The Chill of Night (7 page)

He wondered again about calling Richard Wolfe, the psychiatrist. Maybe it was time. He’d first seen Wolfe a little over a year ago, right after the end of the Lucas Kane affair, after Casey’s first one-on-one encounter with her mother in more than three years. It was Kyra who urged him to go. He’d been getting the shakes and having trouble sleeping, and when he did sleep, his sleep was disturbed by violent nightmares that more often than not included Sandy. Kyra thought he might be having a nervous breakdown. Wolfe told him no, it wasn’t a breakdown. Just the aftermath of a high level of stress combined with anxiety about Casey and Sandy getting together again. He prescribed Xanax, which seemed to help, and though Wolfe recommended continuing therapy, either with him or someone else, McCabe decided that was that. He wouldn’t take it any further.

‘McCabe. You feeling okay?’

‘Yeah. Fine.’

‘You don’t look fine.’ Maggie was directly behind him. If he moved too fast he’d knock her right in the water. Once again, he felt her hand on his shoulder. ‘Can you talk to me?’ She was using her gentle voice. So effective in interrogations. All the bad guys fell for it. ‘McCabe?’

He didn’t answer. Instead, he examined the body one more time, finishing up by running the Maglite along her leg, searching for the small mole on the outside of her knee that should have been there. It wasn’t. At least not where he could see it.

No, this wasn’t Sandy. He was sure of it now. Just someone who looked like her. To prove it, even to the doubting little voice that inhabited his brain, he took out his cell and punched in her number in New York. It rang. Once. Twice. Four times.
Hello. You’ve reached the Ingrams. Sandy and Peter. Please leave a message, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

‘Sandy, it’s me. McCabe. Call back as soon as you can. It’s important.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Oh, it’s not about Casey. She’s fine.’ He clicked off and tried the house in East Hampton and then her cell. Same result both times. He left messages.

No, he told himself again, this wasn’t Sandy. She was in New York, safe and sound. On a Friday night she and her rich-as-Croesus husband were probably at the theater.
We request that everyone in the audience please turn off all cell phones for the duration of the performance. Thank you very much.
Or maybe they were home lying in front of the fire in their West End Avenue co-op, not answering the phone because they were otherwise engaged. He pictured Sandy having sex with Ingram. Without warning, the image changed and it wasn’t Ingram on the floor by the fire, wrapped in the familiar scent and feel of Sandy’s naked body. It was McCabe himself, thrusting into her over and over in a ferocious surge of desire. He was shocked by how much he still wanted her. Equally shocked by how much he hated her. It struck him that the need to exorcise the ghost of Sandy once and for all might be the real reason he kept pushing Kyra toward a marriage she wasn’t ready for. That was something he’d have to deal with. Something he’d have to resolve. He loved Kyra too much to use her that way. Perhaps he should stop seeing her. At least until the exorcism was complete. He wondered what a therapist like Wolfe would say about all this. He wondered if he could even tell Wolfe. But maybe he would. He sure as hell couldn’t tell anyone else.

As suddenly as it began it was over. Even the little voice in his brain accepted the fact that the woman in the trunk wasn’t Sandy. She was a look-alike, most likely one named Elaine Elizabeth Goff. Yes, the resemblance
was
strong, but that’s all it was, a resemblance. Maggie was still behind him, her hand still on his shoulder. ‘I’m okay,’ he said.

‘I’m not even going to ask.’

McCabe focused the light once more on the body in the trunk, looking this time not for moles but for evidence. For something that might tell him who had killed this woman and how. He noticed reddish marks on the one wrist and one ankle he could see, suggesting she’d been physically restrained prior to death. He saw the bruising Maggie mentioned on the visible portions of her legs, buttocks, and arms. Maybe she’d been beaten as well. Or maybe the marks were nothing more than freezer burn. He hadn’t seen any bruising around her face, and there was no sign of blood, either on her body or in the trunk.

Four

‘Why is it you two always find your bodies on Friday nights? Haven’t you ever heard of Tuesday?’ Maggie and McCabe looked up at the sound of Terri Mirabito’s voice. The deputy state medical examiner was standing at the front of the car holding a small black bag, like a Norman Rockwell doctor making a house call. Even bundled in a heavy sheepskin coat with a matching hat pulled down over her dark, curly hair, McCabe could tell Terri was dressed for a night on the town. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her wear lipstick or mascara or even high heels before. She looked good. The two cops moved out of the way to give her room to look in the trunk.

