The Girl In The Glass (9 page)

Chapter 16

From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.

Entry dated June 20, 1924

I begin this journal by noting that while my heart died twenty years ago this month, the rest of my body will only be joining it now. To be precise, not exactly now, but surely within a few short months. I write seated at a simple wooden table and chair in Aimée’s studio on Whitby Island. I have decided to spend my last months here alone with my memories of the woman I loved more than any other, in the place we both loved more than any other, tended only by a private nurse and my manservant, Alfred Kinney.

My doctors have done all they can to prolong my life. I’ve undergone several surgeries, as well as radiation treatments by Dr. Gioacchino Failla at Memorial Hospital in New York. I hope these procedures have given me the few months I need to tell the story of that love as only I know it before I join Aimée and Garrison in death.

I am in constant pain, but I refuse the morphine my doctors offer, for I know it will cloud my mind and make it impossible for me to finish the task I have set myself.

I write for no other eyes but my own and those of my children and grandchildren, and then only when they are old enough to understand the tragic events that transpired in that wretched summer of 1904. It seems right to me that those whom Aimée and I brought into the world should be allowed to know the truth of how she left it. And the guilt I have suffered ever since for the role I played in her death. But no one else. Our family has already suffered too much from the lies and from the public shaming of the remarkable woman who was my wife. Showing these pages beyond our direct line would only revive the chatter we were forced to live through and would serve no purpose whatsoever. The dead would remain dead.

Sitting here on the island, as darkness falls, I ponder how to tell the tale. I suppose I should begin at the beginning. Not with my birth, like Copperfield, but with my year in Paris. The year my father gave me to “sow my wild oats.” The year I met Aimée and fell in love with the most remarkable woman I have ever known.

In June 1894 I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, near the top of my class, with a degree in Naval Architecture. Though I’d pursued my studies assiduously, my true passion at the time was art. From my earliest years I’d seldom been without a sketchpad or paints and canvas. While completing my degree at MIT, I simultaneously completed a course of study at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the basement in Copley Square. I was a good painter, and my work earned high praise from my instructors. While I knew I was talented, I was not yet as good as I wanted to be.

The Sunday after graduation, the Whitby family went en masse, as was our wont, to ser­vices at St. Luke’s Cathedral on State Street in Portland. After returning to the house, I planned to tell my father that before I joined the firm, I intended to go to Paris to study art.

The coach let us off under the porte cochere. Before going in, I stopped my father and told him there was something important we needed to discuss. He looked at me with his dark eyes and invited me into his private study overlooking the back gardens. I always hated that room, for it was there, throughout my childhood, that punishment had been meted out. I still bore the scars, mental as well as physical, of the beatings I suffered in that room from the buckle on my dear papa’s favorite leather belt.

We entered the study. He sat at his desk. I sat in the same straight-­backed chair he’d once used for the beatings. He waited for me to speak. It was like being called into the headmaster’s office. But my father, in his silence, was far more frightening than any mere headmaster.

“What is so important we need to talk about it today?” he finally asked.

“Art,” I said. Actually, I think it came out more as a squeak than the actual word.

“Art. What about art?” He said the word
art
in a sneering way, as though it was something unworthy of serious discussion by a man of his stature. I sensed this was going to be one of the most difficult conversations we’d ever had.

“I graduated MIT just as you wanted me to. Magna cum laude, just as you hoped.”

“Actually, I hoped for summa. Which I think you might have made had you not snuck out to Copley Square three evenings a week.”

I wasn’t sure how he knew about that. I’d paid the art school fees myself out of an inheritance I’d received from my maternal grandfather. I’d felt it wiser not to ask. “Honors nevertheless. I learned the skills I needed, and, as I have often said, I am prepared to spend my life in ser­vice to Whitby & Sons.”

“But? I assume there is a but.”

He was staring at me with such icy malevolence that I thought that in spite of the fact that I was now both bigger and stronger than my father, he might just order me to bend over the chair, drop my trousers and take a dozen of the best. I remember squeezing my hands into fists, thinking that instead of bowing to his will, this time I would defend myself even if it meant disinheritance.

“But?” he said once more.

I forced myself to relax. “Yes, there is a but. I will join the company, but before I do, I intend going to Paris to study with the masters at the Académie Julien. Bougereau, Lefebvre and Garnier. I need to find out how good an artist I am. If I am as good as I hope, I will come back, join the company as promised and do my best to help it succeed.”

“And your art?”

“I will paint evenings and weekends and try to exhibit my work with Homer, Stevens and others in shows at the Society of Art.”

“I see. And if I say no? If I say that I need you, the son I’ve always seen as my successor, at Whitby & Sons now. What will you do then?”

