The Cutting (2 page)

Lucy liked the quiet of the early morning hours in this upscale neighborhood. Passing street after street of graceful nineteenth-century homes, she glanced in the windows and imagined herself living in one or another of them. The image pleased her. She saw herself holding elegant dinner parties. The food would be simple but perfectly prepared. The wines rare. The men handsome. The conversation witty. All terribly
Masterpiece Theatre
. Ah well, a pretty picture but not very likely. She was not, she knew, to the manner born. She watched Fritz scamper ahead and then turn and wait for her to follow.

Lucy moved through the damp morning air, bringing her heart rate up to an aerobic training level. She thought about the day ahead, reviewing, for at least the twentieth time, details of a TV campaign she was presenting to the marketing group at Mid-Coast Bank. She’d worked her tail off to land this new client, but they were turning out to be both difficult and demanding. After work, she planned a quick trip to Circuit City to pick up a birthday present for her soon-to-be twelve-year-old nephew Owen. Her older sister Patti’s boy, Owen told her what he ‘really really wanted’ was an iPod, but he wasn’t optimistic. ‘We don’t have the money this year,’ he added in grown-up, serious tones that had Patti’s imprint all over them. Well, Owen was in for a big surprise.

After that it was back to the Old Port for dinner with David at Tony’s. The prospect of dinner at Tony’s pleased her. The prospect of sharing it with her ex-husband didn’t. He was pushing to get back together, and yes, she admitted, there were times she was briefly tempted. God knows, no one else even remotely interesting was waiting in the wings. Yet after a couple of dates, she was surer than ever that going back to David wasn’t the answer for either of them. She planned to tell him so tonight.

She ran along Vaughan for a mile or so, climbing the gentle rise of Bramhall Hill, before turning west across the old section of the hospital toward the path that lined the western edge of the Prom. The fog was thicker now, and she could see even less, but her body felt good. The training was paying off, and she felt certain she’d be ready for the race, now ten days away.

Suddenly Fritz darted past and disappeared into the mist, barking furiously at what Lucy figured was either an animal or another runner coming up the path in her direction. Then she saw Fritz run out of the fog, turn, and stand his ground, angry barks lifting his small body in an uncharacteristic rage. Instantly alert, Lucy wondered who or what could be getting him so agitated. Usually he just wagged his stub of a tail at strangers.

Seconds later a runner emerged from the fog about fifteen feet in front of her. He was a tall man with a lean, well-muscled body. Had she seen him jogging here before? She didn’t think so. He was unusually good-looking with dark, deep-set eyes that would be hard to forget. Late thirties or early forties, she thought. Fritz backed away but kept barking.

‘Quiet down,’ Lucy commanded. ‘It’s okay.’ She smiled at the man. ‘He isn’t usually so noisy.’

The tall man stopped and knelt down. He extended his left hand for Fritz to sniff, then scratched him behind the ears. He smiled up at Lucy. ‘What’s his name?’

Lucy registered the absence of a wedding band. ‘Fritz,’ she said.

‘Hey, Fritz, are you a good boy? Sure you are.’ He scratched Fritz again. The dog’s stubby tail offered a tentative wag or two. He looked up. ‘I’ve seen you running here before. I’m sure I have.’

‘You may have,’ she said, though she was sure she would have noticed him. ‘I’m here most mornings. I’m training for a 10K.’

‘Good for you. Mind if I run along? I’d enjoy the company.’

She hesitated, surprised at the man’s directness. Finally she said, ‘I guess not. Not as long as you can keep up. I’m Lucy.’

‘Harry,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘Harry Potter.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No, I was christened long before the first book came out, and I wasn’t about to change my name.’

They took off, chatting easily, laughing about the name. Fritz, no longer barking, kept pace.

‘You live in Portland?’ she asked.

‘No, I’m here on business. Medical equipment. The hospital’s one of my biggest clients.’

‘So you’re here quite often?’

‘At least once a month.’

They picked up the pace and turned south down the western edge of the Prom.

‘Normally there’s a great view from up here. Can’t see a damned thing today.’

A dark green SUV sat parked at the curb just ahead of them. ‘Could you excuse me for a minute?’ Harry pointed and clicked a key ring. The car’s lights blinked; its doors unlocked. ‘I need to get something.’

