The Cutting (21 page)

However, Kane must have pissed somebody off. In March of 2001, somebody stuck a 12-gauge up under his chin and turned his jaw and face into hamburger. His body was found naked and tied to an overturned chair in his apartment. Nobody admitted hearing the blast. Four or five hours after the shooting, Kane’s live-in lover, a body builder and hanger-on named Duane Pollard, discovered the body and called the police.

Visual ID of the face was impossible, but the corpse was the right size – six two, 205 pounds – and fingerprint matches were found all over the apartment and the Beemer. Identification was officially confirmed through DNA analysis. No other evidence was found at the scene. Boyfriend Pollard had an airtight alibi. Miami Beach PD looked elsewhere and eventually figured the murder was drug-related since Kane was a known dealer. A detective named Stan Allard theorized the local drug lords killed Kane to rid themselves of a semipro competitor who was becoming annoying. McCabe got the feeling the investigators were just as happy Kane was dead. They let the case go cold after a couple of weeks. The elderly father, Maurice Kane, reportedly suffering from congestive heart failure, refused public comment on his son’s death.

McCabe called the Miami Beach PD and asked for Detective Stan Allard.

‘I’m sorry, there is no Detective Stan Allard here.’

‘Allard? A-L-L-A-R-D?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know that name.’

‘Would you connect me with someone in homicide?’

A male voice answered. ‘Detective Sessions.’

‘Sessions? Hi, this is Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe, Portland, Maine, PD.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m looking for a Detective Stan Allard who worked homicide in Miami Beach a few years back. Is he still with the department?’

‘Who is this again?’

‘Name’s McCabe. Mike McCabe. I’m a detective with the Portland, Maine, PD.’

‘What do you want with Allard?’

‘I just want to talk to him.’

‘Well, you’re going to have a hard time doing that.’

‘Yeah? Why’s that?’

‘Stan Allard hasn’t done a whole lot of talking to anybody the last four years.’

‘Are you telling me Allard’s dead?’

‘They were pretty sure that was the case when they buried him.’

Maybe Sessions thought that was funny. ‘Look, I’m working on a murder that might have a connection with a case Allard handled.’

‘What case would that be?’

‘The murder of a man named Lucas Kane. Do you know who Allard’s partner was at the time?’

There was a pause at Sessions’s end of the line. McCabe thought this might be like pulling teeth. Finally Sessions spoke. ‘Yeah, that would’ve been me. We worked the Kane murder together.’ Another pause. ‘How’s Kane connected with your case?’

McCabe instinctively disliked Sessions. He decided to keep it vague. ‘An old buddy of Kane’s may be involved in a murder up here.’

‘Involved how?’

‘We’re not sure yet.’

They danced around for a while. Nobody wanted to be the first to offer substantive information. Sessions blinked first. ‘Okay, what do you want to know about Kane?’

‘I read the press accounts of Kane’s murder. Sounds like you guys felt it was a gang hit.’

‘That was the default option. We never got any decent leads. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. Nobody knew anything. All we had was a body tied to a chair with its face and head blown half off. Weren’t even any teeth left in good enough shape for a dental records match.’

‘How’d you know it was Kane?’

‘Easy enough. Size, weight, and hair were the same. Prints on the body matched prints we found all over the apartment. More prints in his car. Also, Kane’s live-in lover officially ID’d him. Said it was Kane’s body. Hair, moles, and scars in all the right places. Even made some jokes about the guy’s pecker. “I never forget a penis,” he said.’

‘So you’re sure it was Kane’s body you ID’d?’

‘Yeah. In the end we proved it with a DNA match. Plus there was no more Lucas Kane swanning around the clubs and the beach. We’re sure.’

‘What do you know about Kane’s background?’

‘Not much. His father was a famous musician. They didn’t have much to do with each other. Kane wandered down here from New York in the late eighties about the time the deco craze and the gay scene were really getting going in South Beach.’

‘How’d he support himself? Did he have any money?’

‘Not as far as we know, but back then South Beach was easy pickings for a good-looking guy like Kane. He lived off sex for a while. Then he branched out. Ended up as a high-end pimp and a dealer.’

‘You get an FBI match on the prints you found in the apartment?’

‘Not on Kane’s. Apparently he was never previously fingerprinted. Never arrested for anything.’