‘Hmmm. Frozen like a rock,’ she said. ‘That’s what I heard. That’ll make things interesting.’

‘Any sneaky way to estimate time of death?’

‘No. Freezing right after death keeps a body fresh. Like she died five minutes ago. Think Butterball turkey.’

‘What if decomposition already started?’

‘Freezing would have stopped it. We might be able to estimate the elapsed time between when she died and when she was frozen, but pinpointing actual time of death? No way.’

‘So we could be talking weeks?’

‘Sure. Assuming the body froze in position inside the trunk, which I think is the case.’

‘That’s too bad.’

‘Well, yes and no,’ said Terri, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. ‘Freezing also keeps any evidence we find on the body fresh. Poison, if that’s what killed her. Drugs. Alcohol. Whatever she ate for her last meal. Semen, if the killer left any behind.’ She ran a small high-intensity light over the body and began her examination.

‘She is dead, isn’t she?’ asked Maggie. ‘None of this “Frozen corpse comes back to life. Leaps off autopsy table”?’

Terri looked up, amused. ‘Y’mean, like you see in the
Enquirer
?’

‘Yeah. Like that.’

‘Sorry, Mag. No leaping for this lady. She’s dead.’

‘Any idea what killed her?’ asked McCabe.

‘Yes.’ Terri was now leaning deep into the trunk. She was holding Jane Doe’s hair up with one gloved hand and shining the light on the back of her neck with the other. ‘It looks like the killer knew what he was doing. Here. Take a look.’

McCabe squeezed in next to Terri. She pointed a gloved finger to a wound in the small indentation in the back of Jane Doe’s neck. Right where the head and the neck connect. A small wound, no more than half an inch across. ‘That’s what killed her?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Looks like the killer pushed a thin-bladed knife or possibly an ice pick up into the base of her skull at the C1 vertebra. Probably went through the foramen magnum and into the brain stem.’

‘The foramen what?’

‘The foramen magnum. It’s a small opening at the base of the skull. The spinal cord goes through it to attach to the brain stem. If the killer gets it right, he severs the spine from the brain; cardiac and respiratory systems stop working. The victim falls to the ground dead.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’

‘Doesn’t look like there was much bleeding.’

‘He didn’t hit any major blood vessels.’

‘Death was instantaneous?’ asked Maggie.

‘Yes. It’s called pithing. It’s one of the very few injuries that cause virtually instantaneous death. Victim goes down like a rag doll.’

‘If he hits the wrong spot?’

‘He ends up with a messy, possibly nonlethal wound.’

‘So the creep knows his anatomy.’

‘Yes. Unless he was just lucky, he knows his anatomy well enough to know the effect. Though, if the victim is immobilized, and it looks like she may have been, it’s pretty easy to put the knife where you want it.’

‘You’re sure that’s what killed her?’

‘About as sure as I can be until I get her in for the autopsy, and we can’t do that until she thaws out. It’ll be three or four days at the very least. Probably more like a week.’

‘A week? Jesus. Can’t we do it faster?’ asked Maggie. ‘Maybe soak her in a tub under running water? That’s how my mom handled the Butterballs.’

‘Unfortunately, she’s not a turkey. We thaw her too fast and we end up with tissue damage. The outside starts decomposing while the internal organs are still frozen. That’ll interfere with some of the tests I need to run. Plus, soaking her in water could wash away any trace evidence on or in the body. We’ll just have to wait.’

‘A week?’

‘For a total thaw, yes. We’ll put her in the refrigeration unit at the lab, and at a constant thirty-eight degrees, it’ll take about a week. Doing it that way minimizes decomp. Helps us learn more about what or who killed her. However, we should be able to get some information sooner.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, I’ll be able to check the body surface almost immediately, and clip her nails in case she scratched her attacker. If there’s any hair or saliva or skin cells that aren’t hers, we’ll find them. Also I should be able to move her limbs enough in a day or so to do an internal swab and check for semen.’ Even going over the gory details Terri sounded cheerful. She was one of those people who loved her job.
Unraveling the mysteries of the dead
, as they might have said on the Discovery Channel. McCabe found forensic pathology a strange way to get your jollies, but he guessed that’s what made Terri so good at it.

