The Chill of Night (15 page)

Maggie made the introductions. ‘Scotty Bowman, Sergeant Mike McCabe.’ The two men shook hands. The officer in the SUV lowered the driver’s side window and waved. ‘Mel Daniels,’ he called out. Daniels looked too young to be a cop. He had a soft, almost feminine face and an open, eager expression. McCabe calculated backward. Since today was Friday, Daniels wouldn’t have been on duty Tuesday night. Cops assigned to the island worked fire department hours. Twenty-four hours on, twenty-four off, another twenty-four on, then five days off. McCabe and Maggie climbed into the back of the Explorer. The car felt warm enough to suggest it’d been running awhile. Maybe looking for Quinn. Daniels turned the vehicle around and started up the hill away from the landing. ‘You guys found our witness yet?’ asked McCabe.

There was a short, tense silence before Bowman sighed. ‘No. Not yet. We don’t know where she is.’

‘You don’t know where she is?’ McCabe repeated. He hadn’t realized how pissed off he was about that. ‘That’s great, Bowman. That’s just fucking great.’

The island cop turned in his seat and held up his hands, palms out. ‘Hey. We’ve been trying to find her since nine thirty when I got back to the island. But like I told Maggie on the phone –’

For the second time in ten seconds Bowman had rubbed McCabe the wrong way. ‘Just for the record, you didn’t tell “Maggie” anything on the phone. You told Detective Savage. You got that straight?’

The red-faced cop eyed McCabe cautiously. He didn’t like being corrected, especially not in front of a junior officer, but they both knew there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. ‘Fine,’ he said, his voice flat and unfriendly. ‘I told
Detective Savage
we checked Quinn’s house. She wasn’t there. Her mother, a woman named Grace Quinn, said she hasn’t seen her daughter since Tuesday. However, since Gracie’s usually blind drunk, she probably hasn’t seen much of anything since Tuesday. We also talked to Lori Sparks, the owner of a restaurant called the Crow’s Nest where Abby waits tables.’

McCabe knew the place. He and Kyra and Casey had all made a mess eating lobsters out on the deck one evening last summer. Gorgeous views of the bay and the sun setting down behind the Portland skyline. ‘Quinn hasn’t been there since Tuesday either. Lori was pissed ’cause it left her shorthanded. Friday’s her busiest night.’

‘Have you tried calling her cell phone?’

‘Yeah. Half a dozen times. Message keeps kicking in right away. Like it’s turned off. Or out of power.’

McCabe took out his own phone and punched in some numbers. ‘This is McCabe,’ he said. ‘Hold on a sec.’ Then, addressing Bowman, he asked, ‘What’s Quinn’s number?’ Bowman gave it to him, and McCabe repeated it to the woman who picked up at the PPD Comm Center. He asked her to try to pinpoint the phone’s current location, and no, he didn’t know who the service provider was.

Daniels pulled the Explorer into a parking space in front of the small brick building that housed the Harts Island police and fire stations, a branch of the Portland Public Library, a community room, and the only public restrooms on the island.

‘Have you looked anywhere else?’ asked Maggie. ‘Maybe she’s hiding out with friends.’

The young cop turned to face them. ‘There aren’t a lot of people who hang out with Abby. Not the way she is now. It’s too tricky. I checked with a couple of her classmates,
our
classmates, from high school. The ones who are still on the island. Like me, they remember Abby the way she used to be. A totally different person.’

‘You and Quinn were in the same class?’ asked Maggie.

‘Yeah. Portland High. Class of ’99.’

‘The classmates haven’t seen her either?’

‘No. Not since Tuesday. Neither has the guy who tends bar at the Nest. Young guy, twenty-one or twenty-two, named Travis Garmin.’

‘Anybody out searching the island?’

‘Just getting started,’ said Bowman. ‘The other cop on duty tonight, a guy named Sonny Cates, is out organizing a search party. Mostly people who work city services plus some of the volunteer firefighters. Planning to round up eight or ten in all.’ The island was only a little over two square miles. McCabe figured ten locals could cover it quickly and effectively without bringing in outside resources.

‘We’ll find her,’ Bowman said flatly.

McCabe stared in the dark at the back of Bowman’s head. It was as if Bowman could sense frustration pouring across from the backseat. ‘Listen, McCabe,’ he said, turning around, ‘we handled this right. I handled it right.’

‘You don’t think you did anything wrong?’

‘No. I don’t.’