He leaned in, rummaged in a small canvas bag, and then emerged from the car holding a hypodermic and a small bottle. ‘I’m a diabetic,’ he explained. ‘I have to take my insulin on schedule.’ Harry carefully inserted the needle into the bottle and extracted a clear liquid. ‘Only take a second.’ Lucy smiled. Feeling it was rude to watch, she turned away and looked out over the Prom. The fog wasn’t dissipating. If anything it seemed to be getting thicker. She performed a few stretches to keep her muscles warm while they waited.

She sensed more than saw the sudden movement behind her. Before she could react, Harry Potter’s left arm was around her neck, pulling her sharply back and up in a classic choke hold. Her windpipe constricted in the crook of his elbow. She couldn’t move. She wanted to scream but could draw only enough breath to emit a thin, strangled cry.

Frantic and confused, Lucy dug her nails into the man’s flesh, wishing she’d let them grow longer and more lethal. She felt a sharp prick. She looked down and saw the man’s free hand squeezing whatever was in the hypodermic into her arm. He continued holding her, immobile. She tried to struggle, but he was too strong, his grip too tight. Within seconds wooziness began to overtake her. She felt his hands on the back of her head and her butt, pushing her, headfirst, facedown, into the backseat of the car.

Turning her head, Lucy could still see out through the open door, but everything had taken on a hazy, distant quality, like a slow-motion film growing darker frame by frame and seeming to make no sense. She saw an enraged Fritz growling and digging his teeth into the man’s leg. She heard a shout, ‘Shit!’ Two large hands picked the small dog up. She tried to rise but couldn’t. The last thing Lucinda Cassidy saw was the good-looking man with the dark eyes. He smiled at her. The slow-motion film faded to black.

2

Friday. 7:30
P.M.

The summer crowds in the Old Port had thinned now that Labor Day had come and gone, but the air was warm, and Exchange Street bustled with energy. Shops and restaurants were open late and busy. Packs of teenagers in varying states of grunge – some with piercings and tattoos and some without – spread themselves across the sidewalks, forcing middle-aged tourists out onto the narrow streets.

Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe and Kyra Erikson walked in step, side by side, holding hands. Seeing them absorbed in each other’s company, chatting happily, it would have been easy for a passerby to conclude, correctly, that they were lovers.

Tonight they were heading for Arno, the city’s latest northern Italian hot spot. As usual, it was Kyra’s choice. McCabe’s restaurant habits were as predictable as they were unadventurous. He pretty much always ordered the same thing: a rare New York strip steak, preceded by a single malt Scotch – no ice – and accompanied by a couple of bottles of cold Shipyard Ale.

Kyra, on the other hand, was a real foodie. She was looking forward to one of Arno’s specialties, ‘duck-meat ravioli, served,’ she recited, practically drooling, ‘in a light brown sauce with thin slices of rare grilled duck.’

McCabe considered their differing approaches to dining a minor incompatibility. He had no problem indulging her passion for haute cuisine. After dinner they planned to go back to his apartment and watch a movie, John Schlesinger’s
Billy Liar
, with Tom Courtenay and a young, very sexy Julie Christie. An old favorite from McCabe’s former life in film school at NYU. He’d never told Kyra she reminded him of Christie in this role. She had the same curly blond hair, the same liquid eyes, the same full, almost pouty lips, except, thank God, Kyra almost never pouted. The resemblance was one of the things that first attracted him to her. He wondered if she’d appreciate the comparison.

They paused by a young street musician seated on the pavement, his back against the brick wall of a small jewelry shop. He was playing a beautifully polished violin. A hand-lettered cardboard sign, propped against the wall, identified him as a
JUILLIARD DROPOUT
. They listened for twenty or thirty seconds. Then, before walking on, McCabe dropped a couple of dollar bills into the man’s open violin case.

‘You’re in a good mood.’

‘Why not? It’s a beautiful night. I’m with a beautiful woman. He’s a good player and I like the piece. Mozart. Violin Concerto.’ McCabe paused, but only for a second, searching his memory. ‘Number Three.’

It wasn’t that he knew a lot about classical music. He didn’t. He knew nothing of music theory or the styles of various composers. He only occasionally listened to it. It was just this weird mind of his. Once he had seen or heard something – anything – he almost never forgot it. They walked on, the silken, sensuous notes of the violin fading behind them.

