The Chill of Night (35 page)

He threw open the bathroom door and stepped in. Heard a whimper from behind the shower curtain. He pulled it open. There was Abby, standing in the tub wearing a clone of the flannel nightgown Ellie had on. At least two sizes too big. Her eyes were tightly shut, her two hands together, one atop the other, as if she were clutching something.

‘It’s alright, Abby,’ he said. ‘I’m the police.’

She opened her eyes wide, looked at him. An expression of baffled terror crossed her face. She drew her two arms back to the left, twisted her body a little in the same direction. She swung her two hands forward hard. An almost perfect pantomime of a two-handed backhand, grunting like Serena Williams in a nightgown. Except Abby’s hands held no racket.

She started screaming and swinging her arms. She fell forward. He caught her. He wrapped his arms around her body and held her tight in a straitjacket hug like he would a child having an uncontrollable tantrum. She writhed and fought and screamed, her eyes wide with horror. He barely managed to hold on. ‘It’s alright, Abby,’ he tried saying, but his voice was drowned out by her screams. She tried head-butting him, but she missed. An EMT rushed into the bathroom.

‘Keep holding her!’ he shouted. McCabe held on. Barely. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the man push up Abby’s sleeve and shoot something in a hypodermic into her arm. She kept screaming and writhing for a minute or so longer, but then her body began to relax. Still he held on. Her screaming stopped. Abby laid her head against McCabe’s shoulder and just continued crying. When she was finally quiet, two EMTs came in, strapped her onto a gurney, and walked her out to an ambulance.

‘McCabe?’ said a man’s voice.

It was T. Ly, the same cop who’d driven him to the Fish Pier. Hard to believe that was less than thirty-six hours ago.

‘How’s Maggie?’ he asked. Outside he could see the flashing blue lights of half a dozen police cars and the red ones of two ambulances.

‘Okay, I think. Medic says they can’t be sure till they get her into the ER, but he thinks she’ll be fine. Says the bullet didn’t seem to hit anything vital.’

McCabe nodded and walked outside. He called Terri Mirabito at home. Woke her up. She said she’d be right there. Next he called 109 and told them to see if they could find an evidence tech who wasn’t out on Harts Island with Jacobi.

Maggie was still conscious as they carried her to the second ambulance. He smiled at her. She smiled back, but her smile turned to a wince as they loaded her in. They shut the doors, and he watched it drive away.

Thirty-One

Two
A.M
. It looked like a busy night at Cumberland Medical Center. McCabe supposed the combination of a Saturday night and warmer temperatures was luring people out of their houses and into trouble. He stood inside the entrance to the ER looking for someone who could tell him where he could find Maggie. No one seemed to be manning the reception desk. He looked through tight knots of people, the overflow from the waiting area. A teenaged boy moaned nearby. He finally spotted a woman in a white coat, kneeling down and taking information from a dirty-looking man who lay stretched out across three plastic chairs in the waiting area. He looked like he’d come out on the wrong end of a bar fight. McCabe headed toward her, squeezing past a couple in their eighties who sat quietly side by side, holding hands, her head on his shoulder, her eyes red as if she’d been crying. Next to them a three-year-old child was howling in his mother’s arms.

‘I’m looking for Detective Margaret Savage,’ McCabe said, holding up his shield to the woman in white.

‘Who?’ She looked confused.

‘Savage. Margaret Savage. Portland PD.’

‘Wait over there,’ she said, pointing him toward a counter with nobody behind it.

‘That’s the gunshot wound, right?’ A male voice. One of the EMTs from Summer Street. ‘She’s in Trauma Three. Right over there.’ The guy pointed. McCabe nodded his thanks and started across the open space in that direction.

‘Hey, you can’t go in there.’ A nurse rushed after him. McCabe ignored her. One of the hospital security guards followed.

‘Hey,’ she shouted again. McCabe held up his gold shield and pointed it in their direction and kept going. They didn’t follow.

He spotted Maggie lying on a gurney surrounded by seven or eight people, all in scrubs, all moving fast. They were, in turn, surrounded by an array of screens and monitors. A couple of the machines were making beeping noises. Two IVs were hooked into Maggie’s neck. Two more into her arms. Someone, probably a resident judging by his age, was moving a small white wand around Maggie’s abdomen a couple of inches below her navel and watching a screen on what McCabe was pretty sure was an ultrasound machine. Near the wand on Maggie’s right side, he could see a small, ugly red and black hole where the bullet went in just above her hipbone. A blanket covered her body below the wound.