“I’ll go anyway. I still have enough of Grandfather’s inheritance to pay my own way and live for a year or so.”

“And not join the company?”

“If that is the retribution you wish. Thanks to you I have the credentials to find a position with another company.”

“A competitor?”

“If need be.”

He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. I could see rage rising in his face. A rage I had always feared. Perhaps he
would
try to beat me with his belt. “You’ll always have Charles to succeed you if I don’t,” I said. My brother was three years younger than me, but, instead of going to college, he had been working at the company since leaving Penfield a year earlier.

My father turned to look out the window at the formal gardens he’d always loved.

“Edward,” he finally said. “You’ve just completed an honors degree at one of the finest schools of naval architecture in the country, if not the world. I commend you for that. I’m even more impressed you managed a magna while simultaneously pursuing your passion for art. I commend you for that as well. However, now is the time for you to put away childish things and come to work for the firm.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I am going to go to Paris to study figure painting at the Académie Julien. When I return from Paris, I will take up my duties at the company. But I intend to enjoy Paris first.”

“I see. Will a year be enough?”

“I’d prefer two.”

“One.”

“Two.”

“Only one.”

Before I could answer, he continued, “However, I will pay for your trip and for your studies there. In addition, I will provide an allowance generous enough for you to enjoy the pleasures Paris has to offer. Knowing you, Edward, I suspect you’ll be doing considerably more with the female form than simply painting it, and doing more with your nights than simply eating well and sipping fine wine. However, I will give you a year to study art, sow your oats and hopefully get certain appetites out of your system before you return home to your true vocation. But first you must sign a contract that at the end of the year, you’ll return to Portland and take your place both at Whitby & Sons and in Portland society.”

He had given in more easily than I had imagined. I gave him my word and agreed to his conditions. The following day, I signed the contract. After all, a year was the most I’d expected and, of course, my father was right in his assumption that my eagerness for Paris was rooted at least as much in the carnal as it was in the artistic.

Chapter 17

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was bordered on either side by dense woods and interrupted every ten yards or so with short, sharp flights of granite steps installed to make the climb up or down a little easier.

About thirty feet down, Maggie saw two more cops, Bob Hurley and Diane Rizzo, blocking the way to an even narrower dirt path, no more than twenty-­four inches wide, that veered off to the right from the main trail. Through the darkness she could see a pair of evidence techs setting up their equipment.

A young man, maybe thirty, stood shivering near Hurley and Rizzo. He was bare-­chested, wearing nothing but nylon jogging shorts and sneakers and looking more than a little the worse for wear. His face and body were covered with scratches and dirt and what looked like blood. His arms were folded across his chest, presumably for warmth. He had one hand connected to a leash. A reddish-­brown vizsla stood wagging her tail at the other end. With Maggie’s arrival, the dog nudged her leg and started licking her hand.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“The guy who found the body,” said Bob Hurley.

“My name is Dean Scott, and actually, my dog found her first. She was still alive when Ruthie found her.”

“Well, she sure as hell isn’t alive now,” said an EMT who was passing by, heading up the hill. “Nothing more we can do here,” he said to Maggie. “Dr. Scott here tried his best. You want us to hang by the van?”

“Yeah. Unless you get another call. We may need you to take her to the morgue.”

Maggie turned back to Scott. “You’re a medical doctor?”

“I am. First-­year resident in the ER at Cumberland Med. Like I said, the girl was still alive when I found her. Barely. But I did what I could to save her.”

“What happened to your shirt?”

“She’d been whacked hard on the back of her head. I used the shirt as a compress to try to slow the bleeding. I think it helped a little.”

Maggie turned to Diane Rizzo. “Any idea when the ME’s getting here?”

“Be a while yet. Shift supervisor said Dr. Mirabito was gonna handle it herself. She’s driving down from Augusta.”

“All right. Do me a favor, Diane. See if you can find Dr. Scott something to cover up with? I need to talk to him, and it’s got to be a little chilly standing around half naked.”

Rizzo headed back up the hill toward her cruiser.

“Thank you,” said Scott. “I take it you’re the boss here?”

“For the time being. I’m Detective Savage. Margaret Savage.” She pushed her jacket aside to reveal the gold shield attached to her belt. “I need to ask you some questions about what happened.”

“You don’t suppose I could go home first, clean up and get dressed?”

“I need to ask the questions first if you don’t mind. It’s important that we get started quickly if we’re going to find out who did this.”

Scott sighed, shrugged and finally nodded. “Okay. I get it.”