McCabe nodded and climbed out of the vehicle. The others followed. He threw an arm around Daniels’s shoulder. ‘Why don’t you go on inside,’ he said softly. ‘Detective Savage and I need to have a private chat with Officer Bowman.’

Daniels looked from face to face, probably feeling like the kid being sent out of the room so the grown-ups could talk. Still, he didn’t object. He just walked to the station, unlocked the door, flicked on the lights, and went inside. McCabe waited until the door swung shut, then turned to Bowman. ‘You had a witness to a murder sitting right in your lap.’

The cop’s eyes narrowed. ‘No. I didn’t,’ he hissed. ‘What I had was a psychotic nutcase jumping around my station, screaming her fuckin’ head off.’

McCabe kept his own rising anger under tight control. ‘Abby Quinn may be a psychotic nutcase,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about that. What I do know is that, even agitated and probably terrified, she was cogent enough to provide an accurate description of, one, the murder weapon, two, the MO, and, three, the victim. Details nobody else knows anything about. And what do you do? Nothing. You assume she’s gone off her meds and let her slip through your hands. You’re an experienced cop, Bowman, with what, twenty years in the department? And you didn’t even bother getting her the medical attention you told Detective Savage you thought she needed. If you’d done that, at least we’d have her in a safe place. Instead, you just drove her home. The very first place the bad guy would go looking. Let’s just hope we find her before he does, if he hasn’t already. Shit, Bowman, I’ll bet you didn’t even record what she said, did you?’

Bowman said nothing, so McCabe continued. ‘That’s what I figured. So now, four days later, not only do we not have any idea where our witness is, we don’t even have an accurate record of what she said. In fact, thanks to you, we don’t have bupkis. In case you haven’t been to New York lately, that’s Yiddish for goat-shit.’

Bowman stood facing McCabe on the cold, empty village street, his eyes slits, his hands clenched into fists, the distant glow of a streetlamp accenting his features in an irregular pattern of light and shadow. Two alpha males, facing off, with nothing between them but the whoosh of an icy wind sweeping in off the bay.

Bowman blinked first. ‘We’ll find her,’ he said again. ‘If she’s still on the island, we’ll find her.’

McCabe remembered the ferry they passed on the way in. ‘Let’s hope she is,’ he said, ‘and let’s hope we do. Because if she’s not, she could be anywhere. Like stuffed into the trunk of a fancy car. Stabbed, stripped naked, and frozen solid.’ McCabe felt Maggie’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, bringing him down, urging him toward the building.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said, ‘or we’ll all be frozen solid.’

Eleven

McCabe had never seen the Harts Island cop shop before. There wasn’t much to it. Up front was a small office space outfitted with a desk, a couple of chairs, a police radio, an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machine, and a pair of computers. One was an aging desktop model, the other the sort of silver laptop usually found mounted in PPD units. Daniels was sucking on a Coke, his butt planted on one end of the desk. Behind him, through an open doorway, McCabe could see a second room. He walked over and glanced in at a small, sparsely furnished break room, dominated by a grubby-looking brown couch with worn, nearly threadbare arms, a pair of puke green vinyl chairs, and a circular coffee table, littered with out-of-date magazines and a few paperbacks. A wooden staircase rose against the wall to the left. McCabe knew the island cops kept cots upstairs so they could catch some sleep during their long twenty-four-hour shifts. There was an office-sized fridge topped with a coffee setup under the stairs. To his right, a fuzzy-looking Red Sox game flickered away on a TV in the corner. Had to be a replay. The Sox didn’t play in January.

As McCabe turned back from the doorway, he spotted a small stack of color photos lying on the desk. ‘Quinn?’ he asked, picking them up.

‘That’s her,’ said Daniels. ‘We found them at her mother’s house.’

McCabe studied the pictures, three in all. In the first, Abby was standing on the rocks by the shore, smiling at the camera, a big, healthy-looking girl with a generous figure and a face full of freckles. Probably still a teenager when the shot was taken. Waves crashed behind her, and the wind was sweeping her long reddish brown hair down over one eye in an unruly mass. McCabe never would have called Abby pretty, but she was still appealing in that open, outdoorsy way so common in Maine. She wore a sweatshirt with a picture of a strong-looking woman flexing a muscular right arm. Under the picture were the words
GRRRRL POWER!
McCabe smiled. A Harts Island feminist.