Doctors and nurses were calling out information to each other.

‘Airway clear.’

‘BP 145 over 90.’

‘Pulse 105.’

Maggie spotted him and tried to roll her eyes in a kind of ‘how dumb is this?’ gesture. A wave of pain must have hit her pretty much at the same time, because her expression changed to a tight grimace. He spotted her clothes, cut from her body and lying in a heap on the floor. He still had her gun, but her empty holster was perched on top of the heap, her badge wallet on top of that. He walked to the pile and picked them up.

The team leader, a blonde woman about forty, approached him.

‘I’m Dr Herrold,’ she said. ‘Emergency attending. Are you McCabe?’

‘Yes.’

She accepted his ID and appeared to examine it carefully. ‘Good. She’s been asking for you. You’ll need to sign a confirmation that you’ve taken charge of Detective Savage’s belongings. We’ll put the rest of her things in a bag, and you can take those as well.’

He tilted his head toward Maggie. ‘She’s gonna be okay, right?’

‘I think she’ll be fine. The bullet appears to have torn some muscle, but it didn’t hit anything vital.’

He tilted his head at the young man with the wand. ‘What’s he doing?’

‘Finishing up what’s called a FAST exam. Using ultrasound to make sure there’s no abdominal hemorrhaging that could cause problems.’

‘Pelvic view clear,’ the man with the wand told Herrold.

‘That’s the last quadrant. Your colleague was lucky,’ Dr Herrold said to McCabe. ‘A couple of inches either way and she would have been in trouble. As it was, the bullet seems to have skimmed the muscle fascia at the top of the pelvic rim and then angled down. There’s an exit wound at the top of her butt on the right side.’

‘Great. A scarred ass. Just what I need.’ Maggie looked pale, and her eyes were still closed, but hearing her wisecrack made him feel better.

‘Do you have the bullet?’ McCabe asked. ‘We’ll need it for forensics.’

‘Sorry, we can’t help you with that. We don’t have it. Bullet tore through her sweats. I suspect your people will find it on the ground somewhere near where she was hit. I don’t think it would have gone very far.’

‘Did you catch the bastard yet?’ It was Maggie again. Her eyes were still closed, her voice weak.

‘Not yet.’

‘But you do have Quinn?’

‘Yes. She’s here as well,’ said McCabe. ‘Somewhere.’ Cumberland Medical Center was a big place.

‘Are you talking about the woman who came in at the same time as your detective?’ asked Herrold.

‘Yeah. Do you know where she is?’

‘Yes. There was no physical injury, but she’s heavily sedated. We sent her up to the psychiatric unit on four.’

A nurse handed McCabe a big paper bag. He removed Maggie’s keys from the pocket of her jeans and stuffed the rest of her things into the bag. ‘When can I have her back?’ McCabe asked Herrold, nodding his head at Maggie.

‘We’ll keep her overnight. Put her on antibiotics and Percocet for the pain. She’ll hurt for a while, probably be limping around for a week or so, but she ought to be out of here tomorrow.’

‘I’ve got your keys,’ he told Maggie. ‘I’ll go over to your place and get you some clothes and things.’

‘Do me a favor.’

‘What?’

‘Have Kyra do it.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because I don’t trust you, that’s why.’

McCabe told her to get some rest and tucked the brown paper bag under his arm. He found the right elevator and headed up to Cumberland Medical Center’s small psychiatric unit on the fourth floor.

He was intercepted by a young resident who told him Quinn was no longer there. ‘We gave her some antipsychotics and transferred her over to Winter Haven.’

‘On whose orders?’

‘Mine.’

‘Why?’

‘This is a very small unit. We have almost no room here. They’re much better equipped to handle someone with her history there.’

McCabe thanked the young man and took the elevator to one. He left the hospital the same way he’d come in. The old couple was still holding hands, and the homeless guy was still lying across the plastic chairs. He was snoring loudly.

Thirty-Two

Flashing blue lights still surrounded 131 Summer Street when McCabe pulled up in the Bird. News vans from all four of Portland’s network affiliates were lined up behind the police units. Tom Shockley’s black Chevy Suburban was parked to one side. Bill Fortier’s brand-new Impala, its vanity plates reading looey, was tucked in right behind. McCabe got out. Wasn’t much for him to do, so he just leaned against the Bird’s driver’s side door and watched the goings-on. Eddie Fraser wandered over and leaned alongside. Eddie pulled out a pack of Marlboros, lit one, and blew a long stream of smoke into the night air.

