James Hayman - The Cutting

Last December, before Christmas, Wendy and a couple of girlfriends went up to Sunday River for a weekend of boarding and prospecting for guys. Saturday night they headed for a place called Giggles, which featured a big bar scene for the twenty-something crowd. All three women started the evening off with a couple of appletinis. The idea of actually drinking something called an appletini made McCabe cringe. After that the women started circulating. They talked and danced with a bunch of different guys. At some point, no one knew exactly when, Wendy disappeared.

Her friends told detectives they hadn’t worried. They just assumed Wendy got lucky and left with someone. Not that unusual, they said. Wendy attracted men like flies, and she liked having fun. They figured she’d turn up at the motel either later that night or, if things clicked, sometime the next morning.

When she wasn’t back by 10:00 A.M., one of the friends started calling her cell. Each time the message kicked in right away. Still they weren’t worried. They figured she’d turned the phone off because she didn’t want to be bothered. They left Wendy’s stuff with the motel desk clerk, checked out, and headed to the mountain. At 5:00 P.M. they stopped back at the motel and discovered her stuff was still there. That’s when they called the Bethel police.

The local cops talked to the motel manager and everybody who worked at Giggles. No one at the bar remembered Wendy except for one of the bartenders and a guy who played guitar in the band. He remembered her because A, she was ‘a hottie,’ and B, she kept requesting Dixie Chicks songs. Seems he hated the Dixie Chicks. Neither the guitar player nor the bartender saw who she left with.

After twenty-four hours Wendy still hadn’t turned up. The Bethel cops ran out of ideas and called in the state police. Teams of MSP detectives interviewed every male who’d paid with a credit card at Giggles that night. They also showed Wendy’s picture around at every other bar and motel in the area to see if she’d been spotted anywhere else. She hadn’t. They broadened the search to include men who paid with a credit card either at the ski area for lift tickets or at condos or motels within a twenty-mile radius. Still nothing. They checked with Cingular, who showed no activity on Wendy’s phone since early Saturday evening. The phone had been turned off since then. Detectives interviewed every known family member, friend, and acquaintance plus all of Wendy’s former boyfriends and lovers. Still nothing.

A massive search of the area yielded no results either. According to a Press Herald reporter, Wendy Branca just disappeared ‘into thin air.’ McCabe was pretty sure that wasn’t the case.

Katie Dubois and Wendy Branca. That still left one heart unaccounted for. Because he knew Darryl Pollock was gay and because he suspected Spencer swung both ways, McCabe pulled the files on missing young men. It took over an hour, but he found what he was looking for. Around the middle of April, just weeks before graduation, a Bowdoin senior from Portland named Brian Henry disappeared without a trace. Henry was blond, handsome, a starting forward on the soccer team, and openly gay. Possibly a sexually desirable target, but, unlike with Branca, there was no obvious time or place where Spencer might have met Henry or picked him up. According to Henry’s roommate and partner, they enjoyed a monogamous relationship and neither of them frequented gay bars or other hangouts. It was unlikely Henry had simply taken off. He was a serious student and looking forward to starting medical school in the fall. Tufts Medical School.

It was nearly 8:00 P.M. The Tufts admissions office would be closed. McCabe Googled the name of the dean of admissions, then used Superpages to find his home number. The dean told him yes, prospective students were often interviewed by prominent alumni. McCabe asked him who, if anyone, interviewed Brian Henry. The dean said he wouldn’t be able to check the records until morning. McCabe told him why he needed the information sooner. The dean said he’d call back in twenty minutes. He did.

It turned out that Brian Henry had indeed been interviewed and that the interviewer was none other than a ‘prominent Portland surgeon and Tufts graduate, Dr. Philip Spencer.’ McCabe stuck both files in his drawer. Brian Henry made victim number three. He knew that unless he made progress fast, Lucinda Cassidy would be number four.

McCabe called Maggie at home. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to be working any cases, but he needed her help. He told her what he had discovered about Wendy Branca and Brian Henry.

‘Do the dates Henry and Branca disappeared coincide with the dates Sophie gave you for the surgeries?’

‘Close enough. We know he kept Dubois alive for about a week after kidnapping her. He probably did the same with them.’

‘So Cassidy could still be alive?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, but time’s running out. Mag, I want you to do something for me.’

‘Something like work on the case?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I’m not supposed to.’

‘I know, but this is important. So just be quiet and listen.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘If, as I believe, all three victims plus Cassidy were abducted to use their hearts for transplants, they couldn’t have been chosen randomly. At a minimum the donor blood has to be a match with whoever’s getting the heart, or the transplant won’t work.’

‘So he has to have access to their medical records.’

‘Which probably means all four records can be found in one place.’

‘Cumberland?’

‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

‘Someone hacked into the hospital’s computer system?’

‘Maybe. Or maybe someone already had access because someone just happened to be their number one superstar surgeon.’

‘Assuming all four victims were ever patients at Cumberland.’

‘Assuming that.’

‘There are other places that record blood type. Doctors’ offices. Testing labs. Maybe some others,’ said Maggie.

‘Can you check ’em out? Fast?’

‘Alright, I’m on it.’

‘Thanks.’

As soon as McCabe hung up, Bill Jacobi called from the garage. ‘You were right, Mike. We found blood — and something else that’ll interest you.’

McCabe checked his watch. It was now nearly 9:00 P.M. ‘I’ll be right down,’ he said.

McCabe locked the Henry and Branca files in his bottom drawer, shut down his computer, and headed for the garage. Jacobi directed him to the cargo area of the Lexus and turned out the lights. Blackness closed in. As McCabe’s eyes adjusted, he could see three small blotches of blue phosphorescence shining on the car’s carpet. Then Jacobi opened the spare tire well. The telltale blue glow of more blood. Quite a lot more.

‘Okay, you can turn the lights on,’ said McCabe. He was forced to squint from the sudden brightness. Once again, his eyes adjusted. ‘When will you know if it’s Katie’s?’

‘We already sent it in for DNA. We told the lab to make it a priority rush.’

‘Have them check for a couple of other matches as well. A woman named Wendy Branca and a guy named Brian Henry. I have the files upstairs.’

‘What about Cassidy?’ asked Jacobi.

‘Her, too.’

‘We’ll get it in the works.’

‘You said you had something else, Bill. What is it?’

‘This.’ Jacobi held out a small plastic bag. ‘We found it in the spare tire well. It must have slipped down there. Maybe it caught on something.’

Inside the bag McCabe saw a single small gold earring with a dangling heart-shaped charm. The charm was still shining brightly.

Thursday. 7:30 A.M.

McCabe fidgeted impatiently, eyes glued to a TV monitor, in a viewing room at 109 Middle Street. He watched a uniformed officer escort Philip Spencer into the interview room next door, where Tom Tasco sat waiting. McCabe was anxious to get as much out of Spencer as possible before a lawyer showed up and shut him down.