He moved the beam to the thick waves of dark hair covering her face. It was longer than he remembered, but he hadn’t seen her in a while. He knew he shouldn’t touch any part of her body, not even the hair, until Terri got here. Too bad. Jacobi had his pictures, and there was no way he wasn’t going to look. He felt around in his pockets for the plastic ballpoint he was sure was there. Grasping it by one end, he slid it under her hair, wondering briefly if, like her limbs, the hair would be frozen stiff. It wasn’t. He lifted it off her face, squatted down, and shined the light in. Couldn’t see much, but it was enough. The curve of her lip. The tilt of her nose. Worst of all, one lifeless blue eye staring out. Still mocking him even in death.
‘McCabe, are you alright?’
Maggie’s voice. He didn’t answer. Just raised his left hand and waved her off. The rational side of his brain told him the body couldn’t be Sandy. But if not Sandy, who or what was it? Some kind of delusion? Brought on by what? Too much booze? Too much emotion? Maybe he was going nuts. In his dreams he’d seen her dead often enough. In some of those dreams he even killed her himself. But always with a gun. Never like this. Never without marks. Never left her to freeze in the trunk of a car. Not even a BMW. Though, to be sure, Sandy would rather be found in a Beemer than a Ford.
He wondered again about calling Richard Wolfe, the psychiatrist. Maybe it was time. He’d first seen Wolfe a little over a year ago, right after the end of the Lucas Kane affair, after Casey’s first one-on-one encounter with her mother in more than three years. It was Kyra who urged him to go. He’d been getting the shakes and having trouble sleeping, and when he did sleep, his sleep was disturbed by violent nightmares that more often than not included Sandy. Kyra thought he might be having a nervous breakdown. Wolfe told him no, it wasn’t a breakdown. Just the aftermath of a high level of stress combined with anxiety about Casey and Sandy getting together again. He prescribed Xanax, which seemed to help, and though Wolfe recommended continuing therapy, either with him or someone else, McCabe decided that was that. He wouldn’t take it any further.
‘McCabe. You feeling okay?’
‘Yeah. Fine.’
‘You don’t look fine.’ Maggie was directly behind him. If he moved too fast he’d knock her right in the water. Once again, he felt her hand on his shoulder. ‘Can you talk to me?’ She was using her gentle voice. So effective in interrogations. All the bad guys fell for it. ‘McCabe?’
He didn’t answer. Instead, he examined the body one more time, finishing up by running the Maglite along her leg, searching for the small mole on the outside of her knee that should have been there. It wasn’t. At least not where he could see it.
No, this wasn’t Sandy. He was sure of it now. Just someone who looked like her. To prove it, even to the doubting little voice that inhabited his brain, he took out his cell and punched in her number in New York. It rang. Once. Twice. Four times. Hello. You’ve reached the Ingrams. Sandy and Peter. Please leave a message, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
‘Sandy, it’s me. McCabe. Call back as soon as you can. It’s important.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Oh, it’s not about Casey. She’s fine.’ He clicked off and tried the house in East Hampton and then her cell. Same result both times. He left messages.
No, he told himself again, this wasn’t Sandy. She was in New York, safe and sound. On a Friday night she and her rich-as-Croesus husband were probably at the theater. We request that everyone in the audience please turn off all cell phones for the duration of the performance. Thank you very much. Or maybe they were home lying in front of the fire in their West End Avenue co-op, not answering the phone because they were otherwise engaged. He pictured Sandy having sex with Ingram. Without warning, the image changed and it wasn’t Ingram on the floor by the fire, wrapped in the familiar scent and feel of Sandy’s naked body. It was McCabe himself, thrusting into her over and over in a ferocious surge of desire. He was shocked by how much he still wanted her. Equally shocked by how much he hated her. It struck him that the need to exorcise the ghost of Sandy once and for all might be the real reason he kept pushing Kyra toward a marriage she wasn’t ready for. That was something he’d have to deal with. Something he’d have to resolve. He loved Kyra too much to use her that way. Perhaps he should stop seeing her. At least until the exorcism was complete. He wondered what a therapist like Wolfe would say about all this. He wondered if he could even tell Wolfe. But maybe he would. He sure as hell couldn’t tell anyone else.
As suddenly as it began it was over. Even the little voice in his brain accepted the fact that the woman in the trunk wasn’t Sandy. She was a look-alike, most likely one named Elaine Elizabeth Goff. Yes, the resemblance was strong, but that’s all it was, a resemblance. Maggie was still behind him, her hand still on his shoulder. ‘I’m okay,’ he said.
‘I’m not even going to ask.’
McCabe focused the light once more on the body in the trunk, looking this time not for moles but for evidence. For something that might tell him who had killed this woman and how. He noticed reddish marks on the one wrist and one ankle he could see, suggesting she’d been physically restrained prior to death. He saw the bruising Maggie mentioned on the visible portions of her legs, buttocks, and arms. Maybe she’d been beaten as well. Or maybe the marks were nothing more than freezer burn. He hadn’t seen any bruising around her face, and there was no sign of blood, either on her body or in the trunk.
Four
‘Why is it you two always find your bodies on Friday nights? Haven’t you ever heard of Tuesday?’ Maggie and McCabe looked up at the sound of Terri Mirabito’s voice. The deputy state medical examiner was standing at the front of the car holding a small black bag, like a Norman Rockwell doctor making a house call. Even bundled in a heavy sheepskin coat with a matching hat pulled down over her dark, curly hair, McCabe could tell Terri was dressed for a night on the town. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her wear lipstick or mascara or even high heels before. She looked good. The two cops moved out of the way to give her room to look in the trunk.
‘Hmmm. Frozen like a rock,’ she said. ‘That’s what I heard. That’ll make things interesting.’
‘Any sneaky way to estimate time of death?’
‘No. Freezing right after death keeps a body fresh. Like she died five minutes ago. Think Butterball turkey.’
‘What if decomposition already started?’
‘Freezing would have stopped it. We might be able to estimate the elapsed time between when she died and when she was frozen, but pinpointing actual time of death? No way.’
‘So we could be talking weeks?’
‘Sure. Assuming the body froze in position inside the trunk, which I think is the case.’
‘That’s too bad.’
‘Well, yes and no,’ said Terri, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. ‘Freezing also keeps any evidence we find on the body fresh. Poison, if that’s what killed her. Drugs. Alcohol. Whatever she ate for her last meal. Semen, if the killer left any behind.’ She ran a small high-intensity light over the body and began her examination.
‘She is dead, isn’t she?’ asked Maggie. ‘None of this “Frozen corpse comes back to life. Leaps off autopsy table”?’
Terri looked up, amused. ‘Y’mean, like you see in the Enquirer?’
‘Yeah. Like that.’
‘Sorry, Mag. No leaping for this lady. She’s dead.’
‘Any idea what killed her?’ asked McCabe.
‘Yes.’ Terri was now leaning deep into the trunk. She was holding Jane Doe’s hair up with one gloved hand and shining the light on the back of her neck with the other. ‘It looks like the killer knew what he was doing. Here. Take a look.’