‘Hey, Mike,’ said Fraser after a bit.

‘Hello, Eddie. Thought you quit smoking.’

‘I did. For nearly a whole week. Want one?’

‘Don’t tempt me.’

‘Enjoying your weekend?’

‘Peachy, thanks. How about yourself?’

‘Oh yeah, great. Excitement is what I live for. How’s Mag?’

‘Well, aside from being pissed off about having a bullet hole going in her hip and coming out on her butt, she appears to be fine. Ought to be out of Cumberland tomorrow. What’s going on here?’

‘Chris Beneman’s inside doing his thing. The GO’s itching to get on the air.’

Beneman was a senior evidence technician. Had to be the last one the department had available.

‘Jacobi and Tasco still out on Harts?’

‘They were as of half an hour ago.’

‘We ID the dead woman yet?’

‘Yeah. A friend of Quinn’s from Winter Haven. Her only friend, according to the people I talked to at the hospital.’

‘Patient or staff?’

‘Patient. Another schizo. Name’s Leanna Barnes. It’s her apartment.’

‘Leanna, huh?’ So she hadn’t been telling him that her name was Ellie. She must have been telling him something else. Like who shot her. Not Ellie. Kelly. The man with the black-framed glasses. McCabe pushed his tongue up against his top row of teeth to make an ‘ell’ sound. He then released it and pushed out air for the ‘eee’ at the end. But if you wanted a ‘kuh’ sound at the beginning of the word, you had to make it at the back of your throat. Something you wouldn’t be able to do if a bullet had just blasted your throat all to hell. The killer was John Kelly. For McCabe, that pretty much sealed it. Father Jack. The guy who studied the Old Testament prophets. The guy McCabe’s gut had told him hadn’t done it.
The minute anyone starts thinking they know who or what John Kelly is
, Wolfe had told him,
it’s time to think again
. McCabe’s gut had got it wrong. It was time to think again. He told Eddie to find John Kelly and bring him in.

‘What if he says no?’

‘Arrest him.’

‘Okay,’ said Eddie, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Where you gonna be?’

‘Me? I’m going back to Harts Island.’

Thirty-Three

Harts Island, Maine

Tom Tasco waited till McCabe’d jumped from the rear deck of the
Francis R. Mangini
onto the dock before he started talking. ‘Goff’s prints are all over Kelly’s cottage,’ Tasco said as they started up the ramp. ‘Specially the bedroom. Also some hairs that might be hers. Sonofabitch must have kept her there for a few days at least before moving her to the Markhams’.’

‘Any other prints aside from hers?’

‘Lots of Kelly’s. Plus a few smudges and smears belonging to person or persons unknown. How’s Maggie?’

‘She’ll have a sore hip and butt for a while. Otherwise, she’s fine.’

The black-and-white Explorer was, once again, waiting at the top of the ramp. Bowman was behind the wheel, this time in uniform. Tasco climbed in back, leaving the passenger seat for McCabe.

‘Hello, Scotty, how’re you doing?’

Bowman grunted something unintelligible, pulled a U-turn, and took off up Welch Street away from the landing. McCabe sat silently, watching the dark, empty island streets flow by. At least it wasn’t snowing, and the air was a lot warmer. The cops in the elevator must have been right about the January thaw. McCabe tried to force his overtired brain cells back onto the issues at hand.

Okay, he was pretty sure Kelly was guilty, but he wasn’t at all sure he could prove it. Not to a jury. Not if Father Jack got himself a smart defense lawyer. Goff’s prints provided hard evidence that she had been in Kelly’s house, but they didn’t prove Kelly killed her. Leanna Barnes’s dying words wouldn’t help that much either.
You heard her say what, Detective?
Ellie.
She said Ellie? Not Kelly?
That’s right. Ellie. Not quite the right name, gurgled and garbled by a dying woman who couldn’t herself testify. Sure, he could explain how Leanna’s wound prevented her from forming the letter
K
in the back of her torn-apart throat, but his assumption that she was really trying to say Kelly would be dismissed as pure conjecture. No. Burt Lund would need more.

There was Kelly’s paper on the Old Testament prophets. That’d help. If they found it. Even if they did, though, he didn’t think it would be enough to convict. Even if the Amos quote was right on the front page, underlined and circled in red, some slick lawyer could make the case that anybody might have known that Old Testament quote. Anybody could have broken into Kelly’s house and found Kelly’s old grad school paper.