Down on the narrow dirt path where the girl’s body lay, a generator roared to life. As it did, a pair of floods fastened to tall aluminum tripods lit the area as brightly as center field at a Sox game. The victim came into view, along with Bill Jacoby and two of his evidence techs, all three dressed in Tyvek coveralls. The girl lay on her back on the side of the path, head pointing uphill toward Maggie, feet pointing down. She was naked except for a pair of bright pink sneakers and shorty socks with pink pom-­poms poking out from the backs. What looked like a blood-­soaked rag was tied to the back of her head. Maggie could see some blood on her chest.

She called Jacoby over to where she was standing. “Find any ID yet?”

“We’re still looking, but so far, nothing. No wallet. No clothes. No nothing. Any missing person reports filed?”

Maggie shook her head. “I asked Kelly Haddon to call if any came in. Meantime, you go do your thing. I’m gonna talk to the guy who found her. Yell if you find anything.”

Diane Rizzo handed Scott a blue nylon jacket with the word
Police
stenciled on the back. Probably her own. He slipped it on. A little small, but only a little. Diane was a big woman.

Maggie walked fifty feet down the trail, both for privacy and to get away from the noise of the generator. She sat on an old wooden bench that was decaying on one side of the trail and called McCabe.

“Where are you now?” she asked.

“Forty miles out. I’ve got my flasher on and I’m doing over a hundred, so I shouldn’t be long.”

“You sober?”

“I’m sober. Think I’d be driving a hundred drunk? Want me to meet you at 109?”

“No. We’re not even close to done here. Plus you need to see the scene. Not just the pictures. Park up at Loring and walk down the trail. You’ll see the floods.”

“Got it.”

“Meantime stay on the phone. I’ll be talking to the guy who found the body. You ought to listen in.”

Maggie waved Scott over to the bench. He sat on one end. She sat on the other. She put her phone between them, flipped it to speaker for McCabe’s benefit, turned on a small digital recorder and put it next to the phone. “I’m recording our conversation, and my partner, Detective Sergeant McCabe, is listening in by phone.”

Dean Scott shrugged. “Fine by me.”

“Good. This is Detective Margaret Savage of the Portland, Maine Police Department,” she said for the benefit of the recorder. “The time is 3:11 a.m. on Friday, June 24, 2012. The following is an interview with Dr. Dean Scott recorded on the Loring Trail in Portland. Dr. Scott, what is your address, please?”

“52 Quebec Street here in Portland. It’s a small three-­unit between Lafayette and North Street. I’m on the top floor. Apartment three.”

52 Quebec sat in the middle of a gentrified section of Munjoy Hill. There were some single-­family houses on the street; others had been divided into two-­ and three-­unit apartments. Many had undergone fairly recent face-­lifts.

“And you work as a resident in emergency medicine at Cumberland Medical Center in Portland?”

“That’s right. First year. Graduated med school at UVM last year.”

“Okay. Good. Now would you please tell me in your own words what you know about what happened here tonight?”

“Well, one thing I can tell you for sure is your crime scene’s majorly fucked up.”

Scott’s answer rubbed Maggie the wrong way. It seemed arrogant, and she didn’t like the way he casually used the word
fuck
in an official police interview.

“And I suppose you know a lot about crime scenes?”

“Just what I see on
CSI.
But trust me, this one’s fucked up.”

“Okay, how?”

“First off, the victim was discovered by my dog, and Ruthie’s a licker. She was alone with the girl, who was still alive at the time, for maybe two, three minutes. Probably licked her from head to toe. Then I arrived. Pulled Ruthie off and did what I could to save her life. In terms of your scene, I’m afraid I made things a lot worse.”

Maggie took a deep breath. Scott was right. The crime scene
was
fucked up. Badly compromised.

“Okay, here’s what I want you to do,” she said. “Start at the beginning and tell me, step by step, what you were doing before you found the victim, how you found her and what you did between then and now.”

Scott shrugged. “Okay. When I got home from the hospital, I changed into running clothes and took Ruthie for a run.”

“Just you and the dog?”

“That’s right.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Twenty of. I was supposed to finish my shift at midnight, but there’d been a bad accident out on Route 22 in Westbrook. Ambulance pulled into the ER about 11:30. Three teenagers. Two boys and a girl. One of the boys was DOA. The other two critical. I joined the trauma team working on the second boy. He was sent up to surgery around two. I cleaned up and left around 2:10 or so.”

“Anybody see you leave?”

Scott thought about that. “Obviously, the trauma team. Woman at the admissions desk. Probably some ­people waiting in the ER. There’ll be a record of their names at the hospital. Anyway, I got home a little before 2:30. Washed up. Threw on my running clothes, clipped on Ruthie’s leash and off we went.”

“You live with anybody?”

“Just the dog.”

“No girlfriends?”

“No one serious at the moment. At least nobody who’s moved in.”