The second photo showed Abby standing in the stern of a lobster boat. She was clowning for the photographer, who must have taken the shot from the end of a pier or maybe from a second boat a little ways away. She wore a plaid flannel shirt and a pair of the orange waterproof overalls that seemed mandatory for anyone lobstering in Maine. She was holding a big lobster, maybe a five-pounder, by the tail and pretending to be frightened by the creature writhing at the end of her arm.

‘How old is she?’ McCabe asked.

‘My age,’ said Daniels. ‘Twenty-four or twenty-five. Like I said, we graduated Portland High the same year.’

‘Were you friends?’ asked Maggie.

‘Not particularly. The island kids mostly hung together. My folks lived in Portland, so I wasn’t part of their crowd. But I do know that Abby in high school was a totally different person from who she is today.’

In the third picture, she did indeed look like a different person. So different the photo might have been used as the ‘after’ shot in a before-and-after demonstration of the toll mental illness takes on the human spirit. She looked thirty, maybe forty pounds heavier and at least ten years older. Her hair hung lank and lifeless. Her eyes were clouded by a joyless empty expression, and there were dark circles under them. Her skin looked pasty and almost gray. One hand was up, trying to shield her face, as if to say,
Please don’t take a picture of me. Not like this
.

‘Is this recent?’ McCabe asked, holding it up, before handing the stack to Maggie.

Daniels shook his head. ‘No. Probably taken after her last stay at Winter Haven. About a year ago. That’s her mother’s cottage in the background. I’ve got a feeling Gracie didn’t have enough sense or sensitivity not to take a picture of Abby looking like that.’

‘Is it how she looks now?’ he asked.

‘Well, she’s not as fat now – twenty, thirty pounds less – and she’s washing her hair. Looks more normal. Chubby but normal. The last time I saw Abby was about a week ago going in to work at the Nest. She looked almost happy.’

McCabe slipped the photos into his breast pocket. ‘You don’t mind if I borrow these?’ he asked. Nobody did. He glanced over at Bowman, who was sitting in a swivel chair, his eyes locked on McCabe’s, one leg mounted on the desk. A few chunks of ice had fallen from his boot and were melting into small pools on the fake wood surface. ‘You know out there?’ he said. ‘If you were worrying that your killer’s gonna hunt Quinn down to eliminate a witness, you can relax. I don’t think that’s likely.’

‘Really?’ McCabe studied him. ‘Any reason for that? Or just your natural optimism bubbling to the surface?’

Bowman ignored the sarcasm. ‘A couple of reasons. Starting with your assumption Quinn actually saw the murder take place –’

‘Not a bad assumption, Scotty,’ Maggie interjected. She was leaning against the door, arms folded across her chest, the photos of Quinn still in one hand. ‘A knife to the back of the neck is a pretty specific detail.’

‘It is,
Detective Savage
.’ Bowman laced the last two words with a heavy dose of his own sarcasm. ‘But isn’t it at least possible Quinn only saw the body after the fact? A naked woman. Dead. With a small wound in her neck. Don’t you think seeing that might’ve freaked her out enough to push her into making up the rest? Hallucinating it. Or imagining it. Or whatever the hell else you call what schizophrenics do when they’re stressed.’ Bowman looked pleased with his hypothesis.

McCabe shrugged. ‘Slightly tortured logic, but I suppose it’s possible.’

‘Oh yeah? Tortured in what way?’

‘Well, if that’s how it happened, where, exactly, is the killer while your schizophrenic is discovering the body? Hiding in a closet? Wandering around outside in the cold, waiting for her to finish freaking out so he can go back up and collect the remains? Or maybe he’s just over at the Crow’s Nest having a beer? Like I said, possible. Just not very likely.’

Bowman sighed in reluctant agreement. ‘Okay. But even if we assume Abby did catch the killer in the act, even then he probably didn’t see her face.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Maggie. ‘She saw his face. Why wouldn’t he see hers?’

‘Because,’ Bowman announced, ‘she was wearing a mask.’ He smiled with grim satisfaction, like an athlete savoring a meaningless point scored in the last seconds of a losing effort.

Maggie gave him a questioning look. ‘What kind of mask?’

‘A cold weather ski mask. Y’know, the kind that covers your face with holes cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth. It was blue. Sort of an imitation Spider-Man design. She was still wearing it when she came to the station.’

What if Quinn
was
wearing a mask? McCabe thought about the implications of that as Maggie and Bowman continued their back-and-forth.