McCabe knew Kyra had found it unsettling when she first discovered he could repeat, verbatim, lengthy passages from a book or an investigation report he read months before. She assumed what he had was a photographic memory. He said not. ‘There is no such thing,’ he told her. ‘Nobody’s ever been able to prove that a brain can “photograph” an image and then “see” it again.’

‘You remember everything?’

‘Only if it interests me. I’ve got something called an eidetic memory. My brain is just unusually efficient at organizing stuff and filing it away where it can lay its hands on it.’

They continued up Exchange Street. They passed a black-and-white patrol car pulled into a space marked with a
NO PARKING
sign. A young, round-faced female cop sat behind the wheel. She smiled as she spotted McCabe with someone so obviously his girlfriend. ‘Hey, Sergeant, how ya doin’?’ she called out.

He smiled back. ‘Keeping an eye on the delinquents?’

‘Yeah, you know, Friday night. Another few hours the drunks’ll start pouring out of the bars.’

Arno, as expected, was crowded and noisy. Two or three groups stood by the door waiting for the hostess to notice them. Since their own reservation wasn’t for another fifteen minutes, McCabe and Kyra wandered into the small bar, where squadrons of young business types, male and female, jockeyed for position. He noticed the distinctive squat shape of a Dalwhinnie among the bottles at the back of the bar. It was one of his favorite malts and not always available. He signaled the bartender and ordered a double, neat, for himself and, without having to ask, a Sancerre for Kyra. Glancing over, he saw she was chatting with one of her art contacts, Gloria Kelwin, a gallery owner he’d met a couple of times before. McCabe brought the drinks over and handed Kyra her wine.

‘Why, hello, Michael,’ Gloria purred, bending forward to brush McCabe’s cheek with her lips. ‘Caught any bad guys lately?’ She spoke in a mannered way McCabe found consistently irritating. Not waiting for his response, she turned her attention back to Kyra. Kelwin’s gallery, North Space, carried Kyra’s paintings and prints, and Kyra was hoping to schedule a solo show. McCabe watched Kyra’s face, animated and alive, as she described a new series of figure studies she was working on, small oils of young dancers, bodies abstracted in fluid athletic poses. He found her quite irresistible, watching her when she didn’t know he was watching. In the end, he was happy shutting out the words and concentrating instead on the smooth peaty burn of the Scotch as it traced its way down his throat, wondering for the hundredth time how he’d managed to attract this sensual, sensitive woman.

As he sipped, McCabe felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out in time to see the call was from Maggie Savage. While a chance encounter with an overbearing gallery owner couldn’t spoil the evening, McCabe knew Maggie’s call might. Placing his nearly empty glass on the bar, he excused himself and stepped out onto Exchange Street. The air felt fresh, and he could smell the sea. He leaned against the building and waited a moment before calling her back. Then he punched in her number.

Maggie was the number two detective in McCabe’s Crimes Against People unit. Technically, as the unit’s leader, McCabe wasn’t supposed to have a partner, but he’d stretched the rules, and they’d worked together since his arrival in Portland three years ago. Back then, she hadn’t been shy about letting him know she resented the ‘so-called star’ from the NYPD sweeping in and taking the job she felt she’d earned for herself. In her view, the department passing on her application was nothing more than simple sexism. The fact this was the first time they’d ever brought in a senior detective from outside, regardless of expertise or experience, reinforced her conviction. Nevertheless, McCabe knew that in the process of working together, he’d earned her respect – and she his.

Maggie picked up on the first ring. ‘Hate to interrupt a night on the town, McCabe, but we’ve got kind of a mess here.’

‘What’s up?’

‘A teenaged girl’s body was found in that scrap metal yard off Somerset. Looks like it could be the Dubois kid.’

Katie Dubois had disappeared more than a week ago. ‘I gather the body’s pretty cut up,’ she continued. ‘Maybe a sex thing. I don’t know. You’re the murder expert.’

‘Aw, shit.’ He let the idea sink in. Portland wasn’t New York, and murder wasn’t all that common. Hell, there’d been only nineteen homicides in the whole state the previous year. Just two in the city of Portland.

‘Alright, I’m at Arno. Y’know, the new place on Exchange? Pick me up here. I’ll run in and apologize to Kyra.’

The noise level in the bar had risen to a din, and McCabe didn’t want to shout to make himself heard. He tapped Kyra’s shoulder and led her over to a marginally quieter corner near the coat room. ‘I have to go,’ he said.