James Hayman - The Cutting

The plane inched forward again.

Maggie’s voice was in his ear. ‘I think maybe he’s guilty and Tasco rattled him more than you thought during that interview. He decides we’re getting close to nailing him and bango, he hits the road.’

‘Yeah. Maybe,’ McCabe said. Although he wasn’t buying it. The plane reached the gate. The pilot turned off the seat belt sign, and people all around him started getting up. ‘What about Hattie?’ he asked.

‘We don’t know where she is either. I think they took off together.’

The woman next to McCabe was looking at him again. He was still in his seat, and she wanted out. He stood up and banged his head on the overhead. ‘Where are you now?’ he asked, pushing his way into the aisle and rubbing his head.

‘We’re just leaving 109.’

‘Have you put out an ATL yet?’ He didn’t want to use Spencer’s name.

‘Yeah. For both the BMW and the Porsche. Every department in Maine plus the New Hampshire staties.’

The flight attendant opened the door, and the line of people started inching out.

‘We’ve got public transport covered as well. Buses. Trains. The airport.’

‘Maybe I’ll run into them on the way out,’ said McCabe. The idea made him smile. Grimly.

The line stopped again. In front of McCabe, a girl around twenty, probably a college kid, was blocking the aisle, struggling to release a duffel bag way too big for the overhead space. He slipped the cell phone into his pocket and wrestled it down for her. They started moving again.

He could hear Maggie shouting from inside his pocket. ‘Hey, McCabe, you still there?’

He pulled the phone out. ‘Yeah. I’m trying to get off the plane. Call you right back.’ He flipped it off.

Up ahead, the flight attendant chirped her mandatory farewells. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. Finally he was free.

He called Maggie back. ‘Meet you at Trinity Street?’

‘I just sent a car to the airport to pick you up,’ she told him. ‘Should be there any minute.’

By the time McCabe reached the exit, the black-and-white Crown Vic was pulling into a no-parking zone right out front, lights flashing. He slipped into the front seat. ‘Alright, hit it,’ he told the officer driving. ‘Lights and siren, 24 Trinity Street.’

Dave Hennings called as they turned out of the airport and onto Congress Street. McCabe asked the driver to silence the siren.

‘Howdy, partner, how you doing?’

‘Not so great, Dave. A suspect just turned up missing. We’re about to search his house. You have anything for me?’

‘Yeah, but it’s a good thing I love you like family. I had to flaunt my Homeland Security creds big-time on this one. Threaten our nation’s air carriers with the Patriot Act. Imply Wilcox was a suspected terrorist. Anyway, it turns out he made three short round-trips between Raleigh-Durham and Portland over the past year. Trip number one was last December. First class out of Raleigh-Durham on United 3281 December fourteenth, changed planes in D.C. He returned on the seventeenth, also on United.’

Wendy Branca, thought McCabe.

‘Second trip was April nineteenth, return on the twenty-third. Same flights.’

Brian Henry.

‘Third trip was just last week. Left North Carolina on US Air 621 and changed in Newark.’

‘What days?’

‘Left Raleigh-Durham Tuesday the thirteenth and returned Friday morning the sixteenth. How’s that jibe with what you got?’

‘You hit the trifecta, Dave. Three dates. Three victims. They all coincide.’

‘Well, my friend, that means you’ve got serious cause for concern. Because Dr. Wilcox may be back in Maine as we speak.’

Oh, Christ. Lucinda Cassidy.

‘He flew out of Raleigh-Durham Wednesday afternoon on American 1560, landed in Fort Lauderdale.’

‘Lauderdale? I thought you said Maine.’

‘Hold on. I’m getting to that. His return flight’s Sunday morning. From Portland. No info on how he gets from Lauderdale to Portland. Airline calls it “arunk.” Arrival unknown. Just to be sure we had the right Matthew Wilcox, I called his office at UNC. Assistant said he was out of town. Wouldn’t be back until Monday. I asked her if she knew where he was going. She said no. Not real friendly for a southern gal. So I took the obvious tack and scared the bejesus out of her. Told her she might be aiding and abetting terrorist activity.’

‘Jesus, Dave. You could get your ass in a sling for that.’

‘Nah. I’ll be alright. She didn’t sound like she wanted any trouble. Anyway, she finally told me he’d gone to Boca Raton on personal business and then was heading to Maine for the weekend.’

‘Did she say where in Maine?’

‘Said she didn’t know. I also checked his cell phone. It’s been turned off since he left town.’

‘Let me have the number,’ said McCabe. Hennings gave it to him. ‘The airline have any information on where he’s staying in Maine or possible car rentals?’

‘No. None. I called Hertz and Avis directly. Nothing there either. I haven’t had time to check the others. Also haven’t checked the chain hotels. Of course, there’s a million independents up there in Maine. He could be at any one of them.’

‘Or none, and he could be using an assumed name.’ The driver pulled up around the corner from Spencer’s house on Trinity Street. Tasco and Fraser were already there in one car, Maggie in another. Half a dozen uniformed officers completed the search team.

‘Good hunting.’

‘Thanks, Dave.’

‘My pleasure. By the way, we’re now officially even on favors. You may even owe me a couple.’

‘Absolutely. Love to Rosemary.’

The detectives huddled in the street discussing strategy. Because Lucinda Cassidy might be a hostage, McCabe told the others he wanted to enter quietly and not force a confrontation. They deployed the uniformed officers to the sides and rear of the property to cut off avenues of escape. Tasco and Fraser covered the driveway. Maggie and McCabe headed for the house.

Twenty-four Trinity Street had an empty, forlorn look about it. Windows shut. Shades drawn. On the front step, Maggie stood to one side of the door, her back against the house, McCabe to the other. He rang the bell. They waited. Rang it again. Quietly, McCabe tried the handle. Locked. They could either break in or pick the lock. Again McCabe preferred the quiet option. Less likely to panic anyone hiding inside. The front lock was an Ilco tubular model. Pickable but not easy. Plus you needed special tools they didn’t have.

They slipped around to the kitchen door and looked in through the glass. Empty. A coffee mug on the round oak table, nothing else out of place. He tried the knob. Locked, an older-style Schlage pin-and-tumbler dead bolt. He took out the small leather wallet he’d brought from Maggie’s car and withdrew a slender tension wrench and one of three stainless steel picks, each shaped like a delicate dental tool, a small hook on the end. He knelt, putting the lock at eye level. Maggie drew her weapon and waited.

McCabe inserted the wrench in the keyhole and turned it a quarter turn to the right. Then he slid the pick in, probed, found a pin, and eased it onto the narrow ledge of the cylinder. One by one, he lifted the remaining pins. When all five were clear of the shear line, he turned the wrench. The lock slid open.

Inside, weapons drawn, the two detectives looked and listened to the silence. A slow drip from the kitchen faucet. The ticking of a clock. A motor turning on in the fridge. The coffee mug on the table was filled about halfway with clear liquid, traces of lipstick marking the rim. McCabe sniffed. The scent of gin. A familiar ploy of drunks the world over. Every morning, for years, Tom McCabe senior sipped his Bushmill’s from a bone china teacup. ‘Pa’s tea,’ he called it. Mom never spoke of it. Never let the kids say anything either. Not to the old man. Not to anyone. She grew angry when Tom junior, Tommy the Narc, brought it up the day they put the old man in the ground. Sixty-one years old. A liver ailment. Mom only forgave Tommy his indiscretion after he himself was dead.