She went back to her task of looking over the body. She was squatting down, shining her light at Jane Doe’s face, when she called out, ‘McCabe?’

‘Yeah?’

‘She’s got something in her mouth.’

‘Like what?’ McCabe pushed in next to Terri again and looked where her light was pointing. Jane Doe’s lips and teeth were slightly parted. Behind the teeth he could see a small flash of white he hadn’t noticed before.

‘Looks like paper,’ said Terri.

‘A gag?’ asked Maggie.

‘I don’t think so,’ said McCabe. ‘It’s not balled up like a gag would be. Looks folded. Maybe some kind of note? Like maybe the murderer left us a message. Can you get it out?’

‘I don’t know. Her jaw’s frozen in position. No more than an eighth of an inch clearance. I’ll try to thread it through the opening with forceps.’

‘Won’t the paper be frozen, too?’ asked Maggie.

‘Mouth would have to be wet for the paper to freeze, but it might have been. Possibly with saliva. Or, if decomp already started, there might be some purge fluid.’

Terri rummaged in her bag and came out with an instrument that looked like a pair of delicate tweezers with small blunt teeth at the ends. She slipped it between Jane Doe’s parted lips, grasped the paper, and gently tugged. It didn’t move. ‘It’s frozen, alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can wiggle it free.’

It took three or four minutes of carefully pulling and prodding, first one way, then the other. Finally the paper moved. ‘I think maybe I’ve freed it. Now let’s see if I can extract it without tearing it.’

Holding Jane Doe’s frozen jaw in place with her left hand, Terri coaxed the paper through her parted teeth. Finally it was free.

‘Can you unfold it?’ asked McCabe. ‘Let’s see what’s written. If anything.’

‘Not till we warm it up a bit,’ said Terri. She was holding what looked like a standard 81/2’ by 11’ sheet of copy paper between the teeth of her forceps. The paper was folded over and over into a one- by two-inch wad. It had been discolored, probably by fluid in the mouth.

‘Here, Doc, put it in here.’ Bill Jacobi was holding out a small stainless steel pan. ‘We’ll warm it in the van. Then maybe we can take a look.’

Terri dropped the folded sheet of paper into the pan. They walked back toward Jacobi’s crime scene van. It only took a minute for Bill to warm the paper enough to unfold it. He flattened it on a tray and took two shots of it, front and back, with a digital camera.

McCabe looked down. The paper was blank except for two words printed in the center in twelve-point type in an ordinary font.

Amos. 9:10.

‘From the Bible?’ asked Maggie.

‘Yes,’ said McCabe. ‘Unfortunately. It may not be good news.’

Maggie looked at him sharply. ‘Why? What’s it say? Who’s Amos?’

‘One of the minor Old Testament prophets. Book of Amos. Chapter nine. Verse ten.’ McCabe closed his eyes and let his brain take him back to sixth-grade Bible class at St Barnabas. There he was, eleven-year-old Michael, the oddity standing uncomfortably before the entire class. And there was Sister Mary Joseph, standing over him, smiling benignly down, celebrating God’s gift of eidetic memory to her young student, making him recite yet another passage from an obscure book of the Bible. Her version of Trivial Pursuit. Could she stump him? No, she couldn’t. Not even with the Book of Amos. Twenty-seven years later in the cold and dark of the Portland Fish Pier, McCabe’s mind brought the words back. ‘It seems someone was punishing our victim for her sins.’

‘What’s it say?’ Maggie asked again.

‘All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.
That’s what the Book of Amos was all about. God punishing the Israelites for their sins.’

‘What kinds of sins?’

‘The standard list. Greed, corruption, oppression of the poor.’

‘It did say
all
the sinners – so there might be more?’

‘Well, she might be the only sinner he planned on punishing, but I’m not sure I’d count on it.’

Jacobi stared at McCabe. ‘Book of Amos? Chapter nine? Verse ten? I heard you have a fancy memory, but how in hell would you know a thing like that?’

‘Trust him, Bill. He knows,’ said Maggie.

‘You know the whole Bible by heart?’

‘No. Just the parts we learned in class.’ He passed Terri the note.

Terri glanced at the note and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Wonder what sins he was punishing her for.’

‘The sins of the flesh, I suppose. It’s a pretty common syndrome among whackos all the way from Jack the Ripper to that guy Picton they just put away in Vancouver.’