“You ever see the victim before?”

“Before tonight?”

“Yeah.”

Suddenly it seemed to Maggie that Scott was looking more thoughtful. Like he was trying to figure something out. “Before I answer any more questions, I need to ask you one. Are you thinking maybe I had something to do with this? With killing her, I mean?”

“I don’t know. Did you?”

“Jesus. No, I did not. I tried to save her life.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about. All I asked you, Dean, was if you’d ever seen her before.”

Scott hesitated. Then apparently decided to answer the question. “Yes. I have seen her,” he finally said. “I’ve never talked to her, but I’ve definitely seen her.”

“Where?”

“Around.”

“Around where?”

“The neighborhood. I think she must have lived around here.”

“Where specifically?”

“You know the Hill?”

“I know it.”

“I saw her a ­couple of times over at Hilltop Coffee. Doing homework, I think.”

“What makes you think she was doing homework?”

Scott shrugged. “She had a ­couple of textbooks on the table and was banging away on a laptop, so that’s what it seemed like.”

“Was she alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk to her?”

Scott smiled sadly. “I tried to. Once. Asked if I could share her table. She just nodded. I sat down and tried to start up a conversation. She gave me a ­couple of one-­word answers.”

“Answers to what?”

“Standard conversation starters. I think I asked her what she was working on. If it was anything interesting.”

“What did she say?”

“Biology term paper. Just the three words. That was it.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. A while ago. April, maybe. ”

Okay, so the victim was in school. No surprise there. And she probably lived on the Hill. “She say anything else?”

“I asked her where she went to school.” Scott smiled sheepishly. “I was hoping it was USM or something. I’m a little old for high school kids.”

“Did she tell you?”

“No. Just looked annoyed and said something like ‘This paper’s due tomorrow so would you mind not talking?’ ”

“What’d you do?”

“I stopped talking. Just sipped my coffee, opened my own computer and spent twenty minutes surfing the net.”

Maggie made a mental note to check with the owners of Hilltop Coffee. If the vic was a regular there, they might know her name. Where she lived.

“Ever see her anywhere else?”

“Passed her a few times running. I’d nod and smile. Sometimes she’d notice me. Nod back. Sometimes not.” Scott smiled ruefully. “Ruthie’s usually a chick magnet, but not with this girl.”

“She was running alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Think hard about what she was wearing when you saw her running. Any caps or shirts with a school or team logo that might help us identify her?”

Scott thought about it. “One time she was wearing a Red Sox cap. But I don’t think that’s gonna help you much.”

Scott was right. It wouldn’t. “Okay. Let’s go back to tonight. Which way did you run?”

“My usual route. Took Lafayette over to Congress. Turned left on Congress and ran down to the park. Then down the hill to the running trail.”

“See anybody along the way?”

Scott thought about that for a second. “Not there, no. Just a ­couple of cars. One heading west on Congress. One heading down the hill on the Prom. That’s all.”

“Both heading away from the direction you were headed in?”

“Yeah. That matter?”

“So either one of them could have been coming from Loring when they passed you?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t think of that.”

“What kind of cars?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. Just cars. The one going down the Prom was an SUV. Explorer, TrailBlazer, something like that. Mostly I saw their lights.”

“New? Old?”

“Newish, I think. At least not old bangers.”

“Keep going.”

“Like I said, I ran down the hill to the running trail. I let Ruthie off the leash. She’s well trained and pretty much always comes when I call. We took the path along the water toward Back Cove. I usually go that way and then circle the cove and then double back toward Congress. Six miles in all. This time we only got about halfway to the sewage treatment plant when Ruthie must have caught a scent.”

“Not the one coming from the plant?”

Scott smiled at that. “No. She smelled something on top of that and took off like a bat out of hell. I called her to come back, but she kept going. I called again. She still didn’t come back. I figured she must be chasing a squirrel or some other small animal, so I ran after her, calling her name. Telling her to come. But she paid no attention, and I lost sight of her.

“I stopped for a second near the sewage plant, trying to figure out which way she went. That’s when I did see somebody. An old woman scurrying by. A bag lady pushing a cart full of stuff. I tried stopping her and asking if she’d seen my dog, but she just kept going as fast as she could. I suppose she might have seen something.”

“What did she look like?”

Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. Like a bag lady. Gray, stringy hair. Kind of dirty. Mismatched clothes. Maybe sixty something, but you never know with homeless ­people. Sometimes when they’re brought into the ER they turn out to be twenty years younger than you would have guessed. Anyway, she was maybe five foot two or three. Kind of fat. Pasty face. Her legs were all swollen up with edema. Whoever she is, she’s had a hard life.”

“She was coming from the direction where you found the body?”

“Yeah.”