‘That’s surprising.’

‘It surprised me. I figured with his habits Kane would have been busted at least once or twice, but no, not even by us.’

‘Any other prints in the room?’

‘A bunch of partials and smears. Mostly the boyfriend.’

‘Duane Pollard?’

‘How do you know about him?’

‘Just reading the papers. Tell me about Pollard.’

‘He was Kane’s bodyguard and muscle as well as his lover. Ex-marine. Basically a gorilla. Liked to beat people up.’

‘A gay gorilla?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Unusual.’

‘It happens.’

‘Any chance he was the shooter? A lovers’ quarrel?’

‘None. At least six people put Pollard in a South Beach club called the Groove that night. Said he was there the whole time Kane might have been offed. At least two of them said they had sex with him.’

‘Was there a funeral?’

‘Yeah. A small one, hosted by Pollard and a few of Kane’s fuck-buddies from the Beach. Kane’s father showed up to bid him farewell. So did a few of his old friends.’

‘Sounds like a fun time. Did the name Harry Lime ever come up during your investigation?’

‘Lime? Like the fruit? No, never heard of him.’

‘So what about Allard? What did he die of?’

‘He died of suicide.’ McCabe’s gut tightened. Sessions went on. ‘It happened a couple of months later, after the Kane case went cold. We were working on some other stuff.’

‘What happened?’

‘He stuck his service weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. In a sleazebag motel down on the beach.’

‘No connection to the Kane case?’

‘I don’t think Stan’s death had anything to do with Lucas Kane. Let’s just leave it at that. He was my friend as well as my partner, and I don’t feel like chatting about stuff that’s none of your business. You want to know more, you submit an official departmental request.’

McCabe thought about pushing Sessions a little harder to talk about Stan Allard’s death, but he couldn’t see how it would help him find Katie Dubois’s killer or Lucinda Cassidy, so he let it go and hung up. He looked again at the byline on the
Herald
stories on his computer. Melody Bollinger. He filed it away for future reference.

23

Even in the blackness of the room, Lucy could feel his presence. She lay perfectly still, holding her breath. She knew he was there, but where? And why? She listened as hard as she could but heard nothing.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, two hands touched her face. Her heart jumped. Her muscles tightened. She stifled a cry as she felt the hands slide slowly and smoothly down her neck, then over her body, exploring, probing. Still she was afraid to move, afraid to speak. One at a time she felt him loosen and release the restraints that held her hands. He took her wrists, rotated and massaged each in turn. Then his hands moved down her legs. He released the ankle restraints, then moved her feet as he had her hands.

He pulled off her gown and washed her all over with a warm, moist cloth that smelled like lavender. She could feel the warmth of his body, the movement of air from his breath. ‘I think, Lucy,’ he said, his voice a whisper, ‘it’s time for you and I to get to know each other a little better.’

She stiffened and froze, pressing her legs tightly together, balling her fists, waiting for the inevitable.

24

Monday. 8:00
P.M.

The note was in the mailbox when McCabe got home around eight. He didn’t notice it at first, hidden among the advertising circulars and bills piled up from deliveries he hadn’t bothered to collect. It was in a plain white envelope with the words
DETECTIVE MCCABE
, 134
EASTERN PROM
penciled in block letters across the front, as if written by a child’s hand. No stamp. No postmark. No return address. He decided to wait until he was upstairs before opening it. A blast of music from Casey’s bedroom assaulted his ears as he entered the apartment.

‘Hello. I love you,’ he shouted from the doorway, ‘and turn that damn thing down.’

He heard no response, either verbally from his daughter or in a reduction of decibels from her room. He crossed to the kitchen, dumped the junk mail in the recycling bin, took a bottle of Geary’s from the icebox, opened it, and took a long swig. He was in a foul mood, pissed at Sandy, pissed at Shockley, pissed at the world. At least the cold fizz of the beer felt good going down.

McCabe went down the hall and leaned against the frame of Casey’s open door. She was sprawled, tummy down, diagonally across her bed, feet resting on her pillow, head hanging over the edge, reading what appeared to be a science text open on the floor below. He couldn’t figure out how she could actually see the words on the page from that position, but it didn’t seem to be a problem. She mostly got A’s.

