James Hayman - The Cutting

‘The procedure will cost five million dollars. In advance.’

‘That’s a lot of money.’

‘According to our sources, your father’s net worth is more than a billion. For the gift of life, for someone like him, five million dollars is pocket change. In any event, that’s the deal. Take it or leave it.’

‘Who is the surgeon? Is he capable? Competent?’

‘More than competent. One of the best. However, for obvious reasons, I can’t tell you who he is. Now, do you want to proceed?’

‘Yes. It seems I have no choice.’

‘Very well. From this point on there’s no turning back.’ Harry Lime handed her a slip of paper. ‘This is the routing number and account number at a private bank in Zurich. First thing tomorrow morning, I want you to wire five million dollars to this account. Then I want you to burn this note. When I receive confirmation from the bank that the funds have arrived, they will be withdrawn, the account closed, and the money placed in another untraceable account. When that has been accomplished, I’ll get in touch with you to arrange delivery of your father to the surgery site.’

‘Where is the surgery site?’

‘All I will tell you is that it’s in the United States. No passport required. When you are contacted, you will arrange a private ambulance to bring your father to a small airport to be named later. A private plane will pick him up. There will be a pilot, a doctor, and a nurse specializing in cardiac care on board. Other than these, he will travel alone.’

‘I want to go with him. Since my mother died, I’m the only one who really cares about him.’

‘I’m sorry, Ms. Redmond, that will not be possible. He will travel alone. During the trip a sedative will be administered to put him to sleep. He won’t be told where he’s going. An ambulance will meet him at the other end and transport him to the surgery site. The operation will take place as soon as medically feasible. When he is able, he will return home, hopefully in three or four days. He will travel home in exactly the same manner. We will arrange for a nurse to care for him at home and administer antirejection drugs as they are needed.’

‘Will you send prescriptions?’ she asked.

‘Your father will need to take antirejection drugs, primarily cyclosporine, for the rest of his life. It’s available in tablet form, and what is needed will be sent directly to you. There will be no trips to the pharmacy, no paperwork sent to any insurance company.’

‘What about side effects?’

‘Some side effects are likely. There may be kidney dysfunction. Possibly less output when he is urinating. His hands or feet may swell. He may get tremors in his hands. Swollen gums. Bleeding gums. The list is long, but most are not life-threatening. The nurse will know what to do. If there are any indications of organ rejection, the nurse will let us know and we will arrange for a transplant cardiologist to perform a biopsy. If he needs further treatment, you will be contacted to discuss the options.

‘I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you must tell no one of these arrangements. Not your doctor. Not your lover. Not your Aunt Ethel. If you talk in your sleep, sleep alone. If anyone asks why he seems better — if the surgery works — tell them only that’s he’s had bypass surgery. The scars will look similar enough. If he dies, then contact us at the number you’ve been given. We will make arrangements for a physician to sign a death certificate and for the body to be cremated.’

‘Is that all?’ she asked.

‘One last thing. By accepting these arrangements, both you and your father become complicit in breaking the law. If we discover that you have spoken of it before the fact — and we will be watching and listening — the arrangements are off. We will keep the money, but there will be no surgery. If we find out that you have spoken of it after the surgery, to a doctor, to a hospital, to the police, or to anyone else, the contract, and both you and your father, will be terminated.’

Harry Lime spoke these words in a flat businesslike tone, without threat, without emotion of any kind. In spite of the Florida heat, Vanessa Redmond found herself shivering. She knew nothing of this man or the people he worked with. She was taking what he said and what he promised entirely on faith. Yet, because she wanted her father to live, even if only a little longer, she said simply, ‘I understand.’

Tuesday. 5:00 P.M.

It was late Tuesday afternoon. Four days since Katie Dubois’s body turned up in the scrap yard and Lucinda Cassidy disappeared from the Western Prom. Tom Shockley was starting to bitch about the lack of results. Bill Fortier was beginning to worry about the cost of overtime. McCabe was increasingly haunted by the hours ticking down on Cassidy’s life.

He spent most of the day huddling with his Crimes Against People unit, reviewing the results of endless interviews, virtually all of which led nowhere. Working round the clock, Tasco and Frazier and four teams of detectives narrowed the so-called Lexus List down from nearly five hundred to fewer than a dozen. Each of these so-called possibles — three surgeons, four other MDs, one nurse-practitioner, and a professor of biology at a small college in New Hampshire — had the requisite skills to remove a human heart. Each lacked an alibi that could be corroborated by a third party. Each was brought in to 109 Middle Street and placed in an interview room equipped with microphones and hidden video equipment. Each was questioned intensively, sometimes for hours, by teams of detectives skilled in ferreting out the slightest inconsistencies in their stories. In Tom Tasco’s opinion, the most promising ‘suspect’ was a fifty-five-year-old retired gynecologist from North Berwick. He seemed promising only because he’d lost his license in ’02 for allegedly fondling half a dozen patients while their feet were in the stirrups. One was a fourteen-year-old girl.

Unfortunately, the man was only five foot ten, not the six foot plus seen in the surveillance tape and later corroborated by Tobin Kenney. Reviewing the video, McCabe knew there was no way that this man would have been strong enough to carry Katie’s body to where she was dumped.

The hunt for Lucinda Cassidy hadn’t gone much better. Searches organized in ever widening circles from an epicenter in Portland turned up no leads. Divers explored the waters of Portland harbor and found nothing. Advanced mapping techniques used successfully by Maine Forest Service rangers to find the body of a murdered girl a few years earlier were tried again. This time they failed to produce results. Bill Bacon and Will Messing were running out of places to look.

Perhaps the most promising development came in a report from the state lab in Augusta, which said that Lucinda Cassidy’s dog, Fritz, had definitely bitten her attacker and that traces of human blood and hair were found in his mouth. Both samples had undergone DNA analysis, and the results were in. Unfortunately, there was no suspect DNA available to check for a match.

Finally, around six o’clock, McCabe called Burt Lund to find out if Judge Washburn had returned and if Lund had had any luck setting up a meeting with her.

‘She just got back,’ Lund told him. ‘Meet me in her chambers in ten minutes.’

Before leaving, McCabe gathered the exhausted cops in the detectives’ conference room. First he encouraged them all to keep their spirits up and to keep going. He told them every suspect eliminated brought them one step closer to success. Looking into their tired faces, he knew they’d heard it all before. He considered telling them about the note in his mailbox, about the meeting set for tonight with the possible witness, but he was afraid to risk a leak either to the press or to Shockley’s office. However, he did mention he was on his way to ask a judge for a warrant to search Spencer’s car and home. Then he told them to go home and get some rest. Start fresh in the morning.