise? Who knows. The wound in her chest is superficial,’ Maggie said. ‘He must have been drawing the process out. Killing her slowly.’
‘Sadistic bastard,’ he said. He paused. ‘Kane’s dead.’
‘I know. I heard the shots and came out to help. Saw him go over the rail.’
McCabe looked straight into Maggie’s eyes. They were practically the same height. ‘He came at me with a scalpel,’ he said. After an awkward moment, he waved his bloodied hand in her direction as a kind of proof that he hadn’t done anything wrong.
She touched her hand to his cheek. ‘You don’t have to convince me, McCabe.’
Then she took the Maglite, and together they went back into the room where Lucinda Cassidy lay on a steel autopsy table, still naked, her hands and feet still bound to the table, her eyes wild with fear. A thin red line of blood ran neatly from just below her neck to just above her navel. It was already drying.
Maggie bent down and retrieved the hospital gown from the floor. She covered Lucinda’s body, tying the strings around her neck. ‘Lucinda,’ she said, pointing the light at her own face, ‘you’re safe. I’m a police officer. Detective Margaret Savage.’ She shifted the beam to McCabe. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe. Nobody’s going to hurt you.’ She handed the light back to McCabe. ‘You’ll be all right now. You’re safe,’ she said, speaking gently like a mother trying to comfort an injured child. Lucinda’s frantic eyes darted rapidly from one to the