‘Hi, honey, I’m home,’ he called from the door, shouting to be heard over the music. Casey looked up and then, without acknowledging his presence, looked back down at her book. McCabe went to the stereo and hit the power button. Silence flooded the room. Casey looked up again. ‘Isn’t that why I bought you the iPod?’ he said. ‘So I wouldn’t be subjected to that noise?’

‘It’s not noise. It’s Propaganda.’

‘What?’

‘Propaganda. That’s who’s singing. They’re very hot.’

‘I can tell. The iPod. Please.’

Wordlessly she rolled off the end of the bed, walked to her desk, got the iPod, inserted the earbuds, and resumed her position on the bed. McCabe retreated to the living room.

He tossed the bills on top of the small desk in the corner, where they joined an unopened stack. He sat in the big chair, feet on the glass coffee table. More bills than money. Always. How much longer could he afford being a cop? In a few years there’d be college to pay for on top of everything else he couldn’t afford. He could sell the condo. Move to a smaller place away from the water. Move backward. Move down. Maybe Sandy was right dumping him for a rich guy. Maybe the rich guy would pay for college. The idea depressed him.

Maybe he
should
quit the department once the Dubois case was resolved. Shockley might fire him anyway for his big mouth once there was no longer a political price to pay. A guy he knew at NYU who was now CEO of a hot biotech in Boston once talked to him about a corporate security job. The dollars mentioned were a lot more than he was making now. Even so, he wasn’t sure it was worth it. Maybe he could become a PI. Spade & Archer? Savage & McCabe? He could do a passable Bogey imitation, but there were damned few Maltese Falcon cases out there. Mostly he’d spend nights sneaking around hot-sheets motels, getting the goods on philandering husbands and wives. Nope. Not a PI.

Fuck it. Snap out of it. Suck it up and deal. He was still a cop. It was a calling McCabe believed in. Go out on the streets and get the bad guys, as many as you could. Then put them away for as long as you could. Simple and honorable. He liked it that way. It was why he dropped out of film school, why he gave up his dream of someday being a director for the simpler dream of being a cop.

He pressed the icy bottle against his forehead, hoping to pre-empt the headache that was forming. He closed his eyes. Images of New York came tumbling back. Images of his brother Tommy. The big brother. The surrogate father. The hero figure with the feet of clay. Tommy the Narc. Tommy the cop on the take. Images of the drug dealer named TwoTimes. ‘Some may fuck with me once, but there’s none what fucks with me two times.’

TwoTimes who shot Tommy dead. They caught the little fucker, but he walked. Wouldn’t even cop a plea. Walked right out of court on that bullshit alibi and right back to pushing his shit. ‘I got an alibi, Your Honor. I was fuckin’ my fiancée when the cop got popped,’ said TwoTimes. ‘Yeah, she can tell you. Her mama was right there, and she can tell you, too.’

‘Yeah, Your Honor,’ said the fiancée, ‘that’s the truth. He was fuckin’ me the whole time, so he couldna shot the man. I swear it.’

‘Yeah, Your Honor,’ agreed the mama. ‘TwoTimes was fuckin’ my little girl. He was humpin’ her ass like hell wouldn’t have it. So he couldna shot that cop. No way. No, sir. No way at all.’

All of it bullshit, but the cop-killer walked anyway. Never would’ve happened in the old days. That’s what McCabe’s father, a retired and highly decorated captain, would’ve said had he been alive at the time. Never would’ve gone to trial. A perp shot to death resisting arrest. No questions asked. No answers needed. Simple solution for a simple problem: simple – and honorable. Now Dad was dead and so was Tommy, and the simple solutions weren’t so simple anymore.

McCabe snapped out of his reverie. Casey was walking through the living room on her way to the kitchen. ‘You’re not supposed to wear your gun in the house,’ she said, barely looking at him. ‘It’s a bad influence on an impressionable child.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. He got up, went to his bedroom, and put the .45 in the locked box in his closet where he kept the shotgun. He felt naked without it.

He heard the fridge door open and close. Then Casey’s face appeared in the doorway of his room, a can of Coke in her hand. ‘I’m not going to see her. I told her that, but she said she was coming anyway.’

‘Did she call again?’

‘Yes. Right after I got home from soccer.’

‘Casey, you may have to see her. We may not have any choice about that. Have you thought about why you don’t want to see her?’